#stupid and blasphemous art

[drawingdroid]

We have this Catholic thingy in Spain today, Día de los Reyes Magos, it’s supposed to be the day 3 magic kings arrived to Bethlehem to gift tiny Jesus goodies to celebrate his birth. It’s a very important date even though you’re not a Catholic and we exchange presents and eat typycal sweets so I had to draw this:

[the-squeege]

another one

[welcometogrouchland]

We talk a lot about there being zero content for a niche thing you're into but ohhhh my god. Oh my GODDD WHY IS IT SO TORTUOUS. OH MY GOD WHY. KILL ME. PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY LIKE OLD YELLER. OH MY GOD WHY

[lichen-punk]

tbh if u make ai art of a deity you worship youre so spiritually broken that its probably too late for you like straight up kys lol

[beevean]

What pisses me off the most about NFCV is the way it disrespects the original medium of video gaming. The show sets up a potential action setpiece similar to a level from the game (the turning wheel, s1e3 I think) and then just *walks around it*. Everything about the way "Devil Forging" works in the show demonstrates that Ellis didn't even consult a cutscene compilation, much less the game. And sure enough, the fucker admits he never played them. Why adapt source material you've never experienced?

*Captain N* (a show I defend to the death) was better than this. It embraces the action montage, and even if things aren't 1-to-1, they do capture the appeal of the gameplay they adapt. It understands people love the original work. NFCV plows through the formalities of adapting a guy skimming the wikipedia summary of the game and then sits everyone in a basement for a full season.

The only times I felt I was watching an adaptation of Castlevania was in S1, with things like the fight against the Cyclop who petrified Sypha and Trevor falling into the deepest catacombs where Alucard hid himself, and in S4, where the last fight before the final showdown with Death happens in a clock tower, his iconic hideout.

As for the rest, I remember some snarky fans defending the show's wildly different direction with things like "what, did you expect to see Trevor jumping on platforms?" I don't know but it sure as shit would have been better than the trio wasting the entirety of S2 cooped up in a library! Yes, I would have preferred to see them travel through forests and caves and swamps, instead of wasting my time watching N!Alucard being a complete jerk to N!Trevor for no good reason! (and no, defending vampires is not a good reason)

bro. bro not even the vampire killer is treated with respect. it's replaced with the morning star which is a different weapon, and then n!trevor drops it in favor of a knife pulled out of the story's ass. the morning star pisses n!dracula off, but a fucking stick is capable of killing him. are you doing this on purpose.

And don't get me started on Devil Forging. I actually don't mind too much the idea of making it more similar to necromancy, because it would fit with the idea that it's a cursed, disgusting, blasphemous art. I also can concede that the knowledge that Dracula infused Hector and Isaac with his own power is very obscure, vaguely implied in one cutscene in CoD and one panel of PtR, and confirmed in a pre-release interview. But everything else is so less interesting. It's an art that apparently N!Hector was born with for no reason and N!Isaac could study on his own, removing the personal connection between Dracula and Forgemasters. There are other Forgemasters in the world: those two are not special (which also makes me wonder why N!Dracula bothered to hire N!Hector with a lie when he could have travelled some more: I'm sure Miranda would have helped him). N!Isaac eventually becomes so OP he can stibby stabby to create new Night Creatures without any effort. None of the interesting themes about dehumanization or forcing pure creatures to sin are hinted at*. Even N!Hector's unique cavalier relationship with death, a genuinely but interesting childish mentality of "oh no, death is sad! but I can fix it!", is never explored, because the story was too busy making him look stupid and breedable. And to top it all off, Nocturne literally introduces the concept of a Devil Forging machine which is so bad it sucks even in universe.

*the closest thing to this is in S4 with this line from N!Isaac: "You believe you are tools of destruction only because this is how your kind have always been used". Admittedly, it's a cool line I would have loved to apply to Hector and Isaac. But it doesn't quite work because by definition Night Creatures are not innocent, being demons from hell... and anyway he keeps using them to kill people in Styria because N!Isaac is a bastard and unlike Isaac he won't even admit it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that line comes off as so self-aggrandizing and I hate how much the show shills him so I won't cut it any slack because I'm petty.

As for Captain N, I will say this: the inclusion of the Poltergeist King is, of course, totally wrong from a lore stand point, but to me it tells that the writers actually read the manual in search of information, and the American manual really was the only resource they had at their disposal at the time. Just like that, they put in more effort than Warren "somehow didn't realize on his own that Mathias Cronqvist was Dracula's human name while reading a wiki page" Ellis.

[marshvlovestv]

Video Games I've Experienced So Far This Year 1/23/25

Video games are my favorite thing and all I want to do with my life is experience every game I possibly can. I've moved all this video game journaling over to Backloggd but I should update my Tumblr with it periodically as well. I'm talking about games I've watched someone else play as much as games I've played myself. This entry reads like a vent post but that's just a product of where my mind is right now - any future entries should be more normal.

1000X Resist (watched: Welonz) Welonz is from Hong Kong. She understands what this game is talking about. She explains.

Anthology of the Killer (played) The first game I've found entirely because of glowing Backloggd reviews. I am not in the mental space to grapple with the political themes right now. The horror-comedy is fun.

Arco (played) I like this game a lot, so why do I have nothing at all to say about it?

Astroloco: Worst Contact (watched: ZenBear) A decade-old Let's Play of a shitty indie adventure game. I actually surprisingly enjoyed it.

Balatro (played) I'm starting to realize how abnormally bad I am at this game. I still pick it up from time to time but the draw is getting less strong. My brother and I both got each other Balato-themed gifts for Hanukkah.

Banjo-Kazooie (watched: PlayFrame) I wish I had a game I was this nostalgic for. I wish I had a friendship as strong as the two Dans.

Blasphemous (watched: adricarra) It feels so rare to find a Spanish Let's Player playing a Spanish game with Spanish text and Spanish voiceover. Watching these videos is all I'm using my bachelor's degree in Spanish for.

The Darkside Detective (watched: Kikoskia) The sequel was the first game I ever recorded a Let's Play video of so the series is important to me forever.

Dicey Dungeons (watched: SummerDumber) I wanted to replay this for a while but I think I'll just watch this girl 100% it instead.

Eat Girl (played) Pac-Man is a game everyone is nostalgic for, even if they didn't grow up a gamer. I'm almost never excited to play more arcadey games, but this one has sucked me in.

Guardians of the Galaxy (watched: Welonz) I adored adored adored the story, so much more than I thought I would. I think I'm attached to the game version of these characters now and I can never watch the movies or even read the comics.

Hades II (played) It feels stupid to go for completionism in an Early Access game where the devs could remove or change boons whenever they feel like it, but I'm going for it.

Hero Hours Contract (played) The pixel art is really cute but now that I've been away from it a few weeks I just remember it as a grindfest.

Landlord of the Woods (played) I thought this would help me get my YouTube channel back on track. It did not help.

Lies of P (watched: Quasimofo) Quasi knew next to nothing about Pinocchio going into this game and I'm pretty sure he also didn't know what Italy was.

Love, Ghostie (played) Was completely obsessed with this one for a few days. It's a too-happy, squeaky-clean version of video game romance and I was afraid my friends with edgier tastes would judge me for it. I loved every moment.

Neva (played) I don't know if I can finish this one. If something happens to this wolfie...

Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye (watched: PlayFrame) I do not see the appeal of this game. It's fun to watch, but every person I've seen talk about this game has been like "It's life-changing it's incredible" and it just looks like torture to me.

The Secret of Monkey Island (watched: Quasimofo) I made a complainy post about them earlier but damn I love adventure games.

Shipwrecked 64 (watched: Andrew Cunningham and mollystars) This was not part of my usual watching routine, two Deltarune video essayists I watch streamed this and I just wanted something mindless on while I did something else.

Stardew Valley (played) My problem with simulation games is how much restraint I put into it. I'm in the middle of my first fall and all of my crops fit in three little patches and I feel like that's not enough.

Sumatra: Fate of Yandi (watched: GSDBoxer) GSD usually plays RPGs. It was fun to watch him play an adventure game.

Sunless Skies (watched: Laila Dyer) I actually finished this Let's Play this month. It was 143 episodes long and I'd been watching it since July or August.

Wandersong (watched: Kikoskia) A super special game that introduced me to this super special YouTuber.

[val-of-the-north]

While I was drawing the stupid Aldrich meme things I made some time ago [x], I was researching his Archdeacons as well, since I wanted to picture at least two of them... and this led me to think about McDonnell quite a bit ahah.

His introduction of sorcery among the clergy was already seen as kind of blasphemous on its own.

But then he surpassed himself by delving into the Deep for darker sorceries, outright reveling in said corruption.

He is also explicitly from the Boreal Valley like Aldrich...

This led me to two potential storylines for him: he is either one of Aldrich's closest friends since the very beginning, or (the option I find most compelling) he could have been sent there by Sulyvahn to oversee things and ensure they remained under control.

Sulyvahn is the biggest sorcerer bastard hiding in the clergy, and his sorcery is only barely masked to look like Gwyndolin's moon powers and not his own magic arts.

So a sorcerer from the Boreal Valley getting into the Cathedral of the Deep as a sort of mole for him would make sense. Only, Sulyvahn did not anticipate that McDonnell would grow to become fond of Aldrich and the whole Deep thing, leading him to betray the Pontiff later on.

Or maybe he still acted in Sulyvahn's stead and was the one who even allowed Aldrich to be sacrificed initially, which is something the Saint wouldn't have wanted to do himself since he had gotten visions of an Age of the Deep Sea.

But maybe it had been something he had always regretted and was only pressured into allowing by Sulyvahn. This may be why he forsook his white crown and later joined Aldrich in his march towards the Boreal Valley. A sort of fuck you to his former master.

Of course, the Pontiff would not let his betrayal slide, which is why he is found dead, hidden by an invisible wall, and guarded by two of his beasts, even after what appears to be a truce between the two warring sides...

I assume it happened afterward because he can be found after Sulyvahn's cathedral, so they had to have already gone through it. He also looks like he has been cast aside there to rot, as opposed to having died there during the struggle. Why would he need to go down here anyway? I like to think the Pontiff would be petty enough to still have a traitor killed and disposed of, even when he isn't totally in control.

[coramatus]

Under the City Streets: A Pokémon Submas/Over the Garden Wall AU

The Master Post

Will be updated as more is added

Tumblr main tag: under the city streets au

Content warnings: themes of guilt, depression, suicidal feelings, grief and a lot of angst

Main story outlines:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [7.1-7.4] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13+]

Assorted snippets of prose:

Part 4: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

Main story artwork (in rough narrative order):

Their First Encounter in the Unknown

The Woodsman is not ok

Watch where you’re swinging that!

The End of Their First Encounter

Sopping wet and berated by an angry Starly

The Beast and the Woodsman

“You are more lost than you realize.”

RIP Emmet’s coat

Lady Sneasler speaks to Emmet: [one] [two]

Emmet’s promise to Lady Sneasler

Emmet meets Irida the Glaceon

Irida is not really a Glaceon

Irida, Adaman, and Volo stare in horror as Emmet blasphemes

Emmet unites the Diamond and Pearl clans by pissing both of them off

Irida calls Emmet a ding dong

How to smuggle your tiny birb buddy

“🎶I’M THE HIGHWAY MAN🎶”

“Curse you, lady! Curse you! You’ll die someday and I’ll laugh! Laugh!!”

The Conductor

DON’T GO OUT

Their Second Encounter in the Unknown: [one] [two]

The Woodsman Unhinged

tfw you’re about to be burned alive

Emmet’s Edelwood oil burn

Smoke inhalation makes Volo cuddly

Lady Sneasler rocks Emmet’s hat

God gives you a doll of yourself. Wdyd?

I SAID LEAVE

Their Third Encounter in the Unknown: [one] [two] [three] [four] [five] [six]

Emmet’s despair

Their Fourth Encounter in the Unknown: [one] [two]

Ingo begs for Lady Sneasler’s help (updated first image)

Glaring down his tormentor

Ingo refuses to be called the Woodsman anymore

Ingo’s gonna stick that axe where the sun don’t shine

The Beast is an asshole

That’s gonna leave a scar

The three stages of realizing your brother is a dumbass

Looking for his stupid fucking brother in this stupid fucking forest with this stupid fucking lantern

Hunting down his idiot brother in the dark

Ingo’s despair

Get outta there!

Emmet and the Beast

“Are you?”

I’ve got you. I’ve got you…

help…

A moment of peace

Post-Unknown artwork:

Edelwood side effects

Ingo and Chandelure’s very awkward moment

Guilt

Ingo’s Anxieties

Jason the Therapist

Ingo learned Unstoppable Rage. It’s super effective!

Soft snuggle time

Ingo? Ripped?? Buff Ingo??!!

Ingo and the unexpected therapy Minccino

Snuggles with Little Fluff the Minccino

Therapy Minccino at work

Pokémon Gijinka designs:

The Diner folks

The Hunter

The Lake Witches

The Old Man of the Mountain

Out of place artwork:

The very first art post

Volo the Ittiest, Bittiest, Teeniest, Tiniest, Little Starly

Even the Beast thinks the Woodsman is a sad mess

And it is absolutely right

Skrungly Woodsman is skrungly

Rage and Despair

The Truest Submas/OtGW Crossover

[beetlecathedral]

Chiesa di San fedele I visited today with my catholic aesthetics professor. Its so satisfying to finally learn the meanings of every ornate detail of a church. In order to be blasphemous I think you also need to be studious :P

Plus the place doubles as a contemporary art museum and my professor, who is also a priest, who is also the artistic director of the museum, specified that while installing the various works he placed merda d’artista 1 di Piero Manzoni in direct conversation with the reliquary of the church to highlight the change in paradigm from the worshipping of god to worshipping of culture aka man. What he stated and also arranged is a fundamentally blasphemous act by all means lol. I gained a lot of respect for him after that. I really didn’t expect such a level of self awareness and deep understanding of art history from a catholic institution which , was stupid of me considering centuries of interwoven dialogue between artists and the Catholic Church.

Anyway the installations are quite genius sometimes and extremely jarring other times, like for the case of the tabernacle that used to host the relics. It has been now modernised with bright neon colors to exemplify the “resplendent city of Jerusalem rising from the bodies of the martyrs” . YKES. That made my skin crawl. Meanwhile kounneli’s bagged cross (pictured in the second image) filled me with some kind of fervour lol. It is a grim, apocalyptic portrayal of faith and the way it inhabits the crypt is so morbid and potent. I wholeheartedly believe that a church is a better place to embody art than a museum, I honestly hate that museums are the institutions where we meet art face to face. White empty hallways are so devoid of impact and power that they strip art objects of any possible aura in my honest opinion. A church instead magnifies that very same aura. Interesting and contradictory experience im honestly glad I will finally study in depth the rancid religion of my country.

[crazysodomite]

my issues with blasphemous

I don't dislike this game at all. I love the art direction and I find the gameplay to be mostly enjoyable. But it is flawed.

As I've said, the art direction and design is basically flawless to my taste. The enemies look nice and (mostly) memorable, the NPCs and bosses look amazing, the environment art is great. I basically don't have any complaints in that department.

The OST is pretty forgettable IMO. Not bad but also not something I'd listen to on my own time. If you play a song from the OST I wouldn't be able to tell you which area/boss it's from. The voice acting is REALLY GOOD though

The controls are fine. It takes some time to get used to how long it takes for the character to recover from hitting an enemy. For example there are often times when you're doing your combo and an enemy hits you during it without you having any time to respond. Because when you stop hitting you don't get control of your character immediately. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but something to keep in mind and not get greedy during fights.

I mostly like the parry mechanic. Some bosses or enemies make it purposefully annoying to parry their attacks by delaying their attack telegraphs so you end up spamming parry because you're not sure when the attack is even going to come (this is especially egregious with isidora. FUCK her and her stupid delayed telegraphs). It's also sometimes unclear what you can and can't parry. The dodge. This game severely lacks something similar to the shadow dash in hollow knight that lets you dodge through enemies or attacks. SOMETIMES you can dodge through enemies. SOMETIMES you can't. Some bosses let you dodge through them during some attacks, and some don't. This inconsistency is extremely annoying and leads to situations where you don't even feel like you're at fault for receiving damage. If you must have contact damage AND no ability to dash through attacks/enemies at least have a clear way to tell when and where you can dash so it's not just a game of trying to randomly dash through stuff just to remember when you can. The map. Each area generally takes up only a few screens and generally, if you're dealing with the enemies quickly, you will be able to move through the game pretty fast. Exploring the map and finding secrets and places you haven't explored yet is pretty fun and satisfying.

That being said, a lot of the "secrets" are straight up bullshit. There's a lot of secret rooms, breakable walls, puzzles, etc. that are basically impossible to find without looking it up first, or literally walking around the map while hitting every wall and plunge attacking every floor. There are basically no signs to tell you a wall is breakable. You need to try every wall or look it up, or just happen to hit it randomly. This is bad because the game locks you out of essential upgrades and you wouldn't even be aware that you're missing something unless you look it up or purposefully go around the whole map to try to somehow find those secrets. And the game Requires you to find all the hidden rooms on the map for 100% completion.

By the time I finished the game I didn't even have half of the magic bar upgrades because most of them were hidden behind impossible to find breakable walls.

Some of the areas lacked an identity and were really forgettable (like patio of silent steps or mountains of endless dusk)

Maybe I should've used the hand relic, but I'll get to that later.

The quests. It is really unintuitive to figure out what you're supposed to do for any given quest. Most of them (including the ones revolving around the endings) require you to do completely arbitrary sequences of actions. You basically need to have a guide open to not mess up any given quest, and there are ways to mess up in almost every one. Which I guess encourages replayability but you could play this game several times without even realizing that you "messed up" or didn't complete a quest. It's also not very fun to aimlessly roam around talking to every npc just to figure out what you're supposed to do with any given quest item.

Some people try to justify this by saying "thats how souls games do it and it's not supposed to be intuitive" but that's a really stupid excuse. Just because the souls games do something (and I'm not even sure they do this) doesn't mean it's good game design! Something being really unintuitive doesn't make it hard or interesting, it just leaves players confused or not even realizing that they're doing something wrong.

One of the first things you see when you look up "blasphemous quests" is a post titled "Things I had to look up too" which isn't a good sign!

Let's talk about some of the quests:

Tirso/Kissers of Wounds: Quest that basically revolves around giving items to an NPC that has an arbitrary fail condition so subtle you're probably not going to figure out you "failed" the quest unless you look it up

Ludovico: another "give item to npc" quest but this time it's clear what you need to give to him and there's no arbitrary fail condition, great!

Gemino: now this quest wouldn't be bad if you didn't fail it by just entering the area where the npc is located. you can fail this quest without even talking to this npc because he requires you to go to the boss as soon as you enter the screen he is on, which is frustrating. especially considering you can miss out on quite a lot by failing this quest. but at least the objectives of this quest are clear so if you decide to do a second playthrough you know what to do (unless you accidentally entered and exited that area and beat another boss, then tough luck to you)

redento: another overall good quest. you meet the npc, you help him out, you receive rewards. the ending though can be pretty confusing because you need to equip all the items he gave you. but it doesn't seem too hard to figure out what to do.

cleofas: this one is pretty okay with how it interacts with other npcs but some parts can be either confusing or straight up impossible without looking it up. i wouldn't be able to figure out that i was supposed to give socorro the marks because there's no indication that's what she wanted me to do? otherwise, you probably can figure it out on your own

i'm not gonna get too mad on the achievement involving cleofas and redento because well, it's an achievement. it's probably fine for it to be a bit unintuitive

egg of deformity: i simply wouldn't be able to figure out the sequence of actions required of me for completing this quest.

the... whatever the fuck is the quest involving perpetva, her brother, the traitor eyes and crisanta... that quest is also probably impossible to do without starting a clean save Just for this quest

most of the other quests boil down to "give npc all the items they want and the quest is completed"

viridiana is probably the most intuitive quest. she has several different outcomes and it's pretty easy to figure out what to do to get different ones on different playthroughs. this is a quest for replayability done right in my opinion. when you interact with her you can always wonder "what happens if i do this other thing" and then get it in a different playthrough.

now the items.

a lot of the rosary beads feel like padding. there's like, 15 or more beads that basically all do the same thing but with different number values.

a bead that gives 15% protection from physical damage and a bead that gives 35% protection. and theres several of those for each damage type. i don't necessarily think this is bad, but why couldn't you just replace the weaker beads with the stronger ones like an upgrade (like red and blue wax beads)? i can't imagine anyone using a weaker bead if they have a stronger one, so keeping them just feels like clogging up the inventory.

there's a bead that gives 5% damage bonus which is pretty laughable. i feel like a lot of beads give way too little effect to even be noticeable. it's like the devs are afraid of making a bead "overpowered". now there's definitely some useful ones but something that annoyed me a little bit is the long descriptions which made it hard to remember which one i want to put on at a glance. "is this the weak protection or the strong protection one...?" "is this the fire or the lightning one?" and so on.

the damage types (physical/toxic/lightning/magic/fire) are a pretty interesting system, but a bit underutilized. only after completing the whole game i has this moment of "ooohhh.... each major boss had a primary damage type, and the final one had all of the types..." i honestly only really remember fire attacks giving me trouble. and sometimes it isn't clear which enemies have which type of attacks.

Relics. WHY can you only equip 3 at a time? What purpose does this serve? This is extremely annoying. Switching relics all the time while exploring is just a big nuisance and doesn't offer any gameplay complexity or challenge. I had to constantly think what combo of 3 relics would require me to switch them around less. And I had to basically never use the shroud or the hand because I'd have to replace the more useful relics. Also, annoyingly, some of the relics are locked behind those exact unintuitive quests and hard to find secret rooms I talked about so it takes AGES to get the essential relics for map exploration.

Mea Culpa Hearts. I've never used any of them except when I had to farm tears for upgrades. Nothing else I can say about them. The downsides of each one are too significant to really bother with them so they were an aspect of the game I ignored.

Prayers. An actual fun aspect of the game. Some of these are really good and useful, it's fun to choose the perfect one for any given fight. If only fervor generated more quickly, because it's pretty slow even with 2 rosary beads specifically for that. AND... If only the fervor bar upgrades weren't locked behind those damned breakable walls...

Something about this game is that most bosses are really easy while some rooms with enemies with them are AGONIZING to navigate, especially if you don't have much health. And it really is not fun to whack a single enemy 8 times for it to go down, while you dodge their attacks in a repetitive fashion over and over again. It's not exactly challenging, just annoying.

The platforming. It's bad. There's not a lot of it but it's really bad. The sections where you have to jump on ladders, the sections with 1 hit kill spike pits, the sections where enemies knock you off platforms while you're climbing, the sections where you have to somehow pogo off of lamps (???) in a game with no actual down pogo.

The lamps section is so perplexing because i literally had to look up how to do it. You have to hold down dash instead of down slashing to do it reliably, and no the game doesn't tell you this. Which is annoying!

FUCK specifically the floating ghost enemies who hit you with lasers. EASILY the most annoying and dreadful enemies.

okay i think im done

[susspirria]

I like the idea of Omega Eli being a dancer or some kind of performer because he's such a hustler and social climber and the arts would be one of the only ways to do that - he's an omega with no formal education even at a primary level, so the only things he has going for him are his looks and charm and talents.

He starts training very young, like 7 or 8. He's not stupid, he knows he'll need to work his whole life to get what he desires. He begs his mother to make him a dancing dress and his first one is literally made from tablecloth. He spends his days dancing, praying, dancing, keeping house and dancing some more.

Paul finds it really unsettling. He thinks Eli is going to break his body doing this. He's eating very little and practicing daily for hours. But Eli doesn't care. He tells Paul that God had given him talent, it would be blasphemous not to use it. (which makes Paul roll his eyes like 'No. you did that by practicing every day since we were kids')

ALSO the idea of Eli trying to seduce someone wealthy (Daniel) who comes to Little Boston in the hopes that they will take him away from there is so good to me. Eli wants to be rich and famous -- but he'll settle just for being rich if he has to.

[joanofarcs-stigmata]

My second confession is that what cleared the bitterness from my eyes that clouded my love for Jesus was genuinely the webcomic Homestuck.

For context if you are unaware: within the webcomic of Homestuck there is a planet called Alternia where grey skinned people with candycorn-esc horns called Trolls live, and we have 12 main characters from this planet. One of them is a boy named Karkat who is of a mutant blood color (Trolls live on a blood color based caste system of 12 11 colors. The warmer colored you are the lower you are on the caste system, but if you don't have a color on the caste system at all you are culled.)

Later in the webcomic we get to see the ancestors of these trolls, and Karkat's ancestor is known as The Signless or The Sufferer and he is quite literally Troll Jesus. The Signless was also a mutant blood and fought for equal treatment of all trolls. He was raised by essentially the troll version of the Mother Mary, he fell in love in a way that transcended definition with the troll version of Mary Magdalene. Eventually he was caught and hung in chains and executed, but his revolution never truly died.

A fan wrote what they believe The Signless' final sermon would sound like and it goes as such:

https://youtu.be/0qlfeXnIxn4?si=eCc4AhlID0UY6SqM

https://www.deviantart.com/angelfrombellow/art/The-Sufferer-s-Final-Sermon-290057407 (here is a transcript)

And I suppose some other visualizations of his life that had a severe impact on me:

https://youtu.be/kGuzNwdRVO4?si=uwYZQFI205Y8G14f

https://youtu.be/POIyGamReZ8?si=cx0jxFJWs6wrDXSN

And I guess I know it's really stupid and mega-blasphemous for my love of our Lord Jesus Christ to have been resparked by a webcomic that a lot of the internet considers deeply cringe or whatever but. I guess. It was the reframing I needed.

It was the reframing that made me look at what Jesus did through the lens of not the Lord of Our God but as a person who approached the world with Kindness and Love and Compassion. I could not love Him as an entity disconnected from humanity, some perfect being meant to die. But I can love Him as a human who loved his family and his friends and every disabled, disenfranchised, and suffering person he ever met.

Thank you for listening to my confessions I apologize for coming into your inbox as a stranger to give you confessions but I appreciate the kindness you have to let me speak.

(Disclaimer that i know quite a bit abt homestuck and have not the... nicest... view on it, due to the attitude of a few people i unfortunately knew in high school. but the actions of a handful of people from almost seven (JESUS CHRIST) years ago =/= the actions of everyone who partakes in the work or the fandom, and i will try my damnest to keep my bias out of this!)

first: not blasphemous at all to find Jesus in something other than the church-- if it was/is, then fuck me bc i only got back to the church through agreeing with my ex best friend on how awful Jesus and Christianity are where i actively lied growing up Christian and let him mock my parents' faith so he would like me. if something brings us to Jesus, then i say it's good in my book 9/10 times. If it was the re-framing you needed, im GLAD you found it!!

i also find it funny (in a good way!!!) that this brought you to my favorite part of completely real and valid church doctrine: jesus as human/divine. he's 100% BOTH, and the same time. which means he's not half-human, half-god, he IS human. completely. fully. in his totality. he's just god, too, and i love love love talking about that human side, and how it interacts with that god side. The Jesus you love is human. Jesus of Nazareth is human, is flesh, and just also is Jesus Son of God. And that human Jesus is also God the Creator that you feel disconnected from. it's so beautiful to me. It's a giant theological mess and i LOVE IT

thank you for feeling safe enough to come to me. i hope it helped in some way. god bless <3

[6ad6ro]

ufo 50 and dark souls part 3:

much like with gta or call of duty, everyone was trying to make a souls game, or just shoving aspects where they didn't belong. as far as indie games go, i'll use shovel knight as an example. it's a fine game, i like sk. but when you die, you lose gold and have to go back to where you died and pick it back up, or risk losing it forever. it was so unnecessary, and added stress and anxiety for no reason. yet there it was. it never woulda been there without souls, and woulda made for a better game overall. not a huge deal, but then you have games like hollow knight which is an amazing game but def starts to get tedious to unplayable later. or blasphemous which is just AWFUL from the start.

and of course, there's all those reprehensible pos soulslikes that bigger companies tried to make without understanding that the only reason souls got away with so much of it's bullshit is it had insanely good art, lore, and aesthetics. but that aside, you also had souls elements seeping into other big series. like take zelda botw. there's zero doubt in my mind that souls wasn't a huge inspiration, anyone trying to argue otherwise would be a fool. the last decade or so of the series was very lenient with it's challenge, but suddenly in botw things will kill you left and right. i'm not trying to say botw or totk are as hard as souls, but the influence is obviously there. and it makes for a worse game. the whole "weapons break easily" system is dumb. the whole thing they do with food is maybe even worse, semi unlimited healing means the devs can't balance the combat properly, and it was a shitty bandaid solution for an unnecessary problem.

this is what i'm saying. dark souls has really really hurt the whole gaming landscape, to an intensity that i've never seen before. and the good souls elements are usually ignored in favor of "make game hard, profit". and while i don't think ufo 50 will ever be as influential as souls? it's making huge waves in the indie scene. it's gonna change the indie landscape for sure. but idk if it'll be for the right reasons. are people months from now gonna be talking about moon cat or porgy or pilot quest? or are they just gonna be doing speedruns of barbuta?? in my head, all the fun games will probably be old news, and what's gonna be left is all the brutal stuff. all those artificially and needlessly hard games.

and it makes me wary. i really like ufo 50, i'm fine with half the games being bad, and talk to my friends about how cool the game is. but is it gonna negatively affect my hobby in the future? idk. like, i was the biggest demons souls fan you'd ever meet back then. but now i feel stupid. now i feel like i should have called the game out for it's shit and not just focused on the good parts. elden ring was a great example of a half "top 20 of all time", half awful. but then they made the followup dogshit overhard dlc and ruined the name, and it's like "oh god, there's another 10 years of shitty games if this does well".

i think people like to pretend that everything is in this sort of bubble. but i can safely say as somebody who has been playing games for 40 years that, no, these kinds of things can have an overwhelming effect on the hobby.

[faelynnupward]

I am not a Christian. I have studied some Christian art history.

It is utterly baffling, to me, how insanely blasphemous Trump fanatics are. Like… these depictions would have at certain points in actual history gotten you burned at the stake.

That man. THAT man is the second coming? There is no fucking way. How could anyone believe that? It is cartoonishly stupid. I don’t think I could dream up a less Christ-like figure.

It is hard to believe any of this is real. 19 year old me sitting in my History of Medieval Art course in 2005 would laugh you off campus if you tried to tell me this would happen… and 19 year old me was way less tolerant of basically any stripe of Christian and believed most were just stupid and I still would have scoffed.

[11thfempachi]

Passionate Orthodox people calling baroque and Renaissance Christian art blasphemous for drawing Christian saints, Mary and Jesus as average Europeans... Y'all realise that iconography is based on greco-roman "worldly" pagan portraits of emperors and aristocracy? Like the types of icons like Orans or possibly even deesis? Like even if you say "oh of course they remind us of something worldly the way people pray is the same everywhere" (Not exactly true but okay) the art style of Orthodox art is unmistakably greco-roman and stems from ideals of nations that were seasoning in paganism no matter how hard they tried to make themselves look inherently Christian after centuries of feeding Christians to lions. If you don't want any art that could make Christian figures look less vague and divine why did you fight for icons so hard? Why do you have Eleusa or Mater Dolorosa, I thought biblical figures were ineffable and so were their feelings and emotions to the human mind and therefore couldn't be portrayed in a sympathetic manner because it makes them look "less solemn"? Why the fuck don't you just remove all pictures of any biblical figure then save for like. Christ the Redeemer and Hodegetria? Because God forbid they have any human features and also how dare you mention Christ coming to earth in human form nothing about his life was human he just took a shape of a man so you stupid fucking piglets would listen to him. Should've been a burning bush instead. But also he totally felt very human pain on the cross

Girl make up your mind

[mossy-green-aka-ferrythem]

Good news! I have the Unalloyed Gold Needle! Frenzied Flame begone! This world will not be destroyed if I have anything to say about it!

Now all I need to do is beat Malenia. Thankfully I snagged the Blasphemous Blade, and fully upgraded it. Since she's not dying as fast as I'd hoped, I am going to snag the Shard of Alexander to make my strategy work... better.

(My strategy is using the weapon art over and over again because like. Malenia isn't the kind of boss that fights fair. The rest of her attacks are manageable but she can easily turn the entire fight against you with one move, one Ash of War...

So why not do the same to her back? I dislike the inconsistency of Waterfoul Dance, so everytime I fight her, I vex her for it, summon, do whatever stupid strategy I come up with, and win.)

Also like. Even still with a full faith build and a full playthrough on my shoulders... I still don't know how to handle Faith LMAO

Too indecisive, however,

I mean like. Handling incantations and what not. It gets a lot more fun when you stop being like "which incant????" and more like "i'm just gonna throw a bolt at them."

Anyways yeah having a lot of fun! I am sure things will come together even more strongly when I get to the DLC with this character!