#you do not have the ability to make a video game. the concepts will live in your brain forever

[mwahrails]

some keys

[project-lumen]

Have you ever wondered how the Life Series would look like as a videogame?

Then I bring to you…

Project LUMEN: APPLICATIONS OPEN!!

Ever wanted to relive the stories woven by the Watchers, exceeding the limits of what Minecraft is able to offer? How about venturing in a perilous journey full of twists and turns, and most importantly, loooooooooooore?

Well, why hello there! To kick off the start of 2025, Kori, Arto and Pinkie here, and we are proud to present “Project LUMEN”! Our newest scheme to conceptualize and develop a video game based off the traffic-colored hearts we are all so familiar with. An ambitious project, that’s for sure, and that is why we are opening applications to join our little team, right on time to welcome the new year! :]

(way more info under the cut, get ready)

Once a pile of jumbled, senseless ideas, Project LUMEN has evolved into a more fleshed-out collection of story beats and mechanics. An RPG-like game revolving around the tales within the Life Series, a collection of death games ran by the mysterious deities that call themselves Watchers. The player takes on the role of the Watcher Child (affectionately referred to as WC), following and guiding the Champions chosen by the Watchers themselves through challenges and enemies. Featuring unique leveling systems, DnD inspired classes, and, most importantly, the ability to impact the story with the choices you make… because, after experiencing all the Life Series seasons from both the Watcher and the Player side, maybe you’ll have a change of mind. After all is said and done and seen, the world is yours to shape, Watcher Child.

Right, so that’s a basic summary of the concept we have, now here’s a little preview of what we have written for the prologue :3

Chapter 0: ‘The Watcher’s Apprentice’

The player takes the form of a Watcher in training, an ageless child, the Watcher Child. The most powerful and ancient Watchers, unexplained cryptic creatures that live up to their name by watching all, talk about a new series of experiments they have been running, called “The Life Series”.

The only rundown that the WC was given was that a carefully selected group of talented players were asked to test their little Life game for them, where they each have only three lives. Whoever survives last, wins. There were no rules as to how they could play the games. The Watchers then add that they, along other WCs, will be observing from the viewpoint and thoughts of one of the players. This is so the WC can get an idea of the Watchers' work. Of course, our little WC was ecstatic and ever so curious about this new idea.

Fast-forward (and after a couple of tutorials showing off the bare basics of the battle mechanics in the actual game), now our WC was standing in a circle with other apprentices just like them. The Watchers then hold a deck of mystic cards in front of each of them, and everyone picks one. When the cards are revealed, our WC sees a glowing, red card with a person on it. The card simply said, "THE SUN".

Huh, I wonder who could that be…

Now, we get into the thick of it: who are we searching for to join our team? Well, there are some requirements that the potential members should fulfill, here’s a comprehensive list of key points:

We are mainly looking for artists to help us with designs, sprites, backgrounds and UI. Although, we also welcome any writers willing to help us with developing concepts and adding more ideas!

Every person who applies should be involved with the Life Series fandom, we want to build a team with people as passionate about this Minecraft series as we are!

When answering the Application Form, please type in your favorite type of flower (in case you do not have one, just write 'sunflower') in the "Anything else to add?" part, this is only to ensure you've read the announcement :]

Welp, glad you asked. The current plan is, while the applications go on for a week or two, constantly post pieces of concept art and just story bits on this blog, then all the people selected to join the team will be added to the blog as members. We plan to post updates, concept art, sprites and small lore drops periodically on that blog to hopefully garner an audience, and it will also be open for asks and suggestions so that, even if some users aren’t part of the team, they can still help bring this absolute beast of a game to life. Ideally we will work on a small demo experience first with placeholders and stuff to just get the mechanics right and get some testers, and after that, use all feedback, polish the art, deliver a beta version for playtesting, then fix the last details and then release the full version on itch.io, that’s our roadmap. :D (there's the possibility to also publish a browser version to Newgrounds with mobile compatibility tho, so mobile users do not fear!)

Well, Project LUMEN is a very, very hefty task, a big plan to undertake, and, in all honesty, too much work for only three people. Also, talking from experience, having other person involved in development has helped LUMEN to give gigantic steps, helping to ground ideas and give inspiration, now, imagine how far we could go if we had more people in this squad. We are not only looking for artists, we are looking for people whom we can brainstorm with and throw concepts around to polish them and grow the game even more. However, we also wish to keep the team directly working on the game fairly reduced, we are thinking 3–5 people more, but depending on the amount of responses we have, we might consider expanding that number.

The spirit of the game is to be made by the community for the community, we want to offer a quality game, and, by working together, we will be able to make Project LUMEN the best it can be. Though, you need to be aware that this project is solely fueled by the passion we have for the Life Series, and we will not profit off it at all. Please, take into account that this is likely going to be a months-long project, and only apply if you are willing to put in the effort in the long-run, that’s all we ask for.

On the bright side though, by joining in the developing of the game, you’ll be able to contribute to it as much as you’d like, change anything, add anything! You’ll have your rightful spot in the credits and probably a cameo in-game, the team may be small, but we know that, with the right people, we will be able to get it done (cleo is in the storyline too dw).

Application Form!

[rassicas]

In the splatoon fanbase, there are many misconceptions surrounding the relationship between inklings and water. without fail whenever I mention something related to the topic I'll get replies of "actually the canon is [some popular but incorrect theory]" "no they can do this and this canonically [it's actually a headcanon]" "no its really [something NOA made up]"

so to briefly go over The Facts:

Inklings canonically die when submerged in water. And yes, getting "splatted" is them dying for real, respawning is also an in-universe thing that has existed for at least 2000 years and not just a game mechanic. While the dying in water thing originally came from a game mechanic, it has been repeatedly stated that they incorporated this into the inkling's biology. The water weakness is not because of the water itself being toxic. The reason is based in osmosis. in the process of their evolution, Inklings (and octolings) changed a lot, and one of these changes was the ability to transform between a humanoid and swim form. Doing this transformation requires skin that is a thin, semi permeable membrane [this kind of skin is a trait found in real life molluscs]. The evolutionary trade off is that, because of how semi permeable their skin is, the ink inside of their bodies will bleed out when in contact with another liquid. This is the answer given directly by the series' creator. And here it is confirmed that while the water weakness originated from game mechanics, it is very much became a part of an inkling's in-universe biology. Kind of like how a slug will die if you sprinkle salt on it (for a reason that's almost the same as the inklings), but ultimately needs salt in its diet through the food it eats to live, inklings do drink water and other liquids. Its also not like they touch water and immediately explode, it seems they can wash their hands in it and dip their feet in it and be fine.

Some people think the water weakness is stupid, personally i think its reasonable because Inkling biology is already weird as hell and of how ridiculously advantageous it is to be an ink-based cephalopod. the ink gives them the ability to jump absurdly long distances and cheat death to an extent. they're not losing much by not being able to dunk themselves in water. Anyway point is it sucks that all the relevant canon information on this is one of those japan only things/exclusive to developer interviews and pretty much every time it's brought up in English the localizers make shit up. I plan to make a video about this one of these days, but with how 'controversial' the topic is, and how many little details and connected concepts there are, I've been holding it off because I want to do it right. there's also some specific details that are unclear that I've been hoping would be clarified in the artbook or a dev interview but haven't, I might just have to go for it at this point. for the time being, i hope this post helps clear up a few things!

[vermilionstarlight]

Made because I'm bored on the shitter. No shapeshifting because I know this website and I know my sphere of influence and it'll automatically sweep.

A statistically significant portion of you are transgender / therian / queer / autistic / otherkin weirdo freaks (affectionate) (loving) (I fit almost all of these descriptors wholly or partially)

OVERLY DETAILED ELABORATION BELOW THE CUT:

1. Flying - Top speed of Mach 1. You're immune to the negative effects of G force on your body, low pressure environments, low oxygen, low temperatures, and damage from air resistance.

2. Amphibious - Your swimming is not enhanced (you must learn to swim, same as anyone). Any water inhaled is magically turned into breathable air as it passes through your mouth or nose. You are immune to pressures up to and exceeding that of the Marianas trench, low deep-sea temperatures, and the bends. Wildlife that would otherwise be aggressive or dangerous will simply ignore you, and venom from aquatic or semi-aquatic creatures will not affect you. Basically, you're safe from hazards unless you explicitly attack something.

3. Teleport - You have the ability to place the portals (similar to those from the popular video game Portal) at your choosing, and they can be placed at any point in space that you can see. It can be any 2D shape, so long as it fits within the area of a five m^2 square. You can 'bind' the portal to an object (car, wall, article of clothing, yourself), or you can simply have it freestanding in the air and be stationary relative to the Earth's surface. You can only place two pairs of portals at a time. If you attempt to place a new pair, you must choose an existing pair to remove. If you close or remove a portal while something is passing through it, it shears that thing perfectly in two. You can't open a portal in a position or orientation that would have it intwrsect with a solid object, only liquids, gases, or plasma.

4. Time Loop - You can start a time loop of indefinite length at any time. It resets whenever you wish, or when you die, whichever comes first. You can end the current loop at any time, or begin a new loop with a new start point and reset interval/reset condition at any time. You can only have one 'start point' at any given time.

5. Telepathy - At any time, you can think of a specific person and project a thought, concept, emotion, or sensory experience into their mind. Once you do this, it establishes a connection that the recipient can use to transmit in the same fashion. You can create telepathic "group chats" between people, with a maximum of 10 participants (including you). Any participant can exit the connection at any time.

6. Inventory - When you're touching an object, you can will it into an extra-dimensional space. There are no weight or size limits. You can store singular discrete objects, containers and their contents, and "piles" of objects (like a mound of dirt). You cannot store living organisms, meaning any object put into your storage is 100% sterilized. Non-living organic matter (vegetable matter, meat, bone, dead bacteria) can still be stored. You can mentally access this space at any time, and can get a complete mental inventory of everything stored inside it at any time. Time doesn't pass for anything stored in this space, and qualities like arrangement and temperature are preserved. Whenever you wish, you can retrieve an object from the space, and it appears as it was when you stored it, and in any orientation you wish, so long as it's touching you as it comes out (e.g. it comes out of the space in your palm, at your fingertip, on top of your head, touching your ankle, etc.). If you attempt to retrieve an object in an orientation that would make it intersect with anything solid, the retrieval attempt fails.

7. Invisibility - You can, at any time, choose to switch between being visible and being invisible. This does not affect the way light interacts with you, but instead makes it so that anyone perceiving you will contextualize you as not being there, and never having been there recently. The fact that you are walking around, talking, and interacting with the world around them does not change that you are not there to them. Light still reflects off of you and hits their eyes, but they will simply be unaware of the fact that someone walked into the gas station two minutes ago and is standing in front of them right now. Because the you are not there at that moment, most suspicious activities do not register to anyone perceiving you, because you aren't present to them at that moment, and people that are not present aren't able to do things.

8. Healing - When you touch an organism, you are able to heal it of any given perceived malady, affliction, or harmful effect. This relies on the perception of the one receiving the healing, not on the perception of you, the healer. Cancer, aging, alzheimer's, even relatively "minor" afflictions like male pattern baldness or a mild tendency towards pimples. There's no specific limit, so long as the receiver perceives it to be bad or harmful. This also can heal congenital disorders. Specific afflictions can be targeted, so a "full heal" isn't always necessary. If you want to heal someone of a spinal disorder, but they were also raised Catholic and perceive their sexual desires to be inherently harmful and sinful and in need of removal, you as the healer can choose to only heal the former and not the latter, if you are uncomfortable with that. If somebody wishes to have their hearing damage healed, but they are also a paraplegic and consider that to be an important part of their person-hood that shouldn't be changed, it's possible to target specifically the hearing damage and not the paralysis. This ability is also able to affect mental afflictions, chemical imbalances, and the like. This will change the receiver's mind to be in line with whatever they consider to be "healthy," relative to their perceived affliction. It is not possible to apply healing without the desire of the receiver. Verbal consent is not required, only conscious desire for the affliction to be remedied. It's supernatural bullshit, so there's no gray areas. If they would have said yes to an explicit question of consent, you're able to do it even without verbal consent. If they would have said no, then you aren't able. This is specifically to allow emergency life-saving healing, in the case of someone being unable to explicitly verbally consent. Morally dubious, but generally very helpful. Also, so long as you and nobody you care about are killed instantly (or killed too far away for you to heal in time), you and everyone you care about is immortal for as long as any individual desires.

9. Mind-Reading - You are able to non-consensually probe the mind of anyone you can directly see (television screens do not count, there must be direct sight-line between you and the target). You can see any memories they have, though the clarity and veracity of these memories is context-dependent. You can glean their immediate surface thoughts, and you can perceive through their subjective experience. You aren't immediately made aware of their deepest most subconscious desires, but you can analyze and infer from their thoughts and memories to deduce such things. Unless you're skilled in self-reflection and psychology, it won't be easy to immediately understand their entire person-hood. This may be morally dubious at best, but it can be useful for vigilantism and the like, depending on your moral allowance for such things.

10. Skill Retention - Your brain just works better when it comes to getting better at mundane skills. You are not supernaturally more capable than a normal human, you are just able to rapidly get better at things within normal human limits. Skills come easier to you, and not just things like "playing the piano" or "throwing objects" or something. You also find it easier to improve with critical thinking skills, emotional awareness, general kinesthetic coordination, and other such things. Additionally, you retain these skills far better than a normal person can. You don't easily "get rusty" with any sort of skill unless you go entirely unpracticed for decades. You can learn how to perform advanced acrobatics, go unpracticed for 15 years, then pick it back up at almost the exact same level of technical skill. Some tasks require more than just skill and mental capacity, like sports, and you're granted no special ability to get more physically capable. However, this ability does make it significantly easier to learn how to keep yourself disciplined and stick to a routine, allowing you to become more physically capable anyways. You are the most average superhero ever.

11. Clairsentience - You are able to create a supernatural, intangible "camera" whenever you like. You can perceive sounds and sights through this camera, even if you are physically deaf or blind. Your brain functioning is changed so you're able to adequately process two simultaneous sets of sensory input without biologically blue-screening. You can move the camera around as you please, with no range limit, and it's able to move at speeds up to 0.99c (99% of light speed). You can spy on anything, anywhere, whenever you want. Spy on billionaires, spy on political backroom deals, spy on your asshole neighbor to steal their Dropout password.

12. Animal Speech - You can intuitively communicate with and understand any and all animals. Animals that are solitary and lack much social capacity like tigers, polar bears, and some shark species will mostly make for boring and/or antagonistic conversation, though they'll still be able to transmit and receive basic emotions and concepts (territory, fear, food, bright, dark, baby, sex). More social animals, like many canines and felines, will be far better conversation. They still don't have the complex language capacity of a human, but they'll be more amiable even if they aren't generally able to handle more complex concepts. Very intelligent and social animals like crows, orcas, or elephants will likely be mostly comparable to a full human person in terms of conversation, if not functionally the same. They have generally better language capacity than many other animals, and complex social intelligence.

[toh-aus-coven]

Philip's Story is an Adoption Story... Here's Why That Matters

A few disclaimers before we dive in...

Binary thinking is discouraged here; adoption and its themes are complicated and nuanced. Multiple truths can exist.

This is one perspective and this analysis comes from being in community with adopted/orphan people, research, and misc experience

"Adoption adjacent" includes adoptees/orphans/foster kids (these three groups often overlap in various ways that will be elaborated on)

Please engage with this post in good faith. I know non-adoptees can experience things listed in this post however, there is a different context that underlies the experience of those adopted/adjacent. And of course, I'm not trying to make generalizations either... It's just that the narrative is more complicated than a lot of people want to admit.

Sound good? Let's proceed. THIS POST IS GOING TO BE A BIT LONG!

At the core of Belos/Philip's story is an 'adoption' story. And it's all because of this particular line:

I know what you're thinking "But isn't being an orphan different from being adopted?" Yes, and within the media in particular, adoptee and orphan stories overlap heavily-- in fact, it's almost a circle (although due to his background and his time-period, he'd probably be taken in by someone given the boys' age of their arrival). It’s about the experience of parental separation which is what connects adoptee and adjacent people. So while Philip is not adopted, he is adoptee adjacent and that still matters. Concerning media and the way adopted/orphaned characters are portrayed, it's often presented in a very binary manner. Most people's knowledge of the subject comes from other people's perception of it rather than adopted/orphaned people themselves. And to a degree that makes sense... These stories are often ABOUT [adoptees/adjacent people ] without INCLUDING them. Adoption themes are incredibly pervasive throughout literature, TV/movies, video games, and other media. It's not inherently wrong to have an adoption-related storyline, plot, or character but most people don't do it in a way that is humanizing and avoids common pitfalls within the storytelling.

There's a quick impulse to call Philip 'evil' and 'irredeemable' without actually understanding his character... and when you view him through an 'adoptee-centered' lens his behavior makes a lot of sense. The fact the show treats this specific fact about the character as a plot device rather than something that could be explored is a tiny bit insulting. They only mention it in the exposition which kind of implies that this detail is meant to explain Philip's deep attachment to his brother. Which yes, it does and TOH leaves us hanging -- or actually they just tell us that this man is evil and call it a day.

Which leads me into one of the biggest pitfalls that the show uses for Philip-- he's framed as just evil. The trope of good/bad adoptee/adjacent character is a pretty common see -- even within the same piece of media. If we're going to use TOH we can look at King's character -- King, a young main protagonist who is the last living son of a god. King is young, cute, 'exceptional', has special abilities, etc (there are issues with King's portrayal as well but this post isn't about him). This is an issue because adoptees/adjacent people are more than a reductive good/bad label. Same with concepts such as 'gratitude' -- being grateful or not grateful when the real answer can be a lot more complex than that. It's a binary question that can be a complicated answer. We're the picture-perfect heroes or the irredeemable villains-- nothing in-between.

Taking this into consideration, when we look at Philip you start to see someone who's not 'evil'; you begin to see a man who is coping with separation trauma and abandonment issues. This is unfortunate to hear but research tells us that adoptees are 4x more at risk to 'self-exit', 2x at risk to have substance abuse issues, and generally more likely to be diagnosed with mental health disorders (obviously every individual is different but when talking about adoption many people tend to ignore these types of statistics in favor of more 'positive' ones). 'Negative' aspects that many adoptees/adjacent people experience or try to talk about are often dismissed or worse, they are gaslighted. When you look at Philip and his characterization you see these behaviors in a different light such as:

His attachment/abandonment issues (Caleb, this one doesn't need any elaboration; EDIT- gonna elaborate anyways lol). To be honest Philip shows a lot of symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder. The hallmark of the disorder is a fear of abandonment — and BPD often stems from childhood trauma. Interestingly enough it’s not uncommon for adoptees (in particular women; there is a misogynistic component to this but i digress) to get a BPD diagnosis. And given that the show portrays Philip in a very stigmatizing way… you can see why this isn’t great…

Difficulty regulating his emotions ('the curse' seems to come out when he's emotionally escalated)

'Substance' use (the palismen; he seems physically reliant on them and they don't benefit him in any way besides sustaining his life. also, he looks like he's huffing something when he consumes one Side note: Some people think that Philip deserved to 'be cursed' (which is a side effect[?] of the consumption) since he “cursed himself”... super not great for adoptees/adjacent people we’re already a misunderstood group of people and it's not uncommon to get insulted or blamed when trying to have a nuanced discussion or share experiences.

His sense of self seems unstable... Most of his identity hinges on his brother, not himself (ex. being a witch hunter, the use of the gravesfield coat of arms for the emperor's sigil, the coat he wears, his name-- Philip Wittebane, etc)

There's a bunch of emotional stuff I would have to guess would be true but they'd more fall under theory or headcanon

It's not that he is 'evil' he is in pain and he is blamed for that. Obviously, he doesn't make productive choices and he does bear responsibility for the harm he caused and he is a creation of his environment. He had to hate to survive. This is where 'this and' can come into play... For many adoptees, we have feelings of not belonging -- even more so for transracial adoptees (those adopted/fostered into homes of a different race than their own). Many transracial adoptees are raised in environments that are racially / ethnically homogeneous (from their own race) so it can be harder to 'fit in' and it can also cause someone to have a complex relationship with their racial/ethnic background when one is essentially assimilated into a community that they stick out of.

edit: In mainstream society being adopted or 'orphans' is deemed to be a shameful thing, used as a comedy device, or through very rosed colored glasses... and there's a problem to highlight here: because adoptee/adjacent are often seen as source material for STORIES we often view their experiences through the lens of A STORY rather than someone's lived experience. It is easier to view a particular thing as a story for entertainment when for someone else it is reality. While Philip is a fictional character many aspects of his behavior are very real and deserve understanding and empathy for real adoptees/adjacent people. We deserve to be more than stories with black-and-white roles and deserve to be seen in color. As full complex people.

Here are some resources if you're interested in learning more about adoptee-centered adoption perspectives:

https://adoptionmosaic.com/resources

https://sidebysideproject.com/11-short-films

http://adopteereading.com/overview/

https://harlows-monkey.com/

https://adopteeconsciousness.com/

this tedtalk is good too: https://youtu.be/jL4lnvQ1wVU?si=HpYASjvvOXnY2faX

Edit: https://youtu.be/Rz3ME8K_zW4?si=CpEQarRbe8VAUqAR (this documentary just came out and you may hear a certain basilisk/gem featured!)

[miirshroom]

Elden Ring and Bloodborne - What do we Learn from the Dead

I have been thinking through a dilemma regarding Elden Ring interpretation. And it occurred to me that Bloodborne addresses and engages with similar concerns.

There is a scene in Bloodborne where the player approaches Lady Maria sitting still and unresponsive in front of a clock face. The player reaches out to touch her and instead she blocks them saying "a corpse should be left well alone". In Elden Ring the player stands in a palace of blood in front of a corpse next to a woman who if she were not wearing a helmet would have a certain amount of resemblance to Lady Maria. This time Leda says "touch the withered arm", inviting you to meddle with a corpse. And I find that an interesting symmetry.

I. Dissection

Two things to note about Bloodborne: 1) Lady Maria's advice to leave corpses alone is implied to come from her experience of finding a corpse and being cursed by the knowledge that came from that incident, 2) It's very late in the game to be receiving this advice considering how many corpses the player has already tampered with. The Chalice Dungeons are for grave-robbing and the different subregions are grouped by tombstones - memorializing corpses. In fact there is a very compelling set of videos by Charred Thermos about the medical metaphor of Bloodborne, including the role of dissection.

I would go a step further and say that Bloodborne weaves together the concepts of both physical and psychological dissection.

In Bloodborne the consumable item to gain material for levelling is called "coldblood", presumably because is much older than the fresh "warm blood" obtained from killing enemies. The highest tier of this is "Great One Coldblood". But "coldblood" can also have the association of murders done pre-meditated and dispassionately "in cold blood".

There is a book called "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. I have read "In Cold Blood" for a book report a long time ago and I looked up some reviews to refresh my memory. It's a "whydunnit" story - the killers have already been caught and confessed. The point of the book is to interview them and to try and make sense of the why and how. It is also an example of how difficult it is to give an objective and unbiased account of motive. As this one review puts it (by Eden Gray on Google):

"I would not recommend this book to anyone. Capote claims that this book is non-fiction, however, he has changed so many facts throughout and knew one of the prisoners personally. He also had influence on the end of the book as he did have enough money and influence to prevent or prolong the hanging of the two killers, but he chooses not to as he needed them to hang in order for him to finish and publish his book. His bias comes through clearly with his anti-death beliefs and his favouritism towards Perry is blatant because Capote related to Perry. Capote manipulated his audience to feel sympathetic towards Perry even though he brutally killed the Clutters. His manipulation and deception, verisimilitude to the core, left me thinking what is true and what is false throughout the whole book, further making me disinterested as why read a book that claims to be non-fiction when it is clearly filled with false information."

I think this is the Catch-22 of non-fiction. Digging into the lives of real people is more true to life than simply inventing characters and their psychologies from old stock tropes in fiction. But if you want to tell the non-fiction story of these people then you need to be objective and factual all the way through or else this will strictly limit the ability to work in creative themes or a thesis. But that just becomes boring lists of facts. Especially if you are trying to do a story set in a historical time period with fragmentary primary sources - realism is not possible and there will be a subjective filter on everything.

As Charred Thermos describes it in this video, there is evidence that many characters in Bloodborne are inspired by prominent medical practitioners of the Victorian Era...but Bloodborne doesn't market itself as a true crime story, or even a historical fiction. They are framing themselves as "murdering" the Great Ones - the great people of the past - in cold blood and dissecting their life's work for narrative and thematic components, but they obfuscate this under layers of eldritch aesthetic.

If I had to give an example it's like this: it is known that Alan Moore's "In Hell" is a fictionalized version of the 'Jack the Ripper' murders, because he uses the names and faces of real people (which I know about from this Arcane Workshop video that explores the comic's themes alongside the game Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs). This version propagates the conspiracy theory that a specific Crown physician committed the murders - hearsay speculation that arose 80 years after the man's death when there was no-one left alive to dispute it. Nobody talks about the specific ways that parts of Bloodborne take inspiration from the wild theories surrounding the Jack the Ripper murders. Because the game only takes hints and fragments of names and the theme of committing violence against women by men who may-or-may not have some level of anatomical knowledge. Doesn't rely on the name recognition to tell the story that they want to be telling about the darker sides of humanity in the Victorian Era.

II. Discovery

How should a person feel if they are confronted with the knowledge that the character who they idealized was created from story of a single, specific human being with the identifying name scrubbed off?

The character of Lady Maria toys with this idea - the doll was made in her image, but by what is shown of their personalities they are nothing alike. How did people in the Bloodborne fandom react to this? Seriously, how should this be treated? Is it believed that the doll was made by Gherman to have Lady Maria's looks but none of her personality? Is it believed that Lady Maria has a gentle and pious side when she is not in combat? Does it change your impression of Gherman that he gives you permission to "use the doll" after knowing that this is a simulacrum of a single specific person?

I know real person fiction fans exist, but for the rest of us I feel like it would seem weird and exploitative to learn such knowledge retroactively about a beloved character. On the one hand, if a person wanted to flesh out their fanon they could go read the biography of the original. On the other hand, if new characters are being made as fictional reincarnations of the people of the past then their stories carry all of the baggage from that past. Digging through a minefield of old prejudices and heroic fantasies that aren't compatible with navigating the complex global interdependencies and ethical dilemmas of the present day.

Elden Ring pulls back from the aesthetic of physical dissection and expands massively in the realm of psychological dissection. As I've said before, it's a "whydunnit" story - the stuff about becoming an Elden Lord is a red herring (perhaps even a "red HAIRing" looking at Radagon and Radahn for example). The purpose of the Tarnished is to understand why Marika shattered the Elden Ring. To understand and accept her decision as part of the process of mourning. This dissection is not done for the benefit of the dead but is for the living to learn from the mistakes of the past and do better in the future.

Marika-as-Leda invites you to the dissection of the corpse in the cocoon. This is a secret past that they were trying to leave well alone. It is generally dark and unpleasant and surreal because these are the inner fears and obsessions of a mind that struggles to tell the difference between fact and fiction. Stuck in the nightmares of a superstitious past. Recreating cycles of painful and nonsensical rituals supporting a mythology of individual exceptionalism born out of a fear of trusting that people can work together. Messmer "the Impaler" having connotations of being a vampire because an egotistical person in a leadership role is incapable of self-reflection (vampires traditionally cannot see their reflections in mirror of polished silver), and may conclude that their solution is always best despite evidence to the contrary until suddenly everything is on fire.

In Elden Ring and the Shadowlands you can find references to the real and mythological people who served as inspiration for Marika. She's Marie Antoinette. Anne Bonny. Bloody Mary. Anna, sister of Arthur Pendragon (mother of Mordred). Mary Shelley. Marina "La Malinche". Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ. She's all of them and none of them and probably a few more that I've missed. Some of these may even have been the inspiration for Bloodborne's Lady Maria herself due to the way FromSoftware tells stories across a multiverse. But above all she is Lady Maria OF the Astral Clocktower. If you can understand the Clocktower and the FromSoftware meta-narrative, then you can understand Lady Maria far beyond what is available by the item descriptions alone. At least, now with the context of Elden Ring it's possible to understand it. Don't know if it could have been done back in 2015.

A lot of people were not ready for the revelations of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. Not sure they'd be pleased to learn that there is a way to demystify the method below the madness of Bloodborne.

III. A Confession

So, it wasn't random chance that I connected the concept of "coldblood" to Capote's "In Cold Blood". Sometimes I do a "this day in history search" for each the dates that FromSoftware releases games and sometimes this yields interesting results. September 30 was the release date of Dark Souls 2 DLC: The Crown of the Ivory King. September 30 was also the birthday of Truman Capote. This isn't the first time an author birthday has popped up in a way that I find meaningful. Regarding themes of Elden Ring and Armored Core 6, respectively, there was John Wyndham - author of the Midwich Cuckoo, The Day of the Triffids, and the Chrysalids - on July 10, release day of Armored Core (1997). And Walter Michael Miller Jr. - author of "A Canticle for Leibowitz" - on January 23, 1923 which matches the release day of a game called "Thousand Land" (2003).

And September 30 wasn't a date that I selected randomly to scrutinize next. More than ever before the Shadowland area of Elden Ring gives me the impression of a rotting old theatre where literally "the curtains have fallen" on previous eras. There's a progressive rock band for that: Dream Theatre. Combing through Dream Theatre's discography not only are there several motifs that I can see echoed in Elden Ring, but several album release dates line up with FromSoftware's previous games including "Chaos in Motion", the live video album that was released September 30, 2007 - same calendar date as the Crown of the Ivory King DLC in 2014. This is an interesting alignment because in classic writing by Virgil the Gate of Ivory is the one through which false dreams pass through.

What I'm taking away from is this: FromSoftware will not "show their work" and explain in interviews or supplementary footnotes the full scope of media and real life influences on their games. Because boasting about all of the research they did would be morally wrong - a false dream. They are in the business of making fictional characters, not exploiting the dead and putting words in their mouths for sensational name recognition. They may take inspiration from scientific concepts such as medical and psychology but they won't pretend to be an authority on these things. If the player wants to fully comprehend the story then, yes, grasping at the hints of references to real world phenomena and doing your own research into those topics is a way to get there with greater accuracy.

IV. Witnesses

And how can a person know if they are correct about identifying any given influence? You can't "know", but you can build a case for it. Like how the broad strokes of complexity theory are described in this video about the 5 layers of depth in 2016 game The Witness. When understanding the logic of the game universe you want to be collecting "Witnesses" of what the narrative does and does not support. I like this idea of calling witnesses as an extension of the dissection/murder mystery metaphor - after all murder trials make use of both eye-witnesses and expert witnesses.

If I can collect 25 items containing a helix or spiral pattern and sort them according to number of twists and this vaguely follows the agreed upon timeline of history from other sources, then that tells me that the game history supports being sorted into discrete units of time and this is reflected in the art direction. If 5 of those 25 give unexpected results, then either I didn't understand the rules of the helices as well as I thought, or there is a misinformation in the commonly believed timeline. If I can collect 20 instances of suspiciously meaningfully anagrams, then that's 20 Witnesses that the game supports anagram wordplay in certain situations. If I can look to the band "Rush" and collect 7 album release date matches in FromSoft's back catalogue + 13 sets of visuals or wording similarities to specific songs then that also would seem to be 20 Witnesses that these are intentional references rather than the random noise of the universe. Maybe there is grounds to think that FromSoftware saw something inspirational in the creative or intellectual philosophy of that specific group of musicians - drawing from contemporary sources rather than solely on an outdated catalogue of classical poetry.

Based on collecting Witnesses, there is evidence that Elden Ring contains an elaborate reference to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which is itself well known for making global musical pop culture references. In Bloodborne the Great Ones convey their messages through sound.

V. Verdict

Altogether I'm feeling more confident about the relevance of the 3 additional backlogged posts that I've been working on that delve into the musical scavenger hunt of Elden Ring. But the dilemma was about whether it is right to clinically dissect and present evidence that a video game has made characters out of sensitive topics as they relate to the personal histories of specific people who are living or have living family. I guess it depends on presentation - is due respect given to the topic? Are there cases where it would be better to recommend an auto-biography or other primary source than to paraphrase? Is there something of value to be learned, or is it all just entertainment?

[madsims4finds]

Sooo Paralives and the Brainwashing EA has done

It's funny. Paralives launched a gameplay video that looks really good, along with some announcements. One of them being that they won't be offering paid DLC. I was watching Satch on Sims and him, plus a few other people, seem to think this is a bad move.

No shade, but it's easy to tell people who don't really game and all they play is the Sims. Like EA got yall so brainwashed that you actually think you're SUPPOSED to be getting charged for base game features.

His concern was wanting a different world to play in or different aethitics. Who said we can't get that for free? We may not know what all features Paralives are going to offer, but what rule says that they can't give us another world to play in for free? I mean literally, there are so many games that do free updates and only offer DLC if it's a niche theme that not everyone would be into, or if they're adding ADDITIONAL gameplay that has no resemblance to what's already in the game.

Only EA removes base game features just to sell them back to you later. Or expect you to buy a multitude of different DLCs that have the exact same theme or niche. Now don't mind me while I gripe on this point a little.

Growing Together and Parenthood should have been one generations themed pack.

Discover University and High School Years should have been one pack focused on education.

All of the occults (vamps, wolves, witches, ghosts, aliens, mermaids, plant people) all should have been in ONE paranormal pack.

Features from Dine Out should have been included in Get to Work. There was no need for that to be seperate DLC when they both relate to active careers.

For Rent and City Living should have been one pack.

Simple features that should not be locked behind a pay wall, and I'm not even talking weather. Like why do I have to buy DLC just for my sims to have access to a hot tub (Perfect Patio), an ice cream maker (Cool Kitchen), a popcorn maker (movie night), for them to have the ability to carve a pumpkin or have different holloween costumes, when Holloween is a holiday that comes in the base game with base game ability to trick or treat, etc. (Spooky Stuff), I have to buy Vintage Glamour just to have a butler (if anything the butler should have been in get famous along with everything in the luxury stuff pack. These are all things that should just be base game that they force you to buy DLC to have access to.

And speaking of weather, I do feel like packs like seasons, pets, laundry day, bust the dust, and my wedding stories should all be base game features. Yeah I don't care if we're used to paying for stuff like seasons and pets, things can and should change. These are all life basics, why am I paying extra?

Now I'm not all negative. There are packs that actually make sense. Get Famous makes sense. So does Island Living, Strangervile, all the vacation packs (jungle, outdoor, snowy). Hell, even Journey to Batuu made sense. Yeah, hear me out. These are all OPTIONAL packs. Stuff that not everyone is going to play with but they each bring something different to the game. Now whether any of these packs are filled to the brim with playable content, thats another story. But at least the concept makes sense.

Okay, off my soapbox and moving on.

I will forever and always use No Man's Sky as an example of a development team that chose integrity over money. That team has been releasing update after update for YEARS. Significant updates too. Updates that completely change the gameplay mechanics, adds brand new features to the game, or updates/changes the look of the game. All for free. Yes, it's normal. Not normal in the sense that these companies should be releasing broken games or not delivering on promises to begin with, but at least they weren't money-hungry assholes about it. The amount of updates that game has, quite a few could have been paid DLC and they didn't do that. Now if they started releasing DLC with specialty ships or different cosmetic features, I would have no problem paying for that cause it's optional.

Paralives knows what they're doing. As long as they are focused on making the base game everything it's supposed to be, I don't see why they couldn't sell the type of optional DLC that makes sense in the future. But I'm certainly not going to say that they're making a mistake by not having paid DLC right now.

I can definitely see them adding things like weather, a new life stage, or new clothes/build objects for free and that's dope. I'm excited about Paralives more so than Life By You. But either way, I'm just glad EA has competition in the life simulation genre now that isn't just about farming management.

[sammy8d257]

[Originally drawn: May, 2021]

AvA Mafia AU! concept art! with the original idea created with @k1ttyadventurer

Here's a little rundown of this AU:

Char!Alan created Chosen as the head of the gang with Dark as his right-hand man and Victim was going to be the, well, the victim of the story in the animation. Second was going to be the frontman, basically running a small restaurant as a cover-up for the group’s illegal business. But as said above, teenage Noogai eventually gave up on the project but at this point, all of the sticks had become sentient so Noogai let them live on his desktop.

Everything is all good and fine. Everyone’s friends with each other but there’s also a nagging feeling of emptiness. They all realize, “Man, I still want to do mafia stuff” and then subsequently, realize they have access to the interweb and if they wanted, could start ACTUALLY doing mafia stuff.

They create a Mafia gang on the Interspace and Noogai is none the wiser.

And then, comes along 4 brightly colored sticks looking for an open positions in the Noogai Gang. And Yellow convinces (blackmails) them to let the Color Squad into the Family. ^^

(Keep in mind, when I mean Mafia stuff, I mean it in a very movie/video game-esque manner. Everything is very idealized and nothing is too realistic. It’s supposed to be a fun AU!)

As seen above, Purple is also in this AU but they're part of a rival gang called the "Kingdom" with it's boss, King and his "brutes".

If you wanna read the Oneshot I wrote to accompany this, you can find it here!

[The First Meeting - AvA Mafia AU]

<= v =>

Basic Character Info!

The Original 4 (the Hollow Heads): Created by a teen Noogai, have since continued using his username as the name for their Mafia organization, known as the Noogai Gang.

Chosen (He/Him): The Head Boss, has all his usual powers. The brains of the operation, Chosen spends most of his time trying to organize everything and everyone.

Dark (He/They): The Right Hand Man, the Enforcer role and a skilled coder. Dark enjoys his job a lot and doesn't like how easily RYGB were accepted into the group.

Victim (Any Pronouns): Originally supposed to be the person getting attacked in the original animation but since it never got finished, their role was never solidified. As a result, they have the ability to change their color and they use it to be a "master of disguise". Their original color is black but they switched it to a dark gray so they don't match with Chosen.

Second (Any Pronouns): The Front-Man of the group. They run a diner in the Interspace to help cover up the groups illegal activities. Don't let their warm demeanor fool you though, their hands are just as dirty as the others.

The Color Squad (RYGB): 4 stick figures from a fighting game that got bored of it and decided to pursue other interests.

Yellow (They/Them): the de facto "leader" of the group. Yellow is extremely skilled in coding and hacking. They're the one who did most of the research into finding potential mafia-style organizations to join.

Red (He/Him): Red is the hand-to-hand fighting expert. He loves getting into fights and isn't afraid of getting hurt.

Blue (They/She/He): Blue has a mastery over various poisons and other ways to silently kill. They are also the stealthiest of the group.

Green (He/They): The weapons expert. Green knows how to wield any sort of weaponry in combat. Whether it be firearms, blades, or a bo staff, Green can use them all.

The Kingdom: An older more established rival gang to the Noogai gang.

King (He/Him): The elusive leader of the Kingdom, King rules his corner of the illegal market with powerful efficiency. Although rarely spotted, some say they've seen him strike down opposers with one swipe of his staff.

Purple (They/Them): Purple is one of the higher ranking members of the Kingdom. They're usually sent out on scoping missions to make sure the Kingdom's assets aren't being tampered with.

Others:

Noogai/Alan: The creator of the hollow heads. He lets them live on his desktop and do whatever they want as long as his stuff doesn't get destroyed. In this universe, Alan never goes on to create the Animator vs Animation series and instead works on other unrelated animations. Noogai is unaware the sticks started a mafia gang and the sticks want to keep it that way. The sticks themselves are also VERY loyal to Alan and would do anything to protect him.

The Brutes: These are what people call members of the Kingdom due to the rumors of their brutality.

[radiosummons]

Even though Wolfwood is very much not an actual Catholic priest, I do find it compelling that Vash--someone without any religious beliefs and minimal exposure to "Christianity," courtesy of Rem (OG Trigun)--is the most faithful of the two.

And by "faithful," I don't mean so much in a religious or Christian sort of sense. More that Vash holds onto his faith that there is good in people and that everyone is worth saving. That the taking of a life is something so unspeakable to him that it will literally cause him immense mental, emotional and physical pain when he is forced to do so. His unshakeable belief, i.e. his faith that every life is precious and no one is beyond redepmtion irregardless of how morally corrupt an individual may be is so foundational to who he is as a character.

While I've only really experienced this through anime and various other Japanese based video games, I do enjoy seeing depictions of Christian iconography and concepts form non-Western creators. I love the art and memes of Vash being a "biblically accurate angel" (even though Plants aren't angels, I am so fucking happy that people are picking up on the unintentional symbolism) and I do enjoy the amount of, again, art and memes of Wolfwood being a cringefail Catholic priest.

But I also love the non-Western depiction of Christianity in Trigun, or rather the apocalyptic remnants of it. Despite the fact I have lost my ability to have faith in a higher being (and my own personal beef/distate with the Catholic Church/conservative Christianity as a whole), I find the worldbuilding of Trigun fascinating in this aspect as it provides its audience an alternative form of a global religion that's very relevant to our daily lives.

In Trigun, Christianity is very much a shadow of its former self, a leftover remnant of humanity--more specifically, a remnant of an old forgotten belief system--that has been essentialy been lost. Save for a few remaining Bibles and some memories of particular Catholic iconography/symbolism.

But overall, that's all that remains. Just familiar symbols and various rituals that some people are able to recall from their former lives.

So the decision to pair Vash up with someone like Wolfwood, someone who has lost his faith in humanity as a whole but has resolved himself to protect those that he can (or rather, deems worthy of saving) ... I find that relationship absolutely fascinating. Because I'd argue that in most Western depictions of a holy man (typically Christian and typically Catholic, let's be real), it's usually the holy man that is doing the saving. Or at the very least, is usually helping guide the other characters on their own paths towards redemption.

Despite the fact Wolfwood isn't an actual priest but instead an assassin trained by a mercenary group using the guise of an old religion (again, that most of humanity has clearly forgotten about), I find it to be a wonderful storywriting choice to make Vash the "holy man."

They're both incredibly tragic characters that burden themselves with crippling destinies. Destinies that ultimately lead to their own destruction, but hopefully all for the greater good. Vash holds faith that maybe, just maybe, he can make Nai realize the error of his ways and turn over a new leaf.

Understandably, Wolfwood finds this way of thinking horribly childish and naive. He even takes it as a personal insult when Vash continues to insist that killing people, even if it's for the sake of protecting someone else, is wrong.

But Vash isn't wrong for wanting to see the good in people. To borrow a quote from Everything Everywhere All At Once: "You tell me it's a cruel world, and we're all running around in circles. I know that. I've been on this earth just as many days as you. When I choose to see the good side of things, I'm not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It's how I've learned to survive through everything. I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight."

Granted, Vash doesn't express his beliefs as eloquently as this. But that doesn't really matter, though. Because Wolfwood doesn't need Vash to make express himself this way for Wolfwood to finally understand him. Vash, by the simple of virtue of being himself, is a good person who chooses to see the good in others.

And Wolfwood ... Wolfwood is someone who chooses to see the bad.

Wolfwood cannot quite bring himself to view the world the way Vash does. And Vash will never be able to share Wolfwood's opinions regarding who is worthy of living, either. But they respect each other and understand where the other person is coming from.

It does take Wolfwood a lot longer to understand Vash as a person, let alone his faith in humanity. But when he does, it's so satisfying to watch Vash become someone important to him. Someone that he wants to protects. Because if Vash won't defend himself, Wolfwood resolves to be the one to protect Vash.

Even if Vash doesn't really want that.

It's so fucking amazing to see these two clash over their ideals, whether it's in the form of playful teasing or straight up beating the shit out of each other. But they stay together and hold each other in such high regard despite their conflicting beliefs.

To me, one of the most beautiful aspescts of Trigun is that Wolfwood--a man of faith but only in name--gets to have such a close connection with Vash--a man of faith through and through--and that because of their relationship, they both inspire a existential AND spiritual crisis within one another.

Because in a world that makes no sense, they both find faith in each other. And if that isn't the most beautiful shit you've ever seen, then I don't know what is.

[animehouse-moe]

Shangri-La Frontier Episode 1: What Do You Play Games For?

What happens when a gamer who only plays shitty games decides to pick up a so called god-tier game? Shangri-La Frontier is the answer to that and provides an insane opening episode for the concept. I'm just so excited to get 2 whole cours of this, and I really want to explain why.

Also, SiM's vocalist (MAH) on the OP with FZMZ? And Chico on the ending song? This series was made for me man.

First of all, C2C is an incredibly underrated studio considering the quality of the projects that they enjoy. This is one such project. Right from the start the quality is insane. 2D camera movement, detailed animation and character acting, the whole nine yards. Just look at this walking cycle! There's no 3D and their shoulders move!

It's just crazy to see the detail they put into these pieces early on. Walking cycles are super neglected due to how "plain" they are, but there's just something incredible about seeing that effort put into it with stuff like these examples.

And then there's this (sort of misleading) litmus test. Does your anime have really good art for a random cut? Odds are the production's doing really well. And, well, there's this really good looking beetle shown early on in the episode.

Anyways, to Shangri-La Frontier the game. The direction understands the assignment right away. This is a video game, we need to know it's a video game. So they show us it's a video game. First person perspective is our very first cut shown in the welcome screen and once we enter the world, setting the tone perfectly for what's to come.

But of course, a video game has more to it then just first person perspective, and of course C2C grasp that as well. Slow motion (which you'll see later), and more importantly camera movement are important in establishing that feel. The slow draw towards an endless expanse of world, the bird's eye view of a landmark or feature as the camera slowly rotates. It gets it, and it's able to create a living, breathing trailer for Shangri-La during the episode because of that.

And then, there's the fact that it's a video game. There's talks of skills and abilities and levels and whatnot, but I think most understand that that's a "staple" and that C2C/Shangri-La handle it quite well.

Let's talk about the good stuff, let's talk about action. C2C nails it. They put incredible effort into video game-styled choreography, and it pays off in spades. The slow motion, the harsh camera angles to accentuate the fight, the camera rotation, the way that attacks linger in the air. It's incredible stuff that's augmented by insane animation and visual effects. Seriously, pay attention to the fight and you'll see that they did an impact frame for a crit. Not in the traditional sense, but that the impact frame was the crit. This sort of stuff just makes me so excited because of how well it's handled.

And then there's the worldbuilding. The OP comes into play as well of course, but the details are super great. The enemies Sunraku faces in the starting forest are (mostly) beginner enemies. A goblin with a stone axe and some sort of large pig seem to be the "typical", but there's more to it than that. The Vorpal bunny is a "rare" enemy which makes sense, but the pig enemy only appears as Sunraku ventures closer to the second town rather than the first.

There's considerable detail and effort placed in the creation and appearances of these creatures in the world. The Vorpal Bunny featuring a better crafted weapon than the others that most likely came from somewhere else. Don't forget - we saw a rabbit in the opening.

It's just insanely cool stuff. The world is already shown to be more broad and deep than "it's a big video game world!". There's all sorts of little pieces like this peppered about, and it's just so damn good. Even the concept of Sunraku's "Wanderer" dropping him in a forest rather than the starter town. The detail to really sell this game as god-tier is so damn good.

But it's important to not forget, the god-tier part of the game is only one part of the puzzle. Sunraku here is famous for playing garbage games.

And it's a great way to offset the story and provide a fun angle, I'm serious. It allows them to add fun commentary and responses in regards to frustration from playing bad games, and at the same time provide a novel and excitable approach to a genuinely good game. The best of both worlds that sets the perfect stage for how they want to explore this story.

So, understandably so, I'm very excited about two cours of this and everybody else should be too. C2C is showing us they've got the potential to make the absolute most of Shangri-La Frontier and it's fun and surprisingly unique concept. Can't wait to see what they bring with the next episode!

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

I found this post, which I’ll link to at the end, that flat out says “conservatives can’t make good art because they lack empathy” and I just… How do you break it to someone that they’ve likely engaged with conservative creators and didn’t know it because the creator doesn’t blast their politics like they tend to do? Seriously, they vomit their politics all over what they create and create caricatures of conservatives to be villains and then claim we lack empathy? What a moron!

Excerpt:

“Conservatives are incapable of producing good art because they lack empathy, which means they are incapable of creating anything which communicates to a larger audience. When they try to produce art, they only end up producing clumsy in-group signaling.

Conservatives falsely think that art is nothing more than in-group signaling, because they feel alienated by the features that typically constitute good art: exploration of new concepts, boundary breaking, an ability to reveal the inner lives of people who are not ourselves.”

x (dot) com /anarkyoutube/status/1721635415004795167?s=46&t=fABiWWpXbyJadSvu6LkbqQ

So I don't normally talk about this, but in my other online life I'm a fanfic writer. I have multiple fics with 5 digit hit counts, four digit kudos and bookmark counts, and hundreds of reviews. Many of which are from account names like "queeraf_demiboy" or "nonbinary_KarlMarx". If all of those people just happen to come across my fic without ever knowing my beliefs, just imagine how many others are out there. And that's just fanfic. And that's assuming people are being honest about their beliefs. You can't even trust that people who publicly support the Current Leftist Cause actually support it, or are just paying lip service for the sake of their careers. Conservatives are all over creative spaces. They make art. They write novels. They act in movies. They put on plays. They create video games.

And most of them aren't vocal about what they believe. And if that doesn't scare the leftists out there who can't stand the idea of accidentally liking something made by their ideological enemies, then I'll leave you with this.

[maxdanposts]

Introduction time I guess

hello tumblr my beloathed!! I am MaximumDanger, aka Max, aka Jim, an ex-cohoster after the site has been set to explode soon. I personally am not very thrilled by the idea of having to use this site but you gotta do what you gotta do i suppose.

Bit of quick info:

Crimean, minor, speaks RU/ENG + learning german(but horrendous at it), artist person of any/all pronouns. my art is here btw

May do stupid stuff sometimes but not intentionally, if i upset you poke me & i'll try 2 fix my behaviour.

if yer a terf bigot racist or any other variety of such yucky people then get off my 🅱age!!!!! im also a body horror & bugs & gore & etc enjoyer and these will only be tagged in original posts so beware!!

(also additional note i usually dont follow people who post very often(dont wanna flood my feed too much sorry) but if i like yer posts ill just check your blog separately from time to time c:)

Longer version(my interests n shit + other socials):

Media:

The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide & Dr. Langeskov

corru.observer

Knuckle Sandwich(game)

Blame! & Biomega

17776 and its sequel(s)(hoping for the 20021 release)

O Sarilho webcomic(its very good, it has good art character death war crimes gay people trans people nice aliens body horror torture.. generally p cool you can read it here)

VALLONO & ARRILLUM(its an absolute banger the art is absolutely gorgeous please go read it i beg of you)

Bigtop Burger

Half-life

Yuppie psycho(i havent interacted with this thang for a long time but it still has a warm place in my heart c:)

Just stuff in general:

Speculative biology

Biopunk

Biocomputing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Teratomas. in my circles im known as the "biocomputing and hairy tumors person".

Microbial cellulose fashion(< this interest is very new and i barely know anything abt it but i like the concept a big lot)

Worldbuilding

Dieselpunk

Robots & other humanoid creachures(usually not androids tho. not a very big fan of androids. unless theyre fucked up then theyre cool)

Artificial Intelligence(not the boring kind) & artificial life(& as such, aliens)(i love foreign conciousness!!!)

Brutalism

Body horror

Dada(its very hard to figure out what dada is about but i read a bit and the ideas seem interesting)

Middle ages & renaissance(i think the aesthetic fucks immensely)(trying to research it a bit too sometimes but very hard 4 me to do)

Bugs!!!!! Fungus!!!! Birdies!!!!! Creachures!!!!!!

Some hobbies i guess:

i do birdwatching sometimes!! enjoyer of looking at living things in general

i . try to do a bit of coding sometimes. im not very good at it. i did however make a lil thingy to add discord emojis to your posts on cohost tho so theres that

i draw, of course

does exercise count as a hobby. idk its something im interested in and that brings me Nice Feelings. very hard to do consistently tho

i like video games. not playing video games. important distinction. i am terrible at video games. i do enjoy analyzing them sometimes to the best of my ability.

You may find me on:

Cohost(rip my beloved💔): https://cohost.org/MaxDanArts

Discord: @maximumdanger

Steam(i do not check it very often poke me in dms if you did something there): https://s.team/dr_furins

art sideblog, once again @maxdanarts

[shipburner]

Internal Family Skills, part three! This is the Exile (XIL) Attribute: Your capacity to feel things, to integrate sensory inputs with the body. Its six Skills are:

Architectonics

Gut Instinct

Jouissance

Lakas-ng-Loób

Playground

Wonderstruck

[ Manager | Firefighter | Self ]

Architectonics

Organize, craft, decorate. Create data structures and physical ones.

COOL FOR: Bowerbirds, Secretaries, Sculptors

Architectonics is your ability to assign material properties to the immaterial Things stored in your aphantasic memory. From this fundamental basis, you can arrive first at the ability to categorize objects by these properties, and then at the ability to join and organize objects in physical space. Architectonics gives you reliable access to the simple joy of sorting, whether it's file systems, household objects, or raw materials in an art studio; it also teaches you how to put these together to materially represent the pure concepts in the silvery-black void behind your eyes.

At high levels, Architectonics will let you personalize your living space and teach you exactly where everything is in your workshop. However, you'll lose yourself in material pursuits, neglecting social bonds and physiological needs in favor of realizing a grand artistic vision that nobody but you will ever see. But with low Architectonics, you'll be trapped in a swamp of immaterial concepts that bear little relation to the world around you, unable to find or create anything outside your head.

Gut Instinct

Be aware of your body’s needs and the physicality of emotion. Make snap decisions and prioritize.

COOL FOR: Survivors, Decision-makers, Clappers Back

Gut Instinct lives in the moment. Your body is the result of hundreds of millions of years of animal evolution, and what's going on inside gives you information without you having to sit down, logic it out, and get eaten. Your gut tells you when to load up on glucose, when to yank your hand back from a hot stove, and when to punch back before the bigger ape hits you. It's all in the interest of keeping your emotional streak going -- be they sympathetic or parasympathetic, Gut Instinct is happy when you're using the nerves that aren't in your brain.

At high levels, you'll always be right where you need to be, responding to stimuli with sabertooth-avoiding speed. You'll say and do whatever keeps you alive in the moment, no matter the consequences for yourself or others -- but at least your comebacks will be good! At low levels, though, you'll see everything as equally portentious, unable to respond in time-sensitive situations or pursue any of your possible avenues to satisfaction.

Jouissance

Seek stimulation, reward, excitement. Perceive and understand the sensations that make life worth living.

COOL FOR: Heartache Enthusiasts, Attention Economists, Masochists

Jouissance is a prickling in your skin, a hunger in your heart, an endless striving for the Lacanian limit-experience. In your quest for mind-breaking aesthetic perfection, Jouissance figures out how to spice up your sex life, pick your playlist, and know whether or not there's any comfort in the video game or the bag of edibles. It also knows exactly how to stay angry, afraid, or grieving, even or especially at others' expense.

At high levels, Jouissance keeps you on the hedonic treadmill -- bad enough when you're losing time to computers and masturbation, but far, far worse when you're holding onto grudges and picking fights for dubious catharsis. But with low Jouissance, you won't know what's worth your time or not, leaving you convinced of the worthlessness of experience in general.

Lakas-ng-Loób

Act with hope and chivalry. Exercise courage and serenity alike.

COOL FOR: Space Cowboys, Impossible Dreamers, Knights of Faith

Lakas-ng-Loób is your strength of will -- spiritual courage, practiced optimism, and commitment in the face of adversity. It maintains your Morale pool by avoiding spirals of victim-blaming, firmly identifying that external sources of harm are external and not, in fact, your fault. Lakas-ng-Loób protects your sense of agency and keeps pain from motivating inaction; likewise, it motivates you to defend others from suffering and fight for common goods.

At high levels, Lakas-ng-Loób will transform lost causes into victories. Your faith will move mountains -- and prevent you from realizing when a mountain can't be moved. You'll tilt at windmills, refuse to pick your battles, and come across as a zealot with your head in the clouds. But with low levels, you'll hesitate to protect yourself or others, trapped in the myth of personal responsibility and the politics of despair.

Playground

Exercise gross motor skills. Maintain speed, strength, balance, coordination.

COOL FOR: Active Children, Derby Dolls, The Terminally Late for Class

Playground is your sloppy, untrained sense of athleticism. As a Skill, it's concerned with having fun and getting where you want to go, and you'll grudgingly admit you have to train and exercise to keep that up instead of just fucking around. Playground's a runner, a climber, a balancer, a vaulter, and lately a skater -- it affords you some heavy lifting skill as a side effect of learning to lift your own body weight, but it hates not being on the move.

At high levels, Playground will shut out everything but the path you want to take. This is great for getting past obstacles with flair and panache and dancing like nobody's watching; it's not great for moving around non-roller-derby-playing humans, who react poorly to being treated as course hazards. Without it, though, you'll be slow, creaking, and earthbound, too out-of-shape to take any joy in motion.

Wonderstruck

Revere the beauty of the world around you. Surrender to your place in the cosmos.

COOL FOR: Protagonists, Storm Chasers, Mortals

Wonderstruck is your sense of "woah, that's awesome" -- whether it's the little "awesome" of a cool turn of phrase from one of your friends or the big "awesome" that made you kind of attracted to Hurricane Sandy. A Skill of aesthetics, Wonderstruck is your heuristic for awe, and thus your capacity for deriving excitement and comfort from a world that operates on scales too big for you to affect or even comprehend.

At high levels, Wonderstruck's euphoria in being a single strand in the cosmic weave gives you a death wish, whether it manifests as wanting a heroic destiny where there's always new impossible odds to vanquish or just a desire to skip right to "happily ever after". But its absence doesn't do anything to supply a fear of death -- it simply renders existence into something mundane and spiritually corrosive, and its failure to deliver on promises of titanic adventure leads you right back into the arms of anomie.

Notes

Jouissance's art is a reference to the "My heart is a fish" song from Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice. The fish being a pleco is an in-joke with a lover.

The design of Lakas-ng-Loób's helmet is a reference to the shaving-basin helmet from the musical Man of La Mancha (I am a filthy musical enjoyer as opposed to the actual text of Don Quixote).

Playground would probably look different if I'd drawn it today, now that I've started doing roller derby.

Thanks again to "Loób and Kapwa: An Introduction to a Filipino Virtue Ethics" (Reyes 2015).

[yakketymax]

All My Projects!

Alongside the projects listed below, you will also see me refer to other smaller projects, such as the Gingerfolk Universe I share with my friends or my own kitchen sink universe called the Scullery Basin!

Home Is Where The Harv Is

A fake series composed of two movies and two book series following the titular character, Harvey “Harv” Sugarplume II, and his adventures- mis and otherwise -and experiences learning how to love in all kinds of ways. Harvey's job as the big bad General of the Cookie Cutter Army of the Winterbloom Kingdom has taken its toll on him, making him rough and mean and jaded, and his current situation certainly isn't helping, but surely there's still a heart in there somewhere…?

Tumblejack

"Tumblejack" is my concept for a musical adventure rhythm game, wrapped in a metaphor (or is allegory the word I'm looking for?) for identity and the LGBT+ community and the challenges we face in this world! In this world, there is a list of types of music that are allowed and a much longer list of types of music that aren't allowed under ANY circumstances. If you are caught playing restricted music, your ability to do so is taken from you forever… unless you agree to comply to the rules society has put in place and play the "proper" music they tell you to. But who wants to do that! Here, you play as one half of the titular characters, Crackerjack- a peppy polka-playing punk pirate who is doing every little thing in their power to bring happiness and smiles to the people of this world, despite the ridicule they might get in return just for being themself.

Teacher's Pet

"Teacher’s Pet" is my concept for an action thriller video game centered around the rescue of seven living puppets from their now crumbling studio (and from an entity far more dangerous than a broken down building…). You (the player) seem to be the only person to have any memory of these characters from a children’s game you used to play about going to school and making friends and learning your numbers and such, but when the only thing you can seem to uncover about the vague memory is a cartoon based on it that never got off the ground, you take it upon yourself to visit the half finished address listed before you and investigate what might have happened.

Two Moons

"Two Moons" is a story that follows Synthwave Doughnut, an alien from another galaxy that's had an unfortunate accident during their space travel and crash-landed here on Earthbread… eight years ago. Though they've been stranded and forced to disguise themself to stay safe here, they're still determined to make it back home to their family even after all this time. Now joined by their closest friends in THIS world- their coworker, Galaxy Jam, a kindly mechanic, Astronaut Oreos, and the first person to take them in, Moon Cheese -Synthwave is closer than they've ever been to getting there. But, still, repairing a spaceship from a whole nother world takes an immeasurable amount of time, so, until the day finally comes, Synthwave looks up at the white moon of Earthbread, still hoping that one day it'll rise pink and yellow like their own moon back home. The blog for this project can be found here!

[twistedtummies2]

Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes - Number 20

Welcome to A Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes! During this month-long event, I’ll be counting my Top 31 Favorite Fictional Detectives, from movies, television, literature, video games, and more! Today, the countdown enters the Top 20!

SLEUTH-OF-THE-DAY’S QUOTE: “Kill me if you can!”

Number 20 is…L, from Death Note.

So far, all of the detectives on this list have been protagonist figures. Not all of them have been the MAIN protagonists (although the grand majority have been), but the focus in every situation up till now has been on the detectives trying to solve the cases. This, of course, is not always the case: not every protagonist is a hero, not every antagonist is a villain, and there are two sides to every story. While antagonistic detectives are somewhat rare, they do exist, and in various forms. Most I didn’t feel deserved placement on this countdown, however, due to one or more of the rules I established at the start. This character, however, is an exception.

“Death Note” is a highly-acclaimed anime and manga franchise, which sort of toes the line between crime/mystery drama and supernatural horror. The plot focuses on a Villain Protagonist: Light Yagami, a.k.a. Kira. Light is a precocious young man with a lot of high ideals: he sees the world as a corrupt place, and wishes there was a way to right the wrongs and bring true justice to the people. This desire gets twisted and warped when he comes into possession of the titular Death Note: a notebook with a very dark and dangerous magical ability. Whenever someone’s name is written in the Death Note…they die. And the person who writes the name down can even choose how and when they die, if they so wish. Light realizes the book has the power to grant him the justice he craves so much; consumed by the Death Note’s power, he goes mad and becomes the serial killer “Kira,” using its power to destroy anybody he deems unfit of living in the world he wants to create…or just anybody who gets in his way.

Light does not go unchallenged in the series, and this is where our contender for today comes into play: a mysterious private investigator known simply as “L.” This young fellow is a foil to Light, in a lot of ways: Light is seemingly normal, well-spoken, clean-cut, and conventionally attractive. L, in contrast, is a reclusive little hobgoblin obsessed with computers and candy. What both share is the fact they are each geniuses, both wiser and more clever than their youthful years would indicate. L becomes determined to solve the case of Kira, and it’s his actions and choices that create much of the conflict Light must face on his self-righteous and deadly quest.

Much of the show revolves around the concept of a single word I’ve used here already: “justice.” All of the major characters have their own philosophies and outlooks on what “true justice” really is. Light believes justice is as simple as punishing the guilty; as he is corrupted by the power the Death Note brings to him, he comes to think that the only way one can achieve true justice is to eliminate all of one’s enemies, so that those you care about can be rewarded and saved. L believes much the same, but he sees it from a different point of view: he believes Kira should be punished for his crimes, because that is what “true justice” is, regardless of his motivations. However, L is not a pure and simple hero in this story; he does things that are legally and ethically questionable in his pursuit of putting Kira behind bars. His ideal of justice is set up by the precedent that murder is wrong, and therefore catching murderers is just; how one actually goes about doing that is not something he really cares about on the whole.

Another thing that makes L interesting is his relationship with Light: while the two are dead serious about destroying one another, each comes to see the other as probably the closest thing either has ever had to a real, true friend. Indeed, there are, one could argue, subtle implications of romance between the pair. This makes what happens to L later in the manga and the anime even more tragic, because – SPOILER ALERT – in both, L does not survive the entire series. However, even after he dies, he’s far from done with Light Yagami, as things L did before his destruction ultimately do lead to Kira’s downfall. In the words of a different story, “Neither can live while the other survives.” Their twin paths ultimately result in mutual destruction, which is wonderfully poetic. I would argue the musical of Death Note (yes, there IS a musical, and it’s actually pretty good) does this even better than either the anime OR the manga…but that’s another story for another time.

Tomorrow, the countdown continues with Number 19!

CLUE: “Everyone has thought about killing someone, one way or another.”

[hothammies]

Hi again!

I bring another question. Are there any details about your zombies that you find special?

Like unique stuff. Speed, transmission, all that stuff!

- 🪼 (jellyfish anon)

hi again jellyfish anon!

to answer your question quickly: yes! i'm planning for there to be unique qualities to certain infected strains, but i'm not sure what that'll be - the aesthetic of the upside down will be a heavy factor in how i design the infection!

this is gonna turn into a ramble but honestly, i've barely begun the zombie (worldbuilding) part of the au, mostly because it's not really my forte, characters are! it doesn't mean i'm not confident in my abilities to make an interesting world- it's just that i'd have to do a whole lot more research to make a world i feel is cohesive and fits the characters well because it doesn't come as naturally to me :) after i finish off the character sheets, i'll dedicate some time into outlining more about the apocalyptic world!

under the cut, i'll provide my main sources of inspiration that i'm going to be drawing from!

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regarding the entire au as a whole, here's some games that i'm most likely going to be drawing inspiration from for what i'm thinking of:

days gone (currently playing <3): weapons, open world, concept of "drifters" and camps, government play in reference to the infection, science involved in how infection spreads

the last of us i + ii (games): the communities, concept of immunity, use of environment to show not tell, stages of infected, fedra involvement

left 4 dead 2 (the fuckin goat): concept of immunity, special infected concept, tightknit group of survivors that are competent,

resident evil (the og): las plagas similarity, infection resiliency, government involved in infection

the walking dead (franchise): child character references (carl, clem + the ericson boarding school)

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other notes: as i said, all of these are games :D video games are my absolute favorite form of storytelling! in particular, l4d2 and tlou games have stuck with me since i was a kid so i have a huge soft spot for them! these aren't really set in stone ideas, just what i had in mind when making this au

honestly, i'm not gunning for originality or anything - i'm just hoping the world i create is interesting and fits the characters well in context! i've always been much more interested in characters than the worldbuilding in regards to general storytelling, but i do believe characters have a heavy hand in making the world feel lived in + interesting, which is why i'm trying to make a world around the characters :)