#(There are lots of different games involved though! Some other well-known games and some less so.)

[canmom]

"don't post links to pirate sites" as a security through obscurity strategy seems... weak. if a pirate site is so obscure that almost nobody can find it, it's also essentially pointless.

but yes, if a pirate site is common knowledge, the feds will be working on destroying it. so the idea is i assume to achieve an intermediate level of obscurity, where you have to have a certain amount of talent for asking the right people or searching the right things to find it. but... whatever capacity for research you are asking people to have on that front, the feds are equally capable of it, and they have a whole lot more time on their hands for tracking down pirate sites! security through obscurity is a losing game for piracy. the perfect sweet spot where people can find your pirate resource but the feds cannot is something of a mirage.

if not that, than what?

the current piracy system involves a few different tiers of accessibility, and various components that are more or less decentralised.

torrents are the most resilient tech because to stamp out a torrent (with DHT enabled) you have to suppress every seed. so, you have big public torrent trackers like TPB; these are well known and rely on hopping domains and redundancy for security. the ratio of seeds to leeches tends to be low, but the number of users is large enough that there will be at least a few seeds out there for most stuff. torrent clients have gotten a lot better at seeding strategies that take into account your seed ratio and what's currently available in the swarm, so if you just leave everything on seed and open your torrent client fairly often (use a VPN though lol), you don't really need to think about it.

then you have private trackers; these operate on an invite basis. the problem with this is that when the pool of users is so small, the odds of a given seed being online are also small. to prevent torrents dying, they gamify it: you get points for seeding and if you don't have enough points you can't download anything until you seed more. to help people get back in the game there will be 'freeleech' events. being active on a private tracker takes a bit of work.

and of course you have to get in in the first place, which tends to require a proven track record of seeding on other private trackers, and some kind of interview with the operators. getting involved in private trackers is a much bigger ask, you have to figure out where to get your foot in the door, and work your way up to the more insular trackers. it's like a mini subculture. it's valuable, but not scalable.

at the top level of inaccessibility is the warez scene. this is a whole subject that i'm not even gonna get into, go read wikipedia. historically this is where the files actually come from, before getting distributed on public trackers, usenet etc. but good luck getting in there lmao, they are understandably quite paranoid.

of course, for stuff to get on pirate sites you need somebody to go the effort of ripping and encoding it. this is where a major point of failure exists. when RarBG went down recently, the biggest loss was not the existing archive of torrent links, which can be backed up - it was that they were very active at converting scene releases into torrents with a decent balance of file size and quality, which then filter out into the various public trackers. that is much harder to replace! but what killed RarBG wasn't even suppression by authorities - according to their statement, it was a bunch of the admins getting covid or dying or fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war, which made the whole operation impossible to continue. so despite the thousands of people who download RarBG torrents, this single point of failure was overstressed and broke.

as far as the ethics of spreading links to pirate sites go... if it's something like a mega drive, yeah, the chances of a takedown are pretty high if it gets noticed! no question. but those things are by nature short-lived; if you want to use that for archival you're building on sand. there's also databases like emuparadise, but there was no saving that through obscurity, it just took Nintendo a minute to bring the case.

in this kind of centralised case, the clock is ticking from day 1. what we want is to maximise the number of people who are able to save copies while it's up, and then some of those people can put it up again somewhere else and keep the authorities playing whack-a-mole. (for a small collection of files, a sensible measure would be to make a torrent and a mega drive side by side, so that people can download the mega drive and then add the torrent to their client to seed if it gets nuked.)

as for torrent sites, the thing is that torrents rely for effectiveness on a swarm that is either very large or very responsible about seeding. if it's a public tracker, it has to be well known or it's pointless. instead of security through obscurity, the form of security for these sites is try to make the resource itself hard to take down - operating the tracker/archive in countries that don't have copyright treaties, maintaining mirrors, and of course distributing as many seeds as possible so the torrent can stay alive even if the site goes down.

the major problem with a dead torrent site is discoverability. if it's harder to find the torrent, fewer people will download it, the existing seeds will gradually go offline, and of course you can't download a torrent that you don't know exists. and while you could imagine a system of broadcasting metadata about a torrent (title, encoding etc.) in a DHT-like way but that would be so vulnerable to fakes and spam. maybe some kind of cryptographically signed 'this torrent is good' declaration is possible? I know certain torrent clients tout discovery features, but honestly I don't know how well they work. I'm sure there are projects that are way ahead of the game than me on this question.

but yeah anyway trying to browbeat people into not sharing links to pirate media is 1. futile, by the time you see it the cat is out of the bag 2. not a sustainable strategy for security. if you wanna lecture people, 'use a VPN and seed your torrents' is evergreen ;p

#torrenting #piracy

[wfagamerants]

I have made it very blatant that I am a fan of Toad.

If you followed me for a while, you also likely have heard me vent about the claim Toad and Captain Toad are different characters, citing multiple contradictions to this claim in the games themselves.

I’m not here to deny official word or push my preferences (though I do have them), rather I want to give my perspective on the whole thing in full and delve a little into how Nintendo handles main members of a Mario species in general.

First, it’s important to recognize that Nintendo is loose with a lot of stuff. Many different people work on these games and you can see different takes on how to present certain species quite frequently.

When we think of Toad, the main way we think of him distinguished from other members of his species is the red spots and blue vest combo. In a large number of games that is indeed the case.

Most spin-offs, Super Mario 3D Land and Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, only to name some. Those make it simple, red spots and blue vest Toad is THE Toad. Other red Toads have a red vest.

However, not every game makes it so nice and simple. The pre-GameCube games had ALL the basic Toads rock the red spots and blue vest combo. THE Toad was distinguished more by role, being the only Toad in the game or as in Super Mario RPG, being the only Toad to have Toad: in his text box, even in the japanese version I might add, to indicate he is the main one you keep meeting.

The modern games aren’t without occasional screwyness themselves though. Odyssey reverts to the idea of all generic Toads using that look and then you have things like Sunshine or the Baseball games, where there is no red spots & blue vest Toad, but a red vest Toad is identified as THE Toad in things like the manual:

It’s weird, but it should be said the 2000s were still a bit of a transitional era for Mario. It took until 2004 for short sleeves Wario to be consistently used in spin-offs for instance and Peach still had her old dress in Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door. You saw oddities like that around a fair bit.

The only time the Toad thing ever came up again in later years is Puzzles & Dragons SMB Edition and even that one has THE Toad on the cover, despite him having a red vest in the game,

Something that is even stranger given that by then they had stock Red Toad renders around and Nintendo is so overprotective of Mario as an IP, that them letting this slide is notable.

While this kinda stuff muddles things, it doesn’t take away from the fact a THE Toad exists. It’s seemingly more about the iconic visuals, than the detail. That visual of a single red Toad being with the rest of the main cast.

Something that still persists to this very day and will, with the distinctions we prefer to go for (only one blue vest, red spots Toad) even be present in the movie, which Nintendo is directly involved with.

It’s a thing that extends beyond Toad and has been present with other characters representing their species as well. Kamek being the most blatant example of it.

Even prior to Yoshi’s Island, singular important Magikoopas such as a particular Yoshi’s Safari boss, a right-hand man Magikoopa in Super Mario kun’s Super Mario World story or the eeeeeevil Koopa wizard Wizenheimer in the Super Mario World cartoon, had already appeared as important parts of Bowser’s troops.

It’s with Yoshi’s Island that one particular Magikoopa, who was the one who raised Bowser no less, was introduced. While this had no distinct name in Japan, where all Magikoopas are known as Kamek, the localization either consciously or by lucky accident, kept his name as Kamek, giving him a big distinguishing element from his species.

The idea of Kamek the main Magikoopa is one that persists to this day and it makes a lot of sense why. Given his shown connection to Bowser in his debut game, there is no reason to assume the most prominent Magikoopas aren’t this particular one and localization was happy to keep the concept around.

In Japan meanwhile, Kamek the character is not a foreign concept, but many materials do not make a formal distinction between the character and the species. It’s there, just more vague. You can sense that in localizations too, with how there are a couple notable oddities.

Mario Party 9 has a playable Magikoopa who is referred to as such in american localization, is called Kamek in other versions, like the german translation. Whether this is meant to be the character or a generic member of the species is genuinely not clear. Not helping matters is how european translations sometimes call generic Magikoopas like in the first couple Paper Mario games and as recent as Bowser’s Fury, Kameks.

A particularly noteworthy example is Giant Kamek in Super Princess Peach. His status as a boss, the one to guard Luigi no less, makes it easy to take him as Kamek transformed, but then you look at the Glossary:

A Kamek. It’s meant to be a generic member of the species, in a new form.

The truth is that Mario is a very, as I like to call it ‘’function over flavor’’ series. It’s more about the function, such as a main red Toad or a main Magikoopa and not so much the finer details like whether the vest color is correct, even if many games DO take that into account.

Because of this, I think the thing to look for is consistency, whatever fits the consistent image is the most likely answer. We will never know in some cases if the character in question is a generic member of the species or the main one, but that is because Nintendo themselves often don’t put that much stock into it.

On that note, while localizations, despite greater efforts to define things can fumble too, I don’t think that means they don’t ‘’count’’. I generally don’t agree with the idea that only japanese sources have any say with how to interpret Mario stuff, because the series does not have the lore consistency to give that idea weight.

On top of that, we have seen that western influences have affected the franchise at large more than once.  The western Super Mario Bros 2 is the most obvious example of this, with how many elements of it have made it far into the franchise. Most notable though are the Koopalings, who didn’t even have names in the japanese version of SMB3 and adapted their localization given names.

This kind of stuff isn’t like say, Monsteropolis in the US Mega Man manual or the US Sonic CD manual clumsily trying to treat Amy as Sally. This stuff is still with the franchise today and as the movie shows, still matters.

THE Toad is a thing in the movie and as is Kamek. Both clearly defined as such and while the New York backstory is not a western invention, it was more emphasized in the west and that’s back too. It’s even Brooklyn again and I’m not even sure if that was ever specified in japanese material or direct confirmation from Miyamoto.

Mario is not a story centric series where only the original text matters. It’s a extremely loose canon, where what the west did, still matters to this very day and is of equal importance.

With all this in mind, let’s talk Captain Toad.

To understand my point on what I mean with contradictions regarding him and Toad being separate characters, we need to look at what Captain was like in the Galaxy games.

In these games, Captain Toad as a name did not exist, with him being only referred to as ‘’the captain of the Toad Brigade’’ and being specifically shown to be a self proclaimed captain at that. Even his inability to jump was invented later on and is contradicted by many level set pieces he shows up in, as well as this:

Even the headlamp, one of his defining visual features, wasn’t treated as anything that special, with BankToad being able to get it at a certain level of deposited Star Bits in Galaxy 2.

He wasn’t really talked about in any official materials and didn’t even get an official render of any sort, but you know who did and is on the cover of Galaxy 2 no less?

Toad. I have seen the argument that this could be an error, but for that to make it all the way to the cover, the first thing someone would see of the game when buying it, would make that a very massive one. Additionally, Toad also has a render for Galaxy 1, even though he wouldn’t have any presence in either game aside from a Save File icon and a cameo in the story book opening of Galaxy 1, if he’s not Captain. The only existing bios for Toad or Captain in these games, even identify them as the same character.

It does line up with what I said about consistency. Sunshine gave us a group of 5 Toads in different colors, with the red vest and red spots one being singled out to be the main Toad. Galaxy introducing a similar group and making the red Toad, in a franchise where a red Toad is one of the main characters, THE Toad, like in Sunshine or the Baseball games, makes sense because there is precedent.

Then many years later came 3D World, the game where Toad and Captain were supposedly clarified to be different characters, co-existing at the same time.

This is also the game where the main playable Toad is a Blue Toad. THE Toad, has never been portrayed that way before or since, to the point where every time Nintendo reuses one of the Blue Toad renders in this game

They are recolored to fit his proper appearance, because this has NEVER been how he has been portrayed. The game really emphasizes the playable Toad being a blue one too, with how the credits scene even shows Captain with a group of Toads, missing a blue one.

This flies heavily in the face of past established consistency, where between Sunshine, the many spin-offs or Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, THE Toad has always been distinguished as the red one, because that’s the first one, who established himself as THE Toad.

One could point to his blue color palette in NES SMB2 and I have seen arguments that it’s an homage to that. We don’t have official word on this, but I find that very hard to buy, because he was never supposed to look like this. When he WAS depicted that way in art, everyone was portrayed with their in-game colors:

And in every other case, everyone had their proper colors:

3D World doesn’t do either. The idea of a homage rings hollow when Mario, Luigi and Peach are the same as usual and those couple spots needing to be recolored to not confuse him with Mario, also doesn’t really make sense, given how drastically different their body types are. 

It goes so far the official Super Mario website even lists red spots specifically as one of Toad’s defining features, which would make him being Blue Toad in 3D World even stranger:

The game also lacks any kind of red spots and blue vest Toad, which 3D Land ensured there was only one of, to identify him as THE Toad. You know who had an icon like that in the reveal trailer though?

Captain Toad. Completely new art no less, that stuck around in the game to be in the reveal trailer, less than half a year away from release.

Also, yah know how you can find Captain Toad in levels and sometimes get a collectible out of it?

Toad did the same thing in 3D Land. Even in terms of gameplay function, the two are extremely similar. Similarities between the two are a running theme from here on out.

Prominent red Toads who throw turnips, give out stars, have Toadette as a partner, act as leaders to other Toads and have been depicted with fairy partners (though in Captain’s case only in concept art).

It is baffling how much they have in common and you can tell that even more by how much the two are linked.

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker has an amiibo bundle, amiibo functionality and a pre-order bonus, centered around a character that, according to some sources, you don’t even play as.

All by Nintendo themselves btw. Same with say, this video title or german eShop description for the game, which refer to the main character as Captain and Toad interchangeably.

This even extends to in-game content:

And an Odyssey developer interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVNYfoFcrZY

Then you got Mario Maker call Toad Captain:

Smash let's Toad’s spirit evolve into Captain, which is tied to gameplay AND in-line with stuff like Shadow becoming Super Shadow or Alm and Celica becoming their adult selves. The game even makes the distinction that THE Toad exists in the tips, where Peach’s Toad is THE Toad and Daisy’s (who is blue ala’ 3D World btw) is a Toad. 

And then you get Mario Kart Tour, the only spin-off Captain Toad is in and the same one where someone like Peachette can be an independent playable character distant from Toadette OR Peach, so yeah. He even shares most of his animations with Toad:

A trait mainly seen with the simpler alts. Pit Stop Toad has more unique animations than Captain has.

VS Tour promos even group him with Toad, right next to him. Same happens with Peachette, who is correctly placed between Toadette and her alts.

Hillariously enough, even LEGO gets in on this, by giving Toad a treasure hunting themed expansion:

As I said, it’s not my intent to ignore official word. Officially, Captain is regarded as a different character, I’m just pointing out how much the games themselves don’t support that and how it requires a lot of justification and ignoring of past patterns to get there and explain away the mountains of counter evidence.

I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss every source that speaks against those claims either, these are just people trying to make sense of the mess Nintendo has left behind and I could just as easily point out that the original confirmation Captain is a separate character, also came with Toads not truly being mushrooms. A claim that contradicts a lot of past descriptions of the species, dialogue mentioning things like spores and Toad showing spore abilities at multiple points.

Not saying this invalidates the entire thing, just pointing out this is a nightmarish mess if you want to maintain consistency.

It’s why Movie Toad is exciting to me.

Giving him the backpack, Captain’s most defining feature these days and thus possibly silently merging them, is to me, the best and least complicated thing they could do. 

Time will tell if this will affect anything, but Nintendo allowing for this at all does tell me they are fine with the characters being linked, which I hope translates to good things for him. Toad has a lot to gain from being Captain, while Captain really struggles to be his own thing, because he IS Toad in all but official word.

#super mario

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

yo, do you think Netflix could make a better Moon knight show than Disney plus?

And other than Oscar Isaac, who would you cast as Moony?

I mean daredevil Netflix is better than most mcu movie so a Netflix moon knight show might be better than the Disney one

Alright, thank you for your time :D have a nice day!

Hello!

Oh that's a tough question.

I absolutely adored the Netflix Daredevil. Specifically season 1. The hallway fight scene is my happy place. Netflix is known for blowing it out of the water When They Want To. Not to mention the casting was the single best casting job I've ever seen. And Frank Castle? They couldn't have done better.

Since Disney has not actually taken the reigns of Dare Devil yet, it's hard to say how they will choose to carry on the story or what different choices they will make.

But the real difference in the two? How much they are willing to invest. Because it really was all about the script, the direction, and the cast.

You see, Marvel (And Disney) tend to have very strong opinions about what happens in their movies. And these choices have affected many of the movies in very negative ways. Often leaving the directors, writers, and actors very frustrated.

They also tend to heavy hand things and put a lot of pressure on directors. Not to mention that Marvel has an ultimate goal to reach and when you start interconnecting things, it's going to get MESSY.

My biggest joy in Moon Knight was how it was a stand alone and not involved in a larger messy plot with an end goal of tying him into a larger franchise to make movies and more money.

It's a big worry. The more big characters you have involved, the less time you are going to have to establish and develop each individual character and their relationships. And since Moon Knight has his own inter-system relationships to deal with first, there is a HEAVY chance things are going to get overlooked or underutilized or cast aside in favor of a quick fix or sloppy story telling (Looking at you End Game).

I think that the Moon Knight we got in season 1 was absolutely amazing and that was in large because of the freedom that was given to the cast and crew and director of the show. The absolute freedom and research and care they put into it. I'm not sure they would have had that financial ability if Netflix had done it. Not to mention they would have put limits on the set design and location. Disney has that lovely ability to just go "You want the Wadi desert? Let's go."

And OSCAR. This man MADE Moon Knight. His own research, input, and creative suggestions. He was the one that gave Steven the accent. He cast his brother as his body double. He even chose to do the single shot mirror dialogue with Marc and Steven. That's a flex that a lot of actors can't do. There have been MANY that have tried to play multiple characters and complained about how hard it was the whole time. Oscar took it as a fun walk in the park. I honestly can't imagine anyone else doing a better job or even as good a job as he did. If they had used anyone else, it couldn't have been a well known name. It would have had to be a new person. (All though I did just try to imagine Ryan Gosling as Marc for the briefest of moments and it gave me some serious Smallwood vibes. That Smallwood scrunkle on that face? Yes.)

And trust me, when I heard they were making a Moon Knight show with Disney, I was skeptical as hell going in. I'm super protective of my boys. I feared the worst. I have never been happier to have been wrong. I hope I continue to be wrong with season 2. I WANT it to be just as amazing. I want it to blow me out of the water and destroy me like season 1 did. So I'm just sitting here holding my breath and trying not to think about all the ways they could seriously mess it up. (there are so many).

Uh... Did that answer your question?

#Moon Knight #Ask away #Talk to me about Moon Knight #That Smallwood scrunkle makes me melt #Oscar did do an amazing scrunkle as Steven though #....I'd kill for Dare Devil and MK to meet up in season 2 though #The sheer shenanigans #Ooooohhhh my god do you think DD would sense the shift in body chemistry as they switched from Marc to Steven to Jake?! #I'm gonna go lay down now....

[beardedmrbean]

God the amount of people on here I’ve, not just lost respect for, but become completely repulsed by in the last few days. People I share fandoms with who every so often would reblog those stupid “goblins are Jews so anybody who puts them in stories is antisemetic and should be shunned!!!” Which I usually just rolled my eyes and moved on. Those same damn people are on here justifying Jewish people getting slaughtered and kidnapped. And even if in their minds it’s truly just about “Israel vs Palestine”, not a fucking peep has been heard from any of them about the attacks now occurring to Jews around the world. “Punch Nazis! Listen to Jewish Voices! Be aware of antisemitism!” All goes out the window now I guess?

Gonna be setting everything to do with this situation to 'mature' and tagging "middle east mess" from here on in, this situation is far too much for lots of you and I get that I'm trying to balance things out best I can.

Go into your settings to the "content" filtering as well as "tag" filtering and punch in any terms you can think of to get most of this all off your dash.

Schrödinger's POC.

One thing I've come to realize in my observations over the years is the majority of the different activists, really loud ones at least, don't actually care about the causes they claim to care about, they don't actually want things to improve for people. Having perpetual victims while they themselves are not victims seems to let them look like they're trying to help and stand up for injustice and victimized people while still covertly looking down their noses at them.

Israel is a great example of that since they do a pretty good job mostly on their own surrounded by enemies on all sides, gotten a little less dangerous over the decades but they're still in the danger zone and generally still thriving.

That and they very rarely get involved in a difficult fight, much easier to virtue signal over a video game than it is when there's some fairly complex geopolitical forces at play. And hating Israel is the easier of the two routes to go in this one, you'll also be seeing the folks that say it's not Jews it's "Zionists" even if the overwhelming majority of Jewish people are Zionists.

Which hey, you're all entitled to your opinion but before you go and start bashing Israel on a hourly basis go ahead and look at all the other countries out there and see how you feel about them and decide if you honestly think you're judging them all by the same standard or if you're judging Israel (or any others) more harshly and then ask yourself why that is.

Amnesty went in to Ukraine at one point after several schools had been targeted by russia, amnesty pointed out all of the obvious signs that the ukrainian military had been using those schools as weapons cache's or staging grounds or any of a number of other military purposes and they declared that to be a big no no and properly laid the blame on the ukranian military and government. You made it a military target by putting troops there.

Oddly even though it's widely known that hamass does the same thing, somehow amnesty still goes after Israel who will "knock on the door" of places they're about to level that are legitimate military targets, if they're also civilian buildings. hamass using the roof of a building as a place for a communications array/radio tower they'll get a dummy bomb dropped in their lap and civilians have their 30 min notice to evacuate because it's going down in 30 min one way or the other, but somehow that's not good enough.

and Oh lord I was in the notes of a couple different post and people talking about the Jewish citizens of Israel not actually being the same people that are the indigenous population to that area, which dna tests have proven that wrong, but hey they're out there repeating talking points made up by goebels so remember that next time these people call someone else a nazi, granted they're stupid enough to call actual Jewish people nazis to their faces showing that they've really just turned that word into something that's on par with butthead at this point.

Circling back round, like I said most of these activists they don't want conditions to actually improve for anyone, because they won't be special little guys helping out the poor oppressed people, they'll just be ordinary.

Cancer researchers would be very happy if they got put out of a job, professional activists not so much.

Article link

___________________

This is all beyond very tragic both for the people of Israel and the people of gaza who just want to live their lives free of fear and hate, it is interesting to see people doing 180's on their stances on things like rape and child murder/infanticide and such given who's doing it this time round, if I were Jewish I would be seriously reconsidering my position of I want everyone who wants to and can responsibly do so to own all the guns they like, but having one isn't for me.

I'd cut that last bit out, I'd be armed everywhere I go.

There's lots of issues on both sides of this conflict, but only one side went in to a music festival and murdered 260+ people and dragged off hostages to rape, torture, and maybe attempt to bargain with at some point if the mood strikes.

That's not something the good guys do.

Side note, I'm surprised I haven't seen a specific insult tossed out between members of the Jewish community who are on different sides of this issue, for the curious it's a german word and I'm not going to type it out.

Had someone throw that one at me once which confused me given my lack of being Jewish, loses all it's punch at that point.

#anonymous #middle east mess

[canisvesperus]

I’ve seen some discussion on this, so allow me to explain something.

Some people do not seem to grasp why artists like me draw so much fashionable Eridan. He’s not fashionable at all, just look at his canon outfit, they say. Well, it is simple. Eridan is one of the few trolls actually experimenting with fashion at a young age in the comic. Look me in the eye and tell me you too weren’t a hot mess trying to dress “fashionable” in middle school. Yet, chances are that if you had that awareness and drive early on, you will also develop a sense of style and grasp on aesthetics earlier in life compared to your peers. This was my experience. I was well known for being very stylish as a kid, but this didn’t happen overnight. Indeed, if you were one of these kids you most definitely started off with some odd or disharmonious clothing combinations that you threw together in an attempt to express yourself aesthetically despite inexperience in that type of self-expression. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I usually draw young adult Eridan. Obviously given some time, his tastes would develop and mature into something derived from those original aesthetic visions, but far more cohesive.

It’s clear he’s trying to assert his individualism and status in his clothing choices, and most of y’all shrug him off as having bad taste while not also foreseeing the intent and vision behind those choices. I see it, and so do other artists. We differ in how we portray this derivation because there are frankly a dozen different directions he could take it depending on the circumstances of the post-canon/fix it scenario. This is why you may see me refer to the Eridan in my depictions as “my Eridan”. I don’t presume to depict something identical to Homestuck proper, nor am I particularly interested in doing so. If you’re the type of person who is married to the events of canon and cannot consider a scenario involving an older Eridan who was allowed to grow and change, this is why we are not seeing eye to eye— and I’m certain this is the root cause of various other discourses as they pertain to portraying the character in post-canon fanworks. That’s fine. That’s your choice. My choice is different.

Eridan consistently demonstrates concern (an excess, really, which backfired for him in the cruelest of ways poor thing) with respect to how he is perceived, hence the consciously thought out image-crafting and classic Eridan façades that his own peers call him out on for being poorly executed, transparent, and otherwise not believable. They were kids. This is normal. Of course he doesn’t have himself figured out yet. It’s a process. Some people in this fandom believe his façade in the most literal and uncritical of ways but this is all a story for another day. Is his drip game shit though, without regards for fan interpretations? If you’re asking me, I don’t think it’s really that bad considering his age. I really don’t think it’s that bad. That kind of scarf with the cape is a bit much to wear around the neck. Maybe he’ll swap the big scarf for something similar in function and category but less top heavy— a cravat, jabot, bandana, or lavallière? If the cape is too overwhelming for the rest of the outfit, a smaller caplet, shawl, or a coat will work. To accommodate some of the alternative neckwear, a shirt with a collar would be preferable. What many people perceive as a turtleneck sweater, need not be entirely sacrificed. Put a sweater vest on that boy. I see lots of complaints about the shoes and pants. More discreet pinstripes and more formal shoes (field boots, paddock boots, oxfords) will work. Of course he can go in the opposite direction, less formal, in that case the cape can go and the long scarf can stay, get some cool sneakers, consider denim bottoms or casual slacks in a single color, accents welcome. However this isn’t the derivation I pursue so I feel less qualified to speculate. He could ditch all of it even. Start new and fresh especially if he were to go through a markedly subversive reclamation of identity and character redemption sort of process. In any case, he can work with it!!! You just have to believe in him.

I believe Eridan had a lot of narrative potential that was wasted, possibly out of disinterest for the character. It’s only predictable that artists like me simply want to devise a world in which these characters had a chance to actually live their lives. I truly do not understand why there has to be so much confusion over this. That‘s all.

#*Stilgar voice* I don’t care what you believe I BELIEVE #I think my time in a certain sector of the Star Wars fandom during my hiatus from the Homestuck fandom did a number on me too btw #Defy every cynical narrative became our war cry for a long time lmfao #Fam I miss you thanks for enabling me 😭 anyway #I wrote this at 4 am #I’ve been holding in so many fucking thoughts for so long so get ready #homestuck #eridan ampora #eridan #ven talks #meta

[the-goblin-cat]

Are there any OCs you haven't done whole hog on? If so, could we get one of them?

Oh yes indeed!

Kotone Wei

The MC of my eastern fantasy story, The Water Maiden.

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name?

It's just pretty name. I associate K with the color blue and O with ocean waves for literally no reason. Ergo It suited a character with the power to create water.

🌼 - How old are they? (Or approximate age range)

Kotone is in her young 20s. I would say exactly 20 at the beginning of the story. In her culture they don't have birthdays; ages were given by the regnal year of one's birth or the number of seasons they've lived (though both systems are out of wack now that there is no emperor and the land has become a desert)

🌺- Do they have any love interest(s)?

With apologies to one of my old friends who begged me to keep her relationships platonic, but yes in fact. she is going to have three at least. but it won't be some love quadrangle, your girl is going for the harem route. The members are Naota, her dutiful self appointed samurai, crafty and cunning though lacking an understanding of people; Hua, a former bandit whose life Kotone saves, just as loyal, intelligent in different ways though much more impulsive than Naota and physically stronger by far; and Daiyu, the last noblewoman of an ancient house, living alone these many years believing the world had ended, quite relieved to learn it is not.

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

due to her previous lifestyle she has not really eaten a *lot* of dishes. She is partial to the blue grain this world has that resembles rice. The people of this country raise a type of fowl that resembles the guinea hen, which they use much like chicken, although its meat is darker. They also have a root vegetable resembling ginger, though it has a bright red hue. This is therefore a very involved way of saying she likes ginger chicken and rice. As an aside, green is her least favorite color, so she avoids green foods where possible. This does not preclude her from eating vegetables mind you, as the leafy greens of this world range in colors.

💼 - What do they do for a living?

Kotone spent most of her life s a slave, dancing to create water for the king of Kochin. Water dancer is something of a sacred duty, so she was kept confined except for performances and jealously guarded. After being freed by a fortuitous bandit raid that left both the attackers and all her guards dead, Kotone headed out into the desert, where she will become a warlord by her own hand.

🎹 🎯 🥊- Do they have any hobbies?

despite her lifetime of performing in servitude, she genuinely loves to dance. And she is very very good at it. The only time she will balk at dancing is if someone tells her to do it. In fact she will get huffy if anyone gives her an order of any kind.

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories?

Probably one of the memories of playing with her sisters, Ikona and Raishi. They were not true sisters, but rather the three of them were enslaved water maidens together. They performed together and exercised together and ate together, and at night their cells were close enough that they could whisper through the doors at each other. "Play" in this life was restricted to just word games and riddles, as any physical contact outside of what was necessary to dance and exercise was forbidden on the off chance their valuable bodies were damaged.

✂️ - What is one of your OC’s worst memories?

This is spoilers but Kotone was severely punished after accidentally injuring Ikona during practice. That night, Kotone attempted suicide but accidentally healed herself with her magic. She hadn't known she could do that.

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

More or less! In the original draft her omber hair turned magenta at the tips instead of cyan because I had intended for her to have pink magic as well, but scrapped the idea. The gold highlights on her outfit were an invention of character designed dear sweet @fvriva. In the current version of Water Maiden I streamlined the magic system and added the halos as a visual effect of when someone is doing it, which means the halo in the character portrait up there is diagetic!

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

At the time when I conceived of the story I had been playing Fire Emblem Fates, so I took some visual inspiration from the character Azura, who is a tall cielette with water effects when she attacks. Kotone is completely different from her though. I have refined her design and characterization by reading up on Japanese legendary history and given her symbolism of the Azure Dragon, while her rival Fimeko is the Vermilion Bird.

🌂 - What genre do they belong in?

She was built for epic fantasy babey

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality?

Kotone is cis female, bi, and poly

🙌 - How many sibling does your OC have?

Two adopted siblings, as mentioned before; Raishi, who is of age with her, and Ikona who is younger.

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like?

Nonexistant. Kotone was taken from her family as a toddler, when her powers manifested. She doesn't remember them except as a hazy outline. She used to resent them for letting her go so easily but has come to realize there was nothing they could have done.

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC?

I like her righteous anger. One of my most venomous OCs. But full of love as well.

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC?

I think about her often. I have put her story into a little bit of a hiatus as I work on other projects but I consider Water Maiden to be my masterpiece project; that is to say, the one I have to complete so show that I have arrived.

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

Who knows, perhaps if I lean into the Christ imagery. She will definitely die one day, as I have ideas for a distant Era 2 scenario in which she will have faded into legend.

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias?

Now that she's free, she is terrified of being confined again, especially of being chained again.

🍩 -Who is your OC’s arch-nemesis or rival?

Fimeko, for whom I answered questions here.

🎓🍥 - How long have you had the OC?

2016 or so. I was 23

#water maiden

[thewertsearch]

Let’s also take a look at Hussie’s Blogspot. It’s been available on the collection for a while, but I haven’t got round to reading it until now. 

The blog is a loose collection of personal posts, many unrelated to Homestuck. Let’s take a look!

Interrogative remarks followed by statements that involve various forms of punctuation: A lengthy Q&A about the making of Homestuck. I won’t dissect it piece-by-piece, but it’s a very interesting peek behind the curtain.

With this sort of thing, there will always be tension between the author and the suggestors, whose main purpose is to leave their distinctive personal stamp on the story, and as a result, often resort to the outlandish, the overly elaborate, or the non sequitur. These are fine to embrace in small doses, but they are poison to a cohesive story if resorted to regularly. [...]

But probably more often than not, I select commands on a whim, without any such narrative agendas.

There’s some discussion about how user commands really worked, back when they were still being taken.

Hussie talks about what makes a good command, pointing out that their sheer number meant that it was easy to go where the story was going to go anyway. This isn’t to say that they always took the most ‘obvious’ command, though - Hussie was careful to leave some space for the idiosyncratic commands to get through, to maintain the rather whimsical tone of early Homestuck. 

It sounds like a bit of a tightrope act, honestly. I’m impressed it worked out as well as it did.

The long and short is, some very big picture stuff is planned in advance, and has been since page 1. In particular, various SYSTEMS were planned. Systems related to how the game works, how items are manufactured, how the environment is manipulated, aspects of the virtual universe they enter, and the ultimate purpose of the game. [...] When it comes to plot elements, very little planning is done, and practically none at all before page 1. A good example of the story taking an unanticipated turn is the post-apocalyptic elements, which I really had no idea I'd be getting into from the start.

Hussie designs the comic’s systems in advance of their appearance in the story, but the actual beats of the story - how the characters interact with those systems - is mostly improvised. It seems the D&D/DMing comparison I made early on is rather apt.

The kids’ entry to the the Medium  was planned, but the post-apocalyptic stuff, interestingly enough, was not. This implies an alternate version of Homestuck where the kids are in Sburb, but civilization on Earth is fully intact. 

Would these alt versions of the kids still be in contact with Earth, then? This sounds like a version of Homestuck that is, ironically, about going home. 

For example, there was a time when Jade (then known as "GG") made casual reference to having a pet, and a grandfather. These simple facts become a lock in the story, and it would be months until those details were elaborated upon. In the passing months, while I attend to other parts of the story, I have no choice but to dwell on those things she casually mentioned, and think about who they are, and how they fit into the bigger picture.

This ‘plant the seeds’ approach to plotting is a classic Hussie move, and I suspect we’re seeing it a lot.

I like it. It encourages author creativity, and is a clever way to make your world feel like a rich tapestry of interconnected details. In the hands of a good improvisational writer - which Hussie clearly is - it can consistently deliver ‘wow’ moments, more or less for free. 

The story, ultimately, can only go down the path it goes down. But before it does, the reader can understand these game mechanics, and speculate on all the possibilities. What sort of objects would you combine if you were playing the game? What would you prototype with? What kind of villains would that create? There are millions of different versions of the game that could be played, a unique instance for each player.

It seems like Hussie really gets it, in a way that only an extremely online author can. Homestuck was designed to be fertile soil for fandom and original content, and it’s working.  

There have been a few times where I've read theories people are throwing around, and I'll just run with it in the story.

Some people might think this is cheap, or in some way ‘cheating’, but I disagree.

The best fan theories are crowdsourced from the fandom as a whole, with thousands of minds working on them, ironing out the details. Theories like that are often better than anything the author themselves can come up with, and I think just going for it can be a good move. 

At the very least, it’s better than purposefully avoiding all popular fan theories in order to ‘subvert the audience’s expectations’, which... let’s not even get into it. 

What I'm thinking now is, 04/13/10 will still be a key date. The story will build to something critical on that date. But then it will keep going for a while longer, to allow it to wrap up more naturally. Whether this is for another year, or less, I can't say. But I'd rather it not be more.

For reference, this date was when Jack: Ascend was posted.

I think it’s safe to say that the comic did, in fact, ‘keep going for a while longer’.

I also designed all four characters shortly before I started HS. I didn't know much about these characters at the time, other than some really vague personality profiles.

I am impressed that the kids haven’t changed in the slightest since their original, pre-Homestuck concept art. 

Hussie really drew them once, said ‘that’s fine’, and was correct. 

If I remember correctly, the designs we have for the kids were your second attempt. If so, can we see the first designs? I don't know if I still have the sketch. Probably not. Basically, picture the kids as they are now, but with squarer heads. Like the thugs from PS. It didn't look right.

Sorry, Hussie drew them twice. The Newtonverse has, sadly, been lost to time. 

The age never mattered. There's a tradition in cartooning of ignoring the age of a child when considering his/her demeanor and degree of sophistication. See: Calvin and Hobbes. Cartoon kids will act according to their age when it feels relevant. Other times, they won't.

The kids are the the cartoon equivalent of thirteen, where they’re often as intelligent as adults. They can still be emotionally immature, but only when it serves the story. 

How do you deal with the inability to go back and change details from earlier in the story? [...] [...] It's a non-issue. Once it's cemented in the story, that's it.

I’m reminded of the one change that was made, which still confuses me.

Clearly, something changed Hussie’s mind here. I still don’t have a clue what’s up with this.  

The oil, chalk, amber and uranium were stuck in [WV’s] room strictly as parallels to the four types of known grist.

Oh, what? I didn’t catch that!

We haven’t seen uranium yet, so it must be Jade’s green grist - the one that I guessed to be emerald. 

On April 10th, I launched the new story, "Homestuck", made entirely in Flash. My plan was to complete the whole story in Flash, adding interactivity, music, and stuff like that. I completed 8 pages. This turned out to be way too much work. To put this in perspective, doing these 8 relatively simple pages was MORE DIFFICULT AND TIME CONSUMING THAN ALL THE SEPULCHRITUDE ANIMATIONS COMBINED. I am not joking about that!

Flash must be hard as fuck - those Beta panels weren’t that elaborate. I guess that does tend to happen when you’re getting to grips with a new technology. 

I was wondering what sort of story to make, so I drew a detective on a blank canvas. Then I thought he should be in a room, of course. Probably a detective's office, because that's where detectives usually are. He needed a phone and a gun. Clearly those two items would alone suffice, I thought. The wall over there looked a little blank so I drew a safe. A window for ambience. A door for exit, which may or may not have been locked; I wasn't sure yet.

Problem Sleuth was really improvised to that degree? That explains a lot, and I honestly kind of love it. 

Hussie posts some childhood art. This looks an awful lot like a Problem Sleuth dungeon - and Hussie agrees. I used to do stuff like this too, as a kid, and now I’m wondering if I missed my calling.

Everything about this painting is fucking amazing. Oakland Raiders linebacker Bill Romanowski fending off a wild, flaming black steed, in a mystical snowcapped mountain setting. I don’t know if it’s the concept alone, which itself is obviously mind-blowing. Maybe it’s also the curious, vaguely-humanoid musculature of the horse. It has a man’s bicep and triceps, and some very suspiciously man-like back muscles.

I can see this was a formative experience for the younger Hussie.

There’s quite a lot more on the blog, but I think I’ve talked about most of what’s directly relevant to Homestuck. I feel like I understand Hussie a little better now, for better and/or for worse. I definitely buy that this is exactly the person who’d write Homestuck.  

#homestuck liveblog #full liveblog #act 5

[thxrnking]

I don't know who patrick and neil are?? question . . . who are they??

Pat and Nell are my OCs for my current hyperfixation of Just Dance. I recently posted personality/character profiles here for Pat, and here for Nell

Pat actually isn't short for Patrick, he's just Pat. I'm currently not decided if he was born Pat, or if he chose to change his name but in either case he is Pat and I'm using him to offer a different perspective on this dark AU I've developed with the main characters of Just Dance known as the Night Children AU in which the main protagonists of the game have been corrupted and are under control of the villain Night Swan.

Pat came first, semi-operating as the protagonist to the antagonists that the main cast have become in this AU, though he's kind of morphed into a way for me to explore the impacts of what is essentially a Universe-wide war on the average person. Not one of the many side characters who are implied to have the means to fight back, but an average person who has been displaced from his home following an attack that killed/captured a lot of his neighbours and which he barely escaped himself.

I have a tendency to write quite negatively/overwhemingly depressed characters in general so I challenged myself to write Pat as a person who is determined to hold onto his hope, his positivity, and his values. Someone who can't quite comprehend the true scope of this massive war and instead focuses on what he can comprehend which is the impact on individuals.

Given Pat is based on a background character in a dancemap (Just Dance 2023) he doesn't have a glove which is almost exclusively reserved for the lead dancer/coach of each map (a purposeful design choice meant to mimic gameplayers and their controller). Recently I've used this to expand on the worldbuilding within the AU as well as create a greater disparity between Pat and the majority of the rest of the characters.

Essentially those with a Glove (the majority of other characters within this AU) have made a personal connection with the Flow (the canonical Spiritual force of the Danceverses). Pat doesn't have this, putting him at a severe disadvantage but doesn't leave him not wanting to help.

Nell (short for Penelope) is his younger sister, though they are both adults. She was inspired by a coach in a music video who just gave me major little sister vibes.

Mostly I wanted Pat to have some family to better root him and make him seem less of an unconnected potential accidental messiah character. A younger sister gives a chance for sibling dynamic, both for the better and the worse, but with the added bonus that Nell has a Glove, and therefore the "Spiritual connection" that Pat doesn't.

Nell is meant to be somewhat of a mirror reflection of Pat. She has a Glove while he doesn't. She lives in a more affluent area while he lives in the rougher area. She is more outgoing and involved with closeknit group of friends, while Pat knows everyone but has very few if any close friends. They're both impulsive, though Nell tends to think through consequences more, having grown up watching her older brother do nearly everything that passes through his mind. And while they do bicker, they are very protective of each other.

Pat is determined to keep the war away from Nell as much as he can.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask

#Just Dance #Just Dances OC #Night Children AU #Night Children Headcanon #thank you giving me the excuse to share all this

[krello-png]

Feelings on Xicor and DB AF as a whole!

Posting a thread I had back on Twitter here, though I'll be expanding on a fair bit since I have MUCH more room to breath so, let's get into one of my favorite subjects in this fandom, AF fan culture!

The fandom in the 2000s is really fascinating to me as someone who wasn't "there", the show and manga were 100% DEAD, there were only games that retold the same story from Z to GT during that time and yet because of a certain localization that was happening the fanbase was kinda thriving, constantly making new stuff. There was ZERO actual new story content and yet the fans just took it upon themselves to make shit and keep that flame going! New transformations, endless sagas, whole multi work fan manga that just spawned from a dead series that happened to get an English Dub with a different soundtrack.

Arguably at the center of most of this was this guy right here, XICOR, third son of Goku and the main villain of AF (or at least, it's first arc.). People talk about how a character like Xicor is rather boring and yeah that is true, the character of Xicor is boring, but it's not he himself that's the fun part, it's what he represents that makes him interesting!

He's undeniably fascinating if ya think about it.

His design? Ripped from a fan form. This pic is from like, 04' if I recall correctly and it's not even a new character, it's Goku in Super Saiyan 9. That's why he has Goku's Gi but green, the spikes are there cause apparently it's a dragon form??? Who'd have thunk it eh?

His character? Basically every villain that came before him and then some, a high and mighty powerhouse with an ego to match. Eager to take the throne atop the universe where his father supposedly sat as West Kai had told him. Ruthlessly evil to his core and merciless, in other words, very generic.

His backstory? A hodgepodge of several different fanfics from around the same time that combined into what we know now. The illegitimate third son of Goku, born of West Kai and Goku's DNA because she had taken his blood (or seduced him depending on the fic!).

It's just endlessly interesting what he represents, he feels less like a real character to me and more like an icon. Something that embodies DB's OC culture and general fandom in a lot of ways, whether the fans would admit it or not, he's a mainstay in this fandom that won't go away. No matter how far removed we get from that era.

And that's not even getting into the story he's attached to, or rather the concept. DRAGON BALL AF, After Future! Or perhaps it's April Fools? AF is never concrete. It could be anything and everything. It's far beyond what it originally was, beyond what the creator of that "SSj5" image intended. Hell, it's not SSj5 at all, it isn't even Goku! But as far as the fandom is concerned, that didn't really matter.

What had originally began as one fan story, one image really, eventually became something that would define basically any Post GT story line. A lot of them having similar elements with wildly differing execution, from Goku's third son to Cellbuuzer or any manner of unholy creations one could dream up in their heads.

I think to some degree everyone involved in spreading the idea around knew it wasn't "real" but there's something insanely cool about how it became this big community fan project with ideas anyone could use in their own stories.

I honestly can't speak to the quality of AF Origins cause I've never read it myself but Toyble and Jiji's AF Doujinshis are probably the most well known versions of the story aside from maybe PGV's take, but I can't speak on that either cause it's insanely long and it's lore is.. complicated to put it lightly.

Toyble's version of the story takes the Xicor premise and runs whole hog with it, the majority of Xicor's agreed upon characterization is found here and the action is a damn fun read if you're into this kinda thing.

The real highlight is probably the art and what little bits of humor are present, it feels very Toriyama like at it's best and I've no doubt it's why he landed a job doing official work.

It's a darn shame that it never truly finished but the ending we did get was kinda sweet and I'm more than happy with that.

Jiji's AF is a lot longer and has the benefit of actually being finished, with multiple arcs that are quite fun. The highlight is probably the story with Marble and seeing Goten, Trunks and Uub handle a threat on their own.

The last arc being a repeat of the Shadow Dragons is not my favorite conceptually and their designs even less so but it's really nifty to see everyone handle their own Dragon so, I give it a pass.

Both are rife with heavy amounts of ripping shots from the original manga and tracing in some instances but I can't say I'm too bothered by it. As they're still fun to see as real takes on AF in some form. There's definitely better fan manga out there but these are the ones I wanted to highlight.

There's so many more fun and bizarre things from this era of DB's fandom history that I wanna highlight and go in depth on but I'd be here for a million years if I did so I'll leave on this:

I honestly believe there's no fandom that's like Dragon Ball's, Sonic's fandom is close, but that was never a dead franchise. This fandom can be annoying, offensive and quite unfun sometimes, but I adore it at it's best. It's a wildly interesting ride I'm happy to be part of!

#dragon ball #dragon ball super #dbz #dbs #dragon ball gt #super dragon ball heroes #dragon ball af #xicor #zaiko #zeel #dragon ball af sweep #toyotaro #youngjiji #fandom #long ass blog lol #I been wanting to go all out on this for awhile #I admire this stuff so much #genuinely so goofy but so much fun to see #I didn't even touch on other works like ex or new age #or the more modern fan works #or the animations #like absalon or deliverance #maybe another time

[wilanserulia]

Just for fun, I figured it'd be interesting to post a "before and after" comparison, with the raw picture straight from the game on the left (before shaders) and my final edit on the right. I don't always do this, god I don't have enough time in the day to do this for every photo I take and in retrospect I could have probably spent my afternoon in better ways yesterday, but I think some shots really deserve the extra effort. So if that sounds interesting to you let me show you a breakdown of what goes into a shot like this!

When I decide bring a picture on the editing table, usually first and foremost I take a photo of the environment by itself, and a chromakey photo of just the characters of the foreground (I eventually cut out the rest of the floor by hand). These will come in handy for adjusting the elements of the picture independently later.

What I'll probably touch up on first is smoothing out polygons. Shoulders, knees and other joints tend to create unnatural sharp angles when bent too much, and muscles like the thigh here can't accurately simulate the way human muscles flex. Not to mention the body horror going on with that thumb.

While I'm at it, I painted over some parts of the model where the lighting got confused, and made it look a little more believable, like on the fingers of Wilan's hand here.

The biggest reason I did a photoshop pass however is the skirt. Everyone who has ever tried to pose with skirts, robes or capes knows that FFXIV isn't really built for handling cloth, and there's a lot of negotiating involved to make it look decent. I sent more time than I care to admit trying to get the best approximation possible, smoothed it out with Liquify and then painted over folds that didn't quite look believable and details that clipped in awkward places.

While I was painting over polygons, there were a handful of places where I couldn't avoid some clipping, and certain spots were more noticeable than others. For all the spots where the 3D models really wouldn't behave I resorted to just fix it manually.

Once that's done, I went over the lighting. Gpose's three posable lights did most of the work, but I still went in to take care of some details. In most places I just painted over additional highlights on shiny material, or I added subtle touches of rim lighting to make the pose more readable.

And then, for something less subtle, I sometimes just add more rim light for no other reason than to make the pose more dramatic or to further make it pop from the background. This is a photo with a strong pose and sense of motion, so it's worth taking the time to highlight it.

(speaking of which, the base pose I used for this shot was done by Nhagiri, even though as I almost always do when I use pre-made poses I spent plenty of time adjusting it and calibrating it to my two specific OCs)

This shot had pretty intense and dramatic back-light too, so since FFXIV's graphic engine usually calls it a day early when it comes to draw ground shadows I've just painted it myself.

And most importantly, the lighting was very carefully set but I couldn't manage to properly light up their faces without messing with the overall light and shadow contrast. So I carefully mixed in a different photo with better lighting on their faces, and then calibrated the luminosity and exposure to make sure they'd be the the centerpoint of the shot.

Well that's about it for the models, now off to the color correction.

Most of it was done in photoshop but a lot of the heavy lifting was made by shaders. My go-to presets are @owlincense's CandleBlooms (formerly known as Purple Cocoon), which I've used in pretty much every single one of my photos and can't recommend enough. For this shot in particular I've used her Tourmaline Colorful preset.

It looks great already, but I have some further touches in mind for the specific mood I'm looking for for this scene and I don't want to mess to mess with the shaders' interface to achieve them, so post-editing it is.

First of all I've adjusted the tonality of the background to be colder and more bluish and a tiny bit less saturated, while accentuating the reds of the two characters, bumping up slightly their saturation and contrast. I've also manually simulated bright light coming from the main hall in what's hopefully a convincingly seamless fashion, reinforcing the light source and making the strong highlights and shadows feel more justified, and a vignette to darken the far edges of the composition.

Just a little dash of particles caught in the light as the last touch, and that's about it! Wilan and Delen can enjoy their passionate tango, in a little quite corner to themselves, just outside the bustle of the celebration in the main hall.

[tietensgo]

note: spoilers

As I did for Squid Games and Alice in Borderland, I am going to jot down my thoughts about One Piece Live Action, which turned out to be an overall good watch, even though I was /genuinely/ afraid it would suck.

OPLA had big shoes to fill, as the One Piece IP is quite well known and beloved. In my view, the Netflix show understood where it could bring a unique perspective, which helped the execution greatly. For example, the speed, superhuman movements, and over-the-top expressions of the anime would be a stretch to represent accurately in live action; even with cgi, I struggled to feel the epic nature of the devil fruits or fighting abilities being used to their full effect (the initial fight against Captain Alvida, for example). Instead, I enjoyed when the show leaned into amplifying the setting of the world and emotions of the characters, which was amazing! The grime of Alvida's ship, Luffy's backstory on Dawn island (the young!Luffy casting was spot. on.), watching Usopp try to load a cannon for the first time, the exploration of what Zoro and Nami talk about when they're not keeping the captain out of trouble - in my opinion, these were the moments that shined brightest for the show.

Pacing. If you've sat through 1000+ episodes of the anime as many have and felt the buildup of tension over /years/, the treatment that the show gives some plot points can feel frustratingly brief. Sanji's goodbye at the Baratie was not half as emotional as it was in the anime, and the moments when the crew was supposed to band together (e.g. feet on barrel on the Going Merry) felt less impactful because we hadn't had as much time to be endeared to the Straw Hat Pirates and root for them as a group. (For example, if the show had included Morgan's backstory of cruelty from the anime, his defeat would have felt farrrrrr more satisfying). However, I have to acknowledge that rapid pacing is expected in the live action, because the anime is decades old and OPLA has to condense a lot of material into a reasonable run time; for an eight-plus hour series, it managed to rarely feel slow (though it did happen), and that's a feat.

Characters. Koby was perfect. The right amount of nervous, the right amount of ambitious. Buggy was a revelation. His character is kind of a running joke in the anime, so I was ready to wish him off screen as soon as he appeared, but I loved Ward as Deke in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the genuineness he added to Buggy's CLAP FOR ME OR DIE behavior made the performance not just intense but somehow nuanced. Nami asking (after Sanji's wink) if there was something wrong with his eye. Luffy drinking milk while others ordered beer. The adaptations of Hawkeye and Garp. You can just imagine the work that went into the fishmen makeup- the list goes on. As I mentioned, I think this attention to detail in adapting the appearance and interactions of the characters was probably what the series did best. Of course there were... interesting takes (bright neon hair in a world of muted color, Nami turning from dollar-sign-eyes loving money in the anime to eat-the-rich in the show, Nami keeping the secret of her involvement with Arlong from Nojiko) but these differences I think make OPLA its own production - a TV show with its own lore - and leave room for people to go back and watch the anime and fall even more in love with the characters and their deeper stories there.

Helmeppo. Helmeppo is so much. I love the 'let's all shit on Helmeppo' jokes. More. Moarrrrr of this.

Extras. I appreciated all the extra touches like the title screen of each episode being modeled after the focus character of the episode and the wanted posters being half anime half live action; it made the production feel like it was made by people who cared that the adaptation was done right. I loved hearing hints of We Are in the soundtrack, and the den den mushis were toooo cute. Altogether, good stuff for my one piece brain. It helped me get through the scenes of Go with Garp.

TLDR; The interpretations of the characters and the realistic settings were highlights of OPLA. The Going Merry, Kaya's mansion, Morgan's naval base, the Baratie and Arlong Park were all stunning to see in live action. However, while the fight scenes were well made, they didn't quite compete with the heights set by the anime, and the story is really condensed, leaving some heartfelt moments coming off as shallow or leaving them out of the plot altogether. This can be a struggle if you're looking for the intricate, mysterious, multi-layered world from the anime. But those still traumatized from memories of live action atla (2010) or dbz (2009) can breathe a sigh of relief as we hold out for sustained quality for this adaptation in future seasons: overall, OPLA is worth watching. A great introduction for newcomers to this amazing series and a pretty good adaptation for long time fans as well.

#opla #opla spoilers #one piece #one piece live action

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH Devlog 0007 – Reflecting and Looking Ahead

I realize that last week’s DevLog was somewhat short and not exactly fleshed out, as I was somewhat exhausted at the time from trying to get the release done. But there are some things I skipped over that I still feel are worth discussing. So before we get into the next steps and what I’ve been working on, let’s take a step back and talk about some of the things I didn’t last week.

The art style of Project RBH is something I already knew going into it. I have nothing against pixel art, but it’s generally not what I want from my own projects. I’d prefer something more like Hollow Knight, Shantae, Indivisible, etc. Something that is or looks hand drawn. However, I encountered an issue with the implementation of that idea with the in-progress build.

Maintaining the art style I want at the scale I need is trickier than I anticipated. I thought that I could simply draw the sprites at a smaller scale through coding instead of scaling the images down. However, doing so resulted in complications with collisions. As such, the public build had images scaled down and compressed, resulting in pixelization.

I’ll either need to find a way to resolve the collision issues or scale up the entire game to fit the art assets at the proper size.

Speaking of art assets, let’s talk about the hub area of the game, which I refer to as Nexus. This is the room where the game starts and where you return to on death. If I go through with adding story content and the added development time it will bring, then Nexus will act a lot like the House of Hades from Hades, being a place where other NPCs can be interacted with in various ways.

As for the area’s design, Nexus is directly inspired by Dark Space from SNES classic Illusion of Gaia (Known as Illusion of Time in some regions). Dark Space is the place where you save the game, as well as use the protagonist’s ability to transform.

The similarities between them are… more than passing, but Nexus serves as mechanically different from Dark Space and Quintet vanished from the face of the earth so I doubt they’ll sue, SoulBlazer Remake notwithstanding.

(Square Enix remake Illusion of Gaia I am begging)

So this past week I’ve been back at the drawing board, planning what will come next. I feel as though the gameplay of this build is a solid base, but it’s ultimately far too simple in too many places. This is most obvious with the upgrades system. There’s like nine of them. In a roguelike.

Not to mention the method of acquiring them. Chests placed at random throughout the dungeon is… less than ideal. There’s no real thought involved. You open the chest, you get the upgrade, you move on. There’s no builds, no strategy. Everyone ends up the same.

Luckily, Warframe recently released the Duviri Paradox expansion, which is an open world roguelite experience, and a useful source of inspiration.

Upgrades in Duviri are awarded at the completion of an objective, either a side objective or a main one. You are given a choice of four ‘Decrees’, each of which imparts a passive bonus to you, like adding fire damage to your melee or applying an aura of cold status affect around you. Additionally, most upgrades can be taken more than once, usually three or five times.

What’s really clever about Duviri, as confirmed in a Devstream, is that the Decrees are weighted in their random chance. The more Critical Hit based Decrees you have, the more likely you are to get more to pay off that build.

A system like this would be excellent for Project RBH and for diversifying player options.

Speaking of which, I’d like to add Critical Hits and Status Effects to Project RBH. I’d have to be careful to avoid making Status Effects interchangeable, resulting in a Status Build having far more power and versatility than a Critical Build, and to avoid a Critical Build only being about big numbers, as this would result in their playstyle quickly becoming stale.

I’ve also toyed with the idea of damage types and resistances and weaknesses, like enemies weak to fire. This too would require careful balancing to avoid any situation I which one damage type is objectively better than the others.

I could also add some sort of basic companion system. I have the code to have a drone follow the player around and shoots are where the player is shooting. I did not include it in the build because it is in need of improvements, but it should be simple enough to implement.

The other two mechanics I’ve considered aren’t powerups, but things the player may innately be able to do, to add a bit more strategy into both combat and encounter design: dodging and parrying.

Both of these would be very simple. Dodging would make you move quickly in the direction you’re moving and take no damage while you’re dodging, allowing you to escape the rings from a Shockwave enemy. Parrying is a bit more complicated, but still easily manageable. It would have a tight timing window, but if the player did it correctly, then the incoming bullets would be deflected from the player and deal damage to enemies.

I also want shops in the dungeon. That would add some strategy and risk/reward in getting money for upcoming shops.

Of course, I’m still in the planning stages for all of this and will be for a while. A good diversity of powerups will take time. Ideally I would want at least one hundred different upgrades to ensure some diversity.

Until next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

Special thanks to my Tier 3 Patrons, Haelerin and Christos Kempf!

Support me on Patreon

#devlog #indie dev #game development #indie game #game dev #video games #rbh

[miloscat]

[Review] Avatar: The Last Airbender: Quest for Balance (PS5)

This show deserves better than this cheap and sloppy tie-in.

Peru-based studio Bamtang are the latest to be granted the Avatar licence, after making some decent kart racers for Nickelodeon. Quest for Balance is the result, and although it’s functional this revival game struggles to live up to the predominately Australian-made tie-in games that were contemporary with the show (and movie).

My expectations were quite high for this given the advances in technology since 2006-2010. But there are always other factors at play in game development, like budget, time, and the experience of the dev team, that are potentially lacking here. What I'm saying is the game feels cheap, from the bland level design to the simple combat to the abundance of rough edges.

Quest for Balance covers all three books of the original show... more or less. The six levels in each try to hit the major points while some episodes and events are skipped over; if you're lucky these will be summarised with a cutscene. But even the significant stuff is dealt with perfunctorily. I did like the side quests in the more hublike levels, with named NPCs and items to find that expand on the world a little bit, although it doesn’t amount to much.

The core gameplay isn’t too different from child/family games we have known such as the Traveller’s Tales Lego games. You explore a level, break objects and interact with interactables, get into fights, and solve some puzzles. Locking the fights into little battle arenas reminded me of the first two Avatar DS games, while the puzzles (maybe the strongest part of the game) recalled the third DS game. I still think I liked those better though.

These gameplay elements are often sectioned off, and the levels are mostly a flat and uninteresting sequence of rooms. There’s an inventory which I barely touched, and an upgrade system that incentivises finding goodies by improving your combat powers. I did get through most combat by just mashing with the most effective characters (Sokka and Toph as far as I could tell) but there is some depth when you’re not just getting stunlocked. Like most of the game it’s just let down by a pervasive clunkiness.

Co-op is available… most of the time. A fatal flaw is not letting a second player participate when the story requires a solo character’s involvement, as well as being unbalanced. That is, when the maximum three-character party is present, player 1 can swap between two of them while player two is locked to only one. These choices hamper its viability as a multiplayer experience (also, my spouse just thought the game in general was subpar and so left me to it).

I’d like to circle back to the cutscenes, as they represent the ramshackle feel of how the game is put together. A mere handful are in 3D, using the game models with some decent animation, which despite being prerendered can chug heavily when a lot of stuff is happening. Some are in 2D, going for a motion comic look but with distressing animated png warping. This includes a cute framing story where Iroh, Bumi, and Pakku are recounting the tale to a Ba Sing Se playwright. Others are brief in-engine dialogue scenes where the characters stand motionless. Or you might just have one of the aforementioned three recounters summarising exposition over a paragraph of text. Even with these various methods of varying levels of effort, they will at times neglect to properly set up the next gameplay portion. It’s frankly a mess.

I also have to mention the voice acting, which ranges from decent soundalike performances (eg. Katara or Toph) to… “an attempt was made”. As far as I can tell from a quick search of Behind the Voice Actors, the only VA that returned was Dee Bradley Baker for creature noises, and even his mastery in the field is undermined when you play one of the dull Appa autoscrolling segments and notice that they appear to have forgotten to apply any pitching down or treatment to his voice?? It sounds bizarre and unfinished. I do have to give the game credit for casting a higher proportion of actors of Asian descent though which is nice to see.

Let it be known that I 100%d Quest for Balance… minus some trophies like the one for completing boss battles hitless. In this janky combat engine and with the bosses as boring as they are, I couldn’t face it. But the game is just competent enough and revisiting stages is streamlined such that I didn’t mind going back for the side stuff, which is my favourite aspect anyway. On the whole though I can’t really recommend this game except to superfans; the old tie-ins are frankly of a higher standard and by virtue of having dedicated instalments for each season, do a better job covering the material on top of having more depth and variety. Plus the first one has an original story! This could have been a triumphant revisit of a beloved story, but it ended up a cheap cash-grab. Oh well.

#avatar #avatar the last airbender #avatar the last airbender quest for balance #bamtang games #review #ps5

[manasurge]

scoots into your asks about the commander love interest prompt.

i dont know who to ask you about so take your own pick but can i get uhhhhh 1, 4, and 10?

Omg I'm actually just hoarding these prompts atm (for later when I've had more time to post more of her fleshed out lore so it isn't all just in note form on my end sjldfsf), but for you, I'll still bite! (Tho a lot of answers could be subject to some change in the future based on what might develop down the road aslfjsf)

Fortunately (or unfortunately) I only have the one OC (Mourynn) bc otherwise it'd be too overwhelming for me lksjflksdf. Anywho! 1. Who are they and what's their dynamic with the commander? The main pairing I have is Mourynn x Caithe, and since they're both Firstborn (albeit Mourynn was a very late bloomer, like... a year late. More on that later), they have a couple dynamics going on. First being (what I've always interpreted as) the intrinsic bond Firstborn share. With Mourynn being the youngest (at least in my timeline), she looks up a lot to Caithe (and the others), and Caithe is also one of the only ones who can read her social cues and is patient with her (especially in the early years), and especially so since the Shadow of the Dragon still appears in her dream, so they still have that shared link + Wyld Hunt (though if anything it was more like a rescue mission as Mourynn would've died too it/was too physically weak at this time, and only remembers the bit at the end of the dragon attack. So Caithe is a bit of a hero to her to some degree as well). There's another dramatic lesbian arc in between involving Faolain as well (all 3 actually), but that's a hot mess for another day. During the Commander era, since basically her whole Commander arc is "Imposter Syndrome the Musical™", and with Mourynn feeling constantly behind the other Firstborn Luminaries, and trying to fulfill an important role that's partly due to trying to prove to herself (and others) that she is indeed capable. She is a bit naive in the beginning with trying to impress Caithe and fulfill their shared Hunt, and feels lost/depressed when she isn't around during these times. Basically there's a lot of slow burn and silent gestures and quiet intimacies and moments going on, but there's still the extra layer of the Faolain break up that Caithe is also struggling with, making Mourynn is too afraid to tread further due to the sensitive situation. In general they more or less have the same loner vibe, but Mourynn's a bit more whimsical and accident-proned. They're just glad to have each other around and lean on each other in different ways, a comforting bond with a bit of a mentor dynamic sprinkled in. Caithe is also one of the only ppl who understands Mourynn's weird quirks.

4. What was their initial opinion of the commander? Has that changed at all? I guess most of this was already answered above (lol). I'd say Caithe became a bit more proud to see her grow into her role as time went on and became more of her own person (and get a little bit more confidence). The dragon thing was a bit of a shocker though. Other than that, I'd say, surprisingly, opinions shared remains fairly constant (mostly bc they've known each other for so long) 10. Are there any events in the story that happen differently because of/to/involving them? UHM A LOT TBH. I'm lowkey using Mourynn's lore to also change a lot of points in the game story to better fit what I like best and want to see a bit different. In the case with Caithe, I'm having her involved a lot more (for self indulgent reasons), and bc there's a lot of situations I could expand upon. Also I'M INCLUDING ALL THE STUFF NOT INCLUDED IN THE ORIGINAL HoT STORYLINE!!!!!!! One very notable moment I have down is involving the Exalted and Aurene's egg. The Exalted DO NOT like Mourynn (jungle dragon reasons and all, they see her more as a threat sent by Mordy, and Mourynn will wind up hating anything gilded/gold bc of them bc of Exalted trauma), and with Caithe taking the egg first, that combo makes them both fairly distrusted by the Exalted (and others), which is... kinda bad. They both have to defend each other AND Aurene's egg, all while trying to convince the Exalted they are trustworthy (along with like, everyone else...). Then there's the Vinetooth Faolain fight... (that's gonna be fun :3c firstborn x firstborn Wynne mirroring, plus just the dynamic the 3 of them have in general. Mourynn almost dies, but that's normal. Caithe will get to do more fun things during the fight too)

#ask game #sry for the long answers laksjdfljf #a lot of it is kinda vague but I have most stuff in jotted point form notes atm aslkdjfls #also that was very sweet of u to send the ask regardless hehe ty Cheddar <3 you didn't have to do that haha

[minuy600]

The 70s Wrap Up FINALE: Almost All Arcade Game Tier List

Never thought I had it in me. Woooo. Here we go, it's the farewell to a decade of technological growth, from when games were just a dot and some rectangles to full color displays with clear objectives.

I enjoyed the trip, but am also very grateful I can put it behind me. The 80s have significantly more deeper titles and a lot more to write about than the likes of Galaxian and Space Invaders do. Obviously helped by launch of the Famicom & NES, the Master System, the Atari 7800 and even the Mega Drive and Game Boy at the tail end of it all.

As one last look back, it's time to rank 'em all once more. No Atari Football and Fire Truck unfortunately, for reasons stated earlier. One day...

Considering the swaths of quality the arcade had at this point when compared to the Atari 2600 (and company), the structure has changed to lack an F tier, and instead have an S tier at the top. Thankfully we didn't have some extreme stinkers... but believe me, they are comin'. You'll see when the density of the release schedule increases.

D Tier

#21 Sprint 8 (16/40)

Despite the addition of color and the 8 player multiplayer, this is actually less enjoyable than Sprint 2 was. Whatever they did to the controls didn't work out in their favor. The blown up graphics look exactly as described. Lastly, they got rid of the scoring system that made the singleplayer worth a damn. If you get stupid lucky with your friend group, this could fare a little better, however. Hence why I won't call it genuinely awful.

#20 Sprint 2 (22/40)

One of the earliest examples of an overhead racer. Painfully mid. What I do like is the 12 different tracks included, means you can compete for best times for a respectable amount of time. Got obsoleted extremely quickly by Atari itself, though it did surprisingly well in American arcades.

#19 Avalanche (19/40)

Kaboom before Kaboom. It ain't that great, but that's my opinion about Kaboom too. The sound effects are pretty grating, in addition to this game suffering from the Breakout issue where you can lose far too quickly if you haven't mastered the controls. A forgettable high score chaser.

#18 Sky Diver (19/40)

The worst sounds known to man, combined with alright gameplay. Seeking out the full 'Skydiver' word, while pointless, does give an incentive to land 8 times I s'pose. The wind factor helps the replayability a tiny bit. On the verge of a C, i'd say.

C Tier

#17 Atari Baseball (22/40)

The praise I had for Atari Basketball cannot quite be replicated here. It does a better job than Home Run to replicate America's pastime, however they actually made it a bit too slow and repetitive for it to be properly enjoyable. The visuals stink too- the nice UI notwithstanding.

#16 Pool Shark (23/40)

Completely average, typical Kee Games affair which tries to replicate the game of pool in the year of our lord 1977. They almost succeeded. The Atari Flashback Classics achievement made the building of muscle memory a fair distraction. I'm pretty sure I am technically one of the best players of the world according to it's rankings now!

#15 Dominos (24/40)

Got a soft spot for this one. The game is abysmally slight, only being exactly like a shortened round of Surround, a game you can easily play at home. On the flip side however, the sounds are GODLIKE for no reason at all. How they did it with the typical Kee Games flair is beyond me.

#14 Canyon Bomber (24/40)

The first of the duo of games that involve dropping bombs out of the sky for shits and giggles. This one has the gimmick of gravity actually being a thing and allowing the numbered rocks (I think) to drop down to the floor. Aiming precisely and going for the higher numbers is alright enough. Took a couple hours for me.

#13 Destroyer (24/40)

And there's the other half. With an overlay on, this has some of the prettiest visuals i've seen as of now. As far as the game plays, it adds a little more to the table since you have to properly aim to blow up your enemies. I like it a little less than Canyon Bomber, however the aforementioned positives let it shine a touch brighter as a whole product.

B Tier

#12 Atari Basketball (26/40)

An improvement over the Atari 2600 title, in all aspects. I mean, duh, but i'm surprised how far they took that. Visually one of the most realistic titles so far, and gameplay-wise it adds a layer of complexity and snappiness to the experience. Having an actual crowd noise is the cherry on top. A good early sports title.

#11 Breakout (23/40)

In 1976, having a high score to chase and a decent dash of color was a big deal, and we HAVE seen some good games based around this one. With a regular controller however, which is the most likely way you're gonna be playing it, it's easily the least functional and forgiving of this genre. Constantly losing directly after starting and having sincere trouble to reach the top of the playing field isn't fun at all. Still, very innovative for the era.

#10 Lunar Lander (25/40)

Another milestone, it's the game that plays differently depending on the settings. You can make it pretty hard for yourself in there by constantly having to fight your spacecraft *and* gravity. Doesn't have a long lasting appeal. Perfect as a tech demo you try in the arcade once or twice. No McDonald's easter egg is a big loss.

#9 Super Breakout (26/40)

Of course Super Breakout's gotta go above regular Breakout. This one has 3 modes and slightly more forgiving gameplay in 2 of those. I can at least say I found it easier not to hate playing this over it's predecessor. It does lose some of the pre-microprocessor charm in the audiovisuals, though.

#8 Super Bug (28/40)

The shifter controls are fun as sh*t to learn as they aren't super difficult while you get gradually faster across it's 2 tracks. Setting up personal goals for this one was a hoot, too. You know what? It's an underrated jolly time. I'll vouch for it any day. If it had more replay value, it would have been an easy A tier.

#7 Lunar Rescue (28/40)

Would've expected a touch more from Taito at this point. It's a bit more on the shallow side than I would have expected in late 1979 from a company this influential. Don't take this as me saying I didn't enjoy it while it lasted, but seeing the Space Invaders show up twice kinda makes me think they knew it wasn't gonna be as hard a hitter... Hey, at least the little guys falling into nothingness is hilarious.

#6 Asteroids (28/40)

Jack of all trades, master of none. According to ME at least. It's made out of a scrapheap combination of Space War, Space Invaders and even Computer Space, which made it transform into a verrrry competent game. Shooting your laser is just all around solid. Nothing more. For that, it would've needed more meat on it's bones. So many games peak at level 4 and this is no exception.

A Tier

#5 Pong (31/40)

THE way to kick off gaming right. Computer Space was the first proper arcade release, but it was too complex to make heads or tails from back then. This, however, was something everyone understood, with a ridiculous amount of people flocking to try it out. Still remained relevant for a while as a small burst of competitive play.

#4 Galaxian (32/40)

A bit stiff to play and doesn't vary it up enough in the later rounds. That's all the negatives though. This is the best looking game by a WIDE margin due to it's extremely appealing popping colors. Considering they had only created Gee Bee and Bomb Bee before then (they did publish for Atari in Japan for a bit), that's a brutally impressive accomplishment. I still think arcade goers would easily be lured in by this cabinet 44 years later.

S Tier

#3 Space Invaders (34/40)

The first real video game characters. The first game that could go on forever rather than hitting a kill screen. The game that started a revolution in Japan and had serious traction in the USA too. The first game to have a strategy guide release for it. So many goddamn clones and follow ups on this exact hardware. Need I say more?

#2 Cutie Q (33/40)

Namco made a Breakout/pinball trilogy and RAN with it, man. Each game is more perfected and polished than the last, ending with the peak that is Cutie Q. Obscure and underrated despite being made in part by Pac-creator Toru Iwatani himself. You can tell with how much charm this one brings to the table. I doubt paddle-less brick destroying action will be as fun ever again.

#1 Space Invaders Part II (34/40)

Better Space Invaders. A stronger challenge via some extra variables, your name appearing on the high score. The quirky little cutscene. Etc. Etc. What has been said about Space Invaders can also be applied here. Doesn't matter what version you play, you'll at least have a blast from a historical perspective.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I got some ghosts to chomp and missiles to direct... Gimme a few more days!

#retro gaming #minuy600 #review #sona #arcade #minuy's big game catalog #1977 #1978 #1979 #atari #taito #kee games #namco

[sprinklenoodles]

The other polls gave me some answers! Most of you do plan on reading my fics, but haven't yet. So, let's just start with a quick summary of them!

That Really Wasn't Supposed To Happen

This is my main fic. It has almost been a year and a half since I posted the first chapter and it currently has over 110K words! I'm also close to being doing with it, since I've begun with the very last trial!

It's mainly about Chihiro and Byakuya. What happens is that Chihiro gets distracted just before he meets with Mondo and reveals that he's a boy (that isn't changed from canon) to Byakuya instead. Oopsie...

This leads to other murderers and victims. Chihiro also gets an ahoge at one point! During the fic, Chihiro and Byakuya become closer... for the most part.

Chihiro really gets some well deserved development and slowly becomes much more confident. Byakuya does also get some devolpment, though he's still Byakuya.

The Ultimate Mystery Incorporated

Out of my two long fics, this is definitely the much less known one. It has over 36K words, though I'm far from finished.

This fic centers around a whole group! You have Byakuya, Kyoko, Leon, Sayaka and Yasuhiro as the self appointed Mystery Incorporated! They solve mysteries around town- which is Crystal Cove- Scooby-Doo style, though without a talking dog.

All of them have a Scooby-Doo character they represent, but that's loose. It's very much still the danganronpa characters, though with some changes. For one, Byakuya and Kyoko are childhood best friends!

Both of their fathers (who are not terrible and play a role in the fic) have been best friends since college and that transferred over to Byakuya and Kyoko once Byakuya and his father moved there.

There are a few ships, mainly Leosaya which will get something good next chapter. Though, there is some slight Naegiri. Both ships aren't together... yet, there's just the crush fase.

Some ships that haven't appeared yet, but do exists, are Ishimondo, Sakuraoi and Tokomaru (which will get a mention in the next mystery). There is also another ship that will get a moment next chapter...

It also has a lot of lore. Because, if you know me, you know I love lore! There have only been some little hints dropped so far, but there will be some big lore drops eventually. The lore does involve DR characters, but in a very different way!

The Forced Outside AU

This is the fic you guys chose! I haven't begon writing it yet, but that doesn't mean I don't have some info about it!

It mainly centers around Makoto, Byakuya and Kyoko. What happened is that Junko found the idea of a killing game eventually too boring, so mostly destroyed Hope's Peak before the killing game ever begon.

It will include the same ships as I mentioned before, though probably no Tokomaru since that wouldn't make much sense.

Also, the people from the motive video's haven't been captured or anything! As of now almost all families are complete/alive. Even Byakuya's (why...?) The only exeption to this is that Jin is missing.

So, class 78 (minus Junko and Mukuro) formed some kind of resistance to Junko's 'rule'. They've been trying to stop her. At this point, the Future Foundation is beginning to form.

The remnants won't really appear and neither will the WOH. Though, they are still on Junko's side. But, the Towa Conglomerate still makes quite a bit of the Monokuma's for Junko, though that's mostly all they do.

Well, that's it for the info! If you have ANY questions about these fics or just want to know more, ask them! I'll happily answer them :D

#danganronpa #danganronpa trigger happy havoc #danganronpa fanfiction #fanfic #byakuya togami #kyoko kirigiri #chihiro fujisaki #makoto naegi #sayaka maizono #yasuhiro hagakure #leon kuwata #junko enoshima