#i never draw most of them back in 2018-2019

[thirstywaffles]

Guess who drew this instead of doing my thesis haha.....

Template by pompipurin !!

#doodley #i'm not sorry for the pickle SJ lmao #anyways. i hope they don't have same face syndrome; this took so long to draw #oh and!! i tried making LBH have both of his parents characteristics!!! #artists on tumblr #digital art #illustration #svsss #scum villain's self saving system #scum villain #sv #shen qingqiu #shen yuan #shen jiu #luo binghe #shang qinghua #mobei jun #liu qingge #liu mingyan #yue qingyuan #sha hualing #ning yingying #ming fan #tianlang jun #su xiyan #zhuzhi lang #gongyi xiao #i think this is the first time i draw most of the characters here lmaooo #i never draw most of them back in 2018-2019

[goo-berz]

Talking about Vivziepops' weird art of minors

I've never been the biggest fan of Vivziepop, I've always knew about their weird behavior (since like 2018 ~ 2019) before they were as popular as they are now.

She has done a lot of weird stuff but the thing I mainly wanna focus on in this post is their character Addison. Addison is a 17 year old gay effeminate fox humanoid from Zoophobia, he's in a relationship with a 19 year old Teacher's assistant named Gustav. Many people get confused by this but Addison has been CONFIRMED to be 17 years old by Vivziepop. Someone had changed Addison's Fandom Wiki page back in 2019 to say they're 18, when this is not true, Vivzie has confirmed they're 17. I did go back and change the age to 17 on the Wiki with the correct age in hopes that people stop believing incorrect information.

Vivzie confirming their age: https://twitter.com/vivziepop/status/1128064633166712832

The tags in this post brings up the fact that Addison is nearly 18 - not 18 yet - They're still 17.

Edit: Oh yeah, I want to add on context to this tag: "I should mention the characters canon ages are higher then when I first made them because as I wrote the story any big age gaps were uncomfy"

I've heard multiple older fans of Vivziepop say that Addison was originally meant to be 14-15 years old, and I've heard that Gustav was originally meant to be in his 30s.

Addison was created 2010, She began shipping Gustav with Addison in 2011, and Zoophobia began in 2012. So the fact she shipped a 14-15 year old character with a 30 year old one to begin with, and encouraged her friend to draw intense NSFW art of them together is so.. weird.

Anyways, Vivzie also hints at Addison being a minor, using wording indicating how young they are in age in their Blogpost introducing the character

"I finally created a few concepts, but the one I have been toying with the most is a young character much like Gale. An albino boy, with an identical albino sister"

If you need more proof, Addison is also preyed on by Mirage, a character that SPECIFICALLY goes after minors... that's basically her main personality trait, that she's a p3d0. She goes after Addison because he's a young submissive boy and easy to manipulate.

Anyways, back on topic. I personally I don't see anything wrong with the age gap of 17 & 19, however I do think it's weird to have this relationship between Addison and Gustav.. he's not exactly a teacher, but he still holds power over Addison due to the fact he's the voluntary teacher's assistant. Back when Zoophobia was popular there were people who found this dynamic weird & creepy considering the fact that Addison is basically a student under Gustav. Also, I just wanna bring this up because I find this weird, Gustav was originally under the impression that Addison was a year one student and much younger than he actually is, yet he still tried to flirt with him.. erm..? Yeah..

Anyways, that isn't the main point. The point is that Vivzie DREW NSFW OF HER 17 YEAR OLD CHARACTER AND HIS 19 YEAR OLD TEACHER... erm.. holy cracker balls? Literally how can anyone excuse these?

Vivzie also drew Gore of Addison too, but I won't post it here cus it's very graphic and weird and idk why she drew it!!

And .. possibly the worst drawing of them all.. Holy titties what is this... If you're wondering, the stuff under the censors is ACTUAL NSFW. It's not suggestive, or implied s3x, It's their ACTUAL WEE WEEs.

These accounts are poorly archived, so it's hard to find the original post and what it originally said. However after some digging I was able to find out the original text said

“ dollcreep: “ i can only see ‘dark-Günter’ exposing him and addi to a public area like so…so. yeah. Günter says; merry Christmas. god this question is super old. vivz reminded me about it"

So, I'm assuming that Dollcreep drew this, not Vivzie. However I was also able to find out from the limited resources there is that Vivzie reposted this to her accounts Vivzie-zp (unarchived) and ZPanswers, which are also now deleted, but if you view the accounts tumblr archives over the Wayback machine you can see that she did indeed repost this. http://web.archive.org/web/20120801182958/http://zpanswers.tumblr.com/archive

If you don't know, Dollcreep and Vivzie used to be best friends, however aren't anymore. Dollcreep originally designed Gustav, originally named Gunter, and Vivzie bought the design from them. Vivzie designed Addison back around 2010, and taking into account the old caption, this means that Vivzie.. allowed Dollcreep to draw NSFW art of their underaged character ;-; oh my gawd!!! Whatthe heck guys... like I said at this time Addison was still 14 - 15 and Gustav (Gunter) was in his 30s.

Also I want to mention that this drawing was from 2011, so that means Vivzie had this pedophilic ship with Dollcreeps OC for years, & after she bought the rights to the character she decided to.. keep the pedophilic ship and write it into Zoophobia by making him Addisons teacher. That's crazy..?

Anyways, because I brought up Mirage. Mirage is written pretty bad. She was a character meant to be in.. or scrapped from Zoophobia, she was meant to be a villain who preyed on the kids, mainly Addison. Her main trait is that she likes kids

Vivzie's made a bunch of drawings of Mirage preying on kids which I think is pretty weird, especially considering how poorly some of them represent it and make it seem like a joke instead.

and yeah, we all know about this infamous drawing she made of Mirage preying on Kestrel, a 14 year old. Pretty weird

Also when I looked at the web archive of Vivzie's ZPanswers blog (a Zoophobia ask blog) she accepted many weird asks about Kestrel, 14, and Addison, 17, like an ask asking if Kestrel had ever been fucked by a horse & how Kestrel, Addison & others would act when they were drunk. Which is also pretty weird to me I won't lie

Anyways that's all for now. Sorry if this is all over the place its 4am and I just wanted to get my thoughts out that vivziepop is kinda a weirdo

#vivziepop #hazbin hotel #helluva boss #vivzie #zoophobia

[datura-tea]

holy shit this year marks 10 years of this blog and moz!! i can't remember the exact date i started posting here - my archive says i have one post from november 2013 but let's disregard that - but i do remember it was around late 2014/early 2015 :)

^ one of the very first moz art pieces i ever drew, for fallout week 2015!!

memories and art through the years under a read more bc it got long

2014 → baby's first rpg!! i started playing fnv on my cousin's jailbroken xbox late 2013 and finished mid 2014 and i loved every minute of it. i remember waking up at 8am and playing almost nonstop until 2am the next day haha!

i didn't play moz on my first playthrough - but i did start creating a character that would eventually become her: a shorthaired ex-boxer who punched her way through obstacles when diplomacy failed. i remember she spent a lot of time with boone. i liked him then, because he saved my ass more times than i can count. but i digress. this is draft 1 moz essentially

2015 → this is the year that i was doing my thesis so i could graduate but i was so depressed and stressed about it that i distracted myself by replaying fnv on pc, where i played through the dlcs for the first time. i fell in love with the dlcs' oversarching story; particularly ulysses, who i became obssessed with, especially since i couldn't find any content of him at the time. in the game, i played as moz; i had most of her personality and choices down, but her backstory was still up in the air.

fun fact: this was an existing sideblog that i remade to be a fallout blog so i could look for ulysses content, and when i couldn't find any, i made some myself, featuring moz as my main courier six. originally, i didn't ship them, but eventually i ended the year as a courier/ulysses otp shipper.

this was the year i started drawing digitally - my uncle let me borrow a drawing tablet and i used an old copy of photoshop i pirated hehe

2016 → i graduated this year!! and promptly fell deeper into my depression. this was the year that it got so bad that i had to be medicated. through it all, this blog and moz and ulysses and my fandom friends were with me. and for that i am truly grateful :) this was the year i figured out how to lock transparent pixels so that i could color my lineart lol

2017 → i started hammering out moz's backstory this year i think. there's a lot of sketches of her and her family in my files. i experimented with shading and backgrounds here but that experimentation was pretty short-lived

2018 → i started using references seriously!!!! i did a lot of oc on oc kissing this year, featuring mostly moz and many friend ocs haha

2019 → didn't draw much this year. actually this year was a blur and i can't remember much from it except from it being the year of my terrible no good bad copywriting jobs... anyway i did manage to continue my courier/ulysses brainrot and make this piece, which i'm still proud of

2020 → pandemic time. i spent a lot of time asleep at home and i think this was also the year i started doing commissions?? shoutout to anyone who has ever commissioned me - thank you so much, i truly appreciate it!!

2021 → i switched from my old-ass pirated photoshop to clip studio paint and never looked back. also i did a bunch of commissions for my grandmother's surgery, which failed, and i distracted myself from the sadness by drawing my ocs over and over and playing disco elysium

2022 → by this year, i've got moz down pat and have started vaguely developing other ocs instead. but she's still always at the back of my mind

2023 → i bought new brushes from true grit texture supply and immediately found new favorites that i started using for everything. i tentatively started incorporating background elements in some pieces!

2024 → while it's still too early to say where this year will lead me art-wise, i will say that i started experimenting in realistic paint studio (which i bought in 2021, the same time as clip studio paint) a few days ago and i'm liking the results so far. we'll see!

all in all, these last 10 years have been quite a ride, but i'm glad i stuck around and i'm glad you guys stuck around too!! much much love 💖💖💖

#shh peri shhh #god. look at that old art... i took the ones that i still kinda liked but the rest... #well i don't hate them. but they're old and of their time and i wish i could redo them lmao #my art #moz

[thepersonnamedsam]

characterisation

pairing: genz!driver

summary: a short characterisation of the genz!driver

warnings: none :)

note: ahh, i love, love, love the genz!driver (wish to be her, actually) and i hope you love her as much as i do!

masterlist / taglist

personal data

born a female on a sunny day, she graced the world with her presence. as a first and last born she is her parents pride.

her parents, father, hardworking and loving, mother just as loving and hardworking.

born with no siblings, she grew up as an only child, happy to have her parents attention all the time. as she grew up, it was a bit annoying, but now that she’s away 2/3 of the time, she enjoys all the attention she gets from her mother and father.

racing career

she started karting at a young age, younger than most of the others. young and female she had a rough start, but always found her way back.

at 15 she started to race in f4, driving for CDR or chris dittman racing. coming second that season.

she soon was signed by prema in f3 where she won her first championship. she raced together with mick schumacher and she celebrated his championship in 2018.

they both signed with prema in f2 at the end of the '18 season and started racing in 2019. mick placed 12th that season as she placed third overall.

mick stayed another season with prema, winning his f2 championship, as you started your f1 career with alpha tauri.

when mick got signed with haas, she was happy to have her best friend back on the grid. she left alpha tauri.

languages

she speaks english of course, knows a little french from school and her mother tongue.

she tries to speak as many languages as possible, fascinated by them.

she asks charles, pierre and esteban to speak french with them, but she gets confused and overwhelmed pretty fast. she asks them to stop after like 6 sentences.

she also learned a bit of german, having spent so much time with the german driver. seb was surprised when she heard her speak german for the first time.

carlos repeatedly tried to teach her some spanish, but it never worked. the language just not sticking, just like french to be honest.

hobbies

her hobbies are drawing and singing. she also does some youtube videos around her life.

if she has some alone time, she usually has concerts for her stuffed animals (yes, she still has some, besides already living for herself. actually, that’s why she still has some stuffed animals).

or she draws, she likes to post her art under a fake persona, well her fake name isn’t as creative and some fans have connected the art to her, but she doesn’t care.

she spends loads of her free time with other f1 drivers, feeling lonely sometimes. they are happy to spend time with her, knowing the struggles to live alone at such a young age.

°°°

taglist: @ironmaiden1313 , @topguncultleader , @missskid , @gulabjamooon , @lovelyy-moonlight , @peachyplumsss , @mistrose23

#f1 x reader #formula 1 #f1 #gen z mood #gen z life #gen z driver #genz driver #female driver

[foursaints]

i know you get asked this probably 16 times a day but as a fellow artist who usually paints based off of references of real pics and trying to be somewhat realistic. how did you develop your style? did it take awhile, or was it pretty immediate? did you start out doing mediums like painting and drawing and transition to digital or was it always digital? final question: do you have any “tips” or “words of wisdom” for silly people like me who wanna try digital art but never have and because i never have im too scared to try…? sorry for the elephant stampede of questions i just really love your art and would love to know YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS!!! (please)

hi ♡♡!! this is so kind & honestly i'm incredibly touched... I forget that people even like my silly art so this had me making 🥺 eyes at my phone. i will answer your questions to the best of my abilities!!!

i'm putting it under the cut so i can attach examples lol

DON'T BE SCARED OF THE SWITCH TO DIGITAL!! it's so fun and the undo button will change your life... come take my hand... my biggest tip is to watch speedpaints! that was really huge for me when making the switch. find artists with styles close to yours & pay attention to their steps (how many layers they have, how they do lineart, do they use overlays, etc). if you do this a lot, you can get a clearer sense for how the digital workflow/process can look for you

i feel like kind of a pompous asshole discussing my own "style" or whatever 😭😭 my silly yaoi fanart 😭😭 but i do want to answer your questions!!! i started out drawing traditionally but i transitioned to digital when i was 16. and for a very long time i was one of the people who drew with my finger on my iphone .......i def get the most questions about my style & the unsatisfying answer is that it's pretty much always been there. it's evolved over time in a way i can't really describe so i'll show it visually

(my examples are all my ocs in an attempt to get you guys to be curious about them)

^ i did a redraw pretty recently so i can put that here!! these are the same characters from Jan 2020 -> March 2024... the first one was drawn on my literal phone lmfao. to me it's almost as though my "style" has always been there, but it's become like... yassified?

^ my art looked like this in 2020-2021

^ and like this in 2018-2019 when i was still doing trad

sorry for responding to your questions with an elephant stampede of images lmfao!!! I APPRECIATE YOU!! i guess my only words of wisdom are that even if it's intimating, you will never look back & regret trying something artistically. looking at my own stuff like this, im the cringiest yaoi artist EVERRR but im still doing it because it's the most fun when you're being self-indulgent.

i really really wish you the best on your art journey! thank you so much for writing & i hope my answers weren't too long-winded ♡♡

#a #i need to learn to Say Less #EITHER WAY I APPRECIATE THIS SM I HOPE YOU ENJOY !!! #saintsocs #<- look i’m making a tag. i feel like i posted them enough here #foursaints art tag

[wrongcaitlyn]

AHHHH I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE I SEND YOU TOO MANY ASKSMHFJGXJC BUT ANYWAYS- the greatest of luxuries takes place around 2018, right? Which is also coincidentally around the time tiktok got popular so just like hear me out-

Nico is a chronic tiktok user and definitely makes tiktok dances (he was supposed to use it for promotional purposes and it's not until Apollo asks him about it that he actually does)

Nico and Will are those tiktok friends, the kind that you see videos of and it just looks like they came straight out of a coming of age movie- same goes for whenever Leo is featured in Nico's tiktoks like they are so iconic

Apollo definitely gets tiktok for the shits and giggles, only to go accidentally viral constantly- like he could make one silly random tiktok of freaking alley cat he found and it'd get like 50 million likes 😭😭 (bros tiktok account consists of his children and their silly friends)

ANYWAYS HAVE A GOOD DAY 🫶🫶🫶🫶

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR TOO MANY ASKS I LITERALLY LIVE FOR THEM LIKE YES PLEASE ASK ME A MILLIION QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS AU THAT CONSUMES MY ENTIRE LIFELKSDF

and you are RIGHT OHMYGODSKLJF i keep thinking of a way to incorporate it bc rn they're in 2019, but i'm like, ahgsdf how do i bring in tiktok, do i make it a whole convo or just casually mention it orrrr

i do have quite a few tiktok headcanons in relation to them but i LOVE your ideas they're so real😭

these are the hc's that i had before reading this but tbh might have to go back to the drawing board on some of them becauseee i mean

(also i deleted tiktok a while back bc it was too addictive so tbh i have no idea what's going on over there anymore... nor was i there in the early daysSDLKF)

nico already strays away from social media quite a bit, and i think over the music industry changed, it's def encouraged for artists to like promote their music there and stuff. BUT. he has a bit of an addictive personality (relatable) and so when he eventually downloads it (because he would resist for a very long time) would get hooked. except he rarely posts, instead, he's that verified celeb account that you find in the most random comment sections and he spams all his friends with vids. he definitely gets a lot of pet videos i feel like, like the cute dogs and cats and he would send a vid of like yk YK WHAT VIDS IM TALKING ABOUT like two cats snuggling with each other or smth and send it to will with 'us' i just KNOW he would bc it's incredibly sappy but doesnt require too much descriptionsfkljs

he probably has 235829348 drafts and he mostly posts random stuff that's completely unrelated to his music. like i bet there would be a few people (when he occasionally says something related to his job) who didn't even know he released music despite definitely having heard it

i didn't really envision him doing tiktok dances eXCEPT maybe they all stay in his drafts. bc i dont think his vids would really be focused on *him* because he's not a huge fan of being on camera, so it'd more just be like those rants where you can only see his forehead or random studio vids oR TRAVEL VIDS WHILE ON TOUR. he would def do those. there's def some people who think he's a travel influencer and then find out he's a grammy award winning artist and are like ??? NICO?? FROM TIKTOK???

but he isn't called a "tiktok artist" despite some people knowing him from tiktok because he literally ALWAYS forgets to promote his own music in his vids. his fans are promoting it in the comment sections to try and get the people who think he's a travel influencer to listen to him😭

but his posting schedule is so very sporatic like he'll post ten vids in a day and then nothing for a month. it's fully based on vibes and is completely chaotic, just like everything else he does

will, like any other social media platform, has a private account. (nico also has a private spam) so will is that person who tags people in the comments like all the time (whereas nico sends it more often just bc he doesnt wanna risk being on the wrong account accidentally)

he appears a LOT on leo and lou ellen and cecil's tiktoks (and nico's) and every other week there's a huge internet search to find out who this guy is on a new famous person's tiktok account and then someone will be like "it's just will solace again HOW THE FUCK DOES HE ALWAYS FIND THESE PEOPLE"

like when he randomly shows up in taylor swift's getting ready for her nyu graduation post. like he's definitely there for a brief second in just like the reflection of a window or something and everyone goes CRAZY

before realizing it's this cryptid guy again who seems to be surrounded by every famous person to exist

he definitely posts a lot on his private account though and often it'll just be him rambling about something he's learned in class or him documenting every time he sees a cute animal in public

eventually he'll be dared to make a public account and he decides "haha that's funny okay sure it's not like anyone will find me"

WRONG. this guy is allergic to being not-famous. he will never be allowed to be a normal guy. his first video goes completely viral. he posts once in a blue moon, usually documenting his friends being crazy and every single time he does, it gets like a million views with people in his comments being "how does he know them???"

but you are DEFINITELY right about his account always seeming like it comes out of a coming of age story

and there are most definitely thousands of shippers in every single comment section with literally every friend. so he tries to have at least two other people in every single video so that people can't ship him with just one other person. but it's unavoidable. esp when he comes out as bi, people are just shipping him with ANYONE who shows up on his account

he also does those screaming lipsync vids to whenever a song by one of his favorite songs comes out he's a huge fanboy

OH and he gets to show off his vinyls there. he loves doing that. he's got so many and vinyl tiktok admires it.

also in every single video there's at least one comment that says "you look like apollo the singer"

EVERY SINGLE ONE

leo's the most active on tiktok, as he is with every other social media

it's either him building something, him setting something on fire, him with his friends, him talking to the camera while walking down the street (you know the genre of tiktok)

he is very similar to will in the aspect of "HOW DOES HE KNOW THEM??" but he's been a bit more public than will so people will know him more

he doesn't go viral as often as will (despite posting 132532x as much) but when he DOES it goes VIRAL viral. like tens of millions of views. it still happens quite often and he has the highest follower count of the friendgroup

and he's also the most active in comment sections like he's in every comment section you can't escape him and he replies to like every single one on his vids, usually with very cryptic responses that leave you with more questions than you started with

he ALSO tags will and nico in a bunch of videos, but not in a private account. he doesn't have a private account. he just tags them (obviously, avoiding any romance-related / stuff that could out them, in which he would send it to them) in EVERYTHING

and that's also the highest chance you have of will (on his public account) commenting on a video bc he's mostly on his priv

he also (when him and jason eventually come out) makes a million couple tiktoks and does all the trends

most recurring character in his vids are piper (and shel) (and will and nico over the summer when they're not so far apart)

apollo runs the account for delphi records

i know i haven't shared much of this BUT most people 100% assume that it's run by some intern or something bc of how casual it is but it's actually just him

he loves comment sections and hyping up all of his artists

oh BTW leo and will and apollo do all the promotion for nico because of how much he forgets about it

it's very common for nico to be posting a random ass video and then the top comment is Delphi Records ✓ Check out Nico's latest single, ______!

he also EVENTUALLY gets a tiktok for himself

that is just entirely his kids

as he should

aside from leo, i think kayla and piper are most active on tiktok

piper knows all the inner fandom details from shel (who has an editing account 100% bc i have an editing account and im projecting onto her)

piper's vids are mostly with leo they're such an iconic duo

idk why but all i can think of when thinking about piper is that her feed is like momona tamada?? like that's the vibe we're going for here

and ofc she promotes charities and other important topics there too!!!

and if there's a wlw trend going around yk that piper and shel are going to be on that first thing, probably the top video under whatever audio it is

and KAYLA. GOD. KAYLA'S TIKTOK IS SOOO ICONIC i think she's second to leo with most followers

the lip sync videos for sure, also out of all of them i think she'd def do tiktok dances she'd slay them all

and then some of them are just trends or her in the archery range

somewhat similarly to will, she often gets comments that say "how does she know them??"

but like a good 30% of people watching the archery events of the olympics are there just because of her tiktokSDLFKJS

she also happens to go viral. all. the fucking. time. like i swear apollo's kids just HAVE to go viral all the time they can't escape it they're made for fame and it's likeee kayla does love it (will not so muchKSDF and austin has avoided this problem by just not downloading tiktok at all! except apollo's video of him performing has gone viral. oh well.)

so those are my hc's feel free to add on to these!!! i would love to hear what y'all think bc AHGSDFL writing about these characters' social media is one of my favvv things to do - thank you for the ask!!!! sorry for the lengthy rambleKSDJF

#wrongcaitlyn #talk ur talk asks

[catofadifferentcolor]

Terrible Fic Idea #85: The Old Guard, but make it Assassin's Creed

My brother has always been a big fan of Assassin's Creed, but I never gave the games a shot until recently, when it seemed a natural progression from all the Crusades research I've been doing for The Old Guard fic I want to write but probably never will. Once I realized Isu bullshit could be a perfect explanation for TOG immortality, this (incredibly self-indulgent) crossover was born.

Or: What if Merrick Pharmaceuticals was a competitor of Abstergo Industries?

Just imagine it:

Pharmaceutical research is an expensive, cut-throat business. Viagra is a $2 billion dollar a year industry. Humira, the blockbuster drug of 2018, sold nearly $20 billion in the US alone. So I imagine if you're a pharmaceutical CEO of limited morals and great ambition, it might seem like a better idea to steal ideas from your competitor who seems to hit it out of the ballpark every time instead of pouring billions of dollars into what may turn out to be an unfruitful venture.

Enter Hugh Merrick, father of Steve Merrick and founder of Merrick Pharmaceuticals. Needing a blockbuster and desperate to get one over on Abstergo, he hires a hacker to slip into Abstergo's servers and find him the ripest, juiciest plum they can sometime in the early 2000s, before the (modern) events of the games or the 2019 TOG movie.

The hacker comes back with the schematics for the Animus.

The idea of genetic memories seems absurd, but Hugh figures that if Abstergo has been using the Animus since the 1980s to get ahead, there's no reason he can't do it too - all he needs is a single Piece of Eden and all his problems are solved.

Hugh builds the Animus and has the hacker go back into Abstergo's systems looking for a candidate to put into it. But finding someone with Assassin blood seems dangerous - they're likely to be an assassin too and could be dangerous if they try to escape, plus the Templars killed off nearly all of them. Templar descendants are out because most are Templars themselves and if Hugh's plan is to succeed he heeds to stay off their radar for as long as possible.

The hacker returns with Abstergo's list of people who may be useful if all other avenues fail. It contains a list of people who were peripherally involved during the invents that interest them - mainly high-ranking courtiers close to Popes Alexander VI and Julius II - and their descendants. They might know things about events of Ezio's time.

Enter Joe and Nicky.

For the past few hundred years, their primary cover identities involve being the children or grandchildren of their previous cover story, all the way back to their first deaths. There are fewer questions and you get to "inherit" all your old stuff.

This method has worked quite well for them - until Merrick learns that their "ancestors" were part of the court of Pope Julius II from 1497 (when he was still Bishop of Ostia) until his death in 1513. Nicky was his private secretary, Joe was a court painter, and contemporary sources suggest they were highly placed enough to know whatever Pope Julius II knew about Ezio's apple. Such as where Ezio might have hidden it.

It's not an unreasonable plan, except for the pesky fact of Joe and Nicky's immortality. After all, the animus is designed to draw on genetic memory, not the subject's own memories. And even if it can be used to view memories laid down in their own genes 500 years ago - which is doubtful, - there's a high likelihood of it killing them - and if Hugh were to learn of their immortality, things would only get worse for them. But they have little choice once they're captured and brought to Hugh's secret research bunker somewhere north of Inverness.

What follows is a largely self-indulgent stroll through the more interesting episodes of Joe and Nicky's life together.

Nicky's first go in the animus is a jumbled, confused mess as Hugh's tech minion learns the ropes as she goes. Nicky ends up hopscotching through his early memories - for instance, a memory where he's learning how to use a sword as a young squire jumps to him using the same move during the Siege of Jerusalem. That strand of memory continues on for a bit until another interaction gets him sent into the memory of another battle/training session/conversation with the person in question and so on.

Joe's first time in the animus goes a little better, as Hugh realizes that his minion needs to learn how to program the animus before they put their most valuable subject into it, and so let's her learn with Joe. Hugh's minion (who is really beginning to regret taking this job) succeeds, pulling Joe into the genetic memory of one of his ancestors: al-Kahina, an Amazigh religious and military leader who led indigenous resistance to the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb. There should be suggestions of a Sword of Eden somewhere in events, but since they don't share Precursor knowledge, Hugh's not interested in letting the memory play out.

Nicky's second session gets them to the time period they want, but his memories have next to nothing to do with the PoE. The same holds true for Joe, when his second session puts him through his POV of that time period. And though Hugh has his minion take them up and down every memory of that time period searching for the smallest hint of anything that might point them in the right direction, there's nothing to find.

Or, rather: Nicky and Joe did meet Ezio once or twice, in waiting rooms or reception areas or the like, but they spent that time talking about art, or the weather, or philosophy - nothing about politics, or Ezio's travels, or PoEs at all.

Otherwise, most of Nicky and Joe's memories of early 16th century Rome involve Joe's rivalry with Michelangelo, who among other things persisted in flirting with Nicky even after he made it clear he wasn't interested. (Joe was, among other things, responsible for getting Michelangelo the commission for David in Florence to get him out of Rome and away from Nicky.)

There's some Vatican politics as well - Nicky's part in organizing the Swiss Guard, Joe's in organizing the Vatican Museums, and the removal of the Borgias from power - and some global politics - the 1503 dispensation for Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, etc. But most of their memories are largely Joe and Nicky being Joe and Nicky in the High Renaissance (and rather hating their jobs, as neither of them particularly like working for Julius II but were blackmailed into it to avoid being labeled as Ottoman spies.)

This goes on for several days until Hugh orders his minion to start looking for the memories of other "ancestors" - essentially, to refine the animus and her technique while he gets his hacker to find better candidates for the animus. And if this accidentally destroys Joe and Nicky's minds in the process? So be it. The plan was always to kill them at the end of their usefulness anyway.

Hugh's minion spends a day doing as asked - there's a few tantalizing glimpses of Joe and Nicky at the court of Kublai Khan in the 1270s - before she has an opportunity to act on the guilty conscious that's come to plague her.

The minion helps them escape - destroying the animus, wiping the records, and blowing the place sky high to cover the bloody swath they have to cut to get out of the secret research bunker. Amongst the casualties is Hugh Merrick, propelling his son Steve into position as youngest CEO in Pharma.

Joe and Nicky rejoin Andy and Booker - who'd been doing their best to cut their own bloody swath through anyone tangentially related to the mercenaries who kidnapped their brothers - and decide to turn their attention to tracking down PoE and destroying animus technology wherever it can be found, believing there are no peaceful uses for either. As a glad you escaped present, Booker tanks Merrick Pharmaceutical's stocks so badly the company never recovers, eventually going bankrupt.

As for the minion? Maybe she's a young Rebecca Crane prior to her recruitment by the Assassins and it’s her experiences with Hugh's animus that get her recruited by the Assassin Order. Maybe she's just a random OC who sets herself up with a new identity halfway around the world and watches gleefully as Merrick Pharmaceuticals and Abstergo Industries both eventually crash and burn.

Bonuses include: 1) Joe and Nicky being the most passive aggressive kidnapees in the history of kidnappings - on the face of things, going along with exactly what Hugh asks of them, but doing their best to focus on innocuous memories and figuring out how to purposefully make memories "skip" between similar episodes without Hugh ever noticing the glitch. Also, playing up the Bleeding Effect so that by day three they're only speaking in Medieval Italian; 2) Hugh being a better class of villain than his son. Immoral? Unethical? Yes, but in a sophisticated businessman way, not a jacket and hoodie, stab a man with a letter opener type way. For some reason I'm imagining him as Jean-Luc Picard, if Picard ever had a Mirror Universe alternate; and 3) Interludes of Andy and Booker searching for Joe and Nicky after they've been kidnapped. This should be part action-thriller along the lines of Taken, part buddy comedy, and involve an arc wherein Andy learns of Booker's deep unhappiness with his immortality and helps him come to terms with the feelings that would have otherwise eventually led to the events of the 2019 movie.

And that is surprisingly more than I thought I would have had. As always, feel free to adopt this bun, just link back if you decide to do anything with it.

More TOG Fic Ideas | More Terrible Fic Ideas

#plot bunny #fic ideas #the old guard #assassin's creed #ezio trilogy #tog #ac #alternate universe #assassin's creed au #nicolo di genova #yusuf al kaysani #yusuf x nicolo #immortal husbands #isu technology #genetic memory #abstergo #ezio auditore #animus #andromache the scythian #sebastien le livre #rebecca crane

[banqanas]

Can I ask how you learned Japanese? I'm curious about learning it myself but have no clue where to start.

Disclaimer:

I'm self taught (only have one basic class in Japanese) and never took JLPT. I can talk, write and understand basic japanese, but definitely not proficient. Because I only apply my jp knowledge for hobby stuffs (a.k.a i can read a novel about oshi and have conversations with fellow otaku. but none of it is applicable in regular daily life)

I started since 2014 so I've been learning jp for almost 9 years (still am). I dont think I'm qualified to give advice so instead, here's a short essay on how I got to this point;

2014: learnt reading & listening from manga & anime. reading raws while comparing to fan scanlations. same with anime. doing this consistently to get used to the language 2018: peak of my learning -took a basic class in japanese in college. helped a lot in getting used to sentence structure and particles -started translating seriously (short written text only: interviews, tweets, articles) -practice writing and conversing via twitter. started tweeting in japanese and talked to japanese people in same fandom. found kaiwa friends. -also started translating spoken japanese (livestreams), but was not confident enough to translate word-by-word 2019- jan 2021: started translating mobage contents. literally just doing the same things as the year before but more frequently and more quantity. also started translating short spoken japanese without any text/script aid (radio). feb 2021: discovered high&low. met todoroki yosuke. trajectory of life changed. stopped translating for the time being 2022: slowly translating media with real people starting with some kamen rider stuffs. got more comfortable with translating spoken japanese (unscripted). 2023: here i am.

The long essay version:

The earliest I started learning japanese was around ~2014 where I was into a very niche series that has no translation so I had to buy the manga and try to read them myself. At the time there's no translate using image function, so a lot of it was me typing in the words in hiragana and hoping that I find the right kanji. During this period I (was forced to) learn a lot about kanji radicals and how to properly write them.

From that day on, Jisho was my best friend

I learnt mostly by comparing anime/manga fan translations with raws and going back and forth to check the words in dictionary. I prefer fan scanlation bc most of them are literal and are easier to understand as someone who isn't an english speaker.

I still consciously do this whenever I watch anything but I can differentiate what's a literal translation vs localisation now.

I started dabbling in translation around 2018

At the time I was into Hypnosis Mic (rap songs). I was better at understanding jp words now and could write simple words. I would tweet in japanese and reply to my fav artists drawings (this template is my origin). I also started posting my drawings with jp caption

I used to help around the fan translation group with seiyuu interviews or magazine articles (mainly written text). And the admin of the group would check my translation before posting them. I tried translating songs myself, but I realised that while I could translate, they don't make sense 😅😅

I made some friends in the fandom who were also learning japanese and we would consult each other with translations. I also made a friend with a japanese person wanting to learn english. So I would talk to them in japanese while they would reply to me in english.

So I stuck around with translating short interviews/tweets. I also started doing livetweets of niconico livestreams. I wasn't confident enough in spoken japanese so I only made general summaries instead of word-by-word translation.

At the same year I also took an introductory class to Japanese Language at my college. It was my first formal lesson in japanese. The book we used was Minna no Nihongo Elementary 1. The class got me used to sentence structures, particles, numbers, time etc etc. The class did not made me translate my anime stuffs better back then but the present me is very thankful for everything I learnt during this class bc it's what people in the real world use.

The next following years (2019- early 2021) were when i was most active bc I got into translating mobage contents. I translated pretty much everything I could from home screen lines to event stories to radio. I got better at making my translation sound better and not too literal. Also helped proof reading friends translations.

I personally think this was the best learning duration for me. Compared to actors, seiyuu (voice actors) have really clear enunciation which helped me got confident in my listening skills for spoken japanese, thus became confident enough to translate it. I could understand and catch up with what they were talking about with minimal text. But I still need to listen to the same radio show 2-3 times before I could fully understand them.

I dedicated every waking minute of my life to this game until it shut down. Then I got so broken hearted, I didn't want to consume anymore 2D media. Depressi spaghetti phase.

On that fated day in February 2021, I watched High&Low on netflix and I fell for Todoroki Yosuke. Started the process all over again by consuming everything i can about highlow to get used to the actors voices, way of speaking, dialect, common words/phrases etc. Also includes stuffs related to exile tribe. During this time I barely translated anything bc I wasn't confident enough with unscripted spoken japanese.

By 2022 I got the hang of it and started translating stuffs for kamen rider. And this year I can listen to fanta's radio while doing chores without thinking too much about it but can still understand their conversation! I read a novel for the first time!

I'm sorry that this got too long but I hope it helped to give you an idea of where to start! Here's to learning more! 👍

#the-sunshine-dragon #yukenshairtie #asks #replies #i really am sorry over how long this is #but i hope it helps!! #will add my personal points in a reblog

[dogtoling]

your oc lore heavily revolves around krakening you say 👀?? I really enjoy your splatoon ocs and i remember peppermint has a kraken condition of some sort (btw she’s one of my favourites i love her :3), but I don’t know much about your lore for it besides the contents of the kraken special post. can you share anything further about it, or point me to any posts where you’ve talked about it before?

Thank you! it makes me really happy when people like seeing my OCs. And to be fair Peppermint seems to be the one I draw the most lately... her lore specifically centers around the Kraken a LOT. Honestly, as for stuff about it, I don't really have much more than the Kraken post out in public (everything lives rent free in my brain). This comic i started making the other day taking place in like 2021 is extremely relevant to this topic... it's going to have at least one continuation, and i find it funny that the kraken was revealed to be re-added to the game literally 1 day after i posted this

But the gist of it is that yeah Peppermint does have Kraken syndrome, which triggered in around 2014 - she'd been playing for like four years OBSESSIVELY and she was kind of insane about turf wars. Per my story, her main was the Krak-On Splat Roller (and later the Custom Range Blaster) but uh... canonically, we don't know ANYTHING about the turf war scene prior to 2015 and whether those weapons existed at all yet, so you have to use your imagination on that. (I WISH WE KNEW, BY THE WAY.) She was genuinely going to pursue becoming a professional ink battler, but obviously her body said otherwise because involuntarily Krakening because you got too stoked about the match or got a bit too heated about an enemy player is kind of bad. Like really bad on every possible level.

So needless to say, she had to quit very much to her dismay and it was a primary reason why the blue team (which Engel was also part of!) ended as a whole. Doctors were busting their ass trying to figure out what the hell was triggering the transformations and why it was so easy, given that the drug was probably fairly new at the time and she was likely one of the first people out there to have Kraken Syndrome (Krakening like 6 times a day will do that to you), at least two years before cases of it would start more commonly popping up.

She's had meds for it for years and they seem to work fine, so it's not really a problem for her (except in the mornings sometimes and if she like, forgets to take them.) but she did go like the entire Splatoon 2 era without attending turf wars pretty much at all just because she was really worried things were going to go south, and again, none of her teammates really play anymore. She returned to Turf Wars for the first time in forever last year sort of on impulse as her and Amber happened to land in Splatsville just in time for the Rock-Paper-Scissors Splatfest and decided hey, why not. (then proceeded to be on different teams, so never mind.)

Um, she's been using the Splat Roller lately and enjoying more of a support position instead of Kill Everything Immediately, but now her actual main is coming back, WITH THE KRAKEN... I don't think she's going to be taking up on that offer and I don't think she's super thrilled about it.

however, here's a bonus picture of her from like, 2018-2019? having a kraken moment in her house.

#mailbox #dodo ocs #thanks for asking i love talking about my ocs #(at least the ones that actually have story.) #deep sea dead zone #blue team

[go-to-two]

Was the network this quiet for the other cast members leaving (Sophia, Monica, Jon, Elias, etc)?

Most of these exits occurred during my hiatus from PD, so I'm doing a little deep dive on each of them. Also, please keep in mind that these occurred at the end of their respective seasons, so that impacts how they are announced. TLDR: The silence feels very weird, but that does not make it concrete evidence of anything.

Sophia: This one is tricky! It was a complicated exit on bad terms, so I hesitate to even draw a direct line to Jesse since we don't know the nature of his departure. For timeline sake, Sophia's final episode aired on May 17, 2017 and her departure was confirmed on May 25, 2017. Further details about situation were not reported on until December. To my knowledge, there have never been concrete statements made from anyone about her departure, just heavy allusions and educated guesses. I could not find any statement from the network about her specifically (not to say it does not exist).

Monica: TBH this one still stings. Her final episode aired May 10, 2018 and her departure was confirmed May 15. She posted on socials and was clear in her statements that she was ready to move on. The show was very vocal about thanking her.

Elias: This one is pretty cut and dry. His final episode aired on May 9, 2019 and there was an interview shared that night stating that it was a creative decision for the storylines.

Jon: Jon's final episode aired May 22, 2019 and his departure was confirmed April 19. This is the only one we knew ahead of time! Eid gave an interview in September stating that it was a creative decision. They were open to having him back for the beginning of season 7 to wrap up, but it did not happen.

I know there have been several One Chicago exits we can study, but none of them really feel like they mirror Jesse's so it may not do much good. I don't understand the silence, but I also assume there are reasons behind it that I'm not privy to. Hopefully we'll get more answers soon.

#anon ask #chicago pd #with a dash of fire

[whoiskt]

Evolution of my art. Made this for myself because I wanted to see my own progress but I accidentally just made myself sad with how much of my art I've lost and the years when I hardly drew anything.

2011- One of my first digital art pieces. Redraw of a photo I found on Google. Eyebrow and mouth are immediately off-portion, but as a fully colored piece I think it is pretty good for a beginner. It was really small tho, I didn't understand resolutions yet!

2012- Homestuck phase. A year full of art to choose from, this was one of the last drawings I made that year, and honestly I still think it looks really good. The way I drew eyes back then was totally different.

2013- Supernatural phase. I was doodling a lot on homework and notebooks, but actual finished pieces are hard to find now. I've lost sketchbooks from this era. Perhaps even burned them, haha. This was done on whiteboard.

2014- This self-portrait was my magnum opus at the time, done for art class. There was a level of detailing textures here that I'd never care to revisit and this piece easily could have taken me 50 hours or more to complete. The nose/mouth feels so off to me, now, although I clearly broke my bad habit of drawing small pointed chins with this one. Each year I look at it hanging in my parent's house it makes me cringe more. Charcoal.

2015- Mostly MIA. I have some pen drawings from this time but I thought they were skippable and I only had room for 10 years here. I went to film school so I was focused on that creatively.

2016- Got into watercolor this year. Wasn't done on watercolor paper so it warped a lot. I don't really mind. End of my vanity era. I was in an art class, animation class, and character design class this year. Maybe got a little burnt out on art.

2017- Height of my pen drawing obsession, although most of the drawings I did were at work, and were hung up at work, and may still be there even though I am long gone now? Sorry about the weird crop it was a horizontal piece.

2018- Yes, similar to the previous year, but I see improvement in pen technique. I rarely took time to just sit down and draw other than in-class doodles.

2019- Wedding gift for my sister of her and her husband (although I cropped her out lol). Large watercolor piece where I was rushed and had to finish the background as an abstract fall leaves. I'm still on the fence about it overall.

2020- My digital art renaissance. This was the year I started to really realize I was utterly incompetent at backgrounds.

2021- I was really focused on photography this year, although I did do some sketching here and there. My laptop became mostly unusable for digital rendering so that cut down on my motivation.

2022- I discovered watercolor brushes, my beloved. I closed the door on many of my other creative outlets which seemed to bring back my love, passion, and motivation for drawing again.

Hopefully I can share a 2023 piece with you soon to show my improvements 🤗 I've been sketching a lot like I did back when I was 13 and it feels good!

#lifeblogging #my art

[obenvs3000w23]

Unit 04: The Gift of Beauty

“The gift of beauty”, as it relates to nature interpretation, is the capability for one to acknowledge and appreciate the beauty around them, be affected by natural beauty and develop a desire to protect the resources in their environment (Beck et al., 2018). When art is incorporated into nature interpretation programs, it can have very meaningful results. Art can entertain and ignite a passion for nature in individuals (Beck et al., 2018). It can lead those who previously hadn't made meaningful connections with nature to explore a passion they never knew they had. 

Capturing the beauty of nature through art has been instrumental in my own relationship with nature. I interpret “the gift of beauty” through visual art and photographs. I love to draw, and I remember some of the first things I began enjoying drawing were landscapes. My grandmother was a talented painter, and she would love to paint nature. I remember when I was young, she took my sister and I to a beautiful park in Montreal and took photos of us so she could paint them later. I remember that day like it was yesterday, and I remember the joy I felt in the park and after I saw the portrait she painted. She passed away two years ago, and that portrait hangs in my room. It is a constant reminder of her, the happiness we felt in nature, and the magic of being able to capture that feeling through art. This is an example of the emotional response that the gift of beauty can evoke in an  individual. Below is a photo of part of her studio, you can see her many paintings in the back. In the front is the painting she did of my sister and I about 14 years ago. 

 Even now, my favourite artist is Claude Monet, who painted gorgeous nature scenes, his most famous being the Water Lilies. I remember looking at photos of his Water Lily Pond painting and thinking about how much I would love to sit on the edge of that little bridge and watch the lilies. During covid, I went for a walk in the evergreen brickworks and passed by the pond in front of the trails. I stopped and watched the pond and the lily pads and felt as though I had finally found the place in the painting. Whenever I need a moment for myself, I visit that pond. Below is a photo of the painting by Claude Monet.

Another way I interpret the beauty of nature through art is via photography. I took a trip to Costa Rica in 2019 with my dad, who is passionate about photography. We walked through a rainforest and looked out for as many animals as possible. While walking through, I heard many animals and saw them from a distance, which was very special. I felt as though I was visiting them in their home and they were welcoming us in. My dad took many photos that day and it was only when I got home and looked at his photos did I fully appreciate where I just was. The colours and patterns that he was able to capture were ones that I wasn't aware of when I was walking by. Both experiences were special, being in their habitat and hearing them, and then going home and fully understanding what it was that I just saw. Below are some of the photos that my dad took that day.

Art is an incredibly helpful tool in interpreting nature in many ways, and I hope to continue developing my relationship with nature through personal art pieces.

Beck, L., Cable, T.T., Knudson, D.M (2018). Interpreting Cultural and Natural Heritage for a Better World. Sagamore Publishing

[eri-blogs-life]

This post is about my playthrough of Persona 4 Golden

So first, some background info. I’ve been a fan of rpgs and in particular jrpgs for most of my life. I played Persona 5 in like 2018-2019 and instantly fell in love. I kept watch closely on when P5R would come out and picked it up at launch [missed my chance to get the special edition version tho :( ].

I tried going back to play Persona 4 a couple times, the first time buying a used PSP cause P4G hadn’t yet come out on PC. I’ve tried playing Persona 4 a couple times before, but never made it more than about halfway through. But this time I decided to really sit myself down and play through the whole thing, and actually accomplished it.

I played Persona 4 Golden, and for context during this playthrough I did not complete the requirements to get the “True Ending,” as people call it, so this write-up is based only on my own playthrough and my own basis of knowledge. (And generally I do not avoid spoilers when I do these write-ups, if that matters)

So, gonna start with the story and the characters, then talk mechanics. Overall, I really liked the game. The story is interesting, the characters are mostly pretty good, and the game’s got fun mechanics, a nice aesthetic, and a killer soundtrack.

In terms of story, Persona 4 generally takes place with a group of teenagers in a small town solving a supernatural mystery. They discover that there exists a parallel world to the real world, accessible by going into a TV screen. With them being some of the only people able to access that world, and that world being related to the mysterious deaths in town, they have to solve the mystery themselves.

The parallel world is eventually revealed to be a world created of human thought, which I believe is a common theme through the Persona games. After all, the Persona series draws a lot from Carl Jung’s theories on there being a kind of collective human psychology.

Along the way, the party saves a handful of people who were put into that world, many of whom become new party members when they face their shadow - their unconscious self - and become a fully realized person and thus gain the magical power of persona.

So, putting that together the game kind of has a whole big theme about how people can get lost into the TV, can come to be bought in to what they see on TV and not think critically about it. The argument seems to be mainly that the party is searching for the Truth, but the main antagonist seems to believe that humanity wants to fog over their minds and just meld into mindlessly consuming media and being entertained.

(the irony that i was usually watching some kind of TV or youtube video while playing is not lost on me)

So I think one of the most interesting bits of Persona 4 is how it deals with queerness. Like, I feel like I remember hearing generally very positive things about this game, in terms of things like representation of queer identities. And it’s interesting how it... kind of does that, but then also throws itself flat on its face sometimes.

Like, one of the first party members you get is Kanji. And Kanji’s shadow seems to explicitly be gay, which makes everyone believe that the part of himself that Kanji’s hiding is him being gay. But then the game kind of walks it back toward the end of his part of the main story by having him talk about how he “was just afraid of being rejected - by anyone” because he had non-masculine hobbies like sewing. And later on he definitely expresses interest in women and awkwardness around men in a way that maybe makes it reasonable to read Kanji as bi, and that’s awesome!

And Naoto, one of the later party members, seems pretty clearly to be a trans man. He’s initially presented as a man, he presents himself as a man. During his section of the main story it’s revealed that he’s “actually a woman, but grew up being a big fan of detective novels and knew women don’t get respect in the police department, so had to pretend to be a man.” And again, it’s like... Yeah, that’s... I mean, read at face value, including the way the game switches to exclusively using she/her pronouns at that point, then she’s just a confused young girl. But he is pretty explicit about saying that he literally wishes he was born a man, and like... That’s Trans, babey! It’s handled in that specific dumb way that japanese media handles genderqueer characters sometimes, by essentializing them into their sex and just expressing that there’s some outside factors that mean they have to present otherwise, but Naoto’s fairly explicit about not wanting to be seen as a woman. It’s... I don’t know how to feel about it. Obviously, the game is like 10 years old or so, and if the same game were made today, would they treat his story different? Who knows

Also Kanji clearly has a crush on Naoto and it’s cute AF

But then like... the game can’t resist playing into homophobia, transphobia, and fatphobia for jokes. There’s so many moments played as jokes where, like, Yosuke freaks out cause you choose a dialogue option saying you wish you’d gotten valentine’s chocolate from Kanji or whatever. And all the fatphobic comedy at the expense of one of the recurring NPC students is just disgusting, and it really sours the experience for me in a lot of ways.

But of course the character’s stories aren’t just about their part in the main story, the modern Persona games also have a social aspect, where you can spend time interacting with your friends and building relationships, which can ultimately influence your abilities in the world inside the TV.

I maxed out... 8 social links, I think? I ended up completing the personal social link side stories of Chie, Yukiko, Ai, Yumi, Daisuke, Nanako, Dojima, and Sayoko.

And so there’s also a consideration with regards to the past section of this write-up where like... if I had completed Kanji or Naoto’s social links, would my opinion of them be different? I look forward to exploring that in my next playthrough (though that won’t be for awhile).

Now in terms of the social links, I feel like this is one of the parts where going back to Persona 4 from Persona 5 feels really really weak. Like, in P5 you get really cool and unique abilities from increasing your social links, allowing you all kinds of new moves to use in dungeons or in battle, or out in the real world.

In Persona 4, if you’re doing a social link with a party member they unlock new abilities (though everyone has mostly the same abilities they unlock, like being able to clear status effects on allies in battle), and if you’re doing a social link with someone else, you get nothing. Well, you get an EXP bonus when you make personas of that character’s type. Which feels really weak and underwhelming compared to P5. The unique abilities you get in P5′s social links helps make it really feel like the relationships you’re building during the course of your journey are actually impacting you and helping change who you are as a person.

But of course the relationships between the player character and NPCs aren’t the only important relationships in the game. And one relationship in particular brings out some really uhhhh... weird feelings in me. Not good ones.

So Teddie is a character who is a big teddy bear, who helps the party and is eventually revealed to be a Shadow that took on a form that would allow him to better bond with humans. (Though he’s since forgotten that by the start of the game.) Eventually, he gets a human body, which by all appearances is similar to the other main party members, being presumably about a teenager.

He has a very sexual side to him, often being a “comic relief” pervert type character. Which is often played for laughs and is... fine. It’s overdone sometimes in my opinion, but it’s fine. However...

It’s never explicit but it’s kinda definitely implied he has, like, a romantic attraction to the player character’s young cousin Nanako. And coupling that with his very sexual nature and the seeming age gap, it just leaves a very very bitter taste in my mouth. Like, yeah Teddie might actually be closer in terms of how long he’s been around to a kid like Nanako, but he’s definitely put more generally on the same developmental level as the other late-teens party members. It’s just kinda a little creepy and not okay

All that aside, moving back to the main story... There’s definitely something interesting to be said about the concept of the world of human thought. The collective unconscious being represented as a phsyical thing that can be directly impacted by people - and can directly impact people - makes for the Peronsa series being able to set up some really interesting questions and answers about the nature of the world and society as a whole.

In P4, the world of human thought is accessible by going through a tv screen. That world in a way is a representation of the way that access to mass media impacts people, and the way people impact mass media. I don’t really know that I have it in me to provide a real thoughtful writeup on my thoughts about that, but like.. I like it. And I think it’s interesting how the villain being able to impact the TV world can potentially be a way of them affecting the real world by affecting the way people on the outside see things, so it’s a sort of manufactured consent or something. Again, my brain’s not working overtime on that thought right now, but there’s something there for sure. Maybe I’ll make a separate post about that sometime.

Speaking of the villain...

So going into the game I already had an idea of who the villain was going to be, which I’d picked up through memes and things online. And then I was fooled!

Late into the game, you chase down a false lead and it really felt like things were gearing up for a finale, so I thought the internet had tricked me into thinking the wrong character was the big bad. It was very funny for me to have realized that.

And then of course the real villain gets revealed. And then of course the real REAL villain gets revealed. And honestly? The “villain we’ve never seen before is actually the one behind the villain we’ve been chasing the whole game” thing felt deserved here. Adachi may be the one who committed the murders we’ve been trying to solve the whole game, but the one behind Adachi is one who has a great deal of control over the world within the TV. And the mystery of what exactly the world within the TV is has felt like one that’s been a secondary mystery the whole time. So I really liked the way the “real villain reveals himself after you beat the guy you’ve been chasing after this whole time” trope was executed here. It felt earned.

So, what about game mechanics?

The game’s a lot of classic JRPG goodness. But the Persona games don’t fall into the trap that a lot of JRPGs do, where fights feel like kind of a slog as you whittle down the monster’s HP and try to keep your party’s HP topped off. Instead, Persona’s combat feels a lot more like a puzzle, where if you can figure out an opponent’s weakness you’re rewarded by finishing the fight. If you can’t figure out the enemy’s specific weakness, it’ll usually only take you a few rounds to whittle down their HP anyway, so no battle ever sticks around too long.

Except for boss fights, which is really where I feel like this game fails. Persona 5 I think does a little better at this, by giving bosses different phases which have weaknesses you have to figure out to progress, but in Persona 4 a lot of the bosses just feel like damage sponges where you have to whittle down their HP while keeping your own party members from falling too low on HP, and it gets kinda boring. But you can’t really zone out and play the boss fights absentmindedly either, because then you end up getting hit by some big attack you were meant to have guarded against and have to do the whole fight over again. It’s very annoying.

So, now I guess we get to the section where I give a bunch of random miscellaneous thoughts that didn’t feel like they fit in anywhere else, and then I do a wrap-up section after that. So, miscellaneous thoughts:

- This game takes place in 2011-2012, and the MC and their classmates are 2nd year in high school, the equivalent of 11th grade here in the states. I was in 12th grade in 2011-2012. It’s wild having the feeling that like... I am the same age as these characters. Like it feels like I should’ve played this game originally when I was in high school, and this should’ve been me coming back to the game that was really formative to me in high school 10 years later.

- So I had the thought, with how much of Persona 4 is based on this idea of seeking the Truth, and finding yourself in a world where it’s hard to find yourself, and the topics of queerness explored through some characters... If I actually did have this game back when I was in high school, how different would I be now? Would I have realized I was trans when I was in high school? Or would I have not even thought too hard about it as a story and just appreciated it as a “turn-off-your-mind-and-just-experience-it” as I did with so many games back then. Like I picked up on some themes of other games I played at the time, and Tales of Symphonia definitely still holds a lot of sway over my decision-making 10+ years later, so would Persona have had that kind of impact on me as well? Obviously, we can never know cause that world isn’t the one we live in. I can only accept the me as I am now. But speculating about it still gives a weird feeling in my gut

- There’s this really cool effect when you fast-forward through lines of text where it looks like a VHS fast-forwarding, which really helps bring together the whole theme of the TV world and whatnot. It’s such a cool aesthetic choice. I don’t have anything more to say about it, I just think it’s neat

So, this is a long as heck post. But lemme wrap it up, then give some random extra screencaps afterwards.

I really liked my time with Persona 4 Golden. It’s a good game, overall. It’s got some flaws that are really, really hard to deal with at times (got some big scores on the Weeb Ass Shit meter). But overall it’s entertaining and thought-provoking in a really good way.

But if you wanna play a Persona game, play 5 first please. It’s so much better.

.

.

.

And now for the post-writeup random extra bits/screenshots!

An interesting thought from our main villain. Of course, that’s not exactly the right way to view mass media. That’s why he’s the villain I guess.

Rise here with a fucking mood and a half. I do love Rise’s story, and her version of self-actualization.

I absolutely am going to continue to dote on Nanako forever, I love Nanako Dojima so much she’s my favorite little sister in video games and I will protect her as long as I possibly can.

God DAMNIT why is it that I always date the woman who goes on to be a cop in every Persona game. I did it with Makoto in P5 during my first playthrough as well.

We are all controlled by something greater...

MEMES!

#eri blogs games #god this is a long post #so many thoughts on this game #and most of them are probably not well articulated #on account of just how big of a post this is #overall like... #persona 4 is a good game for sure #but it's also got some big problems that are hard to overlook #i don't know that i can really wholeheartedly say i like or dislike it #like most games even if there are some problems i'm willing to say that i still think the experience was overall really good and worth it #but some of P4's issues just make it real damn hard to give it an enthusiastic show of support #but i am still gonna buy it again when it comes out on switch and replay it then lol

[chipponius]

Chiprepost Extravaganza - Beebo (the Clown) Master Post

A bundle of art I've done of my OC and former mascot/sona Beebo the Clown - the four most important pieces- who's since been retired and replaced by Space Cowboy. From the newest to oldest we have:

Beebo the Clown (2020)

The last piece I've done of him - third colored. Went out with a bang, I'd say. I worked on it at home and when I had free time in school. Was proud of it then and still am now. It fucks.

BEEBO The Clown Upgraded (2019)

Second colored drawing of Beebo, which is a touch up of a prior piece. I tried to make the title fancy~.

BEEBO The Clown Colorized (2018)

The aforementioned prior which is the very first colored drawing of Beebs. It's a very crudely digitized version of the initial doodle, with a very fetal version of the title.

Beebo The CLOWN (2018)

The initial doodle - his birth. I believe I wanted to draw Deadpool but things took a turn and he happened. I resonated with him a lot, which is why he was given the title as my mascot/sona to begin with. Back when I was more open on my IG stories, I used to try and put on a voice for him ☠ Embarazzing. Anyway, I supposed this would be a good time for...

THE LORE:

After the death of his parents, little Beebo goes on a journey and finds himself in a little coastal town where he eventually sneaks into the circus and is taken in, becoming Beebo the Clown (because the show runners reasonably didn't feel comfortable giving a kid anything dangerous to do). It's been years and present day, he's still clowning around. He's simply just too silly.

His signature boots were given to him by an old lady who took care of him from time to time. She never wore 'em and couldn't fit 'em so she decided they deserved a new lease on life with him, the grandson she never had. He had a roommate and best friend named Swan, who was the straight man of their little duo.

As of now, I have no plans to draw him and his compatriots again, let alone develop his story. I said I retired him but his story as a whole is put up on the shelf until the day comes where I'm magically compelled to care for them once again. (If that does happen, I imagine the story would be much darker and have somewhat of an actual plot.) Anyway, the Chiprepost Extravaganza is just getting started, so stay tuned! I have quite a bit more to reupload here (and on Bluesky) before I can start posting new. (That being said, with Tumblr's format - being able to add titles and what not - I might go ahead and start posting new stuff. We shall see.) That is all :))

#artists on tumblr #digital art #chippy82577_beebo

[permanent-bedhead]

The other game! explanation (an undertale au)

If you want to skip the back story I’ve marked we’re you can start reading for What the world is.(it’s in red)

I feel like I’ve never called it and undertale au but that’s what it is. Okay so the other game is a world that me and my sister have been working on for years (when i say years i mean it started august of 2019)

My sister and I were very cringy and started an undertale role playing game. I was Chara and Sans and she was asriel and frisk. We basically just played there day to day lives on the service and we had a lot of fun with it.

This was 2018 and i didnt know how to draw boys at the time (did other people have that struggle?) So when I had the thought of making an au where they are all humans I decided to make them girls instead.

Eventually I changed it so the errors, nightmares, and epic were all boys and dream, cross, and ink stayed girls. I proposed playing this game with my sister too and we did.

I picked those six because there (in my opinion and observation) the most popular (epic I just really like.)

She generally only plays as a dream and occasionally epic.

I'm the rest.

We didn't have a name for it so we just called it “the other game” we had the undertale game (or utg for short.) so we just referred to it as the other game we did have the intention to name it eventually but we never did so “the other game” just stuck.

(it's also called t.o.g for short.)

——read from here if you skipped

Their characters grew with us, it was so fun to play with character designs as an artist and backstories, turning the things that the original characters have and “humanifing” them was really fun, like for instance dreams constant urge to have to be perfect. What do you think that would do to a human teenage girl who lives in a regular human society?

We ended up changing a lot about them as we went on, epic’s gender changed and they over all grew as people with me.

Nightmare has always been a bit of a favorite of mine so naturally I connected with him, but all the characters have struggles.

We dug into their mental health a lot as well. Giving explanations for things that only their monster counterparts should have like errors glitches we ended up just using tourettes as “glitching out” we got into how their brains would work in these different circumstances.

Dream and Nightmare’s relationship is stable and seeing how that ended up affecting their characters. Making error and nightmare warm up to the group was one of my favourite character developments to play with.

To sum up the world there human versions of those six who’s genders vary. They're just this cute friend group.

I’ve worked so hard on this world that I thought why keep it to myself anymore share it.

I also want to mention that there are ships if you don’t agree with them I’m completely fine with that. But the world really doesn’t rely on the ships for plot. (I did pick these ships when I was nine and can’t bring myself to change them so give me a break.)

error and ink- I feel like the fandom kinda agrees on this one even if they don’t ship it

Dream and epic- I may have to explain this bc I’ve never seen this ship once in my life but I thought it was cute, like dreams friends with cross so that’s how they met idk I’ll explain that more in detail if someone wants me to.

Cross and nightmare- okay so I know this one’s a hit or miss with people but nightmare is a lot more like passive or even dreamswap so it works better ig

again I was nine when I picked this and I think it’s too late to change it we have to much plot around them

Another note is they are the only “ship” that doesn’t even happen really they end up never dating they had like a situationship (even though I hate that term) and it just never happened. Nightmare has a boyfriend who I made for the game and cross is happily single I can explain that more too if anyone wants me to.

That was a lot but I hope I find at least one other person who I can rant about this to bc I think my irl friends are sick of me talking about it.

Have a lovely day thank you for reading feel free to use the asks if your interested or dm me! :)

#undertale #under tale #the other game! #undertale au #lgbtq artist

[magpiejay1234]

https://twitter.com/YuGiOh_OCG_INFO/status/1638510849630388224

https://ygorganization.com/dune-mirror-formation-of-the-ten-sacred-treasures/

We don’t have a huge reveal for today, but we got possibly the most important card for the next three years. It is Mirror Formation of the Ten Sacred Treasures, a Kuji-Kuri Curse for Level 10 and lower monsters.

We were supposed to get this card back in Series 11 (Rise of the Duelist to Cyberstorm Access) due to massive influx of Level 10 Main Deck monsters, but for some reason it was never printed. Now, in the first set of Series 12, as the first daily reveal, it is shown.

This is an insanely pivotal card for many, many GX-era archetypes, and ARC-V archetypes, and antagonist Decks from various series including Dark Signers’ Earthbound Immortal (well, it is actually kinda the reverse), and Aporia’s Level 10 Meklord Astros, as well as Z-One’s Timelords (lol this got revealed the day prior to Z-One’s Duel Links unlock event’s start). 

What this card means for casual animé fans is, finally, the massive amount of unprinted, predominantly Season 1 ARC-V boss monsters are now open as options, but also your favourite GX-era characters who got recent Level 10 boss monsters will get pumped in lots of new support. And that is the merely the surface level of possibilities of this card can unlock. For example, because of The Legendary Exodia Incarnate statue we are getting, and the previous Three-Eyed Ghost reveal, we might even get main set Exodia support for next DM main set. Or rest of the Dark Signers in Duel Links. Or main set Slifer support for the next DM set.

****

Other deets:

*This card’s slot number is 64, which is below the new Evolution Pill card. This doesn’t tell us much, but it means Spells go at least to slot 64.

*The other Levels without Kuji-Kuri Curse/Trade-In analogue are:

**Level 12

**Level 11

**Level 5

**Level 4, 3, 2, 1 (Level 4 has a few draw cards, though. Soul Transition for Normal Summonable/Settable cards, and Gemini Spark for Level 4 Geminis).

Next target should logically be Level 11, but due to recent Level 12 support, I’m guessing we will be getting Level 12 before that. Once Level 12, and 11 draw cards are released, we will likely see the franchise’s first Level 13 monster, to match Numerounious Numeriona. I don’t what will happen after that though (maybe we will finally get LINK-7/8? Also Rush Duels don’t have the inherent Level limit OCG cards do caused by the layout, since the Level is shown inside the star ball as a number, not as x amount of star balls. They can go to Level Infinity if they want.)

Edit: (For a little bit of context, Sacred Sword of Seven Stars (for Level 7) was released in Lord of the Tachyon Galaxy (16th February 2013) as Elemental Lord support, and got reprinted as Yuya support in Structure Deck: Master of Pendulum (20th June 2015). Celestial Observatory (for Level 6) was printed in Cybernetic Horizon (14th April 2018), and Kuji-Kiri Curse (for Level 9) was printed in Ignition Assault (12th October, 2019).) 

*A bit aesthetic difference, but Duelist Nexus tweets use English (well Engrish) date stamp, likely meaning OCG Twitter is now trying to appeal to international audiences. In addition to this, the reveal’s background uses muted colours, similar to VRAINS era reveals, but also heavy shadows, similar to DM era sets. This might hint this Series’ cards are meant to appeal more to older audiences of YGO, as we get more classic themes being transferred to Rush Duels.

This might also imply more of a focus to original 3 shows, but more likely it means ARC-V is old to be considered nostalgic (which basically how they treated ZEXAL’s anniversary 2 years ago.)

***

Tomorrow will be Z-One’s Duel Links quotes hopefully, but it will also be the next batch of April 2023 Tournament Pack. We will see if there is anything interesting in them.

#shitposting #ygo random thoughts