#they're variants just a little bit

[phoebebuggers]

she's gonna clock his tea so fucking hard

[electricwhims]

Infant Resize Preset

Are you sick of using demon toddlers? Do you want newborns that actually LOOK like newborns? Well you came to the right place cause one night I had a midnight thought that I turned into a reality and it was to make those toddler resize presets but for INFANTS!

The proportions look so much more newborn-like, eh? I tried my best to use real newborn references for an accurate scale!

DISCLAIMER: THIS PRESET IS FOR POSE USE ONLY. It kind of works with gameplay, but it doesn't give you any new gameplay features for newborns. They will act like infants

HOW TO USE?

STEP 1: Equip preset in CAS

The preview looks like this! And is located under body presets!

-Note that you CANNOT go back to a regular size infant without defaulting their genetic body type. So I recommend making a CAS backup just for the infant!

STEP 2: Get you some poses that work with this preset! (I have a launch day list at the bottom of this post!!)

-Resized toddler poses WILL NOT work with this preset.

-Regular sized Infant poses will work with the preset, but it may require T.O.O.L to fix the positioning.

STEP 3: Pose as normal!! If you're having trouble with positioning, see the known issues section of this post!

POSEMAKER'S GUIDE

To make poses using this preset, you must use the special rig provided in the download section of this post! It's exactly like posing with resized toddlers.

-You must NEVER use the reset rig button. That defaults the rig to regular infant size. To undo changes please use alt + R and alt + G

KNOWN ISSUES

Infants are notoriously glitchy and for some reason when they're small sized, they act just a little bit crazier.

I HIGHLY RECCOMEND YOU DOWNLOAD T.O.O.L TO HELP SOLVE THESE ISSUES.

-If your teleporter is throwing last exceptions, your small infants may become misaligned with their caregiver's. This is easily fixable with T.O.O.L.

-When posing on an incline, the infants WILL MOVE OUT OF PLACE. These kinds of misalignments can't be fixed with T.O.O.L. I recommend only posing on flat terrain.

-This is not an issue, but more of a suggestion. If you're posing with some kind of bed, these babes are tiny and hard to click on. I recommend downloading a camera mod such as this one to get down low under the beds.

If you have any other detrimental issues, please let me know! I'm happy to help troubleshoot! You can reach out on here, but I respond faster on my instagram!

Free poses you can use right now!!

Thank you SOOO much to my amazing friends @truecolorssims and @herecirmsims for making 100% free poses to release alongside this launch!! Ya'll are INCREDIBLE and I couldn't have done this without you!!!

Cold Welcome by Me -Birth poses with complications

Newborn Singles by Me

It's Your Dad by Me - NICU visit poses

Safe in My Arms by Me -Sim being handed a baby and cuddle sesh.

It's So Hard by Me - Sim crying by a crib and being handed a baby

Complete by Me - Polyamorous throuple with baby

Isn't Mommy Awesome? By Me - Breastfeeding/Bottlefeeding with toddler and both parents.

Hold This by @herecirmsims - Couple and trio poses handing off a baby!!

Emotions With A Newborn by @herecirmsims - like the title suggests!!

Teeny Tiny by @truecolorssims - Family portrait poses with newborn!!

There was also supposed to be a preemie size variant of this preset but for some reason I couldn't get it to work!! Maybe one day when I have more time to troubleshoot I can release that, but for now, I didn't want to put this off any longer!

TERMS OF USE:

I put a LOT of hours into this preset and all the poses to go along with it and I'm releasing them COMPLETELY FREE So I feel a slightly stricter TOS is warranted.

-Do not reupload

-No poses made with this preset are allowed to be perma paywalled PERIOD. Early access is allowed if it is released for free in a timely manner (2-3 weeks)

-Do not include the preset in your post. Please link back to this post!

IF THESE TOUs ARE VIOLATED I WILL BLOCK YOU ON ALL PLATFORMS

If you use it, please tag me on here or on Instagram @electric.whims Not a requirement, but I do want to see!

@ts4-poses @alwaysfreecc

DOWNLOAD: SIMFILESHARE| PATREON

[bonny-kookoo]

Jungkook

TERRITORIAL. | Pretty Baby

Who would've known that the big bad wolf isn't actually all that bad?

Tags/Warnings: Punk!Jungkook, Wolf!Jungkook, Good girl!Reader, Dom!Jungkook, Sub!Reader, Corruption kink, strangers to crushes to lovers, Fluff, Adult themes

Length: uuuh long idk

There is no taglist for this fic.

-> Masterlist

⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──💗── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅

Strawberry milk is your favorite.

It's always been a comfort thing for you- just like certain snacks or fabrics make you feel comforted, strawberry milk gives you that little bit of extra braveness at night after work has ended to finally make your way back home into the safety of your apartment.

But tonight, it's a bit different. Tonight, there's a group of vamps outside, clearly trying to agitate the wolves who've been ruling the streets for a while now.

It's not actual gang-behavior. They're not actively fighting or anything, there's never any guns or other violence involved- at least not on the surface. Underground, you're sure this must be a different story- but on the streets, the wolves play the tune everyone else dances to- the vamps only occasionally trying to provoke something, which never actually happens.

But that doesn't mean it won't tonight. Maybe tonight's the night it'll escalate.

And on nights like this, you sometimes feel like moving into the big city was a big mistake too, because this seems so normal to everyone else around you.

Back home in your little town, there wasn't anything like this at night. People would go to bed at reasonable times, you'd know every neighbor by name and house number, and you never had to fear going home alone. But here, things are different. Here, things are a lot more dangerous, especially as nothing but a human with no connection to either group.

You kind of want to stay neutral- even if, deep down, you feel more drawn towards the wolves with their more laid back approach to life.

Outside the small convenience store, you throw away the empty bottle of strawberry milk, before you reluctantly make a few steps- looks from a few vampires immediately making you retreat however, pulling out your phone to appear occupied. You can hear them snickering amongst each other already, laughing and talking, making comments about you.

You can't do this, fuck that.

You look around a little, when you notice someone from the nearby wolves looking back at you- a young man, golden eyes a tell-tale sign of what he is, as he sits on his bike that's perched up on it's kickstand. He's watching you, but not in an intimidating way- he's more so calculating it seems like, scanning the situation before he looks towards a friend nearby, who nods, some others nodding as well as they move closer.

He's got his hands in the pockets of his jacket, beanie hiding the slightly faded blue-ish strands of hair. Everyone of the tiny group appears relaxed and non-threatening. But there's a certain confidence in them that intimidates you a little as they walk closer.

That is, until he smiles at you-

and his black tail behind him wags, swaying from side to side.

"Alright guys, can we make some space here for the lady to pass through?" He asks towards the group of Vamps, who laugh, before they reluctantly make space for you to walk. The young man carefully moves to walk a little behind you, the other's shielding you just as much on the side that's turned towards the blood-dependent human variants. It just confirms to you that yeah, you're definitely more drawn towards wolves.

"There we go. Is your home far?" The young wolf asks, still keeping a respectful distance towards you.

"Uh.. no, not really." You deny, and he nods. "Thanks, by the way." You bow to him and his friends politely, everyone just waving it off- though you can see all their tails swaying a little. It's honestly.. cute, if they didn't all look like they could probably break your neck at a moment's notice.

But they don't. Instead, they all agree to your request to walk home now by yourself, and let you go-

though you can feel one person's eyes on you for a little longer, and when you turn around, he smiles that smile again.

A smile that's just.. genuine.

⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──💗── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅

You meet him again the day after at the convenience store, though he's sporting a fresh scratch on the top of his cheekbone. He doesn't seem to be in too much pain as he spots you however, having just bought your typical strawberry courage to go home tonight. "Do you always work this long?" He wonders, and you nod, sitting down next to him at the narrow table at the windows of the small store. He's been eating something, bowl now empty though, faint redness on his lips the last remnant of his meal.

"What happened?" You ask, pointing to your own cheek, when he seems surprised, touching his own before hissing at the sting. "No don't touch it-" You whine, before you look for something in your bag, opening another, smaller, makeup bag. "here- or... do you want me to help?" You wonder, making him nod and lean forward with a faint smile on his lips, hands holding onto the chair he's sitting on between his legs as he closes his eyes so you don't feel watched.

As you clean up the scratch and put a bandaid on, you kind of have to think about the fact that he seems awfully.. less threatening than you thought he'd be, considering he's a wolf from the big city. But maybe the one's you know from the smaller towns are just.. a little too full of themselves, pride getting the best of them.

"Oh-" You suddenly say, noticing the little cartoon fish on the bandaid you just placed on his cheek.

"What, 'oh'?" He wonders back, and you hold out another bandaid to him so he can take a look.

"I'm sorry, I didn't- I forgot I only have those…" You mumble a bit caught off guard by your own actions. But he just laughs, giving it back to you with a smile and shake of his head.

"It's fine- they're cute!" He simply shrugs, not bothered by it at all. "Thanks." He offers, tail swaying behind him. "So- can I ask what you work as?" He wonders, and you nod, putting your stuff back into your bag.

"Just data management. It's pretty boring." You shrug to yourself. "But I can work by myself and I like that." You explain, zipping your bag shut before you look at him again. "Although.. I might have to get myself maybe a dog, when I go home at night. A big, scary looking one you know? But they've got to be nice so I can bring them into the office with me.." You mumble, drinking the last of your milk as he turns his body to face more openly to you again, a playful smirk on his lips.

"How about I'll be your big bad dog then, huh?" He flirts, tail swinging side to side behind him. "Though I'm probably not allowed in the office.." He laughs, especially when you roll your eyes and still smile at his joking attempt at flirting. It was a joke.. right?

"Ha-ha." You say because of that, though he just widens his eyes, feigning innocence.

"Hey I'm serious!" He offers, leaning a bit closer. "I could take you home every night- and if I can't, someone of my pack could do the job instead."

"I- I'm probably not even gonna stay in the city for too long." You sigh, playing with the fluffy pom-pom ball attached to your bag. "I don't like it here very much.. it's too.. I don't know. I don't belong here.." You mumble.

"Maybe you've simply not seen the good parts of the city." He shrugs. "I could show you some."

"And by some you mean your bedroom?" You sigh, looking at him with a bit of an attitude- and he can't help but be intrigued by that little hint of spice you seem to have, underneath your pretty visuals and rather introverted appearance.

"If you'd like to visit, the door's always open for a pretty girl like you." he purrs, and at that, you clearly turn shy. "..And I don't ever open that door for anyone but myself, typically." He adds on, and at that, you look back at him, searching for the deeper meaning of that statement-

and you seem to find it, in the warmth of his eyes and the slight redness to his ears.

⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──💗── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅ ── ⋅ ⋅

"Have you ever been a backpack before?" Jungkook asks, as he waits outside of your apartment, one helmet on his bike and the other in his hand.

"Uh.. no-" you say, honestly never having heard the phrase.

"Would you like to try?" He asks, motioning towards his bike, holding out the helmet. "Got this one from a packmate. Should fit you." He says, black and grey tail wagging as you take it somewhat reluctantly. "And I'll drive extra careful too." He says, helping you put on the helmet properly before his hands adjust the strap under your chin.

"What if I fall off?" You worry, but he just laughs, putting on his own helmet. You notice that his hair seems freshly dyed- nor black.

"Not if you hold on to me." He explains, sitting on the bike after putting up the kickstand. "Hop on- I'll keep it stable." He reassures you, as you somewhat awkwardly climb onto the back of his bike. Only when his hands pull yours around his middle do you notice he's only really keeping you both and the bike stable with his feet alone.

And it makes you wonder how strong he might be.

"There we go. You'll figure things out as we go, trust me." He chuckles, small speakers in his head connected to his own too so you can talk properly. "Good to go?" Be asks, and you nod-

That is until his bike roars to life, and you instinctively cling onto him for dear life as he turns to drive off onto the main road.

He laughs. You're not sure what's so funny.

"Oh look at Jungkookies new passenger princess!" Someone jokes suddenly over the speaker, and you look around just to find three people on bikes as well at the same red light.

"Nervous?" Another voice asks, and Jungkook growls a little in front of you.

"You're making her nervous, hyung!" He complains, making the stranger's laugh. "Don't worry, they just want to mess with me.." he mumbles towards you, hand squeezing yours for a little in comfort.

"Yeah of course, after all Jungkook's finally all grown up!" The first voice laughs. "Finally up for an actual relationship now, fuckboy?" He asks, and at that, you grow a bit nervous.

Fuckboy? Relationship?

Just who is Jungkook really? You've got no idea. Sure, you've texted over the past few days, but you basically know nothing about him. He could just try and get into your pants, maybe that's his whole thing- maybe he likes them innocent and stupid to have a quick fuck and then drop them again. With looks like his that must be easy.

You're easy.

"Please don't listen to them, they're just assholes-" He tries to explain as the light finally turns green, but you're quiet, and Jungkook has a feeling that something's wrong. "You okay?" He asks occasionally, but you just nod and move on, not really up for talking anymore. He just wants to screw you anyways. Maybe he really is just a big city wolf down the line.

The scenery is nice, but you don't really feel like enjoying it too much as you just want to go home right away again. It's something you do- you hide from things, because confrontation just ends in you being at fault all the time. And maybe, this time, you are at fault.

You shouldn't just trust someone like that. You both barely know each other.

He parks at a gas station, turning off his bike in a more secluded parking area, before he takes off his helmet, and helps you take off yours too.

"What's wrong?" He asks, hair a bit wild, but eyes serious as they look at you, reflecting the light from the neon signs a little like mirrors.

"Nothing." You shrug, avoiding eye contact.

"He was just messing with me. They're always like that-" he tries to explain, and as you sigh, he knows that that's exactly what must've set you off. "Listen, I won't stand here and tell you I'm a church-going virgin because I'm not. Yeah, I fucked around, because sex is fun to me." He shrugs, and you're caught off guard at how boldly he says that. "But that doesn't mean I can't take things seriously." He offers, finally catching your gaze again. "And I want to take.. you seriously." He offers you, but you're not sure.

"...why?" You wonder. "Cause I'm pretty and innocent?" You jab at him. "Cause I'm the small town girl you can corrupt and then drop after you finally got into my pants?" You accuse. "Sucks to be you, I'm not a virgin anymore. I've had sex already, and for me it's not fun." You deny, crossing your arms almost defensively, though you quickly move your hands back on the bike as it moves slightly the moment he sits on it again, facing you however.

"I don't care about that." He tells you. "I won't lie that the corruption part isn't something appealing to me-" he chuckles, as he tests the waters, hands on your thighs not moving, just resting on the tops of them. "-But I'm not dropping you, if you ever let me have you." He purrs.

"What if I'm not ever letting you have me?" You respond, trying to act tough so he won't think you're easy.

"Then that's your choice." He nods.

"So if I say no right now, you'll leave me alone?" You ask.

"Depends on what you say no to." He shrugs leaning back a little, your legs feeling cold without his hands on them. "No to sex? Alright, we won't fuck then." He explains. "No to being with me? Cool, we'll just stay friends then." He goes on.

"No to me entirely?" He offers, eyes unreadable. "I'll accept that, and back off."

"That easy?" You ask a little caught off guard, and he nods. "So you're.. huh." You mumble to yourself, defeated. So he's not even up to put any effort in you. That's slightly disappointing, and honestly makes you feel a little ashamed even.

"So what is it?" He asks, and you shrug.

"I don't know." You answer honestly.

"Then how about I'll work for it?" He smirks, and you look at him now. "Let me take you out. Let's go on dates, I can take you to pack meet-up's so you can get to know those assholes better, hell, I'll even have you meet my mom if you want!" He excitedly proposes to you, tail wagging, hitting his bike occasionally. "Just- you seem really cool. Exactly what I've been searching for." He explains a bit softer now. "Let's try.. okay?" He asks.

"... okay." You answer, and at that his lips turn, part in a happy grin, before he gets up from the bike and punches the air once in his excitement before he returns.

"Okay!" He giggles to himself, helping you back into your helmet. "I know an awesome place to get some food-" he instantly rambles, kicking up the stand for his bike again before he drives off with you-

Eager to show you that he's the one for you.

[reachartwork]

the process

a lot of people like to ask me about my process and how ai can be "creative" because they're under the impression that it's just kind of a big slot machine. you pull a lever and art uncontrollably comes out. well, let me show you my process

this is going to be a long thread tagged with #long post, blacklist that if you want to skip it.

so how it starts like most art is that i have an idea. in this case, earlier i made a post about witch-knights "surfing" on swords, so i'm going to try and make that - a witch-knight flying through the air atop one of her swords.

it starts with this picture.

i think this picture is dogshit so i discard basically all of it to try and find something closer to my original intent. there's a couple of uninteresting regenerations so it's clear i have to go back to the drawing board and teach the machine what it is i'm trying to do

let's start with a witch-knight on a broom. it's definitely not great but it gives us a better pose that i can work with.

i start by erasing the broom and replacing it with a skateboard - the machine understands skating better for what i need it to do.

there's a ton of small, subtle errors in this image and it overall looks like dogshit but the most important part right now is blocking and the overall pose structure - i need her "surfing" a large, lengthwise object, in the sky. i start by erasing pieces of the skateboard

now we have a sword, which is good. but the sword itself looks... bad. i'll spare you the abortive attempts at selective regeneration of the sword and just show you what happened when i rolled it back a couple of times from this pose and let it regen entirely.

again, tons of small little shitty errors, but this is something i can work with. i do another regen for a less shitty sword. her boob armor gets replaced with, like, generic scale mail.

this image has a great sword and decent pose but like... everything else is kind of futzy and i dont like it. instead of trying to pick and choose i just throw it back into the oven for a second. much better! but now she's going to cut herself on the sword, oh no!

again, i'll save you the agonizing thirty minutes of trying to get it to understand where the foot should go. unlike before i didn't really have a choice except to muscle through. there! now she's surfing safely :)

so it's done, right? well, i mean, i could post this. and it would probably do okay. but *i'm* not satisfied with it. there's stiffness. dozens of minor errors. the eyes look weird when you zoom in. let's start by fixing her hat, and then maybe her hands?

but she's missing fingers on her left hand so let's go ahead and fix that too. and i don't really like the tip of her sword and the ocean looks really flat and boring. so, VERY CAREFULLY, i have to etch out the parts of the sword and her body i have to keep, and also write an entirely new prompt to tell it "i want an ocean w/ rolling waves please :)"

this is better but not great. i try again - serendipitously, it makes this really cool variant with a shadow over the water, but i know working with that will take more wrangling so i'm considering it an evolutionary dead end and discarding it for now.

i proceed to spend 30 minutes trying to make the ocean look better but it's really not working imo. i'm gonna go back to the shadow version and see how that works

i'll spare you the other 8 minutes - i'm satisfied with the following picture. the sword isn't *perfectly* straight, her eyes aren't perfectly textured, the scale mail is... weird, in texture, but anything else would be greasing the wheel and i think beyond the machine's ability to do fine detail.

i've also attached the starting picture for comparison - it has better, "higher quality" clouds and ocean but i personally cared more about the pose and the sword surfing - the background is mostly tangential. could i get back ocean and clouds of that quality with another two hours of painstakingly cutting and re-generating bits of the background without destroying any of my existing work on the pose? probably. but i don't want to.

total time spent on this piece from start to finish was one hour and twenty one minutes. and now you know!

[alexanderwales]

Alright, here's my dream Stardew Valley style game, designed for my own tastes.

You come to a small town with the usual twenty to thirty people. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's a fantasy town, and no one actually farms anymore, partly because it's only questionably profitable, partly because a lot of the knowledge has been lost. Instead, everyone uses these magic doodads which are very powerful but also very limited. The tavernkeeper has a doodad that makes him a single kind of weak ale and a single variety of off-tasting wine. The clothier has basically a square mile of linen to work with, and everyone wears her drab clothes. Tools are made from a doodad that the blacksmith owns, not even made of any actual metal, just a material that wears away after a month and needs to be replaced by a new copy from the blacksmith's doodad. People get their meals from the doodads. They get their medical checkups. It's all a bit shit.

Because I'm a worldbuilder at heart, I would have this all exist in the wake of a large-scale war that depleted the town of its fighting-age population, with the doodads being a sort of government program to ensure that more of the lifeblood of the town could be drained away. And for there to be some reason for the town to continue existing, perhaps the government is harvesting some resources necessary in the creation of doodads. That's enough for a pro-doodad faction and maybe some minor drama with them, though I do like the idea that the only reason things are Like This is because there was a war and things got bad. It's not necessarily a bleak town, but there's definitely a listlessness to it, a "what's the point".

So you're a farmer, but no one is really a farmer anymore. Maybe there are a few books, but you don't learn farming from books, you learn it from practical experience; that's a lot of what this game is about. When you start, there's no one to buy seeds from, there's just a bunch of wilderness where farms once stood, now all long overgrown.

So you go out and forage, for a start, and you clear the land, and you pay attention to the plants and how they can be used, and you start in on making recipes with them, maybe with the help of your grandfather's old, partially incomplete books. You find some wild corn that's a descendant of the old times. You find some tomato seeds in an urn. You discover potatoes because you see them dug up by a wild boar, which itself was once a domesticated animal.

In my ideal game, you need to pay attention to the soil quality, to how far apart things are planted, to what crops work well together. Farming is a matter of companion planting and polycultures. You get some chickens by giving them consistent feed, and you keep them around because they're natural pest control. Your climbing beans climb the stalks of your maize. You're attracting pollinators. (From a gameplay perspective, yeah, we probably put this all into a grid, and you have crop bonuses from adjacencies, and emergent gameplay that comes from all that, some plants providing shade, others providing nitrogen fixing.) You're a scientist making observations about the plants, maybe with your incomplete book giving you confirmation on the nature of all your crops once you hit certain production goals or a perfect specimen or whatever.

Cooking is the same. There has got to be a system that I like better than just "combine tomato with bread to get tomato bread". I'm pretty sure that it's some variant of the actual process I use when cooking, which is making sure that things are properly cooked, balancing flavors against each other, adding in a little salt or acidity or umami or whatever. Time in the kitchen, in this game, is often about making meals, ensuring that if you have a fatty piece of meat you have some asparagus that's coated with lemon to go with it. (From a gameplay perspective, I think building the dish once is probably sufficient and it can be automated after that, and building the meal is the same. I don't want to play this minigame every time I'm cooking a dish, I just want to play it a single time until I have good knowledge of the best way to grill a BBQ chicken breast with a homemade sauce.)

But if we're having a little minigame here where we pay attention to how long we're cooking the kale to make sure that it's the right texture, and we're paying attention to abstractified mouthfeel and palette, then we can get something else for free: variation. See, you're not just cooking to get an S grade, you're cooking for people with different tastes. The cobbler has a sweet tooth, the librarian loves fruity things, the mayor cannot stand fish, that sort of thing. From a gameplay perspective, maybe we represent this with a radar graph with some specific favorite and least favorite individual flavors, and maybe it's visible to the player, but the important thing is that player gets feedback and have a reason to strive for both "good" and "perfection" and some of this is going to depend on the quality of the ingredients.

And this is, gradually, how the town is brought back into the fullness of life. You're not just cooking for these people, you're also selling them food, and they're making their own recipes, and all the stuff that's not food is making their businesses not suck anymore. After the first test keg of ale goes swimmingly, the tavernkeeper wants more, a lot more, and puts in an order for hops, wheat, grapes, anything he can use to make things that will improve nights at the tavern. The clothier will skeptically take in wool and spin her own yarn, and then eagerly want more, because how awesome is it to have a new textile? There's a chemist who is extremely interested in dyes and paints, and wants you to bring him all kinds of things to see what might be viable for going beyond the ~3 colors that the doodads can provide.

So by year two, if you're doing things right, you're the lynchpin of the revivalist movement. People are now moving to the town, for the first time in decades, because they hear that you're there and doing interesting things with the wilderness. Maybe there are other farmers following in your wake, but maybe it's just new characters who are specifically coming because a crate of wine was shipped to the capital city. Maybe some of them bring new techniques for you, or a handful of plants from a botanical garden, and there are new elements for the minigames, or maybe some automation for the stuff that's old hat.

I think something that's important to me is that there's a reason for the crops you plant and the things you do. I always like these games best when it feels like I'm doing something for someone, when I can look at a plot of cabbages and think "ah, those are the cabbages I owe to Leon". Where these games are at their worst, everything is entirely fungible and I've planted eight million blueberries because they have the highest ROI.

And yeah, in most of these games, there are other minigames like fishing and mining and logging and crafting, and since this is just a blog post and not a game, I definitely could massively expand an already sizeable scope.

I think for mining the player would use doodads of their own, and maybe you could make a mining minigame out of that, using the same planting tile system to instead create an automated ore harvesting machine that plumbs the depths of the earth (possibly dealing with rocks of different hardness, the water table, and other challenges along the way).

Fishing is a question of understanding the different fish species, what they eat, where they congregate, and then setting nets or lines, since I have never met a fishing minigame I really enjoyed. Again, there's some idea that the player is gaining information over time, building up a profile of these fish, noticing that some of them go nuts when it rains, understanding the spawning season, that they go to deeper water when it's cold, etc.

Crafting really depends on what you're crafting, but if you're reintroducing traditional artisan processes to this town, then people are going to need tools and machines and things. I'm not sure I know what a proper crafting game looks like. The only experience I have to draw on is wood shop, where I made wooden boxes, cutting boards, and picture frames. Since this is an engineering-lite puzzle-lite game, you could maybe do something in that vein, e.g. defining a number of steps that get you the correct thing you're trying to make, but ... eh. I love the idea of designing a chicken coop, for example, or building a trellis if I want my climbing beans to not need maize, or whatever, but I don't know how you actually implement that. There are definitely voxel-based and snap-to-grid games where you build bases, and I tend to find that fun ... but it's mostly cosmetic, for the obvious reason that doing it any other way than cosmetic requires programmatic evaluation, which is difficult and maybe unintuitive. The closest I think I've seen is ... maybe Tears of the Kingdom? Contraption building? But I don't know how you translate that to a farming game. Maybe I should ask my wife about this, because she's always doing little projects around the house (an outdoor enclosure for our cats, a 3D-printed holder for our living room keyboard, a mounting for our TV).

Making an interesting crafting system is difficult, which is why pretty much no one has done it.

And if I'm talking pie in the sky, without concern for budget or scope, I want the villagers to all have a mammoth amount of writing for them. I want petty little dramas and weird obsessions, lives that evolve with or without my input, rudimentary dialog trees that let me nudge things in different directions. This is just an unbelievable amount of work on its own, it would be crazy, but I would love having a tiny little town game where sometimes other people would fall in love. I would like to be invited to a wedding, maybe one that happened because I encouraged the chemist to hang out with the clothier, and in the course of working together on dyes, they fell in love. With twenty people in town and another ten that come in over the course of the game if you hit the right triggers, I do think this is just a matter of having a ton of time/budget. You write tons and tons of dialogue so there's not much that's repeated, you have some lines of conversation between characters that are progressed through, you have others that trigger off of events, and then you have personal relationships between NPCs that can be progressed through time or with player intervention. Give single characters a pool of love interests, have their affections depend on their routine which depends on what's changed in town ... very difficult to do without spending loads and loads of time on it though.

Anyway, that's one of my dream games. No one is ever going to make it, it would be a niche of a niche, and as scoped here, is too much for a small team to ever actually finish, let alone polish. But it's the sort of thing I'm imagining in my head when I think about playing Stardew Valley and its successors.

[iamthedukeofurl]

While what happened to studio ZAUM and the Disco Elysium creators is undeniably tragic, it's honestly the most thematically coherent way that particular story could end. A passionate group of creatives creates a massively successful product, it's weird and innovative and, while it certainly draws a ton of inspiration from various existing works and genres, it synthesizes them into something unique enough that I'd say it would be impossible to predict that there even WOULD be an audience for it until it was released. It's openly political, but not in a way that necessarily makes anybody feel good about their existing beliefs. The entire thing is crafted and driven by deep passion and excellent writing and more than a little bit of insanity. And then, once it became clear that it was a genuine major phenomenon, the investors stole the company and the IP out from under the creatives. Which, yeah, that tracks for the Funny Communism Game. Otherwise, what are the options? The creators make another game, but fail to capture the lightning in the bottle of the original. The ideas that were once so fresh and unique are now expected, meaning that they'll be condemned for failing to reuse them by the people who just want to play Disco Elysium again for the first time, but won't have the same impact on people. Ends with a whimper. "What happened to the Disco Elysium guys" "Oh they made Disco Elysium II: Disco Elysiumer, but it kind of sucked". The creators could make another game, and it's wildly successful again, and they make a ton of money off of it. Capitalism Works and, just this once, people are rewarded for their ingenuity and passion. Eventually you either go back to number 1, or "Makers of Funny Communism Game are rich now". Like, genuinely the best outcome from a "People deserve to be rewarded for putting things people love into the world" standpoint, but thematically a bit eh. Worst case scenario, you get a repeat of Notch. I guess a variant of option 1 has them TRY to catch the lightning in a bottle again but fail to make anything they're satisfied with as the studio breaks up in frustration in an ironic repeat of the in-game story of Fortress Occident.

Instead, they make Funny Communism game, it's wildly successful, but instead of receiving the rewards promised under capitalism, somebody leverages the fact that they have access to capital to steal the studio out from under them and claim the rewards of their passion and labor. Karl Marx would have something to say about that.

[renai-fr]

Perler Bead Flight Flags

Made these flight flag coasters a bit back, figured it was a good time to post 'em! I do enjoy Perlers, they're like pixel art but at the end I can hold them and stuff.

Crafting details after the break, if y'all want to make your own.

These are using the original 2013 flag designs/colors on a 14x14 board, with standard 5mm beads. If you wanted to do the current flag designs, they'd need a little bit of tweaking as many are more symmetric in the current art (and also, I'd recommend a 16x16 size, since then you have room to put the current art's border). You could also try out an odd-sized flag, 15x15 maybe, but the angles at the bottom will look a little off. Doesn't hurt to try stuff though!

I got most of the beads for these out of variety packs and various kits, which don't necessarily label the colors in them, but these are my best guesses to what I used:

Earth: Tan design on Brown base

Fire: Butterscotch/Orange on Light Brown base

Wind: Dark Green on Kiwi Lime

Water: Light Blue on Dark Blue/Cobalt

Lightning: Toothpaste on Parrot Green

Ice: Turquoise on Robin's Egg

Light: Cheddar on Creme

Shadow: Pastel Lavender on Purple

Nature: Kiwi Lime on Dark green

Plague: Red on Cranapple

Arcane: Pink on Raspberry

(Most of these came from the Multi Mix packs or the Neutral Colors/Fun Colors trays, but Cranapple in particular was catankerous to get ahold of. Fitting for Plague, I suppose! Anyways, there's some wiggle room on hue for a lot of these, too, I was just using what I had onhand as much as possible)

As for what I would do differently if I made another set of these? Well... I've gotten a bit better at getting the melt level consistent, so there's that. Learned the hard way that trying to melt two designs on the same pegboard, even if said board is big, isn't a good idea (and it's near-impossible to fix). Also, I was using one of the freebie folded pieces of parchment paper, so some of the coasters have creases... On non-ironing notes, I think it would be fun to take a stab at a micro-bead variant, since they support a higher dpi and all!

Anyways, if you decide to make your own set, please uh... I'd say ping me, but I'm not actually sure how that works here? I think it'd be cool to see 'em, that's all. Happy crafting!

[archangeldyke-all]

fake dating sevika? obviously leading to real marriage cuz duh 🙄

how have i not done this trope yet? i love it

men and minors dni

you and sevika are friendly. you wouldn't go as far as saying you're friends, but you get along pretty well with your neighbor. that is-- when you see her. she's usually at work but from time to time, you both end up on the fire escape that connects your back windows at the same time, the two of you smoking together after a long day.

on occasion, she shares a cigar with you. you always share your weed with her-- giggling at the way her eyes get heavy and pink as she smokes. you've even shared a few late-night dinners-- just a bag of pretzels and a six pack of ale, but it's still nice.

despite the nice few nice nights you've shared, that's as far as your tentative acquaintanceship has ever gone. which is why you're a little surprised to find sevika at your front door as you get ready to head out to the markets.

"sevika?" you ask. she blinks in surprise, dropping her hand that she'd been ready to knock with.

"uh. hi." she grunts. she's not looking at you, her head is ducked and she's scrubbing the back of her neck. you're a little worried for her.

"you okay?" you ask. sevika sighs a long, gusty sigh, then looks up at you with a wince.

"i need a favor." she grumbles. you raise an eyebrow, curious. sevika groans again, and you giggle.

"come in." you invite her into your apartment, nodding her toward your couch as you grab a beer from the fridge for her. she takes it, nodding at you in thanks. you clink your glasses together, both of you taking a few sips as you settle on the sofa beside her. "so?" you ask. sevika huffs again.

"you know i work for silco, right?" she asks. you snort and nod.

"yes, i'm aware." you bite back the urge to tack on 'so is everyone else in zaun.'

"well..." she trails off, staring at the floor, before shaking her head and rolling her eyes. "basically, we gotta go up to piltover for a fancy-fuck dinner, but they won't let silco bring anyone from his crew besides me. so..." she sighs.

"so what?"

"the whole reason we're going to the fucking dinner in the first place is to get a good look at what the topsiders are cooking up as their own shimmer variants. we can't distract the pilties, and gather intel with just the two of us." she looks up at you, waiting for you to respond like she's somehow revealed the favor she needs.

"...okay?" you ask.

sevika groans, then slumps against your couch. "i need a date." she huffs. you raise an eyebrow.

"i'm pretty sure the girls from babette's--"

"no!" she squeals. you chuckle a little. "these people-- they can sniff out a sump-rat from a mile away. they're already nervous about letting silco bring me along. i need to bring someone..." she pauses and chugs the remainder of her beer, swallows a burp, then speaks again. "you're, like. sweet, y'know?" she whispers. you blink. "you're easy to talk to. you could charm the pants off anyone: zaun gangster like me or piltover elites."

warmth bubbles up in your stomach at her words, a soft smile pulling at your lips. "you think so?" you ask. sevika groans and rolls her eyes.

"fuck off. just: will you be my fake date to this dumbass dinner or not?" she asks. you grin.

"well, what do i get outta it?" you tease. of course you're going to say yes, especially after all the soft things sevika just said to you.

sevika scoffs a bit, smiling back at you. "topsider food for a night?" she bribes. "good wine?"

you snort, then reach your hand out between the two of you for sevika to take. she does, and you're surprised at how warm and firm her grip is. "deal." you agree.

the entire trip up to piltover, sevika's scowling and huffing, bitching to silco any chance she can get about the fact that he's dragging her up top. you find it endlessly amusing.

but the moment you enter the mansion, sevika's attitude does a complete 180. it's impressive to see. her pleasant smile, while fake, is just as pretty as all the quick smirks she's shot you on the balcony as you pass a joint back and forth.

she also starts touching you. at first, it's tentative; a gentle hand on the waist or small of your back; but as you relax into her touch and start touching her back, her touches become mindless.

as you sip on drinks and laugh politely at the rich-people humor you can't understand for the life of you, sevika slings her arm around your shoulders, pulling you toward her chest.

when you're two drinks in, she presses a kiss to the crown of your head. she turns her head to whisper against your ear, "regretting your decision yet?"

you have to bite back the shaky moan you want to let out at the feeling of her breath on your neck.

you end up drinking more than you probably should. sevika's always been attractive to you, but you've never acted on it. you're neighbors, sevika's pre-occupied with work and her girls, you don't want to make things weird. but it's hard to ignore how handsome she looks in her suit when she's staring at you with a strangely convincing admiring-gaze, her mech thumb gently sweeping across the back of your hand.

the wine loosens you up, all your jitters and nerves about being surrounded by wealth melting away with each sip of your glass. the guests find you endlessly entertaining once you start talking: your radical undercity politics softened by the docile way you're leaning against sevika and your slurred words.

you get into a few debates. silco seems impressed with your knowledge of zaun's history, his good eyebrow ticking up with interest as you berate a man who suggested piltoverian taxes shouldn't be funding any zaunite public systems.

you charm a few of the wives, complimenting the appetizers and asking for the recipes, helping clear empty dishes and glasses to the kitchen.

you even make friends with the violinist that's been hired to play music for the night, complimenting her music taste and requesting a few songs that make her grin. "nobody asks for that one, but it's so fun to play, it's my favorite!"

sevika has to keep hiding her cocky smile behind her hand as she watches you work.

dinner is delicious. you're wiggling in your seat with excitement as you tear into the fresh food: a rare delight for you. beside you, sevika keeps laughing as she watches you eat. "you're an animal." she giggles.

"you gonna need anymore dates up here in the future?" you ask around a mouthful of food, hiding your full mouth with your hand. sevika grins.

"we'll see what happens." she chuckles.

by the end of the night, sevika has to help keep you steady as you sway on your feet, laughing and jogging down the streets of piltover while sevika and silco trail behind you.

"i quite like her." you overhear silco mumble at some point. then,

"yeah, me too." sevika replies.

she doesn't kiss you goodnight. you're almost disappointed, until you remember that this wasn't a real date. you stand in your doorway awkwardly, shimmying out of the suit jacket she'd slung over your shoulders on the walk home and handing it back to her, trying to find something to say.

"uh. this was really fun." you whisper. sevika smiles.

"it was. i knew you'd be a good fake girlfriend."

you giggle a bit, something strange flopping over in your stomach at the reminder that tonight was fake. "you're not so bad yourself, you know." you whisper. sevika blinks at you with big eyes, but doesn't say anything. "anyways. was i a good distraction?" you ask. she grins.

"oh, yeah. you had those pilties wrapped around your finger-- i was gone for thirty fuckin' minutes and they didn't even bat an eye." she says, giggling. you smile.

"i'm glad i could help." you laugh. "if you ever need another fake date..."

"you'll be my first choice." sevika promises.

you gulp. this is the point of the night where you turn around and go into your apartment, watch through the peephole as sevika goes in hers, then go to bed. but... you linger.

sevika lingers too.

you decide to just go for it. you're drunk off good wine, full off good food, and... she looks so fucking pretty that the choice isn't all that hard to make. "or, you know. i'd say yes to a real date too."

it's quiet for a horrifying moment, sevika's eyes widening as they study your face, like she's trying to figure out if you're joking. you're about to laugh it off-- already planning on breaking your lease early so you can move out of this building before you ever have to see her again-- when sevika grins.

"a real date with me wouldn't be as classy as tonight was." sevika says. you bite your lip.

"that's okay. tonight was fun, but it was... a lot." you mumble. sevika giggles, a sweet sound, and your stomach flip-flops.

"how does take-out from jericho's at my place sound?" she asks.

it's your turn to grin. "fuckin' amazing." you say. sevika laughs.

"tomorrow?"

"sure. or, we could go now?" you suggest. "jericho's is open all ni--"

you're cut off by sevika's lips. she crowds you to your front door, pressing her chest against yours. you hum into her mouth, and she hums back.

eventually, she pulls away for air. "i've been wanting to do that forever." she gasps.

you giggle, and pull her back in for another kiss. "me too." you mumble before your lips meet.

taglist!

@fyeahnix @sapphicsgirl @half-of-a-gay @thesevi0lentdelights @sexysapphicshopowner @shimtarofstupidity @chuucanchuucan @badbye666 @femme-historian @lia-winther @gr0ssz0mbi3 @ellsss @sevikaspillowprincess @leomatsuzaki @emiliabby @sevikasbeloved @hellorai @vikasub @glass-apothecary @m0numents @macaroni676 @vixel352 @artinvain

[perksofbeingpoet]

☆ THE POETS AT THE AIRPORT ☆

CHARLIE: trying WAY too hard to be everyone's airport crush. has to be dragged out of the liquor section of the duty free shop ("but the vodka is so CHEAP"). plays a game of "trying to sneak as many metal objects past the security check as possible". when he gets a pat down he keeps wiggling his eyebrows and saying some variant of "wow no you're wayy too old for me" to the security guy (who's probably considering quitting his job). is secretly terrified of flying but tries not to let it show (grips neil's hand so hard it hurts when they take off)

TODD: literally a ball of pure anxiety in the beginning of it. SO scared he overpacked, he's constantly talking about what if his suitcase is too heavy and he has to empty it out and everyone in the queue will be watching him and GOD HE HATES AIRPORTS. calms down a bit after the security check (totally panics about what if he accidentally put a gun down his pants or something and doesn't remember), and then just chills in the perfume area of the duty free shop, trying all the scents. buys loads of snacks because you never know if the place you're going to has the good ones. tries not to think about the possibility of the plane crashing. likes watching the clouds.

NEIL: A literal kid. Is the one who ACTUALLY overpacked, and runs around with his suitcase (he'd totally sit down on it and ride it around if that was socially acceptable). spends like an hour in the shops and is suddenly convinced he needs to buy a lot of unnecessary stuff. BUT goes into airport dad mode as soon as he needs to, he has all the tickets and keeps reminding everyone of having their passports ready, he knows the gate number etc. takes the lead and gets them to the plane safely.

KNOX: has like an hour long "in case i die on the plane" video ready for chris, and they have a long phone call to say good bye (interrupted when charlie gets into a fight with a security guard - "c'mon dude, who's side are you on, the government?? like being a small little guy in power??" "Sir I'm going to repeat it one more time, I need you to take off that belt please."). if knox wasn't dating chris, he'd totally be looking at all the cute girls at the airport for like two seconds and trying to telepathically tell them they're cute (relatable, not gonna lie). Is so polite and charming to all the staff that it's on the verge of being funny, Pittsie teasing him about really being the perfect son in law. Honestly just a very chilled flyer, he has fun.

PITTS: has even more fun. has like an extra bag full of snacks that everyone makes fun of and then obviously wants some of later (pittsie gives them some because he's a bro, but they have to swear that he's the best and will get the front seat of every car they'll ride). TOTALLY has one of those inflatable neck cushions. the security guy comments on how tall he is mainly to make conversation, but pittsie is still proud of it (i think i mentioned my headcanons about pitts' relationships with his height? or did i never publish them?) and smiles for the next minute. reads the on-flight magazine. super excited at take off, he's like LET'S GOOOO while todd and charlie are on the verge of crying. freaks out about omg I forgot my passport (neil took it from him one second ago). fun facts about planes!!

MEEKS: the chillest. tries to calm todd down by telling him statistics and all that about the narrow chances of dying on a plane until charlie snaps and is like SHUT UP OH MY GOD ("'kay sir" 🫡😳). nerds out about planes with pittsie! has WAY too many tags on his bags in case they get lost. tells really bad airport puns that pittsie thinks are HILARIOUS. spends the wait by just sitting in a café and drinking way too much coffee. ONLY buys one teeny tiny little bag of m&ms and then eats like half of pittsies snacks. sits more comfortably than pitts because his legs are shorter and don't get cramped and DEFINITELY teases him about it like 'hmm i don't know what you mean, there's plenty of leg room!"

CAMERON: really excited for the flight, loves the whole experience. printed out everything twice just in case!! all his liquid items are in these little plastic bags that no one ever uses (or maybe y'all are just better than me). eats SO much beforehand to save money because the airport prices are ridiculous. runs to the gate like three times to check it hasn't been changed. has the craziest methods to keep his ears from popping.

[quitealotofsodapop]

I also mentioned this before in DMs, but I want to point something out.

Wukong gave Macaque a peach popsicle after the fight with Azure. At this point into their relationship, they're only jsut to the point of beginning to reconcile, not quite trusting each other yet, but the first thing Wukong does is give Macaque a peach flavored treat. Is this because he's just extending an olive branch? Did he somehow get his hands on more immortal peaches and made modern treats out of them to make it so they last longer for his friend who needs to regularly invest them to manage his chronic sickness? A little bit of both?

Ref.

Wukong 100% planted a divine peach tree or two on FFM from whatever pits he had left over.

I *love* the idea that when Wukong realised his bestie-turned-rival was alive again, he started thinking of ways to add the Peaches of Immortality to modern day snacks/sweets so Mac wouldn't have to wait potentially months or even centuries for a new dose.

In the lore; the special Life-Extending Peach trees in the Celestial Realm supposedly only fruit every 3,000 years (300 celestial years?), and two other variants that take 6,000 (makes you light as air and youthful) and 9,000 (super boosted first variant) years respectively. This is why so much of the harvest is converted into Peach Wine that the immortals can sup on throughout the orchard's fallow season. And why the Peach Banquet is so important to the Queen Mother. There *is* a possibility that there are other sections of the royal orchard that were planted at different times to make the waits a little shorter tho. Irl peach trees take about 3-4 years to grow to fruiting sizes, so the Immortal Peaches could take a few hundred years to sprout anything on Earth - unless someone crossbred them with local peach trees to shorten the amount of time needed.

Also! Hilarious thing I discovered while looking up peaches; the specific trees Wukong is assigned to as an Peach Orchard Attendant are called "Pan Tao/Coiled Peaches" aka "Doughnut/Saturn Peaches"! My fave variant! Ironically in chinese mythos "Saturn" is an earthquake star god - A Stone/Earth Monkey to look after the Earth God's Peaches.

Wukong seems like the sort of guy to plan way ahead when it comes to his fave fruit. Even as a little monkey I could see him eating a Peach of Immortality and deciding to plant the pit or graft a few sticks onto a FFM tree so those on earth could enjoy them. The grafting (basically Frankenstein-ing a divine peach fruiting branch onto a normal peach tree) in particular would produce a tree with hybrid fruit!

The hybrid fruit could act like a "lower dosage" for Macaque's condition, and still treat him albeit requiring more frequent consumption.

And with Wukong's special interest in medicine and herbalism; why stop there?

He could use the little islands around the archipelago for breeding new variants of peaches and other prunus fruits he can graft on to. He'd be more interested in the medicinal/healing properties than the "makes you live for hundreds of years" part, so he could accidentally make an entirely new breed of Peach that massively boosts physical health/treat rare illnesses, but also be safe for anyone not wanting the burden of living so long.

In Wukong's mind, if he could no longer treat Macaque, then he would help treat he entire world to the medicinal properties once exclusive to the Celestials.

Note: in the events of the AU, Heaven def finds out. Mostly because Wukong accidentally info-dumps during his appointments/check-ins with Lao Tzu + Nezha finds one of the FFM orchards during his bodyguard duty of the monkeys.

Xiwangmu is willing to let the peach theft be bygones IF... Wukong gives her a sapling or two for her personal orchard. The variants he's managed to cultivate are super tasty after all, and Lao Tzu wants one for his own medicinal research.

(We ended up calling them Vitality Peaches in the dms. XD)

Wukong wouldn't stop at making wine from his peach orchard; he'd make jams, desserts, canned peaches, dehydrated jellies, dried peach crisps, persipan/marizpan from the kernels, vitamin gummies, and ofc Popsicles from the juices and pulp. The Brotherhood could have eaten entire dishes made with the stuff and not realised it!

So when he confirms that Macaque is back home for good? He busting out the modern treats. He remembers Macaque not caring for the texture of ripe peaches, so a nice cooling popsicle is an easy thing to pack for the beach party without making it obvious that Wukong wants Mac to start having some again.

If Macaque learns that the peach and plum products he's been eating are in fact medicinal, Wukong can easily bluff and say the shadow monkey's immune system is 1300 years out of date and that he'd rather not have Macaque get super-sick from a modern sniffle.

Macaque secretly thinks the concern is sweet, but he really doesn't like being tricked into taking medicine. Just ask him next time okay Peaches?

Macaque will eventually figure out his condition from some digging around and his own summons to the Underworld to review his Draft Scroll. And he will be pissed that Wukong didn't tell him. Then he will hug him.

I ended up on a peach rabbit-hole while writing this as you can see.

[kedicatt]

Out of curiousity, if everyone in the party were dogs, what breeds do you think theyd be.

I think Marcille would be an Afghan Hound.

Oh-ho, that's a very great question!

The Touden siblings Laios and Falin would be Kishu Kens, that's a Japanese medium-sized (up to 55 cm) and typically white-furred breed used for hunting. That's how I see the dogboy Laios when I draw him!

Marcille Afgan Hounds are very majestic, definitely on the elf side, but to me it's a little too majestic to be Marcille (she's silly), get me? I think Marcille is not a full blood elf, which technically allows me to make her a mixed breed! She would be some sort of a Rough Collie OR Shetland Sheepdog mix, with the general vibe of these breeds, a size somewhere between the two (Rough Collies are way too big and Shelties are too small next to Kishus) and a lighter shade of fur (coming from the other part of the mix). Sadly souldn't find a photo of what I was looking for, so attaching a normal collie photo.

Chilchuck Toy Fox Terrier, the white and tan coat variant. Small (up to 29 cm), silly, big ears. Or an alternative version: Chiweenie (Chihuahua and Dachshund mix), they just have this Chilchuck energy.

Senshi I'm not actually sure… Some curly breed, maybe something like Puli! They're not too big (about 43 cm) and it would look good on him

Izutsumi Cat! Okay, well... Whippet! They're cute, cat-like (if the internet articles are true) and athletic. Also, they aren't too tall or short in comparison to the other breeds i picked (about 45 cm) AND they can come in black and white!

TY FOR ASKING I HAD SM FUN WITH THESE!!! Tried to give them a teeny bit more of the fluffy manga kobold vibe, except with their normal eyes instead of dog eyes

I wonder how other people see them!

[otterloreart]

What's in the Box?

PONY PONIES IN THE BOX

If you've been following along you may have seen that @queenofsquids printed the Takara-inspired BJD last week, both in a "mini" test form and a full-sized one. The full-sized one was supposed to be in yellow, but the pure yellow resin turned out to be a more orangey tone. She incredibly generously offered to send me the orange pony BJD

And then

She incredibly incredibly again generously sent not only the little test takara-bjd in grey BUT ALSO printed my original takara 3D model and sent that?! This is so unbelievably kind and generous. I was so surprised when I opened them all!

I'm not sure if you were all aware but I actually dont have a print of the original "Takara duplicate" doll. I did get the seapony PLA printed at the library (and it was my first ever 3D print!).

For my second print, I got the Dollightful bunny doll printed because I wanted to have experience with jointed dolls made by other people before I put more complex models out. So I figured it would be a while before I got the chance to see my newer models printed.

So like its actually so kind of @queenofsquids to send these but also it's really meaningful to me because I started the takara project where I became obsessed with them over a year ago. It's so amazing to see this thing that frankly I spent so much time fiddling with (even if there are some imperfections; more about that later) and hold it in my hands 🥹 I just keep looking at them and smiling

Also I immediately stole the clothes off my NaNaNa dolls and put them on mini-takara-bjd. They're a little short but fit pretty well!

Some design notes/planned adjustments under cut

-The neck and arm balls are definitely too blocky, this doesn't impact the movement but it is very visually obvious

-Queenofsquids mentioned this but the arm bean is too big and gets stuck in the arm sockets.

^^ These two issues are the most obvious upon brief inspection but are also easy to fix so I'm gonna put out a version ASAP adjusting the file. Call it the version Version 1 Hotfix. Both of these should be fixed in the existing models with a bit of sanding.

-The legs are like just a touch too blocky and I think you can also see lines in the head and chest areas ;-; I think this would depend on the printer, like it might be fine in PLA due to the lower resolution. This can also be buffed out but I can adjust it with some effort

-> I think the blockiness issues come down to the fact I was trying to make the models not too high resolution because then the file size is massive, can't import into cura properly, and even slows down *my* beefy computer. that's why it might take a bit for me to adjust all of these pieces, especially the legs because they have a lot of booleans that lag blender. basically i leaned in the other direction and went a bit too far with some pieces.

-legs are very thin at the bottom (ran into this issue with the dollightful bunny doll too and had to redo quite a bit actually to make it neat)

-The bottom of the heart on the knee in particular is an imperfect fit. I was getting errors in Cura because of some issues related to the knee so I had to remesh it, if you'll remember, so I will need to maybe go in and redo that one :/

-The line around the eyes could be a touch more pronounced, its supposed to be somewhat stylized eyelashes

-I need to play with the arms/legs more to figure out potential issues with the existing joints. But they do at least work and hold poses. I'm not sure if people would prefer anything more complicated like locking joints or if this level of poseability is acceptable

Other things I want to experiment with

-hand pose variation

-nose/mouth variations? it is actually kind of funny to imagine you could switch the expression out to a little :o face or a c: or :3 type of thing

-pegasus/unicorn/fluffy hoof variants like i had planned before

so much stuff :0 and I haven't even finished bunny doll, although at least her paint job is basically done. Once I string the big BJD I can also test posing.

[comicaurora]

what’s your opinion of the relatively rare trope/scene where the protagonist is ordered to be captured alive so they pull out a gun or a knife or something and hold themselves hostage?

also minor shout out to the otherwise terrible borderlands Telltale game that had a pretty funny bit where the protag does this and his two guards respond by also putting their guns to their *own* heads and instigating a tense reverse Mexican standoff where you have to intentionally fail a QTE in order to chicken out and let the guards just shoot themselves.

It's an interesting one! I think the reason it's so rare is it requires the protagonist to be the type of person who'd unhesitatingly threaten to do that (and be believed by the bad guys) AND wouldn't instead use that badassery to just fight their way out. A character with even slightly normal levels of self-preservation would probably rather take their chance to be able to escape later. It's a slightly delicate balance to strike, which means you either get it in stories that are a little bit internally wacky and can get away with the protagonist doing something deeply silly, like your borderlands example, or in cases that are played dead serious when the protagonist is a stone-cold badass AND the threat of capture is so uniquely horrible to them that they wouldn't hesitate, which is a rare character beat.

I've been recently rewatching Stargate Atlantis, and they actually did a minor variant on that trope in the episode "Sateda" - the protagonists had been captured by some vengeful bad guys who wanted to turn one of them over to the Wraith as punishment for him accidentally leading the Wraith to their settlement years before while they were hunting him, on the assumption that if they turn him over the Wraith will appreciate the gesture and spare them all, and he responds by immediately holding himself at knifepoint and demanding they let his friends go first. It's a notably more-unhinged-than-usual move for the character in question, and an indicator of how bad he thinks the situation is.

An easier-to-execute variant is probably the one where the protagonist's ally immediately takes them hostage when they hear they need to be captured alive, because that can run the spectrum anywhere from "this ally is morally dubious and may legitimately be ok with making good on that threat" to "the ally is the protagonist's best friend and they're just having a great time hamming it up together to scare off the bad guys"

[cringefaecompilation]

okay since i have felt i've been really negative i am going to be positive and talk about something near and dear to my heart. fanart redesigns!

this design of braius by @phi-guy is delightful, including the mustache variant. i'm not a big fan of him as a character, but this is a great compromise with the holstein patterns on his humanoid face that previously left a few furries disappointed.

fcg is a very tough character to stylize, given the whole... aeormaton of it all and that they're so intricately designed that any attempts to move any part of their body around tend to make things they do in-game not make sense. the blades of grass emblem being revealed as bloody fingerstreaks, for one. but this design by hugo cardenas strikes a good balance between canon and fanon where you don't have to sacrifice accuracy for imagination or vice versa

imogen sadly doesn't receive a lot of redesigns in fandom and even got hate (?!) for people putting glasses on her. but for the people that do a little more than that, i would have to give my favorite design to @rokiie! it's subtle, but i love that she's musclechubby and mixed, and her curly hair and ponytail is adorable. @jadequarze also has a nice looking mog, though theirs is more angular than bulky.

ashton is another character hard to redesign... because his original design is so damned complex it feels like a downgrade to change it. so not a lot of people do and focus more on his outfit and body type. so that's why these two, by @magscherer and @ladysantos are so great! little tweaks that make him fat or simplify him are so nice

@lyadrielle has the most complex chet redesign i've ever seen. i love how in-depth it is, and even if full head of hair chet isn't canon, i still adore the fluffiness of it. also quick shout out to @colealexart giving chetney a mustache because i love it.

conversely from her girlfriend, people love to redesign laudna, if not just to pump up her creepy factor over her "bizzarely beautiful" factor. @astoriacolumnstaircase and @paragonraptors do this in a fun-scary way! i love how spindly they make her, like a praying mantis. for a more scary-scary way, @cpprcoyote's laudnas are stunningly creepy and lovely. @galacticjonah's take on her is also very cute with her billowing fabrics surrounding her like a security blanket. good stuff!

being the mixed orym truther guy, naturally i love art that makes him a man of color, and this art by @therosecleric hits the mark for how i see him in my head. i love his curls, his jaw, and his strong nose, and it's always good to give him muscles in a way that don't make him look like a tween who powerlifts. the previously mentioned @magscherer's art of him is a bit more hobbit-y but still scratches the same itch. love me a brown eyed orym. @jennydolfen also gets points for her terrific hobbit/halfling proportions

@jam-etc's critical role redesigns might not be for everyone, but i love 'em all. dorian here looks so friendly and seeing his native culture depicted so overtly in his outfit is awesome! no whitewashed dorians allowed. on the same token, here's a repeat of @therosecleric's dorian art because it also is great to see him with curly hair and a wide nose. this design by @caitmayart with dark cloudy speckles on his body is incredibly nice as well.

and of goddamn course fearne gets the most art. it's fearne! there are so many good pieces of her i could not choose one. i love ones that play up her goat-y nature, like @willowbirds, @rainbow-roll-art, and @phi-guy again. and i love fat fearnes, like these two by @marmadelin and @countslimeula. this one by @maluspumilaa is so beautiful, making her a little more fey and extremely animalistic. all fearnes is good fearnes

[lonelystczennie]

Dating San Headcanons

San x Plus Size Reader

Summary: Headcanons for boyfriend San with a plus size S/o

Warnings: suggestive, mentions of body insecurities,

A/N: Thanks to @bethanysnow for this request! I hope you like it! I had so much fun writing this, I wanna make lists for the rest of the members(and for Skz as well, bc the brainrot is so real rn)!

Masterlist

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

He is like the perfect definition of "boyfriend material".

Like, he’s such a gentleman, always treating you with the utmost much care and gentleness as if you are made out of glass.

He’s soo shy when you first get together, but he quickly becomes a giant teddy bear once you get more comfortable with each other, cuddling/clinging to you every chance he gets. He is always attached to you in some shape or form, hugging you from behind and following you around the house as you’re trying to get things done.

Lowkey little spoon vibes, but with those long ass limbs, it takes a bit of maneuvering for him to fit. He loves when you hold him tho, he feels so safe and comforted in your arms.

He loves kissing you, stealing little pecks every chance he can. When you have more time though, he loves leaving slow, teasing kisses along your lips and face that make you impatient and lean in for more.

Not quite the best cook, but he still tries anyway, bc he likes doing things for you.

Loves buying you little gifts to surprise you with. It could be anything, clothes, jewelry, plushies, or just your favorite drink. If it makes you smile, he’s buying it.

He is just so soft and nurturing, always ready and willing to listen to your problems and worries and offer advice where he can. He wants you to know that he’s always there for you and that you can rely on him.

Doesn’t quite understand when you first explain your body insecurities to him, bc he thinks you’re absolutely gorgeous, but he does his best to reassure you and make sure that you feel as comfortable around him as possible.

Does little things like making sure that there are hoodies and clothes in his closet that fit you, but he never says anything about it.

Makes a point to check in with you extra on days when he knows you’re not feeling great about yourself, and will drop everything to be with you if you need him.

He won’t tolerate you talking/treating yourself badly though. He’s lowkey really protective over you and will not tolerate anyone or anything making you feel uncomfortable or bad about yourself, and that includes your own mind.

Words of affirmation are a major love language for him, so he basically becomes your personal hype man. He’s always calling you some variant of “pretty girl/boy/baby”, beautiful, or gorgeous.

He understands tho that it takes a lot more than just kisses and sweet words to get over personal body issues, but that doesn’t stop him from making the effort to remind you of how beautiful he thinks you are, inside and out.

He’s very big on body worship in bed, kissing and caressing every inch of you that he can reach, whispering praises into your skin. He loves the way you trust him enough to fully let go and fall apart under his touch.

He is an ass man through and through, argue with the wall. Like, he's absolutely obsessed with your ass and thighs. They're just so lush and soft and so perfect for him to squeeze and knead in his hands, he can't get enough of them.

His favorite place to be in the whole world is between your thighs, whether you’re just innocently cuddling or doing other, less innocent things😏.

Gets v sulky and pouty when you don’t pay attention to him, even if it’s just for a few minutes. He always tries his best to give you his full attention whenever you’re together, making a point to even put his phone on do not disturb sometimes, and he expects the same from you.

Overall, he’s just a super sweet and reassuring partner, and I love him v much. Imma go cry now, bye✌

[splatsvilles-fashionista]

Well, we got a new trailer, so you know we've got to do a fashion check-in as well!

And let's not start at the beginning, but instead with the new feature, Adjusting your gear!

Certain items can have the way they're worn changed, which is also indicated with a little icon in the equipment menu. Something that is pretty easy to miss is that it's not just the way you wear your cap, but also shirt size!

This is a very cool addition, in particular since I've never really cared for the way a lot of T-shirts cling to your body the way they do, and I think it'll breathe a lot of life into all of the graphic T-shirts in the game.

With all the backwards caps and large shirts, it was a bit harder than usual to spot brand-new gear, but nevertheless there was still plenty to be had.

This octoling is wearing a new red variant of the Moto Boots.

Everything these two are wearing I believe to be brand new. I am not so certain about the inkling's shirt, but that helmet is a new variant of the Home-Team Catcher.

This inkling has a new cycling cap with a headlamp attached, alongside a new version of the Barazushi Wrap with inverted colors and a new green model of the Arctic Duck Boots.

This octoling is wearing a new, knitted, bucket hat.

It's a bit of a blink-and-you'll-miss-it type shot, but this octoling has what looks to me like a mesh shirt being worn over an Enperry T-shirt (with a octopus having been added to the brand logo?)

That said, that was actually all of the brand-new stuff I could spot in this trailer? Either there's more they didn't show, or they're focusing on old stuff to show off the new gear adjustment feature.

But we do have some new Slopsuits! One with a camouflage pattern, and one that looks to me like it's inspired by the colors and pattern of Koi.

And finally, just an actual-ass clown suit. For when you're clowning on company time.