#this is what I mean by not really a redesign cause I want their bug like appearance still

[rainbowpufflez]

Thinking about possibly “redesigning” Lysandre’s bugs in my style

[snarky-art]

I swear I dont wanna be mean but why does everyone keep making stella fat. Why is it that the most attractive character, whom everyone finds beautiful inside the show, is the one who is always turned fat. Like... No one would find her attractive if her canon design was like that. I promise im not being mean but I feel like the artists are always projecting themselves onto Stella and wanting to be loved like she is, cause usually the ones making her fat are fat too, like I saw your selfies and you're a bit curvy. I promise im not being mean im just curious.

For starters, send me more fat Stella’s if you can I haven’t seen that many made and would love to see more varied takes on her appearances in redesigns.

Secondly, I made her fat because I think it’s nice to have the character that’s canonically considered to be the most beautiful girl in all of magix, a fashion icon in the magical dimension, a very celebrated trendsetter, be something other than the stereotypical concept of socially acceptable fashion tropes. She isn’t an hourglass, she has cellulite and stretch marks, she’s super pear shaped, and that can be and should be considered something to be normal, since they are, and shouldn’t be seen as things that need to be hidden. Having that put on a loud and proud fashion girly seems good imo and it can only really contribute to good stuff for body image stuff and representation. I did it so people like you could reconsider that beauty is something that comes in multiple forms and shouldn’t have to fit one type of standard. If we wanna get super technical too those standards also very from culture to culture and I image that’s extended even further in Winx club.

The girls are all aliens from different worlds. There’s bug people. There’s a lady in the miss magix episode that has tentacle hair, a blue body, and tentacle hands and feet. I highly doubt beauty standards in canon would be the same as what you’re saying, ie that no one would consider her beautiful. As if people who look like her irl also would inherently be considered not beautiful too. I know lots of people who have people that think they’re the hottest thing ever and they have all sorts of different body types and traits. Lets just call it realism lol

I’m not really projecting any of my physical stuff on her also, outside of I guess stretch marks and cellulite?? But I put those on other characters too so I don’t really think that holds up. I actually put my old body type on Flora since she’s my favorite, but now I’m way more midsized, like a slightly thinner Bloom from my stuff (love this unit of measurement gonna start using the gorls as a reference point for my appearance going forward lol). I’ve always had the “socially acceptable” fat type of body, ie hourglass with even proportions and a super snatched waist. I just think it’s tired and trite to constantly reenforce the idea that “the hot fashion one” needs to be tall and thin all the time, and if she is made fatter, that she needs to look like I did ie not much of a tummy with super equal proportions, big boobs, and a big ass.

Kinda related to that also, I made a post about a lot of character design “rules” too that I think are kinda outdated and annoying, at least to me, since I’ve seen them a million times. We all have. So I decided to do something different that I think would be good for normalizing traits outside of what we consider typically acceptable for that kind of character.

I’m already very loved also and don’t need to project anything on Stella lmaooo

I got multiple partners, great friends, do modeling, and am slaying with my own fashion and appearance stuff outside of that too. That’s all independent of whatever I’m doing with her physical body type when I draw her.

Gonna level with you also, you going “I’m not trying to be mean” doesn’t erase how weird this ask is. Sounds like you have your own gripes that you need to work through. Like, if you consider those traits on Stella ugly, that means you definitely have some internalized hatred for fatness, skin blemishes, scarring, and other peoples’ general appearances if they don’t fit some specific molds that aren’t realistic for the majority of people. Even if it is just genuine curiosity, being aware of this stuff going forwards and reevaluating how you view beauty standards and bodies in general would do you a great benefit imo.

Thanks for going through my old selfies tho it was pretty weird of you but at least make sure to leave a like on them. I looked hot when I was fatter and I look hot now too sharing this with the world is the least I can do💕✨💕✨

[scotch-tapee]

PLEASEEEE SHOW US YOUR OC DON'T BE SHY!!!^!;@;@,@(

AHH!! JUMPSCARE!! ermm UHHHH HIIIIIIIII SILLY!!! here's the silly doodles of them.. ( im so sorry my post are really messy and i yap a whole lot )

also erm @sakura-gyarugall and @vuomelo!! since you wanted to see them:3 (also im still working on my design for callie cause i do not like her current one at the moment, its bugging me so much. So i might redesign her outfit AGAIN) WARNING YAPPING UNDERNEATH!! (im so sorry if its really long i just add little stuff that i forget in parenthesis, im now rereading this and oh my god. ITS LONG. CHAT ITS LONG IM SO SOSRRY)

The Kanawha Clan. the Kanawha clan is formed from an Uchiha descendant and a Hyuga descendant. ( i have not thought about the clans special ability.. and it's been 2 years, my last idea was WAY TOO OVERPOWERERD AND I DONT WANT THAT!! ) And yes that would mean that some of the Kanawha members have Uchiha blood! but again yknow genetics, it wears off so it isnt as strong as before yknow? anyways! The Kanawha clan specializes in swordsman ship, most specifically the Main Family of the clan because of tradition n stuff (i cant explain properly and my vocabulary isnt that wide) Also!!! The children of the main family are to be homeschooled due to a tradition of the main family, but they're learning the same topics and lessonss they're supposed to learn in the Ninja Academy. They are also privately trained by their guardian, or a trusted kanawha member to teach them how to wield a katana!:3 When they're a genin, they get their own katana. What about 3 person teams? Once and everywhile, if a kid of the main family passes the entrance exam there will be one team that will have 4 people. relationships with the Hyuga and the Uchiha clan; now remember that I said the descendant is a hyuga and an uchiha? That would mean that uh early kanawhas had one or the other! But as time passes by, the kanawha clan cut ties with the Uchiha but is still friends with the hyuga clan. Like i said earlier, i do nawt have an idea for the clans special ability but i might make it genjutsu or something sword related!! -- OC YAPPINGS!! (im so sorry this post is VERY LONG also im sorry if the canon characters are like ooc it's been 2 years since i've left the fandom and i've recently came back) Callie Kanawha - she's the oldest of the main family. When she was younger, she had a high ego, mostly to just satisfy herself but whatever. She's loud, and normally high tempered (she can control it now though. But she WILL yell at you for being so stupid and will apologize later with your favorite food). She would often sneak into the academy to see what it was like because she was homeschooled, Her first interaction in the academy was with Itachi. And I would imagine it would go like this. C: " Oh it's you. " I: " ?? What do you mean ' it's you ' ? " C: " eh whatever. I've seen you around " I: " ..okay " C: " ... you look like a stick " -grins before leaving- I: ???? And it's so stupid, and she's like " what the hell was that interaction??? Why was that my first reaction.. ". But anyways, she secretly sneaks in the academy multiple times. She gets caught often but she keeps finding new ways to go in and her Father is sooo done with her. Telling her to stop or she'll be grounded. And of course she doesn't listen!! After a few times of sneaking into the academy she makes a few new friends and she has talked to itachi a few times, honestly just telling him hes a stick he's just annoyed.

(I may not be able to continue her lore because I was planning on telling you guys her entire story but whatever.. but you can ask me in my inbox about more!!) Camori Kanawha, - he's the youngest of the Main Family. When he was younger he was mostly quiet, but not like hinata-shy quiet. Just quiet, He wasn't like his older sister, he would follow the rules but he looked up to her, he thought she was the strongest person ever aside from his father.

Uhhh ASK MORE ABOUT THEM IN MY IMNOX BECAUSE I BELIEVE THIS IS TOO LONG!! UHH TEAH BUT THANKIES FOR ASKIES GUYS:3

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I still get a bit lost in my new gig — at WillowTree — as a React Native/TypeScript dev. The syntax is making more sense and getting easier to follow, but, I do have a difficult time understanding the errors produced by yarn ts:check. It’s the same each time I learn a new language.

I’m also developing an interest in Rust. That’ll have to be a part time interest for a long time I suppose. I have more important business to attend to. 😃

Onward!

Filipe Espósito • 9to5Mac

Shareshot is an iOS app that transforms how you share iPhone and iPad screenshots

A friend of mine, Marc Palmer, is part of the duo who created Shareshot! It is, as always, absolutely beautiful, full featured, and stable.

If I’m not too lazy moving forward I should use it to make screenshots for Stream blog posts and the like.

Congratulations, Marc! 🥳

Andrew Carter • WillowTree Blog

Mobile app interactivity, multimodal voice technology, and AI are all converging with Apple Intelligence — Apple’s new artificial intelligence feature set announced at this year’s WWDC, coming soon with iOS 18 (maybe in October). And the secret sauce powering those awesome interactions is something called App Intents.

Andrew is pretty legendary in the halls of WillowTree. So damned smart and witty, and he plays a mean fiddle and banjo.

Anywho, go give his piece on App Intents a gander, you might learn a thing or two.

Kelly Crandall • Racer

Austin Dillon has been stripped of the NASCAR Cup Series playoff eligibility that came with his victory at Richmond Raceway.

Austin Dillion looked great all night. I don’t recall how many laps he lead but it was a lot. He was two laps short of victory when a late caution came out.

On the restart he was beat off the line by Joey Lagano and fell into second place.

I wanted to see Mr. Dillion win so badly. He hasn’t had a win in a couple years and Richard Childress Racing needed one but the way he did it was not great.

He kept the win but was stripped of his points and playoff berth. They should’ve disqualified him and given the win to Legano, if I’m being honest about my feelings.

Scharon Harding • Ars Technica

Sonos is laying off about 100 people, the company confirmed on Wednesday. The news comes as Sonos is expecting to spend $20 to $30 million in the short term to repair the damage from its poorly received app update.

It’s incredible how much an app redesign can make or break an application or company.

Another critically acclaimed podcasting app called Overcast was also redesigned and released recently. It too has had a very difficult time with its subscribers. Lots of one star reviews and hate.

Rewrites can kill companies. Don’t do it. Evolve your code over time. Think of it as a Ship of Theseus.

Tasha Robinson • Polygon

Ryan Reynolds had very specific tech (and humor) requirements for Wolverine’s corpse

I still haven’t see the new Deadpool but I really want to. Deadpool’s obsession with Wolverine is funny as heck and I’m here for it. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are hysterical.

Juan José López Jaimez and Meador Inge • Google Bug Hunters

In a throwback to the past, this blog post takes us on a journey back to a time when eBPF was a focal point in the realm of kernel security research. In this update, we recount the discovery of CVE-2023-2163, a vulnerability within the eBPF verifier, what our root-cause analysis process looked like, and what we did to fix the issue.

Fresh off the heels of the Crowdstrike fiasco we get a story of how Google engineers found vulnerabilities in a Linux technology that allows for similar extensions to the OS. Similar in desired outcome, not in implementation.

Matthias Endler

Quite a few websites are unusable by now because they got “optimized for Chrome.” Microsoft Teams, for example, and the list is long. These websites fail for no good reason.

Chrome has definitely become the new Internet Explorer in a way. Devs have become lazy and don’t code for the open web, they’re coding against a specific browser. Not good. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Stan Alcorn • Rest of World

How Spotify started — and killed — Latin America’s podcast boom

What Spotify has done is not podcasting if it doesn’t allow any podcast player to subscribe to a feed. That’s part of what makes a podcast a podcast. What they’ve done is something that needs a new name.

Lately I’ve heard some podcasts announce ad free versions available on Apple Podcasts, which is also just as bad as Spotify’s locked up audio thing.

Please, don’t do this, keep your podcast a podcast and find a better way to create subscriptions. Others have done it. You can too.

Patreon

Apple is requiring that Patreon switch to their iOS in-app purchase system starting this November, or risk being removed from the App Store. Here’s what’s coming, and what you can do about it.

My opinion on this is simple.

If they really believe in creators Patreon should abandon their iOS App in favor of a really great mobile experience on their website.

Liam Proven • The Register

Before WordPerfect, the most popular work processor was WordStar. Now, the last ever DOS version has been bundled and set free by one of its biggest fans.

It’s not surprising how many fans of WordStar exist. Many of them are novelists and columnists. The best of the best writers in the world. Of course they’re most likely of a certain ventage, if you know what I mean? 😂

I started as a BASIC programmer and used WordStar as my editor until I discovered Brief. True story.

David Edwards • Raw Story

Judge Chutkan faces call to seize Trump’s passport after threat to flee to Venezuela

Can Judge Chutkan do the opposite and encourage Trump to move to Venezuela, now? That would solve a lot of problems with the upcoming election and help preserve democracy.

It would be a great service to the country. 🇺🇸

Rex Huppke • USA TODAY

Trump rambles, slurs his way through Elon Musk interview. It was an unmitigated disaster.

I listened to it for a few minutes and the Orange Man sounded like Sylvester the cat!

Sufferin’ Suckatash! 😋

[avlillustrations]

Last but not least here's my redesign of Yandere-Chan herself! (quick note: Maybe It's just the way the character artist draws faces but doesn't Ayano and Taro look like they could be siblings?) So anyway, For now I tried not to stray too far away from the store bought model because let's face it, her character model is no longer just a placeholder and Yandere-dev is most likely going to continue using it throughout production of this game even though it's not an original design and he really should at least let the character artist make an original design for her. Sigh. Anyway for the redesign, besides changing the uniform to the one I designed, I've altered her ponytail slightly and added a ribbon into her hair. I also changed her eye color from that boring black color (also probably one of the reasons she looks like she could be related to Taro) to a reddish brown color. I thought it would be a fun little detail if the more the player eliminated rivals via violent means that her eyes would become more and more red as the game goes on.

But like Taro, the problems with Ayano isn't really her design but her personality. Or lack thereof. But unlike Senpai whose lack of personality comes from minimal character development. Ayano's not really given a chance to shine because another character is the one driving the narrative: Info-chan. Think about it. While we as players may play as Ayano throughout the game it's Info-chan who moves the plot forward. In fact the game wouldn't even happen if Info-chan hadn't of set it in motion. Which doesn't make sense to me? I thought Ayano was the main character not  Info-chan. Of course, part of this is that Yandere-dev keeps taking game-play features and idea's from that Hitman game instead of trying to be creative and original. I don't think Info-chan belongs in this game. She's a detriment to gameplay(meaning she's too op) and to Ayano's character in general. You probably could make her work in the narrative if she was more like an actual student and not some omnipresent figure. Like, what if she was Ayano's childhood friend? No, seriously I have an idea for this. It's not what I'm actually gonna go for in a rewrite of the game I'm currently working on but I really want to get this idea out of my head.

So Ayano is hollow and emotionless and she's probably been taught from an early age to hide all this. She's been explicitly told the importance of "fitting in" with society and to make herself seem as normal as possible. So when she first goes to school her mother encourages making friends because that's what "normal" kids do. She's not very good at it at first, but luckily the other kids haven't really built up their own social skills and don't notice. Except for one: Info-chan(and I'm tired of calling her that. I'll be calling her Ai from now on.) Ai sees right through Ayano but still befriends her. Ai doesn't really care that Ayano isn't "normal" and so Ayano has someone she can be herself around and still blend in well enough. Their friendship carries all the way to high school when Ayano meets Taro for the first time and finally starts to feel something. She literally can't stop talking about him and Ai listens to her as she gushes and raves about a boy she really doesn't know too well. But Ai is just happy her friend is happy. And this could be how Ayano finds out about Osana. Like, maybe during weekends and school vacations Ayano and Ai meet up at say, a local café or something. Maybe Ai is the who insists on this as it's what "normal" friends do. Anyway the girls are sitting at their favorite table drinking their tea, or coffee, or whatever. Ayano's gushing about Senpai that she had been stalking all day and Ai just blurts out, "I heard that Osana girls got a crush on him too. Rumor has it she's gonna ask him out on a Friday. You know like that stupid rumor."

That's it. No ulterior motives, she doesn't care about Osana, or have some vendetta against her. Just a blunt statement of a rumor she heard. Ai had no idea of how Ayano would take that statement. No clue of what she's now caused to happen. Ayano insists she help her put a stop to Osana's confession and Ai just goes Ok (like in the Saitama meme). When it comes to gameplay Ai is just a normal student. Neutral school reputation, goes to all her classes, most likely has the top grades in school, is probably harassed by the smart kid clubs that are trying to get her to join but she's not interested at all. But she does like helping Ayano. She'll do things like copy the answer sheet so Ayano can frame Osana for cheating, and hacking the school system, and editing footage. No more of that panty-shot crap or bugging the school, no schemes or item drops. Just a friend helping Ayano because she cares about her. Maybe has a bit of a crush? Maybe she really loves Ayano but as long as she's happy Ai is willing to do whatever it takes even if it means giving Ayano to someone else. Sorry this devolved into making Info-chan a better character than Ayano. But I really do believe Ayano could be a much better Character if she's the one to set things in motion herself and not just because someone else told her to. Which is kinda what Info-chan does in this game. Anyway tell me what you think and a I guess keep a lookout for the rewrite I'm working on?

[hamstermastersamster]

You know, I’ve been through a lot of site redesigns in my time and they don’t really get my blood boiling like they did when I was a teenager. I could totally deal with the new ‘aesthetic’ of DeviantArt if they hadn’t so thoroughly fucked up image viewing functionality. Because that is the entire purpose of the site.

I mean, I filed the whole image scaling thing (instead of letting artists display art at the intended max size) as a bug report but I suspect it is a ‘feature’. So good luck for any artists trying to post tall images in the meantime :\ Enjoy getting a face full of blurry double-scaled art that requires horizontal scrolling for some reason.

You wanna look at a pic at full size and flick up and down between the artist description/comments? Tough shit, can’t do that anymore. You see a nice-looking thumbnail, click on it to go to ‘max size’ like before (it is not max size) and it opens in like a pop-up frame and locks you out of scrolling so you have to click back out of the image to go look at the artist description/comments. ‘Cause extra clicks and scrolls to do something simple is . . . great web design? I guess? (It’s not).

I can’t sort my galleries by date added anymore, which I was doing for my comic galleries. Why just . . . remove a whole-ass feature?

I can’t configure the landing page to show me categories of art that I want to see, so instead my ‘Recommended for You’ landing page shows me Transformers fanart and I don’t even . . . I’ve never even clicked on Transformers art before. Is this just ‘cause I like TMNT? TMNT and Transformers are totally the same thing? I fucking fucking hate algorithms that try to tell me what I like with a fucking vengeance.

Anyway fuck you deviantart :’)

When are we gonna get a decent art/writing community site again? Is bending the purpose of generic social media sites for posting creative works until the owners ban everything besides flowers and cupcakes ‘for the children’ really our only option in this internet era? There doesn’t seem to be anything filling this giant void in the market right now.

[djsherriff]

Here’s redesigns of the other 3 new warriors , more in depth comments under cut 

B-negative is now Blood Saint!

When he was born ,instead of being a bundle of life ready to take on the world, he suffered from extreme blood due to complications from the labour, meaning he had to have a blood transfusion.

Though unaware at the time, doctors actually used the blood of a vampire to save his life, causing him to become a living vampire of sorts. (So yes he can still age)

It’s his life long mission to learn who his mysterious blood donor is and master his dark powers, but it would be much easier his parent stopped bugging him about him wearing 4 layers of leather in the summer and his loud music. “augh , my parents are the REAL blood suckers around here”

You’re probably curious why he would go by “blood saint” , well besides sounding cool, it’s also a bit of irony for him.

See , unlike other vampires Saint can actually heal people when he bites them rather than turn them, which also works cause he actually can’t stand the taste of human blood (no matter how much he loves to push the brooding vampire aesthetic), he eats foods like any other kid his age, though his diet consists of more meat than the average teenager.

Besides that , he has the standard vampire traits like turning into a bat, weak in sunlight , can’t stand garlic , you know like the classics!

Artist comment:

Since Marvel has a bunch of other vampires they rarely use, I rewrote his backstory a bit so he wasn’t tied to a well known superhero , as well as have a chance to have more original vampire characters in the marvel universe.

The only thing I really pushed design wise was tone down the red/pink and use it more sparingly throughout to make it pop more (hence his hair colour being changed), as well as add a few more punk aesthetics to it such as spikes.

I imagined that his your standard punk teen who trying way too hard to rebel against everyone and everything besides what he personally likes, you know the “its not a PHASE mom” kinda teenager. I thought it be hilarious if besides the vampire thing he has going , his got the most normal home life outta everyone on the team and thus the most “boring”. Yes he totally makes up ridiculously tragic backstories for himself when meeting strangers , his a complete drama queen and is definitely a theatre kid.

Speaking of hilarious, I also made him the team’s medic with his healing bite, cause I also thought that was funny and also a great opportunity for both good comedy and some good character development for him.

His greatest character flaw is his tendency to overdramatise EVERYTHING and he needs to learn that sometimes , life is that simple and that’s not a bad thing.

Trailblazer is now Void Caster

Void Caster is a young teeenager from a family who regularly travels through the universe to explore the wonders and to gain a living , though her mother decided she needed to stop having her head up in the stars so much and return to Earth- literally.

She comes from a long line of space witches : witches ...... but in space! The deeper history is that her ancestors were witches who came into contact with aliens and decided to use their magic to explore beyond the world of earth , which lead to a brand of magic that’s more “sci-fi “ aesthetic than its earth counterpart.

Thanks to a life full of space adventures, Void Caster is what most people would describe as “quirky” as she very new to a lot of concepts on earth , like selfies! She always has a smile on her face and a sparkle in her eyes, though those sparkles can be seem almost forced sometimes. But she generally curious to the world around her and always open to learning new concepts!

You wouldn’t think it , but Void Caster’s seemingly mundane mother has a lot more in common with her daughter than either of the two release, though what remains a mystery.

Void Caster main ability is to create worm holes to transport to one place to the other, which is the main form of transportation for the whole team, she is also capable of making items shrink and grow whatever size she wants and effect gravity of those said items. The limits of her powers though is that she can only effect the size of an object as long as she can see it without straining (so she can’t turn people into the size of an atom or make someone be big enough to sit on the sun) she also struggles to change her own size (she’s very self conscious of it) her portal powers also have a similar size limit (she can’t make a planet size portal but making one a size of a tank would be possible, but straining for her)

Artist comments:

So with Trailblazer’s redesign I could’ve went with one of two options:

Make her a Native American and very likely make her a stereotype due to my lack of knowledge on the culture.

Or

An obvious Dora the Explorer knock off

I went with making her an obvious Dora the Explorer knock off , with a bit of a sci- fi twist to her. Her hair being a short bob is an obvious nod to Dora, as well as sticking with a pink and purple colour scheme which was also a way of ditching the all neon palette she originally had.

While she still has pockets , I completely ditched the bag all together and instead made it so she had space themed powers instead. I went with the weird idea of “witches but from space” since I didn’t want her to be a mutant as there were already 3 mutants on my redesign of the team, but adding onto the weirdness I also made it so her style was more “quirky” in comparison to her teammates , as well as stand out as the leader of her team.

I like to think that she’s a very outgoing girl but doesn’t grasp social ques all that well and usually ends up feeling like an annoyance to people when she tries to connect with others, though she also struggles with her more negative feelings and tries bottling them down to avoid bothering people , only for those feelings to explode at the most inconvenient time.

So naturally her biggest character flaw would be that she tries too hard to please people and fit in and that she’ll have to learn that she can find friends without sacrificing her own quirks, and that expression negative emotions isn’t a burden to anyone.

Screen time is the worst so I made him Brain scan

With the others I made in depth backstories and such for them as well as some notes on their rewritten character.

But here I didn’t, I honestly hate screen time , his the worst character outta everybody if you ask me and the first I would throw off a cliff if given the chance.

This is less of a redesign and just me making up a straight up oc here cause what the hell is “internet gas”???

Soooo uh, Screen time is now brain scan.

His an autistic kid who spends most of his time online cause his power of telepathy makes it extremely difficult to be around people. He learns to control his peers and socialise more

I’m sorry , that’s literally all I could do here.

(If I do turn these redesigns into my own ocs, I would 110% make “him” a “she” ;) )

[mobius-prime]

134. Sonic the Hedgehog #75

I Am the Eggman!

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Frank Gagliardo

We have a very important question to address here at the beginning of this story. Apparently, all this time, it wasn't Robotnik who was activating the satellites and tormenting the Freedom Fighters in secret. If that's the case… who was it, then?

So! Do you remember, aaalllllll the way back during StH#19, when I said that that issue would introduce a very important character, someone who would shape the course of the entire comic? Didja forget about that? 'Cause I sure didn't! Here he is, ladies, gents, and enbies - Robo-Robotnik, AKA the alternate, roboticized version of Robotnik from another zone! Don't worry if you don't remember - he gives us a nice rundown of exactly how this all came to be, just for those of us who may have forgotten him between then and now. But first, just to make sure no one escapes or attacks before his villainous monologue is over, he encases the Freedom Fighters inside an egg-shaped energy field, which knocks Bunnie out when she tries to punch her way out.

So here's how it went down. Way back when Robo-Robotnik was taken back to his own zone after his interdimensional defeat, his consciousness was stranded aboard a space station in orbit of his own version of Mobius. Then, as chronicled in StH#22, Robotnik Prime ended up aboard the same station when he was thrown out of his own dimension, and gave Robo-Robotnik just the pep talk he needed to get back to hunting down his enemies and taking over the world. However, what we didn't know until now is that at the moment Robo-Robotnik sent Robotnik Prime back to his own world, he tapped into his memories, learning of the scattering of the Giant Borg suit's pieces across all dimensions. Yep, that makes him the mastermind behind the Crossover Chaos plot as well!

I just have to stop everything for a moment to go over what Robo-Robotnik said up there again. He straight up nuked Mobotropolis and killed everyone within. If you'll remember in StH#22, the Sonic and Sally of his zone had already grown up, gotten married and had two kids at this point. Their world followed basically the same general path laid out in the Sonic in Your Face! special - everyone had grown up, the world was idyllic, Robotnik was thought to be long defeated, new families had been born and peace reigned. They had absolutely no idea that they weren't safe. That one day, without warning, a goddamn nuke would drop onto their beautiful city, killing everyone within. Sonic, Sally, their two kids, and everyone else they ever knew - dead. Vaporized. That is ridiculously dark.

So, as we can see, this version of Robotnik is even more terrifyingly evil than the previous one. And apparently, his whole extended gambit with the satellites and random disasters was implemented not just to test the capabilities of this world's Sonic and friends, but also, to finally lure them out of the city for the culmination of his plan…

Okay, Nate, why the hell didn't you use your badass laser-eyeglasses to fight back against the thugs who captured you before? He and Amy rush to the palace, where Geoffrey is informing King Max about the resurgence of the swatbots. The king has the cryo-tube containing the queen carried out of the palace to safety, and orders that everyone within Mobotropolis be evacuated to Knothole. However, before they can get much further, Robo-Robotnik contacts them from a screen in the med-lab, mocking the king and informing him of his daughter's current captivity aboard his space station. The king immediately takes a knee and offers himself in exchange for the safety of everyone on the station, which is quite a notable gesture considering how traumatized his stay in the Zone of Silence had left him, but Robo-Robotnik simply laughs at him as at that moment more swatbots - or shadow-bots, as he calls them - burst into the room demanding their surrender for roboticization.

The more we see of Elias, the more I like him. Back up in the station, Sonic insists that they have to get free to help the Robians, but Robo-Robotnik only mocks him some more, and brings forward none other than Uncle Chuck, Muttski, and Sonic's mom and dad to enrage him further. Sonic begins flinging himself against the energy field trapping them, which only injures him every time he does it, despite Sally begging him to stop.

Within the city, Geoffrey and the other members of the Secret Service focus on rescuing civilians from the shadow-bots' attack. Valdez stays behind to cover their retreat as they rescue Rosie and the children she's looking after, and despite Geoffrey trying to go back for him, Hershey insists that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one," drawing a pretty bizarre parallel between her and Mr. Spock. Up in the station, the energy field trapping the Freedom Fighters suddenly disappears, and they turn around in shock to see who released them…

Snively insists that he needs them to be able to escape this station, and Sally agrees to bring him along. She uses Nicole to order their space shuttle to dock with the station (seems weird that that wasn't their plan from the beginning, rather than exiting the shuttle and entering the station through a damn trash chute) before setting an explosive charge to blow the place in five minutes. Sonic pulls out a power ring that Nate gave him before they left the planet's surface, saying he's going to go find his family before they leave. Sally tries to insist he shouldn't go, since Snively already mentioned Robo-Robotnik was loading the Robians onto a transport back to Mobius, but Sonic heads out anyway. Come on Sally, you should realize at this point that once Sonic has his mind made up about something he wants to do, literally nothing, not even you, can change his mind. He speeds through the corridors, soon finding Robo-Robotnik loading the last of the Robians onto the shuttle, including his family. The door shuts, and Sonic attacks Robo-Robotnik, thinking that at least his family will be safe when this place explodes. However, as Robo-Robotnik pins him to the ground, a pair of voices startle them out of their fight.

Noteworthy for being the third panel in which Sonic visibly cries, which if you'll remember is something that Sega put strict limits on in the comic later on. Been a while since we've seen that, and it's the first time it hasn't happened in a somewhat silly scenario. He races back to the shuttle with his parents in tow, and they make their escape just before the place blows. Sonic asks how his parents maintained their free will, and they explain that they were in Knothole just hours ago when every Robian suddenly turned and began to mindlessly file out of the place. Their wedding bands made out of power rings began to glow, protecting them from being affected by Robo-Robotnik's bug, but they followed anyway, playing along as though they were also being controlled and hoping to find out where everyone was going. As they fly back to the planet, safe for this brief moment, dusk falls over Mobo- uh, I mean, I guess we have to start calling it Robotropolis again. And underneath the city…

I really can’t express how funny this page is to me. I mean, can you imagine if Robo-Robotnik transferred his consciousness into the one in the middle, and was just going around looking like a gay 80's biker dude for the rest of the comic? Regardless, this is actually a good way for the comic to justify redesigning Robotnik into his more modern Eggman style. He laughs to himself that an explosion won't be enough to do him in, especially now that he has this new body… and as a somewhat jarring conclusion to this story, Sonic and the others smile and pose happily on the final page as though nothing devastating has happened, promising to us that if we liked these last 75 issues then the next 75 will be even more exciting. I suppose this is actually somewhat noteworthy however, as from here on moving into the fourth era of the comic, the inclusion of specials and sister series abruptly taper off, leaving us with just the issues of the main comic for quite a while. Unlike the third era we're leaving behind, where over half the content came from issues of KtE and Super Specials, the fourth era consists almost entirely of the main comic. But for now, I suppose we must say goodbye to this era of peace, as now that Eggman has risen from the ashes, the world is back to being embroiled in war…

[moonlightreal]

Winx club Season 8/14

In which Sky doesn’t quote Thor

14 The Wishing Star

This episode opens, where else, at a concert at Alfea!  The other students whisper and ooh and aah.  So the Winx are famous pop stars but also hold concerts here like every other week and go to school here?  They should be treated more like when the choir performs, I mean it’s cool but not a super big deal.

sigh this pop star thing.  It feels a little less weird than it did in WoW since the girls are younger so the blatant wish-fulfilment version of being a professional musician isn’t as jarring I guess.  But I still can see so many opportunities for characterization—whose idea was it to form the band?    Who decided Bloom wis lead singer rather than Musa?What happens when Musa writes a song and loves it but the others hate it?  What happens when there’s a concert but the girls are busy with schoolwork?  Why don’t the minor fairies also form bands?  Why do only Alfea students come to these concerts?  When do they practice?  Do they ever perform at other places in Magix and who sets that up?  Where did they get the transforming instruments?  Are some of the girls thinking of ‘musician’ as a future career?  How will that conflict with ruling their planets?  And adventuring?

So. Much. Wasted plot & characterization opportunity.

Girls sing.  Cute shots of the minor fairies dancing.  Knut waltzes Faragonda.  Kiko crowd-surfs on the minor fairies.  Stella kisses the screen.  

The girls go to meet their boyfriends.  Stella is adorable.  

But Sky’s missing, he’s on Eraklyon.  “His dad wants him to spend more time at court being a crown prince and all while Sky would rather be a professional hero.”  The other specialists and Bloom express sympathy for Sky.

Season 8 timeslide: Sky is no longer king… if he ever really was, that whole thing was retconned pretty much right after Secret of the Lost Kingdom when we all realized we were going to have more stories.  Also there’s no mention of Brandon being Sky’s squire as he was in season 1.

Meanwhile on Eraklyon!  Cool shot of the palace!  Nice landscaping?!

Yikes, Sky is yelling at his dad, “I’m a Specialist, my place is at Red Fountain!”

Erendor: “You need to put the good of the kingdom first, that’s what princes do.”

Sky: “I put the good of everyone first, that’s why I go on missions with the Specialists!”

So clearly the dubbing department hasn’t seen Thor: Ragnarok because they missed sliding in, “Because that’s what heroes do.” and having me fall over laughing.  Also this situation is very much caught in the timeslide; is Sky a student still learning to rule the kingdom, or a graduate ready to begin his duties?

But as Sky walks away I see someone peering from behind a pillar… a familiar blonde head… oh no, not the number one source of couples drama in all Winx-dom! D: T_T

Diaspro’s done well by the new art style, she’s got gorgeous golden eyes and a nice braid. Her face is really wide though, she looks like an Ever After High doll.  She’s hoping to take advantage of the fight so Sky “will finally be mine.”

Yeah, you tried to kill his girlfriend two seasons ago, why are you not in jail?

Diaspro plots bug me.  Strap in y’alll.

Gorgeous nighttime shot of Alfea.  In Bloom’s room the girls are saying how great their concert was.  Then Stella goes into how hard it is to spend time with their boys when they’re busy saving the magic universe. The other girls try to shut her up before Bloom gets sad, but Stella is oblivious and just rambles on.  Brandon’s planning to take her to the “magic enchanted theater” sometime soon.

Musa yells at Stella.  Stella: “What’d I do this time?”  And there’s Bloom, sad now.  But Bloom says it’s not Stella’s fault; Sky didn’t say he was going to Eraklyon.  The girls talk about boys, with a side of Grumping at Stella.

“Brandon and I always talk.”

“When Riven left we stopped talking, and that didn’t go well.”

“Sometimes Timmy doesn’t call or text but I know he’s just thinking about his projects.”

But the good news is, Valtor’s gone so everything’s going to get better!

Bloom goes outside to make a wish on a star and there’s Sky!  They talk a little about not having time, and Bloom suggests Sky wish on a star for more time.

And now to what I’m really curious about!  The Trix!  We cut to Valtor’s asteroid and I kinda want to see him showing the girls around, but instead he’s on his throne meditating or something while the Trix float in front of him.

Exposition time! Only three witches like them can get the Wishing Star aka the Comet Star apparently, which grants wishes.  It’s made of Sparks (Sparx?) The energy that gave birth to the magic universe, the stars themselves.  So… Dragonfire?  “the magic of fairies, and witches.”

Flashback to Valtor trying to grab the comet and getting knocked for a loop. Incompatible magic.

Icy does the, “And why should we help you?” and it turns out Valtor’s mark is on their hands—they belong to him.  Just now or still from season 3, I wonder.  Also once Valtor becomes the most powerful sorcerer he promises to give them immense power.

Icy, apparently forgetting every other teamup they’ve ever done, thinks this sounds like a good deal, “Am I right, sisters?”

The Wishing Star hurtles through space, quite close to Valtor’s asteroid.  Our villain team warps outside and…

...And we cut to the wishing Star, which is a person of the same species as Queen Dorana, but with a more snowy theme.  She comments, “Valtor’s palace.  Hasn’t changed much in the last thousand years.  Still creepy!”  That was kinda random and cute, and also, Valtor’s had that palace for a thousand years and space people just know where it is?

...And THEN the Trix appear and the chase is on.  Stormy’s storm powers seem to be able to cause a meteor storm in space.    Darcy summons the illusion of a black hole which actually draws things into it.  Then icy succeeds in catching the comet girl in a block of ice.  The Wishing Star is caught!  Valtor is pleased!

But then she sends out her power in a blast of colored lights and a star-shaped box.

Valtor goes, ‘Noooo!”

The colored lights fly away but the star box flies straight at Lumenia and nearly beans Twinkle.  She flees, with the star box chasing after her!  Twinkle flies to the palace for help, where Argen is admitting to his sister that he thought being king of Lumenia would be more exciting.  Heh. Then in comes Twinkle, chased by a star box!

Queen Dorana recognizes it: the star case.  (so, book version rather than movie version of Escape to Witch Mountain?)  And it’s a bad sign!  We need the Winx immediately!  Twinkle goes to fetch them.

Bloom and Sky are having a peaceful evening looking at the stars… when Diaspro texts. Sky makes a horrified face.

Bloom: “Who’s messaging you?”

Oh just my ex who always teams up with villains and tried to murder you back when…

Diaspro keeps calling and Bloom says Sky should answer it.  Then Twinkle arrives. Saved!  Bloom and Sky must say goodbye as the Winx leave on an urgent mission!

In the Owl Sky ignores a few more increasingly irate texts then calls Diaspro back. She’s got a super secret mission from Sky’s dad!  They gotta go find the “lost locket of Eraklyon, one of the most poerful items in our kingdom.  And the two of us have to find it!  Together!”

Sky is not down for this together stuff.  He tries to tell Diaspro the mission might be dangerous, but she is undeterred.  Then the other boys turn up with a new Specialist mission, that Sky has to turn down since he’s got thiss mission with diaspro.

“Diaspro?  That crazy girl who won’t give up on you?”

“Yes Brandon, that’s the one.”  

“Come on Sky, the Specialists aren’t afraid of anyone, even broody aristocratic girls from Eraklyon.”

In case you were wondering how the boys talk about Diaspro.

And honestly, I was sympathetic for Diaspro, she and Sky were engaged and then Sky started falling for Bloom and instead of working things out he did nothing and let both girls find out the truth by surprise in public and Bloom attacked Diaspro thinking she was Icy.  Diaspro was kinda more sinned against than sinning, at that point.  But the heartbreak apparently caused Diaspro to go over the edge and she started teaming up with villains, cast a love spell on Sky, and pushed a magicless Bloom into a fiery pit.  My annoyance at all things Diaspro isn’t really with her, it’s with everyone who acts like Diaspro is just an annoying ex instead of a dangerous criminal.

Things from Diaspro’s perspective would make a great fanfic.

But now we’re going to Lumenia to learn about the star case and the Winx’s second mission of the season!

The Winx arrive on their hoverboards, showing those off so kids will buy the toys, then we arrive at the palace.  They meet Argen, who recognizes them from his days as Obscurum but they don’t recognize him so he explains what happened to him.

Then, star case! It contains the essence of the wishing star.  Tecna remembers hearing about it from Miss F in a “cosmomagic lesson.”  It’s the most powerful star in the universe and it’s made out of “Sparx, a magical radiance that is the source of all fairy powers.  And witch magic!”  So, Dragonfire.  Which is why I shall keep spelling it Sparx.

So the girl in the comet was herself a star and to defend herself she “split herself into the seven prime stars.  But her essence remained inside this case.”  The Winx have to find the seven stars and put them all back, so the Wishing Star can pull herself together again.  But they need the star compass, which is in the case—but it won’t open.

Bloom has an idea: go inside the case!  Using our Enchantix powers!

The view pulls out to show our villains watching and I want them to say something about how the Winx are still using Enchantix like last time...

But no.  Valtor orders the Trix to find the compass first.

Enchantix!

And it’s… all right.  I can complain about the pink creep—aka everybody is wearing more pink than the first time around—but that’s about it. It’s not a terrible redesign, but not brilliant.  Musa’s translated best, I think, maybe just because her color is already pink so it’s not jarring like Aisha’s or Bloom’s.

The girls miniaturize and poof into the star box, which is like a miniworld of decorative gears.  They find a ballerina figure—the star case is a music box.  They find the star compass easily, and Tecna says “achievement unlocked!” again.  But then a cold wind starts to blow and a familiar laugh echoes...

“The Trix they’re back!”

“I hope you like this place, because you’re never leaving.”

Cliffhanger!

How did the Trix get miniaturized, hmm?

I have a suspicion that when a season of Winx is made, both halves are made at the same time by different sets of writers.  So things don’t completely match, like the Wishing Star being a person of the same sort as Dorana and Argen who are not stars.  Stars were lots of things, but they weren’t people until now.  I bet we’ve seen our last staryum, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Valtor uses a lot fewer portals.  I’m hoping we haven’t lost Orion because stolen design or not, I really like him.  And I prefer legit villain Valtor to the wimp who did nothing but pick on Obscurum for twelve episodes, so please keep him threatening to destroy the planet, ok?

[douchebagbrainwaves]

CALDER'S SCULPTURES NEVER GET BORING

This is part of what big companies pay extra for is the next Apple, or the market wasn't ready yet, b the founders solved the wrong problem. While writing the prototype, the group has been traversing their network of friends in search of angel investors. I think new theorems are a fine thing to create, but there are few outside the US, startups will do a rolling close, where they can choose for themselves, rely instead on the opinions of other investors. Big companies think the function of office space is to express rank. I think a bigger problem is that the kind of things most people use computers for, a tenth of your time working on new stuff. The smart ones learn who the other smart ones are, and together they cook up new projects of their own, they'd screw it up. Even worse than the spectacular abuses might be the overall decrease in efficiency that would accompany increased secrecy. You don't have the clean, sparse feel they used to be for getting users. A lot of investors hated the idea, but not because of some right turn the country took during the Reagan administration, but because it gives you another source of ideas: look at big companies, you'd need an impressive-looking sales force to sell it to them as a web service. But with company names there is another possible approach. In fact, the reason startups do better when deprived of this crutch anyway. The first stories about Jaynes cited this source, but now that the things we build are so complicated, there's another way to convince investors to let you do it like a pilot scanning the instrument panel, not like a detective trying to unravel some mystery.

The url is in such cases practically enough by itself to determine whether the email is neutral, the spam probability will hinge on the url, and it was like trying to run through waist-deep water. For some reason this seems to be toward the merely unpalatable. That means it has to stay popular to stay good. As long as you're profitable. Or rather, my inbox is a todo list. After we fund startups we work closely with them for three months outweighs the inconvenience of moving. In such rounds they won't get the 25 to 40% of the company and demand that it take immediate action to cure any past violations of securities laws. At best you end up with a statistical sort of correctness. Can't you just think of new ideas. In fact, the language encourages you to be omniscient, but actually they tend to be about 15? We're just working on search. One of our axioms at Y Combinator is not to try to create a startup hub.

And when people seem to share a certain prickly independence, whenever and wherever they lived. We hated our last TV so much that a competitor will trip them up as that they will trip over themselves. You don't need to raise money, but also as a way of saving you work, rather than carry a single unnecessary ounce. In theory you could stick together ideas at random like this, but others haven't decided what they'll do afterward. To me she seems the best novelist of all time. Don't be evil. But investors are so fickle that you can learn from them. On the other hand, startup investing is a very strange business. When you have the degenerate case. For a startup, then hand them off to VC firms for the next round. Good ideas and valuable ideas are very close to good ideas, use them, but more than full-time.

So the lower we can get the response rate—whether by filtering, or by redesigning the product in the way of redesign. There's a real difference, because an assertion provokes objections in a way that seemed to reflect the personality of the city. And while governments might be able to pinch it off at the point where they're used. And no one can tell you, that requires your complete attention. Only a few do so far, startups that turn down acquisition offers is not necessarily that all such offers undervalue startups. There will be many different ways to learn different things, and some may look quite different from what happens in college. That's orders of magnitude better than desktop software. Our startup begins when a group of people they didn't already know. If you're starting your own company, because you're only replacing one segment instead of discarding the whole thing. Though I'd really like to know how she does what she does, I can't imagine they'll work any less hard to feed stories to bloggers, if they built whole towns, market forces would compel them to pay attention to you. Now survival is the default, instead of paying attention to what users needed, or c the company spent too much and burned through their funding before they started to make the implementation easier to port, but it turned out that many did. You release software as a series A round, the round is going to solve this problem, but it can be good for writing the kinds of programs they want to write desktop software, because desktop software has become a lot less money.

But I think that while stricter laws may not decrease the amount of memory you need for each user's data. One solution to this problem, without waiting for the government. When he rides the Eunicycle, people smile at him. How are they to hear? What a wonderful thing, to be able to reproduce the error and release a fix. US News & World Report. Some time before the release date you assemble a new version of your software by a certain date? And when someone can put on my todo list, I looked to see if there was a problem with acquisitions is that they lead to more ideas.

And then there is the question of what this new Lisp also had powerful libraries for doing what hackers want to do it. Their format is convenient, especially when you're generating code, to have operators that take any number of arguments. This should yield a much sharper estimate of the probability. You have to make their fortunes will continue to work for people with high standards. Last year one founder spent the whole first half of his talk on a fascinating analysis of the limits of the conventional desktop metaphor. And it has to be modified to: stay upwind for as long as you're still actively developing the product. One way of using patents that clearly does not encourage innovation is when established companies with bad products use patents to suppress small competitors with good products. Result: if it can't contain exciting sales pitches, spam becomes less effective as a marketing vehicle, and fewer businesses want to use. This was not how things worked at Viaweb. He said their business model is a down elevator. Another great thing about Web-based applications. The problem is, the USPTO are not hackers.

One easy way to build such a whitelist is to keep a list of the n most admirable people. And the way founders end up net ahead it's not coming out of organs not designed for that purpose. And put this kind of bug is the hardest to find, and also occurs once or twice in a big program is to start from the symptom and hope to fix the underlying causes. It also has to convince instead of commanding. They just want to invest in you, or his only duty is to the advantage of investors. This time the evidence is a mix of good and bad. In effect, this structure gives the investor a free option on the next round of investors can decide in a couple days. You can afford to be candid about what you haven't figured out yet. Writing is the same reason readers like them.

But it's also because money is not the hours but the responsibility. I had to predict now, I'd say that startups will build on, they have to understand the advantages startups get from being in America. Jack Lambert. The defining feature of spam in fact, that would not only not eliminate great variations in wealth, but might even exacerbate them. You might say that it's an accident that it thus helps identify this spam. If anyone is dishonest, it's the reporters. The problem in more traditional places like Europe and Japan goes deeper than the employment laws. A throwaway program is something that more and more programs may turn out to be really useful.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Do you prefer sees original designs or their DMN redesigns (and maybe PT and IT if you dont mind)

Hmmmmm you mean their costumes or how they look? Or their character art? (I’m mostly assuming their costumes, if that’s not what you meant then could you clarify? ;w;)

I like the redesigns (P4/5 there isn’t much difference from their base game), I am sad Minato’s little cowlick is gone tho. I’ll take anything that isn’t P4U’s bug eyed designs. XP

If you mean costumes. I....really don’t like P5′s tbh, I’m actually really pissed that the P5 Dance DLC (I’ll call it the P4-5D DLC for short) wasn’t in P5D (I WANT ANNE’S DANCE-Y PANTS DAMNIT! ;W;), at least I don’t remember seeing it, if it’s there then my bad. 8U Tho I’m not a fan of Ryu’s P4-5D outfit (not that the P5D one is great), both of Makoto’s suck imo, not a fan of either for Mona (his P4-5D outfit really fits P4D tho), Futaba’s P5D’s was lazy (I do actually really like her P4-5D one), I like Anne’s (not a fan of the bracelets, I prefer her Dance-y pants tho), I think Ren’s is fine (tho I prefer his P4-5D one), def prefer Yusuke’s P4-5D, I like both of Haru’s (P5D!Haru stole P4-5D!Anne’s headband tho XD). Tbh the P4-5D outfits are a weird mixture of P3D’s, P4D’s and P5D’s outfits (some has the weird P5 punk/rap vibe, some have P4′s disco vibe, and some have P3′s....80s club-esque?)

P4D’s costumes were fine (some better than others), but I absolutely love the Soejima designed Dance outfits the most. They are my fav of the 3 dance games, and of the 5 dance outfits (P3 has one dance outfit, P4/5 have two, one for the dance game and one as DLC for one of their games)

P3D′s are fine, some are better than others (really only Akihiko and Fuuka are lacking for me, well mostly Aki, I do like Fuuka’s sweatshirt 8U).

To couple the costumes with the games themselves, P4D executes its style the most. It does use some disco stuff. P3D is a close second, only cause it also adopted a techno vibe, and while it capitalizes well on that, it doesn’t capitalize on the 80s vibe all that much (bare minimum it just had to include some more of its Reincarnation OST, even if tho the closest to 80s on that OST is a 70s sounding song but you know, A for effort) . I have no idea what P5D is doing, there’s no songs in the game that even resemble punk (P5′s rock songs don’t sound like punk rock, it sounds.....heavier....not sure what it is if it’s heavy, metal, or classic tho) nor rap/hiphop (of the three it’s the only one without a rap song/remix), yet that’s the costume style they went with, P5D is a mess and it shouldn’t be. 

[entergamingxp]

Definitive Edition Hardly Qualifies as a Remaster

June 3, 2020 11:30 AM EST

It’s time to stop calling half-done ports to current-gen consoles “remasters,” starting with Mafia 2: Definitive Edition

I first played Mafia 2 either in 2010 or 2011, the year it originally came out or the year after. After hearing about the game again this year, in the context of a grand remaster, I was excited. I’m not entirely sure why though. It may have been a combination of setting the nostalgia vision to 10,000 percent, or my recent quarantine-caused binge of The Sopranos that made me want to experience the life of an Italian mobster again.

And while I did get that experience out of Mafia 2 — its narrative is its strongest part, don’t take that for high praise though — I was constantly pulled out of the detail-filled world of Empire City. Not by video-gamey aspects or pop up messages saying “press R2 to pop a cap in this guy.” Instead, the game itself constantly ruined its own immersion by being a technological failure.

Mafia 2: Definitive Edition markets itself as a remaster, and it’s time to talk about what that term really means. Because Mafia 2: Definitive Edition is not a remaster. In fact, the only reason you could call it one is because it at least runs on a modern console.

A remaster implies, well, a remastering of things. Some parts of a game are improved, from visuals to controls, to entire gameplay aspects, while maintaining the core of the game. That’s what separates a remaster or remake from a reboot. That core game is still there, but everything around it is spruced up, like fixing up an old house. The exterior shell is still the same, but the interior is vastly improved. Except, in this case, the vinyl paneling is falling off the sides, and rats have established an advanced society in what was the living room.

If you boot up Mafia 2: Definitive Edition on a PS4 Pro right now, you will face a long list of bugs, glitches, framerate issues, graphical issues, and even hard crashes. For a game that tries so hard to bring a player into its world, this is a death knell. It’s the exact opposite of what anyone picking the game up should expect, mainly because of that magical word attached to the game: “remaster.”

“If you boot up Mafia 2: Definitive Edition on a PS4 Pro right now, you will face a long list of bugs, glitches, framerate issues, graphical issues, and even hard crashes.”

So let’s get one thing out of the way first; any remaster should not leave a game with framerate drops into the 20s, or character’s faces sloughing off because their textures didn’t load in right. Remasters shouldn’t come with spammy splash icons in the top right corner, reminding you that your 2K account isn’t linked until you close the game and open it again. And they certainly shouldn’t have hard crashes that occur consistently during missions.

Here’s the thing – I could forgive some of these issues. The small graphical bugs are usually funny rather than detrimental, and I’ve played through games with unstable framerates and still enjoyed them. But the frequency with which Mafia 2: Definitive Edition stutters, seizes up, or just freezes always ends up impacting gameplay. I’ve had the game drop frames during car chases causing me to crash into a light pole, or during shootouts by making it harder to put sights on an enemy. When these issues weren’t present, Mafia 2: Definitive Edition played alright; it is a dated game, but it’s simple and sometimes fun. It was always saddening or just infuriating when the game’s own technical limitations ended up hurting how much fun I could have had with it.

All that being said, according to a Digital Foundry video on Mafia 2: Definitive Edition, these issues are unique to the PS4 Pro. However, finding that out didn’t make me feel any better – in fact, it only feels more insulting. According to this video, even the base PS4 model handles the game better, a fact that flies in the face of everything that I know about how games run. This end result is either the product of a lack of testing or extreme apathy on 2K’s part. I can’t help but think that someone at the company ended up saying “Who cares if the game runs like hot garbage, people are going to buy it anyway.” And that’s because of the power of the word “remaster.”

When we hear that buzzword, immediately we can only think of positives, and that’s because of what a remaster implies. With a remaster, a publisher or developer sees a vocal group asking to experience a game again, and works hard to polish that product to fit current expectations. That’s the inherent danger in a remaster; without a single ad campaign or PR stunt, a game immediately has expectations set for it.

“The N. Sane Trilogy ended up being one of the prime examples of how a game should be remastered.”

Except Mafia 2: Definitive Edition is antithetical to a remaster. Look at other remastered titles this generation, like the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. It took the core concept of the original three Crash Bandicoot titles while slapping a new coat of current-gen paint on them. It even managed to improve some of the floaty-ness of the old games’ movement. While for some the difficulty spikes in these games were an issue, they had nothing to do with its redesign. Those games were hard, and that difficulty was rightfully preserved. The N. Sane Trilogy ended up being one of the prime examples of how a game should be remastered – with enough care for the source material while being conscientious enough to make the right improvements.

It is in both of those fields that Mafia 2: Definitive Edition fails as a remaster. On its way to current-gen consoles, there wasn’t enough care for the original game to make sure it runs well, and there wasn’t any will to make sure it was an actual improvement over its original iteration. The game runs around wearing the mask of “remaster,” while in reality it’s more of a half-baked port, and it’s about time we stop accepting those.

So for goodness sake, don’t buy Mafia 2: Definitive Edition. Don’t prove that minimal effort and a buzzword can make sales. Not until those that made it own up to the fact that this game isn’t a remaster, but a hack-job of a port, and one that doesn’t nearly deserve its listing price of $29.99.

June 3, 2020 11:30 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/definitive-edition-hardly-qualifies-as-a-remaster/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=definitive-edition-hardly-qualifies-as-a-remaster

[freedom-shamrock]

Bare With Me - Chp 3

Also on AO3  You can catch the previous chapters there or on Tumblr (though there’s not a lot of plot here, so it’s not strictly necessary). Chp 1  Chp 2  Chp 3  Chp 4

Adrien couldn't decide if he should be pacing or casually drape himself over Marinette's lawn chair.  Past experience indicated that both had the potential to appeal visually, but what would Ladybug prefer?

He was still pacing when the distinctive zip of her yo-yo announced her arrival.  He looked up just as her feet touched down, and he made a point to use the wide-eyed expression his photographers wanted when they were aiming for a sweet and innocent look.

He smiled, delighted to see her cheeks darken slightly.  "Welcome back," he said,  throwing her a little finger wave.  "Everything go all right?"

Ladybug nodded.  "Yep.  Chat and I got it all taken care of. It's safe to bring you home."

"Great.  Uhm… so why was I in particular danger?"  Having helped fight the Re-Modeler, he knew.  But Adrien Agreste had been stranded with no cell phone, radio access, or clothes, and had no way to know what was going on.  "I didn't cause the akuma, did I?"  He aimed for a horrified reaction, because, seriously, if he had caused it, he'd feel terrible.

"No, no, no."  Her hand settled on his shoulder, as she rushed to soothe him.  Damn she was sweet.  "It wasn't your fault the photographer and designer preferred you."

Actually, it was totally his father's fault.  The man was a colossal dick, and that was to people he liked.  "Oh.  Was it Johann, then?"  He sighed.  "I would've been more than happy to give up today's shitty shoot for him."

"He probably would have been fine if he hadn't run into Chloe while he was getting over his frustration," Ladybug pointed out.

"Ugh."  His reaction didn't have to be feigned at all.  "That girl needs to take akuma prevention sensitivity training."

Ladybug giggled.  "So are you ready to go home?  I'm sure your… family is concerned about you."

He snorted.  "My handlers, you mean."  Her hesitation had suggested she knew more about his home life than the average Parisian.  He didn't really want her to drop him off and head on her way.  Not yet.  "Nathalie is probably completely freaked out."

"Ah!" Ladybug said in bright discovery.  She held out her yo-yo and opened it in communicator mode.  "I can call her and explain.  Do you think that would help?"

Adrien nodded eagerly.  It would certainly minimize the urgency of the situation.  When she offered the device to him to dial, he pretended to misunderstand and just reached over her to enter the number.

"Hello, this is Nathalie Sa…"  His father's assistant hesitated.  She'd answered in video phone.  "Ladybug.  I see you have located Adrien.  His father will be most grateful."

"It's no problem at all," Ladybug said, her professional hero mode in full force.  "As soon as I realized the Re-Modeler was targeting him, I moved Adrien to a secure location.  I'm sorry.  I didn't even give him time to grab his phone."

"I understand."  Nathalie turned her focus to him.  "Adrien… are you naked?"

Adrien shook his head quickly.  "No.  But I'm less dressed than I'd normally be out in public.  Good thing it's dark out."

It was subtle, but he could see the amusement in Nathalie's face.  "I won't tell your father if you don't, and if you can manage to avoid being caught by any photographers."

"Thanks Nathalie."

"I'll bring him home right now Ms. Sancoeur," Ladybug promised.  "He was concerned that you'd be worried, so I wanted to contact you first."

"Do I have anything before 10:30 tomorrow morning?" Adrien asked.

She looked down at something, probably her tablet.  "There is nothing on your schedule until noon."

"Great," Adrien said, happily.  He had no reason to push Ladybug out after she brought him home, and she had a fresh transformation.  "I'll see you tomorrow, then."

Nathalie gave him that rare smile of hers.  "I'll inform your father that you're safe.  Don't stay up too late."

The screen went dark and Ladybug closed it.  "All right.  Ready for another ride?"

He grinned.  He'd love a ride other than the one she was offering.  "Anytime you want, my L- lovely bug."  Dammit.  Channeling his inner Chat Noir was risky.

She scooped him up again and swung them back in the direction of his father's mansion.  Once she'd safely landed back in his room, he could see the pink in her cheeks again.  She was out of her element, and there was no previously established protocol for hero behavior in this situation, and he loved seeing her a little out of her element.

"Thanks for going out of your way to protect me," he said, wanting her to feel comfortable with him.  At least enough so that she wouldn't leave too soon.

She beamed at him, back on familiar ground.  "All in a day's work."

"It was the best part of my day, to be honest."  Granted, any time in her company was the best part of his day, but this had been extra nice.

"Oh."  She smiled, looking bashful.  Though he was sure he'd never seen his Lady look like that, it was incredibly familiar.

He shrugged.  "I don't have a lot of terrific days, and that's just how life works.  But today was phenomenally bad."

She took one of his hands between both of hers.  "I'm sorry to hear that, and I'm glad I was somehow able to make it better."  She shook her head.  "I think it says a lot about your life that being targeted by an akuma was the bright point in your day."

He laughed.  "I guess."  He reached back and rubbed the back of his head nervously.  "Umm, would you, uh want to hang out a bit?"  Oh god.  He'd done it.  He'd asked her to stay.  Did he sound too desperate?  When she stared at him, seemingly unable to respond, he tried to fix it.  "Uh.  Sorry.  That was probably weird.  I just thought--"

"Yes!" she blurted out, cutting him off.  Her face went nearly as red as her suit as she started to fidget.  It was another oddly familiar behavior.  "Uh… to the hanging out.  Not the weird part.  It's not weird."  She closed her mouth and her eyes and took a deep breath, then faced him calmly.  "I'd love to hang out."

Relieved, he beamed at her.  "Great.  So… "  He looked around his room, trying to remember all the things he'd learned his Lady enjoyed.  But his brain wasn't braining.  Stupid brain.  "Uhm.  We could… watch a movie or play video games."  He gestured to his personal arcade.  "I think I'm ziplined out, but… uh…"

Once again, his Lady saved him.  "I love video games."  Her gaze flicked over him.  "Uhm… not to be one more person in your life telling you what to do, but, are you going to put on clothes?"  She pointed to his towel.

Yes.  An opportunity.  He could use this.  "Ugh," he groaned.  "My life revolves around clothes.  Scratchy clothes.  Sweaty clothes.  Holy-crap-I-can't-breathe-in-this clothes."  He grabbed his face with both hands and dragged down.  "I'm not sure I can possibly clothes right now, my… Ladybug," he whined.

Her giggles reassured him.  "Have I just discovered Adrien Agreste's deepest darkest secret?" she asked, tapping her lips with one finger.  "You're a naturalist at heart."

"Sssh!"  He shushed her, pretending to be panicked.  "Not so loud.  Can you imagine what that would do to my father?  His career?  I mean, Ladybug, this is serious.  You.  Can't.  Tell.  Anyone."  He planted his hands on his towel clad hips.

She patted his cheek, and he was pretty sure he stopped breathing.  "Your secret is safe with me."  She took a small step back, pink in her cheeks again.  "While your body is nothing to be ashamed of, I mean, seriously, it's not… but I'm not used to hanging out with naked boys.  At all.  So maybe you could find the least clothing-like item you have so I don't get all distracted and lose every game we play?"

He thought for a moment, running through his usual options for when he had to wear clothes but didn't want to.  Plagg gave his thigh a light scratch.  "Oh!  Uh… I might have something that'll work.  Just… gimmie a minute."  He headed for his huge walk-in closet.  "Have a seat, make yourself comfortable."  He waved vaguely to the couch before ducking into the closet.

He tugged the knot on the towel, dropping it on the floor.  "I'm sorry, Plagg," he whispered.  "You're hungry, I know."

The miraculous black cat hovered in front of Adrien's eyes.  "Naah.  I'm good.  I'll just phase into the mini-fridge for a snack."

"Oh… what did you need?"  This was a surprise.

Plagg smirked in a decidedly not cat like way.  "You want to get the girl, and it's obvious that showing some skin is working wonders for you.  Hmmm.  Maybe I should redesign the suit…"  He shook his tiny head.  "Naah.  Don't want to damage your fragile skin.  Anyway, you have the perfect thing to wear in this situation."

"I do?"

Plagg darted out and returned with a black utility kilt.  "Trust me on this, kid.  Ladies dig a man in a kilt.  And as a bonus, it's traditional to go commando."

Adrien's face hurt from the size of his smile.  "I love you Plagg.  You're the best."  He'd forgotten all about the kilt, which he'd bought online to go with a costume that he never ended up getting to wear.  It had been just a smidge loose three months ago, but now it fit perfectly.  He idly wondered what would happen if he started wearing it around town or to school.  

He popped out of his closet, to find Ladybug going through his high scores on the DDR.  Yes.  He could make that work to his advantage, too.

"Hey Ladybug, is this all right?"  He struck a simple pose, did a three point catwalk turn, and paused facing her.  Had he ever seen her eyes so round?  "Is that a yes?"  He looked down at the kilt, hanging just above his knee.

She let out an odd wheezing squeal, sounding a bit like a teakettle, and when he looked back up, she was on her knees, still gawking at him.

"Is it that bad?"  He was pretty sure that wasn't the reason, well, he hoped that wasn't the reason.

She shook her head vigorously, apparently unable to look away.  "Of course, only you could go from towel to clothes and have the clothes be sexier.  What the hell?"

He barked out a laugh.  Plagg was going to get so much camembert.  "Oh, well if that's all…"  He walked across the room to her.  "I wasn't sure if it looked horrible or something."

She held up one finger.  "I think it's physically impossible for you to look horrible in anything.  Hell, I'll bring you a burlap sack to wear and I bet it would be hot."

He felt his lips twitch.  "Scratchy, too,." he added, covering his mouth at her mock scowl.

"You're extremely attractive, and I'm certain you know that."  The way she looked at him felt like she was reading his mind.  "You're a supermodel , for god's sake."

"Wait… you're familiar with my work.  Are you a fan?" he asked eagerly.

She rolled her eyes.  "I live in Paris, of course I'm familiar with your work."  She sighed.  "And yes.  I'm a fan.  Have been for years.  I'm an amateur designer myself, actually, and I've grown up watching you model."

"That makes me so happy."  He beamed at her.  

"Yeah, well if I have a heart attack, it'll be because of you and that goddamn kilt."  She let out a huff and forced herself back to her feet.  "I have to be up at six, so we should get started if you want to play."  She looked mortified, and hastily added.  "Uh, video games."

Teasing would be too Chat Noir.  It also hadn't worked, and he didn't want to chase her away.  "So, I saw you eyeing up the DDR, want to start there?"

She shrugged.  "I'll warn you it's not my strongest game, but I've never played as Ladybug, so maybe that'll help.  I expect you'll kick my ass though."

"Ladies first."  He caught himself mid nod, before he could go into a full bow and moved to stand near the scoreboard in case she needed any help navigating the system.  She pulled up one of the songs that came with the most recent upgrade, toggling through the options relatively quickly.

The music started and she was off to a good start.  The difficulty wasn't terribly high, but she was decent.  While he'd seen her do all sorts of random regular person things during their patrols, it was surreal to see Ladybug on his DDR.  

"You're excellent!" he said as her score came up.  "From the way you were talking, I thought you'd be tripping off the pads."

She laughed, such a lovely joyful sound.  "The suit helps.  Regular me is not nearly this good.  Though I haven't fallen off in a while."

He picked his current favorite song, not coming anywhere near his high score because he was still pretty tired after the day.  His score was higher, but he didn't point it out.  "Do you do freestyle?" he asked gesturing for him to take over.

She waved one hand.  "A little, but again, not great."

"I think freestyle's a lot easier, especially if it's hard for you to get your feet to move where the programmed dances tell you to."  He'd been working with Marinette on freestyle mode, because she just had a tough time with her foot-eye coordination.  "I have a friend who has a lot of trouble with the regular mode, but she's pretty amazing in freestyle."  He shrugged.  "Plus it's more fun than rapid foot tapping.  More like actual dancing."

Ladybug smiled indulgently at him.  "Okay.  One freestyle for each of us.  Then I probably need to head out."

When her chosen song started, he nodded.  "Marinette likes this one, too."

She winked at him.  "Great minds think alike."  Her freestyle was fantastic, much more relaxed than the stiffer action of her previous turn.  She favored a lot of the same moves as his classmate.  Her whole body was part of the dance, and she was smiling.  God she was gorgeous when she was having fun.  She bounced happily off the pad and waved him toward it.  "Your turn, Mr. Dreamy Model."

"Do I have an official Ladybug-granted nickname?"  He clasped his hands together.

She laughed.  "Yes.  Henceforth you shall be known as Mr. Dreamy Model, though since I know you so well from our little visit, I get to call you Dreamy."

"Yes!"  He hopped onto the pad and picked out the song "Don't Bother Me."  He'd been working out a fun routine with it, though he'd skip the hand and head stand to avoid overtly mooning or flashing his guest.  As he spun and kicked, he realized that he liked the way the kilt flared and swished around his legs.  Unfortunately it distracted him enough that he finished out his routine on autopilot, executing a flip that landed his feet on the farthest right sensors.  He felt the fabric of the kilt pull away from his legs and flip before it eventually dropped back down.  

Oh shit.  

Mortified, he glanced up and saw that Ladybug appeared to be frozen, her face an odd combination of delight and surprise.  He scrambled to his feet and reached on hand out to touch her shoulder.  "Ladybug?  I'm sorry.  That was rude.  I… kinda got caught up in the game."

"Ah!"  She sounded surprised, and strangely out of breath.  "Very rice noutine."  She looked up at him, with a very familiar deer-in-headlights expression.  "Must go.  No time to gawk… er talk.  I'll just show myself out."  She mechanically headed for the same window they'd used earlier.

Had he broken her?  "I'm glad you stayed for a bit," he said, following her.  "I'm sorry you've got to go, and… if, by some chance, I haven't completely offended you, and you want to stop by again sometime, I promise I'll wear real clothes."

Spun abruptly to him, her eyes wide.  "A kilt is a real article of clothing, Dreamy, and I expect to see you wearing it again."  

"Oh."  He blinked a couple of times, slouching with relief.  He'd flustered her, but nothing irreparable.  

"Besides, how many ladies have been treated to the rare and glorious Assgreste full moon?"  With that parting shot, she bounded out the window.

Again, points to @seasonofthegeek for helping me to see the absolute dearth of Nakedrien out there.

If you’re interested, Adrien's routine looks a lot like this.

[somniumcomics]

So heyaaa I’m gonna be Redesigning Goldy into an OC and maybe rebooting his blog to be original- And maybe redesign some other AU characters I haveeee

And maybe put my askblogs on hiatus because I start college for graphics design soon-

I guess I’ve been feeling really pressured to update my blogs- Kinda had an epiphany at work tonight that pretty much shook me good-   I’ve always wanted to be more original than just sticking my fingers in other shows and picking characters to twist around with- I’ve never taken the chance to be original, been stuck with AU’s for too long- Most of my life, really- It’s left an empty, incomplete feeling for too long- Like, my originality’s there in my askblogs stories, but it’s covered with the faces of characters that aren’t mine. And I can do so much more than AU’s-

Feibel and Zain, and Solace Resonance, pretty much my only original OC’s, have shown me that originality’s the path I should be taking more on. And I should be concentrating on college more so now-

So yeahhhhhhh

There’s a summary of my vent from Discord, and what’s gonna be happening with me, hhhah.. TvT

I mean I guess I can post my rant from my Discord server here too- It goes sorta more indepth than this?

Here it is if you guys want to read it:

---------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, so for the longest time, I've felt that there was something missing with my art. Every single update. Every single thing about my blogs and the characters. Everything.

And lately I've been drawn to Feibel and Zain, being pulled away from my blogs altogether. And tonight I figured out what the missing feeling was, the missing piece. The reason why I felt so drawn to Feibel and Zain, was because they were original.

I designed these two from scratch, and they're not just some knock-off of another person's creation. Granted, Feibel was inspired from Abel, but he looks different than him. He's completely original. One of my very few OC's. I've never really created OC's- I've always relied on other people's concepts of characters and making tweaks, making AU's of them.. Maybe making a fan OC from said show, but even that doesn't feel the same either..

So what I'm getting at, is that I've decided to become more original in my art. AU's are fun, and my originality is there. But it's hidden behind the faces of characters that someone else has created.

I can do so much more with my ideas, create characters and ideas straight from scratch- I've never really done it before starting with a blank slate, but gosh I have to start somewhere.. Reading that Fan-Policy from TheMeatly completely bugged me the entire night while at work. I was so worried about what I was going to do with Goldy. And it caused me to have the worst wave of migranes I've ever had, all of the many thoughts were popping up and everything.. I was literally arguing with myself mentally the entire night until my epiphany happened.

So- Goldy may become an OC, many of my other blog's characters may be turned into OC's- Or just left alone? I haven't decided. But this is the reason why I've felt like updating my blogs was a chore, it isn't healthy at all to have this pressure always on me to update- Especially if it's something that isn't entirely mine to begin with. (The characters.) I do still love Goldy- He'll still be an Ink God- He'll likely still be kept in personality and story-wise.  I'll just make him a non-Bendy toon. He needs a new name- Gold sounds nice- I've gotta think on it though..

I have a lot of thinking to do... But I just felt like venting this to you all because it involves you too... Since you're all fans of Goldy, and of my art in general... TvT

[insane-mane]

11 year old Ben’s new batch of 10! Updated powers n such under the cut!

Swampfire has the ability to regrow his body over and over again from even the worst type of damage. He has a heated inner core that allows him to create fire from his charcoal-like hands. When snapping his fingers together,  a spark ignites the methane gases his body produces, allowing him to create fire. Being a being that LIVES on heat, Swampfire can withstand almost any type of hot temperatures. Swampfire is pretty resilient against many things, but if in extremely col environments, he is greatly weakened. He has a TERRIBLE odor due to the methane gas (although not as bad as Stinkfly’s stank) so hiding ain’t easy. For this design, I tried merging all of his concept designs, along with his blossomed form while adding a bit of my own flare to it. Heh, flare. Like fire. As in the alien above. The one that controls fire. Aptly named Swampfire. I wish I was dead.

For Echo Echo’s new design, I kinda wanted to return to form on this one. While I love Omniverse’s style and a lot of their redesign’s (I mean it IS practically the only art style I try to go for when drawing Ben 10), there are a few redesigns that don’t really strike me as the best. Echo Echo kinda being on of them. My only complaint was making him more pudgy-looking and giving him bulbous bug eyes. So, I kinda used his old design while keeping in tune with Omniverse’s design. Echo Echo is like a living amplifier. Covered in head to toe with a biosuit allowing him to create copies of himself, Echo Echo can duplicate and increase his amplitude tenfold. However, he can’t make infinite copies of himself. His max limit for clones is around 10 to 15. Anymore than that can weaken him and make his amplification less powerful. So if you’re expecting an army, you’re out of luck.

For Humungousaur’s new design I didn’t necessarily change much despite his power set is a tad different. AS for his clothing, I absolutely LOVE giving Vaxasaurians MMA-style clothing (shorts and gloves, primarily). I liked how it looks on my OC, Brawlasaurus, so I wanted to do it with Humungousaur too! Humungousaur is one one of Ben’s strongest, and largest aliens (besides Way Big). Humungousaur is pretty much just a large humanoid-like Dinosaur alien ranging up to 20 feet tall. He has IMMENSE strength (surpassing Four Arms), and very durable, incredibly dense, armor-like skin. But, like every alien, he has his weaknesses. Vaxasaurians are notorious for being cold-blooded creatures. Meaning if they were ever in contact with harsh, cold elements, their strength and size would dwindle and could possibly even die. So if a Vaxasaurian were to ever pick a fight with a Necrofriggian, chances are the Necrofriggian would come out the victor. And before anyone asks, no. My versions of Vaxasaurians do not sporadically change their size and grow plates of armor. They’re already large enough and have dense skin.

Instead of flying fast, Jetray is able to merely glide quickly in the air. In the water, however, he’s an incredibly fast swimmer. He can still breathe both on land and in water. Instead of shooting lasers from his eyes and tail, he merely has the ability to do so from his eyes. His tail is now able to shoot out a very long, VERY sharp paralytic barb that he can regrow. For this redesign I wanted to keep Jetray’s colors/stripes and such, but have a few of his features to feel a tad more alien. So I decided to simply restructure his face and change his abilities.

Big Chill’s power set is not that different from what we’ve seen. He still has the ability to freeze things by blowing incredibly cold gases/wind onto an opponent, freezing them instantly. He also has the ability to become intangible and phase through different objects, even freezing them inside-out if he chooses. Big Chill now has the added ability to create large ice structures over his limbs in order to make any punch/kick twice as powerful. Big Chills species can survive the cold vacuum of space, however they are still susceptible to incredibly hot temperatures. Was really excited for this one since Big Chill was an old fave of mine. For his design, I really wanted to keep the buff look Omniverse gave him, since I sorta felt his more scrawny-look made him look like a dude in a suit (a problem I feel UAF had a lot of times with their designs). I wanted to give him a lil fur, like an actual moth, and an exposed rib cage that has a translucent sack that can sorta show his organs (although a tad hard to see in the pose, my bad). I also REALLY wanted to keep the hood he always wears, so I had the idea that to top part of his wings stay on his head when he’s gliding, but when he needs to fly faster they flow outward, giving him more air to fly on. 

Chromastone is still a subspecies of Petrosapiens known as a Crystalsapien. However, this subspecies mainly lives deep underground, illuminating the dark caves and catacombs. They absorb large amounts of light when they’re on the surface and “feed it” to the core of Petropia, thus containing the planet as a whole. The crystal on his head allows him to shoot a wide range of powerful beams of light that can disintegrate an object in no time flat. He can also create light energy-based barriers to defend himself (an evolutionary trait his species learned to not be crushed by any cave-ins). Nothing too different from the last redesign I did for, but merely simplified it and gave him a new outfit.

For his powers/skill set, Brainstorm is one of Ben’s most strategic and analytical aliens on the roster. Able to calculate practically ANYTHING (whether it being complex math equations, enemy attacks, etc.) Brainstorm proves to be a go-to alien when needed for complex issues Ben can’t solve on his own. Brainstorm can produce and manipulate electricity in a variety of useful forms, including shoving/launching or shocking enemies, creating protective force fields of energy by opening the exoskeleton plates on his skull. Brainstorm is often very cold an calculating, so a lot of his calculations don’t involve how other may feel about his solutions. His species is also very boastful, so he may get stuck on admiring how intelligent he is.  Nothing all that different for Brainstorm in terms of design, pretty much just an addition of the sharp, winged ridge around his dome. Felt like it gave him some mad scientist “hair” in a weird way. .

For his skill sets, Spidermonkey is not too different. He’s now equipped with sharp, prehensile spider-like arms and a paralytic/venomous bite. Spidermonkey’s webs are about as strong as a lightweight cable, and sticky enough to latch on to just about any surface. Spidermonkey is able to climb on just about anything, although places with sooth surfaces can be pretty hard for him to grasp on to. Spidermonkey is INCREDIBLY agile, able to dodge many attacks and can jump insanely high. However, he’s not as strong as you might think. He relies far too much on his webbing, but can only organically spin out as much as he can. He can be easily caught off guard and taken down, depending on his adversary. For this design, I really wanted to hammer in the whole spider aspect about Spidermonkey, since I sorta feel his design was pretty much just a monkey with extra limbs and weird eyes. However, I didn’t want to stray away from his initial design he had in UAF. I didn’t really like the hair design they went with in Omniverse, so I kept the UAF style since it gave him more of a spider-looking head. 

This Goop doesn’t need his Anti-Gravity Projector to move, however if he’s on a planet with little to no gravity, his body will move aimlessly and sporadically. He’s still able to make his goop acidic, and can fit between any crease or crevice. However, if the Omnitrix (which is now located inside his body for convenience) is removed from his body it will return Ben to his human form. His one major weakness is large amounts of water. If submerged, his body will dilute and also cause Ben to revert back to his human form. Goop’s species is immune to heat, but can be slowed down in much more frigged temperatures. Nothing too different from the first redesign I did of him, just felt like putting him in an old pose he’s had before. 

And last but certainly not least, Alien X! I really loved his initial look, so the only thing I really wanted to was give him clothes inspired by OS suits and the Galactic Gladiator outfit. I also wanted to make the three horns on his head to be the same color green that Serena and Bellicus are to show how there are three entities controlling Alien X (including Ben, obviously). Alien X is at the TOP of the most powerful aliens list. He’s omnipotent, being able to warp reality, time, and space with ease and at any level. He’s so powerful he can even recreate the universe if need be! However, that doesn’t mean these tasks are easy… A major weakness for the most powerful alien in the universe is simply coming to a decision on what to do. Sounds dumb right? It should be easy knowing what to do immediately. Wall crumbles? Just rebuild it using your thoughts. City being wiped out by typhoon? Just reverse the effects of the planet to calm it down. Bad guy going on a rampage? Teleport him to the nearest dimension. Well, it wouldn’t be hard to actually do those things, but it depends on every variable you could dream of. Ben often goes to Serena and Bellicus (the two other halves of a Celestialsapien that they all have) to see what to do. Serena tells Ben how one decision can solve the situation, while Bellicus tells him how it could also mess with events going on ANYWHERE in the universe. Not only that, but Alien X’s powers are so difficult for Ben to manage that any one of his abilities can mess with the fabric of reality itself. While in this form, Ben would have to be absolutely emotionless and analytical. All three must come to a conclusion that ends up solving the problem, while not damaging any part of the space-time continuum. You can probably imagine how that sort of thing can be really difficult for an 11 year old who barely knows what cereal to get at the super market. Not only that, but turning into Alien X takes a major tole on Ben’s psyche. After transforming back, Ben still hears voices and gets major headaches. He has trouble sleeping at night, thinking about every action he takes that could have a negative or positive effect. It really messes with him for a while, making Alien X one of his most powerful, and harmful aliens to transform into.

[suzanneshannon]

Design v17

We rolled out a new site design on January 1! This is the 17th version of CSS-Tricks if you can believe that. The versions tend to evolve a decent amount beyond the initial launch, but we archive screenshots on this design history page. Like I said in our 2018 thank you post:

This is easily the most time, effort, and money that's gone into a redesign since the big v10 design. There are a lot of aesthetic changes, but there was also quite a bit of UX work, business goal orientation, workflow tweaking, and backend development work that went along with it.

This is a big one! The reception so far has been pretty great, but please know that we'll be refining it and squishing a lot of bugs here in the early days.

Here are some notes about who was involved, how it happened, and things to notice.

Kylie led this project

Kylie Timpani was the lead designer and really whole project lead on this.

I first reached out to her in April 2017, we chatted in May, and kicked off the work in June. From my perspective, this was a pretty casual process, as I had no particular deadlines and fairly loose goals. Let's make an attractive site that does better in all ways than we do them now.

Kylie was super organized and had a very thoughtful process around every aspect of this. Just in the first block of time that Kylie allocated for this project she:

Took a complete content inventory

Dug into analytic data to understand users, traffic, and usage at a high level

Created, distributed, and analyzed a reader survey to understand readers better and answer specific questions she had for them

Chatted with all the staff members of CSS-Tricks to understand their roles, workflows, and ideas

Kylie's obviously not the kind of the designer that just whips open a design tool and starts noodling around. As great of a visual designer as she is, the work was highly informed. She went on to speak with our advertising agency, clearly identify the site's current strengths and weaknesses, and do light wireframing.

I've been using Figma for visual design stuff, and Kylie was happy to use that as the design tool. That was nice since we both have Team level access and were able to use it collaboratively. For me, it was mostly useful for being able to see and reference everything, and make notes on the designs.

We also used Asana to track what was being worked on and ultimately as a place to track bugs and places where the design implementation needed attention.

Thanks so much, Kylie for all your excellent work on this project! If anything is a bit off or buggy about the site, it's my poor implementation. And good luck! ⤵️

⚡️ So! Speaking of big life changing news... in just a couple of weeks I'll be moving to San Francisco! I'm so SO excited to be joining @nrrrdcore and her truly incredible team over at Apple! 👩🏻‍💻✨

— Kylie Timpani (@kylietimpani) January 7, 2019

Design Stuff

I'll let y'all explore the design for yourself to find all the little touches we put in, but I'll give a shout out to a few of them where there is a technical detail you might enjoy.

Orange-to-pink

Clearly, we went all dark mode on this design. It's nothing to do with the new media query, although that reminds me we might consider alternations for those who specifically set prefers-color-scheme: light;.

The brand/accent/action colors are orange and pink, which looks quite striking against the darkness but works on light backgrounds as well.

I made a quickie little Sass @mixin that allowed me to use those colors (with variations, if needed) at different angles as backgrounds:

@mixin orange-to-pink($deg: to right, $col-1: $orange, $col-2: $pink) { background-image: linear-gradient($deg, $col-1, $col-2); }

And on text as well wherever we needed (most often as for :hover and :focus):

@mixin gradient-text() { background: linear-gradient(to right, $orange, $pink); -webkit-background-clip: text; -webkit-text-fill-color: transparent; }

We also needed the gradient to be applied to fills and strokes in SVG, so I plopped that into the document to use wherever it was needed.

<svg width="0" height="0" class="visually-hidden"> <defs> <linearGradient id="orange-to-pink" x1="0" x2="0" y1="1" y2="0"> <stop offset="0%" stop-color="#DA1B60" /> <stop offset="100%" stop-color="#ff8a00" /> </linearGradient> </defs> </svg>

Fixed header

There is something about headers that always bring out more complexity than you might expect. I recently went through this with the new CodePen header/sidebar and it as complicated for this site. Part of what complicated this one was:

It has its own set of unique breakpoints. The header is pretty full, so the breakpoints are pretty specific and unique to it.

We wanted a fixed-position (but minified) header that showed up as you scroll down.

When you're logged in, there is a WordPress admin bar also fixed to the top of the page. I wanted to accommodate for that.

At one point, it was getting pretty messy and I wound up deleting all the CSS for the entire thing and re-wrote it, taking all the states into consideration, and writing media queries that used logic to clearly specify styles in each of those states.

The idea of a not-always-fixed-position header is interesting in and of itself. It means that:

You need to determine when to apply the fixed position

You need to make sure the shift from not-fixed to fixed (and back) doesn't cause layout shifting

I was dead nervous about attaching an onscroll listener and doing math and such to determine when to do the switch. I'm sure it can be done responsibly, but I haven't had great luck with that. Instead, I placed a tiny one-pixel element to the screen and attached an IntersectionObserver to it and reacted to that. That gave me the power to adjust where that is in CSS, which was a nice little touch.

Here's the very basics of that code:

See the Pen Fixed Header with IntersectionObserver by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

Mixup

One very cool feature of this design is the Mixup area on the homepage. It was one of Kylie's ideas to show and remind people of the variety and depth of content that is here on CSS-Tricks.

The line that goes through it needs to depend on the height of the HTML content in each of those boxes. The boxes are set on a CSS grid, but they can and should still expand as needed for titles and such. Rather than try to SVG this somehow, the line is essentially stitched together though border and border-radius on individual boxes. To make it line up, I occasionally had to nudge them around with transform.

There was some z-index involved too. It was fun making mistakes along the way:

Cards

I'm kinda in love with native scroll snapping. The cards kinda have a fun animation on desktop, revealing the entire card on hover/focus, and then on mobile you can see the whole card, but are easy to thumb through:

Thanks, Amelia!

The design called for these curved line separators:

I have a small degree of confidence with the SVG path syntax, so I took the first crack at it. I was able to design it in a way that it could draw that line OK and keep the stroke at the desired width, but it didn't scale quite right.

See the Pen Lighted Path by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

I brought in SVG expert Amelia Bellamy-Royds to help me get it right. Feel free to inspect the site to see how it was done. It involves masking and nested SVGs and rectangles and transforms and all sorts of fun stuff. Amelia actually created four variations of the code and carefully noted all the pros and cons of each one. Ultimately, we went with this:

See the Pen Lighted Path by Amelia Bellamy-Royds (@AmeliaBR) on CodePen.

Another thing Amelia helped with was the "circle of text" design element. Kylie had these instances mocked out and I thought they were so cool and I definitely wanted to pull it off. There is a really elaborate way to do it by splitting the characters in to spans and transforming them, but that's a bit messy compared to SVG's <textPath>. I knew I wanted to go the SVG route, but perhaps abstract it away into a reusable component so that it wasn't a heaping pile of code every time I want to use one.

It occurred to me that a web component might be the best way to go here because I can kind of invent the API myself. What I wanted a circle-of-text component to do:

Pass in the text to set on the circle

Declare the radius of the circle

Rotate the circle so I can start the text at any point along the circle

That makes perfect sense as a web component:

<circle-text r="3em" rotate="-90deg"> CSS is super fun & cool & I like CSS!!! </circle-text>

My expertise with web components is limited, so I reached out to Amelia again who is great both with web components and SVG—a perfect match! This is what she was able to do, which I easily integrated easily into this design.

Thanks, Ana!

Another design thing that Kylie cooked up that I was a bit perplexed by was this line:

I thought maybe SVG again, but I really wanted to nestle regular HTML content in there nicely. I was hoping to pull it over with borders or something CSS-y. I reached out to Ana Tudor who is fantastic at tricky design situations and solving them with native browser tech. Ana was able to whip up a good solution here using multiple gradient backgrounds in the main area and a border for the top right bit that flies off.

See the Pen nav by Ana Tudor (@thebabydino) on CodePen.

Thanks, Zach!

Fonts are a unique part of the loading experience of websites in that their presence (or lack of), how they appear, and how they change all play major roles in the perceived performance of the page.

I've had the good fortune of being able to chat with Zach Leatherman about font loading before, but I still don't feel entirely comfortable with what the best practices are in any given situation. For this design of CSS-Tricks, I made the call to use the system font stack for most of the body copy. That has the major benefit of being instantly available to render and aesthetically seems to work well on a technical site, not to mention generally pairing well with Rubik, our header font.

But we still needed to deal with Rubik. There will be an upcoming article from Zach going into this in more details, but the gist is:

Create a minimal subsetted version of Rubik that handles the majority of usage

<link rel="preload" ... > it

Use it with @font-face using font-display

Load a more robust version in an async second stage

Nice job everyone that worked on the @css relaunch!

Look at those web fonts showing up on that 2.09s Fast 3G first render 🎉

(full disclosure I helped a wee bit with the font loading here 😇) pic.twitter.com/Ih7zJhelQQ

— Zach Leatherman (@zachleat) January 1, 2019

Some areas of the site are somewhat deprecated

The Forums is such a complicated area of the site to design and maintain, what I've done is just loaded the default bbPress styling for them, instead of trying to override things or start from scratch. I think that'll be the best route going forward.

There is a Gallery section of this site, but I'm not even linking to it anymore as we didn't really keep it up to date very well nor did it get used much. The URL's still work though. Maybe it can make a return someday, but for now, I'm enjoying the reduction of some technical and content debt.

Tech stack

It's somewhat boring. It's about the same thing I've done forever. It's a stock install of WordPress with a custom theme, a dozen or so plugins, and a bit of custom-coded functionality, like having the images powered by Cloudinary. It's running on a custom Media Temple-built box so it can have PHP 7 and MySQL 5.6, plus a firewall that also acts as a CDN. It's nice to have a pretty snappy foundation, so it's on me as a front-end dev to keep it that way.

I used SVG for the icons, Sass for the styling, and Babel to write jQuery-based functionality in ES6. I wrote up a Gulp file to do all that processing and run the local BrowserSync dev server. Local WordPress via Local by Flywheel.

I'm actually pretty happy with the stack as it felt quick and productive to me. But I admit, part of me wishes I dug a little harder into new tech, like building webpack-based processing or trying to go all-in on a server-rendered and React-powered headless WordPress via GraphQL kinda thing. The reason I didn't is because boring has served me so well and time is a major factor since I'm developing alone (my budget doesn't exactly make available a whole development team). My guess is a major front-end infastructure overhaul would have tripled the dev time for questionable benefits. It still sounds like fun and might open up future doors, but hey, another time.

My last regret is that I wish I had spun up a real pattern library system from the start. I think I did OK in breaking things up into reusable parts, but the site isn't truly componentized. As I approached the finish line, I started to see how this could have gone a bit smoother for me should I have worked with true components that accepted data and had variations and such. Native PHP isn't great for that, so it would have forced me into some kind of templating system, and I probably wouldn't have regretted it. If I stay in PHP next time, maybe I'd use something like Timber and Twig for all the components, and then Fractal for the pattern library since it supports Twig. I kind of dig the way Timber abstracts the data stuff from the views.

I hadn't heard of this app until now, but check out Project Wallace:

Project Wallace is a project aimed at gaining insights in your CSS over a longer period of time. It started a couple of years ago as a frustration with existing CSS analyzers that only do a one-time only analysis. As time went by, more and more features were added and now Wallace is place to go for developers who want to know if their complexicity has increased or for a designer who wants to know if all the correct colors and fonts are being used.

Bart Veneman set it up to watch CSS-Tricks, and you can see a before/after comparison and charts over time. Bart blogged about the numbers for us as well. Thanks Bart!

There are more interesting stats in that blog post.

CodePen embeds

The true usefulness of CodePen Embed Themes came out here. The whole point of an embed theme is that you can use them to match the design of where the Pens will be embedded, and if you need to change that design, you can change them all in one fell swoop. There are probably thousands of embedded Pens on this site, and they all got updated at once with one theme change.

There are a few special things that I've done with CodePen embeds on this site:

The are resizable from the bottom right corner. Used jQuery. Like this.

They have a placeholder height. When you embed a Pen, you can choose how tall you want it to be. That's how tall the <iframe> will come in as. But I've adjust it so that the <p> that is there before the iframe comes in will be that same height, so there is no reflow jank.

I regex'd that sucker myself like this:

function codepen_reflow_fix($content) { $content = preg_replace('/data-height=(\'|")(\d*)(\'|")/', 'data-height="$2" style="height: $2px;"', $content); $content = preg_replace('/data-theme-id="\d*"/', 'data-theme-id="1"', $content); return $content; } add_filter('the_content', 'codepen_reflow_fix', 10);

We're gonna bring that feature to CodePen itself real soon. Notice in that RegEx above I'm also forcing the theme id. That way, all embedded Pens definitely have the correct theme, even if we forget.

Achievement unlocked: The custom scrollbar is the new feature that everyone either loves or hates

If there has been one constant in every CSS-Tricks design, it's that there's at least one feature people either love or hate. This time, I'm happy to announce it's the custom scrollbar. In a sense, it's for myself. I manually use scrollbars quite a bit and it feels both fun and highly usable to grab onto this big beefy chunk of pink love.

It's also a little inspired by VS Code, which features a pretty beefy scrollbar itself:

There are general usability considerations about custom scrollbars for sure, but I don't feel like they've been breached too heavily here, if at all. I've heard some "don't mess with my browsers UI" feedback, which I sorta get, but does that mean we shouldn't style any form controls, or even use CSS at all? (LOL.) And don't scrollbars come from the system, not the browser?

Anyway, I'm not faking them or anything. I'm just using ::-webkit-scrollbar and friends. There is official scrollbar styling stuff on the way, per the CSS specs. I didn't use any of that stuff/ I think I'll wait for at least one browser to support it.

We have plenty of bug fixing and polishing to do still on this design. If you've emailed or tweeted or communicated with us in some way about it, I've probably seen it and have been log it all to make sure it's all addressed the best we can. Plus stay tuned for some fun new features!

If you have thoughts, free to leave comments here if you like, use our contact form, email at team@css-tricks.com, or chat it up in our new Spectrum community.

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