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levy120 · 7 months

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Heart Shaped Wreckage

Rating: T Words: 1000 (Complete) Genre: Fluff Lore: Rayman 2

Characters: Rayman, Ly Summary: They're smooching. That's all there is :)

Sequel to: Broken Pieces | [tumblr] / [dA] / [ao3] INSPIRATION: this fanart from @another-her - I tried my best to channel the vibe.

AN: I thought it would be a good idea to challenge my personal comfort zone (and apologize for the last Laserhawk Chapter). (This gave me so much grief. I'm fine with writing the wildest horrors, but intimacy? ROMANCE?? in THIS economy??? 🥲) More like this: [Rayman Oneshots Masterpost]

"I got my world right here."

When Rayman nuzzles into her, it's like her world stops. Her arms tighten around him instinctively as she tries to internalize what he said. It's such a simple thing but it leaves her mind spinning, and before she knows what she's doing she's pressing a kiss to the back of his head.

It doesn't go unnoticed. She feels him twitch. When he tries to move, her arms wind around him tighter as if of their own accord.

…So he stills again and only turns his head to look at her.

She's crying.

"Ly."

It's like her mind isn't all there. She looks haunted.

"Ly," he tries again, one of his hands cupping her cheeks and brushing a stray tear away.

"Talk to me."

He feels her take a shaky breath, and sees her blink the tears from her eyes.

"It's…" her voice is thin as she resorts to clinging onto him tighter, "the thought," she says, "of never seeing you again."

Rayman sees her gaze stray again.

"Hey," he coos and uses his hand to turn her head.

"Look at me," he says, "I'm here. I'm alright."

Rayman sees her eyes glaze over again. No words come to her.

So she kisses him instead. On the lips this time.

Rayman's breath hitches and fearing she has made a mistake Ly pulls away. Her hold on his belly loosens as she fumbles for an apology, but before words come to her Rayman has found her lips again.

And Ly responds to it gladly.

Even when she lets Rayman take the lead he's shy and gentle. It's like he's afraid of Ly's vulnerability, she usually puts up such a strong front for him.

Breathing his air allows her to relax for the first time and when her hand splays in the middle of his sigil she can feel his heartbeat under her palm and the deep magic thrumming within his chest.

He's here. He's alive. He's real.

Her own heart sings and her lips draw into a smile.

It's real.

It's been years since the pirates first invaded their home. It's a privilege not having to worry about Razorbeard or a sudden ambush now…

She feels… she feels safe. Here. With Rayman.

It's one of her favorite hiding places, secluded, untouched by the robots even. The only other presence here are a flock of red lums dancing across the nearby stream.

She wants to say thank you, but repeating it over and over rings empty. She can only say it so often before it loses its meaning.

It's not right. It's not enough. She has no words for the burning in her chest, but she knows she wants to keep Rayman close because he alleviates the pain.

"Ly…"

Hearing his voice is a balm. Hearing him speak her name is…

is…

Rain after drought.

For lack of being able to give him a proper, all encompassing hug she pulls his core closer and wraps herself around him snugly. Her tail curls around him like a nest. His hands respond in kind, one of them resting at the small of her back, the other anchors itself on her shoulder.

"Ly…" he tries again to get her attention. She hums in return.

It's so much like meditating, but she's all here, her senses heightened, her body is tingling and yet…

"I love you."

Her head is ringing to even think it's meant for her.

Those are the words she's been looking for. She should repeat them back. But when she opens her mouth to say them she finds herself chasing another kiss instead.

Ly feels a little lightheaded as she tips his chin up with a featherlight nudge. She drinks Rayman in; pours her everything into the words she can't say.

There would be no harm in admitting it. Not now that the threat has passed. It's been an open secret all this time anyway.

One of her hands lets go of his back to find the one gripping her shoulder a little too tightly and interlocks with it.

When they break apart, Ly loses herself to a fit of giggling.

That… really just happened. It wasn’t a dream or an intrusive thought... By Polokus.

She wants to keep this moment. Treasure it.

The levity is contagious and soon enough Rayman is chuckling along.

"Look at us," Ly says as she brushes new tears from her eyes - but these feel easy with the relief of a lifetime.

Rayman's hand silently squeezes hers as he nuzzles back against her. His head is nestling itself in the warm crook of her neck.

"We can keep doing this," Rayman murmurs cheekily, "It's fun."

"Or we can stay like this for a while."

Ly tilts her head to press her forehead against his.

"I love you," she finally says back to him and the words come easy. A weight off her chest. In retrospect she wonders how this could have ever felt difficult?

"So, so much," she hums as she gives his nose another peck.

She sees his cheeks perk up in a wide smile before he melts against her. Ly hardly thinks they could be any closer as she drapes her tail over him like a fuzzy blanket. His sigil emits a faint glow that piques her curiosity, but before she can ponder the thought further, Rayman is drifting.

The soft brush of her fur seems to have put him to sleep almost instantly, the exhaustion of weeks upon weeks of fighting since his daring escape finally having caught up with him. She adjusts her own breathing to the rise and fall of his chest and soon finds that yes - a moment of rest is well deserved.

The shadow of grief is nothing but a distant memory as she feels Rayman's weight in her lap and the invisible burden of hidden feelings off of her chest.

Ly's fingers idly card through Rayman's hair with a tired smile as exhaustion threatens to claim her as well… and soon enough Ly closes her eyes to tranquil peace.

#rayman #ly #fluff #romance #fanfiction #Rayman fanfiction #RayLy

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balanceoflightanddark · 1 year

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I've talked about MechaGodzilla in the past, but with a franchise as old and long as Godzilla's, it's inevitable that the character has changed over the years. He's gone from a tool of conquest to a defender of humanity to a raging mech turned against its masters.

But if I had to highlight my favorite iteration of the character, I have to go with the Millenium version that debuted in Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla and appeared one last time in Godzilla: Tokyo SOS. Aside from having arguably the coolest design, this MechaGodzilla (also known as Kiryu), actually does have something that the others don't: he has a character arc and isn't either a threat to be conquered or a tank.

The only problem with Kiryu is that talking about him runs the risk of sounding like a mad man. So disclaimer: everything down below is real. I am NOT making this stuff up. At all.

So our story starts in 1954 with the original Godzilla.

By now you should know the story. Baptized in the fires of the hydrogen bomb, the original Godzilla went on a rampage in Tokyo and completely leveled the city, killing countless. He was only stopped when the brilliant scientist Dr. Serizawa reduced him to a skeleton with the Oxygen Destroyer. Anyone who's familiar with Godzilla lore knows the story.

Well, in the continuity of the Kiryu duology, that skeleton becomes extremely important.

When a second Godzilla appears in 1999, the Japanese government knows they did some kind of superweapon to defend themselves (especially since conventional weaponry won't do jack). Taking a page out of Pacific Rim's book, they decide their best chance is a gigantic mech to fight the monster. But even then, Godzilla's vicious enough that even a conventional robot might not enough.

And here's where things get...interesting.

Thanks to recent developments in robotics and bioengineering, they're able to use the bones of the original Godzilla to build MechaGodzilla. The reason being that a robot that uses organic DNA will be able to react faster than a completely automated one. Plus, thanks to those aforementioned advancements, Kiryu would be able to fight as effectively and viciously as when it was Godzilla while remaining under the JDSF's control. Think of it more as a cyborg than a true robot.

So to reiterate, they built a mech out of the bones of the original Godzilla. It's also able to fight just as well as its organic counterpart. Something like an EVA from Evangelion.

...everyone still with me? Good. Cause it gets stranger.

Kiryu does turn out to be as good of a fighter as they needed. While he isn't as powerful as some of his other iterations, he's able to fight the new Godzilla on equal footing. He's able to fight Godzilla to a draw in the first film inflicting grievous wounds and even defeated him in the second with the help of Mothra.

There's just one problem. Remember how I said Kiryu was a cyborg brought to life by the original bones of Godzilla?

During his first scuffle with Godzilla...Kiryu remembered who he was when he heard Godzilla's roar. And when a monster realizes he's been brought back to life by those that gave him painful mutations, turned him into a living weapon, and made to fight one of his own...

He goes berserk.

Yeah, once the reality of Kiryu's state comes to mind, there's some serious questions on whether or not creating him was a good idea in the first place. For one, how exactly can anybody rely on a machine that thinks like a monster? For another, what are the moral implications of even creating such a thing and forcing him to fight what is essentially another of his kind? Or even bringing him back to life and thus playing God? These are actually given a ton of weight in the film as the ethical lines behind Kiryu's creation are blurred. Especially when MechaGodzilla being brought online is what's triggering Godzilla's rampages in the first place.

But the interesting thing here is Kiryu himself. There's a lot of hints that he's a lot more self-aware and in control than most people give him credit for. For one, he seems to have an affinity for his first pilot Akane and one of his technicians, Yoshido. His eyes almost seem to glow when Akane is in danger and flat out says farewell to Yoshido on a computer in Tokyo SOS. The implications are that he seems to sympathize with Akane's feelings of worthlessness and appreciates Yoshido treating him like he was an actual being despite essentially being a robot.

And then there's his relationship with Godzilla. Thing is...he doesn't want to fight one of his own. While he runs out of power in the first film before he can kill Godzilla, Akane speculates that Kiryu genuinely didn't want to fight anymore. While he'll certainly fight Godzilla to stop the monster's rampage (all the more impressive since this is technically the original Godzilla we're talking about), killing him is another matter entirely. Which creates a bit of conflict since his purpose is to kill Godzilla.

And he gets his chance in Tokyo SOS when he grievously wounds Godzilla...but then stops dead in his tracks when his "brother/son" cries out in pain. He then lets the Mothra Larvae to wrap Godzilla in silk and effectively bring the exhausted dinosaur to the earth, giving him an opportunity to finish the job. Hell, the pilots and mission control are basically ordering Godzilla's execution at this point.

Instead...he doesn't.

He gives off a roar that sounds like the original Godzilla, disobeys every command to finish the fight, and gently embraces his organic counterpart before taking them both out to sea where no one can reach them. Godzilla is able to live, and Kiryu (and by extension the original Godzilla) is finally able to rest in peace.

This is why this version of MechaGodzilla is my favorite. His whole arc to me was about choosing for himself and wrangling with his relationship to both mankind and Godzilla. About whether he should kill his own or let innocents get hurt. Or even just learning to move on past his grudge against people. Those are things you don't typically associate with kaiju movies. Cause in the end, Kiryu isn't just another mech or monster. He's got character to him as well. Something I think the Godzilla movies do well.

#mechagodzilla #kiryu #godzilla #godzilla against mechagodzilla #godzilla tokyo sos #kaiju #long post #i like talking about godzilla

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r-ando-m-w-rite-r · 1 year

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Seven Minutes Before Heaven

octane x FEM!reader

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You yelped as you were tossed into a small storage closet located in the back of the common room. Hitting the concrete wall with a thud, you slowly slid down it. That was going to leave a bruise. The air was knocked out of you as you closed your eyes in a dull pain. Touching down on the floor, you looked up just in time to see Octavio being thrown in as well. Before you could stop him, he landed on top of you, letting out a loud ‘oof’.

“See you two in seven minuteees!” Ramya said in a cheerful voice, holding out the last syllable of the word ‘minute’ and hitting a high note. With that, the door slammed shut, leaving only the glow of the stim that Octavio carried with him everywhere lighting the room.

You groaned, squinting your eyes. That was when you realized he was still on you, and when you looked up, his face was right in front of yours. He stared down at you, and he seemed a little taken back by the position the two of you were in. His arms were placed on either side of you, and his legs were conveniently straddling you. How had he managed to land like that?

His eyes drew your attention, however. They sparkled in the dim, green glow coming from his side. They were wide and a little puzzled-looking, but they were mesmerizing. Ramya had been right; maybe the two of you should make out. You didn’t realize it, but you were slowly leaning forward. Closing your eyes and parting your lips ever so slightly, you waited. And waited. Ok, what was he doing?

“Uh, sooo, is this the part where we kiss, chica?” Your eyes snapped open and you glared at him. Shaking your head, you sighed.

“Oh, Tavi..” you groaned. With that, you pushed him off of you, and he yelped. Flailing backwards, he hit the door with a loud bang.

“Ouch.” he said, both to you and to his shoulder, which he rubbed briefly. You listened closely and heard the other Legends talking outside.

“Damn, they must be getting frisky in there.” That voice sounded like Kairi. A few chuckles sounded, and Ramya replied, “Well, he does have some robotic thrusters on him.” More laughter occurred, and you pinched the bridge of your nose.

Ever since you had told Ramya that you may or may not have had a crush on the speedy daredevil, she had literally gone out of her way to get you alone with him. Whether it was at Paradise Lounge and forcing-no, inviting him to come to your table or in the games when the two of you were put into a squad and she made him give you his good loot. You still cringed to it now.

“Now go up to her like a real man and give her it.” Ramya had whispered, thinking you hadn’t heard it with your back turned to the replicator.

“B-But I just found it-” he muttered sadly.

“Uh, uh, uh.” she said, clicking her tongue. “Go.”

You turned around to see an unhappy Octane holding out a purple body shield. “Here Y/n.” he mumbled, not making eye contact with you.

As much as you knew it would start something, you couldn’t stand seeing him that upset. “No, it’s okay Tavi, you can keep it.” He perked up just then, either because of you using his nickname or the idea that he could keep his discovered loot.

He eagerly looked back at Rampart, looking like an excited puppy wagging its tail. But she just shook her head. His energy re-deflated, and he turned back to you, thrusting the armor out farther. “No, really, I insist.”

You really wished you had never told Ramya in the first place. It was sweet of her to try and make things work, really. But her actions were doing more damage to a potential future relationship than anything else. Octavio was pretty oblivious, but you could tell even he could pick up a few things.

“Chica.” he muttered, drawing you out of your thoughts. His voice was in a more serious tone now, despite his aloofness out in the common room only what seemed like moments before. He was looking down, but as he said this, he looked up at you. “I know you like me.”

You sucked in a breath. Who told him? Or had it really been that obvious, even before all of Ramya’s shenanigans? You opened your mouth to explain, but he continued. “And the truth is, I like you too.” His confession knocked the air out of you. He did? You stared into his eyes, and he stared back. But then his gaze averted yours.

“But it just seemed like Ramya was trying to force something that wasn’t there, a-and it made me uncomfortable.” He ran his right hand up and down his left arm, which was bracing him on the ground. “A-And I didn’t know how to respond.” He closed his eyes, seemingly awaiting a disappointed comment from you or something.

It felt like the two of you were worlds apart, despite only being on opposite sides of the room. You felt so bad for him, but just didn’t know how to express it. That kind of discomfort and pressure was relatable, as you had dealt with matchmaker tenancies before. It was just different seeing it take a toll on someone other than yourself.

Before you even thought about what you were doing, you scooted across the floor and leaned into the boy, wrapping him in a hug. Burying your face into his chest, you felt him freeze, obviously a little taken back by the abrupt reaction. But after a moment, you felt him melt into your touch and begin humming. It felt nice comforting him. You looked up into his face, and this time he leaned in. Oh, you definitely wanted this.

But before your lips could touch his, the door was pulled open, and your weight combined with Octavio’s own weight sent you two crashing down to the floor between the doorway. Your head hit his chest hard, and he let out another ‘oof’. You groaned and sat up, looking up. Around the two of you stood all the Legends at the party. You noticed Gibby and Ajay holding in what looked like giggles and you squinted suspiciously at them.

“Uh, Y/n, well, you uhhh…” Elliot started, but Ramya stepped forward, a sneaky grin on her face.

“Well would you look at that, it seems you and Tavi had a pretty fun time in there.” she smirked. You raised an eyebrow before looking down and flushing at what they all meant. You were straddling his hips. He was looking up at the others with a half-grin on his face, his Adam's apple bobbing with each breath. Upon looking back at you, he smiled reassuringly.

“No worries chica, I love you anyway, so I don’t care what position you put me in.” He winked and you snorted, ten times more embarrassed than before because he had said that in front of everyone. Ajay fake-gagged, to some of the Legend’s amusement, and you watched as Natalie turned to Renee, frowning.

“I wish you were that open about us in public.” she muttered before storming off.

Renee frowned, then growled, then shouted to her, “What? You want me to talk about how you were begging for my touch last night?” A series of ‘ooos’ went up as she then proceeded to storm after her now-embarrassed girlfriend and hug her passionately.

You also caught Taejoon giving Elliot a sly side glance before Elliot raised up his hands and protested. “No, NO! Don’t you dare, or else.” he said, backing away from the group. You chuckled at this as you pulled yourself off of Octavio, reaching down and pulling him up with his hand as well.

He just frowned and gave you puppy eyes. “Aww, but I liked the feeling of you on my d-” You clapped a hand over his mouth before he could continue, and Ramya just chuckled as the group began dispersing.

“That’s enough from you, mister.” you replied quickly, grabbing his hand and beginning to drag him back to the center of the common room where everything was set up. You weren’t sure where this newfound cockiness of his had come from, but you were already tired of it.

“Wait.” You turned back impatiently, ready to roll your eyes at him, but he acted before you could. You squeaked as he pulled you close to him suddenly, so close that your chest was up against his. Looking into your eyes deviously, he said, “I still want that kiss.” You opened your mouth to respond, but his lips crashed against yours before you could say anything.

Quickly melting into his kiss, you couldn’t help but reach up and wrap your arms around his neck. He squeezed you even closer, tugging at your hips and completely pushing the air out of your lungs. The two of you continued for what felt like hours as you enjoyed each other’s presence, forgetting about the others that would glance over every now and then and chuckle at the two of you mischeviously. Now this, this was the true ‘seven minutes in heaven’.

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bikwin5 · 6 months

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"ELLY'S ADVENTURE" notes and retrospective

It's been almost a month since I released "ELLY'S ADVENTURE," my first finished game in quite a while. I kind of dropped it without any context so I want to talk about it a bit. This is going to be a long post.

If you haven't played it then GO DO THAT CLICK ON THIS NOW!!!!! Just now I uploaded a recent 1.2 version that fixes a couple more bugs. I highly recommend you read this after at least beating the main game.

THE ORIGINAL

The first thing I want to reveal about Elly's is that the characters and setting did not begin with this project. How scandalous!!! They were actually conceived for a different project that I started thinking of as early as the end of 2015. This was also a game maker project, but it was much larger in scope than what Elly's Adventure became. It was going to be a "METROID MANIA" type game that many indie devs love to make.

The characters themselves didn't change that much in terms of roles. Elly was still the protagonist with Natalie as a supporting role, and I even had the idea of a hard mode where you play as Natalie back then. The plot was that there was like a magical item that got stolen and Elly and Natalie accidentally end up in a situation where they get recruited by the military and sent to take it back from a factory being used as a front for a base of very evil operations. The tone was still kind of funny but a little more serious than Elly's Adventure.

These are the earliest digital drawings of Elly and Natalie from 2015 and they look like FUCKING DOGSHIT!!!!!! SOmehow worse than I remember. I'm glad I learned to draw a bit better if nothing else.

Chandra was also a part of this project but she was not the main villain, rather she would have been the main henchman you fight multiple times throughout the course of the game, getting new attacks each time. She was to work under a character who I called MINERVA, THE CYBER-QUEEN who was to be the main antagonist. Chandra was more of a funny character who displayed moments of incompetence while the Cyber-Queen was more serious. I never really settled on a finalized design for the queen and I didn't even really like her that much in retrospect so Chandra ended up being the main antagonist of Elly's Adventure due to its more lighthearted nature. The enemies were also always meant to be weird round robots with green eyes, and I reused some designs for Elly's Adventure.

Old sprite sheets of Elly and the enemies. Was never really satisfied with Elly's animations.

Yulie was also part of the original project but she was to not make any physical appearances. Rather she was to give hints and bits of lore from pieces of her writing you would find around the factory, from a time when she worked there and slowly discovered that something sinister was going on. Surprisingly Yulie was never actually intended to be Elly's mom from the start until I started thinking of her being a support character in Elly's Adventure and I was like wait why should she be helping these kids... well her and elly both have blonde hair so she's her mom now LOL

This project never had a proper name, I think I also considered calling it Elly's Adventure but I didn't want to exclude Natalie from it so I was thinking of names like "Sky Diamonds" but it doesn't take place in the sky so that's stupid. I got as far as laying out the whole game and getting basic controls and some of the opening area down but that was about it. Truthfully I was never really satisfied with how it controlled or the art direction I was going with and making a metroid type game that lasted several hours felt so daunting I didn't really want to work on it anymore after a point.

Here are some old gifs of what it looked like. The main gameplay idea was that Elly was going to have a propulsion as a double jump that could be upgraded, sort of like the booster 2.0 from Cave Story. That idea ended up working its way into Adventure as a powerup. There was to be other mechanics like shot upgrades and secondary items that would do fun things but I never got around to that.

THE INSPIRATIONS

Now that I've spent long enough talking about Elly origins I can get to the actual game that, if you are reading this, most likely played. While it uses the same characters and setting as the last project, Elly's Adventure has a much smaller scope and style of gameplay. I am not a huge fan of the word "inspiration" something about it pisses me off. But with everything there was stuff that Elly's was inspired by.

First off only the most keen of observers may have realized that Elly's Adventure very much emulates the look and feel of titles played on a certain handheld system. It is the GAME BOY and it's one of the greatest things ever made. It has TI-84 ass graphics and sold a hundred million. I think the Game Boy might be the most rudimentary electronic game device to ever be so popular and I love it for that.

What's really ironic is that I actually did not have a Game Boy growing up YES that's right my first system was the Game Boy Advance. I know it's backwards compatible but I didn't know that as a kid and the only way I knew about games was either seeing them directly in the store or the sears catalog. And I loved Yoshi so much that I wanted a GBA specifically for the Super Mario Advance games with Yoshi in them. I enjoyed my Yoshi's Island port very much. So any original Game Boy title I've played I was either a teen or older since that was when I discovered the magic of emulation.

Anyway this is getting too anecdotal so I should start talking about the specific games that actually did inspire Elly's: Mole Mania and Link's Awakening.

MOLE MANIA is a puzzle game released by Nintendo in 1996. No one bought it because the Game Boy was dying and Pokemon had yet to breathe life into it again. People like to call it "Miyamoto's forgotten masterpiece" and then not say anything else about it. But it is legitimately a very good puzzle game that manages to do so much with so little and it's surprisingly difficult too. Each level is a series of one screen puzzles where the mole has to get the big ball into the goal, like this:

I got this from a youtude video so it has the cool Super Game Boy border. Anyway Muddy Mole can go underground to get to places and push and pull the ball around and all sorts of stuff. It's all designed in a very competent and concise way and I love everything about it except for the bonus stages and final boss. It feels unique among Nintendo games because it feels like they almost never do pure puzzle games that aren't some sort of falling block variant.

Of course Elly's is not a puzzle game so you might be wondering why I'm even bringing this one up. I felt compelled enough by the concise puzzle design that I wanted to make a Game Boy styled thing myself, something that I was considering for a while. I thought the idea of moving from screen to screen and clearing everything out would be fun. So I ended up digging up the handful of characters I had hardly thought about in years and set out to make a game with them.

Funny enough, even back in the day I was considering making a Game Boy styled game with Elly as a sidescroller. The idea was that it would have been a primer before jumping into a big game. It would have been something really short, like only 20 minutes, and the only characters would have been Elly and the Queen. But I didn't really get into it, not even writing down any ideas. So I suppose I was itching to do something with the GB style all along.

LINK'S AWAKENING is a much less obscure Game Boy game, and is probably the most well cherished GB title ever that isn't Pokemon. I went and played it shortly after Mole Mania because I wanted ideas for Elly, which was to be a small funny game of action. It wasn't purely for research, I just realized it was one of the few Zelda titles I hadn't played yet and I figured now would be a good time.

Of course it's a very good game. It uses the Game Boy's capabilities to its fullest and the color version enhances it even more. The overworld is made to feel bigger than it really is and the dungeons are honestly a lot more elegant that what Link to the Past had to offer. But mainly the thing I took away from this was level design stuff that could translate to Elly's well. I think STAGE 10 with the waterfalls was a good example of stuff I took away from this. A lot of the background graphics were also inspired by Zelda, such as the cliffs and castle walls.

did you know between DX and the remake its impossible to find any good screenshots of the original GB link's awakening... anyway just imagine this screenshot in monochrome and that's pretty much everything the desert stages were referenced from.

The Kirby series ended up being another source of inspiration, despite not taking many gameplay influences but rather style influences. Kirby is a funny little guy with awesome power and Elly could be considered similar, maybe even a ripoff if you think about it. I took a lot of ideas from the GB games in particular but moreso the spinoffs than anything. I think Kirby's Block Ball is a neat little title that's probably the best you can get with Game Boy breakout. Stuff like the structure of the game and the concept of an Extra Game were also taken from Kirby.

There are a couple of other minor GB titles that served as inspiration. Painter Momopie is a Japan-exclusive game about a little witch that has to paint floors. It's not an amazing game but it's cute and small. Elly's sprite, which was the first thing I drew for the game, was in fact based off of Momopie, and that's how I set the graphical style in motion.

There's also a game called Out of Gas which has these full screen cutscenes with fucked up looking people in it, which I tweeted about once.

I don't remember how I found out about it. This pic stands out to me a lot because there is not a single other game on the Game Boy that looks like this. This was dated May 10th and the notepad file where I started writing ideas for Elly's Adventure was also May 10th. So it's very much possible that this somehow ended up pushing me to make the entire game LOL

Moving on to Elly's Adventure

As implied by the last section Elly's Adventure started development around May of last year. This was probably my fastest turnaround from concept to development ever for a game idea. Somehow I still have the first things I wrote in the notepad file here unchanged:

There is a LOT more to the file than this but also I want to show that my process of making big projects is stupid as shit. Just take a big notepad file and start putting things in it until it gets so big I have to make a separate one. It's not the best but it works for a one person team.

You might also notice I intended the game to be about 30 minutes long, which did not happen as now it's more than twice that length. This is something called "scope creep" and it happens with every video game ever made by an ambitious indie dev. Honestly not sure how I intended "20-25 stages" to only take 30 minutes. Regardless scoping as small as I did I expected this project to take maybe a year and it ended up only taking a year and five months!!!!! I probably could have done it sooner if other projects and real life things like moving didn't get in the way.

Regardless it was relatively smooth to get Elly's Adventure off the ground. Since earlier last year I was already playing around with making a prototype of a different top down game that was puzzle based (don't count on me picking it up again) it wasn't too hard to do something similar on a smaller screen size, with already existing characters. I had some ideas that I scrapped early on like a score counter and a timer and decided to make Elly's a simple action game where you are simply focused on destroying everything you see.

This video is the earliest footage of Elly's after only a couple of weeks. The music was added by me, it wasn't in the game yet.

There's only one other bit of gameplay that's different than usual and that's the bonus stages, those were added fairly late in devlopment. I had the idea because I realized that a handful of Yulie locations was a pretty slow way of gaining 1ups by itself. I kind of forget they're in the game until I play it myself.

Truthfully I made Elly's as small as I did because I really did want to have a whole game out there that felt complete and polished. My Kirby games of the past might be funny but they're derivative works and VERY unpolished. With Elly's I wanted to give myself as much time as possible to refine a smaller game and I think based on reception it turned out alright.

THE DEVELOPMENT

Elly's Adventure was made in Game Maker Studio 2, a platform that I used because I had prior experience. Is it the best platform for making games? Honestly not sure. It's ok but it's obviously built off of an old codebase, much to its detriment. But I think Game Maker is very good at making 2D games that you can compartmentalize into a series of rooms, and Elly's was perfect for that. So I ended up doing that instead of learning GB studio or something because I didn't want to deal with actual GB limitations.

The development timeline of Elly's Adventure I ended up splitting into three phases. The first phase was to send the game to a couple of friends in secret and see what they think, purely as a proof of concept. The only feedback I was looking for was confirmation it was a good idea for a game. This was about three months in development and it had stages 1-10 without the stage 10 boss or the bonus stages, something I hadn't even conceived of yet. I got enough feedback that I knew I wanted to continue with the project.

The second phase was the longest, spanning like nine more months. This was the bulk of creating the game's content, as well as stuff like me moving that got in the way. I was more open about the game at the end of this phase and I sent it to a number of friends who are listed as "Generous Playtesters" in the credits. Special thanks to them, again, for doing this. I had more people than I expected willing to give me feedback for free. It took them a while, I think because I ended up sending it out the same time that fucking Zelda came out.

The "demo" I sent out was in fact the full game in a less polished state. All 20 stages, the intro and ending, and even a less refined options menu was all in. I did this because I really wanted the whole game to be polished as much as possible, especially since the last big game I put out (PEKSCTG2) was a hellscape tested only by me. Most reception was actually pretty positive and I think the thing I ended up changing the most apart from bug fixes were the bosses. I think all of them had a bit of rework to adjust their difficulty. This build actually did not include the Extra Game you get from finishing the main story, so all those stages actually are an untested hellscape. Have fun!

The third phase went from May to now, taking longer than I expected. Pikmin 4 coming out in that time didn't help either. When making the extra game it turns out making 20 harder versions of the existing stages takes a while!!! It was that + refining pretty much everything else and getting it ready for release. Speaking of level design here is a little snippet of the MS Paint type stuff I did for that:

Later I would put the actual sprites in instead of these shitty placeholders. Note that some rooms are not the same as they are in the finished game, I made some changes on the fly. That's kind of a fun thing of working by yourself, you don't have to like tell a separate design person to do something if you want changes.

Sometimes I see sentiment that making a project is easiest at the start and really hard in the middle but for me it's the opposite, at least with game dev. Getting something off the ground beyond just an idea is hard but making the content is honestly pretty smooth sailing. Then you have the end where the last bit of the game is most of the work. It's a bit painful having to comb through such a big project multiple times to make sure everything is there and running. Despite this project taking way longer than expected I'm still glad to finally get something done and out there.

THE GWAPHICS

If there is something between 2015 and now I have done a lot it's drawing. I'm not exactly an accomplished artist but I think a lot of my stuff has improved in past years. Or at least that's what they say. Taste is subjective after all.

However I didn't do very much pixel art for a while. Especially not anything with a palette as limited as the Game Boy. So making all the graphics for Elly's was something of an exercise in trying to figure out how this pixle art shit works all over again.

Almost everything in Elly's is drawn by me. A few images are actual things shrunken and convered to 4 colors but otherwise it's all me. And as it turns out drawing all the assets for you own game takes a long freakin time even when they're this simple!!!! While no one sprite took very long apart from bigger ones like bosses it all adds up to a lot of hours.

Not all of those hours are on Elly's but still. I think doing the tilesets took up a lot of time, in particular the playroom area because I was insistent on including a bunch of funny easter eggs and references. I can't explain all of them here because it would take much too long, but let it be known that this thing before the third boss is called "The Fumpship" and has like 3 layers of inside joke to it.

As for the character designs they were simple enough that transcribing them into Game Boy sprite form was actually pretty simple. Elly and Natalie in particular I had to remove the symbols on their clothes since it wouldn't translate in sprites.

You already saw this at the start of the post. These are character sketches I did around the start of development. Note that Natalie's outfit color is different, later I made it lighter to make her more distinguishable from Elly in-game. There are very few "concept art" things for Elly's, most of it I started with doing the sprites.

As for the enemy sprites since the ones I already had (see sprite sheet 10 pages above) already worked pretty well in this setting so I used that as a base for other enemies. The "Big Boy" enemies in particular took a while to figure out their sprites but I do like how they turned out. My favourite enemies are the exploding dolls, so much that I even used them as the game's icon.

THE COADS

This section is very technical and vague so you can skip it if you want. I'm something of a programmer... I think. I don't talk about it that much. A lot of what I know is not exactly suited for game dev BUT I did have a lot of residual Game Maker Language knowledge from my past projects. And there was a lot to learn too, since this was my first time using GMS2 in particular.

Truthfully since Elly's is kind of simple there wasn't THAT much that was that difficult programming-wise... I think the hardest shit for me is doing collisions and stuff. Collisions for Elly weren't too bad but for certain enemies like the grinders it was a pain in the ASS!!!!! That's why getting any game off the ground is hard for me, trying to make the groundwork for everything is daunting because I'll worry if it's good enough to accomodate the rest of development.

I think a lot of the challenge was not from getting things to work but rather having everything neat and organized. When you're making a game there is a lot of stuff to keep track of and even sometimes with the way I organized things I get lost in the game maker asset browser. I also made sure to comment things a lot... If you ever decompile the game i'm sorry if my comments are weird and embarassing.

The reason why I'm even bringing this aspect up is because in my past projects, particularly Pik's Epic Kirby Sprite Comics 2 I didn't know SHIT about programming nicely or efficiently and a lot of it was brute force via if statements. I did not want that!!! So with Elly's I made it so that adding new things like powerups and enemies was as easy as possible and I think that ended up making the project bearable.

This was also my first time making certain things like an options menu which was kind of strange and daunting as Game Maker does not have anything build in for menus. You just kind of have to do it from scratch. I was really insistent on having remappable controls in particular because I feel like that's essential for PC games these days. Also I enjoyed making the map system a lot, which was something I only added late in development. It uses a very hacky method of finding hard-coded arrays for each stage and drawing boxes for them but it works.

THE BOSSES

I think bosses in video games are a very novel thing on how inefficient they are for such a capital-driven industry. You have these things that take up a lot of effort and development time and are usually a small part of gameplay but they get made anyway because they look cool and also maybe you can use them as marketing or something. Maybe "boss fights" can be viewed as a disruption of power making its way into the hands of the workers? Ok I'm just talking out of my ass here.

There are not a lot of bosses in Elly's and they don't last very long but I wanted to discuss them anyway because there are some fun things to say about them. The first thing is that I wasn't even sure if Elly's was going to have more than one boss at first. Then I came up with the idea for the first boss (Death Orb) and started getting ideas from there. Fun fact, the Death Orb is named and modeled after the enemy (obstacle?) from Warframe:

I honestly thought it was really obvious but no one, not even my Warframe-playing friends seemed to notice. Anyway I just wanted a very simple boss that doesn't move with one attack. For a long time it didn't have the beeping sounds that telegraph its moves and therefore was very difficult to avoid the second phase without getting hit at least once! It was a bit bulb shit once I realized so I did that.

The second boss is a fish and funny enough, the only surviving boss idea from the original project. The major bosses were planned to be massive weapons named "______ Guardian" and the fish is loosely based off of an underwater boss idea I had back then. Of course the current day Water Guardian fight is not anything like that, and instead likes to flop around. Fun fact, the boss was a lighter grey color for most of development until I decided to make it dark so the weak point was more visible. I also changed the second phase movement late in development so it would flop less, making the grenade powerup feel more useful against it. The way it acts in Extra Game is a lot closer to how it originally was.

The third boss is a hat and is largely based off of "WIZ" from Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. Wiz is just a clone of Paint Roller from Kirby's Adventure but I thought the design was neat enough I even based the intro animation off of it. I also really wanted to tie into the toy theme and the doll enemies so I figured why not a funny magician doll? This boss used to always spawn in the middle after a cycle but then people would spawncamp it so I made it appear in multiple spots instead.

^^^WIZ

The Pillar Knight boss is honestly not that hard for how late it is in the game but I made it to just be a surprise at the end of a boss rush. I don't have that much to say about it really, I based the name and greatshield off of the Tower Knight from Demon's Souls. The big stomp it does in the second phase used to summon a single bouncy and nothing else but that was kind of pathetic so I changed it to falling rubble instead.

The "Antlion" final boss was actually a boss idea I had early on, possibly for the second or third worlds. It's kind of similar to the "head and hands" type bosses you see in so many Nintendo games. It was moreso going to be based off of the "Giant Enemy Spider" from Jerma's car game video. Then I figured that having the biggest boss for last would be a good idea. Funny enough this was the boss I received the least feedback on, most people seemed to like it. It was also a bit of a pain to test because I had to ensure that all 5 powerups would be viable, but I'm pretty satisfied with the end result. The second phase where Chandra shows up in a pod is very much based off of Eggman fights from Sonic, I'm sure you can tell. Something about seeing a little round flying thing is very satisfying.

THE SOUNDS

The sounds and music in Elly's are not mine. It's why I released it for free on itch instead of bothing to publish it on Steam or anything. Why am I even writing about this? I think that there is some fun to be had from digging through existing sound or music libraries and picking the best ones.

The style of Elly's is very upbeat happy scrimblo type game as you can tell, so I went out of my way to pick songs that fit that. The first levels having Mole Mania's first world music is pretty emblematic of what I wanted. I wanted to pick songs that were not necessarily obscure but not too well known so I made an effort specifically to avoid Mario, Zelda, Pokemon. Then I broke the rule because I liked the Link's Awakening nightmare battle enough and that's not exactly a super recognizable iconic song. I think the style of the music is not always consistent, as you can tell with the Belmont's Revenge music in later levels, but I tried to keep to songs that I felt fit the game well enough.

The sounds were taken from various Kirby games mostly because those are the easiest to rip, as those games have individual sound tests. With everything being kind of Kirby inspired I also thought it was the best decision. I think if maybe I were to ever do a Steam release I would hire some bastard to do a GB soundtrack and play around with making sounds myself but I DIDNT FEEL LIKE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE LAST PART

There is so much more I could say about the old project and the finer details of development but I think this post is already long enough.

Elly's is not something that I think is ever going to go viral. It did get more attention than I expected for the first few days but it's petered out by now. Elly's is not meant to be anything groundbreaking or revolutionary. It's not going to turn heads all over the world. It's not going to make me the new Tony Box and that's OK. I wanted Elly's to evoke the sort of feeling of finding a weird cartridge in a Gamestop bargain bin of the past or maybe a thrift store of the present. The feeling of digging through an archive of every Game Boy ROM ever and finding something refreshingly decent after playing 10 crunchy janky sidescrollers in a row.

QUICK LAST MINUTE EDIT: Apparently Elly's Adventure was featured on a Hungarian news site??? Not what I expected but I'm still honored to be mentioned by a publication.

I don't really know what's next for game dev from me. I am not interested in breaking into the industry, I just do this for fun. I've considered doing more things with Elly, which may or may not be in the same style. I've also considered ideas with other characters, and even using things that aren't Game Maker. Maybe in another 8 years there will be something. Keep an eye out!

Overall I am satisfied with Elly's Adventure. I mostly enjoyed making it. I don't know if I would call it my magnum opus. It doesn't have the same sort of unfiltered eccentricity of my Kirby things and it's hardly character or story driven enough to leave much of a lasting discussion. To be honest I liked making a game with no dialogue because in the cases where I do have a more character driven game idea I think about the funny dialogue more than I do the actual game. Regardless I think we can all agree that Elly's Adventure is, and always will be, a small funny game of action.

if you bothered to scroll to the end of this post here is a FUN GAME TIP: on stage 1 from the starting position go one screen right and investigate the rightmost flower on that screen. this can be helpful for those wishing to see the 1CC screen.

#gamedev #elly's adventure

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tobiasdrake · 4 months

Text

Now that Story Time's over, we can get to work keeping the promise I made to my personal temporal admirer. And also Serai.

Okay, team. We should expect not to have the element of surprise because I just leaned over the edge and shouted a message for the past into the clouds. I do not apologize.

I know we're all a little freaked out about Hollow TIA over there but if we grit our teeth and bear with it, I'm sure we can adjust.

We are here to carry out two tasks: To butcher the Catalyst with extreme prejudice and to commit catastrophic amounts of vandalism. I'm pretty sure we're all familiar with the process of aggravated homicide so I don't think we need to dwell much on the Catalyst's part of the plan.

For the other, here's how we're breaking it down.

Plan A: Find a way to disable the cloud cover and instead restore the Sky Base's original functionality as a climate regular. I call this the boring option.

Plan B: Find a way to pilot the Sky Base and send it crashing down directly into Fort Fleshy, preferably aiming for whatever looks like the most elaborate part of the building. I call this the fun option. But I have reluctantly agreed to try the boring route first.

So I guess we should refrain from being too overly destructive until we know which option we're going with.

Turtle machines with grasping spider claws. Wow, I hate it.

Serai, remind me to set this place on fire before we put it on its collision course. Or... reprogram it, I guess. I can set it on fire while we're reprogram it, that works too.

I do not love how much of this place is open to the air below. Or the way only some parts have guardrails.

More effort was made than with Zenith Academy but there are still safety concerns to be had nonetheless.

Holy shit, I can see the Sea of Stars from up here.

Serai, I thought about this on our way here but your world has an eerie beauty to its atmosphere, despite everything. Like a captivating aquamarine floating in the ocean of the cosmos.

Sorry, I'm getting a little choked up. Let's go paint it red.

Are... are we going to have to go into space?

Hang on. Serai, you're a robot. B'st is a glass golem. Hollow Resh'an is a doll.

...the three of you probably can, in fact, go into space. But what about me and Zale? We do draw our magic from celestial bodies. Can we... like... solstice powers our way into not having to breathe or something?

That would have been way more dramatic if machines could bleed.

Well, I guess we're going to find out. I hope you just made good choices, Serai, because we're committed to them now.

Oh, what!? They have force fields up over all the damaged sections! We're fine, then. Honestly, what's even the point of locking down the sector if it's perfectly safe to access?

B'st, your shapeshifting is hilarious and makes it incredibly difficult for me to hold my concentration. XD

I'm glad to see you're getting the hang of your Living Glass body.

How much higher could there possibly be for us to go?

I can't even see the planet out the window anymore. We're so far up now, I think we might be in space space.

Why are we in space space? In what possible way is this necessary for climate regulation? I think an architect wanted to see how tall they could get away with making the structure before their boss noticed.

And if their boss was anything like Moraine, the answer is "very".

SERAI!? THE WALL IS TRYING TO SELL ME THINGS. Should I punch it, yes or no?

I don't necessarily mean that in self-defense, if we wanted to rob the wall instead.

That is a metal rock. I don't know what I was expecting the Catalyst to be but "metal rock" wasn't it. I was anticipating another flesh abomination.

I'm sorry, Serai. I may have gotten ahead of myself. I promised you a murder, but this is more of a vandalism. I will nonetheless carry out excessive vandalism with extreme prejudice for you. That's what friends are for.

*ahem*

HEY ASSHOLE! OVER HERE! I'M HERE TO FILE A FORMAL COMPLAINT! See, I've been looking all over the place since we got here and I have not seen a single wall worth hunting anywhere. I demand to know where you're keeping the Wall Meat.

Oh. I. Um. I didn't think you'd actually be able to meet me halfway on that. Okay. This is awkward.

But. If you insist.

I WILL RIP OUT YOUR METAL FLESH, GIVE ME SUSTENANCE YOU UNFEELING BASTARD, I KNOW YOU HAVE IT

Nope, I still feel ripped off. These walls suck and have nothing but these stupid fleshless turrets in them. You can't eat any of this shit.

...though apparently B'st disagrees. Alright, knock yourself out, man. I'll be over here, holding out for dessert. Thanks, B'stie!

But, honestly, as much as I'm itching to crunch my staff through that big glass eye thing on its front... I can't bring myself to do it.

This is your moment, Serai. Go ahead and finish it.

...this moment would probably be stronger if machines could bleed but I hope you found some closure in this all the same.

I don't know who that is but we'll fuck them up too. A cornucopia of violence, we are going to unleash upon this dead world.

You were a good friend to us, and to Garl. Pretty much anyone who's even mildly inconvenienced you, I am willing to bury in a shallow grave. The Cerulean Expanse has plenty of space.

#sea of stars #drake plays sea of stars

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electrozeistyking · 6 hours

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I am so incredibly curious about N and Uzi before…. N had to kill her…

What was life like as a married drone couple? How did they do their wedding? How awkward was the conversation about having a kid?

I’m also curious about V in this AU, what are her thoughts on all that’s going on… N killing Uzi, N having a kid, N being fricken’ depressed… She was a broken individual in the canon, is she still just as broken here? Has she healed from all that the solver’s but her through?

sorry for the many questions, but as an obsessive individual you have crafted the perfect thing for me to obsess over and i am dying for more content lol.

p.s. are there more fics to come? Ik ya only have the one prologue rn, are more chapters on their way?

Hey, no need to apologize for being curious! I quite like the amount of questions! Tells me you're interested in the AU, y'know? Anyway, let me dig up some old notes!

These aren't the full notes, though. A lot was cut, especially if they involved spoilers and/or if they made this go on for too long.

Everything was as fine as it could possibly be on this frozen, toxic exoplanet. Hell, this stretch of fine-ness went on long enough that one of them decided to propose to the other.

And by one of them, I mean Uzi.

This is based on some observations (aka the hand holding thing in Episode 6), but N was a major fucking dork when V asked him if he was thinking about proposing to Uzi — y’know, saying things like “I don’t know if I should” and “maybe she doesn’t want to go that far” and “maybe we’re fine as is?”

Then meanwhile Uzi’s been drawing up plans on how the hell she’s going to propose to this tall ass robot.

In the end, she kinda threw it all to the wind and decided to do so with no big events or plans or anything. She kinda panicked, though, so she said “Do you wanna marry me?” instead of “Will you marry me?”

N nearly short-circuited trying to say yes. He was kind of having a “Oh my goodness, this is happening????” moment and a “OH SHE DOES WANT TO GO THAT FAR” moment at the exact same time, so something may have literally sparked.

[...] there was a funny period of time where the duo kept very suddenly realizing they’re married, like it didn’t actually sink in until that moment.

In fact, N exclaimed “oh my goodness” and leaned against something every time it occurred to him.

Unfortunately, the good fluffy times couldn’t last forever.

You see, one way or another, our beloved robotic dorks somehow found themselves on the topic of having a kid. The conversation itself was fine, if slightly awkward at first (what with N being unsure he’d be good at parenting, anyway). However, just as they reached the peak of “hey, would they be more disassembler or more worker” jokes, Uzi started coughing.

Which is not normal for any kind of drone. Unless they accidentally swallow something wrong, or if the air’s a bit too thick for whatever reason, drones don’t cough for seemingly no reason. And yet, despite how odd it was, both of them tried to brush it off.

In a brilliant moment of jumping to conclusions (even if they’re the right ones), Uzi realized that The Solver was trying to take over her body.

In a panic, N tried to help any way he could, but felt like he was doing nothing in the process. Uzi just kept getting worse, and every time they landed up empty-handed, the thought he was failing her stung even more.

V tried to help as well, out of fear over what that thing would do if It took over (and because she did think of Uzi as a friend, even if she’d never admit it to her face).

When The Solver started hijacking her body during one such search to find a way to stop It, Uzi realized it was all over for her.

Whatever this thing was — whatever It wanted — wasn’t good. And so, in a moment of desperation and panic, she came up with a plan to destroy It. Hopefully, if everything worked in their favour, It’d be gone once and for all.

Of course, its success banked on N’s cooperation. Since V split off from the duo this time, he was the only disassembly drone who could possibly carry it out. Predictably, he tried to decline at first, seeing as the plan was to kill Uzi and destroy her core.

However, when Uzi explained that this was the only way to get rid of this fucking thing, N reluctantly agreed. Despite being incredibly painful, he brought out his laser gun (which is what I think it is, shut up) and the couple had one last heartfelt goodbye.

But then, just as N went to shoot her, the laser turned an awful shade red he’s never seen before and started malfunctioning — something that’s supposed to rarely ever happen. N panicked, calling out Uzi’s name... right before the weapon exploded.

V felt the vibrations of the explosion from where she stood and immediately rushed to N and Uzi’s location. She assumed that something went wrong, but what she saw was not what she expected.

Uzi was dead.

There was a Fatal Error message on her visor, as clear as day. She was in multiple pieces, with a hole in her chest right where her core was supposed to be — having most likely imploded, thanks in part to The AbsoluteSolver’s weirdness.

While N was alive, his body was in rough shape. He’d been split in two due to the blast, and his chest had been cracked wide open. Judging from how dark smoke billowed from where one of his hands should’ve been, something had gone completely wrong.

But how? There was a very small chance their weapons could malfunction, and yet... what the fuck happened?

V chose not to dwell on it too long. N’s body wasn’t regenerating on its own fast enough for some reason, and he was losing a shit ton of oil at an alarming rate.

Fuelled by pure adrenaline, V somehow managed to carry both of N’s halves and all of Uzi’s pieces back to the Outpost.

#Zeisty's Askbox #ghost drone au #tw death #tw major character death #tw injury #just in case tag #a lot of them anyway #souls is going to kick my ass (affectionately)#i'll reblog this with the actual answers at one point #this feels a bit bogged down to me already so

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the-faultofdaedalus · 1 year

Note

IDEA. AIRON MAN BESTIES WITH A ROGUE DOOMBOT WHO'S JUST TRYING TO BUILD THEIR OWN PERSONALITY AND LIFE OUTSIDE OF THEIR IMPLANTED MEMORIES..........

COULD BE AN ACCIDENTAL GAINING OF FREEDOM OF CONSCIOUSNESS, LIKE W/ SENTIENT ARMOR, BUT I ALSO THINK IT COULD BE RLLY NEAT IF THEY WERE A PROTOTYPE DOOMBOT THAT ENDED UP HAVING MORE FREEDOM AND CAPABILITY FOR GROWTH THAN INTENDED AND THEY'VE BEEN LIVING THEIR OWN LIFE SINCE (IDEALLY W/ VICTOR'S SUPPORT BC RESPECT FOR THE AUTONOMY OF HIS CITIZENS AND CREATIONS AND ALL THAT)

BONDING OVER THE TECHNOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS AND LIMITATIONS OF THEIR FORMS, THE PRESSURE TO APPEAR A SIMULACRUM OF A BIOLOGICAL ENTITY AND THE FEAR OF HOW OTHERS WOULD VIEW AND REACT TO THEIR TRUE SELVES, THE "I AM CONNECTED TO MY CREATOR, BUT I AM NOT HIM IN THE WAYS HE WAS HIMSELF AND I AM MORE THAT WHAT HE MADE ME FOR," THE STEMBOY SWAG, ETC........

I ALSO THINK IT COULD BE FUNKY TO EXPLORE LIKE. I AM AN INDIVIDUAL DISTINCT FROM MY CREATOR BUT I AM STILL TIED TO HIM. DO I FEEL OBLIGATED TO ONLY DRAW FROM HIS VISION? DO I FEEL GUILTY FOR ADDING ELEMENTS OF MY PERSONALITY TO HIS DESIGN OF ME? WOULD HE BE PROUD OF WHO I'VE BECOME?

TRULY THIS WAS JUST MEANT TO BE A VAGUE NOTION OF A POTENTIAL CHARACTER BUT I STARTED THINKING AND GOT HOOKED DJSLHFLSHFLS BUT YES HELLO

oh there literally are already feral doombots just Around. thats canon. they are... already sapient as far as im aware (but like, sapient in that they have enough of victor's memories and personality to successfully pretend to be him and sometimes for them to not know they aren't him. also they can feel pain. questioning why victor has made ten thousand cannon-fodder robots with also his whole brain in them which also can fully feel pain is a different post) but yeah feral doombots my beloved

there’s like…. at least two i know of. the one with the fancy coat and the one calling himself vincent that actually looks like a human, i love them. i have so many thoughts about feral doombots just Around and Vibin and its not like victor gives a shit. he can make new ones. whatever.

but also ;-; that's So good, especially if its somehow pre-reveal for iron man being Known as anything other than like, a human in an armor so perhaps he meets a doombot somehow (maybe it's stealing replacement parts from SI and when IM realizes that its not... actually taking anything dangerous hes like. oh. oh. because he's smart enough to also know why he isnt just going to get repaired like normal) and it's just, this sense of Recognition that iron man cannot say anything else

i think it would be good if it was like. iron man offers to help fix the bot. oor just, helps him. no expectation of anything else. and the doombot is supicious because of course it is, it was programmed by Paranoid Bastard Supreme, and it's not like iron man can even tell it why he wants to help it so badly, because even if he doesn't think it's actively a danger that doesn't mean giving it the information that he isn't human like everyone assumes wouldn't be... an incredibly bad idea. it's still attached to a supervillan, after all

(also sidenote but i am frothing at the mouth about potential doomquest in this universe it would be SO funny,,,,,, king arthur sends a pretty lady to iron man's room for "companionship" and iron man is just like. ah. ok. i dont know what is expected of me right now. also doomquest is very good to me, specifically, because its one of the only early comics things where almost anyone has more respect for tony than for iron man, which i enjoy, i think it would be SO good for airon man au especially if iron man is like. in danger of just... running out of power. technicallyyyyy i think this should also be a problem in canon, i think doomquest happens during chestplate era, where hes largely not able to go more than about a day without Dramatic Wall Outlet Time and yet hes fine just vibin in camelot (famously deprived of wall outlets) for at least a couple of days, but YEAH SEND AIRON MAN TO CAMELOT i think hed be both freaked out and also. sad that tony couldn't experience it. i think the background radiation of iron man's life is just... sadness that tony cannot experience any of the cool things he does)

but like... him continuing too help this doombot. maybe the doombot also helps him out somehow, as well. maybe subtly interveening in some fights. maybe giving iron man some neat lil tech tips. maybe a;klsdjfasdf the doombot still wants like. Something To Do and not just sit idle all the time or something so iron man hooks 'em up with a fuckin. tech support job. or like, product testing, for SI. something where he can just fix shit thats been broken in the stupidest ways or, try to destroy other things. who knows i dont. but maybe theres an attack at SI and iron man deals with it but hes damaged, and normally he'd like. hide away and do a quick n dirty patch job just so theres not obvious holes into nothing, but. the doombot follows him. and finds him. and its just... looking at eachother. knowing "oh fuck we're the same" and also "oh fuck he knows"

i think they should help fix eachother up and be buddies anyways it'd be good

#GOD good #wheeee bootleg doomtony go brrrrr #airon man au #just ;-; buddies #like i do think the rogue doombots are diverse enough #but i think Most of them would not go directly against victor #but also god. they help fixing eachother up and making eachother better im so. im soft #i do feel like generally the whole like. identity crisis from having made robot versions of yourself #is WAY less a thing in victor/the doombots than like. keeps happening with tony #tony: oh god what is me and what is not... at what point am i no longer myself #victor: if it has my face its me. and by face i mean the mask.#i think its fatal frontier where the ''if it has the mantle of doom it deserves the same respect as if it was me''#i think its good i think its funny that victor just skipped the identity issues #i do hold this hc right beside the. theres Something about victor making killable versions of himself #maybe he will never allow himself to die but the doombots can #also like. theres Something about the fact that like.... victor very rarely and basically never Expresses feeling pain #(like whatever the newer comic was. judgment day or whatever. where he burns to death and doesnt even scream)#whereas the doombots on MANY occations like. scream in pain as they are killed #THERES SOMETHING. THERES SOMETHING THERE. I THINK.#theres something that i am Constantly rotating very quickly in my mind

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nekobami · 6 months

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Sometimes I take more than enough to post something... Anyway, Allicia.

She's basically a birdwoman mixed between two slightly different tribes of bird people, which is why her wings are slightly different. Its like a genetic thing yknow? They're bigger than they should and sometimes she can't fold her wings behind her back like Birdperson normally do to get them "round" like that. I like to think she also have some huge claws on her feet but I couldn't draw it

I ended up writing too much stuff here, sorry

I don't know exactly why but I wanted her to look like an angel in some points of the design, I mean, I really don't know, it just sounded like a good idea

For now I still don't know how to say precisely how she ended up working for the federation, like... How do they hire? I can't say for sure, but it shouldn't be too enigmatic, right? Like, it must be like an army I guess

What I know is that Allicia's parents were a couple of criminal scammers, they did some deceiving maneuvers to make a living from stealing and everything. They took relatively good care of Allicia, as despite being criminals and taking advantage of the system in various civilizations, they were not obligated to be bad parents.

They didn't do much to break the law and were always traveling, which made their journey longer. But they just couldn't make it forever. For a time, while Allicia was very young, they paused these activities for a while and settled in a city on a reasonably developed planet, On the same planet where Allicia lives by today

I believe she has a trauma, something related to a deep fear of losing her own wings, but I haven't had very good ideas yet to define that. I think this came about gradually as she had to oppress other species in her work, and she began to feel fear and empathy.

I like to think that she managed to live a normal life, until the federation took over the planet where she lives and she was forced to enlist in the federation army. Speaking of which, I guess this is how they employ people who aren't naturally mean.

Therefore, at work she always acts a bit apathetic, putting her feelings aside to avoid suffering any more from it

I also can't explain how exactly she interacts with Tammy, but what I do know is that It's like she keeps praising Tammy every now and then to keep her satisfied and away from her. Even so, Tammy distrusts her.

She also constantly neglects her work as much as she can without attracting too much attention. Like, when they send her somewhere alone, she comes home, changes her clothes and goes somewhere else. Then, she goes back and pretends nothing happened. Or she just walks around w the uniform anyway.

She neglects her job so much that when she took on the role of "checking agent" she began disguising the Ricks and tampering with the system to prevent them from being found, I believe this 'checking system' came about after the federation lost some very dumb wars because they didn't send someone there before to check how things were going. They were also wasting a lot of time and being tricked and distracted multiple times. Like, A LOT of times. And, since Allicia... like... flies, they thought she was a good candidate for this. And, like, she's always talking in that robotic way that make she looks like she' just can't do anything without receiving orders. But, like, she don't really care at all

She goes on a Rick and says: "now I'll make some questions and you'll lie to me. Say the most convenient things that come into your head and, most importantly, make sure you'll be CLEARLY DENYING ALL THE ACCUSATIONS IN THESE QUESTIONS, K?"

I like to imagine that she interacted with several Ricks in this thing of messing w her own job. Sometimes, she just goes to dinner at the house of some random family of some random Rick she helped and stays there, usually when that Rick isn't home. I guess because she's bad at cooking or she's just too tired and likes to be in a familiar place.

#rick and morty oc #art #she just loves her job #birdpeople #oc lore #HAHA #A BIRDWOMAN #Maybe I have a little problem with creating several characters and not developing them as deeply #I know it's a bit generic #sorry abt that

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clarktooncrossing · 7 months

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HEY THERE PEOPLE OF TODAY AND ROBOTS OF TOMORROW! IT'S ME, CLARK! There is a madness deep in the dark catacombs of Castle Clarkenstein. For years these claustrophobic corridors have been the home of the ghoulish giraffe himself, watching as the world passes by. He prefers it this way. It gives him more time alone with the voices. The voices tell him many strange things. Yet they always come back to one: make more monsters! Everyday they tell him this. Everyday he is unable to comply. Hey, being a mad scientist on a budget means he can’t afford the fancy scientific equipment needed to breathe life into newborn abominations. Guy’s gotta afford pizza somehow. Luckily, he has discovered a way of sorts to please the voices. During all those years of watching, Dr. Clarkenstein noticed a particular pattern. Every night during October saw artists posting new pictures based on peculiar prompts. Many of them based on children of the night. While the spotted specter might not be able to craft new zombies, he can sure as heck sketch’m! As such, I provide this friendly warning to you all now: Be afraid. Few people can survive the horrors that are DUDELZ of the Damned!

By that I mean I decided to do my own take on Sketchtober this year just minus the prompts. Anybody gotta problem with that? Tough, cuz I already drew this crap so you might as well check it out.

Octoberfair has returned to Clarksburg! Based on the German festival of a similar name, adults are invited to partake in food and beer sampling while the kids run around and play. Since this is an Americanized version of the event, naturally the events lean heavily on Halloween theming more than fall itself. Hence carnival attractions like The Haunted House, Down the Zombie, a FEARis Wheel, and of course the Creepy Corn Maze! It’s here we find Bumper and Xena, the two out to have fun as Crocie feeds on pumpkin-spiced funnel cake in the main tent. Bumper would’ve stayed with his fat friend for it not for Xena presenting her pal with a wager. Should he escape the corn maze before her, without the aid of any of his phantom powers, he may pick their Halloween costumes for this year. Having the perfect costumes in mind, Bumper accepted his alien friend’s terms, thinking this would be a piece of pumpkin pie. About a minute in was enough to prove the little ghoul wrong. He was constantly set upon by scare actors whenever he wasn’t lost in the paths of corn. Just as the floating marshmallow was about to throw in the towel, a rustling noise made its way through the stalks. His fear was immediately replaced by interest when the source of the noise turned out to be a black cat named Kiki. Like always, it didn’t take long for Bumper to befriend the feline, who led Bumper out of the maze. Xena followed close behind, congratulating her best buddy on a job well done. When asked how he did it, the ghost revealed he had some help. Yet when he turned to introduce Xena to Kiki, the cat was gone. What happened to her?

Who knows, cuz she’s not gonna be a recurring character. Sorry folks, the Samp Gang doesn’t need a pet. Their quota of mostly silent, largely adorable companions has already been met by the giggling lil’ ghouly himself. Adding a cat to the mix would just complicate things and draw attention away from our main four heroes. If I’m feeling nice I’ll have Kiki pop up in future Halloween pictures, but for now I just wanted to draw Bumper being friendly to a black cat. Personally I’ve always thought it was weird how they were associated with bad luck when they’re such adorable fuzzballs. Considering Crocie’s stories are about finding kindred spirits in the most peculiar places, I figured a black cat would fit the bill nicely. Of course I had to name it after one of my favorite cartoon witches, but I had trouble deciding on either Luz or Kiki. Only after I ran the names and sketch by my friend @the-pale-servant did I settle for Kiki. I hope you all enjoy her and this DUDEL!

MAY THE GLASSES BE WITH YOU!

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aviculor · 1 year

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Twitter is not a safe place to critique pokemon designs, so I'm going to dump a lot of my thoughts here.

Spidops. It's not a bad idea, like a black ops special agent ogre-faced spider. But the execution of its design needed a bit more oomph. The bouncy ball of thread -> kevlar vest idea would make more sense if Spidops' vest was its silk rather than a pattern that looks more like it's wearing an apron. It's not even black to make it look more like a stereotypical covert assassin. There's also a seamstress motif happening at the same time where its abdomen is a spool of thread and it has the aforementioned "apron", but there's not enough synergy between these concepts and it just looks confusing and unfinished as a result. Like they had two separate ideas for a new spider pokemon and ended up mashing them together to save space for their three dog lines. Of course, a lot of this could just be me having high standards and expectations because I want there to be a "perfect" spider pokemon. If I came up with my own take on a Tarountula evo, I would have made it a jorogumo wearing its own silk as a dress. Which is a concept I already had, it was sitting in my list for over a year because I couldn't get its design off the ground. You can dig through my "fakemon ideas" tag for proof. I'm actually ashamed of myself for that.

Slither Wing is another very...interesting pokemon to me. It's a dinosaur-like 'kaijuu' akin to what was common in Gen 1. It could easily have been our first bug/dragon, but instead it's a bug/fighting. I like it a lot, but I don't quite understand why it's fighting type or why its name is that. It doesn't slither, it has feet that it stands up on. Its wings don't slither either, it's not as if they're weird tentacles that resemble Larvesta's horns. Which is a strange thing to say, but having slithering wings that it punches you with would have at least justified it being a fighting type called "Slither Wing". The way Khu described it in his leaks, I was expecting a neotenous caterpillar-like creature, like some horrible flightless moth with tiny vestigial wings. Which is a pretty spicy idea, and one I should take for myself since by all rights it is my thought that I thunk.

Even though I would have preferred a more standard toothed chest for our first genuine rpg-style mimic pokemon, I'll admit it would be a cop-out to strip Gimmighoul of what makes it unique from all the other mimic monsters out there. But Gholdengo. Gholdengo does not look like a mass of coins, it looks like Cinna Mon the old Apple Jacks mascot. It looks like a shiny string cheese man. I get that it would have been difficult to properly render a humanoid stack of coins in a way that would remain easy to draw, but they could have just not done that and gone in another direction. You know what would have been neat? If it was a genie made of loose coins floating out from the chest like it was a lamp. It is still a ghost type after all, and collecting 999 coins to evolve Gimmighoul is basically having a wish that gets granted.

All of the future paradox pokemon being robots is something of a shame since we could have gotten some real speculative evolution happening. But that is a wholly deliberate choice that I do respect. It kind of is more fitting in Violet than in Scarlet where you see a Donphan with spikes and fur and everyone's like "is that thing even a pokemon!?". But in both cases, they could have pushed the envelope even more with separating the paradox from the "original". Take Iron Jugulis for example- it's just a robotic Hydreigon. You want to know one example of what they could have done? Bring back the tank treads from Hydreigon's early concept stage. I also think it would have been cool if its wings were like spider legs, but at that point it would be a bit hard to call it a flying type. Granted, I'm 99% sure we haven't gotten the full story about paradox pokemon anyway, but there's a reason I find myself liking fan takes on the concept more than the actual ones we got.

I don't have any quarrel with Tatsugiri, but I think it would have been interesting if instead of a little guppy fish it was based on a tongue louse...or even better, a liver fluke. It would have still looked like a piece of nigiri, and being a parasitic animal would have meshed perfectly with its relationship to Dondozo. Plus, humans can get infected by Clonorchis by eating raw fish. The thematics would have been very interwoven.

I don't hate Quaquavel, it's not my thing but no starter ever really is. I'm not going to furiously scribble it out and suggest a "cooler" ducky man that abandons the original intent and inspiration behind it. That's not what any of this is about. But I bring Quaquavel up because when I look at Quaxwell, I feel as if there was a missed opportunity for a ballerina swan. Swan Lake and such. Like, it's pretty much low-hanging fruit right there for you to pick.

Pawmi's evolutions...I mean, obviously they deliberately wanted it to barely change, but there's no practical reason behind it. It's not even like Palafin who is a superhero with a "civilian identity". They just made Pawmi stand up and get scruffier. It doesn't even have any visual connection to a defibrillator, which is the whole point behind it knowing Revival Blessing.

As I said, I'm not typing all this because I want to scrap certain pokemon or rob them of their original design processes. I just think some of them could have used a couple last-minute tweaks to improve synergy, or they otherwise gave me ideas that I could potentially use for my own fakemon using the same general concept. For instance, I'm not a fan of Tandemaus and Maushold, but I can still respect their existence and the thought that was put behind them. With them, I think they need more visual interest. Something as small as making their mouths visible when closed or giving the "shirt" and "pants" some contrast so they're actually visible. And when they evolve into Maushold, do just a tiny baby bit of change to the "parent" duo. I don't know, like a mustache on one and a hair bun on the other or something. I don't get why "it looks the same when it evolves" is such a running theme in Paldea.

Bellibolt could have afforded to look more frog-like, closer to the beta Politoed that inspired it. Basing it on a real species would have been ideal. But at bare minimum, if I was allowed to make just one singular tweak, I'd make the false eyes have their "pupils" at the edge of the bumps, dilated and staring off into space. You know, like Iono's Magnemite hairclips? They just look too much like its actual eyes imo. I know that's the point, but the illusion is too convincing and it becomes distracting. I'm also not in love with how they rendered the plasma ball belly when it lights up.

Wugtrio threw out a subtle differences between Wiglett and Diglett: where Wiglett's face is positioned on its head. It would have been neat if Wugtrio had some more differences from Dugtrio the way Toedscruel does from Tentacruel, but the face thing actually almost bothers me. They need to be at the end of the bodies which need to be curved forward.

Glimmet and Glimmora have some great thought and aesthetic behind them, but I'm honestly not a fan of Glimmet's body shape which people have compared to a bike horn or a rubber chicken. If it was up to me, I would have configured it like Yokomon from Digimon- the bulb being the actual core of its body. Maybe the flower on top would even be just a bud rather than a full bloom. As for Glimmora, some people believe it's partially based on the Passiflora, so its flower could have been a lot more elaborate even if you kept Glimmora as just a floating head. Although personally I think this would have been a great opportunity to make a pokemon based on a sessile invertebrate like an anemone, sea sponge (ie a glass sponge or ping pong tree), or feather duster worm. The existing "flower made of toxic minerals" theme would remain perfectly intact, but the designs would have been given a more focused direction. Coral or barnacles would be good choices too, even though there are already pokemon based on them. A Bryozoan would also fit the bill, but there isn't as much brand recognition so to speak.

#pokemon analysis #fakemon design #fakemon ideas

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shammyandco · 1 year

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TRAGEDY AT THE PARTY

The party was going so well. The other guests from different realities manage to visit and attend the party. Trying to be a better hostess, she also opened up games and lucky draws for her guests. She poured drinks; she made toast, as a hostess should be doing. Thanking everyone that comes and all the animatronics that help her make the party possible.

Shammy would try her best to check out the tiny animatronics in a unique room, Lil Shammy watched over her little friends, along with her boyfriend, Toy Bonnie.

"Everything okay, Lil Shammy?" Shammy asked, as she joined Lil Shammy and her boyfriend at a booth. Lil Shammy usually doesn't talk as much to anyone, so she gave a nod and pointed at the floor with a thumbs up.

"All good, Miss Shammy. I think the Minis needed more pizza. Freddy's pizza magic doesn't actually give anyone… food," Toy Bonnie whispers as he gets up from his seat.

Shammy nodded in reply and headed her way to the kitchen since there are not many Staffbot she picked up from the original Pizzaplex yet, many are doing their jobs waiting out at the significant animatronics places.

As she stopped at a corner where the path splits into two. One goes to the Kitchen area, another to the hallway to the basement. She was unsure why she stopped, as if something preventing her from moving forward. Then she looked down at her feet. There's a black goo patch on the floor. She leans over and touches it. The goo feels like grease, but it did not give out any oil-like smell. There’s something about it that makes her feel uneasy. She noticed the patches went straight to the kitchen; she soon realized the patches were on the walls, too. As she walked near the kitchen, she saw one of the staffbots had a knife stuck to its head and its body ripped in half on the floor..

“What the-” she was stunned and began to crouch down to check out the robot. “Who did this to you?

Shammy got up and got ready to leave before an enormous figure loomed over her and grabbed her hand from behind.

Lil Shammy was on her way to the kitchen too, when her other friends needed more things from the kitchen. She saw the patches of goo on the floor. She dares not get near it, as if she knows it means danger. So she started to walk fast as she saw that the patches didn’t stop there until they reached the kitchen.

That's when she heard a loud bang and a scream from the kitchen. She knew right away whose scream it was. She runs as fast to see from where she was, a Springbonnie was holding Shammy by her hand forcefully. Shammy looked hurt, and she was talking to it. This Springbonnie is not the kind she knew of. It was different. It has a larger body like an old Fredbear design, with its left hand seeming like a replacement using Freddy Fazbear’s arm, not to mention, there’s a flow of black goo on its right eye which probably explains the patches on the floor. Lil Shammy saw her eyes water - she never knew that she was able to have tears. Being Shammy is a robot on the inside - Shammy struggles to get her hands off the Springbonnie’s grip.

“Let…Go..! Pit, How did you even get back?” Shammy demanded as she still tried to push his strong mechanical hands away.

“Smell, you….back.. Home…” Pit gargled. He leans over at Shammy and opens his mouth wide, revealing a set of sharp teeth and a tongue, cackling.

“You were still in there?” She gasped, shaking.

“Time to…go home…” Pit drawled.

Shammy began to protest. She’s kicking and screaming for help. The SpringBonnie named Pit starts to drag Shammy to the door. A sharp knife stabbed its back, causing it to roar in pain. Lil Shammy had been picking up one of the knives from the shelf and swinging it down directly to Pit’s back. Lil Shammy holds on to the knife’s handle tightly as Pit twirls around in pain, she slowly loosens her grip but before she even fell over, Pit grabbed her and growls.

“Little… Runt…”

“Pit, let go of her!” Shammy yelled, trying to get Lil Shammy out of his hand.

Pit kept squeezing Lil Shammy. He pushed Shammy away before raising his arms in the air. Shammy saw what he is about to do and she tried to get back up. Pit’s hand was so quick, Lil Shammy smashed to the floor, her body parts split in many directions. Shammy only can watch in horror, watching her little friends shattered like an old toys from a tall shelf. Lil Shammy fell lifelessly on the floor.

Pit let out a small cackle again, reaching out to Shammy, picking her up, putting her to his shoulder, and walking out of the kitchen at the same time, removing the knife from his back. Shammy just stare at her shattered friend. She saw an opportunity of the fire alarm on their way out and she pushed herself forward to push them as fast as she can.

The loud siren in the PizzaPlex startled Pit. He dropped Shammy, holding its sensitive ears. She started to run fast to the junction and screamed loudly for help. As fast as she was, Pit was faster. He grabbed Shammy’s head and slammed it to the wall, making her fall to the floor, fading away into unconsciousness.

He picks her back up again, at a fast pace, he ran to the other way as he heard footsteps from the other way. A minute later, they were actually outside the complex and out on the snow-covered road and to the Ballpit Centre. He barges through the door, passes through the large pool of balls, and goes straight to the opened storage room door. He dropped Shammy into the dirty kid’s ball pit pool, joining her in, and slowly sank in together, and along with the pool, they all disappeared from the place.

#fnaf #fnaf alive au #fnaf sb #shammy&co #five nights at freddy’s security breach #ask shammy and co #helpy fnaf #ask shammy #shammy and co #oc #fnaf oc #fnaf au #oc pit #springbonnie oc

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