#such a fun character design and stuff too ... very very good concept i love it

[girlkisserr]

finally i have energy to draw. wynn oc fanart upon ye

Castor - @lunarthing159

[woosh-floosh-art]

Bits and Pieces: 2024

Went through all my 2024 files and here's all the stuff I didn't post!

Dragon Quest slimes... The idea was to do a slime gacha of some sort but... there's so many slimes man I can't draw them all.

Teeny Sanguini variations. The idea was to make a keychain of each teeny sanguini variation but.. that would cost a lot of money and I don't even know how well does keychains would sell. Maybe people just want basic teeny sanguini and I'm wasting my money buying other keychains.. Oh well. The basic teeny sanguini keychain I ordered has sold well, we'll have to see if I decide to order one of the variations.

Various Ouioui's. I think the goal was to eventually draw them all? I just needed something simple but with some room for experimentation to draw everyday. Early 2024 was a rough time for me.

Fan Ouioui design. This one is good. I would imagine the body of the thing would be a scrunchie so you can put it in your hair or on your wrist.

CMY(K) and spring dango themed galumpin dops.

PEARL DRONE!! The goal was to make stickers, that didn't happen lol. Still cute though...

Various little doodles I thought were cute. Badniks, two headed minecraft calf sticker concept (I didn't think it was very clear in it's design..), kirby :D, alien cow, and a true fact about aphids.

SA2 animal sticker gacha. Like I said, in early 2024 I was really looking for something simple and repetitive to draw with just enough variation to keep things interesting. Like the slimes and the ouiouis this one fizzled out. There was just TOO much variation. I ended up doing all of those gyroids which was perfect for the time and also sold really well as stickers! I also did all those damn kirby stickers which did NOT sell as well.

Okay enough about the grief and depression, let's talk about SONIC OCS!! I really loved the periodical cicada emergence this year so I wanted to make a sonic oc based on them. Her wings are crumpled (like many cicadas I saw this year, unfortunately her and the other cicadas will never fly) but she was some wisp powered roller blades to let her zoom around! I used to do a lot of character design as a teen but now I struggle with it. But I don't think this is that bad of a design? It's fun, she's fun.

Every year for artfight people make new characters based on the theme, and this year I wanted to try as well! He's supposed to be an anthropomorphic ray, a prince that must set out on an adventure! The eyebrow design is cuter but I think the widows peak design better conveys that he is supposed to be a ray. Bottom right is my favorite but I would switch the cutlass for the rapier. It's just a bit more of a princely sword.

Blue eyed cicada sticker concept. During the cicada emergence this year someone found a blue eyed cicada!! This is the mock up if I made stickers of that. I didn't because I was soooo sick of handcutting those damn cicadas, they were not easy to cut. Also they did not sell very well. We need more cicada fans in this world...

Lastly... two pages to a comic I never finished. It was supposed to be the prologue to my oc story but... it's a little scary making comics about original characters! There's a lot more to think about and manage over doing fan comics. I would still like to return to my little world and characters but I just haven't been in the mood for it. Ironically there was only one page left in the prologue but it's been so long I don't think I'm going to finish it!

Also, to try and combat the anxiety that comes with making an original story I didn't plan the layouts at all?? I guess to make the process faster and not worry as much?? The thumbnails in my sketchbook are just loose unconnected panels next to the script. That is not how I typically plan comics... and for good reason! Looks at the paneling in page two! It's bad! It's really bad!! When I come back to my characters I going to have to swallow my fear and put some more time and care into the layouts.

Okay that's all for 2024! I have a couple more things to post from December and then that's a wrap on 2024! Thanks for reading! ^_^

[makerofmadness]

ok so: Beast-Ancients Swap AU but actually the Beasts messed up the timeline and made it one

(I will explain I swear-) The following sprite edits and designs were a collaborative effort of me and @driftwoodmfb

(Lily's design and edit is not finished yet, and Ssalt isn't getting one until that character is released-)

general shoutouts to Driftwood for collaborating with me on this in a lot of aspects btw she's the mvp of this whole project

I am Very bad at concise descriptions but basically: "5v5 climactic final showdown occurs but the bad guys win and then the group consensus on what to all do together to compromise thanks to slightly different priorities is 'Hey we all really hate the ancients now so let's just like. Screw them over' so they basically used their combined virtues' powers or something (look all of this I came up with just to justify the AU's actual concept) to like reset and alter the timeline to swap their places with the ancients basically. and then they kinda accidentally get redemption arc'd in the process. Meanwhile the og ancients... are not happy"

I'm def gonna post more about these guys in the future (and also I like. Encourage people to send asks because I need enrichment dndndnmd! I have a ton of stuff sitting around about them and I love talking about them- so. Here's my attempt at an overview (I. Suck at being concise this took all day to not make way too long dndndndm):

Shadow Milk Cookie - Calls himself the Dark Moon Magician. He's quite braggadocious and more than a little mischievous, quite the show-off too, but he has a good heart down there (nowadays). Though he has often had to be badgered by the Light of Truth into actually telling the truth on things...

Eternal Sugar Cookie - You'll meet them someday. Just not now.

Mystic Flour Cookie - Her face and voice do not do much to express how much she despises the Cookie she used to be, and the Cookie she still sees whenever she looks in the mirror. She is the most eager to come clean to her Cookies, but something is holding her back... she decides to save it for when she has finally repented enough by her standards, to earn her position as queen. It's never enough.

Burning Spice Cookie - For the kingdom he rules, you may (or may not) be surprised seeing how little he cares for material riches. To him, lived experiences are the most precious things- hence why he's always looking for a good fight. Or to just have fun with those close to him- which is not many as he has had a history of issues- after all, transient things fall to time, but the impressions they leave can last up to forever...

Silent Salt Cookie - The fallen hero. It wasn't supposed to happen again. They all knew it could happen, they agreed to prevent it. Why did they make the same mistake...?

Pure Vanilla Cookie - The embodiment of the most common lie. He can string Cookies up to make them move and speak against their wills. He does this to himself often, when he grows tired. He is very ashamed of what he has become, but no matter, he will be fine once he regains the light of Truth, and exposes the truth of this world to all Cookiekind...

Hollyberry Cookie - Berry juice is a comfort to her, such is why she had wished so badly to drown her mind and all her pain in it. She is... frankly, harmless the way she is now. She doesn't have the power, pride or energy to fight. Her heart is just as full of love as it's always been, even if her mind's gone fluffy as frosting. So much that even being in a permanent stupor won't stop her from missing her family, still...

Dark Cacao Cookie - As he describes himself fully, an empty vessel without a will of his own, whose only goal is to carry out the will of fate. He will play his part in this story, for he knows there is no other way. After all, they'd tried to resist already, and it was all in vain. He is cold, empty, such was his resolve: to be unburdened by feeling, so that he would feel no pain...

Golden Cheese Cookie - Calls herself the Demonic Goddess. When she gets upset, she tends to fly into fits of destruction- which she has become very, very good at causing. She laughs it off, she laughs a lot in general, but she really does not like what she's become. However, she is still the same greedy Cookie as she always was, and still wants nothing more than to annihilate the ones who had displaced her and her friends and take back what is rightfully hers...

White Lily Cookie - Founder of the Lily Kingdom. She is a stern, serious figure who tries to keep everything under her control. She quickly silences those who tell her what she does not wish to hear untrue, unkind, or unnecessary things. She does not get very openly emotional often, and tends to address everyone with the same attitude even if it's her friends. (They can generally tell when she means well). She plans to silence all lies from Cookies' mouths, especially regarding who the "Heroes" and "Beasts" are...

(i. Never mentioned the name of the AU itself the whole time in this post did I? Ok uh that's Immemorial Interchange btw if I ever say that or II then I'm talking about this thing for future reference XD)

Edit: I have a tag on my blog for the au and I just kinda post whatever I feel like. Hope y'all can enjoy this I'm probably gonna be dumping a lot of stuff I've held on to. And I would love it if people send asks X3

[doodledrawsthings]

Opinions on the Sols from Nine Sols immediately. Please. Your au is delish.

Keep in mind these are my very off-the-top-of-my-head, surface level impressions of them after having recently beaten the game on story mode once, while streaming. I won’t be giving any deep analysis or anything lol so the tone will be pretty jokey and unserious.

MAJOR major Nine Sols spoilers under the cut. Please do not read if you haven’t finished the game.

Kuafu: second favorite character. I love him so much. He’s such a pal, everybody likes him. Hou Yi left him as the final sun standing after shooting down the other nine cuz he’s just a stand up guy. The fact that he’s the one who pled keep Abacus around and set his settings to High Sympathy and kept coming in to talk to him out of guilt over what happened to Yi kills me. Smart, silly, handsome, the last remaining Solarian in existence and he can never go home for the remainder of his life. He’s my ride or die bestie, he’s one of my several husbands who babysit my little brother while I go off on a revenge murder spree and I’m kissing him on the mouth.

Goumang: I like her design and concepts and think she’s a fun character. She was the first boss I fought and i thought she was pretty fun, though I didn’t find the fight as memorable as others. I wish she had more presence throughout the game, I heard from a friend she had some more stuff that was cut apparently? Curious about her rivalry with Yi and relationship with Eigong. And since Yi technically never killled her I’ve considered including her in the Dont Worry About It AU.

Yanlao: Grampa!! I think he and Yi’s back and forth throughout the warehouse area was pretty funny. I was so ready to kick his ass the entire time, especially after the segment where he’s shooting at you as you navigate a maze. Loved his bossfight, first fight of the first three i started with where I really felt the parry/dodge/attack rhythm for the first time. Rip gramps.

Jiequan: BASTARD!! (Half-affectionate but only half) he’s giving Fruity Disney Villain Who Flirts With You As He Stabs You In The Chest. He sucks <3 but he’s such a FUN character, what a great antagonist. His fake out fight is so intense, the prison scene is so intense, his boss fight kicked my ass and his theme goes hard. He’s a war criminal, he’s a freak, he looks like All Might MHA and he regularly irradiates himself as part of his body building routine. “Heroes are forged in agony!” 10/10 Disney villain, very stylish. Defeating him was so satisfying especially after the Kanghui fight in the prison and learning what happened with THAT horror show.

Lady Ethereal: I LOVE HER!! SO MUCH!!! UGH!!! she makes me so sad! But everything about her is SO cool! Her fate! Her backstory!! Her design! Her boss fight! Her entire platforming area!!! Just!!! Aah! I won’t say too much but it’s just so good she had my favorite fight in the game, the dance for that one is so much fun. I was streaming the game on discord for my partner and another friend and when we first went into the cortex, she was like “oh you should keep going left and see what’s over there ;)” and then I did and just!!! So cool that Red Candle started off making horror games, it’s really great. Love it. Awesome character, awesome boss, awesome theme.

Fuxi and Nuwa: Rich asshole twins!! These two suck lol but I do think they’re fun characters. The entire empyrean district is experiencing a resident evil style zombie infection and Nuwa is throwing a rager at the club for the rich cryosleepers only. It’s really eerie over there though, I love the vibe of the east side and the discovery of the mutants and destruction of the west half is spooky as hell. And then I got to the area where you get Fuxi’s sol seal and didn’t even notice he was sitting there until my partner pointed him out. I thought he was furniture lol. She’s really puppeting around her brother’s pustule-riddled zombie corpse Weekend at Bernie’s style cuz she’s that much in denial. Also absolutely horrifying that the district supposedly once held 100,000 sleeping solarians that is whittled down to 300 after the mutated virus wreaks havoc through the area. Personally, I’m mixed on their bossfight, the first half with just Fuxi was fun once I got the rhythm but the 2nd half when Nuwa comes in with her attacks gets a bit too chaotic for me. Their boss theme, however, is probably my favorite in the game. I love the opera samples, it’s so cool.

Ji: I think about them a lot. Like, wow what a guy. I think a lot about his immortality, and that if he had not left Penglai with the council he would have been stuck there, alone for eternity. I think about the fact that because they will never get Tianhuo, there would be no need for them to be in cryosleep, which probably means that in the 502 years that Yi was recovering, he was probably up and about the entire time, probably wandering around new Kunlun mostly alone. I wonder if they ever hung out with the dusk guardians, or if they just stayed in the grotto for the most part. Their boss fight felt the most like a dance to me, or like friends sparring. Do you think they thought of Lear as you attacked them with the moves he taught you in the spiritual realm? He makes me sad, but he is very stylish!

Eigong: FUCK HER! SHES SO COOL, BUT FUCK HER!!! EVIL GRANDMA! this games story is like peeling back an onion of horrors where each layer you peel back brings new, mortifying understanding of the situation at large until it ALL. COMES BACK. TO HER! AND HER FRUITLESS PURSUIT OF IMMORTALITY! Her boss fight KICKED MY ASS. I was streaming my first playthrough, so I was already prone to doing worse than I probably would without an audience (emphasis on probably) but in my first attempt I was fighting her for like 6 HOURS STRAIGHT. And for the true ending too, which meant three boss phases. I just could not get her pattern down and my hands were cramping but i really wanted to finish the game that weekend so I could finally talk about it so I ended up turning up the accessibility options to one punch man her. I did eventually go back and do her fight by myself with the story mode settings and MAN what a fun boss battle once you get the dance down (I’m still so bad at unbound counter), and it is SO satisfying to beat. Incredible character, we love fictional old women who commit atrocities in the name of science.

Yi: and finally we have the man, the myth, the legend. I could probably write a whole separate post about him and Heng and his relationships with the other characters but to keep it short- I LOVE HIM SO MUCH! BUT IM ALSO BITING HIM AND PUTTING HIM IN A BLENDER AND RUNNING HIM THROUGH THE DISHWASHER AND HANGING HIM UP TO DRY. Just UGH! It’s not common for the main character of a thing to be my favorite character but Yi is my favorite character. It’s the fact that he is his own character, and we, the player, must gradually find out things that HE already knows. And his budding and flowering relationships with the other characters, especially those who set up shop in the pavillion which leads into his character development is just AUGH. AND THE ENDINGS. YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT GHE ENDINGS. THEYRE GOOD BUT AUGH. I love him, I’m rotating him in my mind on a skewer, he’s my little manlet, my poor little “I’m not a good person” shadow the hedgehog energy meow meow cat boy. I love him so much, I’m so distraught over his terrible life choices. Incredible character.

Ok hope that was entertaining to read, bye.

[jean-dieu]

Dragon age the Veilguard: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Don't expect too much there, I'm just writing my own subjective, non-organized, badly written critic of the game. Spoilers ahead, so be warned!

The Good is the good stuff, The Bad is the bad stuff that isn't too jarring or that doesn't threaten the whole setting so much so it's okay to just ignore them, and The Ugly is the bad stuff that DOES make me want to fucking die and explode.

The Good:

-It's beautiful. Not a fan of a lot of design choices but it's obviously well made. The landscapes are very pretty.

-The character creator. It's always funny to me when I see some dudebros complaining about it as if they're not purposefully making ugly characters. It has quite a lot of option, nice skin details, scars, tattoos and all.

-I really like the combat. I still think DAO is the superior system but I'm much more happy with a true action rpg than whatever Inquisition was trying to do.

-I'm going to be more objective there and say the maps are better than Inquisition. THAT BEING SAID I love the Hinterlands so I still prefer Inquisiton's bloated open world lmao.

-There's a lot of nice details all around! Neve's metallic prothesis walking sound, the decorations all around, tears in character's eyes, ect.

-Solas. Can't believe I'm saying it as I didn't like him much in DAI and I don't like Solavellan but DATV made me like him very much. He's much more morally grey and less uwu wet cat and I'm here for that. Excellent voice acting of course.

-Mythal. Again, I love whatever Solas and Mythal have going on. It's toxic, it's passionate, it's one sided, and Mythal is a very interesting character IMO.

-Felassan. Again, such a cool and compelling character.

-A lot of NPCs were very cool. Antoine who's singlehandly saving the French's reputation, Evka, The Viper, Strife, Viago, Teia, etc. They're cool and rather compelling.

-I did enjoy a lot of the companion's personal quests. Davrin and Bellara especially as they felt more in line with Dragon Age in general.

-For a game where the Bad Guys are Comically Evil... Johanna Hezenkoss fits the bill and yet she's a delight.

-There's really cool codex entries. Irelin's letter about mourning Arlathan for example. Antoine's letter to Evka should he ever be Called.

-Ghilahn'ain's design.

-I liked the living Blight! OK the darkspawns were ugly af but I still really enjoyed the idea.

-I actually liked the puzzles lmao? I'm sorry but I usually find puzzles fucking annoying in that type of game so I'd rather have something easy and fun than scratching my head in a rpg.

-I was glad to see Valta again!

The Bad: (vaguely in order of importance)

-Unpopular opinion but Assan and Manfred felt forced af. Yeah I got it, they're cute... Now can we go back on uh, the apocalypse.

-The music is boring. Fuck man Inquisition and Origins musics make me cry, but Veilguard's main them... Exists.

-I would prefer the companion to be stationary and being able to talk to them whenever want. They tried something but it didn't deliver.

-The fuck is Inky wearing.

-The fuck is Isabela wearing, but racist edition. Oh well. At least it's an easy fix with a mod.

-The companions have potential but they often lack something. I wish we got more than Lucanis liking coffee. Also, some characters concept from the art book felt so much more interesting. The only character I REALLY was interested in was Davrin because he feels very dragon age-y. A Dalish Grey Warden! That's interesting!

-The Lore seems alright and coherent with the serie so far, but it was just lore drops after lore drops, with no time for reactions, and your companions being sometimes waaaaay too chill about it.

-The overall sanitazing of the world while the grim stuff still somehow being there regarding Tevinter. It's very close to be in the Ugly category but because it's supposed to be there, I'm encline to believe it's still canon and not a retcon, and just a poor presentation. Where are the slaves? We see some of course, and some stuff were legitimately jarring... But because we're confined in docktowns, we don't get to see the ruling magisters and slavers. Docktowns almost seem... Nice. But it doesnt stop there. The Lords of Fortune not stealing artifacts because they respect cultures. The Crows being patriotic vigilantes. Lucanis being a mage killer but only for evil tevene magisters.

-I understand the impossibility to be Evil as you're recruited by Varric and he wouldn't have recruited the local serial killer that drowns kitties for fun. But... You should be able to be aggressive, stern, serious and all. You should be able to play a no-nonsense character who is authoritative and assertive while still following the plot.

-Again, I understand the companions being healthier than whatever DA2 crew had going on (love them tho) but it should have been more like Inquisition. People working together and forcing themselves to make it work for the sake of the world YET fighting and disagreeing on plenty of subjects. And Rook should be able to tell the companion to stfu sometimes. To tell Taash that they're an ass. To tell Emmerich you don't give a shit about his magic and that Manfred is fucking weird and shouldn't exist. To tell Bellara to stop whining.

-On the same note, the companions are all WAY too nice. One their own they're alright, but none of them have some true flaws/secrets/dark past/opposing convictions or whatever. Davrin and Lucanis are almost the only one who are arguing and fighting a bit but it's very tame. We never hear them arguing over politics, religion, or even ways of doing things (except for food lol. why is this game so much about food). If you take Inquisition for example, the companions are ALL working together in the face of a Ancient Evil threatening Thedas. Yet, they still argue about plenty of things. Solas and Iron Bull about the Qun. Vivienne and Solas about the existence of Circles. Varric and Cassandra's fighting is ruthless even when it's about nothing important. Try to show your pride as a Dalish to Sera and she won't take it well. Tell Cassandra that you don't give a shit about the Chantry and she'll disapprove. And still, these persons managed to work together. The excuse of "They put their differences aside because of the current threat" doesn't hold. The companions don't necessarily need DA2's level of animosity between them, but they don't need to all be best friends forever second one. Bellara could be suspicious of Neve for the sole reason of her being a Tevinter Mage. Lucanis too ("Mage Killer"!!!), but because he doesn't trust magic at all. Davrin and Bellara could argue about what it means to be Dalish to them, or argue about their faith!! EVERYONE Should be more worried about Lucanis being an abomination, damn it!

-I understand the Crows we see are not the one experiencing the worst of the organisation since they're highranking members but c'mon... It should be acknowledged at least.

-Some of the dialogues are fucking awful especially at the begining. They repeat themselves so much. The scene with "Nooo Rook you need to help us resolve our problems otherwise we will be too weak to fight the gods!! Rook, do my personal quests or I'll be too sad to fight!!". Harding's "Awkwaaaard". Bellara's quirky uwu manic pixie girl vibes at the begining.

The Ugly:

-Anything related to the elves. For a game centered on elven gods... We get so much yet nothing. Why are they all more or less cool about their "Gods" being real and evil? No one freaking out about having Elgarnan's vallaslin on their face? No crisis of faith? No elves joining them, really? Not a single one? No dalish celebrating their return before realizing the awful truth? No city elves or elven slaves fleeing to them because they have nothing to lose anyway? That's unrealistic. I can understand the Veil Jumpers already knowing the truth, it's more or less explained in the books anyway, but there's no way it's commonly accepted among all dalish clans. Speaking of dalish clans, were are they? And Briala ? Didn't she also control the Eluvian? What about city elves in general? And elven slaves? There's just nothing. The elven pantheon wasn't some myths for the Dalish. It was a religion. Their religion. Damn, imagine Christians learning Jesus is coming back BUT he's in fact very evil and is launching nuclear weapons everywhere? And their only reaction is "Oh no, we have to stop Jesus :(" ? I'm taking the christian example but you could say that about pretty much every religion.

-Where are Fen'harel agents? A few lines and one or two NPC mentioning Solas parting ways with them or even making the Veil Jumpers the ex-agents left behind would have been SO much more interesting than whatever they justified in the AMA. I can't believe they didn't even put A CODEX ENTRY explaining their absence in game. That's lazy af.

-No repercussion on the elves AT ALL? Seriously, realistically speaking, what is the future for the elves at the end of DATV? "Their" Gods almost destroyed the world, "Their" Gods killed countless, "Their" Gods created the Blight, "Their" Gods that many dalish still worshipped only a few years ago. What do you mean humans aren't going to declare open season on them? Like OF COURSE I don't want that to happen, and I'm hoping that idk, they'll found their own country in a reclaimed Arlathan, or that the instability in the south allows some of them to grab positions of power but don't tell me the humans aren't going to feel so fucking justify in their hatred, especially towards the Dalish who never converted to the Chantry. The fact that the endgame doesn't mention ANYTHING about it is jarring. Bioware ffs drop a book or whatever soon I need answers. I need hope. The game is treating the racism against Elves as... Some prejudices humans soooometimes have against them and not... centuries of systematic oppression, genocide, cultural erasure. The City Elf origins, Chevaliers killing Alienage elves for funsies, Celene burning down a whole Alienage, the genocide of dalish clans anyone? All of this is stuff that happened like... Between 8 and 20 years ago. It's not ancient history.

-Blighting Ferelden Beyond Repair, the Venatori Coup in Orlais and Kirkwall's evacuation was mean. Of cours the South is dealing with the blight and a shitload of problem but the "we lost Denerim. And Redcliff. And anything really. Idk if there's survivors. But if there is they'll starve anyway. xoxo the Inky." was just mean spirited I'm sorry. Same as above, Bioware. I fucking need hope for the South. Anything really. They could have stopped as "Yo there's a big Blight in the south and it sucks, Denerim is struggling and we lost villages and all" and that would have been FINE. No need to go scorched earth damnit.

-The lack of worldstate choices. C'mon. I understand not having a lot of them but a list of 6-10 easy questions would have been nice. Who's Divine? Who's ruling in the South? Who drank from the Well of Sorrow? It wouldn't have asked much work to just personalize a few sentences to adjust that. Also, saying they only kept 3 choices so they could really mean something... Liar. The only thing that really has an impact is did u date solas or not. Which fine, of course it matters! But all the other romances, the inquisition disbanded or not, stopping solas or not had NO IMPACT whatsoever.

-Where the fuck is Fenris. Idgaf Inquisition had Leliana when she could die in DAO, so bring Fenris in the Shadow Dragon. He needs to be there.

-The Antaam is such a fucking racist trope I can't believe they did it. Yeah, let make them growl like damn animals.

-Speaking of Qunari, even Taash is... Urgh. Why do you mean they sniff people. Also, their whole storyline on their gender identity was badly written. That scene with Isabela... No. That's not how you apologize. You misgender someone by mistake? Say sorry, correct yourself, move on. That's it.

-Dwarves had cool moments in the game but dang, we really, REALLY needed more of it. So many revelation about them, and while some of them were very well written, it doesn't have enough impact.

-The absence of reactions and dialogues related to your race is jarring. Can't believe I'm begging the game for racial slurs but here we are. EVERYONE in Origins commented on you playing an Elf. A non-human Inquisitor faced struggles as the Herald. Why is Qunari Rook able to roam freely in Minrathous without a SINGLE comment on their race? Same for the elves, to a lesser degree since at least they are not a rare occurence in Tevinter. Can't believe dwarves get so little reaction for all the big reveals. Can't believe elves barely get to react to ELVEN GODS destroying the world or Bellara's guilt about it.

-WHERE'S THE CHANTRY. WHERE. DAMN IT. Even if it's not the focus of the game, I'd expect to still see its influence. Man I'm almost wishing Harding was more of a Chantry Girl.

-Morrigan's whole storyline is an insult to her character.

[jealousmartini]

It's 21:09, or 9:09 pm on the 12 hr clock shifters. You know the drill. Let's shift.

∘₊ ✧───────────────────✧₊∘

Some stuff I have included in my kpop drs (Specifically O.M.G and MKB) that make them really special to me😫🥹❤️

000 :: Friendships and crushes

Around 2011 to 2018, companies like BIGHIT, Starship, and JYP were very lenient toward friendships with other K-pop idols opposite their gender. This is so special to me because I have THE LOUDEST MOUTH EVER when it comes to who I've got a crush on (looking directly at you wonyoung, jungkook, nayeon, jhope, chuu, taehyung, jimin, keeho, yeonjun, yoongi, sana, jin and namjoon) and who I am best friends with. (looking directly at you wonyoung, jungkook, nayeon, jhope, chuu, taehyung, jimin, keeho, yeonjun, yoongi, sana, jin and namjoon again.) Yeah i am best friends with idols i have crushes on If you couldn't tell. This basically gave me the freedom to talk my ass off about "Ooo wait whys San from ateez kindaa" or "NAH cus what do yall know about my goat min yoonfreak yo." And "No cus I've got the biggest girl crush on Jennie from blackpink right now"

All companies would only become stricter with this after 2019 due to fans complaining about dating rumours and feeling like the relationships are too close (girl I know like I've heard these complaints before) because they like the idea of their idols being single. This makes the 3rd generation of kpop even more precious due to how open idols were with who they were friends with.

Just to make this clear tho, no one in BTS has confirmed or explicitly admitted they have a crush on anyone in O.M.G (or MKB for that matter) they have only mentioned how "so and so" is really cool or subtle compliments like "blah blah is actually really pretty" but I will admit Taehyung mouth is almost as big as mine when it comes to who he likes lmao and sometimes he makes it a little obvious with the "subtle hints" he gives☠️☠️

001 :: Fun facts about O.M.G and MKB!

OMG and MKB are practically the same. One of the only things that differentiate them from each other is the way OMG and MKB was introduced to the KPOP industry.

O.M.G started off as an independent kpop group made by 6 girls for fun but then ended up being adopted by JYP in 2015 because of how much they had blown up in Korea and JYP saw a lot of potential in O.M.G, but even before then, they were widely known and loved amongst Koreans and most of the Western world. It started off as an animated girl group, all music, choreography, aesthetics, designs and art were made by me lol but the girls were basically of me and my 5 friends. They would debut the same year JYP adopted them and it would be in 2016 when O.M.G was officially recognised and accepted as a kpop group.

O.M.G would also be labelled as the experimental group because O.M.G wasn't made to be serious but for fun and because of how successful every era of O.M.G is. I mean literally not a single genre they have done has flopped they are just that good.

Now MKB is literally the same as them. 6 girls who body every and all Genres and concepts and aesthetics like it's nothing. Icons. But MKB wasn't a pre-existing group. JYP had put these 6 girls together and allowed them Creative freedom. This was an experiment made by him that would only come around ONCE and ONE TIME ONLY. He wanted to see what 6 girls could random make together and see if they would be a hit (he wanted to copy BTS lmao) thus why MKB is labelled as the female BTS because of how similar their aura and character was. No one can explain it but everyone gets it.

Both O.M.G and MKB's fanbases are called "Charmings," and their fans independently refer to the members as "Darlings"

How did the fanbases of O.M.G AND MKB even come to be? Literally 70% of Charmings are originally ARMYs. Because of this I frequently refer to my fanbase as CHARMYs

O.M.G and MKB when they aren't abbreviated? O.M.G stands for Oh My Gosh and MKB stands for MaKe-Believe.

002 :: Small appearances in other idols mvs and helping produce music

Randomly popping up as a background character in a kpop group's mv who I am close to isn't rare. Sometimes it's not very obvious, sometimes I am literally hiding in plain sight. I tend to try not to do it too much tho. I can't be THAT ACCESSIBLE..

I already make all of my music from scratch. So I thought it would be pretty cool if I git nosy and helped TWICE or ITZY with ad-libs and instrumentals. No this isn't an excuse to hangout with them more why tf would you accuse me of that.

[jess-the-vampire]

For any of your ocs, we're there any What Could Have Beens? Like some stuff that changed over time or an idea you had for them but you changed it because you didn't like it or something?

Sorry, I just like going Behind the Scenes with some things!

Oh there's a lot of that! When you have as many characters as I do and have worked on them for many years, there's bound to be changes and evolutions as you continue to develop them and work on your creation skills.

I guess a good starting point is romantic relationships? Sometimes when I make characters I do design them with the mindset that certain characters will get together with a planned romance arc, and other times I don't plan for it at all and two characters of mine just have such fun chemistry they just kinda....become love interests now??!!

There's a few examples of that, though a notable one is Ashton and Luna, who are kinda beloved by people who enjoy my sky au. When I made Ashton and Cole I didn't even know where to put them (They weren't made with a au in mind, they were put into this au), much less make them into love interests, but everyone loved their chemistry with luna (especially ash) so they have fanart???!! People love them??!!!

I also equally have examples of planned romances that I end up ditching entirely for something else, like another better couple or plotlines outside of romance. A good recent example is currently Dusk has evolved into a bit of a love interest for Archie, giving them a friends to lovers kinda vibe.

But during the process of figuring out these new characters, I first had considered Dusk and Grady to be romantic interests actually. This changed because boy did it not take long before people became endeared with dusk and archie's relationship. (Although really you could still ship them anyway)

Now I also have design evolutions, where I'm not satisfied with a design and they get a nearly complete makeover (edith, melaine) or i add new details to their design over time (once tom was revealed to have a tail in star vs, a lot of his fan kids got them added/ angel was originally created without the spider legs, they were added later)

Though story stuff happens too, like chloe (main character of my original project), was originally a character i made for my video game class in college, and in that game she fought these little slime creatures I called ghouls.

This has.....very little relevance to her story in the project and while I had it in there originally I've basically ditched it because it conflicts with new info I added later. I did kinda evolve it into her fighting escaping creatures on earth before she is returned to the underground tho.

There's also like, stefan, whose plot lines around finding out he's a prince and going to his kingdom to reclaim his crown after his mom kept him traveling with her his entire life and never telling him about his dad. Like he's supposed to just show up and suddenly take a bunch of responsibilities he's not prepared for because he only reclaimed the crown to live a more lavished life. With the royal family having no idea he existed.

And that's all interesting in itself, but I had the concept of him coming home to find out his dad had ANOTHER kid, and stefan showing up means he basically took her place as next in line.

Obviously I've never made any art of this concept, so yeah.

There's a lot of others I could get into but let's get into archie, because his story was ENTIRELY redone rather then partially like those examples.

So all my earlier archie art and content was VERY different and anyone who was there knows it. Originally, hunter created him due to some unfortunate still lingering attachment to belos, seeing archie as a way to almost "give him a second chance at life" kinda way. Hunter was also a single dad still pining over willow, and had a very different job.

However, this is mostly because this early stuff was made during s2, so you kinda had no timeskip ending to build upon.

Archie also wasn't cursed and in fact he had almost an admiration for the golden guards, kinda wanting to be a fighter like them, a symbol of good.

Obviously this is pretty much all gone when I rebooted him after the show ended, archie is now the product of cultists looking to revive belos and was taken in by Hunter, he has both willow and hunter as parents, he's dealing with the effects of his ortets curse, and all stuff relating to hunter's past is...conflicting to say the least.

Though archie is a bit unhealthily obsessed with researching the brothers, obsessed with knowing about them to separate himself. He doesn't want to be compared to belos and yet can't stop looking into them.

There was interesting aspects of his original concept, but i do think this new draft is a lot more interesting for multiple reasons so I'm happy with the change.

So those are just some of the changes and developments of some of my characters! There's certainly more i could discuss but we'd be here awhile, so I hope you enjoyed this insight!

[sympathytea]

[ID in alt] Zam! The Prince in Yellow himself! This is mainly a design I mocked up to make writing him easier on my brain since having a physical image for me to reference and describe is significantly easier on my brain than not having one. Uh reason he doesn't have the trident this fic is (so far) taking place inbetween ep 4 and 5 rather than like. post finale ok? ok. more fun stuff under the cut (maskless included, along with other details on the fic that i'm writing!!!)

[ID in alt] Kept seeing everyone draw him half blind? Love that for him. I'm assuming that's a reference to his LifeSteal designs either way i think the concept is sick and wanted to work with a character that has that detail worked into the fic as something they need to work with/around since this is a combat heavy series which I'd imagine wouldn't be easy to do with one eye, but not impossible. girlboss is gonna have it rough in the fic though tried to make the scar more obviously trident-shaped? since that's where I'd imagine he'd get it assuming he was sent to the sword civilization against his will? rather than to actually retrieve the eternal sword on his own accord like Tabi was. idk hopefully s2 don't fuck me up some expression testing + additional notes on behavior

(excuse him he's been shaved for this, also IDs in alt) disclaimer uh. very minimal research was done for his behaviors. i'm not a medical professional but i did find a giant thread full of folks who had half-blindness who did mention the head tilt thing as a thing that they did, facial paralysis is from the injury assuming the trident went deep enough to do nerve damage thus the whole 'one side moves other side doesn't' my apolocheese for inaccuracy I'm sure that the tilt thing and the facial paralysis thing are probably a bit too extreme to some folks but due to my artstyle being very exaggerated, this too had to be exaggerated for it to be something noticeable, otherwise its completely hidden despite me being mostly focused towards expressions i have made a decision that might seem jarring to some to..limit the faces of characters in my fic. mainly because all of them are hiding or masking something underneath, it just suits them well to have this be a trait that everyone in pvp civilization shares in various ways Characters like Evbo, Julie, Tabi and Parrot are more obvious masking via emotional repression rather than a physical mask that they wear Wemmbu, Ferre, The Guard Friend and Zam mask due to wearing some form of face covering but once that face covering comes off then they start to be a bit more honest, not having anywhere to hide MinuteTech masks via..other means. More on him specifically later when i get around to designing him. he's fascinating is all im gonna say There are of course other characters in this fic, Marty and Ellie are two iron-sword level specific OCs I made for the sole purpose of being evil, and they are shockingly the only two people in the fic that are full on honest with themselves and others. They have their shit figured out (so I wont feel bad killing them off hehe) PVP Language guy and the similar Wooden Plank guy are the two non-main characters turned major characters that due to their species, literally don't have a face nor a proper voice for others to understand what they are thinking, but if you give them a way to talk, then they will! This project be warned: gonna take a long time. I'm notoriously slow at pumping good quality stuff out. I'm working on like 4? other character refs at the time of writing this and I am nowhere near finished with any of them. Dear god.

Thats all for now, though. Until I post again!

[rmwb-fanfics]

How to remake Harry Potter:

(A step by step guide)

We’ve already had one god-awful adaptation that way too many people think is good. This is our one chance to have the book characters represented correctly, along with the plot they support.

I’ve put YEARS of thought into this. I’ve written scripts for episodes of a hypothetical tv show. I’ve drawn concept art. I’ve done shit. So I figured I’d share my thoughts.

1. Stick to the books*.

Stick to the books has a massive asterisk next to it because I mean the plot and characters. Some stuff (as you’ll see later) should be changed.

Nothing in this show should feel out of character. Harry should be closer with Ron than he is to Hermione. Snape should be a real d*ckhead. Hermione should be judgmental of those who don’t think like her, etc etc. The way these characters navigate their relationships is why the fandom is still relevant. It’s why canon-compliant fic is popular in the first place. We like their dynamics. SHOW THEM APPROPRIATELY.

Plot is a sticky thing because I’d say there’s wiggle room, but not too much. Certain characters have to die. Certain events must happen. You cant change that stuff.

2. Use the Medium.

You’re using film as a format to tell your story. Ideally you’d us animation, but I know Warner Bros has less creativity than Disney’s remake department, so I won’t even try and pitch that.

Use colour and saturation. It can help contextualize emotion. It can make us subconsciously recognize things. For instance, the scene growing more saturated when Ron walks into the room when Hermione is wearing the horcrux, or any multitude of other uses this could bring.

Bring in costume design that (actually fits the world) but also helps show how that character is feeling. What they’re thinking, their personality, their future, etc.

Make magic fun™️. The books sort of sidelined magic in 5-7. Don’t do that. Divert from the books. Magic should feel alive. Colour-code them so we as an audience can recognize spells and what they might do before we see it. Implement sound design to make each spell unique and vibrant. Make this world subtly bursting with magic like it was in the first few books. Have it weave around characters, wrap them up. Be creative with action scenes. Force transfiguration into battle scenes. Choreograph your duels. Show don’t tell us that a wizard/witch is powerful. Turn people into portraits. Lock them up as mice. USE MAGIC.

Your set design should reflect this. Everything should be bursting with personality. Don’t just use the shitty movie sets. Inject some colour, have the surroundings aid you in telling the story. Get weird with the camera. Use these tools to their fullest potential.

Actually fucking try.

3. Utilize Music.

Music is just… such a massive part of film. It’s frustrating how often even the best filmmakers overlook its use. Characters should have themes that mature and develop as the series goes on. Have action arrangements of the themes to play with heroic moments. As the series progresses, we grow attached to these themes. When they appear, the audience FEELS something. Don’t reuse great pieces to force emotion. (Dumbledore’s Farewell in The Prince’s Tale. Are you fucking kidding me?)

For example: Have a theme for Neville that starts out timid and uses very shy instrumentals, but we first hear a change when he stands up to the trio at the end of PS. Then it gains more instruments until OotP, when it grows again. Once we get to DH, it can be used in this heroic swell as he chops the head off the snake in front of Voldemort and everyone watching. The audience, consciously or not, will feel that moment even more.

Have a theme for Ron and Hermione that might not even be romantic until HBP when it gains that element. PLAY WITH MUSIC.

Themes for mystery, adventure, loss, love, friendship, LOCATION. Let them come back throughout the series to highlight various moments. See Lord of the Rings and The Hunger Games, as well as (surprisingly) the Fantastic Beasts films.

Let music affect the visuals. Magic can bend and swivel with the music. Use it to tell the story. Use it to show emotion. Use it to progress a character’s arc. USE CONSISTENT MUSIC.

4 . Be Bold.

This is the big one and it may seem like I’m contradicting myself but I’m not. Rowling’s work hasn’t aged crazily well to modern fiction standards. This is your chance to rectify that. Fill plot holes, actually think through the politics. Introduce world-building elements that enhance the story/characters. (The house system, and how Slytherin fits in. The logic behind avada kedavra???) Get creative with solutions. Contradict the original work when it comes to description of location. If it doesn’t work for the film format, don’t force it to work here.

Spend more time with characters we know are relevant, but maybe not to the plot. These are your Ginny Weasleys, your Seamus and Deans, Nevilles, etc. Really fill them in. Give them more scenes. Ginny has two phenomenal arcs that play completely off-screen, explore them. Show us her friendship with Hermione. Show us her insecurities and her faults. Give us more of her and Harry’s friendship. We know they get married, so maybe fix the whole “Rowling wrote the epilogue first, but didn’t realize she was waiting too long to introduce these characters until HBP”.

Add scenes. Add jokes. Add smiles and covert looks. You have more time, which means you have a chance to focus on friendships, and romance, and world building.

Tell multiple storylines. Give Remus and Tonks a cool spy/thriller subplot interjected with the main story in OotP. Show us more of Fleur staying in England. Give us more of Harry and Sirius bonding. All of this stuff can fit loosely into canon, and be welcome creative additions.

BE BOLD.

And finally,

5. This is your chance to not only retell the story, but to do it better.

RECOGNIZE THIS. Take advantage of this opportunity and enhance canon, don’t fight it.

Don’t add Hermione and Harry dancing because *YOU* don’t like where the romantic pairings went. Don’t add Draco sympathy because you want him to have a redemption arc. Don’t dumb Ron down because you don’t like the fact that he’s just like the teenage boys you dated in High School, and he was a bit immature.

Make changes, be bold, use music, stick to the books*, use the medium, but take this as the opportunity that it is to enhance what came before.

Thank you.

[kindred-spirit-93]

jazzy!! & apollo

hello yall im back on my bs (biscuit soliloquy) with my wonderful oc jazzy and a modern au i came up with when i opened my eyes this morning lol. u can find a little lore on ma blog under the #jazzy tag :3

--

aight so for context a few months ago while deep in the trenches of my greek mythology obsession i made a minor underworld diety oc who goes by kore or jazzy. shes my favourite muffin and i love her.

and after reading one too many apollo fics here lmao i really wanted to explore his domains (which i find endlessly fascinating bc its all my favourite things in one: medicine art literature) and learn more about him as a god via a character study of sorts.

(ive yet to write anything for them lol but when i do it will be great :P)

--

anyway back to the story they are teachers!! bc im currently rethinking my life choices and having fun imagining what my life could have been like things went differently (11/10 recommend. great for the blorbos). babys first midlife crisis at the ripe old age of 21 lol

so without any further ado, them <3

HHHHHHHHHHHHHH MY BABIES

*slaps hands* aight so context and premise:

cant be bothered to come up with alternative names and clever refernces for everyone so theyre keeping their greek names lol.

not everyone in the pantheon will make an appearance, this aint keeping up with the olympians (until it is)

the setting is vaguely british lol bc its where i grew up and am more familiar with the system and the norms. ish

they teach both primary and secondary school students (this afaik doesnt exist in the uk but it does here so yeah. will elaborate later)

greek mythology adjacent at best i regrettably know very little of the mythos and my one and only reference is theoi. i will do better i promise. as soon as i graduate

in the mean time pls feel free to tell me all about ur fave myths and works and recommend stuff :D!!

--

art stuff, character design, notes

apollo has heterochromia :3 dunno if u can see it but his eyes are olive green (right) and a teal (left). representing the suns reach over land and sea. ALSO FRECKLES >:D

my girl jazzy has the most boring brown eyes ever. no pools of honey or flecks of gold. just good ol dirt brown. *foreshadowing*

short curly hair somewhere between brown and black for her, and floofy kraft singles waves for him XD

jazzy is a knitwear gremlin (like urs truly lol), 24/7 turtlenecks cardigans jumpers scarfs all of it. her hands (and extremeties) are always cold bc bad circulation and probably dehydration. shush

palettes are warm and earthy for jazzy (wow im so subtle) and cool celestial for apollo (and artemis hehe)

so thats mostly greens esp olive, brown and beige and a healthy sprinkle of rose. le aesthetic is forest/ gremlincore for my girl

and lots of blues esp navy and shiny silver and gold for chaotic academia sunshine boi (TIL astroacademia is a thing and like wow)

arts and moodboards and quotes in this century trust

jazzy is of average height (which to me is 160cm hhhhh and apollo is taller at 180cm. do ur own math we use metric in this household)

--

finally concept idea, plot if u will, notes and backgorund info too:

the first thing i thought of when i opened my eyes was literally apollo and his nine daughters the muses. let me finish

i wish i was joking lol it instantly gripped me but alas i had to go to uni and so it stayed on hold and i havent studied more that 3 pages bc im thinking about them

and by thinking i mean going over the same scene in my head and not doing somethinguseful like say expanding lore. as one does.

anyway yes we have apollo the girl dad of all time who has 9 wondeful daughters of varying ages from fist year of uni to toddler

still mapping out details like if from same mother or several relationships. idk what im doing pls respect my privacy at this time

apollo has 2 degrees bc its cool af to me (my dad has two masters and its been on my bucket list since. i dont know why i am the way that i am either) one in nursing and another in english literature (and a masters in translation bc i can)

he teaches english and history tho and the art afterschool clubs. yes clubs plural. i am insane and so is he.

jazzy is a biomed graduate and is currently pursuing a masters in forensic toxicology (sucks that i hade organic chem this would be fun to write) so she teaches bio. probably part time idk.

i will get to the details of lore and what theyre like and their work ethics etc but i is tired and id really like to finish some work before bed lol so goodnight for now and enjoy and feel free to ask stuff ig :3

[artist-heart83]

What a crazy year, I’m a right?

Unlike the previous year, when I didn't feel I did that much, this year was a lot different than I expected.

So let's do a little recap about this year, shall we?

My main purpose for this year was making oc's content! Focusing on doing some new designs and giving a fresh look to some of them, buuuut... I have this Minecraft project that I was waiting to do too, then trying to bring my Mario fankids, etc, etc.

Internally, it was a fight between all my creations, and someone needed to win, unfortunately... it wasn't either of them, but an unexpected challenger appeared in the "ring", and ended up winning without fighting lmaoo.

Little comic to visualize the events:

Like I said, this was meant to be temporary, I didn't have plans to do so much stuff for the fandom... right?

I wanna say, in terms of art, this year was very productive! Experiment with concepts and designs for characters, being in the smg4 fandom really pushed me out of my comfort zone, I had fun drawing some characters, they're so fun to draw <3

Also, important mention that currently nobody of you guys knows, I was in charge of designing a silly guide for my university, such pain, but I ended up loving how it looked. Vouch to my teacher to let me do that work.

Also, an important highlight about the experience of a digital artist (me) suffering from power outages since FUCKING SEPTEMBER, which decide to join an October challenge :D

Another good thing, apart from getting back to drawing, was getting back to writing fan fiction!

Been 2 sweet years of writer's block and I got the motivation to write about gay people, still a bit ashamed it was smut, but take it or leave it.

I have more fics that I can't wait to show! Not only about New Gen, but a bit of some rarepairs that I love deeply, and Marware of course.

Entering a completely new fandom, after so many years of not doing that... was strange. But you know what? I never felt so welcome in a fandom before.

A lot of the people here have a big place in my heart for being so nice to me and loving my artwork and my fanfics. Also, I started interacting a bit more, not only here but on Discord too! Which have been fun, I have met so many people and the nicest (shout out to @briandraws for that)

But one thing for sure I wasn't expecting, was people loving my fankids.

Listen, my main thing in fandoms is doing fankids, and after seeing that it was allowed, and I wouldn't be attacked for that, I ended up doing it.

18 FANKIDS AND I REALLY HOPE IT ENDED THERE.

Also, shout out to @blu193 for being the number 1 fan of them, have to open a special folder for fanart because she did a few of some of them which I really appreciate

This year, really surprised me, in all the ways possible. Like, if you tell me at the beginning of the year, that I would fixate on SMG4 when I decided to focus on oc’s, I would laugh.

And if you tell me: “You finally find a fandom place where you feel welcomed and loved”, I wouldn’t believe you either.

And I still can't believe it, I didn’t expect to feel so comfortable, find new friends, and be able to do tons of fanarts and fics.

I'm already nervous for tagging two people, so unfortunately no tag list, but... huge thanks to everyone in the smg34 and smg4 grounds servers, and a lot of my moots from here, you made this year amazing to me <3

Happy New Year everyone!

[sillydummydum]

*DROPS S/I ON THE GROUND*

*RUNS AWAY IN SHAME*

S/I Yap time!!

OK SO-- I made this little S/I art yesterday and felt like sharing!! My Persona 5 S/I is basically-- well, me (bubbly and annoying) and nothing else lolol I literally insert myself in the universe with some plot changes and it's fun!! She likes space and music! Cuz i do too! :D She's also an indie musical artist but it's like more of a hobbie than anything! (Even if it does helps with money and all! she also does haves some good amount of followers on the niche! But nothing big out of the indie bubble) She wants to work as a songwriter for a famous singer one day!

Her background is nothing crazy but I made some silly changes, like aging up my irl brother (he's currently a lil baby and I made him a lil kid :3) and making me live with my grandma! (fucking love my grandma kisses grandma!!) Also some dramatic aah stuff like dead mom and no dad for me (the basics) 😭😭 My S/I has a strong special interest in space!!! Which is something I'm getting really into lately! So I made mommy an astronomer! She was like best friends with Wakaba (scientific nerds lol) and Sojiro so S/I was very close to Futaba since childhood for that reason!

She is a phantom thieve (shockerz) and uhm I wanted to use my personal experience as a bullied child growing up (mostly because of ableism) and turn that into motivation to make justice, since no one did that for me before!! (Grr goddamn adults!) And finding my own group of weird little people made me much more open and generally happy in real life! So that's what I'm doing on this universe as well! ^^

Yes she entered in kamoshida's case cuz I wanna imagine myself in every little story event.

Yes I study at Shujin.

Yes I am basic. /j

Even tho when it's for self shipping purposes I usually make my stuff in the 3rd semester because... life is beautiful and husby has no filter so it's funnier ✨️ AND YES I AM HELPING THE ROYAL TRIO WITH MARUKI FUCK IT NOW WE ARE FOUR!! (Depression afterwards :<)

Her Persona is called Selene! Based off the greek goddess of the moon!! She has nuclear/almighty based skills simply because it's chaotic and looks cool!! FUCKING MEGIDOLAON ON THEM!!! POOOWWW BOOM KABOOM!! 💥👊ALSO FUN FACT SHE'S VERY CHAOTIC!! (just like me fr maybe because it is me duh) often being too dramatic, explosive and loud!!! totally ruining stealth when it comes to infiltrating palaces, which usually makes some funny aah scenes because she was dumb-- maybe she's not a good phantom thief...

maybe.

Talking about metaverse stuff! Her clothes are based off Magicians! Because of her lil show off nature, making everything a explosive dramatic spectacle! And uhm magicians are cool!! -v-"

This concept was made with the help of my bestie! Helping me take a more Kaito kid/Tuxedo Mask inspired design, which i really like allot! big thanks to him!! <3

Relationship dynamics:

On this section I wanted to give a small little insights on her relationships with most characters! Since I felt like it would be fun to do so! :3

☆~☆~☆

Akira Kurusu/Ren Amamiya

- Her relationship with Akira is pretty much like a siblings relationship, Luna looks up to him allot and is the "I wanna be like you when I grow up" type lol even if they are the same age. He is her inspiration to get better, so she will get at his level one day! He also makes extra suggary cappuccino to her when she goes to Leblanc 🤝 ☕️

Ryuji Sakamoto

- Her relationship with him is pretty much the chaotic duo type, shes always giving him death stares when he starts to talk about girls or some dumb Ryuji shit like that 😭 Her and Morgana are constantly slandering him for the funzys, but Ryuji also likes to pick up on her so they're eternally on a war-- and in general they are two loud dumbasses who share the same braincells and have little silly banters 🤲 also HC that Luna helps him dye his hair 🫡

Ann Takamaki

- Her relationship with Ann is the girly besties type, constantly going out shopping, Ann usually helps her to buy her clothes since Luna definitely can't pick her clothes on her own without it looking weird 😭 they also go out allot to eat! Try the newest deserts all around Tokyo! Those two would probably kill for a chocolate cake. And they are getting progressively more poor because of that... She likes to paint Ann's nails and style her hair for fun! because she personally thinks Ann looks like a pretty porcelain doll!

Yusuke Kitagawa

- Her relationship with Yusuke is another of pure admiration!! Yusuke admire Luna for her artistic side on the music and Luna's eyes sparkle at every little sketch he does, I like to think that Luna (just like me) is an artist for fun who really has allot of trouble with drawing certain things that aren't fanart lol, and they go out on little panting sessions togheter. Like I dunno go to Inokashira Park to draw the scenario and his comes out like the next monalisa and hers is like... Blue and Green all mixed up togheter. And she probably got her clothes dirty in the process. He does encourages her to continue tho! And gives her tips that she usually doesn't get-- so uhm sensei Yusuke Ig?

Makoto Nijima

- Her relationship with Makoto is... *sighs* very sibling-like too. Luna isn't the best at school, and always cry for help when it's exams week 💔 Makoto usually scolds her for being too careless at everything, school, metaverse, crossing the road-- but only because she really cares about her. Luna is like the little sister she needs to lookout for so she doesn't get herself killed by accident. Oh fun fact but Luna is also very afraid of Sae (just like me im afraid of pretty woman) so yeah she freezes when she steps in the room 😭

Futaba Sakura

- Oh boooyyy Futaba time!! My relationship with Futaba is so silly and fun and I wanna yap about it!! Ok third person mode on--

So, since they were basically raised togheter, they are pretty close to one another, and have gathered the same types of interests through the years. Since I have the Autistic Futaba HC, I like to imagine that they get each other more than anything, engaging in parallel play most of the time when she was a shut-in. And I like to imagine that Luna was pretty much the only person she talked to at first after her Palace. Also HC that they play Pokemon United togheter. Cuz I said so. They exchange allot of gifts related to their special interests too! Ugh I have so many HC's for us but basically we are best friends forever two little chaotic autistic sillys but i help Futaba with her social anxiety! yipeee :3

Haru Okumura

- Her relationship with Haru is the tea time besties, they talk all day over a good cup of tea and Haru frequently gives her tips of how not make her plants die (very important, I never can make them live...) which is a hobby Luna really is trying to... make possible... (plz don't die this time) and generally her time yapping with Haru is a very comforting one, usually when shes feeling dramatic she goes and hugs Haru and makes her little drama, and Haru is usually the only one who's like "Oh dear :(" and stands her when she's being extra or cheers her up when shes actually sad too! 😭 shes such a sweetheart! <3 don't be mean with Mona and Luna! Haru is gonna politely ask you to stop. (Looking at you ryuji)

Morgana

- Her relationship with our favorite not cat! He's... Morgana. We know him. But Luna can be considered pretty much his #1 fan???? She thinks he's HELLA COOL like the best phantom thieve ever!! (I love morgana!!!) She really respects him and Morgana is really grateful to have someone that looks up to him (Luna looks up to lots of people! ><") Luna also likes to pat him. Allot. (IM A CAT PERSON OK) which well he doesn't mind but still he's not a kitty that you can just pat like that!!! (He's purring)

Sumire Yoshizawa

- Her relationship with Sumire is... damn, Luna is LOUD. And well we know that Sumi isn't exactly as extroverted as she makes herself seem when she takes on the Kasumi role. So uhm let's say Luna is overwhelming-- very overwhelming! 😭 She's always jumpy and bubbly and is constantly trying to cheer Sumire up, turning into some type of cheerleader for her when she starts to self-depreciate in any way, being overly affectionate and in general being extra EXTRA around her since she gets very worried about Sumire's mental health-- So yeah, Luna is basically constantly cheering her on and admiring her for being able to make things she can't (Even if Sumire doesn't think they're that great :< )... ooh we have another extreme admiration case here!!! Maybe the person she admires the most! Hell yeah! Give my girly some love!~ My bestie <3

Haha that's the end nothing more to see here... hah... haha.... bye...

Ok...

*sighs*

Goro Akechi

- That's probably the most important relationship of all-- why did I put him in last? I'm embarrassed. Uh... shy? 😭 gonna be more personal about this one uhm-- well

That's my boyfriend over there, I hate him I don't really enjoy his company and I hope he gets therapy. /hj

No, really tho, our relationship is... I can't even describe it, but our dynamic is DEFINITELY the "aww they do care about each other" type-- I constantly enjoy to annoy the hell out of him, just because it's funny?? I'm the devil from the bible. Er... so... the thing is, Akechi constantly get dismissed through story for obvious reasons, he's openly agaisn't the Phantom Thieves and later they do have much MUCH more motives to not fuck with him-- but Luna? DAMN. That girl is I N V E S T E D In being friends with him. Specially on the start, his sob stories actually made her pity him and get all "aw he's miserable... 🥺" lol so she constantly insisted on being his friend, even tho he was internally screaming and trying to push her away, she was CONVICTED. SHES A FRIENDSHIP MACHINE BABY. YOU CAN'T ESCAPE HER!!

So with that forced proximity, they eventually started getting closer, and it was something very... slow? Definitely. Luna never cared about hiding herself no matter how weird people seemed to find her, maybe he would admire that... envy that? Who knows.

Suddenly he started to enjoy her company. Even if she was... oh well a little dumb, yeah, he definitely thinks she is-- He never had people who were close to him, and definitely didn't had someone THAT determined to bother him 24/7. Maaaybe he could call her something close to a friend... right? (Yes they were she stated that every 3 seconds and Luna rules 🫡) And that was before he "entered" to the Phantom Thieves, and when he did? Damn she was kinda happy! Don't talk about the blackmail part showing off to him and telling him all the cool things she could do as she ""teached"" him about the metaverse (lol like this bitch needed to) and they got even closer!! Damn! Let's go play darts togheter and silly around! Yay! :D

I also like to HC that he would eventually let some good amount of things about his real self slip, and Luna would be like totally clueless and okay about it, when most people would think it was weird or out of character. Maybe that's why he got so weirdly comfortable around her? She didn't gave a fuck-- and oh well he wasn't THAT detective princefied around her by that time. Yeah she's probably the closest he got to it... (sweeps Akira under the rug)

And uh... let's skip allot of things so I won't yap about the whole Akechi arc here. Maybe another day.

But Luna was utterly miserable after everything (yall know what), she wasn't angry... just... shocked. Maybe a bit quieter? Less energetic? She was since the revelation, but it was worse now... and the penny dropped at the worst time-- And uh yeah sad above everything I think that's pretty much expected when you lose someone you really like. Despite everything, he was a friend... someone she cared about... maybe more than she should...

Wait.

Cared about, huh? OH FUCK SHE WAS IN LOVE WITH HIM!!! (Shockerz) GASP WOW WOAH! *VINE BOOM* Who would've guessed. So uhm yeah that sucks, now it's too late...

A little more timeskip--

Oh well damn hi Goro!! What the fuck??? :D

That's where most of the romantic relationship aspects take part, damn he was there now???? It was literally her chance!! To what? Nothing really-- just spend more time to him and get more clingy (like she wasn't enough before) and even MORE bubbly than before!! She was genuinely happy! And now with the useless knowledge that she was utterly and absolutely in love with him. Oh well. And... damn she fell even more for him now! LIKE 20× MORE!! STOP HER PLEASE!!

And uh well she's not very good at hiding it so yeah her secret didn't last long, maybe i'll write how the confession went someday! :)

So basically... at first he was like "What the fuck?? Why????" But uhm maybe er... maybe he uhm... you know-- maaaybeeeee--- okay im flustered BUT MAYBE he would realize in the moment that he was in... love too? Uhm... get a little... yk... awkward there... ,÷*×&×(× er-- I don't know!! I MEAN FUCK OF COURSE HE DID I LITERALLY SELF SHIPP WITH HIM UGH IM DUMB--

OKAY WE ARE DATING NOW. That's the point. 😭😭

It's awkward, not ideal for what people expect of a couple, we definitely still have our little silly banters, he does want to kill me! and i do like to annoy him!! BUT I LIKE IT THAT WAY!! We aren't a veeeery affectionate openly lovey dovey couple but we are deeply in love! And when we do have our little lovey dovey moments it's just us being two dumb messes who don't know a thing about what we are doing! Hand holding? Just the little fingers! Kisses? Barely cheek ones! (On my part obviously im kissing the hell outta his cheeks mwah mwah mwah) I mean, we are trying! I love him and he loves me!! Allot!!! Even if we get a little weird and flustered about it!

>//<

I like awkward dating. It's fun. I love my boyfriend. :>

Oh damn I realized I yapped allot, more than I should-- I was about to write my relationship with other minor characters in the game but uhm that's too much already! Sorry for making you read that much! ^^"

But thank you for reading anyways!! I really appreciate it <3 for reading to my ULTIMATE s/I yapping!! Or... well, a yapping about me! I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to ask questions about my s/i or my self ship if you have any! Oh damn even yap back at me about your S/I's! F/O's? I would love to hear it! ^^

Bye everyone!!!~ ☆

[friendship-test]

The making of Friendship Test:

I have always wanted to make a RPG Maker game. Throughout the years I have played several games with small pixel sprites as characters, as worlds, and I have always been fascinated that you can create a beautiful, funny and interesting story through them. I can not code and I do not have any 3d art skills, the chances of me ever making a videogame were very limited, but I have always wanted to make one. RPG Maker always seemed like the most available objective I could achieve, but I was never motivated enough to try anything cause I never had any good concept in mind for a videogame.

The year of 2024 started with a big robot obsession for me. Robot Dreams had recently came out and I did not stop thinking about it ever since, and soon after I started playing Toontown Corporate Clash, needless to say I adored those corporative robots too. I have always loved robot characters and thought it would be fun to create a story with them, I had several OC projects in mind but none of them included robot characters, so I thought I should change that.

I daydreamed about the concept of a story with robots, suddenly came with an idea: “what if an army of robots turned ‘good’ and only one of them was still ‘bad’?”

A very simple concept, one that would change and develop a lot, but an idea that I really liked. Of course, I like writing character dynamics, so it could not be a solo story, I gave the corrupted robot a companion in their journey. It was the story of a robot that was built to be kind turning ‘mean’ and a robot that was built to be a weapon turning ‘good’, traveling through a laboratory of abandoned robots that had all turned ‘good’, but how maybe that’s not as nice as it sounds.

I had that idea in mind, but I wasn’t planning on doing much with it. Perhaps a quick drawing, post it on tumblr and move on to other projects for now. But an image showed up in my brain that I could not shake off: I imagined this game as a rpg maker game. I imagined the sprite of the protagonist walking around this abandoned lab. And the strangest thing? It looked good. It looked promising. At least, it did in my brain.

The story was nothing but a mere simple concept, but it was good enough to give me enough motivation to look up tutorials on how to use GameMaker. Yeah, you read that right, GameMaker, not RPG Maker. I wanted to try out a more complicated engine, spent three days learning how to build one single room. I followed the steps, but somehow, I ran into a bunch of issues and it was not working properly. It did not feel great to waste three days for nothing, I was ready to give up and just go back to drawing simple drawings, go back to something I already knew how to do just fine.

But the image of the little robot still roamed around in my brain. So I decided to look up tutorials for RPG Maker.

Needless to say, I should have done that from the beginning.

I didn’t become an expert immediately, I still am not an expert whatsoever, but even if it took time and effort, RPG Maker was easy to use. No wonder so many use it to make videogames.

Again, the concept of this game was still very limited, I had a lot of ideas in my mind on how the story could go, drew a lot of concept art, wrote a few lines of dialogues, but nothing was set and stone yet. I decided to make one short area at the very least, and while I was creating it, I could think on the story some more.

I did just that, the first area is basically exactly what I had in mind since the beginning: a dark, empty abandoned lab. FriendProgram’s character design was very stuck on my brain too, they did not require a lot of concept art, their final design was very clear to me.

I made a couple of rooms, learned the basics on how to move from one room to another, how to change the character’s speed, how to make them interact with things, how sprites worked, all that stuff. But I needed to make FriendProgram interact with SOMEONE at some point. I needed a couple of funny NPCs for them to interact with. That’s how I came up with FUN and GAMES.

Now, I already had a few ideas for characters we would meet later on the story, but these two were not planned ahead, I just needed a funny duo to introduce us to the test ‘battle’ mechanic and to showcase the overall humor and dialogue style this game has.

However, I ended up liking them so much that they became part of the main cast of characters, even if their role is smaller than others.

When it comes to the tests, I was a bit concerned with that aspect. I knew that was the main gameplay of this game, the friendship tests you are put through, but I was not certain how I was going to pull that off. Would it be boring? Would it be repetitive? Would I not be able to program it? As flawed as they are, I am pretty satisfied with the results.

You have only seen a pretty simple friendship test, they get a bit more creative later on.

When it comes to the ‘battles’, I wanted them to be short and simple, nothing that takes too much time and nothing too complicated either. It’s the reason why there are so many, cause they are all meant to be pretty short, and the game allows you to save whenever you want. I hoped that getting a game over would not be too punishing to the player, since I’m aware some battles can be a little difficult to figure out what you are exactly supposed to say. Game overs are a bit essential to the point the game is trying to make.

Still, I am aware the battles can hurt the pacing a little in the first act, which is why they are better distributed in later acts, instead of getting 5 consecutive battles at once.

The mechanics of the battles change a little in each act, with act 2’s probably being the most complicated. But battles are not the main point of the game, which is why you might see less of them as the story progresses. Still, I’m okay to have a flawed ‘battle’ system, at least I have one at all, which I was worried I might not have been able to have.

The other gameplay ‘mechanic’ are of course, the friend_test_mode. They are however meant to be more story-focused than anything else, the first one is very simple, the other one can be a bit more annoying to get to the correct answers, but both of them do not punish you with game overs and are not meant to be anything too complicated. It’s presentation, part of the story, less a gameplay mechanic.

But enough about gameplay! This is a videogame that is more about characters and stories.

Before arriving to the new location this act takes place in, you find yourself with two experiments and learn all about the battle system. One of the two experiments is Exe, a strange mysterious rabbit. Exe was originally not part of the story, I adore characters like Exe, the funny annoying comedic relief characters, I tend to include them a lot in my stories. But so far, I hadn’t included any characters like that, I thought that maybe they would annoy people and it wasn’t necessary to the story. This changed however, I realized that if I’m making a game that I would like to play myself I had to include a character I would love, even if there were people who wouldn’t like them. So I included Exe, who serves as a tutorial and overall guide to the player. She started out as a small funny character, but as I wrote the story she became so essential that now I can not imagine the game without her. Sometimes the annoying comic relief character can save your story.

But now we arrive to the Reprogram Town! Very early on I knew that the first real area of the game should be a place full of nature, a huge contrast to the rest of the lab. It’s not just the nature, but the people are also very different from what you will see in this lab. The reprograms have sealed themselves away from everyone else, which means they can live in peace, away from the rules of BestFriendProgram, the program in charge of the lab.

The concept I had for this first area was to evoke something familiar: a cute little town with fun and kind NPCs, a bunch of simple quests, a bunch of simple battles and a story that ends with a nice lesson and with the characters being happy and loving each other very much, all thanks to you, the protagonist. I think it’s something we have seen in plenty of games, you play this area and you have an idea on what to expect, it is something pretty simple and easy to swallow. You are a nice protagonist that helps others and becomes friends with everyone, this is a game where you will meet a lot of programs and become friends with all of them and make everything better through kindness! This is what you are meant to believe.

The protagonists of Reprogram Town are Hammer, Keys and Wrench. The story is all about them, you are helping them but you are not part of their story. You are just a kind silent protagonist that doesn’t steal the spotlight from the story we are witnessing.

I knew from the beginning I wanted a simple but emotional conflict between these new characters, something that you could solve in one episode, but still has meaning to it. Just because you are a little deceived into thinking this game is going to be one way and then it turns out to be a little different than expected, doesn’t mean that the emotional conflicts have no meaning. What these three go through is real and they still have a lot to go through, specially Keys, who will get more things to do later on.

Something I really like about Keys is that he is a character that has kind of already went through his big character arc, there isn’t really much you can help him with when he has already grown as a person on his own and with the people he is close with. It doesn’t mean his journey is over, but it makes his interactions a lot of fun.

His asexual side plot is the first aspec-related story we see in the game and it is very essential to the character, at first I mostly implied it but I wanted to make it very obvious, this is not the ‘implied aspec’ game, this is the ‘stated aspec stories’ game after all. Keys is asexual and is a huge part of his story, as we will see later on.

Kindness is a big theme in this game too, and I really like the story of Hammer choosing to be a kind person despite everything. I like Wrench a lot too, even if he doesn’t show up as much I wanted his personality to be so vibrant that you will forget he has very little screentime. I really like when stories focus on siblings so of course I wanted two of the main cast of characters to be siblings and this is the act where they get to shine.

This first act establishes a lot of world-building as well. There is still a lot of things to find out about, but little by little you learn how this world is supposed to work. The mandatory tests, the water damage, the reliance on metal, the unconscious days, the data corruption, the old organisms… So much information in what appears to be a very silly and cute chapter of a bigger story.

Speaking of a bigger story, seems like that’s where FriendProgram and Waterbottle will truly get to shine. Waterbottle shows up very little in this act, and FriendProgram barely acts like a character, but this changes completely after the ending the demo. The rest of the game is very different from these first few hours and it’s all because of this program duo, especially FriendProgram, but it is also not different enough that it’d feel like a completely different game. The demo gives you a very clear idea of how the tone, pacing and dialogue of this game is usually like, even if there will be improvements later on.

Waterbottle is, in my opinion, probably the best character in the game. They are very fun to write and I enjoy every moment they are on screen, I think this character genuinely makes my game way better, which is why the demo is one of the weakest parts of the story, simply because Waterbottle is barely in it. Not for any other reason, it’s just cause Waterbottle doesn’t have enough screentime.

Now when it comes to FriendProgram, I did not want Friendship Test to be a cynical story where I “criticize” games that “force” you to be kind just to get what you want, I thought that would be very dumb and against everything that I am. FT offers a funny scenario of a character that has no other option than to be a really good friend to be able to advance the story, but it doesn’t mean they are not a complex person with no kindness in their heart. It doesn’t mean that helping other programs is meaningless, it doesn’t mean that FriendProgram hates everyone and would kill everyone if they could. There is a lot of layers to this story and this character.

You might be wondering however: ‘Where are the aspec themes? You said this game was about lovelessness!’ To that I say, patience! Don’t worry, the rest of the game does NOT shut up for a second about the main message of the story, but it was very important to establish the world building and characters first before fully focusing in the main themes. Besides that, the demo is also meant to trick you into thinking this is another story about the power of love, there is a reason why it is not really discussed at the beginning. There is more to the story and to FriendProgram than you might think.

I am very proud of my game, despite the flaws, I’m happy that I finally had the motivation to make the rpg maker game I have always wanted to make. Perhaps this game will help me make a better game one day, who knows, for now I am very happy with the result so far.

The first update was more about the making of the demo, but the next ones will all be about previews and presentations for the rest of the game! Next month I will talk about the next area of the game: The Emulation Area!

Thank you for reading and supporting, see you!

-------

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[foreststarflaime]

What do you like about Loki?

Because in my limited perception, his popularity made me go ‘eh’. I was a late Bucky lover lol.

He seems interesting in the actual Norse mythology. But it looks like you like both designs/concepts of him.

Ohhh you’ve opened the floodgates now lol

Bucky is great, love him—totally understand being turned off by popularity, it’s a thing that commonly happens to me as well, and why I never really got into Harry Potter (kinda dodged a bullet there in a way lol).

LOKIII MY BELOVED he is one of those that is actually really good and deserves the popularity imo! But I am Very Biased lmaooo. Yeah I love Loki in pretty much any adaptation of him—comics Loki (well, Ikol technically) is my absolute favorite, though.

Why I like him overall—in any adaptation, he ends up being an outcast, more than a little bit weird, and I do tend to love those characters so. He’s so often misunderstood by the other characters, often because things with good or at least neutral intentions spiral out of control, and I do so love a good tragic character (it is absolutely no surprise that I love Genesis, having loved Loki for so long). You usually get some fun mischief and shenanigans. Weird Gender Things tm. He’s just a silly little guy and I adore him

Myth Loki has some wonderful tragic story stuff—something that doesn’t get emphasized often in adaptations is his relationship with his kids. And Sigyn too—just a lot of his relationships that aren’t with Odin or Thor, really. You can see the good in him, and how he loves and is loved, and yet he gets in so much trouble because of it.

But I won’t go too detailed there bc I wanna get to the love of my life marvel Loki hehehehe I do admit, mcu Loki is not the best representation of marvel Loki (but I still love him). Comics Loki is where it’s at. I will limit myself to mainly aoa Loki because he’s my favorite by far

Ok I lied you get some kid Loki propaganda too. He’s soooo so tragic it kills me. He’s all of Loki’s goodwill, his hope of a new start without being judged as evil—he tries so hard, and does so much good, but in the end he’s trapped and killed by his own destiny. So similarly to Genesis, the tragedy of Loki is that he just wants to be allowed to live as himself so badly that it kinda is what destroys him. (I know I’m referencing a lot of lore you probably don’t know here but hopefully it’s not too confusing) kid Loki was finally getting the chance to live outside of the just-an-irredeemable-villain box that he had been shoved into before he died the first time, but his old self still wanted to live so bad that he killed that chance and created something else (ik ik confusing but hopefully you’re getting the general ideas). Also he has a very good dog look at him

Anyways. That something else was aoa Loki my beloved. He’s not inherently evil or good, he’s just…himself, really. Good intentions, selfish perhaps, but he means well generally even if the universe seems to be against him having a good time. He’s haunted by his mistakes, trying so hard to break out of the cage of the god of lies. He makes a friend! A best friend, even, who sees through his bullshit and loves him for who he is anyways (Verity my beloved)! He’s haunted and he’s made mistakes, but he’s healing. He’s trying. But again, everything goes wrong for Lokis, and what he did to his younger self comes out and he’s hit with the “you’ll always be the god of lies” and everyone turns on him. But instead of crumpling under the hurt and despair, he says fuck it and chooses to be different. Because a lie is a story told, and he chooses to write his own story, and not be defined by what others would make of him.

And thus he becomes the god of stories! And I do so love my meta storytelling like that. Agent of Asgard does such a good job with that, it will always be my favorite comic. Actually life-changing to younger Star

I will stop there because if you let me go on about post-aoa god of stories Loki we will be here for actual hours. It’s the same stuff continued, more or less—aoa is a very good representation of his character, and I highly recommend, even to complete beginners—it was the first of his comics I ever read, and I went back to Journey Into Mystery from there. I will also not talk about pre-Siege Loki because I’ve yapped enough and I also know he’s @izunias-meme-hole ‘s favorite version of Loki, so if he wants to chime in go right ahead hehehe

[mirror-to-the-past]

Update of my Symphony of Sorcery journey: GAAAH OF *COURSE* THEY GAVE RIKU TCHAIKOVSKY. I AM LOSING MY MIND.

Seriously though, guys. This is just me potentially reading far too much into musical intent beyond "hey, we like these pieces and wanted to design a level based off of them" (which is totally valid, but analysis and musical associations with characters is fun!), and here's my disclaimer that these obviously aren't 1:1 comparisons, but giving Beethoven to Sora (the revolutionary kickstarter of the Romantic movement- a fiery, passionate personality, who, mainly prior to his worsening mental/physical health, had many friends. He also struggled with self esteem issues closely related to his musical ability- especially when his deafness encroached upon his craft) (I'm thinking of Sora's devastation of losing his Keyblade in KH1 and Re:Coded, as well as the implied issues I've picked up on regarding his feeling like he isn't good enough in general, and in this game, having seeds planted of doubting the validity of his feelings and experiences.), and giving Tchaikovsky to Riku (Who felt alienated from his homeland from a young age- expressed through his more Westernized musical styles, he was a Romantic-era composer and regarded as very sensitive and closed off. Struggled with being a queer man in 1800's Russia. The works.) (thinking of Riku's "personal experience" line regarding having emotional walls up in the Notre Dame world which occasionally pops back into my head.)

It's just... man. You've gotta love it, y'know?

Anyway, here's some semi-fitting quotes from my little collection:

"I need to believe in myself again, because currently my self-belief is deeply undermined, and it seems to me that my role is finished." - Tchaikovsky, Jan. 28/Feb. 9, 1893 to Modest Tchaikovsky

"Never can I forget the time I passed with you... Continue your friendship towards me, for you shall always find me the same true friend." - Beethoven to Breuning household, Oct. 1, 1797 (iirc, it was supposed to be to this person he tutored in piano and fell in love with but I can't find stuff solidifying that for sure)

"...the beauty of life is that it is made up of alternating joy and sorrow, of the struggle between good and evil, of light and shade; in short, of contrasts within the whole." - Tchaikovsky, Nov. 23/Dec. 5 1877 to close friend and confidant Nadezhda von Meck

^^ This whole letter is just a wonderful read. Discusses concept of an afterlife, quotes I hold near and dear about the importance of music within our lives, etc. ("[Music] is not just a straw in the wind, but a genuine friend, protector and comforter, and it alone makes life worth living." ;_; Gets me every time.)

[aotopmha]

Being too exhausted to play has made me think about the Dawntrail story again.

I wanted to take a break, but it occupies my brain too much, turns out and I engaged with takes on the internet again.

(Some of it is really dumb and a negativity void with zero substance, which is, in fact, unfun and exhausting, as it is designed to be, so it probably is better to not engage with, but I also do very much enjoy discussing what I love and it offers fantastic springboards for that.)

Spoilers for the Dawntrail story!

You know the complaint that it's "not as good as Shadowbringers or Endwalker"?

Well, I think a lot of people have actually echoed this, but I really like that Dawntrail is not trying to one-up them.

It's really good that it's not only pulling back the scale, but also lightening up the tone.

In particular, there was a complaint I saw that said HW, ShB and EW were these "deep and dark" stories and had issues with DT not being that kind of narrative and I think a story being Endwalker all of the time would become boring in its own right.

If all you see is positivity, eventually it means nothing, but this is also true in the opposite sense.

If all you see is misery all of the time, at one point, it doesn't mean anything anymore.

Eventhough I myself mostly enjoyed it, I can see the argument that it went too far in the other direction and handled some ideas too simplistically, but I think the general idea to do this is a really good, refreshing move.

It's similar thematically (which is actually my biggest issue), but I really like that it mostly focused on new stories with new characters.

I also like that the Scions are taking a backseat.

I saw an opinion that "you can't have your cake and eat it, too" in regards of the Scions being minor roles and you should either write them out completely or entirely focus the story on them, but personally I don't see any issue with this.

They were set up to be support and behaved as such. I don't understand the take that they were "teased" too much when the setup was that it was not their story to begin with.

Now, I do think the friendly rivalry aspect was underutilised. I feel like getting to fight Thancred and Urianger in good fun would've been great, for example.

I love the vibe of adventure we haven't really had for such a long time, and I really think the mystery of the City of Gold might be one of the best ones in the entire narrative because many of the mysteries so far at least have some aspect of retconning to them.

The gate and everything with it is entirely new and didn't need any retconning to fit within the current concepts of the story, whereas you could always tell they had to slightly tweak everything with the Ascians once in a while.

I think the fact that most of the characters that people do like from this expansion are entirely new or characters we knew fairly little about before Dawntrail says it all.

People actually do want new stuff. I think the mostly positive response towards the actual gameplay content says this, too.

So I hope they don't give up on what they've built here despite some of the really loud negative voices.

Don't start trying to do Endwalker or Shadowbringers again before building a new bigger picture.

We've talked about legacy and memory and loss a bunch of times already; evolve from this and do something *entirely* new with new characters and ALSO entirely new theming.

Don't give up on making content just a little more engaging.

That's my worry in light of these very loud complaints.

And the thing is, during the Endwalker patch cycle and even before, these are things so many people wanted.

People wanted a break from the Scions. People wanted the story to reset and relax after Endwalker because it had been within that dark tone for so long.

People wanted us to go back to being an adventurer.

People were tired of the increasingly same-y encounter design (and lack of stuff to do during patch downtime, which you can also see improved in terms of certain rewards; thing is what I've seen is people loving the new content so much they just like playing it and I feel the same way, so it isn't always even more grinds or rewards people actually want).

And that's exactly what they gave us.

Again, I don't know the overlap between audience groups here, but in terms of sentiment, that's the craziest part to me.

They kind of gave us exactly what we asked for.

And I really hope they stick to their guns and get braver from here because new is fun and even if it doesn't always succeed, you can look at what people like and don't like and go from there in a more nuanced way, rather than leaning on overcorrective decisions as they have in terms of certain aspects of the game. It just stops the game from stagnating and getting boring in all aspects.