#I've been considering at some point trying to make character designs of my own like other ppl here

[sepublic]

Alright, let's talk about some details from the TOH pitch bible;

A lot of the stuff is what we've already seen and/or in line with the show. What's interesting is that King WAS a former King of Demons at one point, and we would've had an episode where he runs into his old gang and chooses Luz and Eda over them. It makes me wonder if he even had a connection to the Titan in earlier drafts, if he wasn't recognized as one back in the day because he just wasn't big enough, etc. Eda makes a deal to help remove the collar, which IS the source of King's woes, placed by a 'mysterious wizard', I wouldn't be surprised if it was Obron AKA Proto-Belos.

What gets me is that Tibbles originally started off as a friend to the protagonists, while Bump was an antagonist! Coupled with Tibbles being re-elected as mayor after Bump is deposed for corruption. I like the detail of Bump being a parasite controlling a body from the head, because it carried over into his final design with Frewin, and before we got confirmation Frewin was a separate entity, I loved the joke theory that the imp on Bump's head was the REAL Bump!!! Seems that was always the implied story of the design, I love it. Tibbles being the demon fan of human stuff would eventually become Gus instead, so this is technically Proto-Gus too…?

Interesting how Bump and Tibbles' alignments switch completely with one another, and it makes sense that with Lilith no longer the principal in the final draft, it goes to Bump, who ends up being really chill and a subversion in his own right! Interesting, but I do prefer the final Bump we got, and that's fine by me, because when the concepts aren't as interesting as the final product, it means we got the best possible version.

I've already discussed Obron and William in a separate post, and Pupa is someone we've been told about in a previous livestream. Lilith would've been both head of all covens (and not just the Emperor's Coven) AND principal at the same time, and she seems much more of a jerk to Eda in general; She has no qualms with cursing Eda because of a direct order from Obron.

Apparently the curse would've been an AGING spell, which settles my questions on how it would've been portrayed in earlier drafts! This goes along with Eda's older look. Likewise, there would've been a subplot of Eda considering Luz's sacrifice as a way to restore her youth, which likely goes hand in hand with Obron's orders to bring Luz to her, etc. The 'Bloom of Eternal Youth' quest, which Eda and Lilith go through together as their sisterly relationship is explored, feels like a carryover from this past idea.

I think I prefer the final draft; I like that the curse isn't just aging Eda, but also takes away her magic, makes her turn into a beast, etc. I like Lilith being a lot more complicated in her relationship with Eda, instead of just hating her and cursing her without hesitation. The redefining of the curse makes it less about age, and more a chronic illness metaphor, and I like how Eda in the final draft is upfront about having to learn to live with it, deal with it, on her own terms. She isn't trying to find a cure (although Lilith being promised one by Obron feels like a carryover of Eda's moral dilemma with Luz), and that adds another nice dimension to her conflict with Lilith, as well as Gwen. It's pretty frank in its own right about normalizing disability, and those who play an antagonistic role (however brief) are the real weirdoes for making such a fuss about it.

The Bat Queen would've had more of a recurring role based on the description, which saddens me; I always got the vibe she was planned for more, but between all of the other stuff the show had to juggle, plus the shortening, she ended up getting shafted despite being one of the earlier characters. Sashley, Pasha, and Bruno are also interesting, with Pasha in particular giving me freaking Philip Wittebane vibes with his grossness, beard, and anti-demon attitude; He even starts off as a potential friend to Luz because fellow human, only for his true bigotry to show. Makes me wonder if Philip ended up incorporating Pasha, we also have bodily transformation because of consuming magical stuff... P-names.

(Also, I like how in the drawing of typical Demon Realm denizens, I can see an eye demon who resembles a past drawing of Dana's!!!)

Eda was actually a late bloomer, which creates a parallel with Luz in one way, and their relationship is referred to as sisterly (in the final draft it’s explicitly maternal). So Eda wouldn't have been the talented youth, in fact things may have switched between her and Lilith; Lilith's disdain may have partially come from Eda not being as innately talented as her.

Luz and Amity's dynamic seems like it would've had Amity retain a lot of her more stand-offish, pragmatic personality even as a friend with Luz, and this would've come up more; So basically, she'd remain more like S1 Amity. That, or this part of their relationship would've lasted longer, and then we would've seen character development as Amity unlearns a lot of the issues her parents passed on. I also wonder if the Willow who cameos in the pilot was originally supposed to just be an extra separate from ‘Paulina’, but then they combined the two together.

The themes are exactly as I expected, glad to see they're still there, nothing changed! Luz becoming a witch and defying all odds to do so, putting in real work and passion. Celebrating individuality amidst conformity, plus Luz trying to impose her own fictional tropes onto the world, only to have to put that aside... Just like Wing it like Witches. It seems Amity would've had more involvement with Luz's journey to become a witch, though we still do have a carryover of that disconnect with her rant near the end of Covention.

I love the Demon Realm being situated BELOW the Human Realm, way to be subtle about being Hell you guys lol... Apparently portals to the human world are a lot rarer to find and use, which makes me wonder if the pilot's 'dimension port' doesn't have access to the human world; Meaning Amity is Luz's only way back, so her improved relationship with her is linked to getting back home. There's a gag about the Knee having service with the human world, but I can see how that didn't make the cut, for dramatic purposes; It seems like the premise for a S1 episode or at least a B-plot. Would Luz have struggled to communicate with Camila through this, or would her search for wi-fi be for mundane reasons?

Apparently Luz's magic would've required a lot more steps to complete, and I see why the show simplified things down to just glyphs. I wonder if there was always going to be the connection of glyphs as a gift from the Titan, or if the Titan and her story was going to be less intertwined in the overall narrative. There also don't seem to be nine main covens, just the many, many covens, some of which are pretty ridiculous, and Covention's sub-covens seem a callback to that.

Luz's first spell would've been levitation, and THEN she would've infiltrated Hexside, with Amity being a lot subtler about exposing Luz, though in the final draft she does figure that out as the way to go in I was a Teenage Abomination. Yeah, I prefer Light being her original spell, feels so much more symbolic and personal, etc. I wonder if the Titan is even as much of a character in early drafts, and if there's still the whole connection/relationship with the land and learning to respect it aspect. Some of these hypothetical episodes push the idea of Amity as a more episodic, typical popular kid antagonist, though in the final draft, the show goes through her character development and explores Amity's romantic relationship with Luz and its complications.

It seems the idea of the Mirror Ghost was split into Adegast and Vee, with Adegast being the one who offers the easier narrative for Luz to believe in about becoming a witch (only to be a fraud who uses uncanny puppets), and Vee being a doppelganger whom Luz communicates through with mirrors. Interesting how Yesterday's Lie was born from this. We saw the test animation from Spencer Wan for TOH, so I guess we know what Luz's puppet-doppelganger is called! And we can safely call her Proto-Vee. I wonder if she also would've been a sympathetic character, I always thought she reminded me of Lake from Infinity Train (and speculated her to be as such since Enchanting Grom Fright), and now the similarities are even MORE apparent!

Alas, The Good Witch Azura, or 'The Unassuming Princess' seems like it'd have been a lot less dear to Luz's heart, as the pilot also reflects; In the end, it turns out the author is just Eda's ex using her adventures as basis, and including private information. I remember when I once speculated that Raine, before we saw their face, would've been just like this as the author of Azura... Again, I think I prefer Azura as being a lot less mean-spirited in the final draft, and instead a celebration of who Luz is as a person, her relationship with fantasy and fiction, etc. We also would've had a Luz birthday party, the Quincenera we've been hoping for since S1...! In the final draft (and episode) we still get that Human-Demon Realm disconnect, though by that point, Luz is much more attuned and chill with the isles.

There’s definitely more of an episodic, sitcom feel to this pitch bible, especially when you compare Proto-Yesterday’s Lie to its final version. Makes sense, Dana is pitching this to Disney executives, though her statement on Understanding Willow feeling truly like her show makes me wonder if she always intended to push TOH in that more serious, emotional route we got.

#the owl house #the owl house pilot #king clawthorne #principal bump #hieronymous bump #luz noceda #the owl house tibbles #lilith clawthorne #eda clawthorne #edalyn clawthorne #amity blight #lumity #boiling isles #analysis #the good witch azura #meta #speculation

[fuh-saw-t]

How to Write Character Dialogue 

Like, in a realistic and engaging way. 

Edit: PART 2

Preemptive warning that this extremely long-winded and messy post is designed to be a vague guide to help or prompt beginners with methods they could use in writing, to help people avoid common mistakes, and to hopefully aid in developing unique methods of constructing and presenting dialogue. It's also opinionated, and heavily influenced by my own writing style.

This post will be split up into two posts detailing a macro and a micro view - macro being dialogue in general, and micro focusing on how individual characters and stories will have certain considerations. Reblog and say in the tags if you want Pt 2 on the micro-view.

The 'Macro-View'

Don't start googling that term. I made it up.

The key to making dialogue sound realistic (and, in turn, making your characters appear more like people - making them easier to empathise with) is to think about how real people talk. Very obvious, right? You'd be surprised.

-

Ellipsis 

And no, not the '...' kind. We'll get to that later.

Ellipsis is a term that refers to how words can be omitted from a sentence, yet it can still be understood. It's something we do all the time (though not often thinking about it). For example:

"Are you going home?"

"You going home?"

The latter is entirely understandable, but is not grammatically correct. However, most people do not speak in grammatically correct sentences, or even sentences. We speak in utterances and focus more on being understandable than eloquent. It's important to consider this when writing, as I've seen time and time again - even in published books - the writer focusing too much on making the dialogue grammatically correct. The characters sound dry, void of personality, and appear to be reading off of a script at every moment.

Ellipsis isn't going to be used in every sentence. You still have to think about which character will use it and when.

-

The Other Ellipsis

Gonna break every fanfic writer's heart in one statement: using ellipsis to convey pause is grammatically incorrect.

But, good news! Language is made up and I think it works well for dialogue, so it gets to stay.

Ellipsis (...) can be used to convey a pause - usually when a character is considering something, overthinking or too heartbroken to think straight. It can technically be used anywhere, but I'd advise against using it at the beginning of a sentence, like this:

He muttered, "...I can't believe it."

Because, honestly, it doesn't really convey much that you couldn't show through other methods. And, since a pause is silence, placing it at the start of a sentence conveys (in most cases) nothing, as of course there would be silence - the character hadn't started speaking yet.

However, when placed at the end of a sentence, like this:

He muttered, "I can't believe it…"

We report back to the primary purpose of an ellipsis - to convey something has been omitted. Here, the use of the points have created the impression that the character had more to say, but instead trailed off. This is something we do in speech all the time.

-

Dashes

To me, dashes are a near-essential part of constructing realistic dialogue; they can be used to present characters' spontaneity, the insertion of impromptu remarks, or a 'take it or leave it' comment that can be considered by the other characters or reader based on context (or what's remembered). For example:

"Well," he said, flipping idly through the pages, "we could go to the city and protest there—that might be too dangerous—or try to rally some support from the neighbouring villages."

That's the (largely) grammatically correct version, though. Since language is made up, punctuation is a lie and readers don't notice nor care, you can do whatever. There, I used the 'em dash' (as opposed to the 'en dash', which is '–', or the hyphen, which is '-'). This is what grammarians and dictionaries tell you to do, but you can totally change whatever you want to suit what you think looks best. Such as putting in an en dash or a hyphen instead, putting spaces between the words and the punctuation mark, or putting marks such as '?' or '!' within the subordinate clause (a relatively-new habit of mine).

As you can tell, I usually put a '-' in writing where I don't have to bother. Like here on this blog.

Overall, dashes are a great way of inserting side-comments and impromptu thoughts, making your characters seem much more natural and alive. Moreover, they can be used to give the effect of stuttering. And, as a bonus, they can also be used to show interruption or a stopped thought. For example:

"But you didn't tell me about—"

"I didn't have to tell you anything."

Personally, I use en dashes for interruptions and em dashes for self-obstructed speech (where the character stops themselves) to indicate the following silence. Punctuation can be used creatively to show whatever effect you want. Experiment and find your style!

-

Contractions

This is a short one, since I'll touch on it in part 2, but contractions such as 'don't' and 'I'm' do not necessarily indicate a character, for lack of a better term, isn't posh. I see people try to write characters that are intended to be posh or highly educated all the time and decide the best way to show that through their speech is to omit contractions. In fact, it just makes them sound a bit like a robot. People can still use contractions in speech if they're highly educated, especially in a context where their education or status is not relevant. There are better methods to show a character's personality or upbringing through dialogue, but we'll touch on that later.

-

Dialogue Placement

I'm too lazy to think of, or look for, a better term. It's where you put the dialogue, and how much of it you have. Simple as.

Let's be blumt. Don't do this:

He said, "blah blah blah."

She replied, "blah blah blah."

He responded, "blah blah–"

She screamed, "blah blah blah!"

Riveting dialogue, am I right?

Instead, let's try jazz things up. Ensure that your speakers are clear to the reader, that the tone can be understood through either your punctuation, descriptions or dialogue, and you'll be absolutely fine.

Elliot was heartbroken. Taking Elena's hand, he told her, "I can be better, I promise."

"Seriously?" She snapped her hand out from his grip. "If you could be better, then why weren't you better before? Before all this, I– now I don't know what to think."

"But you don't have to think! I'm telling you, Elena, the life we can have–"

"I don't want to hear it!" She screamed, "We're over!"

Even if you replaced that with blahs, it'd probably be a bit more engaging. The content of your dialogue isn't the only thing that matters, it's how it's placed. Here, the placing is diversified; the dialogue is sometimes embedded within the sentence, more so than before, making the words seem a lot more related to the context; a better view of the situation is shown, and we aren't bothering the reader with a constant 'she said, he said' situation. Though, it should be noted that 'said' is your friend, not an enemy.

Also, you know how sometimes in TV you get characters go 'all right!', 'so cool!', 'let's go!, etc, and wonder how much they paid the voice actors to say the same generic one-liner ten times an episode? That happens in writing, too. If it's something generic and unimportant to the plot or adds nothing to the situation, you can describe it instead or leave it out entirely. 

Like how you can say 'he screamed in pain' instead of typing out "AUGSHAHSGEJAJAHHHHHHHAAAAAA!!!"

-

Also, a few other, quick things because I am tired:

Every rule of punctuation and grammar, as well as every piece of advice you'll ever be given, can be broken in certain situations. Always take advise and grammar rules into consideration, but recognise when it may be best to break them.

Avoid empty adverbs. These are situational.

E.g. 'She whispered quietly' is empty - the verb 'whispered' already insinuates the action was quiet. Adverbs should add to a description or circumvent expectations, an example being if she 'whispered angrily'. Adverbs are not always necessary.

Please don't overuse dashes and overdo stuttering. I'm looking at you, My Hero Academia Fanfiction writers. This line is directed at you.

-

Obligatory 'I'm not a professional, I just do things sometimes and have some education on this'.

Asks are open, and if anyone wants a Pt 2 where I cover considerations in writing dialogue for certain situations, personality traits, etc, feel free to either ask for that in the comments/tags or send an ask in about what specific thing you want covered!

#writing #creative writing #writing advice #fanfiction #fanfic #ask blog #language #fiction writing #fiction #letsdiscuss

[genericpuff]

Hey there! Let me just start by saying that I love your work on Lore Rekindled. I've been super into Mythologies ever since I was like 6 (so that makes it nearly 20 years of constant adoration lmao), and your retelling of the Persephone myth is honestly one of the best ones I've seen so far. Which brings me to my question: I was wondering whether you would ever like to turn rekindled into a wholly original project. Perhaps after changing character designs and tweaking some details?

Keep up the great work and have a lovely day!

Thanks so much! I'm so glad it's resonating with people looking for a more grounded approach. That was pretty much half of my goal, I wanted to try and expand on the more creative interpretations Rachel started with (such as the modern setting) but actually tighten the worldbuilding and keep it more on theme with the original myths. So I'm always happy to hear from y'all that it's accomplishing that exactly as I had hoped :)

I've had people ask me that question about making it a more original thing, and I have considered it just for the sake of like, "making something my own", but at this point if I did that I'd have to completely redraw Rekindled from scratch and I don't know if I have the energy or strength to do that LOL (I'm already infected by the redrawing brainworms on my original stuff). And it would defeat the point of why I started Rekindled in the first place - to bring closure to myself and others who loved LO in the beginning and saw all the potential it had but never really delivered on. To remove it from the LO stylization would make it more 'original and unique' but would also remove it from its original purpose.

That said, I am hoping to do some other adaptions of Greek myth stories that were either poorly done by LO or not covered at all after Rekindled is done, so I'm considering doing a more original interpretation separated from the LO retelling for those, as they wouldn't necessarily depend on the H x P retelling that Rachel tried to accomplish. That way I can sorta try and have my cake and eat it too LOL But we'll see! I gotta get through Rekindled first :' )

#ama #ask me anything #anon ask me anything #anon ama #lore rekindled #lore rekindled ama

[tomatoland]

something i have noticed about mew is that although he dressed similarly to ray since episode 7, the designs or the patterns of his outer layer have slightly changed. he used to wear a lot of bold or edgy design/prints but i think when his moms visited him episode 9, he started to wear a lot more floral/plant designs? it may be a redundant observation or I’m observing too much, but mew mostly wear them around top or his moms? I’m curious to know if you have any thoughts about it.

+ since you have been putting down songs for topmew, i have one for them: again - eden, sophiya (i personally feel the lyrics fit them so well, since how many characters and viewers are so against them together🫢). Thanks for reading!

This song is absolutely beautiful and you're right, the lyrics fit them amazingly. I've been listening to it nonstop. Thank you so much for recommending it to me! <3

Observing too much? No such thing!

Yes, I do have thoughts. I'm actually really glad you asked about Mew's clothing because it gives me a reason to make some collages of my favorite characters.

The super deep-dive into Mew's clothing choices I'm sure you were not expecting.

Clothing can be considered armor we wear when we interact with the world. It's what others first perceive when they meet us. It tells people about who we are or who we want to be. Clothing can also give you confidence. And for Mew, it is exactly this. He even says as much to Cheum here.

In the first half of the show, Mew did wear some short sleeved button down shirts, quite a few actually. He usually wore lighter colors with more neutral patterns and ALWAYS with a t-shirt as the base layer.

The catalyst for the change in Mew’s clothes I would say is this moment in Episode 7, part 3, when Mew is the bathtub. This is quite literally Mew's re-birth as Mew 2.0.

The show also pointedly shows us this by contrasting the book shop scene with Ray in episode 8 with a flashback with Top from the first episode. Mew's shirts are the exact opposites. Instead of predominantly white with black graphics like with Top, it's predominantly black with white with Ray.

Mew in his revenge era as Jojo called it wears short sleeved button downs with louder prints with a black undershirt.

The patterns of some of Mew's shirt are closer to Ray's palette than his own. The Outkast one he wore with Gap and the Vegas one he worse when he went to Boston’s house are the most similar to something Ray would wear.

But Ray actually doesn't always wear a black undershirt. He seen just as often, if not more, wearing white undershirts. Ray's also worn long sleeve button down completely buttoned up with no undershirt or altogether different types of shirt. I was going to make a Ray clothing collage to prove this point, but there's already enough Ray content on this site, you're just going to have to trust me lol.

So before his moms visit, the patterns of Mew 2.0’s shirts are darker and more in your face. This is Mew with his battle armor on, trying to fake it until he makes it. But once his moms come, the patterns immediately change.

I think him coming from a warm, loving home with two caring parents is important for him as a character. His moms notice things like the pack of cigarettes on his coffee table. They immediately know something is up with him but they don't know what because he doesn't tell them. But they know this is not the Mew they raised or the one they last saw.

His moms have always been his strength. Their love for him is why he didn't think he needed romantic love, which is a strong stance to have. So when his moms visit, they are able to help ground him a little and he is able to reconnect to who he is. And as result, he softens his armor.

He still wears a a short sleeve button down, but now with more feminine details, softer colors and more whimsical patterns like the aquarium and the ships. These shirts are more Mew.

Now, let's talk about how Top plays into Mew's clothing choices because I actually have a lot I want to discuss.

Mew has only ever worn a black undershirt since that moment. Only ever black, which is extremely curious.

Because do you know who has only ever consistently worn a white undershirt throughout the entire show?

Top. Interesting, huh?

The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. So even when Mew was rage angry at Top, subconsciously, he wasn't actually as indifferent as he pretended to be.

Mew wanted to become the opposite of who he was before and somehow ended up taking an element of Top's style with him.

Top coming to Mew's family's home is the turning point for TopMew Take 2. And their undershirt colors when they were side-by-side reminded me of something.

Do you see it?

Maybe this will help.

The visual representation of TopMew's fresh start is a yin yang symbol. Yin, the traditional feminine energy is the dark side and Yang, the traditional masculine energy is the light side. Two connected elements in perfect balance with each other.

They are both coming into this fresh start as equals with open communication and dialogue, of their own free will.

And because I love this symbolism, this is literally the Sun hugging his Moon and his Moon embracing him back 🥺

#topmew #ofts #only friends the series #forcebook #book kasidet #force jiratchapong #top tanin #mew witsarut #tomat answers #asks

[feverdreamjohnny]

Orbo's Odyssey - Post Mortem

My Feelings About The Game

It's an odd thing to try and pull together your thoughts about something so chaotic.

I guess it'd be easier to just catalogue how my emotions evolved as the project went on, and then wrap it up by trying to pull apart how I feel now, as arcane as that is.

I've been a part of a private developer community for a bit now, and during a majority of my time there I felt sort of like a fish out of water. I guess it was just weird seeing people at the top of their craft while my work sort of paled in comparison. A majority of them had a background in developing character action games or platformers with intricate movement systems, and that was absolutely outside the range of what I understood.

Late 2022 I decided to try and make a movement system with a really strong focus on momentum so I could feel "at home" with the other devs. So I made a small tech demo where most of Orbo's moveset was formed.

In the end it didn't really make me feel more confident in my work, but at least I proved to myself that I could tackle unfamiliar waters and make headway. Regardless, I left the tech demo where it was and continued to work on Nowhere, MI for the next few months.

I made a lot of progress on Nowhere, and around late November a publisher reached out to me to offer help. I was desperate, after all. I didn't have a lot of money to my name and this was the kind of lifeline I needed to secure so I could finish the game.

To cut a long story short, they kept delaying talks about the game over and over and it became increasingly clear to me that my dream of being funded wasn't going to happen.

I was sort of in a bad spot now. It was early 2023 at this point, and I was going to have to make a tough decision: delay Nowhere and get a retail job to make money (potentially losing sight of the project in the process), or find some other solution to secure funding. No other publishers were going to pick me up (and I really didn't trust a majority of them so I only had my sights set on a handful I felt I could trust), so I came to a new conclusion:

What if I just made something short, say in the span of a month or two, and sell it? Surely that would be easy.

Surely.

The Game

In March of 2023, I began working on the game. I wasn't sure what sort of format I wanted for the game at first, and I had initially considered a rogue-like arena combat game where you'd use the game's momentum mechanics to fight enemies, collect upgrades to improve your abilities, rinse and repeat.

The idea ended up feeling sort of strange when I began pre-production, so I ended up scrapping it.

I thought about the movement system some more and realized that it had a strange kinship to a game I had played just a month earlier: Super Kiwi 64.

Then I thought about Siactro's other games, how they were similarly small-scope platformers that seemed to perform well on Steam and Switch, and I realized that if there was something that would suit my own development style (focused around exploration and secrets), it was a 3D platformer.

The first month was fairly strong. I moved at lightning-speed, hammering systems into the game piece by piece. Collectables were done. Time trials (and their records) were done. Movement had been refined further and felt better than in the initial tech demo. There was also a lot of underlying structuring that I won't get into because it's boring (but important).

About a week in I even started working with my friend Tim (who's a professional environment artist), and we began working together on the hub environment (we brainstormed the layout, I designed the greybox, and he wrapped it up with the environment art).

It was going great, but as March was nearing its end I began to realize what I was dealing with.

"Oh, well yeah I mean I knew it wasn't going to be possible in a month! I'm sure if I grit my teeth it'll be done by the end of April!"

So April came along. Tim and I finished the hub area, I got the world portals set up, and eventually we moved to the first level of the game, Shlarp City.

Tim managed to get a decent chunk of the decorative props done, but circumstances were changing and he had a fulltime job in the industry to attend to, so he had to leave the project.

I reasoned "well, I sort of know how to do environment art and I guess I can just go on without help."

Shlarp's greybox was done, and I was sort of happy about the layout. Some friends playtested the game and liked the movement, so I felt a bit more optimistic about the project.

Despite the boost in optimism, I was starting to feel some kind of dread leaking in. My nights were becoming more frantic and troubled, more than they already had been.

I moved onto the next level, reasoning that it'd be best to get the greyboxes for all of the levels finished first, then return for an art pass afterwards. It was the sensible thing to do, after all.

So I began work on Dunbarrow Mines, and this time I was alone. I finished the greybox, and while I wasn't a huge fan of the level, at least it was done. I moved onto Sleepytime Manor and similarly got the greybox finished. Even since the beginning of the month, something was starting to grow inside of me. April was coming to a close, and I still had another level to greybox, a boss fight, secret areas to add, and an art pass on the entire thing. I hadn't really developed much of a game at that point, just 3 barren levels.

And so May came along.

And this was where it all went to hell.

I had been suffering from a lot of issues in my personal life for a while. The year prior had been particularly traumatic and the waves coming from it weren't done passing over yet. If anything the terror was that the major event from the last year hadn't even finished coming to fruition. The stress from everything had caused me to develop a disorder that made my blood acidic, melting away at my nerves. I fought hard and managed to improve my health, but the damage was done and the occasional return of the neuropathy was just a reminder that my life was spiraling downward.

I entered a period of intense stress and depression as waves of terrible memories came over me. I became neurotic. Started having trouble designing levels. It was already an issue for me, but as my mental state deteriorated I was hitting brick walls over and over.

I had my back against the wall. Game development was my only purpose in life, after all. I had been built for it, sacrificed so many hours to it, put everything else aside for it. The only thought going through my head was that I was dying, and that this stupid game was going to be my graveyard.

So roughly two months came by, with sparing work on the game. I finished Monolith station, but it had to be redesigned 3 times to reach the version you currently see in the game today.

The neurosis made me insane. Constantly seeing my peers succeeding while I flailed desperately in a pit was definitely not helping matters.

But something changed in June.

The Garden

I always had an on-and-off again relationship with plants. I had a sort of preternatural skill with growing things, but my interest waxed and waned a lot. The main thing that stuck through this on-and-off relationship were herbs, since they were easy to cultivate and they needed very little maintenance during the periods where I was losing interest.

As I began to take game development more seriously around halfway into 2021, I stopped gardening entirely.

But something very strange happened in the June of 2023. I was frantically compelled to return to it. I raked, toiled and weeded until I had a plot. Then I started buying seeds and began cultivating vegetables again for the first time in 2 years.

And for the first time in this nightmare I was finally happy about something. I don't know what compelled me to start cultivating plants again, but whatever it was, it rescued me from a very long, dark road.

After 2 weeks, I finally finished the final boss of Orbo's Odyssey.

The game needed a lot more work, but I was finally getting a foothold after months of misery.

Eventually my friend Ben was able to help me with the project, and we made a lot of headway. We brainstormed new ideas for how the player could get gear parts. He modeled a load of props. I scripted a load of systems. Finally, the game actually began to look like a game.

Ben was really important. He was optimistic about the project and wasn't suffering from burnout the way I did, and he helped me get out of my fugue. I can't thank him enough for his help.

After around half a year of hammering, we finished the game.

3 weeks after that, we released it to steam.

And about 2 weeks after the release, we're here now.

The Takeaway

Typically in post-mortems you talk about what you would've done differently, but I think this ending might be a bit different.

I'm not really proud of the level design. I think I also could've done better with my share of the environment art in some levels. I think there could've been more details. I think there could've been more content.

But there's no use kicking myself for what could've been. Of course the next game will be better. The mental state I was in during the development of this game was dire and it had a major impact on the quality of my work. I had to break out of a really bad mindset and try to find a better way of engaging with my life. That wasn't easy.

I think some gamers like to imagine that something that's fun to play was fun to make. It's true that sometimes there are moments where you get excited during game development, but at the end of the day the majority of it is just pure work and toil.

In the end, the reviews on Orbo were very kind. Even the negative reviews were at bare minimum sorta funny.

Hilariously the reviews that bothered me the most were actually positive. The perspective of these reviews was that the game was really the story of some little kid taking his thumb out of his mouth and naively making something he thought was fun. It mainly felt like a way for the reviewers to excuse the weaker elements of the game.

These are the reviews I hate the most. I don't care that they were positive. They're infantilizing. It makes it come across as though the shoddier elements of the game weren't a product of a person having a mental breakdown, but of a child smacking blocks together and making mistakes because he didn't know better.

If you really view art like that, I want you to lean in very closely and listen: Most of the time, people suffered to make something you could enjoy. You're welcome to praise or shun the art by itself, but don't patronize the creator for their effort. I didn't have fun making Orbo. I hated it. And even though I hated it I still tried to put passion into it, because I care about my work.

Anyway I'm glad it's over with. If I attempted to develop the game now it would probably be significantly better, but that's mostly because I've found better methods of managing my mental health.

I have to get back to work on Nowhere, and eventually I have to work on Peeb Adventures. For now, though, I'm taking a break. I'm tired.

Before I go I just want to thank some people.

Thank you Ben for being supportive and helping me make this game happen. I couldn't have done it without you, and I mean it.

Thank you Socpens and Grayfruit for streaming the game and for your kind words. It really means a lot to me, and it gave me a lot more confidence about Orbo's Odyssey post-release.

Thank you Tim for helping early on. I know it was a brief period between us, but I do appreciate the work you did.

Thank you (in no particular order) Bryce, Simone, Jett, Aaron, Quinn, Drew, Ian, and Cosme for being supportive of my work.

Thank you for the folks in the private dev server who were particularly supportive as well.

Thanks for reading.

#orbosodyssey

[flamerunn3r]

Sorry this is unfinished but I need to post these now just bc idfk when i'm gonna actually finish the rest realistically. Idk it will happen eventually. For now heres the great p5u ramblings post detailing my thoughts designs

This is my own personal interpretations but is also somewhat speculative in nature. I'm mostly trying to deal in already established characterizations and epilogue set ups but there might be stuff I've missed or forgotten (i also haven't played dancing yet sorry if there's something in there I hadn't accounted for). This is kind of like if I took the creative reigns on the story where I'd continue for it. Only the investigation team for now (and 2 boss characters I have an idea for) but maybe I'll do the shadow ops at some point. Only 4 characters for now but I'll reblog with additions when I finish the rest or if I edit any of these

Yu Narukami

He's currently attending school as a journalism student in the city or just starting out as one. Enthusiastic about his field but still tries to find the time to keep up with his friends and visit Inaba on his holidays. I felt journalism made alot of sense for him with the themes of persona 4. I liked the sport jacket and turtleneck but wanted soemthing different so the scarf was chosen to keep the same kind of silhouette. I made the collar on the winter coat large and I feel like Narukami's large uniform collar is a key part of his design. and I wanted to call back to that in his casual outfit. The summer outfit I mostly kept close to his summer outfit from p4. I'm kind of unsure on it though I might come back to it. I mostly wanted to keep his outfits smart and simple. For his meta verse outfit I really wanted to go all out with the bancho (kingpin) stuff and other delinquent tropes. I lengthened the uniform coat a little because I wanted it to look like a tokko-fuku. Alot of smaller detail inspiration was taken from Izanagi. The lenses in the mask are supposed to mimic glasses. I'd imagine he'd take off the mask the same way he throws off his glasses in myriad truths.

Teddie

I can't imagine him leaving Inaba and the TV world behind. Still staying in town and working largely the same job. He's got his own place now albeit small (still a step up from the closet though). At some point the IT asked Mitsuru to pull some strings so he actually has a legal personhood now. The animal hoodie is something that came to me spontaneously but I knew I needed to include it. I really that his normal outfit in 4 keeps the white and red of the bear costume in the outfit so I tried to keep the colour scheme here too. Most of his later outfits are less flashy and more casual so I tried to continue that trend. I didn't want to lose the rose from the corsage completely so I included a rose pattern in the second shirt. Alot of his outfits feature light blue so I wanted that in at least one outfit. I considered making the hoodie light blue initially. I don't think he'd have a metaverse outfit he'd just use the bear costume.

Naoto Shirogane

I'm under the assumption Naoto is still presenting masculinely to the general public as of p5 but I may be mistaken in this. If I'm wrong I'd still probably largely keep the outfits similar to this. Naoto's still working as a detective and I don't think that's ever really going to change. One thing that a hypothetical p5u would have to address is what Naoto and the shadow ops would have been doing during the events of persona 5 and I unfortunately do not have any ideas for what that would be at the moment.

I feel alot of the appeal of Naoto's design is the kind of boy detective fashion. I went at this design with the intention of kind of refining that into something a little more adult while still keeping in a similar vein. I did have to ditch the pageboy hat unfortunately as I felt it made them look too young. These outfits were kind of design as pseudo work clothes which is why I tried to make them a bit more formal then the other characters. Something I consider notable about Naoto's design but deliberately avoided here was the rolled up pant legs. It's very obvious in 4 it's done because Naoto is short but I feel like Naoto would start getting that either custom made or tailored to fit. I was initially going to forgo the blazer on the summer outfit but the design felt empty without it. Naoto having a noir detective themed metaverse outfit is an idea I'd had for years but I tried to incorporate design elements that were princely. I alot of the inspiration was from Sam Spade specifically. Deliberately made similarities to Akechi's white crow design. The band around the hat is supposed to invoke the similar one on the old page boy hat.

Yukiko Amagi

Still working at her families in but is taking online courses during the off seasons. She's mostly happy where she is but is keeping her options open. Occasionally makes visits to other ryokans out of town for ideas for her families own inn, as well as an opportunity to for her to sight see.

The headband was included in her design in p4 as a like retro design thing but I find it too important of a marker of her design to remove it. I understand the why they went with the hairstyle they did for her golden epilogue but I feel it just ends up making her look way older then she is. I thought her having her hair up would be a nice change since she does it so rarely and settled on a ponytail. Tried changing the bangs but the ones she already had just felt right. I wanted her clothes to carry this kind of air of sophistication so I tried to keep them relatively simple and sleek. She's wearing pants in the winter outfit but I chose the longer coat to keep a similar skirt silhouette. The choker was largely inspired by the scarf she has in her winter outfit. Despite being a different colour the cardigan was also chosen to tie back somewhat to the sweater she wears with her school uniform.

In some side material it's mentioned that Yukiko has an interest in western fashion and aesthetics (part of what made the castle manifest the way it did) and I wanted to lean on that in some way for her metaverse design. I ended up going with a masquerade ball theme. I tried to keep the dress to something simple and easy to move in. The gloves and boots take inspiration from her persona in terms of design and size. I wanted to incorporate elements from her work kimono as well hence the ribbon around the torso and flower patterning. Probably the most unsure of this one of the metaverse designs so far. Especially the colours (considered making the reds pinks initially). Might revisit this one.

Ok that's all I have for now I'll probably do Rise's next 👍👍👍

#sorry these are of wildly varying quality i did them at completely disconnected times #i guess feel free to critique my ideas if you want but be nice pleaseeeeee #persona 4 #fine this can go in the main tags #also this took like 3 days to type up. i just proofread it but if theres something that makes no sense then oops my bad #ul

[taffywabbit]

im also anti proship but calling rugrats porn drawings "child porn" really dilutes the severity of actual child porn. we shouldnt be confusing actual cp that hurts real children with just weirdos drawing porn of cartoon characters that happen to be kids, the two things are not at all on the same level

ok i suppose this was inevitable, i may as well get into it.

(CW for some discussion of CSA and child pornography, obviously)

first off, "i'm also anti proship but" is a terrifying way to start your message, and to go and follow it up with some extremely common proship copypasta i've heard a million times about "taking attention/resources/severity/etc away from real CSA victims" or whatever kinda makes me wonder how "anti proship" you actually are...?

kind of the point of this whole debate is typically that "proship" folks insist that fiction, or in this case "porn of cartoon characters that happen to be kids" as you put it, has no effect on reality or people's mindsets. and so-called "antis" like myself generally respond to this idea with something along the lines of "well it sure seems to affect the reality of your cock and balls", and point out how repeatedly consuming media with a particular focus or message has been shown time and time again to quantifiably influence the way people view the world around them, in ways that subsequently affect how they act, or desensitize them to things that might otherwise upset/offend them. y'know, like political propaganda! or blockbuster movies about killer sharks! obviously some people are going to be more resilient against that sort of influence when the real-world equivalent of "porn of cartoon characters that happen to be kids" is something so blatantly unacceptable, and nobody is really claiming that the impact of fictional CP is "on the same level" as its IRL counterpart.

but at the very least, most people who would be considered "anti proship" WILL tell you "hey, i'm not trying to say that you jerking it to twitter porn of Gwen Tennyson or Tails or whatever is LITERALLY THE SAME as committing CSA, but it's still really fucking concerning and creepy that the majority of your sexual fixations are all specifically cutesy vulnerable cartoon characters under the age of 12, many of whom also have canonical adult designs that you conveniently avoid in favor of sexualizing the ones that are barely old enough to learn long division. you should maybe do some introspection and figure out why that is and whether or not you're really comfortable with what it implies about you. personally i know I'M not comfortable with that shit and i'm not going to keep hanging around you unless you make some serious changes." except usually in my experience the conversation ends up being a lot shorter and ends in a block pretty quickly. like i'm not a psychologist and i don't keep a bunch of studies on hand to throw at you about how fictional CP is often a factor in grooming, but i DO have a brain and can pretty clearly see when someone is rationalizing behavior that will lead them to places i'm not willing to follow.

ANYWAYS to focus more specifically on the actual reason we're talking about this (which was, to be clear, a mobile ad Tumblr served me that depicted one of the dads from Rugrats having sex with his 3yo daughter): yes, actually, that shit IS illegal to create or distribute. it's not the SAME as literal photographs of real children, OBVIOUSLY, but it's still also extremely fucked up in its own right, and any reasonable person in your life would probably stop talking to you if you told them you got off to it.

don't believe me about the legality part? check this out:

so like, I GUESS you might get some legal leeway with cub furry art or sonic porn or stuff that isn't always obvious in how much it's intended to parallel real children? if you really care? but this ad was literally multiple illustrations of a human adult man having intercourse with a human toddler. it's pornography centered around openly fetishizing the sexual assault of a child by a parent. i fail to see how referring to that in shorthand as "child porn" is inaccurate in any way that matters.

and Tumblr is a US-based company, beholden to the laws shown above, so they are at least somewhat responsible when illustrated pedophilic incest porn gets shown to thousands of their mobile app users in an ad they got paid to display. THAT was the original point i was making in my post. but thank you for trying to derail it to interrogate my "anti proship" views or whatever, i have had multiple people send me fairly nasty asks about it in the past year and you finally caught me in a moment when i was already pissed enough about something else that i felt like going off about this stuff. sorry if you actually agreed with most of this and i came off as overly rude/harsh, but if that's the case then this response is for all the other anon asks and replies i've gotten too, i guess.

now we're all clear about where i stand and i hopefully don't need to talk about this again - it's kind of a fucking bummer to think about this stuff and i've been avoiding the subject intentionally. you are always welcome to just block me if you have a problem

#buny text #ask #anonymous #cw CSA mention #nsft

[evevoli]

original story concept: flight feathers (working title)

aka me shoving my new OCs in everyone's faces for a few minutes. low and behold, my gang of losers:

from left to right: Phoenix, Selene, Helios, and Killian

so a wayward beam of divine insanity lightning struck me about four months ago in the form of the first genuinely coherent original story idea i've had in... basically forever and i am finally crawling out of my mad ornithologist lab to talk about it, if only so i have something to point to when i start tagging random innocuous text posts with the names of characters no one's ever heard of. this project is perhaps the most self-indulgent Autism Fueled venture i have ever gone on and it is so fun actually

the basic gist of the story is that local Teenage Bird Hater Selene accidentally gets isekai'd to a Greco-Roman/baroque-inspired city on a floating archipelago hidden in the clouds, inhabited by bird-worshipping winged people. there she befriends a strange one-winged fortune teller named Phoenix, who takes her in while she looks for a way back down to earth.

as a certified Bird Disliker(tm) for reasons she will absolutely not disclose, the idea of being trapped in this city with its strange bird-entrenched culture has got to be Selene's personal hell. but she's already made a few good friends and is learning a lot, so hey... if you ignore the castle surrounded by doves looming off in the distance, and the general poor sentiment surrounding corvids, maybe it's not such a bad place to be after all.

...until it turns out the King himself might have it out for her, much to the dismay of his son and loyal knight, Prince Helios and Captain Killian.

there is. A Lot more to it than that lol—and at least like 8 more characters i haven't gotten to drawing yet—but there's your elevator pitch. to explain the world a bit more, everyone has bird wings to fly with, their own Bird Familiars(tm), and rides around on pegasi and different species of griffin. the world consists of little islands connected by bridges, with the city developed vertically, and sort of resembles a fusion between the Aether mod in Minecraft and Zephyr Heights in MLP G5.

and now the most important thing, the Closeups

some notes:

Selene is transfem :), Helios is transmasc only because i tried giving him curled ram horns and got so frustrated trying to draw them i just gave up and gave him the ewe ones instead

Selene is a Wolf Kid and really vibes with the lyrics to Angel of Darkness on a personal level

Helios's wings are weak and undersized so he can't take off or fly for very long on his own

i like to consider Helios my personal challenge to design the most unapologetically cringe and archetypal character ever. i am going to make a character that is so sad little loser prince. kicks him

Phoenix is a childhood nickname, Killian is just a shortened form of Achilles. Phoenix absolutely hates his birth name. Killian is ambivalent towards his

Phoenix lost his left wing in an accident that changed the trajectory of his life forever teehee :3c

the little blue jay is named Celeste, the crow is Peanut, and the tawny owl is Athena :)

and that is all i shall reveal in this post >:) this idea has been rotting my brain from the inside out for months now so don't hesitate to shoot me an ask if you're wondering about anything :]

#so nervous finally posting this stuff lol #flight feathers #evff #<- that is the best general tag i can think of 💀 trying hard not to spam a fandom with a certain acronym here im so sorry #selene ff #helios ff #phoenix ff #killian ff #original story #my art #ev.post #oc tag

[skaruresonic]

what were your favorite things about starline before he was ruined

Oh, God, Starline. ;A; How I miss the poor bastard.

Beyond his design, my favorite things about him included his foppishness, his showmanship, his meticulousness, his (relative) calm demeanor, his "comedic intern" angle, and his devotion to licking egg-shaped boot.

Oh, and the most prominent aspect of his character, the linchpin on which all else rests: the simpery.

I will give credit where credit is due, his simpery of Eggman coupled with his more cautious and lowkey nature (at least, compared to Eggman) offered a genuinely new and refreshing dynamic at the time. It didn't seem to come with strings attached as it usually does.

I also used to like his penchant for unintentional comedy. It seemed to be the same flavor of comedy with which they tinge some of Eggman's character.

Granted, Starline was probably always meant to be something of a buttmonkey, but later issues had him ping-pong between being Better Than Eggman(tm) and a buffoon. The constant switch made it difficult to fully invest in him in either case, because one minute we were meant to consider him a srs bsns mastermind and laugh at his failures the next. And not in the balanced way Eggman's humor generates; there were times I genuinely couldn't tell whether we were supposed to root for him or not.

And then, of course, he got crushed under rocks. Big oofed.

Starline used to be funny. Watching him rant and rave? Cry tears of joy? Make an uwu face as Rough and Tumble embarrass him in front of his idol? Funny, because it subverted his otherwise suave Bond villain image, and because you knew that eventually Eggman would crush his windpipe like a squeaky toy. Selling your soul to the devil can only end in tragedy. It filled you with a morbid sort of joy and a dark anticipation as you waited to see how bright this dumpster fire would blaze.

This was one pathetic meow-meow of a man, strange yet oddly compelling. Shame his delusions of grandeur stole away the entertaining aspects of his personality for a more boring, straight-laced character. Even bigger shame that we were supposed to pretend he never meant anything to begin with.

That's not to say Starline could never have had character development, nor that he should have remained a static character. Just as Sonic exerts a positive influence on others, show us how Eggman exerts a twisted influence. Make Starline's devotion to Eggman even unhealthier and fucked-up than it already was. Not in a "I can fix you" kind of way, but in an "I will light myself on fire to keep you warm" kind of way. To the point of self-destruction. That seemed to be the logical direction for such a character, anyway.

But nah, they had to drag us along Starline's unimpressive journey to strike out on his own. Which, like... He stole 90% of Eggman's shit anyway, so how effective was he really? And even if the whole point was that Eggman made him and he's nothing without his idol, then why did the book give him two mini-series? Has he been mentioned even once in the book since his death? Somehow, I very much doubt it.

I don't want to get into it with his creation of Surge and Kit because I'd rather pretend they don't exist, thanks. Yes, I'm aware Starline was originally conceived as their creator, but I think Flynn should have caught on that his character had changed. Realized that trying to cram him back into the original mold would only break him.

And you know what. Even after having suffered 30 issues where Starline was fucking insufferable with his whole "I'll surpass Eggman" schtick, I still felt sad for his passing.

To make matters worse, I felt foolish for my emotional investment, because dammit, I guess I was hoping his story would have culminated in something more substantial than "his favorite flowers are forget-me-nots (snicker)."

Now that I've learned that IDW can drop even their most popular characters in a heartbeat, I'm never making the mistake of even accidentally becoming invested in them again. They're not going to bother developing them or even give them a proper sendoff, so why should I continue reading?

Fs in the chat for my boy. They did him so dirty.

#asks #rip simpline you are gone but not forgotten

[ruckis--rookie]

there is a specific art piece of your’s that seems to have vanished off the internets: “Dark Lord Gerakobitz - Bad End AU”. and I know it disappeared recently because I have a cross-post from your DeviantArt from November 2023

https://www. tumblr.com/loveandmad/ 733130379991629824/dark-lord-gerakobitz-bad-end-au- by-ruckis-rookie (remove the spaces) that now goes to a 404 page

Yeahhh about that. A lot of old art of mine of Fawful and the other M&L lineup has up and vanished. Twould be on purpose.

Y'see, after some very personal events I tried distancing myself from the M&L fandom. The game series remains very sentimental to me, but paired with the personal reasons and the poor treatment Nintendo was giving their fans, I took a long (possibly few) year hiatus. One of several reasons for my hiatus was guilt that I had strayed so far from the source material that the cast of characters didn't seem like the og cast of characters, rather OCs made to fit the mold of them. So by the time I came back I had revamped all the designs I had for the M&L lineup were revamped to be featured as an antagonistic group for my nonfandom oc story called "Order of the Stars" that I'm working on.

The one inspired by my old Fawful design, now named "Geragera", is VERY special to me. He was the one I projected onto the most in the past and he was the one I worked the hardest to distance from the source material without changing him so much that what I had built was no longer there. He's basically a second Fursona to me now. Words can't describe what he means to me.

But despite the many reminders that I gave to old fans that I would be moving on and if I were to ever return to M&L I'd be referencing the source material closer, people still kept missing the memo. Even years later some get confused and it really made me realize how much of an influence I had on shaping the fanon Fawful that's remembered today. It was... incredibly disheartening and upsetting given how hard I worked to make Gera his own character. And furthermore it didn't make sense to me HOW comparisons were still being drawn. I had disappeared for a while to let the fire and the hype die down, in what world to people think THIS

Looks like THIS

If anything at this point Gera takes more inspiration from Yoshi in appearance, I'm shocked more comparisons haven't been drawn to the dinosaur because then I might actually be flattered

But given the circumstances I'd been silently deleting a lot of my old works and archiving them on a personal thumbdrive. It initially started with things I'd see pop up in my notifications that people liked. If I deemed a picture too close to my old fanon Fawful I'd save and delete it. But eventually it got so upsetting to me that in an anger fueled moment I went on an art purge to try and erase the impact I left, or at least scrub what I could to let Gera have a proper limelight instead of being stuck in the shadow of the thing that inspired him. People were also confusing Order of the Stars for an AU, which it's very much not.

While normally I wouldn't have minded the exposure, in fact I would have been flattered had it been years prior (even though the same pic was very much up on Tumblr at some point), that picture was a sore reminder of the past I was so desperate to distance myself. One of many, and reminded me I had to scrub more than just Tumblr... and might have possibly been the catalyst to the purge? I dunno, I slept since then.

The closest you'll get to it now is a horror themed bad end AU that I made that follows a very similar concept

And this is very generous considering the hell I've gone through. It got so bad that I haven't felt very compelled to draw Fawful anymore for fear of further confusion, heck, more recently I decided that I was just going to exclusively post any future M&L art I make over here because I got tired of people finding reasons to draw comparisons on other sites too. I even thought about dropping ANY M&L drawings related to Beanish just to get away from it, but decided against it. I've even started putting more emphasis on Gera's snout just to make him seem less Beanish, which sucks because I've had to stray away from what makes my style mine to begin with. I could easily change his colors, but I can't bring myself to. He's been like this for years now and it's a characteristic that I can't easily let go of, nor do I want to. I've very begrudgingly changed my Beanish HC so that they don't have blue tongues and blood anymore (which was initially nspired by a beta Cackletta sprite having a blue tongue). It feels like I'm having to strip any and all hc personality I gave to certain fandom characters just to create more distance, which sucks.

It gets hurtful after a while, especially considering Geragera has more than just one inspiration... but yeah, a lot of my old stuff got purged and personally archived for my own growth. Truly sorry about that, and for the being a lengthy explanation. Truth be told I also needed a reason to get this off of my chest but I was never prompted until now. For future reference though (and this goes for just about anyone) I would greatly appreciate if you asked permission before making a crosspost sharing my work. There's a good chance I probably would have said no on that one. Anything that remains on this site is either too sentimental to get rid of or still close enough to the source material to stick around.

#mail found under the secret rock #ruckis borks #even now I'm debating whether or not to add key tags I'm afraid people wont take this well #but I might have to #mario and luigi rpg #fawful #order of the stars #geragera guffaw #just to get the word out their and prevent future confusion #*there

[flowersandbigteeth]

Hiiii 😭New in blog!

Do you have any tips/source in writing orcs?

Bc planning to do some bc got the spark your fics an inspiration 😩😩🙌

Halllooo! Welcome! 🥰 I started answering this question and it got so long 😭 I could honestly write an essay on this, there's so much to think about. So my candid thoughts are below 👇🏽

As far as pop culture goes: I generally like Durotan in the warcraft movie as my favorite Orc "look". I'm not too inspired by Tolkien's Orcs personally, but technically the DnD Orcs are based on that description. I started out basing my Orcs and half Orcs on the DnD races and elder scrolls online (orsimer are an orc like race) and then it grew into developing my own lore.

The DnD community is great because there are a lot of OCs to consider for reference and spin off games and lore, though (not saying you would, just for those who need to be reminded) you shouldn't steal other people's OCs. You can browse OCs on toyhouse and Pinterest, as well. Warhammer, Magic, and Warframe also have orc type characters to look at for character design ideas. Tolkien originally developed his Orcs from old English monsters, so that would be an interesting rabbit hole to jump down for inspiration.

Aside from the aesthetics there is a big pitfall to look out for when writing Orcs specifically:

Orcs started out as a villain race, but I find that extremely reductive. Orcs deserve culture, art, motives, and a spectrum of personalities. Tolkien's Orcs have been criticized as well as DnD rules about Orcs. I'm not going to do a deep dive into that because there is a lot to parse through. You can look it up if it interests you. There is far, far more discussion on it than I'm going to get into right now.

But my ultra, ultra simplified take away from what I've read is it's important to acknowledge the personhood of any character you write. And that's true for any writing really. Not to say you can't write an orc as a villain, but, for example, there is difference between writing a mindless killing machine and a villain with a personality, motive, strengths and weaknesses, and backstory if that makes sense.

If they are a mindless killing machine, there should be a reason other than Orc=bad. What happened to them to make them that way? Is there a societal expectation that they are trying to live up to? Do they have an internal struggle about it or do they feel justified for their violence? Are they under a spell or brainwashed? Why is that?

Villains are tricky because you want a satisfying ending, the villain may be complex, but they have to reach a point of no return where the hero has to act. So what was it that sent them off the edge? Vanity? Greed? Revenge? Etc.

Separate from Orcs it is a good way to look at all monster writing. As the counterpart to "born sexy yesterday" I think "born evil yesterday" is also kinda blah.

I'm not at all going to say I am great at this, it's often hard to create full, complex characters in short fiction but it's something to strive for. I'm sure I have characters on this blog I could have developed better, but I try to keep it in the back of my mind the more I learn about writing.

It's the same for an Orc hero. Orcs aren't dumb, malleable studs. I personally like expanding on Orcs canon skills (strength, loyalty, stamina, leadership) and flesh them out. Saber is strong, but he's also nimble and charming. Reven is big and can be scary, but is skilled in style and fashion, as well as being steadfast and loyal. Cedar is a warrior but studious and kind. Golmad loves weapons and is a leader but also gentle and good humored.

For visual ideas, I look at a lot of different styles and cultures, but it usually has a lot to do with the environment. I like to look at ye olde hairstyle and clothing ideas relevant to the place the Orcs are from, if that makes sense? Like if they lived in the artic you'd look for cultures that live in cold weather and draw inspiration from the materials they would have at hand for processing, sewing, and decorating.

In general, I tend to lean on more traditional depictions of mountain Orcs, but jazzed up? I don't like ripped, careless dirty rags, but clean, utilitarian and neatly cut leather and furs, as they are big hunters there rather than farmers. If they live in a village or town they'd wear whatever is in fashion, cotton or linen. Where are they from, their social class, and what types of clothes would be best for that environment are good questions to ask when developing costumes, next their personality. Whether they are vain, utilitarian, or cocky and like to roll around with their shirt off. 😸 I think keeping the environment and personality at the forefront of your mind, you won't fall into cliche traps. There's nothing wrong with having dirty ripped clothes but if it doesn't make any sense in the context of the world you're building it flattens the character. The assumption that Orcs are filthy or unskilled at tailoring by nature doesn't work for me.

Idk without going on too long, I hope some of that helps?

#sweet asks #sweet anons #orc lore #orc headcanons #orc boyfriend #monster romance

[minevn]

Here we go again talking about "Mine" and explaining my absence. For the past month or two I've been questioning myself if I want to put Mine on a hiatus(Which I didn't feel was surprising considering that I've vented about the game so much on this blog, I'm sorry for that). I wouldn't be getting rid of it and I would be heading back to it eventually, but I just needed to step away and really think about what I wanted to do. At this point in time I'm still questioning what I want to do. Long story short Mine won't be getting released any time soon and it needs a lot of work to be done on it, in every way.

I think my biggest issue was rushing into this project. I was so SO excited to just get my story out and talk about my characters and ideas, but I had almost nothing set in stone or planned out. Some of my favorite story aspects I created after I made this blog, granted it wasn't a obvious change since it had to do with spoilers, and story aspect kind of just fit together to make a bigger plot twist. I still love what I've created thus far, but it needs so much work, and it feels weird and off to have changes just happen with the characters and story.

I was getting bored of certain characters and the art style. I won't be getting rid of any characters because even the ones who don't seem that important to the overall plot are still important, but I'll be changing/upgrading character designs. And especially changing the art style. I was really disliking my style for Mine and even more so after the Halloween drawing. I did practice around a bit and I found a style I like, but it's still not set in stone.

This is kind of what I was thinking. The eyes have a more defined shape, the nose is different, the hair is more detailed. I've also been wanted to mess around with coloring and shading. And once again this style is not set in stone, but this is what I'm leaning towards as of now. I want the game to have an anime style for reasons, but I did also try a style that's more mine I guess? Like I drew Yani in the style I draw in the most, the style that's most consistent to me. I mainly did this because one my bestfriends has been helping me sort out my own feelings and she said to at least try a more cartoon style even if the anime style is what I'm aiming for in the end.

I obviously I do like the style, but it's just not what I'm going for, so I was going to try drawing different eyes styles and then I would build a face to match that.

I did like these, but it didn't inspire me and I didn't want these for Mine. So this is what I've been working on for now, I'm trying t build my interest in this story again. I know I've talked about it before, but Yani and Jun's designs are the ones I'm most proud about(maybe Aki as well, if I change anything it wouldn't be too extreme), but the other characters will be getting an upgrade, in design, story, and personality.

Minato in particular. I feel so bad because as much as I like Minato, he feels so plain to me. Like I don't have fun writing him or drawing him. There are things I do really enjoy about him, like his hair style, and his yellow eyes. But I'm bored with pretty much everything else about him, and that's not a good sign, he's the first route, the first character to be released. he needs something to draw in the player, but I don't feel like he has that. I don't know where to really go with him though. I think the fact that he's the least yandere is charming and important, like to lure the player into a false sense of security, almost as if they were just playing a normal visual novel/dating sim with routes, and then the creepy stuff starts mainly happening with the other routes, but obviously I need something to make his route exciting.

In the meantime asks will most likely not be answered until I've figured the characters out more. When I figure out the characters as well, I want to go back and slowly work on updating previous asks to fit the new personality and stories. I'll probably make a poll on how to go about that just in case people want the old answered asks or something. Maybe I could just do something like-

Old: bhjdhsvjagjhasgd

New: VHJDhfdjgshdf

I don't know as of now. I also want to go back and update my 100 followers event drawings, and obviously finish that. Which by the way I am so sorry to everyone who sent in requests, for that event and just in general. Me struggling with Mine's art style has been a thing, even with the refs, there were some refs that I just hated how they turned out(cough cough Hoshi). I also have been practicing with more cartoon(?) styles, so working on a game with an anime style reminds me of my past styles, which I hated because I got those feeling of hating my style or falling behind my peers who were finding their style. I'm a lot better with it now, but I felt like I was falling back into old habits/styles, and it was upsetting.

While I was planning my hiatus, I kept thinking about some of my other game ideas because if I was going to go on hiatus I would focus on another one of my games with a more simple style(Since I wondered if complexity of the style was also an issue for my lack of motivation with Mine), and I do like my other games and ideas and characters, but none of hem were appealing to me like how Mine did. I went into Mine so excited and ready to talk and share my characters, but with my other stories I was just feeling more unmotivated with them, other then "The Magi Academy" which makes sense since that is my comfort story but also I'm gonna work on this in the background since the game is huge.

Another thing I thought about doing while on hiatus was making a test game, where I get used to making games, where I practice. Cause Mine is my first game, but I'm not sure I want it to actually be my first game, but I have no interest in my other games as of now so this game would be simple, a little test to get used to everything that comes with making a game. I'll probably work on this while I'm working on the art style for Mine and the character designs. It will have multiple routes and characters. I wouldn't really call it a dating sim, there will be romance elements but I think more then anything it will be a little "get to know my oc's" type story. Maybe I'll talk about it more if anyone if interested. Although when I make games in the future I'll either make the blogs later, when the game is almost finished or if finished, or at least claim the name and work on them later.

I'd say that Mine is going on a hiatus, at least with this blog, but I will be working on it! Mine won't be getting released soon and when I made this blog I didn't expect Mine to come out this year. Another thing I want to end up doing is dev logs, maybe weekly or monthly, it won't happen soon, but eventually I want to do dev logs. As of now though, I have a lot to think about with the characters and the story/stories. I'll probably work on character personalities and stories before their actual design so I can get back to writing asks, and then I'll be redoing refs and any bigger drawings I've done so far. I also want to have a schedule for answering asks, so I'll probably spend the weekends answering asks and then the weekdays I'll be working on the game, but this is for the future. My ask box and messages will be open though if anyone has any questions :3 I hope that this will help me regain the passion and excitement that I hold for this story, have a great day/night, and thank you for you continued support🩵

#Sorry for my absence #it will happen again #Jun and Yani will stay pretty much the same #their designs are more what I'm used to #more detailed I guess #if they do get any change it wouldn't be too extreme #Although I do want to work on writing Yani better #really amplifying those yandere tendencies #esp the identity theft since that was a really interesting topic to write!! #I don't plan on changing everything about the other characters either though just things that I think could use some changing and updating #id like to keep you guys updated with character designs and art style ideas though! #sorry to come back with some negative news but i wanted to come clean and be honest about my feelings with mine

[ut-versotale]

A Trip Down Nostalgia Lane

This AU's been in existence for so long, and the most current iteration is so wildly different from the rest. As such, I felt it'd be kinda cool to show you guys how the AU's progressed over the years. I don't think it's too big of a problem to reveal what the initial plans were for each iteration, what I liked and didn't like, and my thought process behind forgoing the old ones

If you don't particularly care for all that, here's the iterations' major characters lined up. (Iteration 4 I only have revealed Asriel and Undyne, so the rest I've designed so far are silhouetted)

Iteration 0.5

Oh boy, where to begin with this one...?

I number it "0.5" and not "1" because there were only two parts that never even officially released on this Tumblr blog. I did upload Part 1 for an April Fool's joke a while ago. But really, it was only ever present on the TS!Underswap Discord server over half a decade ago.

To put it bluntly, Versotale at this point was just a reskinned Undertale roleswap AU. The personalities, while I tried to keep them intact, were not the main driving force. As such:

Asriel is a silent protagonist (And not in a cool clever way like Kris; I mean just straight-up silent)

The only difference with Undyne as a narrator was noting that Frisk was a human at the first save point

Flowey had a more formal speech pattern but was otherwise barely affected despite carrying Chara's consciousness. They weren't even named Asthana yet.

Frisk... well, I can give my past self this, he certainly made an effort to differentiate Frisk from Toriel. I can't say he did a GOOD job at that, but they certainly were different. Awkward dialogue, though, and not much sense behind why they were the mayor of the Ruins at 13 years old

Overall, you can 100% tell I made this as a young teen. Awkward dialogue, barely any effort put into the concept, unoriginal...

It's pretty easy to see why I forewent this version of the AU. Only two parts were ever made. I must thank @beethovenus who gave me a lot of very helpful critiques, such as giving Asriel a voice and making original sprites rather than using sprite edits, as well as encouraging me to make this Tumblr blog for it. Thus, brings us to what I'd like to consider the first PROPER attempt at this AU...

Iteration 1

Ah, this one... this ALSO lasted only two parts. Can't remember why. But I made a lot more headway on this one. Quality aside, I am happy that I had the guts to try and make original sprites of my own back then, even if they aren't particularly good compared to now.

This was where I really attempted to make the characters act noticeably different. Though there were still quite a lot of problems, some that would even persist all the way up until Iteration 4.

I wanted to give Asriel a combination of his regular and Flowey personalities. A cool idea on paper, but the lore doesn't support him acting like that well enough. Thus, I refer to this version of him as Sassriel. This was one of those problems that persisted up until Iteration 3.

Undyne having this snarky back-and-forth with Sassriel. Again, cool idea on paper, but it is not supported by her personality in Undertale, nor the altered circumstances in VT Iteration 1. Also, with Undyne being a disembodied consciousness, it means she's merely an observer of the story and not an active participant, meaning her dialogue got very boring very fast. Undyne in canon was always an active character, so putting her in a role that basically FORCED her to be a passive character was maybe one of the worst decisions I could've made that lasted way too long, all the way until Iteration 4.

You'll notice a whole bunch of characters that never actually saw the light of day in the comic. In the bottom row, starting from left to right, there would have been Pepper (Who DID have a design but I've lost it), Donavan, Dr. Aakil, Lily, and Queen Alice. There's not much to say about them story-wise since I mainly just got the designs down, and you can probably guess what the plot was gonna be like given this was the early days of the AU where it was still very much following the Undertale formula. I think the only UNIQUE things I should mention are that Aakil's version of the amalgamates would've been cyborgs.

Iteration 2

This is the one that's lasted the longest (so far), managing to push its way into the Cold West. I tried to break out of the Undertale formula a tiny bit with this one, to varying degrees of success. There's not much history I can recall or find with this iteration, but I suppose I can give a character rundown of the ones you never saw, ironically enough all positioned on the bottom row again.

Donavan... not very unique compared to Undyne. The main gimmick that separated him from her, I think, was that he had gloves designed by Aakil that were soul-powered.

Valencia... a new character who was meant to be an expanded version of Napstablook's role. Fun fact: Valencia's hooded trenchcoat design there was originally Pepper's Iteration 1 design.

Everyone else was... about what you'd expect.

Looking back on this version, I am... honestly very embarrassed by how badly I butchered the Cold West. I wanted to do so many cool things, like a bounty on Asriel's head and all. But my God... Spade and Pepper sucked so much. Especially Pepper. For characters who at this point were meant to be this AU's replacement of Sans and Papyrus... what poor substitutes.

And honestly, I think that's why I scrapped this one; because I hated the Cold West and how I did it. It felt rushed, awkwardly-written, bad characterization, horrifically-bad puzzles, etc. Thus, Iteration 3 was made.

Iteration 3: Hybrid

I nicknamed this short-lived one "Hybrid" for multiple reasons.

It's where Deltarune became an extremely prevalent influence in Versotale's universe. So no longer is Versotale just an Undertale AU, it can also be considered a Deltarune AU as well.

Many characters could be considered hybrids at this point. Asriel and Undyne shared determination and a body. And, more interestingly, the Mettaton role also shared a body with Mettaton. More about that in a bit

When I was making Part 10-B of Iteration 2, Iteration 3 was meant to flow naturally into it, effectively replacing all of what had came beforehand. That never worked out.

Ultimately, I abandoned this version because it just simply wasn't doing it for me. By this point, the project was beginning to feel stale and boring. Despite my attempts to make a new unique storyline, it just kinda... felt like it was still following in Undertale's footsteps far too much. I mean, you've got the protagonist kid, an old fallen member of their species, the double-crossing flower, a mentor who's lived in a secluded area all their life, a chef who wants to join the guard, a tough grizzled guard captain, a morally-dubious scientist, a celebrity, a monarch... you see how I became dislliusioned with the quality of what was supposed to be my "Unique Undertale storyline." The most unique thing at this point WAS probably Spade. But still, many elements of this version of the story were very fleshed-out. I tried to turn Pepper into a character who wasn't just a bargain-bin Papyrus clone, I had come up with a more unique Hotland area, and it probably could've turned out really nice.

I think the thing I genuinely really liked from this old version was that Shella (This iteration's celebrity character) actually was also possessed by Mettaton. There was this huge backstory thing where the scientist character had monster dust and was injecting humans with it, and since Mettaton was a ghost, his consciousness became attached to Shella's and served as her sort of "assistant." He gave her all the tips and confidence to become famous and gave Mettaton the opportunity to indirectly entertain humans like he always wanted. While a cool idea on paper, having... well, essentially Mettaton technically in the same place as canon Undertale again just felt cheap and lazy. Not to mention it only continued my disillusionment with my "unique story" being far too similar to Undertale for comfort.

But the Surface shenanigans this iteration... man, for as weird as Gaster being king was, I had such a cool thing planned for all the Ebottobia characters. It's something I wanna carry over into Iteration 4 to a certain extent.

Iteration 4: "King Asriel"

This one's really freaking cool. Going back to the drawing board completely, the story resembles almost nothing like Undertale's, with the sole exception of the main premise: People underground, free them from imprisonment through peace or violence.

I'm so proud of these ideas so far, you have no idea. The new Ruins area I'm excited for, the new Cold West feels like an actual proper flowing storyline now, the other areas have way more uniqueness, the characters feel like their own characters with their own stories now (Even the ones that appear in canon), the plot feels completely different... I think you all are really going to like it

That's all. Just felt like taking a trip down memory lane and share some ideas and designs the public never got to see.

#undertale #undertale au #versotale

[genericpuff]

Hope you don't mind my asking but do you mind elaborating on why you don't like Mongie too much? I know all about why everyone dislikes Let's Play itself. There are various videos and post upon post online tearing it to shreds with criticism but I've not heard much about the creator herself like I do Rachel Smythe. Does she also run into the same issues that Rachel does or is her behavior different but equally questionable/annoying?

It's kinda equally questionable, kinda different. They both have the same issues of like, fetishizing youthfulness and creating unhealthy power dynamics. They also haven't done a great job at depicting POC in their comics, you can tell they're written by white women who don't understand other cultures but are trying to make their series more "progressive" by including stand-ins for representation.

That said, considering Let's Play is set in a real world setting, the POC characters (and the casually racist issues in their writing) are a lot more obvious than in LO (where you have to know the context that the neon-colored nymphs are based on POC to really realize that they're lower class POC people who are getting the shit end of the stick from the rich upper class main protagonists).

And I don't even mean in the usual "there aren't any POC in this comic" or "the POC in this comic are stereotypical/poorly written", I mean in the sort of white-victim-complex "I added in other ethnicities and people got mad at me anyways so what more do you want!" kind of way (paired with the "they're poorly written and stereotypical" aspect).

Dean is a good example of the stereotypical designing and writing, IIRC he's a Hispanic man but he's written like some Spanish soap opera character who flirts with every woman he sees and always has rose petals falling around him.

Even in that sentence he says "part Asian" which is weird because he's looking for Marshall who's supposed to be his best friend and it's been established in the comic that Marshall is half-Japanese, but that brings us to the other instance of mongie being casually (if not directly) racist and even more so than with Dean...

Apparently mongie thought it was a good move to say that it was "more inclusive" to make Vikki only vaguely Asian. Which is just... so not true LOL Asia is an entire continent made up of MANY different cultures and ethnicities and so generalizing all of them to just "Asian" is not a great take from someone who's trying to seem "more inclusive".

But of course, when her community called her out on this and asked her to elaborate, she and her mod team basically dug their heels in and made up excuses that made mongie out to be a victim instead of just acknowledging she made an error that didn't connect well with members of her audience.

And theeen in comes mongie ready to torch the place. Note that up until this point, it's basically been her mod team speaking up on her behalf and giving her benefit of the doubt, so when mongie DID get her chance to speak, she jumped right to:

"FINE, SHE'S HALF CHINESE HALF KOREAN THEN, STFU AND STOP ANALYZING ME WHEN I INCLUDE CHARACTERS FROM RACES THAT DON'T ALIGN WITH MY OWN !!!" (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻ is very much the vibe people got from this, understandably so. It's also odd (and extremely privileged) for her to say that she'd "rather focus on a character's personality and not their race" because it's very "I don't see color" which has been proven to be counterintuitive to understanding and celebrating different races.

And then we get a lot of self-victimizing "well I can't win no matter what so you people are ungrateful and actually it's MY feelings that are hurt" excuses:

Again it's weird because she had NO problem specifying that Marshall was half-Japanese and she didn't make him into any sort of weird stereotype like she did with Vikki. So I don't know why she's having such a hard time grasping that being vaguely Asian for Vikki isn't inclusive.

Although, let's be real here, the only reason Marshall is half-Japanese at all is because he's a self-insert of Markiplier, a half-Korean Youtuber who mongie apparently worked for on payroll as a graphic designer prior to Let's Play. Which is just a whole layer of ick that I think surpasses even Rachel Smythe and Mads Mikkelson. Like the Rachel and Mads thing is definitely creepy and weird because she's literally drawn herself - an adult woman nearing her 40's - being swept off her feet by a smoochy-faced Mads. But at least she didn't work for the guy or ever interact with him directly like mongie did with Markiplier. That's a whole separate level of "ew".

That said, mongie continues:

Which is just such a half-assed non-apology. Not "I'm sorry for misrepresenting a culture" or "I'm sorry I didn't do proper research", but "I'm sorry people think I'm being insensitive or that they need specific representation in my work that I'm claiming to be representation to be good". Completely shifting the blame from herself onto her audience for not being happy with the bare minimum that she gave them.

There's more though. Probably one of the worst parts and it's not even her, but one of her mods:

The fact that this is one of mongie's mods telling mongie's audience that her feelings - as a white woman who's just legitimately patronized her audience - are more valid than the people whose feelings were hurt by mongie being so insensitive... it's a real gross move and I can't believe they even pulled that.

Oh, and of course, as people like this tend to do, she goes on about "cancel culture" and how "terrifying" it is to her and then comes up with some imaginary scenario where a kid pays a hitman to kill her ?? as a defense for herself that really just further victimizes herself over her own misled actions ??

And this is something mongie does a lot, at least in this instance - she comes up with justifications for her decisions based on completely imaginary scenarios that she came up with and assumed, rather than just, idk, doing her research and being open to learning new things about cultures she's clearly not educated on. Shit like "well if I do xyz you'll be mad at me anyways so fuck you!"

When in reality? No one would have been mad at her if she didn't have any non-white characters in her comic. Would readers be disappointed? Probably. But - and I can't speak for everybody out there obviously so this is just my opinion - I know I'd much rather representation from someone who wanted to represent my respective groups and identities and put love and effort into it, than get it from someone who was just doing it because they made up a scenario in their head that they would be cancelled for not doing it. No one really has any tangible ground to stand on if they get mad at you for writing a cast of all-white characters you wanted to write, there are plenty of webtoons like that on the platform. We do need more stories that uplift and represent POC voices, but it shouldn't be from white victim complex people who only do it to virtue signal and ensure they don't get "cancelled". You know what WILL get you cancelled? Attempting to write other ethnicities and racial groups purely based on stereotypes for the sake of "representation" and then getting mad when people ask you to be a little more specific than "Asian".

Oh yeah, and then have your mods censor/delete any mentioning of educational resources regarding Asian cultures, and then essentially dox one of your community members by revealing their Twitter to the entire Discord group to boot!

oh boy mongie, if you think THAT'S drama, wait until you see the shit I do here LMAO

#so yeah that's the tea on mongie #don't write characters outside of your own worldview if you aren't prepared to do the research #it's OKAY if you're white and only familiar with writing white characters #just don't go writing POC or other ethnicities and then acting like a martyr over it when people call you out for it being badly done #bare minimum stereotypical vague representation is just as harmful as no representation #webtoon critical #ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything

[dross-the-fish]

Just pointing out that as a creator you do have some obligation to your audience. I notice a pattern with you where your responses are affectively "go find another artist" I find that dismissive of people who are upset about how you depict their beloved characters.

Your characters who aren't OCs belong to the fandom and the fandom has a right to correct you. Our comfort characters are not your toys. Artists of your caliber who also write aren't as common as you seem to think so it's not as easy as you think to "find another artist"

We came here for you. The least you can do is appreciate that. If everyone just left to "find another artist" your blog would be nothing. Have some fucking respect.

Ok, I've had a few asks like this and I've been mostly ignoring them but I think we need to have a conversation about "respect" since you're so concerned about it.

Most of the "criticism" I've gotten has been to the effect of "I believe Erik and Christine are in love," "I don't personally prefer your version of Hyde due to my subjective tastes" and "Adam is a helpless victim and Victor is evil," I've even had people complain that my design for Erik doesn't have enough hair. I don't think it's disrespectful of me to call these out as being shallow or based purely on preference rather than literary merit.

You're allowed to have these opinions and I'm allowed to disagree with you. And I do, I vehemently disagree with all of these. I have weighed and considered them and decided not to indulge them.

I'm not trying to be ungrateful but at this point my versions of these characters are my own creations and I have decided how much or how little I want them to deviate from canon. I'm sorry you don't feel like you can find another artist who's style you like but my work is what it is and I'm not changing it. People are either here because they enjoy what I make or they'll leave and if it happens one day that not a single person on tumblr enjoys what I make then I'll just delete this blog and I will go elsewhere to seek a new audience or maybe just stop sharing online all together.

I do appreciate everyone who is here and I think my regular followers and my mutuals are all lovely people that I enjoy seeing every day but people like you, anon, you make me feel like a vending machine that's getting kicked because I didn't stock the right candy. I know I'm also not the only artist on this platform who has been made to feel this way by people like you. I've known artists and writers who actively quit producing anything online because attitudes like yours made them lose their ability to enjoy sharing their creativity. So maybe you should consider having some fucking respect before you and everyone with your mindset drives creators off the platform.

[tails-artwork]

Gaming Thoughts - October 2023 - Xenoblade Chronicles X

Ever since the announcement of the Wii-U's internet being discontinued, I had found myself going back to this game after so many years. Also, knowing me as a small disclaimer, you may be seeing this game a bit from me as well. XD

I had actually picked up XCX back at Launch and played it quite a bit, but because things got busy and also there was a point that I was stuck in the game, I had put it down for a period of time and said that I would come back to working on it later when things calmed down a bit. Well...now became that later so I may be a little scrambling to get things in it somewhat gone through. At least get some of the online-only content in there at the least before it is no longer accessible. (I know that Pretendo could be an option in the future, but I'm not 100% confident on if they will be able to get XCX up and running through their service since looking at their roadmap it isn't quite a priority yet and also I just have great skepticism on fan projects of this large of a scale ever getting finished as well, so it is more or less a 'I'll believe it when I see it deal')

Though coming back to this game now, I've been enjoying it a LOT more now that I'm finally able to understand certain mechanics. The game does jack-shit to explain how some mechanics with the battle system works (ESPECIALLY Overdrive most of all) and the digital manual is like a pain for me to even go through as well (and why I miss physical manuals in games, dammit) either way, after a bit of research and such I've been finding myself highly enjoying it more and more now at this point. It already was my favourite game as it was even with how difficult it was being before, but now only just cemented it even further.

Just as a note for anyone that may want to try to get into the game, DON'T ever approach it the same way you do with normal JRPGs, if you do and just try to go at it entirely for the main story and only hit the side missions here and there, you will find yourself disappointed since the main story itself doesn't present a lot of development for the other characters as it was with the exception of one. You get more of your development of the characters and even of the world itself through the affinity missions and the side missions most of all. Even most of the sidequests have a lot of their own little storyline to them as well too that helps expand more on the world and everything.

I actually wish this game will get at the very least a port to the modern consoles, though. Or even at least Nintendo's next console since because it was on the Wii-U it hardly got a lot of attention as it was and not a lot of people would have played it, but more of all, I would actually also would love to see there be a sequel as well considering there are so many things that are still unanswered as well that I would love to find some resolution to.

Anyways, when I played this game, I made my primary OC, Conrad, being my custom character as well. So I tried to draw him with at least the equipment that I have currently in-game. Out of the weapon types that there are, because of some of the prior things that I have done with him, I felt that out of the weapon options in the game, the Sniper Rifle was still the best one that did fit him as well and I'm still keeping that as being the main weapon that I'm basing my build around. (You have a LOT of options of how to make your build and a few different weapon options to use. You have to have one ranged and one melee weapon in your setup, but with how the game is designed, you really cannot balance your build between the two and it becomes more of one being your main damage dealer and the other being essentially there for support because of the arts that are available to it.)

Either way, odds are likely I'll be playing this game quite a bit either until I get a lot of things finished up finally or after the end of April, whichever comes first so if I end up needing to cover this game again because of this, I'll try to at least make it more on that month's summary as opposed to the game as a whole. XD

(All in all, I don't think I will ever see this being dethroned as one of my top favourite games anytime soon)

#Xenoblade #Xenoblade Chronicles X #my work #my OCs #conrad strasburg #Gaming thoughts