#ocean studios

[scaryspookyleg]

YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE

[star-dragon-art]

where the villain arc really started

[tropicaltopia]

[nikoco11]

[they/them, zine work] 🐠🫧art i did for seaglass lens mag , an ocean themed zine run by a couple pals of mine :3 lots of very lovely artists involved, go check it out!!!

[marzimars]

My piece for DIVE: The Anazuine!

[danis-artss]

UwU not rlly finished buuuut.... its 1 am so i wont finish it now anyway lol

Seems like undergrowth won, and his beloved little plant queen even already has her mate ✨️✨️

[haranikala]

Trains of Ghibli

☛ twitter, instagram, website ✉ art print shop

[amaterasou]

ghibli films

[almondcroissantsandink]

i feel the need--the need for speed!

[habibtea]

[mybruisedankleneedsakiss]

about failure and success and the monstrous vacuum in between

Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs // Whisper of the Heart 1995, dir. Yoshifumi Kondō // please, please, please let me get what I want by The Smiths // White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky // Whiplash 2014 dir. Damien Chazelle // Mieko Kawakami, All the lovers in the Nights // Frances Ha 2012 dir. Noah Baumbach // Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea // Steve Jobs 2015 dir. Danny Boyle // Shoko's Smile by Choi Eun-young // Shoko's Smile by Choi Eun-young // Shiva Baby 2020 dir. Emma Seligman // Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke // Evening Wind, Edward Hopper // Ocean Vuong, Time Is a Mother// Dead Poets Society (1989) dir. Peter Weir // Educated, Tara Westover

[elizabugz]

[cursed-nyxan]

OK, but did you know that even those hilarious ads in A date with Death are based on other visual novels? It just makes them twice as cool! | edit: By the time I decided to post this -it was in my drafts since january-, they've already add links to the ads, but whatever. still, if you don't want to wait in game, here's all of them in one place | Slay the princess

The Ocean at Night

Moonflower

Heart Agency

The Inn Between

Dreambound

The Divine Speaker

The Sun and the Moon

The last rose

Please be happy

> one way

[creativitysloyalservant]

i have decided to break my lack of original posting on this blog to bring you my Thoughts on Rot in Paradise. because i played it as soon as i got up this morning and i have scoured for some opinions after finishing it, and now i have my own!!

(and also i posted this on twitter but twitter has such a Shit wordcount that i'm also posting my things here with More Detail)

so! spoilers under the cut, please go and play the game if you haven't. it takes literally an hour (it only took nearly 2 hours for me because i like voice acting by myself and exploring every nook and cranny) and it's also free. so maybe come back into the tag once you're done.

okay, so i noticed quite a number of people being confused and disappointed on the lack of an explanation for the monster. it's brought up in the story as the central thing driving the plot, but it's never explained on what "she" is, why she's compelling people to eat a ton of fish-related food or hell, metal, and why this doesn't impact June at all.

but you know what I think?

i think that that's the point. the focus of rot in paradise isn't supposed to be on the monster.

yeah, it's the thing that pushes the plot along besides June and the gang going on vacation in this island. it's what's causing that uneasiness from the moment that guy grabs June's arm at the drinks, to the sheer unnerving feeling of witnessing people going to the ocean to get Raptured basically. i know i personally felt a chill when i saw that one dude literally eating chains and the other hauling an anchor, as if they're trying to make themselves heavier so they get taken by whatever She is.

but that's not the main point! the main conflict is about June and her friends.

as people have pointed out, this game is about toxic friendships and relationships! it's foreshadowed in the conversation that June has with the gang about her cousin (which i will also get into), and it carries it through the way her friends are horribly warped by this ocean Creature. June goes on a silly little vacation trip with her friends only for them to become so so different from themselves that they lash out at her and even hit her in McCoy's case.

but she still sticks it out with them. through the whole game, even despite their verbal abuse, despite being slapped, despite them being people that she can hardly recognise. she stays with them for the whole game, up until the point where you are given the two options at the very end. and she could still stay with them.

because they're still her friends. she cares about them even if they still hurt her. from the way June still tells Carmen to tell June if she needs anything after Carmen literally tells her to shut up and leave, the way June worries about Vonnie eating seafood even though she continues to stuff herself despite being implied to either hate or make an active choice to not eat seafood, to the way June still trudges out to sea screaming for McCoy to come back to the shore as he wades further in even after he slapped her until her nose bled.

it mirrors the conversation about her cousin, the reason for why June was looking forward to the vacation. that while she did comfort her cousin through all of it, June clearly says that "they were dickheads, and she should have ditched them a long time ago".

but it's funny, isn't it? that June, an outsider to her cousin's friend group, easily sees the pain that her cousin's friends are causing her, and immediately calls it as it is. that her cousin should have left the second they hurt her.

and yet now, when her friends hurt her, even though this was a quick and sudden change that happened in a span of three days, June still sticks around. her friends are dickheads right now, and we can see that in the way they interact with June, but she still stays.

because they're her friends. and how could she just leave them like this if it's something that's causing them to be this way?

so no, i don't think the monster is supposed to be the main picture. we don't need to know what it looks like, or why it needs to do this to the islanders, or how it's even doing it in the first place. it adds to the scariness of the game, as per the Spooktober Game Jam, sure, but that's not the point. might be a bit disappointing to some, but that's not the point.

the point is about June, and the choice that she needs to make at the end of the game.

it's a choice on whether she chooses to be pulled deeper into the tides and be with the friends who hurt her and will continue to hurt her in this way,

or to leave them to their fates, whether deserved or not, and resurface to a world where she's alone without her friends.

and even though the first choice hurts much more in the long run, doesn't the second hurt even more in the moment? knowing that you're alone at the end of all of this?

even if it is the right choice, i'm sure the pain must be unbearable in the moment.

[hakuwaii]

生で ⭑.ᐟ 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒 where your heart finds 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒.