#through with playing by the rules . . . [ EDITS & GRAPHICS ]*

[frosthidden]

PICTURE YOU - CHAPPELL ROAN

mutuals may interact, do not reblog without permission (personals gtfo)

Iisa frankenstein cap cred goes to @byroncapped

[lilmisssammy]

The Path Iceberg

This is an Iceberg for The Path- created by myself with editing help from my good friends Samhain, Torr and Gloria. If you don’t know what an iceberg is, it’s a chart to discuss different levels of knowledge for a specific topic, the farther you go down, the more obscure or dark the topics become.

Before you read, I need to state that there are discussions of Rape related to people aged 9 to 19, Death, Potential Triggering content within links, and Spoilers for The Path. 

Thank you! And Enjoy!

This is an Iceberg for The Path- created by myself with editing help from my good friends Samhain, Torr and Gloria. If you don’t know what an iceberg is, it’s a chart to discuss different levels of knowledge for a specific topic, the farther you go down, the more obscure or dark the topics become.

Before you read, I need to state that there are discussions of Rape related to people aged 9 to 19, Death, Potential Triggering content within links, and Spoilers for The Path. 

Thank you! And Enjoy!

Tier 1 - The Sky

The Path is a psychological horror art game created by Tale of Tales, now Song of Songs, in 2009. It follows a modern retelling of Little Red Riding Hood as it's experienced between six sisters, the wolf-loving 9-year-old Robin, the precocious 11-year-old Rose, the tomboy 13-year-old Ginger, the brooding 15-year-old Ruby, the confident 17-year-old Carmen and the responsible 19-year-old Scarlet. Each sister takes turns walking to their grandmother's house, with the only rule being to stay on the path. And the only way to win is by dying. The Path is a walking simulator and is seen as one of the best representations of the fact gaming can be art. 

Tale of Tales was a Belgian game development company that ran from 2003 to 2015. It was founded by artists Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn in an effort to bring art to an interactive medium. They're known for games like The Endless Forest, Graveyard, Fatale, Sunset, and especially their cult classic The Path. In 2015 they ceased making commercial video games after the release of Sunset, and now work on art projects together under the name Song of Songs. Currently, they’re working on a remake of The Endless Forest, which is currently in its beta stage open for patreons!

Little Red Riding Hood is a fairy tale about a young girl with a red cape who meets a wolf on the way to her grandmother's house. The basic story has Little Red walking through the woods to bring food for her sickly grandmother, where she meets the wolf who wants to eat the food and her. The wolf tricks her into telling him where she's going while she stops to get her grandmother flowers. When she finally gets there, the wolf has eaten her grandmother and tricks her into getting into bed so he can eat her as well. Depending on the version, a hunter may come in and slay the wolf saving the granddaughter and grandmother from his stomach, or the grandmother could be unharmed in the wardrobe. 

Auriea Harvey is a digital artist and sculptor currently living and working in Rome. She’s one half of Tale of Tales and is specifically credited for Design, Direction and Character Design on The Path. She was also the author of the post-mortem on The Path which you can see I’ve heavily referenced throughout this whole post. She currently has an art exhibit at the Museum of Moving Image called My Veins are the Wires, My Body is Your Keyboard which features images, models and the ability to play the path! 

Michaël Samyn is a graphic designer and digital artist specialising in VR from Belgium, currently living and working in Rome. He’s the other half of Tale of Tales and is specifically credited for Design, Direction and Programming for The Path. His most recent work, apart from actively working on The Endless Forest, is The Viriditas Chapel of Perpetual Adoration, an utterly stunning VR experience you can get on Steam.

Tier 2 - Tip of the Iceberg

The Path as a game is about building your own interpretations of the character's struggles via item reactions and rooms in Grandmother's House. There are generally two main interpretations believed by most who play the game. One is that the game shows each girl's death, Robin being mauled to death by a wolf, Rose drowning after she falls off the boat, Ginger being strangled/electrocuted on the flower fields wires, Ruby getting into a car accident, Carmen being killed and chopped up, and Scarlet being hung by the string seen on her wolf’s claws. However, these are also usually viewed as metaphorical examples of the sisters feeling like they died after extreme traumas. Using the items and images as clues, there is a common consensus of what each sister went through that made her feel like this. Robin's is learning about death and the consequences of actions, Ginger's is getting her first period and being forced to grow up, Ruby's is falling in with the wrong crowd and getting into harmful behaviours, Carmen's is getting taken advantage of while drunk, and Scarlet's is falling under the weight of responsibility placed upon her to look after her family.

Some places reported that the game would be about rape or pedophilia, like this spread in a Dutch gaming magazine. Something that gives credence to the rape interpretation is the basis of Perrault's version of the tale where the wolf tricks the sister to take off her clothes and get into bed together, as well as the uncomfortable positions the sisters appear in after their encounter. Though, this is how Auriea addressed it in the post-mortem- 'Some say blindly that the game is "about rape." And while that could be one of the interpretations -- and I understand it -- for me, those black-out moments after meeting her wolf are the moments of realization. Those are the times when a girl grows. And what happens in Grandmother's House is not a murder but a shedding of childhood and an initiation to womanhood. Each girl is one step closer to her fate.'

The Path may have intended answers that are mostly agreed on, but the format of the game is purposefully set up so there is no wrong or right answer, allowing for more personal or specific interpretations. You may notice I didn't mention Rose in the last section- and that's because there isn't an accepted answer. The most popular ideas are either her blooming spirituality, or dealing with illness, though those are both contested. There are other popular interpretations for each character- Robin having a family member pass, Ginger being a lesbian or trans man in love with her wolf, Ruby's experience with ableism or addiction, Carmen experiencing society's sexualization of teenagers, Scarlet having extreme psychological issues, with Rose's ranging anywhere from the struggle of a gifted child, actually dying or even the creators not having an actual set intention! 

Each sister you can play as has their own Live Journal- Robin's is named Kid Red, Rose's Innocent Red, Ginger's Tomboy Red, Ruby's Goth Red, Carmen's Sexy Red, and Scarlets Stern Red. Here the sisters post about their lives and talk to one another and sometimes other people, there seems to be a group of people who didn't know these were fictional characters, and one person talking about the Rio World Cup. Nowadays, this blog project could be seen as an early form of an ARG, considering its interactive nature.

The Company of Wolves is a 1984 gothic horror film about a grandmother warning her granddaughter about straying from the path and never trusting charming men. Multiple stories are told about girls falling for people who are secretly wolves and how it became their downfall. There are similar themes of femininity and sexual awakening, as well as the usage of Charles Perrault's Le Petit Chaperon Rouge at the end of the movie and in the trailers for the game. 

If you've played The Path in recent times you may notice that there are various bugs that range from bearable, game-breaking, beautiful or simply funny. The creators have an image folder of beautiful glitches from developing the game and the VK fanclub has compiled some glitches found themselves.

The game is turning 15 this year- and as time goes on the web aspects that hosted information about it are slowly going out of date. There's been an effort to archive images, the character models for the sisters, and object textures. 

Jarboe Devereaux is an experimental rock musician probably best known for being an early member of the group Swans, who co-composed the soundtrack for The Path with Kris Force along with lending her voice to some narration in the soundtrack and trailers. A lot of her music is experimental and I honestly recommend listening to it if you want! At the moment she’s working on her next solo album to come out in late 2024, as well as considering a tour in Europe after the album is released!

The Path of Needles or The Path of Pins is a line from one of the earliest versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf asking which path she will travel down, the needles representing maturity while the pins represent childhood. It's said to be based on a French village in which a girl was sent off to become a seamstress for a year, as a sense of sexual maturation. This features heavily in the trailers as well as being part of The Grandmother’s Tale read by Jarboe, with it being referenced to by Ruby in her reaction to the needle. 

The Prologue is a short free version of The Path you can find on their website where you play as the mysterious Girl in White. You're unable to interact with items or go to grandmother's house in this version- but you are much more able to explore and find your way back to the path on your own, something you cannot do in the full game.

Izzzyzzz is a YouTuber who makes commentary videos who posts deep dives on things like famous fandom stories, old media and internet legends. In late 2021 they posted a video covering The Path which now sits at 1.4 million views, introducing a good chunk of the modern fan base to the game, as well as causing a surge in new content for the game, with a follow-up video in 2023! Their most recent video is about the game Palworld and it’s plagiarism, as well as having a new line of merch out.

Despite being released in English and Dutch only, The Path very quickly grew a fanbase in Japan and even more so in Russia. Screenshots from Auriea's post-mortem showed Russia was the second biggest purchaser of the game. The European social networking site VK has a fan club of 5.4k members as of writing this- as well as having produced 251 fanfictions on ficbook (for context, Rule of Rose, a game with similar themes and an overlapping fan base has 5 fanfictions on it) Japan's is a lot less archived, but on niconico you can find a lot of fan videos for The Path that is simply not there on the English net.

Though not like how it's used in other games- The Path has an inventory system in which you can collect, store and view items found in the forest. These are deemed "Distractions", and you're able to use these to unlock parts of grandmother's house. There are 30 items you can collect, the bread and wine are already collected which unlock the house and gate respectively, but there is also: A Knife (Unlocking a knife on the kitchen table), a Bullet (Unlocking a deer head), a Feather (Unlocking a Cage with a bird), a Mask (Unlocking the curtains in the kitchen), a Dead Bird (Unlocking a tv), Treasure (Unlocking a stack of money), a Needle (Unlocking pills), a Two-Headed Teddy Bear (Unlocking the bear in grandmother's house), a Boot (Unlocking a table), a Record (Unlocking a stereo), Flowers (unlocking hanging flowers), a Balloon (Unlocking Balloons on the ceiling), a Piano (Unlocking a Cobweb), the Playground Tower (Unlocking a picture frame), a Bunker (Unlocking beer in a fridge), and a Grave (Unlocking a Vase). Each sister then has three special items that unlock secret rooms. For Robin, an Open Grave, Swing and Shopping Cart unlock a crib with a birds-nest, a side staircase and a birthday party. For Rose, a Living Crow, a Skull and a Well, unlocking a long corridor of bathroom stalls, a flooding hallway of doors and a greenhouse. For Ginger, a Twisted Fence, a Climbable Tree and a Shed unlock a hallway, a bedroom and toys under the bed. For Ruby, a Scarecrow, a Wheelchair and a Car unlock a hallway, gymnasium and giant cage. For Carmen, beer, campfire and bath unlock a bush corridor, a basement and a row of fire. And for Scarlet, a cobweb, a clothing line, and a tv unlock a music room, a library and a hall of books.

Tier 3 - Beneath the Surface

Kris Force is an electroacoustic composer, performer and visual artist you'd probably best know from her work as Amber Asylum and with Neurosis. She’s an extremely talented multi-media artist, including such skills as painting, sound and photography. At the moment her most recent release was The Embrace, with Jarboe whom she collaborated with on The Path!

1001 Video Games To Play Before You Die is a spinoff book from 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, featuring games from 1970 to 2013, with The Path being listed right between Punch-Out for the Wii and EyePet the pet simulator. Listed as being so effective due to its interactivity.

The Girl in White, the mysterious forest girl who brings the sisters back to the path, seems to be tied with two of the sister’s Wolves. Ginger’s, The Girl in Red, and Carmen’s, The Woodsman. The Girl in White has a small tent next to the Woodsman’s area, as well as sharing the same skin colour, hair colour, eye colour and similar-looking boots. With the Girl in Red it’s much the same, the only things being different are the colour of their dresses, and the directions their pigtails point, and is directly named as the Girl in White’s twin. There’s even art of all three together named “The Woodsman’s Daughter” but not saying which one is his daughter. 

Fey Wolf, if you aren't familiar, is the name in the files for Scarlet's Wolf, the white-haired pianist found in the theatre. You'd not be faulted for seeing them as either an older woman or a long-haired man, or even a genderless ethereal being. The Fey Wolf was never specifically gendered by the creators, but insights about The Girl In Red Wolf reveal that she is intended to be the only female wolf.

Laura Raines Smith is an extremely prolific animator specialising in modelling and textures and was the main animator in a lot of Tale of Tales games. Some of her Tale of Tales animations can be found here, but she's also worked on games like Borderlands 3, Rage of the Gladiator and NHL 95. Her most recent work from what I can find was the animation and rigging on Saturnalia in 2022! 

If you’ve been in the community or if you’ve seen people discuss theories for The Path, you have probably seen the interpretation that Ginger is a lesbian, or transgender. This goes beyond just a shared headcanon, there’s a mountain of evidence for both camps that seems potentially intended. Starting with Ginger being transgender, just out of respect, in this section Ginger will be referred to with gender-neutral pronouns. Their appearance is particularly androgynous compared to their sisters, with a short bob cut and a black shirt and shorts- along with having the gender-neutral name Ginger that doesn’t quite fit the family naming theme that could be seen as a chosen name. Ginger also is associated with things that are seen as more masculine, their favourite video game is an action-adventure called Ico, they enjoy exploring the forest and trying to blow things up or fake crop circles, as well as having “boy” toys under the bed, little army men and dinosaurs. Ginger also notoriously dislikes things that are more “girly” like dressing up pretty, going as far as to make their entire family forget their birthday to avoid it. Their wolf can be seen as a manifestation of that, of all things girly and feminine, literally being only known as a Girl in Red- and the GIR’s obsession with barbed wire could be how they feel their feminity is trapping them. Ginger getting their first period is near-universally considered to be the “proper” interpretation of their route, but people who believe in Ginger being transgender use their overwhelming reaction to their first period being a sign of gender dysphoria, and fear of now believing they will be stuck to becoming a woman. This can be summed up in this image, of Ginger clutching their legs together with what's supposed to be in the middle being completely absent, instead with a drawing of flowers in place and barbed wire across, a clear sign of how they see their period as trapping them into womanhood. For the lesbian side, Ginger never specifically states that she doesn’t like men like Scarlet, but more shows her complete disinterest in them and romance in general. She mentions how she hates that “kissing stuff” and describes Carmen as “Hot, if you’re into that kinda thing.” While that does seem to show Ginger isn’t into romance at all, there are some things. The recurring image of two girls holding hands as a doodle can be found all over the game, and her general identity as a tomboy is sometimes seen in young lesbians yet to have come out, but most of the evidence lies within her wolf and their relationship. They’re clearly close, they have a handshake, and Ginger is more comfortable with affection with her than compared to her own grandmother, with the two girls hugging deeply and the GIR even lifting her into the air. The Wolf Encounter is comparably tamer and almost sweet compared to every other wolf encounter, ending with the Girl in Red grabbing Ginger’s hand and pulling her down to lie together in the sun. The final flashes show an image of the GIR leaning in, almost looking like she’s kissing something. On the GIR’s development blog, their relationship is described as “They are what is missing from each other's lives” as well as describing why Ginger was chosen to have a female wolf as “And the girl most likely to be attracted would be Ginger.” These development notes as well as the general tone of the wolf encounter seem to apply that Ginger and her wolf’s interactions weren’t as antagonistic as the others, almost as if her goal was not to hurt, but to trap her, seemingly to stay in the relationship.

If you’ve lurked on forums about the game for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard the question of “Getting an A” in the game's grading system, and speculation on how it’s possible. Well, I’m sadly here to tell you it’s impossible. Even if you get all of the items, all 144 flowers, successfully succumb to the wolf, and become Grandmother's favourite grandchild, you are unable to get an A. It honestly should not be a surprise- The Path is not supposed to be a normal game that rewards you for your completion, it’s… The Path.

Lisa Falzon is an Illustrator turned tattooer and multimedia artist from Malta. She was originally approached early on in the production to design the box art, though I don’t know if this was ever made or shared, and went on to inspire multiple other aspects of the game, being described as "Awkward Realism." She even drew Ginger when Tale of Tales interviewed her! At the moment she’s working in her own Tattoo shop called Upward Spiral Ink- her tattoos involve amazing detail and beautiful shading, I highly recommend checking it out!

Emriss, Redsbane and Bonedevill are three accounts found commenting and interacting with the sisters' live journals in the comments between 2008 and 2009. Most of Emriss' comments come from 2008, while all of Redsbane and Bonevill's are from 2009. The common through line is interaction with the accounts by the sisters and deactivation. Emriss plays a more neutral role, while Redsbane and Bonedevill lean more antagonistic with them referencing something bad happening to the sisters, Redsbane also seemingly implies the 'Bane' of the 'Red' sisters. With these accounts not archived on the Wayback Machine it's not clear if these were accounts used by the creators to provide interaction, or if they are actual fans playing along.

Ruby’s Leg Brace is probably the most iconic thing about her, with the rarity of video game characters using disability aids, her open usage of one is a welcome sight- but from the beginning of her development it’s not clear if she needs it. In her original plan sheet it’s noted that she may just be using it for show and later her description on the website saying “When asked about her leg brace, Ruby says she’s in pain, but she doesn’t specify where it hurts,” implying she doesn’t need it. Conversely, one of Ruby’s secret items needed is a wheelchair, and the final flashes put an emphasis on her legs and how they’re bent out of shape, seemingly saying she needed the leg brace due to a car crash, or an alternative reading is that Ruby was already disabled before the accident, as she gets violently thrown through a high school gym, as well as being the quickest character in the game, maybe signalling she used to be a school athlete before the onset of a condition or an accident.

Kirin San may be a kind of mysterious figure for non-Japanese fans of The Path, especially if you’ve gone through fanart, seeing a random man or giraffe in a little suit with the red sisters. The truth is, Kirin-San could probably be best described as the Japanese Izzzyzzz, being a big part of how the game became popular over there, with his playthroughs inspiring animatics and leading to a Japanese translation coming in 2010 from Zoo Corporation! This is a weird side note I didn’t know where else to put, but while I was researching this topic I found out that apart from translating games like GTA and Left 4 Dead into English, they also create hentai card games like Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire as well as developing medical prescription systems, so that’s hilarious. 

144 is described as the essence of the game by the creators, that it represents “a girl's restlessness, the sound of footsteps on dry leaves, the smell of pine trees, dim sunlight through filtering clouds.” The original working title of it was 144, with the original intent to have 144 red riding hoods. This was quickly abandoned due to the scale, but its importance remains, the 144 collectable flowers in the forest are the most obvious example of this, but it's all over the rest of the game. There are 36 items (144 divided by 4 being 36), 18 secret rooms (144 divided by 8 being 18), 3 secret rooms per sister (144 divided by 48 being 3) as well as six sisters (144 divided by 24 being six).

Something talked about in the postmortem but was not mentioned by name in the game is that The Girl in White is quite literally an older version of one of Tale of Tales past characters, The Deaf Mute Girl in The Pretty White Dress from 8. Her models were created based on making them look like the Deaf Mute Girl but at the age of 13. With 8 never coming out; the Girl in White is both the first occurrence of this character and the second time she was in a game.

Tier 4 - Middle of the Iceberg

An interesting detail that 1c changed when they translated the game into Russian is them choosing different names for the main six girls, unlike every other translation which keeps their original. The names are: Robin as Алина/Alina, Rose as Алиса/Alice, Ginger as Ада/Ada, Ruby as Агния/Agnia, Carmen as Алла/Alla and Scarlet as Аврора/Aurora. The translated names are no longer themed around red things, but around the alliterative A’s, probably due to their name puns being lost in translation.

This is an entry that’s probably more well known to people NOT into The Path, in that The Path is featured and shouted out by name in Hetalia. Yeah, Hetalia, that Hetalia the anime about personified countries that once was the second most popular Anime/Manga fandom on Fanfiction dot net, features The Path in both the anime and manga, with Belgium showing off the game as something from their homeland.

Something never mentioned in the games is that each of the sisters was given birthdays. On their livejournals, you can see posts of them celebrating Robin’s, Carmen’s and forgetting Ginger’s, but they aren’t the only ones with birthdays. On their live journal profile descriptions, their birthdays are listed as the 13th of October 2000 for Robin, the 13th of March for Rose, the 13th of September 1996 for Ginger, the 13th of May 1994 for Ruby, the 13th of November 1992 for Carmen, and the 13th of April 1990 for Scarlet. Rose doesn’t have her birth year listed but it’s probably just 1998, due to all of the sisters being spaced by two years. Something interesting is that all of the sisters were born on Friday the 13th, but only Rose would be her actual age as of the game release. Since the game came out on the 18th of March 2009, the actual character ages would be 8 for Robin, 11 for Rose, 12 for Ginger, 14 for Ruby, 16 for Carmen and 18 for Scarlet. Part of me thinks that this is why Rose’s birth year goes unmentioned on live journal, though if she wasn’t born in 1998 she would not fit the profile of being born on Friday the 13th, but it’s possible it was either a mistake or related to another entry on this iceberg.

Only mentioned in one development image and the development blog for Ginger’s Wolf, is the idea that Ginger and Rose were at one point supposed to be twin sisters, both being 13 similar to the Girl in White and her twin The Girl in Red being 13. In the accompanying image found on Flickr, you’re able to see above Rose her age is listed as 11, or as 13 if she was a twin. The thing is- the sister that has age 13 listed above her is very clearly NOT Ginger, it’s Ruby, and it’s Ginger who’s listed as 15. Well, they’re not listed by name, but Tomboy Red and Goth Red are the names used for Ginger and Ruby as seen on Livejournal, and their appearances are nearly identical to those from the final product. Especially weird considering that Ruby was the first character ever made for this game, and she was listed as 15 in that as well!

You probably noticed this if you looked at the image where Rose and Ginger are listed as twins, but they aren’t the only ones with stark differences that go unexplained. The Girl in White is listed as LDMGIAPWD, an acronym for the Little Deaf Mute Girl in a Pretty White Dress, simplified in print as the Girl in White and in fan discussions as the GIW. Another thing you’ll notice is that Scarlet has… A different design. With a long buttoned dress reminiscent of something straight out of a period piece set in an asylum, and a hat with things that look like antennas with flowers. And then it comes to… Rose and Carmen’s original names. Virgin Red and Sexpot Red. We’ll start with Carmen. Sexpot is a more crude way of describing someone who’s sexy, which is what Carmen’s nickname was then changed to. It’s still kind of a touchy issue with fans that Carmen, a minor, uses the name Sexy- but it’s still far more appropriate compared to Sexpot. Sexy gives more of a feeling that it’s self-appointed when compared to Sexpot which is more voyeuristic. And Virgin Red. Virgin has two contexts that are relevant here. Virgin within the context of purity and innocence, related to the Virgin Mary as an example of goodness not seeing bad. And Virgin within the context of never having sexual contact with anyone. Given the fact her name was then changed to Innocent Red and the fact she is ELEVEN- it’s likely that it’s related to that first interpretation, further giving evidence towards the view of Rose’s story being about her relationship to her spirituality. 

If you’ve read Rose or Ruby’s live journal you’d find out that on the 2nd of May 2008, Ruby dyed her hair black. That’s not surprising to begin with, you can see her with her hair as black throughout the game (Though sometimes it has a blueish look with some lighting)- a bit weird that it had to be pointed out as dyed due to all of her sister’s also having black hair (You can see Ginger’s black roots), but their live journals give a reason for why. In Ruby’s comment section, she’s asked about her original hair colour, which she replies was Green. It’s not clear if she means her hair was last dyed green, or if she has natural green hair. This seems like a reference to one of her final flashes that’s the same as another but with a green colouring. Anyway- this isn’t what we’re talking about. In the reply of that comment, someone calls her a liar, and says if it really was green, why did she get her sister to lie? What they’re referring to is Rose’s post about it- in which she says that Ruby had made her promise not to tell what her old hair is. There’s still a debate as to what her original hair colour is, and I don’t think we will ever actually get to know.

In 2022 @wammy4 on Twitter began multiple Twitter bots based on the sisters in The Path, posting various things sourced from lines in the game, live journal posts, quotes from grandmother's house and links to the game. It posted multiple times per day, now with so many posts it’s hard to keep track, but as of the fourth of April 2023, none of the accounts other than the creator has posted, due to Musk’s shutdown of free API bots and $100 per month bot subscription.

A staple of fandoms on the internet are Askblogs, where fans can ask characters questions and get a reply, usually with illustrated companions. The Path is no outlier, having a dedicated askblog on VK- with over 800 followers. It’s been active for years and has over 2 thousand different images, and has asks for all of the characters in the game, as well as gender-bent versions. If you can speak Russian I highly recommend checking it out, and even if you can’t, the art is stunning!

The Red sisters aren’t the only ones who have live journals, within the comments you can find Grandmother Red interacting with her grandkids, asking when they’ll next come down to see her. However this livejournal is different from the others given that hers is deactivated, even with the wayback machine- and her livejournal was never linked on the official website next to the others.

Fuco Euda is a Japanese-based surrealist painter focusing on the horrific, sensual and innocent, with girls nearly looking identical as if they were family, or the same girl. She was first referenced all the way back when Ruby was being designed as an artist to look into for inspiration. Her artbook LUCID DREAM is out, with a special bound edition if that’s something you’d be interested in!

Alice Knows Karate is an alt-pop band that takes inspiration from fairytales and J-pop, creating a unique nostalgic sound that feels straight out of a video game. They’ve got various albums you should definitely check out, but what we’re specifically talking about today is their 2018 album Fablewave, with their song ‘The Path’. It was originally posted on the head of the band Keiko’s YouTube channel in 2009, with an updated version coming ten years later. It’s outrageously good, it captures the essence of the game perfectly with amazing lyrics, and I got a bit too attached and it ended up as my number-one song on Spotify in 2023. The rest of Fablewave is also based on other fairytales and fairytale-inspired games, particularly ‘Alice, What Have You Done?’ based on American McGee’s Alice. Their most recent work is Grounded, and they’ve also been featured as the theme song for Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain! 

The Path was supposed to be Tale of Tales' first commercial project, and as so it included advertising, but being Tale of Tales, they did this the most extra way they could. Around where they lived, they made a Tear Off poster, with what I believe is Martha Samyan’s art of Robin. The poster asks the reader to choose the path of pins or the path of needles, while linking to the website. On their blog they provide a blank download of the tear-off poster so you can print it off, to draw on it and place it around you!

The Path was Tale of Tales' first foray into creating commercial games, and because of that, there are various different selections of merch, such as: Signed Posters, USB drives, CDs of the soundtrack, Polaroids, Shirts (via Redbubble) and a sticker. Nearly all of this, save the shirts on Redbubble, are no longer purchasable, being limited items when they came out, and then finally being sold in 2015 as Tale of Tales moved. I am still so mad I never got those Polaroids and am still madly searching for auctions of them.

The Rose Problem is a catch-all term I am using to describe basically ‘What the hell is up with Rose’. It’s no secret that Rose is divisive when it comes to interpretations- so much so that I couldn’t include her in the first interpretation section. So, what is it that makes Rose so difficult? Well, you can barely see her wolf, her house is almost all flooded and she speaks with flowery prose. The reason people seem to view her route as spirituality or disability is because of her continued mention of disconnect from herself. But there have been oceans of other disagreeing ideas, related to her perhaps going through puberty early, her experiencing guilt related to her family, her being potentially molested, or even her literally dying. It’s been put forward by some that Tale of Tales went into Rose not even having an intention in mind, or it shifted from one idea during development and becoming aimless during that period.

Scarlet is known to be the last created sister, Tale of Tales describe the making of her as being the first to be born and last to be made, and because of that, her wolf was the last to be made. The final wolf is named the Fey Wolf- related to the Fae Court. As an Irish person who’s in full belief of the Fae, I don’t see the resemblance. But that wasn’t his final name- maybe it wasn’t his final appearance. His original name, according to a rough floor plan of what Grandmother’s house would look like with the secret rooms was Boy Toy Wolf. That’s… A name change. Especially considering the fact Boy Toy refers to a young man in a sexual relationship, usually with an older woman, and the Fey Wolf is a sort of elderly-looking androgynous thing with a 19-year-old Scarlet who is not into relationships. But because the Fey Wolf’s making has no text, it’s not clear if his appearance or purpose even changed between the name change.

Quest3d was a tool used for making 3D applications, with an intuitive way of programming by using graphs and seeing it in real-time without the need for a compiler. On Mobygames only 8 games were ever listed as created by Quest3d, 6 if you don’t count The Path and The Prologue- with three of them being a Ship Simulator. I say was because it’s pretty much gone. You can’t open their unique file in anything so you’re kinda screwed if you want to do anything with the game files.

The Shrine and the Playground Sign are two interesting objects that you really can’t see in the rest of the game. They both appear along the path but not in the forest, and unlike the crow, you can’t interact with them. Though not immediately clear- the reason why those appear is to signal to the player that the Graveyard and Playground are accessible. That’s probably self-explanatory for the Playground Sign, but for quite a few people the Shrine may come as a surprise, including me before I researched it.

The Path, like everything, has speedrunners. There are two categories- All Girls and Failure%. There have been seven runs altogether, one in all girls and six in failure%. Failure% is reaching grandmother's house without interacting with any wolf, beginning when you gain control and ending when you leave first person in Grandmother's house. Though there are no guides available, the strategy is clear, using Ruby as she’s the quickest. The world record holder as of now is from Krayzar with a one-minute 35 seconds. There's only one speedrun for All Girls, and I’m going to be honest, I don’t think there’s a strategy, at least not one clear from the world record holder Multiwinner who admits that the run they sent in was their first and only attempt. If you want to try this out, go ahead! You’ll have the chance to make history!

In 2020 a zine by the VK fan club for The Path was released- featuring illustrations, comics and stickers, a full collection of all included is linked here. As far as I can tell, this is the only one of its kind! It really is a marvel, and I have said this for like the third time, but if you have a copy of this I would love to buy it from you. I do have to warn you- there is nudity in here of Ruby.

Tier 5 - Bottom of the Iceberg

Tale of Tales references three artists and illustrators that inspired the feeling they were going for The Path, naming them as Lisa Falzon, Fuco Ueda and Ray Caesar. For its first anniversary, three sets of interviews of those artists by the six red sisters. You can find the interviews here, but some highlights are: Carmen asking Lisa if she has a boyfriend followed by Scarlet asking if Lisa is a feminist, Robin asking if Fuco Euda's paintings showed "Good girls or naughty girls", and Ginger just asking if Ray Caesar would ever make a video game.

One of the more confusing things mentioned in the Post Mortem is the fact that Tale of Tales at one time considered creating a mechanic where you would have to dance battle your wolf. No, I am not joking. I just have one question. In a game about exploring your deepest trauma in a wolf-infested forest. Why did you make them dance?

The Path Tribute Project was a group of Vocaloid songs created based on characters in The Path on niconico. The project is from 2014, and due to this and a lack of updating links, I’m unable to find the original organiser of the project and one of the songs, but what I do have, is a Paste Bin of all the found links, the Tumblr blog it was advertised on, and a short compilation of all of the songs reposted on VK!

The canonicity of the grandmother house pages is up to discussion, with Rose, Ginger, Ruby and Carmen all seeming aware they’re in a video game created by these people with Scarlet not making mention of Kris’ involvement with the game. The outlier is Robin, who says not only is Jarboe real in their universe, but that she lives in a black house in their forest- and that she was the one who taught the family the Safe Song. There clearly is not a black house in the forest- the only house is Grandmother’s which is white. Maybe she’s referring to the tent in the Campsite, we never exactly do see the Woodsman go into it, or it could even be the Bunker, as it seemingly has a panel over the door, but neither of those are housey.

Given The Path’s limited characters and interactions, the game’s fanbase has never really been prime with shipping, the most you would see is Ruby and her Wolf along with Ginger and her Wolf. But one pairing stands among them all as the most. Ship to exist. The Woodsman, and the Fey Wolf. There’s a weirdly large amount of fanart for this, despite their status of never interacting or existing near each other, but I suppose what fandoms do best is see two men and decide they should kiss. Should I show examples of this? Yes. Am I going to? No. Just… Take my word for it and understand why I am not showing you a sweaty bald man making out with whatever the Fey Wolf is.

Shamus Young was a game critic and blogger who was an early modder in the Doom Community, and held some infamous views related to parts of The Path. I want to preface this by saying- Shamus Young passed away in 2022 at the age of 50, and out of respect for him and his family, I will be only relaying what he wrote instead of including my opinions. The reason Shamus gained a particular status in the fan community is for his interpretations of Rose and Carmen. Starting with Carmen- he states that he knew girls like Carmen in high school, that would “Find the biggest, strongest, best-looking complete-jerk they could get their hands on, and then endlessly whine about how ‘men are such pigs.’” He then goes on to explain that he believes Carmen was not raped, because despite being drunk she had taken the alcohol without asking, and that it was not rape because “She came on to him.” He does say that it “does not excuse the forester for sharing his beer and hooking up with an (in some states) underage girl-” and then proceeds to say “But I don’t think he’s a rapist.” At the end of the aftermath saying that “Maybe this one bad experience will make her more careful.” Rose’s analysis begins with him prefacing that “I don’t actually want to talk about this one, because it involves stuff I wouldn’t even bring up on my blog.” and then again stating “And I really hope you’ll keep a clinical head on when I bring this up and try to be polite even if you disagree, and furthermore I hope we can keep this discussion civil and remember that this is all open to interpretation.” Before he goes on to explain how Rose’s water motifs are a representation of discovering masturbation- that the reason why her wolf is a Cloudy Male figure is that “She knows she’s attracted to men but she doesn’t know what men look like yet, or how sex works”. As stated at the beginning of this entry and by Shamus himself, I’m keeping this civil and I am not shaming him for his personal interpretations.

There’s quite a bit of Micheal’s Daughter Martha present in the game at various points. Martha made the original pictograms, I believe the poster art was also by her- but the most clear inspiration is Robin herself. As mentioned in her Making of post, Robin’s outfit is based on her, specifically her outfit of her blue hooded cloak and stripey boots. Martha’s actually an artist now too! Martha Samyn is a textile artist and interior architect, with her last exhibit being at Texture Kortrvijk in January! You can actually see the start of her textile art related to The Path, showing off her Ruby-inspired outfit for her doll!

A last-minute change mentioned in the post-mortem was the fact that The Path did not contain any text until the playtest. And when I mean any text, I don’t just mean instructions- until they had people play the games they hadn’t thought to include text for the items, to show what the characters were thinking, because they saw that “Some players had difficulty to let their imagination work.” That’s a wise lesson for you all. Involve Beta testers.

The Path Fangame, titled The Path Fan Project, is a game by Kinder and Doll, a spiritual follow-up to The Path with less of a focus on horror and more on open-world explanation and interaction with the sisters. The graphics are astonishingly pretty, with quite a few new locations like a train, a cave, and a treehouse. The game also involves slight voices, giving the characters voices for the first time! I again urge you to play it, especially since I am unable to because of the age of my computer. 

The-Red-Path is a LiveJournal community never officially linked on the website like all the other LiveJournal profiles, with only six members- the six sisters. This account has only three posts, all posted in 2008, between April and August, only one of which I will be bringing up. On the 16th of April Robin asks whose turn it is to visit their grandmother, with Rose mentioning that they’ve all gone down the path already. There's a weird sadness in this post, with the normally boisterous Carmen asking why she couldn’t just go with anyone else.   

You have probably heard of the first urban legend about The Path, the ability to get an A, but this one you likely haven’t heard of. There’s a phone present on the road on the other side of the path, calling it will allow you to transport the sister back to the apartment without needing to go to grandmother’s house. The general idea is then, if you go through the wolf encounter, but turn around on the path and walk back to the phone- would you be able to call it and actually return back home without the sister disappearing? There have been testimonies of being able to do it, as well as fanfictions about the concept, and not a lot of checks due to the fact you can’t run after the wolf encounter and your speed is already extremely low. But I am going to come out and say, no, I don’t believe it’s possible. I don’t think the creators would have overlooked that idea, especially since they had a large number of beta testers, but I do really like the idea and I wish it was true.

That’s the end! I have quite a few things I left out, due to it maybe not being interesting or my losing of sources, but I’m glad I could finally do this. In all honesty, The Path changed my life. It’s helped me through a lot in my own journey of healing and accepting trauma, and I will forever be grateful. Happy 15th anniversary!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Quinque gazump linkdump

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

It's Saturday and any fule kno that this is the day for a linkdump, in which the links that couldn't be squeezed into the week's newsletter editions get their own showcase. Here's the previous 23 linkdumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Start your weekend with some child's play! Ada & Zangemann is a picture book by Matthias Kirschner and Sandra Brandstätter of Free Software Foundation Europe, telling the story of a greedy inventor who ensnares a town with his proprietary, remote-brickable gadgets, and Ada, his nemesis, a young girl who reverse engineers them and lets their users seize the means of computation:

https://fsfe.org/activities/ada-zangemann/index.en.html

Ada & Zangemann is open access – you can share it, adapt it, and sell it as you see fit – and has been translated into several languages. Now, there's a cartoon version, an animated adaptation that is likewise open access, with digital assets for your remixing pleasure:

https://fsfe.org/activities/ada-zangemann//movie

Figuring out how to talk to kids about important subjects is a clarifying exercise. Back in the glory days of SNL, Eddie Murphy lampooned Fred "Mr" Rogers style of talking to kids, and it was indeed very funny:

https://snl.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Robinson

But Mr Rogers' rhetorical style wasn't as simple as "talk slowly and use small words" – the "Fredish" dialect that Mr Rogers created was thoughtful, empathic, inclusive, and very effective:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/09/the-nine-rules-of-freddish-the-positive-inclusive-empathic-language-of-mr-rogers/

Lots of writers have used the sing-songy fairytale style of children's stories to make serious political points (see, e.g. Animal Farm). My own attempt at this was my 2011 short story "The Brave Little Toaster," for MIT Tech Review's annual sf series. If the title sounds familiar, that's because I nicked it from Tom Disch's tale of the same name, as part of my series of stolen title stories:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

My Toaster story is a tale of IoT gone wild, in which the nightmare of a world of "smart" devices that exert control over their owners is shown to be a nightmare. A work colleague sent me this adaptation of the story as part of an English textbook, with lots of worksheet-style exercises. I'd never seen this before, and it's very fun:

http://ourenglishclass.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/09/bravetoaster.pdf

If you like my "Brave Little Toaster," you'll likely enjoy my novella "Unauthorized Bread," which appears in my 2019 collection Radicalized and is currently being adapted as a middle-grades graphic novel by Blue Delliquanti for Firstsecond:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Childlike parables have their place, but just because something fits in a "just so" story, that doesn't make it true. Cryptocurrency weirdos desperately need to learn this lesson. The foundation of cryptocurrency is a fairytale about the origin of money, a mythological marketplace in which freely trading individuals who struggled to find a "confluence of needs." If you wanted to trade one third of your cow for two and a half of my chickens, how could we complete the transaction?

In the "money story" fairy tale, we spontaneously decided that we would use gold, for a bunch of nonsensical reasons that don't bear even cursory scrutiny. And so coin money sprang into existence, and we all merrily traded our gold with one another until a wicked government came and stole our gold with (cue scary voice) taaaaaaxes.

There is zero evidence for this. It's literally a fairy tale. There is a rich history of where money came from, and the answer, in short is, governments created it through taxes, and money doesn't exist without taxation:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

The money story is a lie, and it's a consequential one. The belief that money arises spontaneously out of the needs of freely trading people who voluntarily accept an arbitrary token as a store of value, unit of account, and unit of exchange (coupled with a childish, reactionary aversion to taxation) inspired cryptocurrency, and with it, the scams that allowed unscrupulous huxters to steal billions from everyday people who trusted Matt Damon, Spike Lee and Larry David when they told them that cryptocurrency was a sure path to financial security:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

It turns out that private money, far from being a tool of liberation, is rather just a dismal tool for ripping off the unsuspecting, and that goes double for crypto, where complexity can be weaponized by swindlers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/13/the-byzantine-premium/

We don't hear nearly as much about crypto these days – many of the pump-and-dump set have moved on to pitching AI stock – but there's still billions tied up in the scam, and new shitcoins are still being minted at speed. The FBI actually created a sting operation to expose the dirtiness of the crypto "ecosystem":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/10/24267098/fbi-coin-crypto-token-nexgenai-sec-doj-fraud-investigation

They found that the exchanges, "market makers" and other seemingly rock-ribbed institutions where suckers are enticed to buy, sell, track and price cryptos are classic Big Store cons:

http://www.amyreading.com/the-9-stages-of-the-big-con.html

When you, the unsuspecting retail investor, enter one of these mirror-palaces, you are the only audience member in a play that everyone else is in on. Those vigorous trades that see the shitcoin you're being hustled with skyrocketing in value? They're "wash trades," where insiders buy and sell the same asset to one another, without real money ever changing hands, just to create the appearance of a rapidly appreciating asset that you had best get in on before you are priced out of the market.

This scam is as old as con games themselves and, as with other scams- S&Ls, Enron, subprime – the con artists have parlayed their winnings into social respectability and are now flushing them into the political system, to punish lawmakers who threaten their ability to rip off you and your neighbors. A massive, terrifying investigative story in The New Yorker shows how crypto billionaires stole the Democratic nomination from Katie Porter, one of the most effective anti-scam lawmakers in recent history:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/silicon-valley-the-new-lobbying-monster

Big Tech – like every corrupt cartel in history – is desperate to conjure a kleptocracy into existence, whose officials they can corrupt in order to keep the machine going until they've maximized their gains and achieved escape velocity from consequences.

No surprise, then, that tech companies have adopted the same spin tactics that sowed doubt about the tobacco-cancer link, in order to keep the US from updating its anemic privacy laws. The last time Congress gave us a new consumer privacy law was 1988, when they banned video store clerks from disclosing our VHS rental history to newspapers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

By preventing confining privacy law to the VCR era, Big Tech has been able to plunder our data with impunity – aided by cops and spies who love the fact that there's a source of cheap, off-the-books, warrantless surveillance data that would be illegal for them to collect.

Writing for Tech Policy Press, the Norcal ACLU's Jake Snow connects the tobacco industry fight over "pre-emption" to the modern fight over privacy laws:

https://www.techpolicy.press/big-tech-is-trying-to-burn-privacy-to-the-ground-and-theyre-using-big-tobaccos-strategy-to-do-it/

In the 1990s, Big Tobacco went to war against state anti-smoking laws, arguing that the federal government had the right – nay, the duty – to create a "harmonized" national system of smoking laws that would preempt state laws. Strangely, politicians who love "states' rights" when it comes to banning abortion, tax-base erosion and "right to work" anti-union laws suddenly discovered federal religion when their campaign donors from the Cancer-Industrial Complex decided that states shouldn't use those rights to limit smoking.

This is exactly the tack that Big Tech has taken on privacy, arguing that any update to federal privacy law should abolish muscular state-level laws, like Illinois's best-in-class biometric privacy rules, or California's CPPA.

Like Big Tobacco, Big Tech has "funded front groups, hired an armada of lobbyists, donated millions to campaigns, and opened a firehose of lobbying money," with the goal of replacing "real privacy laws with fake industry alternatives as ineffective as non-smoking sections."

Whether it's understanding the origin of money or the Big Tobacco playbook, knowing history can protect you from all kinds of predatory behavior. But history isn't merely a sword and shield, it's also just a delight. Internet pioneer Ethan Zuckerman is road-tripping around America, and in August, he got to Columbus, IN, home to some of the country's most beautiful and important architectural treasures:

https://ethanzuckerman.com/2024/08/29/road-trip-the-company-town-and-the-corn-fields/

The buildings – clustered in within a few, walkable blocks – are the legacy of the diesel engine manufacturing titan Cummins, whose postwar president J Irwin Miller used the company's wartime profits to commission a string of gorgeous structures from starchitects like the Saarinens, IM Pei, Kevin Roche, Richard Meier, Harry Weese, César Pelli, Gunnar Birkerts, and Skidmore. I had no idea about any of this, and now I want to visit Columbus!

I'm planning a book tour right now (for my next novel, Picks and Shovels, which is out in February) and there's a little wiggle-room in the midwestern part of the tour. There's a possibility that I'll end up in the vicinity, and if that happens, I'm definitely gonna find time for a little detour!

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

[eventuallyaugust]

bound by the rules masterlist smau

pairing/s: lesserafim huh yunjin x txt's sixth member! gp! oc x aespa yoo jimin

summary: txt's oldest member, oh hyunseol just want a peaceful life after pandemic with her members, but it seems like fate wants to shake things up.

tags... crack, fluff; angst; hurt(?); suggestive/smut (not all time); kinda slow burn (not the do i like her slow burn, but those longer than a min touches and longing gazes kind of slow burn); no beta we die like men; love at first sight; friends to lovers

warning/s... love triangle; angst; too many things going on; an ungodly amount of time skips; suggestive/smut themes; dark jokes; toxic staffs and management; scandals; dark themes & graphic content: strong language, bullying (affectionately); multiple mentions of alcohol and its consumption; many more to be added

setting... story will start in 2022

featuring... txt, lesserafim, aespa, itzy (mostly ryujin), ive (mostly annyeongz), choi yena, skz bangchan, nct jaehyun, g-idle yuqi, enhypen heeseung, some bts members, and many more that often pops up in just one of the chapters.

status... DISCONTINUED

————

profiles. bighit's baby giants, too pretty to be ais, not-so-fearless with bugs, the seven avengers

chapters (number of chapters & some titles still unidentified)

⭐ - fav chap

01 | happy birthday to you⭐

02 | new bestie unlocked

03 | birth month twinnie (half written)

04 | pretty elevator girl (kinda half written)

05 | tagged along

06 | birthday money

07 | meeting for what?! (mostly written)

08 | MEETING?? HER?? WHAT??

09 | minjeong's research

10 | lee fcking soo-man (written) ⭐

11 | give me your bets

12 | field day (pt.1)⭐

13 | the claw machine⭐

14 | party party yeah

15 | alexa, play drama by txt (written)⭐

16 | she is like dramama ramama

17 | #prayforheeseung

18 | gay panic-ese⭐

19 | txt's first 2022 vlive (written)⭐

20 | lord me when⭐

21 | be careful what you wish for (written) ⭐

22 | something bad just happened ⭐

23 | perfect friends ⭐

24 | matchz? it's a matchz! ⭐

bonus... matchmaker episodes

25 | 0 7 . 3 0

26 | seol & umji?? seolji?

27 | haters gonna hate

28 | wee-woo 🚨🚨

29 | a house of cards (written)

30 | us against the world

31 | through the cracks

32 | without the foundation

extra/s:

bbtr plot timeline

2022

2023

2024

----

taglist: @curly-fr13s , @neuftaeng , @myothegreat , @yoontoonwhs , @nasyu-kookies , @awkwardtoafault , @osakis-gf , @dream-chasers-things , @woonie57 , @juhyunsthirdwife , @sewiouslyz , @yerevies , @kimsgayness , @jeindall777 , @notodayeli , @mah4u

°°°°

misc hyunseol - kprofile | articles | spotify playlist | youtube compilations | fem idols crushing on her | matchz playlist | oddz playlist

a/n: seol can be interpreted as the reader or whole other person. it was supposed to be y/n, not seol but i find it hard to imagine if i pair yunjin and karina to someone i can't imagine, so that's where seol is born.

disclaimer all images and pictures used in this story are not all mine. they belong to their rightful owners and i therefore give credits to their edits. since this is a smau, all of the happenings and events within are made up and the product of my imagination. any similarity to real-life occurrences or individuals, whether alive or deceased, is entirely coincidental. SEPARATE FICTION FROM REALITY.

@ eventuallyaugust 2024 | navi

[morhath]

Oh I’m very very interested in your nonfiction book recs 👀

EDIT: ykw I'm gonna make this a little more organized

I listed a bunch in this post (the last question) but lemme see if I have any additions because I know I was kinda trying to keep it short when I wrote that. (But that being said, that post is the Top Faves Of All Time, so go for those first.)

Freaky medical shit I also liked:

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah

The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco by Marilyn Chase (I just read this a few weeks ago and OOUUUGGHHHHHH IT'S LITERALLY JUST. LIKE THE RESPONSE TO COVID.)

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

Political shit I also liked:

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century edited by Alice Wong

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change by Janelle S. Wong

History I also liked:

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle

The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives by Bryant Simon (between those two you can tell I was on a bit of a "workplace tragedies caused by lax regulations and bad management" kick)

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore (I think everyone knows about this book, including it for completeness)

Promised the Moon: The Untold Story Of The First Women In The Space Race by Stephanie Nolen

The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison by Hugh Ryan

Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke (this is nowhere near as fun and cute as you'd assume from the title)

Memoirs I also liked:

The Less People Know About Us: A Mystery of Betrayal, Family Secrets, and Stolen Identity by Axton Betz-Hamilton (I read this before I really got into nonfiction and it was WILD, I tell people about it all the time)

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (this one is a graphic not-novel-I-guess-memoir)

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Other:

Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood

A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America by Ken Armstrong, T. Christian Miller

Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food by Lenore Newman

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror by Joe Vallese

AND here are a few on my TBR that I'm really excited for! I decided not to categorize them because they're almost all history:

Silk and Potatoes: Contemporary Arthurian Fantasy by Adam Roberts

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown

All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David I. Kertzer (I am actually partway through this right now but in a bit of a dry/confusing section)

The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist Blacklist by Carol A. Stabile

The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St Clair

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell (have just barely started this)

Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518 by John Waller

The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea by Lady Hyegyeong

Miss Major Speaks: The Life and Times of a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste by William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley (I'm in the middle of this but it's surprisingly, um. not exciting.)

Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond by Mark Ames

Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won't Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It by Joslyn Brenton, Sinikka Elliott, Sarah Bowen

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel

Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Gentry Household in the Later Middle Ages by Ffiona Swabey

Hitler's First Victims: The Beginning of the Holocaust and One Man's Fight to End It by Timothy W. Ryback

I am soso normal and have very normal interests that are not at all grim :)

[freetobeeyouandme]

Chapter 10: The World's Most Awkward War Council Convenes

The chapter I had the most displeasure of writing/editing is finally done, so I hope you enjoy it a little more than me! The party forms an uneasy alliance with El's sister, Lucas does some lying, and Mike considers some hypotheticals.

Tags: M, Graphic Descriptions of Violence, Fantasy AU, Canon Typical Violence, Canon Typical Horror, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn

Summary:

Mike Wheeler hates High School, so when he almost dies and falls through a portal to another world, he’s not going to complain. Especially not when that world does not only have swords and magic but seems to work exactly according to the rules of his favorite tabletop role-playing game. But his euphoria might be short lived because the party of adventurers he falls in with turns out to be the target of an evil god and the fate of the world might rest on their shoulders. So, exactly like his games of D&D. Except the wanna-be Paladin soon realizes that being a hero is much harder in real life than it is in-game. - Or, Mike gets isekai’d into a world where D&D is real.

An excerpt and taglist below the cut:

Excerpt:

El and Mike lead the way to the Sleeping Blackbear while Kali and her friends follow, grumbling. Mike feels a little exposed turning his back on them, but as they make their way towards busier side streets he keeps catching glances of Erica on the balconies and roof tops. From the way Kali keeps glancing to the sky, so does she, and it seems enough to make her think better of attacking them or running away.

It’s still a tense couple minutes, and Mike is glad when they finally catch a glance of the people still celebrating – and even more glad when they make it to their destination. Erica manifests from the shadows just as they approach the front door and steps in front of them, one hand on the door handle, the other held out towards Mike.

He hands her the dagger back and steps through the door she pulls open for them.

While the streets are loud and bright with the merriment of a spring fast approaching, the inn feels eerily deserted. In the bar on the ground floor a couple of revelers are drinking, but most patrons will only end their night there – and the evening is far from over.

Max leans over the balustrade on the first floor, watching them approach. She slides down the banister when they’re about halfway up, greeting Mike with a silent nod before she does and then falling into step beside El, who has taken up the rear with Erica.

In his hurry to make it back to the rest of his friends Mike hadn’t even noticed her slip from his side, and now the distraction of Max’s arrival and the irritation at being left alone leading their more than hostile potential allies, he stumbles over the steps. He manages to catch himself before he falls on the stairs, takes a quick step up the next one, and dusts off his hands as if nothing has happened, but Mike doesn’t need to look back at Kali to see that she’d caught him. It only makes the small hot thing in his chest flare brighter, and so he stomps up the stairs, not checking if the rest of them are following.

The door to the girls’ room is open, and as he steps onto the landing, Will appears in the door frame, pacing the length of the room. He pauses when he spots Mike, a smile splitting his face, and waves.

Unofficial Tag List (aka you interacted with my posts about this fic, please tell me if you want me to not tag you in the future (or want to be added)): @smalltownwheeler @wheelerpilled @wrong-energy @foodiewithdahoodie @doggo9 @gardenfairie @beelikesbyler @beverlysclown @yickarus @sourdough-el @hessolivagant @hesquietoday @oldfashionedmorphine @total-serene560 @bylersrise @hawkinsunderground @generalstorecashier @snixx @camel-casing @bylersbear01 @turningsoft @casatoan @maru-chu @mid13s @goldentrunks @bunnybylerfangirl @willbyersenthusiast @letterstomichelangelo @drowninginideas @fluffyfangirl @artsyna @absolutelynotyouidiot @bymarara @unknowmiau @are-you-reddie @elherself134 @longtallglasses @kennahjune @easilyentertained99 @bylerschapter @eli-being-silly @bylerina

[kanasmusings]

[English Subs DL] Joker Game II

Hello~! This is an unexpected project from me, I’m sure, but it was a really great stage to have worked on! Thank you to @thiswasmadeonawhim​ for requesting me to do them! I had a blast reliving the anime and catching up with the novel, even if they did make me go through a rollercoaster of emotions in the process ^^;

The first stage’s subs were wonderfully done by @/great-blaster and their team in this post HERE. Please check them out if you want to get into the world of Joker Game stage~! (Not sure if the actual video is provided or if it’s just softsubs though ^^;) It’s not completely necessary to watch the first one to get the gist of the second one, but it would be better ifjust to get a feel for the characters, setting, and overall vibe that Joker Game offers ^^

Translations for the “Valkyrie” light novel some of the stage was based on can be found HERE as well! The novel really helped me a lot when I got lost, so a big thank you to the translator who did them, too~! 

For those who are interested in getting the Blu-ray for themselves, I’ll provide links below~ BD Purchase Links: JOKER GAME STAGE 1 | JOKER GAME STAGE 2

Notes, disclaimers, trigger warnings, and link under the cut, enjoy~!

NOTES:

※ THE FILE IS SUBTITLES ONLY, VIDEO IS NOT INCLUDED!

DISCLAIMERS:

I am not a historian in any way, and while I had the novel to guide me, I am not 100% sure whether the historical references are accurate or true to life.  I did do some further reading regarding some of the names and events, but if something is off or not accurate, please feel free to DM me so I can edit the subs!

I only translated the play, so any problematic or controversial views/idealisms/philosophies mentioned in the story do not represent my own views. Please don’t come sliding into my DMs about them.

TRIGGER WARNINGS:

Parts of the play are set in Nazi Germany, so please be warned of the presence of characters based on their real life counterparts (i.e. Joseph Goebbels, Leni Riefenstahl, etc.), as well as a lot of Nazi Germany symbolisms and references.

It is not graphic, per se, but it is a stage play based on spies, so some scenes, word choices, and sequences contain violence.

Mentions of war, war propaganda, and conspiracies are also present, so please be warned.

RULES:

[MOST IMPORTANT] Please DO NOT re-post the subs and the link outside of Tumblr! If you want to share outside, please, please DM me about it and link my blog to your post. That’s all I ask.

Please DO NOT remove my credits.

Please DO NOT re-translate without permission.

SUBS DL LINK: GOOGLE DRIVE

※ Please only DM me if there is a problem with the subtitles. I cannot help you if it’s related to the videos.

※ If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a coffee here, if you can. It’ll really help me out a lot.(o^▽^o) Thank you!!

[blacktabbygames]

For Scarlet Hollow have you made any changes to the story based on the response of your fanbase towards one character or another? Have you been surprised by any strong responses to certain characters?

We have a hard rule about not making any major changes to the story in response to the community.

The main way we interact with fan theories or community discussions of characters is to see how far interpretations drift from our initial intent, and then we'll course correct to make things more openly in-line with that intent.

We also strive to have competitive splits on important decisions in the game, and will sometimes make edits to the script if we feel a decision is too lopsided one way or another.

Spoiler examples under the cut.

When Episode 1 released, a lot of people were confused by Stella's actions and reactions towards the end of the episode, generally not realizing that she's written to be an aloof person who intensely and immediately buries her trauma. We wanted her behavior to raise questions, but there are challenges, especially with interactive media, with writing something so that people question the character rather than the portrayal. Her content in that episode's gone through quite a few revisions, with the most recent being an addition we made in January of this year that depicts the ride back to town.

In the end of Episode 3, we had Sybil shut down speculative conversation following the ghost hunt, mostly because we find that sort of exposition-heavy conversation boring both to write and play. This led to parts of the fandom having a serious bone to pick with her, and it definitely influenced parts of our approach to Episode 4, even if it didn't change the general structure of that content.

In terms of major decisions, the two most imbalanced decisions were in Episode 1 (Duke vs Gretchen, ESPECIALLY after we added Talk to Animals) and Episode 2 (Leave the mines vs go after Becka and Alexis) We did a few iterations of edits to try and balance that out, including more graphically depicting Rosalina's injury.

One of the lessons we learned from Episode 3's survey was that whatever the player is last told by an authority figure heavily influences the decision they make. So in the library, there's about 45-55 split between leaving the ghost in the library and somebody making a sacrifice (excluding Book Smart). But if you cut that data based on whether you spent the haunting with Wayne (who tells you leave the ghost) and Tabitha (Sybil tells her to make the sacrifice), it switches into a 70-30 split in both cases, favoring either what Wayne or Sybil tells the player to do.

We eventually applied that information to the Episodes 1 + 2 decisions. Originally in Episode 1, narration about Gretchen struggling against her harness was the last information you received before making the choice, and in Episode 2, it was Rosalina pleading with you to rescue her friends.

We changed those such that in Episode 1, it's now Duke begging you to get the flashlight because the creature is "getting closer" and in Episode 2, it's now in this order depending on what's available: 1. Tabitha stressing that this isn't a movie, and if you don't leave, you're going to get yourselves killed.

2. One of your traits emphasizing the danger of the coming collapse.

3. Narration emphasizing the danger of the coming collapse.

While they're still lopsided decisions, in the case of Episode 1, this small change shifted things from 20% of players saving duke and 80% saving gretchen to 30% of players saving duke and 70% saving gretchen (excluding powerful build)

In Episode 2 this shifted things from 15% leaving with Rosalina to 20% leaving with Rosalina.

[neptuniadoesstuff]

The Luther Twins, Sanchi & Sierra!

(Does contain surgical scars on Sierra's face but not too graphic)

Here is this image of the Goofy ahh twins that I put a bit too much time on bcs I wanted to make some official art of them.

I also never played Fallout before, primarily FNV's time bcs these guys are apart of FNV (Well supposed to be).

Now they may not look like twins all too much but I'll explain why: it's bcs Sierra (Nicknamed Sepia bcs her clothes) is pretty tan from being outside while Sanchi (Nicknamed Copia bcs uh... why not?) Is pretty much on the more lighter side bcs he stays inside alot (Also he has a phobia of going outside). They are however both born as wastelanders but due their forced separation (bcs of a horrible incident that happened when both of them were only 15) the 2 pretty much changed like LOTS!

(BTW here is some rules just incase you draw them: Sanchi is canonically on the chubby side. Now I don't mind if you draw him skinny but I prefer if you try to draw his Canon body shape. However if you end up being a big butt about it then I might block you bcs I do not allow hateful things bcs said about me or my OCs. Also do not draw Seirra as a softy, she's a mercenary who went through a lot of bs during her time (& DO NOT REMOVE THE SCARS ON HER). Btw plz don't ship these 2, tehy are twins, don't ship twins, that's gross, if you do then I'll block you or worse... report you... THESE ARE MY OCS!)

Now... here is them but full-body edition. (I swear to God if someone on here reports this for "Explicit Material" bcs I know that does happen to artist on heres then imma go strangle a bruh srsly I will. This is not sus this is just showing what their bodies look like man.)

(BTW TW/CWs: SH Scars, Mass amount of surgery scars, bruises, Sierra (right) is missing a EYE! & maybe some dried bl00d/rust on Sierra) (Also a lot of battle scars... & man boobs- Do i gotta just so this post hopefully wont be murked by a random? Do i really?)

Yeh them but w/o the clothes they usually wear. You can really see the scars on the 2. (Srsly these 2 have gone through some bs for the past years...)

Credits time!

Characters are mine. (Sanchi "Copia" Luthers (L) & Sierra "Sepia" Luthers (R).)

Art: Mine.

Program: IbisPaint x.

Bubs' TOS: Plz don't repost/steal, trace, or recolor my art WITHOUT MY PERMISSION! If you do, I'll take yur femur and pelvis.. SO, DON'T THINK ABOUT IT! (The PNS on my blog's pinned post clearly means "Please No Steal" plz follow that rule.) If you do post my art on anything like yur blog or somewhere else (With my permission) PLEASE CREDIT ME!

[madamemimic]

Fully completed the definitive edition of LISA the Painful this afternoon. Here are my thoughts. Spoilers under the cut.

Overall I was super impressed with the changes made to Painful.

First, the sprite change for Junior and the edit to Salvation Black’s intro were nice. Lisa’s got it’s fair share of edgy humor, sure, but those felt a little overboard and mean-spirited. Bloodiest Wolf is still… not great, though. I get that he’s supposed to be covered in blood and his skin isn’t ACTUALLY supposed to be that red, but it looks really bad.

The improved graphics and border art make the game way, way nicer to look at. Glad I don’t have to deal with differently-sized pixels fucking up the visuals.

Changes to the battle system are a little mixed, but overall good (and the issues are currently getting fixed thanks to SF’s frankly absurd community feedback response). TP not refilling when taking damage sucks, the alcohol boost is neat, battles are a lot snappier, seeing what status effects actually do is nice, and the flavor text at the top of the screen is super buggy. Again, a mixed bag, but overall an improvement in my opinion. Animated battle backgrounds are also fantastic.

Missing joy addictions getting patched in is nice. Annoying, but it’s what was intended.

I wish there was more new content throughout the game. I was expecting some new enemies and NPCs, but in my experience there really weren’t any up until the superboss. Then again, I might just be misremembering what was actually in the game. It’s been years since I played the original.

Campfire scenes fucking rule. They make your party members feel like actual people. Some of Brad’s dialogue in certain scenes feels a tad stilted, but I don’t care much. Queen Roger, Geese, and Ollie - party members that I never cared about in the original - became some of my favorites thanks to these scenes. Also, fuck Garth to Hell.

The superboss was incredible. The leadup to it was nauseating, the atmosphere was thick with dread, the conversation with Joy Marty was incredibly upsetting… and GOD, that fight. Took me an hour and a half, and I was having a blast the whole way through. So many new mechanics and twists and turns (Marty permanently reducing your party’s stats was a nice surprise) that all add to the helplessness of the encounter.

And the dialogue afterwards, my God. It adds so much content to Brad and Lisa’s relationship, their home life, and the guilt that Brad feels over her death. Fucking fantastic. The music is great, too.

Haven’t done Joyful’s secret stuff yet, but I like the warlord abilities. It doesn’t fix the gameplay issues of only having one party member, but no RPG really can. At the very least, it adds options.

Rest in peace Work Harder. You will be missed.

[frosthidden]

HAPPY BYRON DAY!! (4/???)

featuring . . . alice haley & billy butcher / @devilsnare

mutuals may interact, byron may reblog

[corvidry]

Hi! I am working on an assignment for school, and I am trying to find information on how animal crossing is styled. Through my scrounging of the internet I saw a link that lead me to your website that was a "Animal Crossing Style Guide" but it no longer exists. I was wondering if you might have some pointers that I could learn from for my project?

Hi there,

You're about 2 weeks shy of that link working. I just changed web hosts and rebuilt my website and ended up taking down the blog section, which is where that content lived. The Animal Crossing Style Guide was an article / blog post I wrote a few years ago around the time New Horizons came out discussing the topic of animal crossing character designs for artists. While the post no longer exists online, I did archive it to hopefully host again in the future, but I havent gotten around to remaking the blog yet. In the meantime here's literally the entire thing in a tumblr post, and if I remember, I'll try to update whatever links I can. Sorry if it reads or is formatted a little weird on tumblr, but rest assured it's identical except for some shopping / sponsor links that dont need to be on this version. No idea if this is the sort of thing you need for your project, but good luck and enjoy!

Animal Crossing Style Guide: Artist Tips for Drawing Your Favorite Characters

Apr 24 | Written By Birdy

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Fandom Friday. If you’re like every Nintendo Switch owner  right now, you’ve been playing Animal Crossing nonstop for the last month.  And who can blame you? This irresistible chore simulator has no trouble winning the hearts of the masses by helping us fall in love all over again with our favorite animal neighbors. Nintendo found a way to make tedium fun by implementing a fun reward system and fully embracing the rule of cool, or rather, the rule of cute if there is such a thing. Why do I like it? I don’t know, man!! It’s adorable! It turns my brain chemicals into a relaxed, happy soup.

If you’re an artist it’s possible you’ve seen these cute character designs and thought “I want a piece of that for myself.” I know I have. If you love to draw the Animal Crossing cast or have some OCs of your own who you want to mesh with the AC universe, read on for some mini tips for drawing in the Animal Crossing style. I’ve been studying the style for the past few weeks and this guide is a pretty compact version of what I’ve learned, but feel free to let me know if you guys want more.  It was fun to study these characters and I’d love to expand upon this with a more definitive guide or deep dive into more specific aspects of the style!

On to the basics!

Villager Bodies

In the graphic below I describe that most animals are a little over 2 heads tall. That’s because the characters in animal crossing tend to have very large, bulbous heads as part of their appeal. You’ll find that certain species, such as eagles and gorillas, do break this convention slightly, often appearing with their anatomical midpoint lower on the chest than most smaller animals.

That said, this isn’t a hard and fast rule necessarily. While the height and shape of AC bodies is generally in the neighborhood of what’s stated above, there is some variation between installments of AC. Compare the following images and you’ll see what I mean.

As you can see, Bob’s shape and proportions vary between Wild World and New Leaf, as do many of the other characters. While many current players likely think of New Horizons as the definitive style for now, I would encourage my fellow artists to experiment here. Play around with height in the 2 to 3 heads tall range and see what you like. Stylize the torsos to your taste. It’s entirely possible to remain within the AC style of drawing while still making some details your own.

Heads

Heads of AC characters are a bit of a complex subject because there are literally so many different species of animals who all have their own goofy, lovable little faces. I’ve done my best to break them down to the basics without getting too specific about one species or another.

As you can see, even the the more complicated animals can be broken down into these simplistic, bulbous shapes that Animal Crossing loves so well. When designing a new character, it’s wise to plan their head and body using basic shapes before you tack on any other extraneous features. By doing this you can ensure that your character has the round, soft features that are key to Animal Crossing before you ever have to decide what their face looks like or what their personality should be. When in doubt, round it out. You’ll be drowning in the cute in no time.

Speaking of faces, feel free to let me know on social media if you’d like me to expand upon this guide in terms of facial features and placement. I avoided the topic in this case because I wanted to focus more on foundational elements, and animal faces felt it a bit broad for that scope. The sheer expanse of animal individuality in this game allows for quite a lot of different faces with quite varied placement. And that’s not even including the human character options!

Limbs

Arms are perhaps the simplest section of this guide because there are so few styles of arm in Animal Crossing. The vast majority of characters you encounter will have the cylindrical arm style, or something close to it. At that point, all you’ll have to do is vary the length to suit the character.

Birds and octopi are one exception to this rule, with birds in particular being the more complex of the two. In most instances, bird characters will have those flattened out oar shapes for forearms with a simple texture stretched over the shape, but on occasion some birds will have distinct feathering as part of their model, which can at times distort the underlying shape for the artist trying to make sense of it. Our owl friends, Celeste and Blathers, are good examples of this.

With birds and octopi in particular, don’t be afraid to experiment a bit with the design of the limb. Some birds, like Blathers and Celeste, have wider forearms, and many octopi have interesting textures for their suckers. In addition, don’t be afraid of extending or shortening the standard cylindrical arm shape, as this shape can be applied to all different sized animals, from cats to hamsters and beyond. Some animals will have very short stumpy arms while others will have longer ones. Some villagers have slender, delicate arms, while others have bulkier ones. You can adjust the proportions of the shape to suit the character you’re drawing.

Legs on the other hand….those are a different can of worms. I’d like to preface this by saying that legs are another topic I’d love to go into greater detail on if there is interest because this graphic could afford to do the topic a bit more justice.

As with arms, most animals have the same simple cylinder that can be widened and extended as needed to suit the body of the animal. Birds once again have a unique trait in this department, but beyond that, leg styles vary widely. Mostly in the foot department, I should say. When starting off you’ll find that most animals maintain a cylindrical leg even if they have a unique foot, and in most cases the foot can be constructed out of a dome shape attached to the cylinder. Not unlike a plunger, if for some reason the stick was on one side of the plunger rather than in the center. On top of that, human characters can now wear a large variety of shoes, making this a second topic that I felt went beyond the scope of this exercise. If you’re interested in a more thorough explanation of Animal Crossing legs and feet, feel free to let me know. I just might write about it in more detail in a future installment.

But never fear! Feet, like most unique animal traits, do share similar design elements across the entire game even when they don’t look particularly alike.

Designing Unique Features

So you’re an artist who wants to draw a specific character, or maybe you want to design a brand new character. You can construct a simple animal body, but then what? What makes this character Your Character™ rather than Bob or Molly or Flora?

Despite how similar these animals all are in basic constructions, each animal and human has their own unique design elements that set them apart from one another. It is nigh impossible to cover every single interesting design element of every single animal in every single game, so here are some tips that will aid you in drawing any element you decide to apply to a character while still keeping them cute as a button.

Just like up top, I reiterate. Big, round, soft shapes. Even the most hardcore animals in Animal Crossing look soft and huggable to some degree.

Take for example, these animals who all should be at least a little bit scary.  Animal Crossing’s art style keeps them appealing even with their rougher traits on display. Alfonso the alligator should logically be among the most feared of reptiles, yet his sleepy eyes, gently sloping snout, chubby cheeks, and tubby belly give him all the charm of a stuffed animal. His pointy teeth feel more like a clumsy after thought than a mechanism for killing prey.

Coco the bunny is designed to look like a haniwa figure, an item commonly buried with the dead  during the Yayoi period of Japanese history. Coco’s Japanese name is, in fact, Yayoi. In addition, many items in her house are reminiscent of Japanese funeral decor.  She’s supposed to be a little unsettling. Her facial expression does not change like those of other villagers, so she can’t smile at you or put you at ease the way other characters can. Indeed, Coco wears a permanent somber appearance, but even so, she looks sweet and pleasant to touch. Her face is completely curved and she is given the body of a bunny villager.  Her huge, round ears and tiny, dainty paws evoke the charm of a little rabbit even from a villager whose whole design is meant to remind one of death.

Rasher the pig and Spike the rhino have similar charm. Both of them don scars all over their bodies and in some cases wear aggressive looking shirts in their rough or rustic homes. Still, with Rasher’s big sleepy eyes and friendly round belly, he could almost give you a Winnie the Pooh vibe if you squint hard enough. Spike, meanwhile, has had his horns rounded ever so slightly at the tips and his curved hooves and short tail make him seem far from threatening. Even the most edgy creatures in the Animal Crossing universe can appear somehow friendly by making use of these softening design elements.

Go Forth and Draw

And that, in essence, has been my broad overview of Animal Crossing’s art style. I consider that last tidbit to be the most valuable tip of all. By closely studying the way Animal Crossing characters use round bodies, gradual slopes, and pleasant curves, you can make even the most threatening of animal characters look cute and perfectly cuddly for your town, village, or island.

Once again, please let me know if there are particular elements of the Animal Crossing style you’d like me to look into more closely. This has been a very broad and very general overview of the character designs, but I would absolutely love to dive deeper into this art style. If you use this guide to improve your Animal Crossing drawings, feel free to tag me on Instagram, Deviantart, or Tumblr, so I can see what cool art you’ve made!

Have a great weekend, The Internet! Can’t wait to see you again for the next Fandom Friday. If you need me, I’ll be waterscaping a moat around Raymond’s house.

[eri-blogs-life]

Today officially marks my 5-year anniversary of starting gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy! It's been a real good five years, overall. A mixed bag at times, for sure, with my old shitty job and then me losing my job and getting into extreme debt, but on the bright side I'm in a great relationship, I've got some fantastic friends, and I feel like I am my own person now and all that good stuff's got a lot to do with my transition.

Anyway, to celebrate I decided to take a whole day off work and play a bunch of video games! Quick impressions on like the half-dozen games I played at least an hour or so of today, in no particular order other than the order I played them in today:

Lego: Lord of the Rings

I'll be real, I was not the biggest fan from my first impression. I grew up with Lego Star Wars, and still love that game to this day, but a new Lego game for me...? The gameplay is pretty simple, which is fine but not necessarily the most engaging.

Worst of all though is adding voice acting. One of the best aspects of the Lego Star Wars games was that they had to get creative with how they told the story, focus only on the really important details, and come up with unique ways for characters to express themselves. By ripping the dialogue straight out of the Lord of the Rings movies instead, it cuts a lot of the Lego charm that I loved so much in those games growing up.

Probably not going to play much more of this one

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

RIP AND TEAR

Holy shit, this game slaps. Like, I'd heard lots of good things, but now that I've played it I can really feel just how good it is. The pixel art intro is amazing (though a little long-winded for my taste I feel), the graphics of the core gameplay are absolutely beautiful, the music and sound feels so good to the ears, the shooting feels so clunky and satisfying... All around, an absolutely awesome experience.

I am definitely going to be beating this one at LEAST once through.

Lethal Company

Far from my first time playing Lethal Company, but yeah, this is a real fun game. The mix of horror and goofing off with friends just makes for a real fun experience. Once you start learning the creatures' behaviors and they stop being so scary, it really does become just a fun, goofy, silly time with friends in which you ocassionally get extremely freaked out by something suddenly killing you when you don't expect it.

Absolutely playing more, of course.

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin Edition

I've written about this game before on my blog, it is one of my favorite games of all time and I absolutely adore it. I didn't play for a whole lot today, mostly just booted it up and played until I died, but that made for a satisfying little taste of the game again. Without the social aspect of me playing this game with my friend Jon back in college, though, it definitely doesn't have quite the same appeal.

I don't know if I'm going to play more DS2 anytime soon. I played so, so many hours of this game and explored nearly all its secrets, I don't know how much more playtime I've got in me.

XCOM 2

I've been playing this game for the past few weeks, actually, and fucking loving it. I adored the original reboot XCOM and played it tons, and I picked up XCOM 2 shortly after its release, but I didn't actually give it a real good playing until recently. It's fantastic, but man is it rough to play. You lose a couple of good soldiers on one mision and it feels like everything starts chain-reacting til you've lost the whole run.

Definitely going to be playing more. I want to see this game's ending at least once.

Slay the Spire

Quite possibly my favorite game of all time, I love Slay the Spire's everything. Its game loop, its art, its music, the whole package is absolutely fantastic.

Absolutely I'm playing this game more. I also cannot wait for StS 2.

Cube Escape Collection

Alright, so my first exposure to this series was my neice playing a Cube Escape game on her ipad in, like, 2014, and then I didn't think about it again for a really long time. It was just some weird little puzzle game for mobile apps for kids or whatever. But then I saw this game on steam one time on sale, thought the name sounded familiar, and decided to pick it up. So far in first little experience, it's chill. I do enjoy me a good little escape room puzzle, for sure.

Probably going to play more, but it might be a while before I pick it up again

Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp

I loved Monster Prom - its fun characters and silly setting make for a really entertaining time. I finally got around to trying out the sequel. It's good, though mechanically it felt like largely the same core loop. It's not a bad loop by any means, and of course the real appeal is in the new romanceable characters, but I didn't find myself really falling too hard for any of them on an initial runthrough like I did with Polly in Monster Prom.

I might play more. Might try at least one run to date Aaravi cause they seemed fun.

Highschool Romance

Holy shit this made me feel things. The premise of a boy has to crossdress to fit in at an all-girls school feels kinda silly at first blush, but it really feels like the game takes it seriously. I dunno, when the game put me in a situation where I had to make a decision between revealing my identity to the girl I was interested in or keeping it a secret, I had to just pause the game and step away for a few minutes. The game really got me in to feeling like I was there in the character's shoes, caught in the headlights of a near impossible decision between trying to keep my secret a little longer or coming out when I didn't know how she'd take it. I tried keeping it a secret, but it didn't exactly end up working out, and she found out. But she was cool about it. And she even wanted to kiss me, which was pretty hot.

I'm absolutely about to play the fuck out of this game.

Ocean's Heart

Didn't play this game for long, but I got just enough of a taste to say it seems really promising. Got a lot of the 2D Zelda genes in it and from my short time with it, it feels pretty fun to play.

Definitely going to play more of it, but I think it's going to go back onto the backlog for now while I focus on other games.

[odysseys-blood]

then, can you give us a list of games you recommend?

i sure can thank u for asking! i'll try to make it a bit more brief but under my top 4 i'll add a readmore with a longer list in case u wana read that and not the like. Odysseys Blood Introductory Game Pack.

so starting with the top picks:

1. The World Ends With You

i think a lot of people have a similar feeling about this game. you play as neku, recently deceased kid with no memories no friends and a whole lot of attitude and your main goal is to survive the reaper's game for 7 days to get a chance at living again. he trusts no one and believes in nothing but himself and being an extremely depressed middle schooler, i related to him but watching the way he changes over time and learns to open himself up. its kind of an eye-opener and i've seen the same though echoed through a lot of different people like me who wanted to really give up but this game does take you by the hand and oush you to try again. make connections. live and whileit may be a struggle its alright because you always have the option to keep going. also the ost is AMAZING and the art style is very unique and the story and characters captivate you so well. idk where id be without this game honestly. preferably if you do want to play its best to play the og on a ds (can be done w/ a hacked one) but if not its on switch and theres a sequel! which is ok but its not as great as original twewy

2. Tales of the Abyss

ToA (or tota as most ppl tag it but i stick with toa to match the tags for other tales games. which are also good esp vesperia i just wont add it to this list bc its already gonna be a long one). what stood out to me a lot with this game besides the main cast who i love to bits, is its theme on religion actually. when i first played toa i was still in the church and the main theme of religion in toa can be boiled down to devotion is all fine and good, but don't let it rule your life. the fate that is written out for you doesn't rule you, you make your own choices. even if they seem futile, you still don't have to take your fate sitting down you can kick and scream and fight as much as you want towards another path if that truly is what you desire. and that resonated with me heavily. this one's a little more crunchy looking from its age but i still really like the graphics (and i played on 3ds lol) and the environments in tales games are all so stellar its such a good game. and oh my GOD the party interactions. tales games usually do really good at having main casts that are "6-8 people who have no business being stuck together but they are anyways" and i think the part for this one will always be my favorite. also last little bit but theres so much about identity in toa as well and the way the main character, luke, is written with his own struggles about feeling like his own person has gripped me to this day. ive heard this one is hard to find a physical copy of but like. again shoot me a message if u have a hacked 3ds

3. AI: The Somnium Files

i've been here since day ONE (not exactly but theres a youtube page for one of the characters they were using to drop some info before the game released and i was watching while that was still going so. close enough). i am obsessed with aitsf. my icon is even the main character (edited a bit and w/ stickers). this game doesn't have combat like the first to and is strictly a visual novel and i adore the way it explores the central theme of love, especially familial love and its many shapes and forms and how sometimes even through blood it just doesnt. exist. but that doesnt mean you dont deserve love. someone will be there to give it to you and if not you take it however you can. this is much more apparent in the left half of the game which to this day has made the mizuki route my favorite. this one's eveywhere (playstation, steam, switch) and goes on sale frequently on steam for like $7. this one also has a sequel which is pretty good but again i think the original is much better

4. Heaven Will Be Mine

honestly with how many people i see daily gushing over poetry and writing im surprised more dont play hwbm. its a space mecha visual novel set in the aftermath of a war where earth sent children to go fight an existential threat which may not have even existed and now all of those kids are adults who have grown up without the shackles of society on the earth which js funny enough, finally calling for them to come back. the writing is beautiful and fun to pick apart and if you're a fan of prose i definitely think you should give this one a try. double of you're lgbt in any way this game is good for its writing about queerness especially if you're trans. please play hwbm. this one's on steam and doesnt have a sequel game but the devs, worst girl games, also made We Know The Devil which i like less than hwbm but its still pretty good! that ones got gay religious trauma

continuing is just a list of more i like in no specific order. some of these may be a bit cringey but i like fun

Witch's Heart

listen i know theres some strange bias some ppl have gainst rpgmaker pixel games but like. 1) odd but ok 2) witch's heart is such a beatiful story i need you to throw whatever biases you may have abt pixel games RIGHT NOW. my header text comes from this game. it means everything to me. do you have a wish you would kill for? does your wish mean more to you than another's? how much will you let your selfishness control you. for a game that looks so silly it made me cry a lot. this one's free on vgperson's translated game list and theres still MORE BEING MADE. SO MUCH GAME. FOR FREE. LOOK AT ME. ITS FREE. and heartwrenching.

To The Moon/Finding Paradise/ Impostor Factory

this description is short but similarly a pixel game like the previous rec. its more understandably heavy considering you play as eva and neil who fulfill the wishes of the dying in their dreams. its sad. i cried. i cry a lot dont i? these r on steam

Just Shapes and Beats

a rhythm game this time! it's got a cute little story mode but it is just a dubstep rhythm bullet hell i like playing. did you know i was a dubstep fan in middle school well now you do and im sad skrillex is mid now. its on steam and switch. not a good pick however if you are sensitive to flashing lights or have epilepsy im sorry. i believe there are safe modes but i havent tested them myself to see how well they work

Paranormasight

paranormasight is a horror visual novel illustrated by gen kobayashi who, if you can tell from the linework on the sprites and in the portraits and what have you, illustrated for twewy. i'll be real i was ready to screan and cry 30 minutes in but its not actually that scary im just a wimp. this one could be seen in a similar vein with witch's heart in the idea of: what would you do to fulfill your greatest wish. how many people would you kill. because you will be killing. on steam and switch.

Bustafellows

for being an otome bustafellows rly got me. while being an otome it is still plenty silly but heavy with fun characters. also i think this is the first time ive really liked an otome mc they tend to be very waify and kinda annoyingly written tbh but teuta is a VERY fun character and not at all a stand in for a self insert. or at least she isnt good at being a self insert which is fine to me because i love a main character that has their own personality. a guy dies like 10 minutes in. this ones on steam

Mamiya

i seem to like a lot of visual novel games with time loops and dead main characters and this is another one. very dark but i love it to bits. also this one requires a warning list i haven't seen anywhere but i made one myself here. its on steam

IVE RUN OUT OF PICTURES. SO I CANT ADD ANYMORE BUT QUICK LIST YOU'LL HAVE TO LOOK UP MORE OR JUST ASK ME ABT ANY OF THESE:

Lethal League Blaze

Hatoful Boyfriend

Fallen Hero: Rebirth (and its sequel Retribution)

Code Vein

shout out also to What in Hell is Bad. not for kids at all this one is explicitly 18+ but for being a goofy eroge otome it has. gripped my by the nuts and it has not let go. ive only been playing like a month help.

[bmaxwell]

Baldur's Gate 3

Baldur's Gate was my first-ever PC game. I came home with a shiny new PC a coworker built for me, and stopped at Best Buy to pick up the MicroProse Magic the Gathering game and Baldur's Gate. The game was positively mind blowing. It used AD&D rules (my first tabletop system) it had gorgeous isometric graphics, and FIVE (5) discs. Console gaming had nothing like it.

5 years later I was burned out on the genre* and maybe the rest of the world was too, because that style of game stopped being made. Years later when Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and Divinity Original Sin came along, I spent time with each but was never truly enamored with them. I figured that, like RTS games, Metallica, and kart racers, CRPG's were something I used to like.

So when Baldur's Gate 3 released in early access, I largely ignored it. I'm not going to spend time playing an unfinished story-centric game, and even if I did? I haven't finished One of These in some 20 years. It's a bad bet.

However.

I'm like an alcoholic that drives past every bar in town every day. I listen to video game podcasts, and I talk games with friends. A couple of friends' enthusiasm for the game was infectious and, near release, Larian Studios announced that they were upgrading standard preorders to the Deluxe Edition for free. Well, if I ever do want the game I'll want the deluxe edition, and I can get that upgrade for FREE now? I'm basically losing money if I don't buy it. Right?

Buy it I did, and I was immediately hooked. I even spent an eternity in the character creator,** mostly debating my race and class. I get major FOMO with games like this. I want to see everything there is, and that's just not possible. I can't pick every lock AND smooth talk every conversation AND be a follower of every god, and so on. I finally settled on a Tiefling Warlock, a patron of The Great Old Ones.

Oh Aremon. I have so much I need to warn you about. But alas, I cannot.

It turns out there's a lot more than your character and class keeping you from seeing everything Baldur's Gate 3 has to offer. The game gives you an incredible amount of freedom. The studio touted the game's "17,000 endings" which seems nonsensical. After putting a hundred hours into the game I can believe it now. There are choices and events - big and small - whose outcomes ripple out into what feels like an ocean of possibilities.

The game reacts to everything you do. I've played a few saves and have friends playing their own campaigns, and the way we swap Baldur's Gate 3 stories feels like the old days on the playground. "Oh, you saved the druid grove? Well I heard you can assassinate the leader and there's a war and the whole GROVE is basically destroyed! Billy says he went and saved their missing leader and Susie says she helped an evil Drow elf raid the grove and burn it down!"

Susie that bitch.

And that's all true. Every action you take, every quest you follow through on or ignore, every area you miss altogether - these all have tendrils that spread out and touch every other thing in the game. It feels like there's a DM with a folders full of wrinkled papers of hastily scrawled notes alongside their binder of carefully written world lore that the players may never see.

The story revolves around mindflayers, opening with your character being restrained and infected with a gruesome parasite. It's a pretty good impetus to set you off on a quest to get that teethy little tadpole out of your head. No one needs to tell you that the kingdom is in danger, you have your own personal stakes in the form of unwelcome parasite in your brain. You can just watch that opening cutscene again if you need reminding of the situation's urgency. *shudder*

Or, perhaps not. Maybe this tadpole gives you cool powers. If one tadpole is good, more must be better!

Right?

As of now I am into chapter 3, exploring the titular city of Baldur's Gate, and I have no idea how this is all going to play out.*** The shades of grey and the way the game subverts expectations speaks to the quality of its writing. Dungeons and Dragons is some 50 years old now. Creative works carry the world view of their makers - hopes, fears, sense of justice, and prejudices are all along for the ride. They HAVE to be.

It's a black and white world where the monsters are evil and the heroes are heroic. The black skinned Drow are born evil and cruel, orcs are wild, savage, dumb, and violent. Mind flayers are cruel, thriving on enslaving others for their own ends. Thankfully the writers have gone outside the tired stereotypes pretty often with Baldur's Gate 3.

It makes me happy that I have a female Tielfing demonic barbarian who is somehow big hearted and vulnerable while also being powerful and kickass. My cleric is worships Shar, goddess of darkness. She's not necessarily evil per se, but she's definitely not about holy water and rays of holy light shining down from above.

And those mind flayers? Maybe they're not so bad. Not all of them. Some of my best friends are mind flayers! Or maybe that's my tadpole parasite thing speaking. I've met monsters who were not monsters at all. It's a lot of shades of grey and I DIG that.

The game gives you some weighty choices. I've had a handful of moments where I had to sit back and ponder for a few minutes, and these usually involve my party members. Each party member I've recruited (I have missed a few that I know of also) has been wonderfully written and voice acted. They each carry their own baggage and their own backstory that they will eventually share with you. We're all in the same parasitic boat together, but we each have our own demons.****

I have a vampiric theater kid, a spunky demon lady, a melancholy mage, a heroic warlock, an emo cleric, and a fearsome warrior traveling with me. Well, had. I ended up killing one of them when their morals went too far off the rails for me. It's not a choice I made lightly and I do not regret it. My friends have had their stories play out differently. The world reacts to your decisions and so do your party members. They're not just blank ciphers to blindly follow in whatever you do. They'll make their opinions known up to the point of leaving or even attacking you. I've seen their stories play out in very different ways based on who was in my active party at the time of a key story event.

Video game stories are very hit or miss for me. With RPG's I'm usually there for the combat and systems as much as the story. Baldur's Gate 3's main story is engaging and kept me invested from start to finish. Every party companion felt like a fully fleshed out character who I wanted to learn more about and hear more from. Even some of the game's side plots were engaging - one involving a hag comes to front of mind. There's just so damn much DETAIL here, and none of it feels extraneous. The developers have clearly played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, they know the sorts of things players want to do, and they made a game that says "Yes, actually you CAN do that" surprisingly often.

That freedom extends to the game's combat as well. You can throw objects, ignite pools of oil or alcohol, electrify water, push people off ledges, and on and on. My concern was that I'd get overwhelmed like I did with Larian's previous game Divinity Original Sin 2, but the combat threads the needle of being challenging without typically being overly long (spending an hour plus in combat only to lose and have to start over feels bad).

I can't close this review without mentioning that Larian did a great job replicating the act of rolling a die, a key component of tabletop games. The die clatters about and settles on its number in a satisfying way, and the excitement of a natural 20 on a long shot or the deflation of a crummy roll are intact here in this digital translation. The game handles luck streaks too - there's an option called Karmic Dice that you can toggle in the system menu, which prevents long runs of bad die rolls. After all, the dice add some welcome randomness but they should never play a huge role in determining how things play out.

The inspiration system is also wonderful - the game grants characters an "inspiration point" that can be spent on a reroll either in combat or in a skill check. These points are earned by essentially roleplaying your characters; smooth-talking Astarion will get inspiration points whenever you lie, persuade, or otherwise bullshit your way through a situation while no-nonsense bruiser Lae'zel is inspired whenever you mop the floor with foes in battle. The game is full of these thoughtful little touches.

The game writes a LOT of checks in the opening act, and somehow manages to cash them all. Choices you've made, people you've helped or hurt or ignored will come back around to you in the final act. Major events will play out wildly differently based on who is in your adventuring party. When it came down to the end, I made choices that felt right for the people in my party. It felt more like an ensemble cast rather than my character being the star of the show and everyone else supporting him. I'm writing this the morning after finishing the game, and I'm debating whether to reload my final save to see how other options play out. On one hand, I'm curious; on the other, it feels like the ending I got was my canonical ending, and playing tourist with it would feel dishonest.

As someone who hasn't seriously played D&D since 3rd edition (and not at all with the 5th edition ruleset used in Baldur's Gate 3) I'm not sure which elements are from the tabletop and which are unique to the video game. All I know is that, while no videogame can wholly replicate the experience of spending a Saturday afternoon at a table rolling dice, talking in bad accents, and poring over rulebooks and character sheets with friends, Baldur's Gate 3 does a better job than any game before it. *After Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale II, Planescape: Torment, and Baldur's Gate 2 **At least 15 minutes! ***I've since finished the game ****Figurative and otherwise

[reapcrbunny]

WELCOME    !!   my name is miles,  i’m 28 and i’ve been on this site since 2012. dahlia las'eesi is my warrior of light from square enix's final fantasy 14 online and she is a study of on finding oneself through tremulous times even when trauma’s follow them and what it means to not grow cold. \\ i just have a few quick things to drop here before you continue your perusal of my content and blog:

UPDATED 25TH JUNE 2024 BLOG EST. APRIL 2022 ❤️ ORIGINALLY FROM @poswiecenia STATUS: LOW ACTIVITY, WORKING. \ playing through Dawntrail OTHER ACTIVE BLOGS: SOULSEEKCR ( au / wol hythlodaeus, less active than multi ) & POSWIECENIA ( multimuse ) CREDITS: kimikoyuki13 ( ART ), fckurselfie ( GRAPHICS )

rules are available here | dahlia’s dossier, verses and connections available here | her carrd which includes most of the above in one place is available here. it would be much appreciated if you went through each and every rule  before we interact - i have been very problematic in the past and I want those that write with me to be aware of what i have been apart of or what i have done. if something is unclear and / or you need something explained a little more please let me know via dm's so i can either clarify, direct you to a callout or edit something within my rules so it can be better understood.

i use beta editor, though at this point it probably is universally used by most.

i do not often follow first.    i am semi private, thus we must be mutuals to write. by following me i will reach out to make sure my rules have been read. ( updated 17th of april ; reasons. ) if i've followed you and you do not feel comfortable, please softblock ( or block ) me ; you're more than welcome to do so and i encourage it.

i have affiliates ( hydaelyn's chosen ), wherein my focus will probably be the most intent on interactions here or on discord. these are: @fckurselfie ( and any blogs unicorn has ), @londonfallen ( and any blogs orion has ).

to write with me we must be mutuals. once again i will reach out to make sure that so that you have read my rules and that we are all on the same page and that you are aware of my past behaviour.

i do not interact with minors (  those under eighteen years of age  ) nor do i ship with minor muses.    if you follow and are under the age of 21, i will ask you to unfollow or outright block you. the content on this blog is not recommended for those underage due to what the ffxiv itself  has in relation to content.

please,   please,   please read my rules.