#never posted my art online but yknow what there’s a first for everything and I’m brainrotting

[sootsz]

1 bird. many stones.

[ajxrn-archive]

rant under the cut . doubt anyone will see it but who cares anymore.

.

I’m tired of not being interacted with.

I always have to start the conversation. My ask box is empty 24/7. Maybe once in a while someone else will start a convo with me. I constantly get notes and I look and its just the kosa post I made. I might turn rbs/notifs off or delete it at this point. Someone I thought was my friend fucked up our friendship and I realized they didn’t actually value me in the first place. I joined the discord right when everything fell apart and practically everyone left. Half of my friends aren’t online often. I’m active in the discord and try to fucking fix everything and keep it lively and fun for everyone and it feels like nobody else fucking cares as much as I do.

idk.

I’m just really lonely and I feel like nobody cares to speak with me yknow. I reblog or make ask games, and I don’t get asks any asks. I tag friends in posts and they don’t rb or just acknowledge them. People always liked and never reblogged my art so I gave up posting it. I don’t get tagged in stuff and that made me hate picrew/reblog chains so I don’t do them anymore. Im always initiating conversations. I vent too much and complain and I can be rude so maybe that puts people off from me.

I just feel like I have stressed myself by trying to put in so much effort just for others to…not? Even back then when I was an anon. I would send rambles and ask people about their day and be super friendly just for..barely any response.

The last time my friends seemed to care so much was when I made my suicide note post at like, what, 14? I was begged to stay. People said they loved me so much and I mattered a lot to them.

..And then the next day it went back to no interaction.

I have ONE fucking irl friend and I’m grateful to have her and she means the world to me but fuck I’m so lonely. I even just talk to my animals like people at this point. I try to send asks to friends and they never get answered or the replies are short. Nobody sees my posts despite the fact I have 44 followers. Which irritates me. And half of those people followed for art and I can’t even do that anymore.

i feel like everyone liked me better when I was in the Lu fandom and under the different name. I got way more interactions back then. People saw my art more even though it was bad. Friends sent asks and DMs. People responded to my tagging. I would reblog ask games and I’d GET asks. I would post something and it would get attention. But now it’s so empty.

I used to post a headcanon about a character and people would say they loved it. Now I do it and it goes unnoticed. I talk about shit I like now and nobody fucking cares. Nobody listens. It pisses me the fuck off. Oh but if I came back as old me and started talking about lu again I’d get SOO much fucking attention.

I saw friends talk to eachother in huge reblog chains. I saw people reblog their mutuals posts all the time. Constantly answering asks. Talking about dm conversations. Everyone I was friends with. It feels like being in a huge circle of people yet everyone forgot about you. Even when you cut people off they didn’t notice. And that really shows that you weren’t of value in the first place. They didn’t care. You meant nothing to them. There was always someone who mattered more.

I feel invisible and honestly unwanted. And that really fuels my whole abandonment issues. Its so nice knowing people will leave you because they always have someone who’s more important. Someone they favor. Someone more valued.

I could post a suicide note right now and suddenly people would care. People would want to talk to me. People would ‘like’ me.

that really shows that people don’t care until your gone.

[cluelesslesbian]

Check-In Tag✨

AKA a very long post about moi and this account bc I was tagged by the lovely @katelfiredemon <3

IF YOU SEE THIS, PRETEND I'M TAGGING U like this is completely optional (and long omg) so I don't wanna FORCE anyone to do it but asjhkl I think it's cute

1. why did you choose your url?

My og url was something dumb bc I only used tumblr to keep up with artists and writers I admired… this one is revamped to be ~relatable~ bc I wanted something that I felt comfortable adding on my art?? But ok-

clueless = because THERE’S TIMES THAT I’M A LIL SLOW TO GET A JOKE SDFHJKL

lesbian = bc I’m not out to my family but my sexuality is something I like about me,,, so I wanted to acknowledge it somewhere (and the anonymity of tumblr = ideal tbh)

2. any side blogs? if you have them: name them and why you have them

I made one like yesterday lol! It’s @blue-dragon-shin-ah and it’s for Akatsuki no Yona (an anime and manga I TOTALLY rec! It’s like a historical themed fantasy, comedy, romance WITH a found family trope it’s so good)

but ngl I have no clue how to keep track of more than 1 blog so it'll be a lot more inactive than this one asdhkl

3. how long you’ve been on tumblr?

hmm according to my tumblr account it’d be 2016 since that’s the oldest post I’ve kept (I deleted everything and revamped this acc in december 2020)

BUT I did the math and I would’ve made this account in middle school so around 2013-2014 lol I don’t think I used it much until voltron was booming in like 2016-2018.. Then I lowkey stopped… until now!

4. do you have a queue tag?

oof no

……...I probably should? like 90% of my blog is queued or scheduled… but ngl I barely remember to tag posts at ALL some nights so I probably won’t (rip if that’s annoying,, but I don’t make much og content so I figure anyone following me is chill with this lol)

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

In middle school?? To see funny posts and not be pressured into having an ~online presence~ tbh. That’s literally it lol

6. why did you choose your icon?

Matching with @lesbianklance rn! and keith's expressions r hilarious

Before I just,,, chose sokka bc I love that blue boi and the edit of him had a yellow bg that I LOVED (and matched with my pink theme)

7. why did you choose your header?

Matching with @lesbianklance rn! and klance sdjfhk

Before it was just a colour palette bc I wanted my blog to be my fav colour: PINK

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

My zukka art omg- like I did one that I put effort into which I KNOW is my top post (it’s got like 600 notes??? I still can’t believe it I love that!! 🥰)

BUT MY SECOND TOP IS A POST OF REALLY REALLY ROUGH SKETCHES OF THEM AND I LOWKEY CRINGE AT IT (it’s got like 500 notes.. And I’m like… y ?? I can DO BETTER 😭)

9. how many mutuals do you have?

…...listen I’ve literally never had mutuals until this year (minus my one irl.. I love u bitch!! but u know that bc we text on other platforms too)

idek am i supposed to be keeping track??? I just smile a lot when i see the darker-tinted notifs in my activity feed

10. how many followers do you have?

hmmmmmmm ok i lowkey don’t want to answer this bc my whole love for tumblr is that followers don’t matter? You could follow me today and unfollow tmrw bc i ship something you don’t and life moves on??? So yeah no answer here

11. how many people do you follow?

1807 babeyyyy

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

...wait define shitpost- technically any original post under #yeetidk might be a shitpost cause they’re all just?? my shitty rambles tbh???

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

Sometimes i’ve got the app open allll day long but other days?? I’ll go on like once in the morning or at night just to check my notifs and then that’s it

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

lmaoo bold of you to assume i interact with anyone enough to have a fight (AKA no)

If i did tho?? I’m the type to try and come to some middle ground before dropping the issue so idk- i’m more likely to lose bc i’m willing to （づ￣3￣）

15. how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

Wish-granting/curse stuff: no.

Politics/Donation posts: depends! I try to only reblog posts like these that I know a bit about bc I don’t really wanna contribute to misinformation ykno?

I did start tagging these posts as #important but I’m not like?? gonna be mad at anyone for not reblogging political posts (also a heads-up if you wanted to block #important: I also tag some lgbt+ stuff under there so you’ll likely miss those too, not a huuuge loss but just an fyi yknow??)

16. do you like tag games?

asdfghjkl this is honestly the first tag game i’ve ever been part of so i have no opinion 😭 tho formatting this post has been a bitch asdhjkl I gotta get back to my homework when I'm finally done this

17. do you like ask games?

I've done a grand total of 1 and I felt so?? ashgjl awkward and bad for asking people to talk to me about myself- maybe if I do one that isn't about me I'll like it more

I do love sending other people anons to compliment them when they do these games tho 😌

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

....this requires me to pay attention to people I follow more than I have been so I literally have no idea??

19. do i have a crush on a mutual?

yes. the one readings this. love u, sweetheart 😘

/jokes

I don't?? usually get crushes? idek.. thought I was aromantic for a while bc of that lmaoo (but then I got a crush on someone irl and I was like "oooh ok so maybe im just gay then")

[novantinuum]

A Link Beyond Memory (ch 2/4)

AO3

Fandom: Trollhunters, 3Below

Rating: T (for minor language in future chapters)

Words: 600~

Pairings: Jim/Claire, but not focus

Summary: Shortly after the events of the Eternal Night, memories of a day that never happened somehow resurface in Jim’s mind in his sleep- and upon recalling the friendship he and Aja formed, he decides to pursue that connection again. Slice of life, and kinda a slow burn friendship reunion. A hybrid of prose and chat fic (to be seen in later chapters.)

Previous chapter

|

Next chapter

Note: Unfortunately, fic circulation online is getting harder and harder as the months pass. Please, if you read to the end and enjoy, consider helping me out by reblogging this post, or even commenting/giving kudos over on AO3. Thanks! :D

Chapter 2: Transit

Transit- The instant when a celestial object crosses the meridian, thus reaching the highest point in the sky.

~

T: hhhh miss ya already. tbh i dont know what im supposed to do this summer now ahah

T: i was all looking forward to hangin with you and claire and everyone else in trollmarket and now…

T: i mean i still have aaarrrgghh. and darci and eli too i guess but

T: really starting to wish i came along.

T: i know you said to watch over the town while youre gone and i know thats a good point but honestly i just wanna be with you

T: jim?

T: yoooo ? did u die

T: god i hope not after all the end of the world chaos thatd be really anticlimactic

J: Sorry no I lost signal for a bit!! Miss you too gahhh.

T: pls know if you so much as say the word ill crawl on the first airplane i can find and launch myself directly at your face

T: jim liSTEN jim im not even kidding

T: screw arcadia

T: if you need me im there

J: Omg I’ll defo keep that in mind

T: ..jk dont screw arcadia tho i love this place. also its already screwed enough at this point so

T: hey but you think merlin could make me another warhammer for my growing arsenal?

J: Yeah I think he could be easily convinced.

J: He’s kinda sucking up to me now hahah

J: He already made Claire a sorta necklace amulet to store her armor so a magic hammer should be no problem

T: awesomesauceee

J: Any particular reason lol?

T: i dunno i just think itd look wicked cool to double wield, like general orzan from gun robot three. also lets be real after all the crap he put us through we deserve S W A G

J: I’ll ask tomorrow. Hey quick Q for you though

J: Well okay not exactly quick  

J: It’s actually a long story but-

T: ye?

J: Do you happen to have Aja’s number or anything?

J: We took her and her bro down to the Janus Order, lightning in a bottle, remember her?

T: ye i know- lively! and uhhh don’t think i do? havent really talked to them since why

J: I get the strangest sense we’re supposed to know them more than we do. Had a really weird dream but it felt more like a lost memory. Think it’s an amulet thing, like that alternate timeline it made me live through once?

T: huh funky

J: Also supposedly according to the dream/memory both Aja and Krel are… not from Earth?

T: dude no offense but are you sure it wasnt just a normal dream

J: Seriously.?

J: Merlin turned me into a fucking TROLL and aliens are where you decide to draw the line

T: okay yknow thats fair

T: i take that back  

T: okay so,, aja and krel are MAYBE aliens. got that. go onnn

J: What I saw honestly felt so real, I swear. It was two weeks ago, at the science fair. We were fighting a troll in the planetarium with them, and the troll kept combining magic with some alien tech, which kept reversing everyone back to the beginning of the day, like a time loop or something. But I could remember everything bc of the amulet. Aja remembered bc of some energy shield she had. We lived through the same day almost a dozen times.

T: whoa…

J: And get this- in some of those loops we even went to their house and got to look around inside their spaceship! But none of us are supposed to recall any of it bc technically the entire day never happened? It’s how we defeated the troll, that bit’s a little fuzzy. A lot of technobabble sorry.

T: goddd out of all the days to forget huh

J: Right??

J: I guess… if she remembered all of this before I’m kinda curious if she still remembers now too. If it really happened. We were friends in that memory. It’d be nice to maybe get to know her again, y’know?

T: okay you’re prob gonna hate me for suggesting this but i THINK steve has her number

T: bc i was talking to darci and she said that mary told her that aja and steve are like, a thing now

T: a Thing thing

T: i believe her exact words were ‘staja’ ?

J: Oh my god how’d that happen is he even capable of proper flirting

T: well if shes an alien like you think then maybe she doesn’t know what human flirting looks like

J: Haha maybe indeed. I’ll go talk to him thanks

J: G’night Tobes love ya

T: night buddy <3

(my notes from ao3:)

Admission, I had far too much fun with the text format. I've never attempted anything like it, but I especially wanted to create unique "character voices" that extended into the way they each type- which was a cool challenge.

I imagined Toby as the sort of person who types out his thoughts far too quickly to care about punctuation, and IMO if Trollhunters was set just a year later (I generally just imagine it all set in 2016) he'd be keymashing. Jim is more of a full sentence type of guy who never turned off auto capitalization.

ALSO, a note on the contact photos- (Jim's which I directly took from a screenshot from Claire's phone, and Toby's which I edited from some 2D concept art)- That's the photo Jim uses for Toby's contact, and I imagine there's probably some inside joke where Jim took a really derpy photo of him at one point and they laughed so hard about it that he immortalized it as his contact. Jim's personal contact photo is... well, as this all takes place post s3 of course, a rather sad reminder of his loss of humanity. He can't bother himself to change it currently.

Future chapters will likely be a mix of text AND prose, instead of one or the other. Hope you enjoyed!

[tumblunni]

You're good and I admire you and aspire to be like you

Oh man you’re making me blush so much! I don’t reccommend aspiring to be like me though, internet personalities often look admirable on the surface but if you copy everything they do and try and translate it to real life it probably won’t work so well. I mean I don't think I qualify as an ‘internet personality’ since i’m not popular and i don’t really put on any sort of mask online, but still naturally there’s gonna be stuff you just never discuss with strangers on an online forum. tho now that I’m saying that, I’m noticing I have a huge problem with rambling about my bad days and stuff, haha...

umm.. so.. what I mean is...Like in real life I’m way less cool than I look on a blog? And I don’t look very cool on a blog in the first place.

I have kind of a complicated life that isn’t really very ‘successful adult’, I’m pretty solidly lower class, I’m disabled, and I’m still very incompetant at lots of basic life things because of the abusive upbringing that led to my disabilities, and the circumstances it took to escape that. I kinda had to start my life all over again in a homeless shelter, and I’ve only just reached a point where I can look at myself and feel semi-proud that I’ve regained the level of normal life that everyone else has. And even then I’m still unemployed and missed my chance at university, and have no real accomplishments from my years of blogging online. Like I never became famous or found a job via tumblr or any of those other big aspirational dreams you see on the news. And I think my art has barely improved and I still haven’t finished a single game project, and i’ve only just started learning how to make youtube videos...

So yeah! Don’t aspire!I’m hoping maybe you just meant this as a compliment and not a legit statement, ok? Aspire to someone bigger than me!

But like uhh, to try and look at myself and find some positive traits for once, I guess I’ve gotten better at being positive and friendly and interacting with my followers more? So if you wanna aspire to just being a kind person, then I’m cheering you on! But I don’t have much confidence in my abilities at this either, cos it’s taken constant work to become..like.. mildly entertaining and helpful and not accidentally make people’s day worse. It’s more of a challenge than it seems, often good intentions don’t mean you’ll automatically succeed all the time. Especially when you’re a socially inexperienced weird PTSD person.

So...!! uhh...!! Yeah...!!Thank you anon, and I hope you succeed at all you aspire to!!And personally I aspire to be the person that people think I am, yknow? no matter how much you say it, i don’t think I’m there yet!

(...sorry for rambling post..)

[tirkarokujo]

Was making a writeup about single player in fighting games for my twitter, but it got way too long, so now it’s a blog post. Incomprehensible armchair game design nonsense under the jump

Anyway heres my long tweet thread about fighting games, namely the single player portion, from a guy who wants to make one himself. If this was an actual article it'd probably be called "what fighting games can learn from Cuphead" so yknow thank christ this is just a tweet thread- oh fuck, what do you mean this is a tumblr post now? Well I’m still gonna spare you from that motherfucking storm so you better be thankful.

One issue thats plagued fighting games is how eternally niche the genre seems to be, even when they have occasional bursts into the AAA space , interest tends to wean until they just cruise along by enthusiast hype, never reaching the same level of interest of other "esports" games. This lack of ongoing interest persists for obvious reasons, namely that losing in a fighting game just feels bad. Compared to something like overwatch or mobas, you can't blame your failures on your team, nor can they carry you, yadda yadda, u heard this before 

To a newbie, jumping into fighting games feels impenetrable just because losing feels so bad. But guess what? You gotta get your butt kicked to improve, just like most things in life. Often its just incomprehensible why you're losing so much, and while the clear course of action is to go online for some hot tips, the path of least resistance that we’ve seen exhibited by most players is to just give up after playing a while. This is of course mainly a problem if the first thing you do is hop onto online matchmaking, which ideally you really shouldn't. But is there an alternative? Well, the first solution is to find local peeps to play with, but if that's not an option? Why of course, there's the great beast known as

~single player modes~

Yes, arcade mode, story mode, training mode, challenge modes, you name it, as fighting games have progressed, so too has the multitudes of single player content become more complex and fleshed out. Nowadays it’s basically vital that your game has ample single player content, SFV stumbled out the gate without it, so you need yo single player fix.This is basically the entire subject of this blog post, so it pains me to say they also suck ass. all of them, every last one of them, they all suck. there isn't a single good single player anything in any fighting game ever made, no not even that one, nor that one, sit yo ass down, they're all irredeemable garbage and here's why 

To use an example of the archetypical fighting game single player mode, I'll go over the story mode from Street Fighter V; Things uh kinda happen and you do a couple canned matches against the CPU. ok i wow i dont remember anything from that story mode at all, what the hell. Ok I think FANG does stuff and Rashid is there and then Karin gets way more screentime than anyone expected and Ryu is also there sometimes. Hey, what happened to that Necalli guy, wasn’t he supposed to be important? What happened to that. Wheres Necalli. Where...where did he go....

But anyway, for the gameplay portions, you go through a bunch of uneventful and really easy CPU matches that are just sorta thrown in there, you're guy A, there's guy B, go fuck em up not like they're gonna attack back its so easy even a 6 year old can do it. And hey don’t think your favorite game is off the hook either; There's the single player mode of DBZ too: Go across the map, level up your characters, and fight a bunch of really easy clones. Blazblue? Really complicated plots happen and you do uneventful battles to spice things up occasionally.

Most of these story modes, despite their differences, all mostly follow the model of "plot happens, play a round in the game against the CPU to unpause the plot." So what's wrong with this picture here? Well let's break it down from the beginning: 

Fighting games have complex core mechanics, this is undeniable, but they're also just like any other game. In something like a platformer, level design is key. Surely you've seen all of Miyamoto's insight into the thought that went into level 1-1 of super mario bros. So much thought and effort was put into such a simple level bc the levels in platformers are strictly designed to work within the confines of the games mechanics, and require their usage as necessary. An important part of this is teaching the player through the level design itself, slowly and naturally. When you first boot up SMB, level 1-1 just assumes you know fuckin nothing about video games and you suck at life and everything, so it teaches you the mechanics through the subtle nuances of the level, there's a goomba, you better jump over it, if you try to touch it, you die, but thats ok bc little progress is lost, lesson learned, oh man i bumped by head on a flashy block now theres a mushroom, should I touch it, better jump over it, oh shit i cant better brace for impact aaaa oh wait i just grew bigger instead, mushroom good, etc etc 

My point is, the level is designed around teaching you the very basic mechanics without needing to bring up the manual or read a text box. This is generally considered fun to play. The game mechanics and the level designs love eachother and are in a healthy relationship

fighting game story modes on the other hand, do not like the fact that they're attached to a fighting game. They're the ritzy theatre kid while the mechanics is a guy who replaces a good shower with a can of body spray and wears 2 sets of sunglasses and skateboards everywhere. In my life I have never seen a fighting game story mode, or even arcade mode for that matter, that felt like it was actually meant for the game it was attached to. I mean sure, you get to play against the CPU on occasion, but so what? You're not gonna learn terribly much besides getting the basest feel for your character via peeking at the command list and finding what various ways u can dunk on the CPU that wouldn't work against a human to any capacity. The game doesn't teach you the mechanics, but thats ok bc u dont really need to learn them. They’re just kinda there. The single player is toothless and generally works independent from whatever game its a part of. They don't take advantage or do cool things with the games unique mechanics or moves, you're just left in a room to beat up a CPU for a while until the silly plot trucks on. (Guilty Gear in particular seemed to have realized this and just skipped the middleman by making the story modes just straight up movies with no gameplay at all, not that I can blame em.)

So yea the story modes suck ass, but hey, that’s not all! What about stuff like training modes and challenge/tutorial modes, this is where it's at! At thats, true, it’s usually in supplementary tutorials where the mechanics actually get to shine, so already it has that over the story mode. And yknow what, I get it. This is where most of the innovation tends to happen. With every new fighting game I always see some new bragging point about how incredible the QoL improvements are. Wow! the new UNIEL lets you record savestates in training! Wow the new GG has matchup data! Wow Skullgirls goes over high level concepts overlooked in other tutorials! It seems like every week there’s a new anime fighter that breaks new ground in terms of how helpful and advanced the tutorials are, and how they teach you the ropes in a controlled environment and everything. This is where the magic happens. This is where you learn practical setups and combos and situations and shit. And yknow what? All these new innovations are mindbogglingly good and impressive. So what's the problem here? Well it's all handicapped by a minor drawback...

it’s uh....well it’s all kinda boring, really. Also you can breathe easy now, this is the part where this post stops being a copypasted tweet thread, so maybe it’ll read a lil better.

But yea, main problem, all that stuff about super advanced tutorials, it’s just...it’s not very fun to play. Or really, it’d be more apt to say that they’re not -as- fun to play as they could be, and it doesn’t have to be that way. Because as they stand currently, all those tutorials on footsies and wakeups and combos and setups and mixups, no matter how basic and dead simple you make it, it’s not gonna change the fact that it’s not gonna hold the casual player’s attention for long. It doesn’t matter how much you dumb down the game or introduce comeback mechanics or what have you, it all doesn’t matter unless the player is continuously playing your content without it feeling too much like busywork. So what’s the solution here? Well, it’s gonna require taking inspiration from other games instead of other fighting games, for one. Speaking of other, non-fighting games, hey, I hear Cuphead is pretty cool! *Children cheering in the distance*

Cuphead is a run n gun shooting them all up game from last year and one of my personal favorite games of 2017. And yea sure, it’s nowhere close to the first game of its kind, but it does display something, and that’s HUGE breakout mainstream popularity, despite its foreboding difficulty. Most of this can be attributed to the impressive art style of course, but it wouldn’t have endured had the core gameplay loop not been up to snuff, which of course it is, or else I wouldn’t be talking about it here.

The reason I bring up Cuphead in my blog post about fighting games should be clear; Despite the entirely different genre, I’d argue it still bears much in common with fighting games, namely what the single player portion could be in a perfect world. While the gameplay loop in Cuphead and tutorial/challenge modes in fighting games follow the same mechanical loop, which can be grossly simplified to “throwing yourself at the wall repeatedly until you can climb”, in Cuphead this rarely gets boring and tedious, while hassling with fighting game challenges feels like pure busywork. While that seems anecdotal, I can 100% bet you that there’s more people who played Cuphead to completion than people who got even kinda decent at your favorite fighting game...well, accounting for ratios and all that.

So what’s the big difference? Well sure, you can say that Cuphead has the advantage of much simpler mechanics, but I think the real key to success is just simple presentation. When you get down to brass tacks, the weird and wacky bosses you face in Cuphead aren’t much more than patterns to learn and habits to form, not unlike any other fighting game tutorial. Just like a fighting game tut or combo challenge, you’re probably gonna fail and restart like 50 times until you get it right, and then you move onto harder challenges. By the end of the game, I became so good at parrying that the game felt it necessary to have a boss pattern that does little else but fill the screen with parry-able attacks, which I easily overcame like it was second nature. So what makes Cuphead so consistently fun and replayable while doing challenges in the lab has more, uh....niche appeal?

It’s all context, really. Sure, it seems superficial, but its just objective fact that fighting a dragon with its own health bar and everything that wants to kill you dead with its fire breath is gonna be more fun than beating on the same helpless CPU 50 times until you beat on them in this exact specific way. Just imagine if Cuphead worked the way fighting games did- There’s no big funny bosses to kick your ass, it’s just a series of separate execution challenges you pull off over and over again to a Mugman with infinite health, and the win condition is to pull off the required series of jumps and shots a boss fight would normally require of you. Doesn’t sound too fun, does it?

In essence, what I propose here is just slapping some story context and maybe a health bar onto what a normal fighting game would consider a “tutorial” or a “challenge.” Yeah, it’s superficial, but so what? It’s a god damned video game, giving some emotional attachment to practical concepts should be key here. 

Right now you probably notice my observations on “Story modes” and “Challenge/Tutorial modes” are two gigantic puzzle pieces that fit suspiciously well together, and that should be obvious; Take the meaningless fluff of story mode and the oppressive academia of the more practical modes, hold em up real close like and tell em

This is what I’d like to call the “fruits and veggie shake” approach to game design. For most fighting games, you have a direct segregation between these fruits and veggies, like to the point where they’re not even in the kitchen, the fruits are in the living room and the veggies are in the attic of the next house. So statistically while plenty of the playerbase will eat up those sugary fruits, they’re probably gonna ignore the veggies, which is a crying shame bc they’re good for you and will keep you healthy in the long run. Fruits are stuff like story modes, arcade mode, tekken ball, all that stuff, while the veggies are all the more practical shits that all the anime and indie fighters like to brag about.  And if you’ve ever made a veggie shake, you would know that the fruit flavor always overpowers the vegetables. The kids don’t even know they eatin they greens, it all just tastes like fruit!

This is a groundbreaking approach to game design as exhibited by a select few classics such as DAMN NEAR EVERY OTHER GAME GENRE EVER MADE which is a winning formula bc its fun, and fun things are fun, why do I even need to explain this? Getting at least moderately good at a fighting game shouldn’t feel like an academic course, it should at least be tricking my dumb as shit lizard brain into putting all that time into learning it so I can wipe the dumb grin off that Boss That Teaches You About Footsies’ face.

The only game I recall that came the absolute closest to this is, weirdly enough, the tutorials for the Darkstalkers Resurrection HD re-releases that came out a long time ago. It was an extremely minor touch, but every one of the character tutorials sorta contextualized the challenges you were about to take with a threadbare story, mostly having to do with a suspiciously similar recolor of your chosen character talking to you about needing to practice or whatnot. It only amounts to a few lines of dialogue in a text box, but it went a long way into giving me enough of an emotional connection that led me to 100% all of the tutorials, which is a lot more I can say for damn near every other fighting game trial mode. These trials weren’t easy either!

People also like to bring up the tutorial in Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator, which had you going through a very gamey representation of the core mechanics framed in the context of Sol Badguy vs Jack-O’s wacky cast of minions, which yknow, is a good step in the right direction. But I think we can go further.

For a basic setup here, let’s assume there’s a character in our hypothetical Good Fighting Game that has a crouching fierce that takes the form of a sweep, which in turns also chains into a standing fierce. Not much combo potential, but it allows you to recover faster so you can set up additional offense. The opponent will have to block low to guard, and the additional fierce will keep the chain safe on block. So sure, you could include that in a combo challenge, but we can also spice it up a bit for increased engagement:

So in this situation, let’s have a boss character that encompasses many of the core concepts inherent to a certain characters fundementals; For some convoluted reason, his brand of martial arts makes it so he’s invincible from all forms of attack besides down below, and if he does guard down there, he’ll immediately do a short ranged counter-attack unless you do the follow up standing fierce. After doing that enough times, Boss McAsshole will catch onto what you’re doing and adjust his strategy by acting defensively and crouching down. Thankfully, our character here can perform a very fast and near instant airdash much lower than other characters can; You can take full advantage of this and drain the Boss’ health quicker by doing this special airdash and attacking with an aerial fierce on the way in, which acts as an overhead, and finishing with a knockdown combo.

And yeah, this boss is rough and tough, but you’re at least slightly more likely to take up his challenges so long as you get the satisfaction of slapping that dude in the balls to his doom. It’s more satisfying to finally defeat that swamp-assed dragon in Dark Souls IIII than it is to just do the required canned inputs that would result in defeated said dragon but removed from its context. All it really takes is putting the flimsiest bit of context or story or whatever to what you already have in the trial modes, just reworked to be a bit more gamey. Take that GGXrd Rev tutorial and attach it to something with an actual health bar or something, or lock entire story content behind a combo trial contextualized as a dance recital or something. Imagine unlocking a new character, and the first thing it does is put you through a story sequence where they need to overcome a stage or enemy that requires using their specific tools in practical ways, so you have a good feel for the character if u ever feel like picking them up. Yeah fighting game mechanics are more complex than other games, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take those lessons from simpler games and apply it here. Your average Normie McBoremie is perfectly willing to get they ass whipped dozens of times over for the sake of seeing the next boss or lines of dialogue, people don’t dislike hard games, they just don’t like BORING ones. So stop being boring! FUN THINGS ARE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN

anyway, while this wouldn’t entirely solve the issue of newbies getting discouraged from getting bootybumped online, it would at least give them better frame of reference as to what needs improving when the supplementary content designed specifically to go over the core fundementals they need to improve on are at least mixed together with the mild amusement of the antics of your fighting game’s canonical universe, or I don’t know, SOMETHING. I dunno. Anyway don’t read this bc I plan on this being the main philosophical backbone for my own fighting game, which will take the entire world by storm and yours wont, so HAH.

[shaddy-bee]

I KNOW ITS BEEN LIKE 300 YEARS BUT-

5 things you’ll find in my bag

Right now theres uhh Notebooks, both school and 1 art. Drink mix ins, with such great flavors as sour apple jolly rancher and crush pineapple (tm) Two packs of cards, one of which steam punk themed and the other your regular ol bicycle. A calculator. Its a shitty old one but its for tests, i have google and shit for anything i need myself.

5 things you’ll find in my bedroom

A roommate. Idk if he is gay or what but he isnt straight, name’s will. Chill dude. Sleepin rn, what a fella MY SICK ASS COMPUTER IM MISSING OUT ON BECAUSE MY ROOMMATE IS ASLEEP AAAAAAAAAAAAAA I WANNA PLAY ROCKET LEAGUE WITHOUT LAGGING TO HELL also programming my mods. Need to upload that shit. Shit what number we on, 3? Okay cool. A bed. Wow really a bed in your bedrooM? yeah its pretty fuckin spectacular i know. I dont have posters n shit so like i gotta be creative you feel. A microfridge. Now i know what youre thinking, “ah a small fridge whats the big deal?” but no you dont understand, its a microwave fucking bolted onto the top of a fridge. They gave zero fucks attaching these two together and apparently the name is the same way, WHY NOT A FRIDGEWAVE EVEN LIKE MICROFRIDGE JUST SOUNDS LIKE A SMALL FRI- Last but not least, im tempted to just say my wallet here tbh, cuz its old but like, youd EXPECT that now would you? Something boring and mundane for me to fill out the word count with making everything super exciting so nah man, fuck it. Theres air in my bedroom. Fight me.

5 things I’ve always wanted to do in my life

Make a videogame. Like okay, a lot of stuff on this list is jokes and stuff, and I know im going into too much detail and my followers will probably murder me in cold blood for this shit, but im serious about this one like - i have some ideas, but i never have the motivation alone to like work whole-heartedly and finish one but like, at some point in the future id love to sit down and just go at it and make a game. Doesnt matter if its popular or big or small just i wanna make something that i love ya feel? I wanna like, go to newark, delaware. I know, its delaware and all, no one lives there, but ive met a bunch of cool people there and i was promised a donut run sometime, so lookin forward to that. Yknow that post awhile back that was like “i dont wanna be rich and like buy shit, i just wanna have enough money to throw at kickstarters whenever i want without having to strain on my food and rent costs” thats me. 100% Like i wanna have just enough money to be able to donate to cool people and watch them do cool shit - it wont always work out but thats fine, I just love shit. I wanna be able to donate like the high prize and fly out to meet these game studios for coffee and shit and just talk with em and see their passion and ideas. I love it. Im not actually really sure besides those. Like idk. I think itd be cool to enter a game tournament with my brother and win, but i doubt thatll happen and its not super like on my desires just itd be cool cuz we named ourselves Sora and Shiro after NGNL and to see that like, have us win would be great. Yeah. Ill make my fifth to think of a fifth one.

5 things on my to do list

FLOPPY DICKS i mean disks. Floppy disks. I do binding of isaac ab+ modding shit, and im currently working (its mostly done for what i want it to do) which adds a new consumable called floppy disks, effects are based on viruses, bugs, and just computer based shit. Like BSOD for instance, which makes the screen literately bluescreen. Or atleast look like it. Cant wait to watch people play with it. I gotta work on the programming class project too but honestly i dont waannnaaa. Like its cool as shit. Recreate a card game using c++ code. But man, i just love Apocrypha and Floppies so much more. Eat today???? Please. Dining hall opens in 3 hours. Its goddamn 4 am. I want my food. Dunno if ill get it - if ill stay awake till then. But i want it. Probably draw some stuff? Like i posted one drawing already (check it out if u wanna ;) kay?) but like theres wacom tablets here i can just kinda use whenever???? its great. I love being able to just draw stuff on em. Even if i suck at drawing, even if it took 10 hours to make the one i posted here, still love. Probably play more rocket league. Sleep first, soon as i get that food im CRASHIN BOI IM OUTTIE HA but uhh, rocket league has a halloween thing rn and i like playing it. Was playing earlier today and i matchd with a dude in 2v2 that had the same car, skin, AND colors set up as mine. Totaly random. We kicked some major ass together. I kept thinking of the same hat comic the entire time. (also my card was superior because it had furry ears on it ;))

5 things that make me happy

Getting an idea for a thing and working at said thing until like boom it went from this abstract idea to now it has a physical form and it works! And its fun and its great and i can share it with other people and they can have fun too!!!! that feeling is wonderful.  Obviously friends man. Just doing shit with people can be so great sometimes - like not all the time sure but like man. Its nice to talk to people and share experiences and just smile and tell bad jokes and have them groan but like it anyway like thats the shit. Going out at 2 am and walking to a nearby run down schoolyard and swinging on the swingsets and watching shooting stars burn up. Thats the good shit. Getting tents and setting em up in your friends back yard when your friend from far away comes up for a few days, and playing ridiculous games in a group like kick the can or fuckin zombie screaming your lungs out in the dark to freak em out, or just talkin around a fire about fuckin life man. The people make life great. Shits worth living for. I realize that last answer covered a LOT of shit but like, im just gonna add here videogames. Would be amiss if i didnt mention that, considering the rocket league rant above lmao. Yeah i better not make this category any longer.

5 things I’m (currently) into

Isaac modding, probably will be for awhile. Its good shit. As a suggestion from one of the people I work with (we also fuck around its a good time) i have started watching space dandy. Its a slow progress through lol like an episode or two a day but god man like its pretty ridiculous and the main character is pretty much everything i was expecting from seeing him everywhere. Rocket league again. It comes and goes with various different games to tide me over, give me a break from working. Bout 2 months ago or so said relaxing time was dominated by anime - i suddenly went on like a massive streak of watching shit. By that i mean, i watched all of hunter x hunter in like 2 weeks, among other shows prior to it. But yeah. Fuck man HXH I LOVED THE KING WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. I have too many emotions about that. I wrote a rant to the Groupchat (tm) about the fucking battle and how everything is in slow motion but it fucking like makes it like foreshadowed and have so much of an impact and still so much fucking happens even while everything runs at super slow mo just GOD KLASFJBHUGHASFIUHIPJASK anyway. Yeah. Music, as always im listening to like constantly. Wireless headphones are a wonder for this, but uhh....i cant say im especially into any specific thing rn right? Like a bit ago i was super into joywave and then that faded out and now im just listening to whatever random shit, yknow? But I am into music in general. Its good. Art! A lot of times i dont do shit like for drawing right, like especially not in like pencil in notebooks but like, i sorta started doing a lot more art stuff? Like i had a period awhile back last year where i stopped using pencils and used only pens and i just loved the aesthetic of the ink like how it looked (funny how im doing the opposite of the fucking inktober though, huh?) but yeah im back into using pencils to draw shit occasionally. Im still terrible at drawing people (which is what i see mostly everyone drawing on tumblr lmao RIP) but its fun to sketch stuff out and just let my thoughts run and bounce to some music and shit right? Also the tablets. Especially with the tablets.

5 things people may not know about me (at least on tumblr)

I basically constantly wear sweatshirts, and they all have like earbuds where the strings go. All the earbud shits are broken pretty much, like occasionally they work (the one i have rn does) but like, i dont ever really use them? i have wireless headphones for my phone and a headset (because i need the mic for my computer) for said computer so like, idk. But yeah. I rarely take em off when im not home, and sometimes even when i am i just kinda keep em anyway? (also just now i realized i talked in the section for room shit about all the stuff in my current dorm, my room at home has all KINDS of wierd fucking shit in it. Really missed an opportunity there.) Like many people i like to stay hydrated and shit, but drinking water all the time seemed like a chore more than anything so i got like drink mix ins and shit, mio’s or whatever offbrand version you can find at your local SUPERSTORE CONGLOMERATE. I drink em like all the time pretty much so atleast im health in one way :P. Also gummy vitamins. I dont excercise but you can only ask for so much. Idk, its hard to think of things for this section because tumblr knows so little about me yknow? Like i never make my own posts or shit like its SUPER rare so im pretty much just tryna find random facts but that might not be interesting? Like i have a bad habbit of like talking way too loud when im excited about something right? Not quite yelling but like getting there and like idk. See? Thats not super interesting but it is something no one online would be able to really know ya feel? Idk. I mean physically im kinda fat as you do, but im also like wierdly strong? Like for someone who never works out i sure do have arm strength if nothing else lmao. My endurance is shit tho. Honestly? I can only blame it on osu and groceries. Osu is just a game i like where you mash buttons to the beat of weaboo shit tier music. The groceries is just because like, well, my policy is Least Trips Possible which means carrying in 13 bags at a time if need be it, fuck it milk too? And a watermellon? Bring it. 

Who am I tagging? Idk man. Just for shits and stuff tho i do wanna tag @theoriginalyami just to see what all’s changed in teh long time since i actually went to fill it out :P Dont feel like you have to add as much as me tho omg @milkchocolateowl because honestly? love you. Think about you a lot, just like glad im mutuals with that ray of sunshine. Good. @fantaledfish <3 (this is the friend i mentioned earlier, runs a QUALITY blog i guarantee it, better than mine for sure) @dragonfucker-supreme always top in my notes, a silent bond, like two guards assigned to watch back to back in the early dawn. Birds gather round. I can only tag so many people (i set myself a limit of 5 because...idk why i just mentally it felt right) so for my last trick gotta go with @ask-oncies-jizz like cmon man name changes for the win, also has quality icons and quality shitposts tbh, supreme top meme. Have fun yall.