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@flickering-nightfall

I got inspired by this video and other people’s art, and so I made this (at a very very late hour).

I hope you enjoy this silliness!

#it seems like this video really inspires smol iterator energy #the frantic scrabbling of me/suns as we attempt to keep the other three from Not Dying across like two in-game screens #at least moon gets a cool friend out of it :) #the fools all look very sopping wet here excellent job thank you #others' art #iterator shenanigans

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do you think youll ever finish the animation of the only thing? im obsessed with how you draw SoS she looks so good in your art style

I went and cleaned up some of the frames for that recently - but otherwise, it's kind of on the backburner. Would like to finish it one day though!

And thank you <3 Here's a little Sliver for your thoughts.

#asks #anon #flickerdoodles

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#flickerdoodles #rain world #art #looks to the moon #rw rivulet

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I can't boop people back under this name because it's a sideblog, so I will boop you all via image instead

#i really gotta look into that tool that lets you animate on paint tool sai #i just eyeballed this one #i mean i don't think it'd replace toonboom by any means but #i still draw faster on sai than I do on toonboom #it may help synergize the two #flickerdoodles #gif #the wayfarer #scopophobia

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Happy rain day! And congrats to Nightcat/the Watcher for finally becoming a Real Slug™️

I wonder what their campaign will be like. Seems like there's some rot and nature stuff going on in their title text.

I wonder if it'll be connected to, or independent of Downpour? Since Watcher's grouped up with the other three vanilla slugs (or referred to as the fourth) it's possible it'll have nothing to do with DP. It is another DLC with modders involved, but I hear Videocult will be more involved this time.

I wonder where in the timeline they'll sit. Maybe post-Saint, if DP is relevant? Or even if not (post-Monk in that case). It could also be a different timeline.

"Unknown creatures stalk and climb and dive and hunt. New breeds rip and pluck and burrow and hide. Predator and prey redefined." So there's definitely new creatures... the phrasing makes me think it could take place after Surv+Monk, but I'm not sure.

"Journey beyond to something, somewhere only ever glimpsed." Are all the regions new? It would be really neat if this didn't take place on Pebbles' and Moon's territory, though I'm not sure how feasible that is. I'd love to see more of the world outside of their grounds, and I'm not sure what else can be done with their stories other than AUs. They could also be dead, like completely dead, in this campaign. Ice age passed, growth overtaking everything. Perhaps the void sea would have risen. That would be bittersweet...

If it does take place in an entirely new setting, then the timeline wouldn't matter as much, I think. But the suggestion of rot makes it seem like it'll still be in the same area to me. Rot is a very "Pebbles thing" at this point, even though other iterators may have gotten it before too. I feel they'd need to come up with a new twist on it if they wanted to explore it with another iterator.

Quotes are from the Steam DLC page description by the way: [link to page]

#text #rambles #gif #saint spoilers #dp spoilers #rw spoilers

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could you tell us more about the gift? :D

Oh, sure! I can stick some of my Gift drawing backlog in here while I'm at it~

The Gift is an unruly creature whose presence begets chewed wires and headaches wherever it goes. It's spunky and mischievous with a penchant for violence, and it revels in its job: to kill as much rot as it can without getting eaten by it first.

It exists only in an alternate universe where Pebbles is stopped before Moon collapses. Moon is damaged but alive - and after many long talks, Pebbles begrudgingly allows the other iterators to assist him with his rot.

The Gift's campaign uses the points system with an emphasis on rot kills. The gross cyan mixture on its spears is - via interacting with their stomach, in true slugcat fashion - weird altered barf. On contact with targets, "immunospears" explode like a spore puff and damage everything Five Pebbles related within their radius. This means you can kill even Mother Long Legs with good aim and enough food pips. Unfortunately, this does also kill neurons and inspectors, so the Gift has to be a little bit careful on its path of carnage.

Notably, Gift's goal isn't to eradicate the rot, just to help control it. If there's a way to cure the rot, this one silly creature can't do it for a whole superstructure.

It's been specially made (with love and care) by the other iterators so that Pebbles' inspectors don't target it. This is also why Pebbles won't murder it unless it shows direct violence towards him. His local group worked hard on this wretched being and they'll be very upset with him if he kills it. Plus it is actually good at its intended purpose. He just has to count the days until it keels over on its own.

Gift probably has some scavenger in there somewhere too, and maybe a bit of lizard. They're strong, but outside of fighting, I wouldn't say they're the smartest slugcat...

I've also played with the possibility of Arti and Spearmaster existing in this timeline. It ends as well as you'd expect. (I thought it would be funny if you could team up with Spearmaster and piggyback them around as your living spear generator though.)

There's some other stuff to the idea, such as a repeatable campaign where your strength and food requirement goes up every time you replay it, and a random pool of pearls you spawn with addressed to either Moon or Pebbles. I might go ahead and post that old campaign writeup still, so there'll be more in that!

#I feel like some of this would be a headache to code in an actual campaign #But I would have no way of knowing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #flickerdoodles #rain world #art #ask #anon #text #long post #the gift #ocs

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Happy anniversary to my horrible child, the Gift. I wrote an AU campaign idea for them a year ago and then never posted it. This just about sums them up though :]

#the comic is a reference to lilo and stitch #flickerdoodles #rain world #ocs #the gift #art

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I love your art style so much! The science is also very logical and makes sense overall. What's your favourite slug cat in general?

Thank you!! I was kinda surprised by how much people liked that post. It made me really happy, and I definitely want to do more~

In terms of gameplay, Rivulet! Otherwise, Spearmaster has really grown on me, but I still like Riv a lot too ^^

#ask #text #deoxide

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Playing with some ideas mostly regarding gender/reproduction in RW, and slugcat colonies.

Full transcript under the cut!

Creatures in Rain World are typically simultaneous hermaphrodites but require partners to reproduce, with either individual capable of being a genetic donor or carrier. Alongside what we are familiar with, this has lead to interesting reproductive strategies such as rotating donor/carrier roles, or dual/simultaneous genetic swaps.

Rotating donor/carrier roles - A K-selection reproductive strategy. One partner carries the first child, the other partner carries the next child, and so forth. Allows each partner to recover from the demands of childbearing.

Rain Deer aren't quite monogamous, but they tend to choose the same breeding partner whenever mating season rolls around. They serve as a donor one season, then bear and raise a child the next. Calves are raised away from the rain and worm grass, in places that have less food but more safety. Calf wool is softer, not yet gunked up by the dirty rainfall. Their legs are sturdier as children, allowing them to run for cover while the parent wards off threats.

Dual/simultaneous genetic swap - An r-selection reproductive strategy. Parents fulfill the donor and carrier role for each other. The more children you make, the more likely some are to survive!

Multiple batflies lay thousands of eggs in a single "blue fruit." Several eggs congeal and become nutrient paste for the surviving eggs (and for hungry slugcats). Like some plant seeds, batfly eggs that are consumed before pupating can survive passing through the digestive system. Ew.

Ancients also fell under this umbrella. Their genders (and the genders of iterators by extension, who have no sex anyways) could have been determined by a variety of other factors, such as societal role, donor/carrier preference, or simply different categorizations of personal expression.

It's difficult to say how well their common pronouns would translate to ours, but it seems they can translate to an extent, given what Moon and Pebbles use canonically.

Slugcats, like real slugs, can have children with a partner or self-fertilize. Unlike real slugs, they are often known to adopt.

In the case of self-fertilization: children who are born from one parent may display a large amount of genetic diversity despite the circumstances. Maybe slugcats have some sort of... genetic reservoir independent of their own genetic code?

Slugcats live 20-30 years on average... if they manage to reach adulthood. Their mortality rate is sadly rather high, especially in pups. If they were to develop as a civilization, it's likely their lifespan would increase dramatically.

Slugcats in a colony are more likely to have more children, and to successfully rear those children to adulthood, than those who wander alone or in small groups. The safety and stability of a colony cannot be understated.

Colonies either have a set, cycling migration path, or wander continuously. Survivor and Monk's tree home was a nesting site that their colony frequents about once a year. So it's likely that they'll see their family again!

...also, the strength of large colonies are why scavengers are likely to become the dominant species. In the time of Saint's era, continuous migration has become more of a risk, and it has become more difficult to support large populations. Slugcat populations have shrunk back to the more forgiving equatorial zones.

Saint's tongue is pretty unusual and probably unique to them, or to a small population that they hail from. Fur (of varying thickness) is much more common.

Meanwhile, scavengers are bulkier and covered in thicker insulating fur. They:

have seemingly massive populations

have a burgeoning society (the existence of merchants, tolls, bartering, elites and leaders)

are adept at communicating (non-verbally)

manipulate their environment

can build structures (scavenger-made structures were a scrapped idea from Saint's campaign)

can create complex weapons and tools

may have agriculture behind the scenes (unsure if scout parties prioritize exploration or hunting)

I would wager on scavengers developing more quickly than slugcats, but it would be nice if there was a future where both could co-exist.

#oops! impromptu rendering practice! #rotating donor/carrier roles could also be an r-selection strat #but i feel like it'd be more common as a k-selection strat #rain world #worldbuilding #headcanons #flickerdoodles #art #um #ask to tag? #that goes for all of my posts #rw spoilers #dp spoilers #saint spoilers #long post

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what if scavhead,

#rain world #flickerdoodles #art #scavengers

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i know nothing about rainworld but i saw one of ur posts show up on my feed and felt my heart get ripped out and shredded and now i need to look into it

:^) Come join the fun~

#o what sweet suffering #text #asks #anon

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If you don't mind me asking, what does CDSS stand for?

"CDSS stands for Chasing Daybreak: Sundown Survived, which is a whole mouthful and a half so I just always call it CDSS."

Via here but I didn't actually tag that post as CDSS so it wasn't findable, oops

I'm going to do more stuff for it and explain what it's actually about, but I have some other stuff I need/want to do first.

#I'm focusing on commissions and the suns + spearmaster video mainly #and my map parts #with doodles and writeup stuff on the side #and a lot of stuff not related to this blog lol #cdss #text #ask #anon

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fluffy fluffy fluffy fluffy

Smooth

#gosh the dp + vanilla slugcat color balance looks WEIRD to me without saint #the broken rainbow... #rain world #flickerdoodles #art #slugcats #group pic

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Here's a couple drawings I did for a theory post before I… debunked my own theory (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

The theory was about Saint starting on karma 2. When you meet your first echo as most other slugcats, you gain two karma. But as Saint you only gain one.

So my theory was: Saint starts at zero (as we see at the end of their campaign), and they act as their own first echo, raising their karma to two.

But no, Saint gets two karma from their fourth echo (when they're on 5 max karma). This applies to Arti too. Maybe the game is just coded to always give you two karma if your current max is 5.

I guess Saint's Situation™️ could still have to do with their starting karma (0 max raises by two like 5 max does?). And/or they have already conquered the urge of violence, so they skip max karma 1. But from a gameplay standpoint it's most likely just utilitarian.

#I see 👀! #that's very cool #others' art #uh maybe not typical art but but it's the tag I use for other people's stuff lol #rw spoilers #dp spoilers #saint spoilers #uhh i think tumblr extends the original posts' tags to filters but editing these in just in case (sweats) #no id

[flickering-nightfall]

Here's a couple drawings I did for a theory post before I… debunked my own theory (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

The theory was about Saint starting on karma 2. When you meet your first echo as most other slugcats, you gain two karma. But as Saint you only gain one.

So my theory was: Saint starts at zero (as we see at the end of their campaign), and they act as their own first echo, raising their karma to two.

But no, Saint gets two karma from their fourth echo (when they're on 5 max karma). This applies to Arti too. Maybe the game is just coded to always give you two karma if your current max is 5.

I guess Saint's Situation™️ could still have to do with their starting karma (0 max raises by two like 5 max does?). And/or they have already conquered the urge of violence, so they skip max karma 1. But from a gameplay standpoint it's most likely just utilitarian.

#flickerdoodles #art #text #rambles #rw spoilers #dp spoilers #saint spoilers #no id #(whoops)

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#ask #meltedwax87 #obsidianthecloud #flickerdoodles

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magnificent specimen

Five Long Leggles.

Isn't he just simply majestic?

I'd say I'm sorry but I'd be lying if I did lol

#he was too inspiring not to animate #others' art #flickerdoodles #animation #gif #five pebbles