#like. i sort of assumed that it was because it's wasn't a 'real' regeneration. but no. it was just good old misogyny

[maraslesbian]

god i shouldn't have gone on twitter i just ended up seeing a bunch of tweets about the whole "rtd didn't want to put dt in jodie's clothes" thing and now i'm just. mad. it was bad enough that they had jodie regenerate into dt but that they changed the clothes too because they didn't want to put a man into "women's clothes" makes it SO MUCH WORSE

[play-on-skinners-box]

SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER FIVE OF RAINCODE(And a LARGE amount of text)

I wanted to do more Raincode furries cause they're honestly so fun and are really good practice because I'm kinda rusty in general. I only did Yuma and Makoto this time just cause it's a more manageable workload and they are some of the last ones I'm especially passionate about.

OKAY, BUCKLE UP BABY, THESE CHOICES HAVE LAYERS TO THEM. L A Y E R S

OKAY SO, at some point scrolling on tumblr I saw this post by Nadox showcasing a piece of Yuma's concept art, and in the art he was depicted with long hair. They theorized that this was what Number One originally looked like and he sheared his hair into that wimpy fresh almost bowl cut so he could pass as a trainee, AND I L O V E THAT. I herby declare it as correct on the grounds of I said so.

Going along with this idea, Yuma is a young wolf that has a lame haircut so everyone THINKS he's just a dog. I know a wolf in real life would be a lot harder to reasonably pass as a dog, so this requires a bit of anime logic tomfuckery, but I'm fine with that because Raincode already deals in its fair share of logic jank. I am simply being true to game in that regard! The way I drew him already isn't super wolf-like cause I made him all squishy looking like human Yuma, and made the veerrryyyy tips of the ears flop over because the pointy ones just didn't feel quite right. I know real wolf ears are only ever depicted as pointy but it was for the VIBE. Yeaahhh in hindsight I might have taken a few too many liberties. I suppose to make it a little more sensible you could say he's a wolfdog and not full wolf or something. Other than the logic I really like this choice because everyone would naturally assume Yuma's just a pathetic little puppy dog when his real identity is hiding in plain sight!

I went back and forth on alot of the fur aspects. How smooth is too smooth? How much of it should just look like blunt cuts? Should I even give him his human hair? Usually I don't like giving my furries human hair in general because I want them looking a lot more like animals rather than people, but for Yuma his hair is such an important part of his design that I ultimately decided to keep it on both him and Makoto.

MAKOTO IS A WOLF IN SHEEPS CLOTHING AND THAT IS SO FUN, SO SILLY, SO GOOFY, HOOOORAY(Specifically a dall sheep cause they have those big curly horns). In theory, the hardest part of choosing an animal for Yuma is that whatever his animal is needs to tie into Makoto, and also be able to be implemented in a way where their connection isn't obvious. Makoto having a mask helps of course, but if you pick a really distinctive animal for Yuma you'll have to come up with better ways to hide it. Others have gotten a lot more creative with how Makoto hides his species, but I didn't do that and went in the full direction of just giving him a disguise. Its a littlllleeeeee lazy but I'm too smitten with the idea to care. I was a little confused on what to do with the tail. I considered just chopping off the majority of it to make it look like a short little sheep tail and put the justification for it in his suuuuppper tragic past(Though I honestly don't know if homunculi can regenerate like lizards). Luckily, the pose makes it so you can't see it anyway so I don't have to grapple with the responsibly of weather or not I need to brutally amputate one of Makoto's body parts. I consider this a win.

Disregarding his actual animal, I think the sheep is also weirdly fitting because of some of their associations. When I met Makoto I wasn't sure what to make of him besides being cautiously optimistic about him not letting Yuma die(What a fool I was), and sheep/lambs/rams and animals in that ballpark can vary wildly in their depictions from literaly the devil to good little fluffy guys!

For his actual look I wanted the sheep parts to look costumey sort of. I was going for a similar effect as the blood in chapter 0, where it's very noticeable but you write off the weird things about it because it's not immediately relevant. So, the mask has fake horns attached. The hand hooves are just little caps over the paw fingers, and there are two gold and silver caps to mimic his rings and point to their artificiality. The feet are also fake and are suppose to look a little clunky like Makoto's actual shoes. His hair is also much more full looking, a little less limp; because his actual ears need some place to get tucked away. I think the main problem with this design is it'd make for a really awkward reveal, cause when he dramatically gets the mask taken off then he'd just be a canine with hooves.

For both of them I think wolf works very well in terms of their characters and their shared forte. Yuma spends most of the game struggling with needing to rely on others, and Makoto has been carrying the weight of Kanai Wards secret on his shoulders alone for like three years. They also both have the Coalescence forte, which by it's very nature requires the help of other people, and at the end of the day being with others and working together is what brings them farther then they could do alone(even if some of the themes get muddled at the end and arn't really as clear as I'd personally like I find that Kodaka's games can have some not so rock solid theming with shakey conclusions but this is what I chose to take away from it)

These aspects of their characters fit perfectly with the stereotypical idea of a strong and stoic lone wolf in contrast to real wolves being pack animals that work together to survive!

I thought I'd like Yuma's design more by a landside cause I've grown really fond of his human design, but I actually really love this version of Makoto. I guess any designs with horns or hooves just appeals to me in a way that paws don't. Still really happy with these two. They could most certainly be worse! I think they're both cute little guys though and I learned a lot about how to like, render from this so that's a bonus!

[reckless-lambert]

Question what do you think of infinite from Sonic forces (don't skip any detail I would like to hear this)

WOAH HELLO!! OK OK OK OK you're in for a ride because I am kinda crazy about this guy.

Right off the bat I wanna say that imo he's not a bad character. Like not in a sense of potential or whatever, I did like him in general.

To try to keep myself on track there will be 3 topics I'll give my opinions on: powers, backstory, character.

POWERS

First of all I don't think that he is a pushover. If we are talking about measuring strength of a character based on their bossfight pretty much all sonic characters up until 06 have bad bossfights that can be finished in seconds so it's not a good measuring point. In terms of lore there are many many many theories to be had, I prefer to look at his encounters from a story standpoint (we don't talk about dying to a flamethrower in 0.5 seconds accident). I think it's safe to assume that Infinite was a capable fighter (hence the title), him being beaten by Shadow doesn't really tell us anything, Shadow is arguably the most powerful character in sonic series so losing to him is to be expected. Infinite was just a very skilled mercenary, what was he supposed to do against teleporting, regenerating, super fast living plasma cannon?!?

Anyways if we are talking about real encounters (after him getting ruby powers) there are many ways to interpret it (other than just saying that it's bad). Here's my understanding of the events. Sonic gets captured at the start of the game because Infinite just overwhelmed him with quality and numbers. After this the whole war happens (no one talks about Infinite conquering 99.9% of the world), Sonic escapes and encounters Infinite in mystic jungle, this time around we can see that Infinite doesn't have illusions of past villains helping him so it's safe to assume that his powers are actually pretty finite (he can't uphold too many illusions all over the world at once, first time he had them helping because he wasn't using them elsewhere), he still beats Sonic and leaves.

Next time we see him in Metropolis, here we see avatar pretty much matching him with his own bullshit (I have a magical rock that neutralises your magical rock) which is fine by me and Infinite still comes out on top thanks to energy blasts and presumed better fighting skills. Escape to null space can be blamed on phantom ruby prototype again. As to why Infinite didn't use it before I assume Eggman and Infinite invented this ability not that long ago.

For the last encounter, Infinite doesn't have to distribute his illusions all over the world so he uses them in battle, but still has a hard time because numbers advantage is no longer on his side + he probably struggles to control so many entities at once so the quality is diminished drastically. He decides that using an all out attack is a better tactic, but yet again kindergarten logic applies so the sun doesn't explode (rock to rock shenanigans). Despite the sun doing nothing I think it drained Infinite's resources drastically + he was using only the backup power. So in the end avatar and Sonic finally beat weakened Infinite only for him to be transported somewhere and never seen again.

In my opinion we can clearly see that Jackal wasn't defeated by power of friendship or avatar or whatever else people tend to say as some sort of parrots. Infinite was defeated only by his own hubris and his own kind of magic. I think he did alright all things considered. He was pretty powerful and I'm fine with the way things played out. The only thing lacking here is good presentation, people just don't take the plot seriously so it all crumbles, but I don't think that it's fair to say that someone is not powerful because you don't take the stakes of the story seriously. Still can't believe that people call a guy with power to create rockets and lasers out of thin air and change gravity at will "all talk". The only reason our characters are alive is thanks to phantom ruby prototypes and Infinite's weird fondness of main cast (if you are complaining about sega not outright killing sonic or other main characters, Infinite is not the one you should blame + I have some ideas as to why he does that described later).

BACKSTORY

Infinite's initial motivation is fiiiine. As we can see in his prequel comic his main desire is to ruin, he even says that "he is tired of this world" at the end of it. So it's safe to assume that our Jackal doesn't like how things are going and wants to overthrow the current world order. As to why he is that way it's up for debate (more about it later). That desire is what drives him towards Eggman.

After unspecified amount of time "episode Shadow" happens. Shadow presumably kills the whole Jackal squad except Infinite whom he deems unworthy of killing and throughoutly insults him instead (super mean! Shadow wtf!). Infinite in attempt to somehow amend his self image after losing everything he had (all thanks to his ambition and Shadow btw), decides to abandon his old self as if it was a different person (sad to look at) and double down on alliance with Eggman because it's all he has left - professor's promise of greatness, something to cling onto. So that's how we get to forces. Some might say that Infinite doesn't really enact revenge on Shadow in any way, but there're still things to consider: 1. He actively avoids his old identity, so you can say that he avoids Shadow and feelings tied to him in the same way (doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't feel them) 2. Eggman could have done some mental gymnastics with the Jackal. It's pretty easy considering that Shadow is a self proclaimed guardian of this world (he made a promise and all of that) + he works for GUN. So what better way to enact revenge than to ruin all the things your enemy stands for? Bonus points for this objective coinciding with his initial motivation.

Those options are something I thought of, I think they create a rather straight forward narrative + nobody said that those are the only ones.

Anyways I hate how people yet again somehow diled his story down to "Shadow beat him called him ugly and now hes bad". As if killing his whole squad is nothing, like Infinite's character can be interpreted in many ways, but even if you think that he is a cold hearted killing machine - how can he live as a captain and a sole survivor of the squad, it's the end of his mercenary life if captain is the only one standing that means he fucked up real bad it's the ultimate failure, there's no recovering your career after that.

CHARACTER

I saved this one for last because It's almost purely my headcanons and subjective opinions. Anyways as I mentioned above Infinite is not fond of current civilization for some reason. My take is that:

1. He hates united federation for some reason. I think it would be funny if jackal squad were some sort of child soldiers GUN experimented on. Desert is already torn apart by bandits Eggman and feds fighting all over the place, no one will notice random street orphans missing (a lil metal gear revengeance brainrot for ya). But they deserted and became a more evil versions of desert raiders from Archie becoming a nuisance for every party involved: collecting bounties, raiding Eggman's bases and GUN convoys - earning reputation and fame. But jackals' hate for their previous captors is not forgotten and it's also mutual as UF probably wants them dead as soon as possible because they are a living proof of their dark deeds.

2. I think Infinite has problems coping with all the things he was deprived of. His first instinct is hate "how dare they live normal happy lives while I'm fighting for my life every day!" And because all he knows is conflict he thinks that living by jungle rules is the only right way and everyone else is living a lie (that's how I interpret his lyrics). So his desire to ruin the civilisation stems from his idea that jungle rules shall return, and UF citizens should suffer the same way he does. (Spreading misery is fun amiright)

Also I don't think that jackal squad was a family or a friend group, more like a congregation of equaly fucked up individuals who kinda trust each other with tasks, as soon as they deem you a burden they will abandon you. Also imagine the pressure captain of such group would endure. Infinite is not ok. He is partially driven by pride, but also by peer pressure of his fellow child soldiers, being cruel = being strong. As a leader he must be the strongest. That's why his sadism might not be inherent to his character. Also I do think that he was bullied in his unregulated child environment, heterochromia and girly tendencies make him a prime target (CMON PEOPLE dude has the longest hair in the whole franchise and presumably lived in highly militarized environment, there will be problems). I guess he just powered through (it's hard to bully you when you are the strongest).

Anyways coming back to episode Shadow I think Infinite was so scared of not being in control, being pretty much bullied by some stranger. So he did what he always does - search for more power.

Interesting side note here is that Infinite doesn't really have ambition, he doesn't create himself a castle or even a throne (and he is someone with power to create things from thin air, for example it took Zetis 1-2 days to throw together those in idw, he doesn't do it despite having the whole year). He just wants power to not be pushed around and push around others (I IMPLORE you to understand, he is not a nice person, but it doesn't mean that people should just give up on him, my boy needs help).

Also I think episode Shadow warped his brain really hard, like he tries so hard to re-enact his own trauma onto others many many times despite clearly seeing it not working except the first time with avatar. Like we can clearly see that it's all he thinks about, how not deeming someone worthy of killing is the most painful thing he can inflict on them, far more painful than just outright killing the guy. This hinders his critical thinking really hard and it's sad to look at.

Anyways that's pretty much all of my thoughts on this guy (says the guy who thinks about him every day for past 1.5 years, I can mumble on and on, but it will never end if I do), hope you enjoyed!

[dxmedstudent]

I had a question about your liver transplant answer. You mentioned several patient profiles, one being an alcoholic 60 year old. This is just for clarification but is it not true that you must put someone at the end of the list if they've had a drink in a certain amount of time previous to the transplant? So overally, not speaking ethically, but speaking technically, (which I realize wasn't the point, this is just out of curiousity) wouldn't that eliminate them as a candidate?

Ask away! You’re correct in the sense that continuing to drink following seeking help is a contraindication to going on the waiting list. The reasons why someone might not be appropriate for receiving an organ do include things like:

Alcoholic hepatitis (a condition of liver inflammation resulting from alcohol use)

The patient repeatedly not working with their treatments, with no good reasons as to why that is.

And returning to drinking. Patients can lose their place, or even permanently be removed from the list if they drink whilst they are on the waiting list.

Current drug use (except occasional cannabis use)

However, the requirement for people not to drink isn’t a moral one; it’s not about punishing people for not drinking. Rather, it’s about having time to assess their stability, getting them the help they need so that they are in the right place where they can make use of the transplant and have lower chances of relapsing. And, because the liver can regenerate itself, when people stop drinking, some of the people who might have needed a liver may no longer need it once they stopped! Interestingly, even people whose liver problems aren’t related to alcohol and don’t drink are recommended to stay within the daily recommended limit, in order not to risk their transplant. They also need to be assessed by a specialist in addiction, who can get them help and assess how likely they are to relapse; though at this point we don’t have any predictable way of really knowing. So it’d be unfair to assume that ‘all alcoholics’ lapse or something like that; it’s just not true, nor is it easy to predict who will and who won’t. The point you raise is interesting, because I don’t believe (I can’t actually remember, so correct me if I’m wrong) I specified whether the 60 year old alcoholic was currently drinking; whether they were ‘lapsed’ or ‘recovering’ and what sort of position their life is in right now. It raises questions about how we see people with substance abuse problems; there’s a huge, huge morally judgemental element attached to how most people view them, and that stigma in itself probably makes accessing help and recovery harder. I can’t remember if I specified that they were ‘recovering’ or ‘currently drinking’, so a lot depends on how we all choose to interpret their state. Most people will see the word ‘alcoholic’ and probably believe that to mean someone who is currently drinking large volumes of alcohol. Which may often be the case, but is not always so. Another point is that they don’t expect your average university applicant to necessarily know the ins and outs of the transplant list. To be honest, I had to refresh myself quickly before answering your question, to make sure I didn’t lead you astray! That’s mainly because only very few centres actually handle transplants (about 7 in the UK), so although we all broadly know who would be an obviously good or less likely candidate, the decision as to who is most appropriate, is handled by a specialised team, it’s not something most of us have any experience in. So they definitely won’t expect budding students to have to know all the details. Obviously, I was applying at a time when there was a lot less information online, so it’s possible that today’s applicants are more well informed. But I don’t think they expect you to know all the criteria for liver transplantation in the UK (which can be found here, courtesy of BTS), or this slightly more user friendly summary on NHS choices.  So I suspect what they really want to see is still your rationale behind working it out. Even if you come up with the same answer, the reasoning might be what makes it wrong or right. If you argued  that the alcoholic would have to have abstained from drinking, gotten treatment, been compliant and that in reality many people lapse. Therefore many alchoholic patients might well not fit the criteria, and might therefore not benefit from the treatment enough to warrant having it, but they would have to be assessed to see if they could benefit from it, and whether they fit the criteria individually (and they likely may not), then that might be a reasonably logical answer. Compared to “I don’t believe any alcoholics should ever get transplants because it’s self inflicted” . Or at least one built not on the medical tenets of helping those who need help, as long as treatment is not futile. The word ‘futile’ is key here, because the reason we sometimes have to refuse care to a patient is precisely this. We don’t have an obligation to offer a treatment we believe is futile. It’s true for CPR (which, let’s face it, is a shot in the dark at the best of times, anyway), and it’s true for transplants. That’s why patients with other, non-alcoholic severe medical problems are, if you read the guidance, also often not listed for transplant. Because if you can’t survive an operation because your heart is failing and you have severe COPD, a transplant would almost certainly be futile; even if you survived the op, you’d be likely to do poorly afterwards, and you might well not be expected to live long afterwards, even with a new liver. The transplant criteria explicitly state that patients need to be expected to have a reasonable quality of life and 5 year survival afterwards.  Whether someone would survive the operation, and whether it would add to their survival and quality of life are key things we consider for many treatments, because treatments carry their own risks; if there’s no benefit, why would you treat? If you might kill them faster, why would you treat? These are things to consider. The real answer is that I was vague because I was probably post on call precisely because these types of questions usually furnish you with minimal information to make your decision. I can’t reveal specific questions, not least in part because I signed at least one nondisclosure agreement as part of the interview process, years ago, but really because I can’t remember exactly what they asked; so even where I did not promise not to blab all the questions, I can’t  anyway even if I wanted to. I do remember, though, the feel of the questions. And that, like CMT interviews, these questions aren’t usually detailed. They give enough information for you to make a reasonable choice, but not enough for that choice to be a certain one. I suspect that they want to keep it vague, or the answer might be too straightforward. There needs to be enough of a difficult decision for students to demonstrate that they can weigh up their knowledge of how healthcare works, and who might benefit, and who might not. I hope this helps!