#great rogue designs too

[theoryofrefraction]

I've also been playing p06. I've never played the original so idk how it compares, but it's a good game in it's own right, and I feel like it's giving me a good picture of what sonic games can be.

#especially compared to the old game that is adventure oof #like there's still issues but it overall plays really solidly and I've been having fun with it #you can see the bones of the adventure games in it too! #like the spin dash noise is the same and it's mapped to the same button #and the homing attack is also a sort of double jump here and you can still homing attack springs #but it's also got so much more development than that #like everybody have more moves and the level design is just straight up better #like #apologies to adventure fans #but yesterday I got stuck on sky deck for maybe multiple hours because I couldn't figure out to progress #go the fourth pillar. there's a rocket there. #there was not a rocket there #I had to go to the fourth pillar and then take a left back towards the start of the level #and then left again to where the rocket was #this did not happen in project 06 #like I did get lost for a bit in the shadow level where you have to turn off the searchlights but I never got LOST lost #also I just feel like it controls better and that p06 is living up to it's name of being a good remake #excited to try out adventure 2 though! #I hear it's fairly different from 1 and also better storywise at least #and I want to see shadow and rogue and omega's debut because they're all great #all me

[cannedinternets]

Yanno, a thing i see a LOT in fics is that the Batfam think Danny is a meta, b/c ghosts don't exist. Which is valid, i mean they ARE a team of detectives with a shitton of wacky themed rogues and, at least on batman's part, a noted distaste for and disbelief in magic and the supernatural.

But bruce and tim have both worked with ghosts directly. (Maybe the others too? fuck there's a LOT of comics and animated series and-) So i think it would be much funnier if they think he's not a ghost, b/c Ghosts Don't Work That Way.

In fact, b/c Communication Is Not The Batman's Strong Suit, I think it's funny if all of them are wrong but for different reasons.

Bruce - has worked with Deadman. You can't see or interact with ghosts without magical outside intervention. Thinks Danny is a magic user who transforms a la Shazam/Captain Marvel.

Dick - Clown trauma? Mind control Trauma? One of your rogues tried to brainwash you to be his son/weapon? Damn kid you're like me if i had it even worse. Thinks Danny is a "regular" kid vigilante with a schtick.

Babs - Well the video evidence she can find deffo lines up with him being a super, but there's a hardcore blackout around his town, he doesn't legally exist, AND any outside info she runs into is usually cutoff by someone (tucker or technus depending), AND he's mentioned cloning. So he's probably a designer "cloned" (ugh dc that's not how cloning works) meta kid that's being taken advantage of by the government and/or cadmus.

Cass - Thinks Danny is a terrible liar (true) who is counting on the refuge in audacity to keep people from realizing what he is (also true). Thinks he's someone who got themed meta powers in a lab accident and is playing up the ghost thing b/c he fights ghosts constantly.

Jason - Glowing green eyes? Ability to manifest green constructs that look like they're made of goo? Constant death jokes? Aww, this dude is just another me but he is also a meta/somehow got anime girl powers out of getting dunked in the lazarus pits.

Tim - worked with Secret. Ghosts can fly, shapeshift, go intangible, teleport, posses people. Thinks phantom is an actual ghost that is possessing/overshadowing Danny, possibly consensually? He's looking into it. Ironically, is the closest to the truth.

Steph - Hasn't seen Danny do anything that the other bats can't do, and HAS seen him work on an engineering project for 16 hours straight. Thinks Danny is something like the bats, either under-powered or completely non-powered and makes up for it with tech and mystique. Also thinks Danny is a great ally in gremlinship.

Duke - his Ghost Sight does NOT play well with ghosts, ironically. Thinks Danny is some sort of eldritch horror with a human guise. He seems cool tho, Duke isn't gonna judge someone based on looks even if they do give him migraines.

Damian - thinks that Danny is a Pit Demon and you are all insane.

Jarro - thinks Danny is a Green Martian. Also thinks Danny is awesome.

#dpxdc #danny phantom #batfam

[artbyblastweave]

Recently a post has been doing the rounds about military propaganda in the latest COD, yea yeah, sky’s blue, fork in kitchen, et al et al. This got me thinking about the shooters I actually play, and one thing that strikes me about the multiplayer shooters I play is that a lot of them dodge that same major discourse bullet by expressly grounding themselves in amorality and Kafka-esque dysfunction- a structural fingerwag towards their own content, acting as a paradoxical green-light to enjoy the game with no sense of moral injury. And there’s a big example of one that didn’t do this that kinda winds up with egg on its face as a result. 

To start with, I’m thinking about Team Fortress 2. The original Team Fortress, inasmuch as it’s possible for a game where you shoot each other with real firearms to be apolitical, was fairly apolitical. The soldiers had no markers of identity beyond their arbitrary team affiliation; the fighting was over no discernable real-life resource or point of political tension; the environments were decontextualized labs and facilities. It was platonic violence. 

Team Fortress 2 rolls around. Now that the general novelty of a 3d multiplayer class shooter has eroded, development stalls out on the following aesthetic problem; you can’t have semi-realistic militaristic character models rocket-jumping themselves across the map in the early 2000s. The cartoonishness is too dissonant when you’ve got similar semi-realistic militaristic characters in much more “grounded” games. Eventually they resolve this by taking the other tack, leaning into the cartoonishness, crafting character models so completely bombastic and over the top that no action taken in gameplay, no matter how absurd, will ever feel dissonant. This philosophy extends into the map design; the environments are farcical. Military instillations built mere yards from each other, with paper-thin pretenses of being civilian facilities despite the constant gun battles occurring inside. It’s self parody. And when the game extends to the point of having lore and worldbuilding, the idiocy becomes diegetic. This is a conflict fought on the behalf of idiots, by idiots, over idiot-goals, in spaces designed by idiots. It’s completely amoral, but it’s also contained amorality, since the fighting doesn’t spill out of these Helleresque Designated Pointless Fight Zones- and that leaves the mercs sympathetic enough that you can play them as protagonists in stories that take place “off-the-clock” without a ton of tonal dissonance. I can’t stress enough that the TF2 protagonists are amoral PMCs who work for callous megacorps. In a vacuum, this is not a well-regarded Kind Of Guy around here. There is some implementation of this broad concept that would invite a shitload of discourse that I’ve never seen materialize!

A lot of hero-or-character-based multiplayer games do this, abandoning any pretense of player heroism or productivity in the conceit in a way that shields them from a lot of moral and logical criticisms. Apex Legends and Monday Night Combat are explicitly in-universe bloodsports. Atlas Reactor and Rogue Company are cyberpunk corp-on-corp warfare. Dirty Bomb is about loosely affiliated mercenaries picking over the remains of an evacuated city. I think that Valorant is PMCs in a resource war (Not completely sure on this one.) The never-released Battlecry was expressly tied to actual nation-states, an alternate history where great powers fight wars via singularly-powerful champions instead of via traditional warfare. And in Battleborn the PCs were a hastily-assembled coalition of smaller hastily-assembled coalitions, which means that it makes perfect sense that any combination of these people might be fighting alongside or against each other, at any given time.

Here we see commonalities. Amoral participants. Larger governing bodies delineating clear fight zones centered on specific, if deliberately silly or petty, goals. Most crucially, PCs that are very loosely affiliated with each other, such that you’d see them in different configurations, fight to fight, day to day, as they’re contracted or shuffled around by the powers that be.

You know a game that doesn’t do any of this? Overwatch. 

Overwatch gets 80% of the way to being a superhero universe; it falls short primarily because Blizzard chose not to explicitly market it as such, but it’s got everything short of the purposeful brand designation- powered heroes, super science, codenames, Faceless Hydraesque terrorist groups with shadowy, powered enforcers. There are specific allegiances implied by this; specific policy and interpersonal goals implied by this that aren’t really reflected in six-on-six grudge matches in a smattering of inexplicably depopulated civilian environments. There are roughly half-a-dozen villains associated with Talon, four or five independent villainous mercenaries, and everyone else is a would-be superhero. Why is most of the core roster of the world’s premier superhero team performing some kind of terror attack in London? Why is a woman who murdered a civil rights leader trying to stop them, with the help of two avowed anti-Omnic mercenaries and three Omnics? Why did a cryogenics researcher weaponize her tech and come along for the ride? Why are a dozen envoys from tech conglomerates, grassroots movements, and paramilitary defense forces throwing down over a Gazebo in a charming Greek resort? Fuck if I know. Fuck if the writers know!

So, to round it out, I think that there’s a structural difficulty for multiplayer shooters to stand for something, or advance a philosophy, or whatever. The smart ones embrace this by shielding themselves in ablative nihilism, preemptively deflecting criticism by painting the gameplay as hollow and barbaric, but fun! But Overwatch- Overwatch 2′s tagline is “Get back in the fight.” What Fight? Why? Against Who? Call Of Duty might be a horrific mouthpiece for militarism and imperialism, but when it valorizes the military, it’s at least picking a side! Overwatch is just so strange to me because it’s somehow got the worst of both worlds- it uses these heroic, aspirational language and visuals to hype up a gameplay loop that’s ultimately the exact same kind of cynical, aimless abattoir as the games that are smart enough to explicitly be about amoral paid killers!

#thoughts #meta #I don't think any of this is new #but it occurred to me #video games #media analysis #team fortress 2 #tf2

[seekinghelp-adhd]

Chance Encounters (Maribat idea I'm throwing around)

Marinette moves to Gotham to pursue fashion. She has to finish her last year of high school at Gotham Academy and do an internship over the summer, but if she does she gets a massive scholarship to Gotham University. They were more than happy to help out Jagged Stone's famously young personal designer. Obviously, this puts her in classes with Damien Wayne, who barely talks and only ever calls his brothers by their last names.

Jagged insists on setting her up in a penthouse for her stay in Gotham, but Marinette argues that being a single girl living in a fancy penthouse is like asking one of the Gotham rogues to kidnap or rob her. They compromise on a nice apartment with a state of the art security system, one owned by Wayne Enterprises. Another tenant on her same floor, Jason Todd, stops by to scope out the new neighbor. He seems nice enough, but he keeps calling his older brother "Dick" and Marinette can't tell if that's his name or just an insult. Apparently he does this whenever someone new moves in to see if he’ll have to move. Marinette tells him to let her know if he does, Because she says if he doesn’t feel safe living in this building anymore, she definitely wants to leave. Jason is amused by this and decides she can stay.

It doesn't take long for Marinette to encounter Gotham's bad side. After a few months of living there she's seen plenty of rogue attacks. She's been lucky enough to stay out of it. After all, if the villains aren't magical there's nothing her Miraculous Cure could do anyway. Her luck is apparently starting to run out though, because now she's being held up at knife point in an alley. She obviously takes the guy down after years of being Ladybug and calls the cops. Dick Greyson is the officer on scene. He's incredibly friendly and is super impressed that she managed to take the guy down, but Dick has seen corrupt cops take people in for self-defense if it means someone else owes them a favor. He gives her his personal cell in case anything like this ever happens again.

Through all of this, Marinette has been spending more and more time with Damien at school. Marinette is hesitant to trust all the smiles and niceties around her after Lila's manipulation and wants to truly get to know someone before she puts any trust in them. Damien is the only exception. She was warned of his reputation as the "Ice Prince" of GA before meeting him and found talking with him to be incredibly refreshing. There was absolutely nothing fake or over the top about him. He was straightforward and down to earth and Marinette found comfort in that. She decided that she trusted him on day one. Likewise, Damien finds her skeptical attitude toward the other students to be incredibly validating. Growing up in the League, everyone was always pretending, even to the other assassins. You had to act a certain way around the right people, and manipulation was the key to survival. Marinette seems to notice people trying to take advantage of her and recognize when someone just wants a favor, and he respects that. Regretfully, and to Jon's great joy, Damien finds that he thinks of her as a friend.

Word eventually gets out that Marinette is Jagged's designer. This is, of course, entirely Jagged's fault. Some good comes out of all the extra attention, though, when she learns that the co-CEO of Wayne Enterprises is a fan of hers. He makes a commission for a new suit and, upon learning of her situation, offers her a position as his families personal designer over the summer to meet her internship qualifications for GU. They set up a meeting in person for her to take measurements once her midterms are over.

When everything is going well though, something has to throw a wrench into things. The Batfamily raids one of Black Mask's warehouses late one night, and Red Hood takes a few too many bullets and a pretty big hit to the head. The kevlar took most of the hits for him, but he's badly bruised and nursing a concussion. It's the concussion that causes him to stumble into the wrong window of his apartment building and scare his new neighbor half to death. Marinette does what she always does and helps the vigilante without question. To do that though, she has to take off his helmet. She assumed he would have a mask underneath or something. He does not. Marinette is not as surprised as she probably should be, and Jason is pissed when he wakes up. He realizes after a while that this isn't her fault. She's been taking care of him since he was too stubborn to go to Bruce, and if she wanted him or his family dead she could have done something about it by now. He decides to put a little trust in her, but keeps an eye on her just in case. This is what clues him into the situation. In her time here in Gotham, she's managed to meet all of the Wayne brothers aside from Duke, and she has no idea they're even related.

Jason, of course, finds this absolutely hilarious and wants to see just how far this madness can go. He sends Duke to her favorite coffee shop. He refers Marinette to the same dance studio as Cass. Marinette, completely on her own to Jason's disbelief, enters the same Ultimate Mecha Strike tournament as Stephanie and absolutely destroys her. Jason lives for the chaos and Marinette is completely oblivious.

Eventually, after a few AO3 tags (slow burn, feelings realization) Marinette and Damien start dating. Damien feels guilty for hiding that he's Robin from Marinette, but he knows that he'd be sharing more than just his own secret and doesn't want to betray his family's trust. He realizes that if he wants to share everything with her, his family has to trust her as well. She'll have to meet them. He tells Marinette all of this, and she shares that she's been keeping her own secret as well. Marinette hasn't told him about Ladybug even after Tikki has given her blessing, and she's been feeling guilty about it as well. She encourages him to tell her whenever he feels ready and assures him that she can wait until then. She trusts him, and she asks for that same trust in return.

Damien trusts her of course, and everything goes back to normal for about 30 seconds. Then, Damien starts trying to prepare her for the chaos she's about to find in his dining room that night. Little by little, Marinette starts to realize that she already knows every single person he's talking about. Only, that means so much more than she could have realized, because if Jason is Red Hood and his brother "the Dick" is Nightwing, then that means Dick Greyson is Nightwing and Damien's older brother, which makes Damien Robin, and oh no she thinks she knows exactly what that secret is that he didn't want to share yet.

#miraculous ladybug #batman #batfam #dc comics #dc universe #miraculous fanfic #marinette dupain cheng #damien wayne #maribat #daminette #fanfic #fanfiction

[agarthanguide]

I notice that Luc has equipment strapped to his thigh, just like Caleb does. Is Luc intentionally emulating his uncle's style there, or is it just a coincidence?

The book holster was an intentional Caleb reference. Everything else is just edginess.

Fun facts about Luc-

1- His look was heavily influenced by a friend of mine from childhood named Max. My entire family got it immediately- he had hand-painted vans just like that, handmade pins, etc. Max never once scowled in his life, though. Easily the most sanguine kid to ever saunter out of Wisconsin. A really great adult, too. He’s in his 30s now!

2- Luc was designed without me knowing what his class was! He may well have been an artificer, rogue, wizard… he was built on vibes! Sam’s a genius, though. I could have gone rogue halfway through and drawn him in a ball gown and Sam would have styled it out.

#asks #my art #critical role

[creaman]

Hello! Just want to say that I absolutely adore your designs for Jon, Edward, and Jervis! They're so detailed and extra. I love them sm. Up in the top two favorite designs. My favorite is definitely Jervis. Which is funny, because in just about every version he's my least favorite of the three. His design is just so fun and goofy and him. It's amazing. They all are.

Anyways that's it. Byeeee<33

Oh? Do you now? Well I’m glad you think so because now you’re getting

Design Notes — Riddler | Scarecrow | Hatter

I drafted up some rogue designs last year, actually. They’ve mostly evolved from those. Content warning for horrific old art.

The McGriddler — Ah, a grown man with the strength of a baby! I’ve actually had this… horrendous peacock concept in my brain since 2022, back when my Riddler design was a dirty blonde/brunette. I hated him. He had the costume, but not the flair. Not to mention the generic facial structure.

Luckily, New Riddler is now an ostentatiously dressed vain attention whore! Highly fashionable, extensive wardrobe (def designing more outfits for him) and a possible mid-life crisis arc where he just wears a bathrobe and wifebeater for a month straight.

And listen, I’m not much of a writer, but there are notes on his personality.

Not great ones, though.

And rather than his ambiguous forensics/science job, he now works in I.T. Or rather, worked in I.T. (fired for patronising tech support customers)

For Jon — He’s always had black eyes with orange ringed pupils (initially blue) from the fear toxins. Drafted him up in high school because I was coping.

I’ve always intended to give him multiple costume designs. With narrative purposes. He redesigns himself. Ofc he couldn’t be satisfied with one thing, no, he has winter, summer, Witch Doctor, stealth etc. costumes on the way.

The initial design was trying to do too much — Patches, stitches, belt straps, arm warmers, utility belts, boots. Clutter. (Does NOT help that I can hardly decipher my old sketches.)

So, we just remove the overtly slutty components from the main design—

—And put them in a seperate campier Scarecrow design that I use as a Halloween-sona.

Silly Crazy Zonka Wonka — I think I was looking at pics of the Depp Hatter for the old design, which. May explain some things.

Acute observation! They look nothing alike. So I’ve kept absolutely nothing from the initial design except for the choppy wavy hairstyle.

Completely different colour scheme. Subbed out the TF2 Ghastly Gibus for the Towering Pillar of Hats. (Because ofc The Hatter would have something from the funny Hat FPS, no?) Shorter. Feebler. Every sickness on the planet. Congratulations! Mercury poisoning.

The initial concept for the redesign was to have a sort of reversible coat with his Arkham outfit on one side, and Rogue outfit on the other. You can see I just opted for him to wear a combination of both.

#vclownverse #I fucking hate my riddler if you couldn’t tell #design notes #character design #batman #the riddler #edward nygma #scarecrow #jonathan crane #jervis tetch #mad hatter #digital illustration #creaman #batman rogue redesign #batman rogues #old art #vinegarclown #fanart #creaman-answer-sheet.pdf #gamer scarecrow

[caitmayart]

omg i cant believe i stumbled across your blog!!! ive been going crazy over the art this season and now i can thank you for it!!!!

ive been rotating lucy frostblade in my brain. you did such a good job on her. i love how her vitiligo is reminiscent of frostbite and how her hairstyle is not only similar to historical styles from cold climates but also, because of the way she winds the braids into buns, looks like frost swirling on a windowpane!

the agueforts making out with each other was GREAT and youve really captured his energy in all your art of him

thank you for the teachers. especially zara and antiope. im gay.

on the topic of the teachers, the way you drew the mist around the rogue teacher is really cool! i love how from a distance she seemingly disappears into it! you mustve done a LOT of work on character designs and it SHOWS

sorry if youve gotten this question a lot, but what program do you use? im trying to get back into digital art after a long break and am looking for one that works for me!

Hi hi hello! Thank you! 1. Thank you so much!! I adore my girl Lucy, I'm so glad she's had such a warm reception from fans ♥ 2. Bahaha thank youuuuuuuu I had too much fun with that part. 3. YOU'RE SO WELCOME! 4. Thank you! I was kinda going with the stylistic choices the previous artist made regarding ghosts, and I'm also a fan of swirly ectoplasm bubbles :) 5. All good - I use Clip Studio Paint! I highly recommend it, since you can get the FULL program on ipad as well as pc, rather than the parsed-down version of photoshop adobe threw at us. Thank you for brightening my day! ♥

[tcfactory]

Silly idea of the day: Shen Qingqiu grills the System for answers about how to avoid the whole Abyss scenario and save his little cabbage favorite disciple until the System very reluctantly offers up the option to transfer the protagonist halo - and all the trials that come with it - to someone else if he pays literally all his points. It's a risky endeavor, but he doesn't see any other way to save Binghe from his suffering/blackening, so he decides to take the risk. After some deliberation he decides to transfer the protagonist halo to Mobei-jun. Based on his memories of PIDW, Mobei-jun isn't the type to be interested in world domination and Shen Qingqiu figures if any kind of wild plot is going to happen to the ice demon, it will be limited to the demon world + maybe Huan Hua Palace and that's it.

The System checks in with Shang Qinghua about what kind of story he would have written for Mobei-jun if he had the choice (SQH is vary of the System and answers 'found family and slowburn romance, maybe with a touch of a coming of age plot' because there's no way the System can make something horrible from that, right?) and accepts Mobei-jun as an alternative.

The protagonist halo is transferred with the click of a button; Luo Binghe loses that special spark that designated him for greatness, but at the same time, he is free of the weight of his fate as well. He's destined to live a life as ordinary as a half-demon cultivator's ever gets.

However, Shen Qingqiu is not required for the new story and keeping a 'troublesome' transmigrator around is too risky for the System, so it decides to swap Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu back. There is a high chance of Shen Jiu dying of qi deviation when he's shoved unceremoniously back into his body (his soul has been fragmented and damaged when the System replaced him with Shen Yuan) which would be the best outcome, as far as the System is concerned, because it would be a natural-looking death that nobody would bother to investigate. It's pure luck that Liu Qingge is lurking around, looking for a chance to thank Shen Qingqiu for saving his life in the caves, and can step in and stabilize Shen Jiu.

At the same time Mobei-jun, in the first hour of being the new protagonist, stumbles into a patch of very specific magic weeds and passes out.

Shen Jiu now knows of the System and has some vague awareness of the person who, as far as he can tell from the incoherent hints the System gave him, was kidnapped against their will and showed into his body and fate for the sake of raising some prophecised emperor of the three realms to power, a plan that was foiled by Shen Jiu's return. He doesn't know why this person acted so strange while in Shen Qingqiu's role (coddling those brats, especially that brat?! What was the stranger thinking??), but the System's remarks make something clear: the stranger knows something about the prophecy and did his best to avoid it, much to the System's displeasure.

So clearly the best course of action is to get them back and question them, somehow. But first Shen Qingqiu is going to Yue Qingyuan and shakes him until he confesses why he left Shen Jiu behind, because if he has to deal with a demon (?) or being that can erase him from existence at a whim, then he wants to know the reason. He's facing almost certain death here, it's the least he's owed!!

While Shen Qingqiu is grilling his soon-to-be-beloved-again brother and trying to come up with a way to keep being a decent teacher despite himself, just in case, on Qian Cao a young, amnesiac rogue cultivator wakes up. He was found in the borderlands, almost ripped to shreds by a herd of man-eating boars. He doesn't remember his name or his past or even his cultivation, but Mu Qingfang estimates him to be in his twenties. He has a very well-developed fire root and a sunny complexion, but he is haunted by dreams of ice, so they decide to call him Beilun (悖论 - paradox) for the time being. When Beilun recovers he asks to stay in the sect so he can learn proper cultivation again and after some rigorous testing - a balanced nature between physical and spiritual cultivation, not much of a head for arts, but excellent instincts for politics, trade and strategy - Yue Qingyuan snatches him up as a personal, soon-to-be head disciple (also maybe brand new adopted little brother, because Yue Qi can't help himself). Shen Qingqiu is initially unhappy about having to share Yue Qingyuan's brotherly affection with someone new, but soon warms up to Beilun himself when he realizes how ruthless the young man can be. Second big brother acquired!

Time passes. Shang Qinghua privately mourns for Mobei-jun when word gets back to Cang Qiong that the Northern prince has been missing so long that they wrote him off. His mourning is tinted by guilt, because he keeps getting distracted by the handsome new Qiong Ding head disciple. Yue Beilun is tall and suntanned and scarred, even years later still not fully recovered from whatever befall him on the edge of the demon realm, but every time he smiles at Shang Qinghua it feels like the world comes to a standstill.

So for one there's the glacially slow falling in love between Shang Qinghua and definitely-not-Mobei-jun. There's the forming adopted family with the two disasters in charge + still-absolutely-not-Mobei-jun. There are Shen Qingqiu's persistent attempts at being a good teacher and a better martial brother (with inconsistent degrees of success, but Liu Qingge is discovering a lot of new things about himself as the primary audience of Shen Qingqiu's self-improvement). There's the long search for ways to get Shen Yuan back from the System, which leads to a whole, wacky side-adventure when they learn the truth about Tianlang-jun and set him free while they are there to get the mushrooms.

Of course this New Plot can't happen without some drama. Beilun is accompanying the masters to the Immortal Alliance conference when the Endless Abyss opens up. Luo Binghe almost succumbs to a sever qi deviation when his seal breaks and Beilun rushes in to fight off the monsters attacking the disciples and falls into the Abyss - which is just the thing needed to break the curse on him...

So Cang Qiong is in mourning over the loss of Yue Beilun who many of them assumed will be the next sect leader based on Yue Qingyuan's strong attachment. Luo Binghe is confined to Qian Cao, half under treatment and half under house arrest on account of being half-demon until they can figure out what to do with him. At least the System has relinquished Shen Yuan, now that the mushroom body is grown enough, and after learning how young he is, he becomes the new replacement little brother of the sect leader and the (ex) scum villain, which is weird and confusing, but not in a bad way.

Meanwhile in the demon realm Mobei-jun makes his return (as far as people know he was training all these years in the Endless Abyss and he is monstrously stronger for it), takes over as Northern King and starts solidifying his power base with Tianlang-jun's help (rumors have it that he was the one who broke the Junshang out of his prison, a feat everyone thought impossible). After all, only a fool goes courting when their court is in disarray and now that he remembers all the things Qinghua has done for him, he has eyes for nobody else.

All the while the Old Palace Master watches the shifts in the demon realm and plots a new war against the demons. With such a cold and ruthless rising Northern King looming on the horizon, not to mention the vengeful Tianlang-jun, it shouldn't be difficult to whip the cultivators up into preparing for conflict...

#svsss #tc writes #this would be at least 30% slowburn moshang shenanigans #with like. probably LiuJiu as a background ship #and maybe TLJ/YQY? because MBJ would tell TLJ all about how great YQY is #so when disaster ice prince comes courting so does TLJ #even OPM can't spin the two demons coming to court the human way as an invasion force #he still tries to all the same #he might succeed in labeling CQMS as a demonic sect though for colluding with them #I haven't thought that far tbh

[delta-orionis]

For the past couple of days, I've been tossing around the idea of an iterator OC who is focused around astronomy. I love astronomy, and there's a conspicuous lack of any information about it in Rain World, which I find pretty intriguing. (I made a post about some of my random theories here.) So, I started to think about what an iterator specifically designed to study astronomy might be like. I named them Three Stars Above Clouds (in reference to Orion's belt, because I can't help but put references to Orion in everything I do, I guess). I actually ended up having a lot of thoughts about them, which I'll detail below. (Warning, there's A Lot.)

Three Stars Above Clouds (TSAC) was designed and built by a splinter group of Ancients who believed the Solution to the Great Problem wouldn't be found deep underground, but in the sky. TSAC was created in order to help them collect data about the sky, house their institutions, and conduct research. They were built into a mountain range, where clouds are less likely to form and the air is thinner. (Real world observatories are often built on top of mountains or in arid places like deserts in an attempt to avoid interference from clouds and rain. You can't see the stars if they're hidden behind clouds, after all.)

Three Stars Above Clouds' city is home to several large observatories which keep a constant watch on the sky. I got the idea for TSAC in part from the currently-under-construction Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (also called the Vera C. Rubin Observatory). The LSST is designed to take ultra-high-definition pictures of the entire night sky every couple of nights, in order to monitor for changes. This data will be a treasure trove for astronomers, and can be used for anything from discovering new asteroids and rogue planets, to monitoring distant galaxies for supernovae. One problem that arises from this, however, is the sheer amount of data that this telescope will produce- it's way too much for any human to hope to be able to sift through. I imagine that the Ancients who built TSAC would run into a similar problem; TSAC's observatories generate colossal amounts of data, so a large part of TSAC's duties as an iterator are to sift through and analyze this data to find anything that might be useful in finding the Solution.

Three Stars Above Clouds is relatively isolated as an iterator. They are located at a much higher altitude than their peers, in the middle of a remote mountain range. Their citizens are also somewhat isolated from Ancient society at large, due to their fringe religious beliefs. (Due to the lack of anything astronomy or space-travel related in Rain World's lore, I think the Ancients either largely don't have an interest in studying astronomy, or it's considered taboo due to their religion's focus on ascension, as well as the subterranean Void Sea.)

As for Three Stars Above Clouds themself, they have a bit of a reputation for being a loner. Other iterators sometimes see them as obsessing over something pointless, because despite the vast amounts of data TSAC has collected, so far it's turned up nothing useful in terms of the Solution. However they are sometimes contacted by iterators who might be interested in their data, either for the purpose of research or just out of curiosity. TSAC is happy to talk about their personal research to anyone who is willing to listen.

Three Stars Above Clouds worked closely with their citizens while their city was still inhabited, and misses them deeply. Despite their citizens being gone, they continue with their sky surveys, partially because the desire to do so is hard-coded into their programming, and partially because it at least gives them something to do. Deep down, TSAC is convinced that someday they will come across something extraordinary among the stars.

In order to store the immense amounts of data generated by their observatories, TSAC's city and internal structure contain a wealth of data pearls, which has inevitably led to the amassing of a large Scavenger population both in and around their structure, who regularly raid TSAC's supply of pearls. However, due to TSAC's high altitude, their external structure and surrounding mountains are also home to large colonies of Vultures, which help control the Scavenger population, at the very least. TSAC is quite fond of Vultures for this reason.

The mountains are very cold, which means Three Stars Above Clouds' rain freezes almost immediately into snow and sleet, which falls down onto the surrounding mountains. As the glaciers and snowfall on these mountains melt, the water flows down the mountains into large rivers, and is collected in several dams at ground level. These dams are home to pumping stations which pump water back up into TSAC's can. TSAC's can is fed water through a vast array of underground pipes that snake underneath and through the mountains. The upkeep of these pipes is mostly automated, however, there are some issues that only an engineer can fix. With all of TSAC's engineers gone, their pipe network is extremely prone to failure due to its complexity. They've had a dam or two break in the past, and TSAC knows that it's only a matter of time before all of their dams break and they will lose their water supply for good.

Their void fluid filtration system is also similarly complex; mine shafts are scattered throughout the mountain range and reach deep underground to access the Void Sea. Even though TSAC's ancients don't think Void Fluid is the key to ascension, they still recognize its usefulness as a potent energy source.

These networks of tunnels, pipes, mines, and maintenance stations have become home to a wide range of creatures over the cycles, many seeking refuge from the cold. Maybe there's even a colony of subterranean Slugcats running around down there.

I've also made an annotated version of the drawing of TSAC's can; you can click on the alt text for transcriptions of my notes if you can't read my handwriting. One thing I forgot to note was the green lasers, those are Laser Guide Stars. (I just think they look cool.)

And here's a closer look at TSAC's city, because I'm pretty proud of the way it turned out. (I even snuck the LSST in there on the left, hehe.)

Aaaand I think that's everything! If I got any of the lore wrong, I apologize. Rain World's lore is pretty vague at times, and I tried to do the best with what I know. I also have a pretty strong grasp on astronomy, but not so much on climatology and geology, so if I got some of those things wrong as well, go easy on me, haha. X]

I will say, creating an iterator is an interesting thought experiment. You need to think about the effect they have on the surrounding environment, while keeping in mind that they're sentient and also have an entire city of people living on them that they need to help manage. Iterators are fascinating to me, and I love reading about other people's OCs and seeing the ways they're able to make them unique.

If you read this far, thank you for devoting some of your time to listening to me ramble. You get a gold star: ⭐⭐⭐

Edit: Here's a closeup of their in-game sprite as a reward for reading this far. Yippee

#my art #my ocs #rain world #rain world iterator #iterator oc #three stars above clouds #I PROMISE I will draw some of the canon characters soon. I just needed to get this guy out of my brain #I love iterators so much. rotating them in my mind #what if there was an enormous building that was also a Guy. Also it had Depression. Would that be fucked up or what #also holy shit I wrote so much. if you have the patience to read it all I love you #I came up with most of this during long commutes. I need to keep myself from going insane while sitting in traffic somehow #might as well make up a guy #this might as well be an iteratorsona. why the hell not lol #they’re extremely tailored to my interests #iterators

[millenialfanfictionaddiction]

New Nail Day with MSBY

MSBY! Black Jackals (including Barnes and Joffe) x GN! Manager

Warnings: fluff

AN: just expressing my love of new nail day 🤩

Everyone needs selfcare Yn

Especially you 🥰

Because let’s face it, you have one of the toughest jobs on the entire planet

While you love your job and adore the guys, man do you need a break 😅

And one of the activities you do often is pampering yourself with new nails 💅

Whether you DIY them or go to a tech, your nails always look perfect!

Sometimes you go for simple, like an ombré or a French tip

And sometimes, when the guys are EXTRA annoying, you splurge and do a design or some bling 💎

No matter what you get, the nails do their job

And let’s just say, you look FABULOUS 🤩

And there’s one thing you can always count on

The guys noticing your new manicure!

It’s almost kind of weird how much these guys notice

Like your pretty sure they look at your hands everyday just waiting for a new set

The moment you walk into the gym and the glimmer of a new set sparkles, it’s game time

“YN LET ME SEE THEMMMM!” Bokuto shouts, running full force towards you as you brace for impact

“NEW NAIL DAY NEW NAIL DAY!” Hinata shouts, bouncing towards you

“Don’t break them right away!” Atsumu shouts, following behind the first two dummies

“You shouldn’t go near them either Miya, they are expensive!” Sakusa scolds him

Meian, Inunaki, Barnes, Thomas and Joffe all just stand aside, waiting for the hype to die down

Bokuto and Hinata each grab a hand and began to dissect everything

The shape, the design, the bling 😩

“Oh wow YN, look at all the sparkles!!” Bokuto chimes, so excited

“I don’t understand how the shape is so perfect on every one of them! There is like no imperfections!” Hinata comments, observing your perfectly manicured cuticles

Sakusa whistles, looking over Hinata, “man YN, did you have to take a loan out to get those done?”

Meanwhile you just stand there, waiting for their gasping and oohing to finally calm down

“Alright idiots, back off of Yn!” Meian finally says, interrupting their party

“But captain, YN’s nails are always so pretty!” Hinata gushes

“They are very pretty-” Meian adds

“And YN is super pretty too!” Inunaki interjects

You 👉🏻🥹

“Yes Yn is very pretty-” Meian continues

“Wow YN how do you even get to see those gems to stay on?” Barnes asks

“It’s a cured gel that makes them super strong!” You say, banging your nails against the wall to demonstrate their durability

The team 👉🏻😱😱😱

“I can’t believe how well you work with nails like that YN, truly remarkable!” Thomas compliments

“Well YN is the best manager in the entire V.League,” Joffe boosts

“Ok YN’s nails are great but we need to get practicing,” Meian sighs as the guys continue to ignore him

“You can’t expect us to practice with such perfection in our presence!” Atsumu exclaims, grabbing your hand and pushing it into Meian’s face

Meian 👉🏻😐🙄

You can tell Meian is about to lose it, so you decide the guys have done enough simping for today

“Ok guys, let’s get to practicing!” You say, walking towards your office

“But Yn what if you break a nail!” Bokuto scream 🙀

“That would be a tragedy!” Hinata yells back

“Well it’s a good thing YN doesn’t actually play Volleyball then,” Sakusa adds

“Yeah but what if one of Atsumu’s rogue serves gifs YN in the hand!” Inunaki interjects

“Hey-” Atsumu asks confused 😐

“Or what if one of Atsumu’s really bad sets hits Yn and they have to block their face?” Joffe questions

“HEY MY SETS ARE PERFECT!” Atsumu shouts back

“Atsumu shut up and get on the court!” Meian yells

Atsumu 👉🏻👁️👄👁️

“Oh and by the way Yn, your nails look amazing,” Meian winks before walking onto the court

Seriously Yn, you are so freaking lucky 😭

#haikyuu!! #msby hinata #hq msby #msby 4 #msby black jackal #msby bokuto #msby atsumu #msby four #msby scenarios #msby #msby x reader #msby bj #msby sakusa #msby fluff #haikyuu msby #MSBY x GN! reader #miya atsumu #sakusa kiyoomi #hinata shoyo #bokuto kotaro #adriah thomas #meian shugo #oriver barnes #alexandre joffe #inunaki shion #msby inunaki #msby Thomas #MSBY Barnes #msby joffe #MSBY Meian

[fairytale-poll]

SEMI-FINALS! MATCH 1 OUT OF 2

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Red Hood:

she’s red riding hood but CYBERPUNK. and she’s part of the REBELLION. she’s can hack MILITARY tech in a matter of moments. she uses her WOLF VIRUS to hack into CROWN VEHICLES and RIDE THEM INTO BATTLE. she REPURPOSED a GOVERNMENT VIRUS into a weapon to HURT THEM. her GRANDMOTHER was killed by the corrupt government virus that she has since TAMED and uses it AGAINST them. her fiction (this is canon!): https://themechanisms.com/fiction/what-big-eyes/

mechs fans need a win methinks. my mutual told me to go submit red but i also have very strong opinions on her because this entire album makes me insane. red started as a young 12 year old hacker who eventually put her skills to the test when a government-made computer virus (called the wolf virus) went rogue and unplugged her grandmother from life support. (the wolf virus was initially intended to figure out what wasn’t necessary for the war and divert power to weapons instead. it went rogue and started going after people who would never be able to help the war [ie disabled and elderly]). so red FOUGHT IT OFF ON HER OWN and TAMED IT. so then she essentially had a weapon designed to take down crown weapons and vehicles. so she joined the war effort and fought for brutal 30 years. it’s unclear whether she survived the final battle, but i think she deserves to take the win. also. she’s in space. she’s cyberpunk. she’s part of a retold fairytale cast BUT IN A COSMIC WAR. it’s like if star wars was actually good.

Cerise Hood:

She’s the child of the red riding hood and the big bad wolf. Don’t question it to okay. Also she was the first character I thought of when I saw this!

She’s the daughter of red riding hood and the big bad wolf! She’s a werewolf!

Love her design very much. She gets a lot of great outfits. Also, another version of Red Riding Hood that incorporates both the girl and the wolf together.

1: ever after high was iconic and amazing and so well written and i'm really bitter that it was cancelled so i think cerise deserves this win (i do too) 2: her design is really good. like no one else could EVER if you ask me 3: wolf girl. do i NEED to say more. ...honestly, my brain cannot bring out any more words so fingers crossed someone else submits her and she gets some ACTUAL GOOD propaganda (sorry cerise forgive me)

She’s a badass red riding hood with a secret (her dad is the big bad wolf)

She's the daughter of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, so she has wolf ears and is really strong. She's supposed to be the next Red Riding Hood so she should count.

She's the daughter of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf making her a daughter of forbidden love and thus a double representation of Little Red Riding Hood's age-old story of maturity and adolescence.

She's really cool! She was born from a forbidden romance between the wolf (don't worry he turns into a human lmao) and Little Red Riding Hood and has to hide her heritage from other people which I think is really interesting. Also her hood is really pretty.

She's the daughter of red riding hood and is meant to take over that role when it's her time

she slays so hard!! while technically shes not THE little red riding hood, she is her daughter and the FUTURE little red riding hood. shes also half wolf, which is really cool!! and yea. she slays.

idk she’s just cool & definitely gay

She’s meant to be the next Red Riding Hood but her whole bit is that not only is her mom Red Riding Hood, her father is the Big Bad Wolf and she needs to keep it a secret. The best of both worlds. The tween girls went crazy for the wolf thing. Had a pretty doll and cool outfits. Has an older sister who’s meant to be the next Big Bad Wolf (Ramona Badwolf) who she comes into conflict with. Identity crisis! She was everything to eleven year old me

She’s half wolf, she has cool white streaks in her hair, she’s a jock with super speed and I like her a lot.

she turned me lesbian.

Fan favourite, my first lesbian crush on a character

She is a daughter of previous Little Red Riding Hood and Big Bad Wolf, how cool is that

She’s a furry yeuwu

she’s the daughter of red riding hood and the big bad wolf. she’s a wolf girl. i love her

#red riding poll #semi-finals #poll tournament #poll bracket #character polls #polls #red riding hood #little red riding hood #red hood #once upon a time in space #once upon a time (in space) #the mechanisms #cerise hood #ever after high

[jaypea00101010]

A single design problem I have for each D&D 5e class

Made this a thread over on bluesky and figured might as well bring it over here. Not really big problems in most cases, but just, small things that I feel WotC should tweak in all current 5e classes.

Artificer: No clear weakness.

A single class that can make great a great support character, DPS character, tank, single target attacker, stealth character, etc

Obviously needs to be built spesifically for each of these, but every other class has at least one thing they can't do.

Barbarian: No force resistance

Slightly cheating because it's not inherently a problem with Barbarian, but recently more monsters have been using Force damage instead of B/P/S, and barbarians should absolutely gain resistance to it while raging at higher levels.

Bard: Full-casting

Bards are designed to be a jack of all trades, it's right there at 2nd level, but they seem to have missed the 'master of none' bit.

Full spellcasting up to 9th level, a pretty solid spell list, and spells they don't have they can take with Magical Secrets anyway, even 9th level ones.

Cleric: Turn Undead

A holdover from older editions, turn undead in my opinion just doesn't make for a good universal option on clerics.

I'd much prefer something like spirit guardians or spiritual weapon be reworked into their universal channel divinity.

Druid: Universal Wildshape

Probably controversial, but I have similar problems with wildshape that I do turn undead, it's good, but a weird universal option.

If I'm a druid getting my powers from stones, plants, or the stars, why can I also turn into a ferret? There should be a few options to pick from instead.

Fighter: Action Surge at Level 2

Action surge is such a good feature, usually it's just some extra attacks, but the fact you have the chioce is great....

That said, I think it coming online so early incentivises unintentionally incentivises multiclassing, casters dipping for 2 spells a turn mostly. They've somewhat fixed it by limiting what actions you can use it for in OneD&D, but I personally just feel it should be later level rather than limiting it.

Monk: Ki Dependancy

This doesnt' need explaining, everything for monks costs ki and it really doesn't need to, they should get resource free disengage and dash, or have ki recover faster.

I had an idea for a ki recharge of 1 min, but less points overall, so you have all points for every fight

Paladin: Oaths at 3rd level

You get your power as a paladin from a sacred oath you swear, so why do you only choose that oath at 3rd level?

That's like a warlock only deciding their patron at 3rd, or a cleric only deciding their god at 3rd (Yes 1D&D does this and I hate it).

Ranger: Spells Known

Why do rangers, the class that's meant to be about being the best prepared for the wilderness and natural areas not have prepared spells?

It just seems so obvious to me, and I've got no idea why it's not done like that already?!

Rogue: Is Pretty Good

If anything I'd say that I'm not a fan of skill floors like reliable talent, and expertise not letting you use it on other tools is a bit strange, maybe the large subclass level gap?

Yeah overall I'm a fan of rogues though, they're just solidly made.

Sorcerer: Spells Known

They tried to fix this in Tasha's with subclass spell lists, and I think that's good idea generally, but letting them swap them for (admittedly limited) options from 3 different spell lists is also weird

Just give them subclass spells they can't swap, or maybe can swap fron one list and you're good.

Warlock: EB is a Cantrip

Eldritch Blast is a good spell. Too good to be honest with multiclassing at least, it's one of the reasons PalLock is such a good combo.

EB should scale with Warlock level so be a feature not a cantrip, or cantrip scaling with warlock level like it was in that One D&D UA that they then reverted.

Wizard: Subclass Theming

Tying wizard subclasses to schools was a bad idea, and what we've gotten outside the PHB seems to be an attempt to go back on that.

It also means they don't have room to explore all of each school, I'd love a teleport or summon focused wizard but school of conjuration smashes them together weirdly

#dnd homebrew #homebrew #5e homebrew #d&d #dnd #dnd 5e #dnd5e #dungeons and dragons #artificer #barbarian #bard #cleric #druid #fighter #monk #paladin #ranger #rogue #sorcerer #warlock #wizard #magic #spells #subclass #dnd classes #dnd design #jay's design commentary

[frankiesmileshow]

Crystal Project Review

Ive been having a lot of fun with Crystal Project, a well made FF5-inspired RPG. The combat is very tightly designed and the exploration aspect is top notch. The art style put me off a bit at first, but I think it grew on me over time.

The game does a great job of slowly uncovering its breadth and letting you break its sequence through curious exploring. Lots of fun to search every part of its gigantic map for secrets. This is a game that loves hiding secrets within secrets within secrets. You might even occasionally stumble into a late game area, and exploring carefully could lead to finding items meant for the end of the game, giving your party a significant early game boost.

Exploring will often lead to surprise optional boss battles that are completely out of your league - but dying has few consequences in the game (you just lose a bit of money) and dying from bosses has no consequences at all, so you rarely feel truly punished for having explored too far, and its always worth it to have a peek at a boss battle.

Don't expect too much of a story. There is one, but it keeps a very light touch, this is mainly a game about exploring and fighting monsters. It does have characters and some personality, but dont expect something dense story wise.

It manages to avoid feeling like an open world game - it feels more like a linear game that just lets you break out of the confines of its intended path if you explore enough. It strikes a very good balance between having direction and having freedom. The world map just keeps expanding as you play, leading to many little shocks about the games' scope, a feeling you might be familiar with if you played Elden Ring.

The games combat uses a very well balanced, strategic system. Battles give you a lot of information to let you choose your actions carefully - you can see any enemies' next action in advance, and you even know who the enemy will attack next (notice the dotted lines in the screenshot above). Manipulating the enemies' current target is actually one of the fundamentals of the game- enemies choose their next target based on a "Threat" system which is entirely open to you as you fight, and many classes have abilities to help you manipulate this. Some class abilities also depend on the current threat state of a character - for instance, the rogues' many powerful skills only work if they are considered an enemy's bottom threat, and will otherwise always miss, which requires careful actions on your part.

The class system will be familiar if you played Final Fantasy 5 - you obtain new classes by exploring the world and finding large crystals, each unlocking a new one. The classes set a characters' stat growth on level-up, equippable items, main abilities and all have a unique "Innate passive" which are usually quite powerful (for instance, the base Cleric class receives a significant boost to all healing spells).

You can also add the abilities of a secondary class to your characters' moveset- like adding a clerics' healing spells to your Samurai. There is a lot of fun to be had mixing one class's abilities with anothers' passive boost - for instance, one class has an ability which makes the first action this character makes in a battle always target All enemies or All allies, allowing you to either massively boost your whole party or nuke the enemy party with a powerful spell usually meant for a single foe.

There are also passive abilities you can unlock from any class and assign regardless of a characters' current class, limited by a point cost system. These can range from a boost to max HP, to adding a poison effect to any weapon attacks, to allowing your character to equip a shield regardless of their class.

You can get very creative with the games' class system, there are countless ways to mix and match character abilities and classes to figure out some powerful strategy. The endgame has several challenges that might require you to make custom party setups just for them, turning the combat system into something resembling a kind of puzzle - though one with many possible solutions.

Boss battles have a way of feeling like a desperate struggle of improvising as your strategy falls apart - then winning by the skin of your teeth. This happens a lot. At least half of the boss battles for me ended with most of my party dead, and being one or two turns away from a full wipe-out.

I think the only real misstep is the games' analogue to chocobo breeding, introduced at the very end of the game. It feels tedious, I gave up on it after an hour of wasting my money on food for the creatures and not getting anywhere. Luckily it seems to be completely optional.

All in all I recommend it to anyone who likes FF5 and who likes RPGs that have a focus on exploring. Visually it might look a bit basic, but underneath that is an extremely robust game.

#game development #rpg #indie rpg #crystal project #final fantasy #final fantasy v #game review #video games

[urwizards]

Greetings, fellow adventurers and dice hoarders! It's Lambert from URWizards here, your resident dice designer and conjurer of gaming wonders. 🧙‍♂️✨

I'm absolutely stoked to take you on a little journey deep into the heart of our latest creation – a dice set inspired by the ferocious beauty of a volcano's wrath. 🌋

Let's embark on this tale of craftsmanship and elemental passion:

An Idea is Born

We scoured through a mountain of volcanic eruption videos and photos, and even though I've never ventured to an actual volcano, these materials made us believe that a volcano holds an infinite inner strength. It's much like most of us, right? Perhaps we haven't had our momentous eruption yet, but that inner flame and the dreams of our childhood are still burning bright, aren't they?

Molding the Myth

After poring over a volcano's worth of materials, my colleague and I have chiseled out the base molds for our dice set, each with the distinctive pattern only Mother Nature could etch. Varied as the layers of the earth, these textures stretch from peak to base, a hallmark of the great outdoors on a miniature scale.

But don't let the rugged exterior fool you. Like fitting square pegs in round holes, we've ensured that these designs hold the same density as the resin they'll marry, because in the world of D&D, balance isn't just a virtue; it's the name of the game.

Igniting the Palette

After a dozen splattered trials, we finally got the hang of bringing our volcanic dice to life – and let me tell you, it's as delicate as defusing a bomb with a feather.

You see, my hands became a living canvas, often speckled more than a Jackson Pollock knockoff. While painting, one overly enthusiastic stroke and the pigment would go rogue, flooding into canyons we never meant to explore.

Sure, real lava doesn’t play by the rules – it flows where it pleases – but here in the URWizards’ workshop, every stream of molten color is plotted like it’s got a GPS tracker on it.

But we nailed it! Each fiery path now sits exactly where we wanted, a testament to our ‘control the chaos’ mantra. The end result? Dice that look so hot, they could melt your face off – in a good way, I promise! That night, I was so jazzed up, sleep didn’t stand a chance.

Carefully applying the paint. Little volcanoes in the palm of my hand.

Casting the Core

The last hurrah in our dice-making shindig is the resin pour – sounds easy-peasy, right? But hold onto your hats, because we're not just making dice; we're birthing miniature volcanoes here. We're going for that ‘just erupted’ vibe, aiming to bottle up that smoky after-party glow that lingers like the best kind of rumor. The goal? To have that smoggy dance, twirling up with the magma like it's auditioning for a spot in the air ballet. 🌋✨

We've equipped this product with a sophisticated box, the Black Magnetic Rigid Gift Box, as many of our users cherish gifting our products to their most beloved. This magnetic gift box snugly fits a full set of dice—and there's room for a few extras, too.

Thank you so much if you actually follow here. I know it is quite long for a post lol.

Please comment on this, any comment is very valuable for us.

If you have some great design ideas, feel free to share them with us; let's explore together and turn dreams into reality.

#polyhedral #dungeonsanddragons #diceset #dice #dnd #gemstone #gemstonedice #dungeonsdragons #dnddice #handmadedice

[mariaofdoranelle]

The Courtship Deception - Part 5: Hope

Fic masterlist

Written for @throneofglassmicrofics

I’m posting the next chapter tonight because it depends a lot on this one to make sense lol I need everyone’s memories fresh

Warnings: none

Words: 695

Rowan’s POV

“YOU SAID WHAT?” Fenrys screeched in Rowan’s kitchen, a bruschetta halfway into his mouth.

He shrugged. “I said no. I’ve known her for a week, Fen.”

His friend put his food back on the plate, eyebrows raised at him. “You don’t think she’s marriageable?”

“She’s very marriageable,” Rowan defended himself, two hands up in surrender. It was curious how protective Fenrys was of Aelin, so he asked, “Do you think she’s marriageable?”

“Very much, yes.”

Interesting. “Do you wish you were one of her suitors, Fen?”

He snorted. “Fuck, no. I mean, she’s great, but I’m not in love with her or anything like that.”

“My point exactly.”

Yes, Rowan would love to get to know her better and see where it goes, but he’s not marrying Aelin after knowing her for a week. Especially not after finally fleeing from his royal duties.

“Bullshit.” Fenrys had a shit-eating grin on. “You’re half in love with her already.”

Lies. Rowan was approximately one-fourth in love with her. Half in love was too much for a week. Aelin was incredible, and she definitely fucked him like he expected his future wife to do, but it was too much too soon.

He wanted to get to know her better, wait until the thought of not having her by his side was absolutely unbearable; then, he could see himself popping the question. Not in a storage closet, and out of a sweeter sort of desperation.

Rowan liked her—way too much. It was even safe to say that he was smitten, as much as he hated this word. But apart from a title he barely had, Rhoe also wanted an amount of money invested in Gala Airlines that Rowan definitely didn’t have.

He wasn’t a proper suitor, he didn’t feel ready to marry her so soon, but if he let this go, he’d lose her—it’d be torture to fall in love with someone else’s wife.

After objectively explaining his thoughts on the matter to Fenrys, the man sighed as if he carried the world on his shoulders.

“Fucking Mala, do I have to do everything around here?!”

Rowan tilted his head, trying to understand his friend’s distress. “What—“

Fenrys held up a hand to shut him up, halfway out the kitchen already. “Just leave it with me.”

˜˜

Fenrys’ POV

The next day, Fenrys got to work to a full desk of poorly-wrapped gifts.

He called his co-worker instantly. “Seriously, Lor?”

Lorcan grunted, already knowing what this is about. “Not my job, Pup.”

He groaned, getting to work before work even started. Every single one of Aelin’s packages were to be checked before sent to her, but would it kill Lorcan to re-wrap the gifts nicely? You don’t send a half-closed Louboutin shoebox because you won’t bother to fit the shoes back in nicely, for Mala’s sake.

Fenrys works like a dog day and night, and does everyone ever recognize it? Absolutely not. His coworkers thought he had it easy because he let Aelin do things she wasn’t supposed to. As if. Guarding her regularly was hard, but imagine trying to protect a heiress gone rogue.

While he worked on the gifts, Fenrys did a little inspection to check which ones she’d like, and which ones would give her the ick. He removed the cards from the few ones that would certainly be her favorites.

Brimmed with designer bags, he managed the stairs to Aelin’s room, but had to knock on the door with his feet. “A package awaits your reception, Your Highness!”

When Aelin opened the door, her smile faltered as she notices the gifts—or who they were from. She opened one by one before asking, “The ones without the name tag?”

He grinned. “You’ll have to guess, Princess.”

From the way her eyes lit up, Fenrys made a mental note to slap Rowan later. He was penniless, yes, but he needed to up his game asap.

Fenrys cleared his throat. “I won’t be available for brunch today, but I’m sure Lorcan will love to gossip over macarons with you,” he joked.

“Oh.” Aelin frowned. “What’re you up to?”

“Just something I need to fix.”

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[shuttershocky]

The more I think about it the more I realize an actual Fate hack and slash game (as opposed to a musou) just isn't feasible. Samurai Remnant's combat is the closest we're ever going to get, and it's just a musou with extra bells and whistles.

The issue is scale. Fate games are all about the servants, you gotta put as many of them as you can fit into a title and make as many of them playable as possible because they're the stars. But that isn't feasible for an action game in the vein of DMC or Bayonetta (which would also have bigger budgets than a Type-Moon game), because you need each playable character to have elaborate movesets with multi-layered depth and incredible precision, and you need to balance them all against each other.

This is impossible for a Fate game with many playable servants at once. Samurai Remnant does its best to give Iori depth by giving him 5 styles (that don't really have much depth to each tbh), but the servants themselves have a limit of 5 normal attacks with a different finisher for each of them, 3 specials, and a screen clear noble phantasm (which all work the exact same way but just have different animations). It's the most they can manage. Sometimes servants have gimmicks like Rogue Berserker having super armor and grabs or Rogue Caster having debuffs to try to differentiate them, but we don't get to play them for long to hide that they still have very limited (if powerful) movesets.

Making a more complex action game with that many characters would be impossible. Just look at DMC4, which had a rushed development time. Even with the DMC team's mastery of designing combat, the game had an obvious flaw: Dante's sections weren't properly balanced. Even if Dante's moveset was great as usual, the enemies were clearly designed around being fought by newcomer Nero, and players had less fun fighting them as Dante even if he was still literally Dante, just because of the incompatibility.

A LOT more work went into balancing DMC5 because of it and its 3 (and then 4) playable characters so that they could fight any enemy and still be fun, but you could STILL somewhat tell when some enemies were designed for specific characters. For example, try fighting Cavaliere Angelo as Nero and seeing that the boss moves like it's expecting Dante with his teleports, so Nero has to do a lot of running around that breaks the pace of the bossfight.

As fun as it sounds to play a servant and then juggle the enemy for 50 hits, it's just too wide a scope. The only feasible way would be to limit the amount of playable characters and keep most servants as NPCs.

Personally I wouldn't mind it. I'd prefer it even. My ideal version of Samurai Remnant would be only Iori as a playable character and switching control to Saber as the devil trigger (Saber Trigger lol) where Iori would have a real moveset within his 5 styles and be able to fight in the air so jumping isn't just to dodge groundslams. The Rogue Servants would all act like Rogue Rider: a summon that either does a special move (like the special spells Rogue Berserker, Rogue Saber, and Rogue Lancer give) or gives buffs to Iori. The servants will mainly serve to be bossfights (which were already actually quite good in FSR).

But I know that wouldn't be a Fate game at all, just a hack and slash set inside a Fate setting. It admittedly wouldn't appeal to anybody except me.

And that's why a hack and slash game by Type-Moon ought to be set in Kara No Kyoukai instead.

Give me Shiki with Raiden's cut anything and everything Blade Mode from MGR. Or make the sword combat be like Sekiro. It would be so cool.