#strange / unique

[fishofthewoods]

Oh my god I woke up this morning and my Stardew Valley meta post had almost 150 notes????? Hello?????????? Anyways I started writing this last night because @moon-is-pretty-tonight left nice tags on the original so thank you so much!!

We know from the starting scenes of the game that the farmer's grandfather loved Stardew Valley. So why did he leave? Pelican Town is a good place to grow old; George and Evelyn are just fine. It's a fine place to raise a kid, but maybe he just wanted to raise his child closer to real schools and other children.

Or maybe, just maybe, he understood.

Was there a day when he was in his thirties where he looked at his friends and realized they weren't like him? That he could run faster than them, work longer, explore deeper into the hidden places of the valley?

Was there a day when he went to the wizard to ask him for help, for knowledge if nothing else? Did he learn then that his family was different? Special? Chosen? And how did he react? He couldn't possibly raise a child in the valley if they would be as strange and fey as him. He had to leave. There was no other way.

But years later, on his deathbed, did he regret that choice?

Is that why he gave the farmer the letter?

Is that why they went back home?

When the farmer steps off the bus that first day, the valley is still on the cusp of winter, just barely tipping over into spring. The flowers are starting to bloom, but a chill still hangs in the air. As soon as the farmer's boots touch the soil there's a change. The air gets warmer. The trees get greener. Not by too much, not all at once, but it changes.

The junimos watch the farmer as they do their work. They're new to farming, but take to it with frightening speed; their first batch of crops is perfect. None of the townsfolk tell them that parsnips don't normally grow in less than a week, that cauliflowers don't grow to be ten feet tall, that fairies don't visit when the sun goes down and grow potatoes and beans and tulips overnight. The junimos talk amongst themselves in their strange, wild language, and agree: this is the one. They're back. The valley recognizes its own, even when they've left for a generation. The farmers have come home.

Things change fast in the valley. The community center, empty and decrepit for so many years, is rejuvenated. (Lewis says it was abandoned only a few weeks after the farmer's grandfather left. Strange coincidence, he says, that it both came and went with the farmer's family.) The mines and the quarry, similarly abandoned, are explored for the first time in ages. The town becomes cleaner, brighter, more vibrant, happier.

And it is happier. Not just the environment, but the people. It's the talk of the town for weeks when Haley does her first closet purge. Leah's art show in the town square is a huge success. Shane's smiling for the first time since he moved to the valley. All of them, when asked, say it's all thanks to the farmer.

People love to ask why Lewis didn't fix the community center on his own. Why Willy never repaired the boat to ginger island. Why Abigail or Marlon never went down to fix the elevator in the mines, or why Clint didn't fix the minecarts.

But isn't it so much more interesting to ask how those things were there in the first place? How they got so broken down? If the stories the townspeople tell are true, the valley was once a beautiful place, flourishing and full of life; why did that change? When did it change?

Was it when the farmer's grandfather, the locus of the valley, its chosen representative, left town?

And if so, what happens when the farmer comes back?

[mail-me-a-snail]

hey remember when games had unique art styles and didnt require the most expensive high shelf gaming tech to be played because they weren't designed to show you every character's pores and hair fibers. hey what happened to that

[bigfatbreak]

Do you read bugtopia

on and off but not super often. I heard there was a reboot recently?? i follow the artist for their succubus and angel comics tho

[queenvhagar]

Loving the juxtaposition of Aegon just lounging sideways on the Iron Throne completely unhurt by it knowing that canonically in Fire and Blood the first time Rhaenyra sits the Iron Throne despite wearing armor she walks away bleeding from all the cuts it gives her AND understanding that it's well-known in-universe that the throne cuts people unworthy of sitting on it (to the point it literally straight up murdered Maegor the Cruel)

[time-slink]

i dont think theres a single hermit who enjoys lying through their teeth more than iskall

[weaponizedmoth]

If requests are still open it would be awesome to see you doodle Christine or Roul, your style is gorgeous!

Thank you! Here you go:

[alyona11]

Thinking how the importance of style for beginner artists is often so overrated. So many artists obsessed with “finding a style” and panicking when they can’t/their style is constantly drastically changes. But the style is just a combination of things you love and happen to find comfortable and comforting for you to draw and I think eventually you just…circle to the tendency in style you find the most convenient. I don’t think there is a necessity of running after style above all else. Just find the things you enjoy drawing, find the artists whom you find visually pleasing. If you wanna, try to break down their work for studying, it’ll help you to understand which parts about their style you enjoy the most. Adapt the things you learned for your work, test them out, see if they stick. If not - that’s ok, not all things that look cool in other’s work is good for your own work. Have fun, don’t pressure yourself to have a consistent style by tomorrow, it’ll come around even if you don’t see it yet. Artists are also often blind to their style sometimes, just by the sheer amount of time we spend looking at our,all stuff and thinking that it should have looked different.

Give yourself some time, do not rush

[megidoreyn]

Happy 30th anniversary, Shin Megami Tensei!

Thank you for your wonderful games!

💙twitter post

[foursaints]

I feel like barty would have those like overlapping tats? but like they're strangely artistic?

yeah so real that boy is Cluttered

[lobster-x]

Derailed Discontinuous Density, 2024, acrylic, 12” x 16”. Layers and layers on this one. Frustrated about half way through, but it turned out okay in the end? What are your thoughts? #art #artist #artworks #acrylicpainting #paint #pain #machine #mechanical #abstract #portrait #city #weird #oddlysatisfying #strange #pareidolia #create #creative #unique #original #draw #drawing #orange #black #white

[loveipromiseimnotinsane]

It's so funny people acting like they have unique taste or they're special for simping over The Ghoul as if he isn't the most popular brand of white man out there.

[hiddenspriings]

guess who’s back to job? :)

[misscammiedawn]

To be loved is to be altered. To be perceived is to invite a new version of yourself into the world born from the other's eyes.

One of many tales spun in Slay The Princess.

Every chapter your perceptions shape the princess and add to the complex web of contradictions that make up her entirety and every chapter her perceptions of the bird boy protagonist add more voices to the menagerie of voices in his head.

I think a lot about the Leave/Slay endings and the simple line:

After everything that has been said and done can either one of them truly remember what it was to be the unaltered person they were before their relationship (don't get the wrong idea, two people interacting have a relationship).

It's impossible.

Though it's possibly an allegory for going through multiple relationships I prefer to read it as an allegory of the joys and pains of knowing a person and intimately, the game exists only within the boundaries of this entanglement. That's the story.

I long for a route which hits Eternal Sunshine territory. Like the moment of clarity in that every voice exists at once but I'd like to focus on that former allegory a moment.

What if you were to choose to make no choices whatsoever.

The game starts.

You're in a path in the woods. And at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a princess. You're here to slay her. If you don't it will be the end of the world.

[Close your eyes and do nothing]

And yes The Narrator would protest. Perhaps even cold hands may eventually reach out. But you do nothing. Some people just aren't ready to break another heart or feel their own heart broken. Some people would rather avoid being changed by the eyes of another or invite a new version of themselves to be born into the world through being perceived.

It's safer that way. Right?

and like Joel Barish in Eternal Sunshine you refuse to go forward and so you go backwards. You cannot change the past but you can bring your baggage from the past into the present. It's human nature after all. We can't help but reflect, compare and construct from that we already understand.

Why don't you think back to the last "princess" you shared your heart with? The one from before. Think about them for a few moments. Think about all the transformations you inflicted upon one another over time. Did it end beautifully? Tragically? Horrifically?

It doesn't matter.

The game never lets you avoid your fate. The basement awaits.

I wonder, though, what would be in the basement when you approach The Princess for the first time with your baggage projected upon her?

[boxheadpaint]

how do i start coming up w more interesting character designs like urs. they are sooooo cool and i try to make a character like that but it always comes out stinky

if it stinks thats great

[anndramarama]

Lest we forget, Christopher Pike grows herbs indoors.

[urlocalwormtoday]

are you proud 🥹

Look at these rocks. Just look at them. Look at the way I organized them (left)

It's so perfect

I'm gonna cry