knightanni

[knightanni]

The International Phonetic Alphabet consonants found in English, with keywords and relevant parts of the mouth highlighted and colour-coded. (Source.) 

[knightanni]

Humanity went extinct. However, the supernatural creatures pretending to be human were so good at it that no one realized there were no more humans for over 200 years.

[knightanni]

Gushing about Homicipher's Language

Big fat long rant incoming

--The full dictionary of the game is 200 words.

Which means two things:

The writer (yatsunagi) determined that they only needed those 200 words to tell their story.

The otherworld residents only need 200 words to talk about everything they want/need/can remember to talk about (assuming that the game's dictionary is the full vocabulary of the language.

Fanfic challenge: write a story using only those 200 words. Make it fully understandable for the reader.

Assuming that the residents only have 200 words to say everything they need to say:

--There are no gendered words, no words for counting, for measuring time (except for "time," "little amount," and "big amount"), no verb tenses.

--There are words for movement, direction, being alone or going together, emotions, desires, parts of the body, words for danger and safety, for pretty and cute.

--These are the ideas most important for the residents to communicate. They live in a dangerous, bloody world, without any sun or moon. Measuring time is useless because there are no days or nights. Companionship is important for protection and for happiness.

-------But what about pretty and cute? There are no words for ugly (though they could say "not pretty"). Do they think of things as "ugly" and "pretty?" Or do they think of things as "normal" and "pretty?"

--But of those 200 words, only one is a color word: red

Makes sense. After all, there are very few colors in the otherworld.

The otherworld is mostly black, gray, white, and brown.

Red is an important color to distinguish. It is the color of Mr. Scarletella, blood, and many of the residents' hair.

Black, gray, white, and brown could probably be conveyed through the words for "dark" and "bright."

--But what about Ms. Blue-Clad?

When a resident wants to refer to another resident in the third person, and that resident is not present in the room, they usually use descriptors.

Mr. Chopped refers to Mr. Silvair as "long hair resident."

Mr. Silvair refers to Mr. Chopped as "head resident."

Mr. Crawling refers to Mr. Scarletella as "red."

So how would the residents refer to Ms. Blue-Clad?

There are no words for "blue" or "woman." Why are there no words for blue? Mr. Stitched has blue eyes. There's buckets of blue paint. Maybe they would call her "dark hair resident?" Or maybe "big eye resident?" "Blood eye resident?" (Because her eyes are always bleeding).

Guys, I'm having such a hard time imagining being able to see a color but having no word for it. Are there colors that I can see that I can't describe? I don't think so, but then again, how would I know?

Theory: Maybe the residents can't see blue? But that doesn't make sense because why would Ms. Blue-Clad wear blue and only blue if she can't see it?

--I've seen a lot of fanfics where MC teaches the monster-husbands some of her language.

Question: To what extent would they understand the abstract concepts?

For instance: the otherworld only has "like" and "dislike." Since the language is extremely economic, I'm going to assume that "like" also contains "love," and "dislike" includes "hate."

So when you try to teach them the difference between "like" and "love," to what extend would they understand it? Will they think of love as "like a lot" or will they understand love as humans do? (Platonic, romantic, the difference between loving a child vs loving a best friend). Maybe it'd be easy for them. After all, in English we use "love" for romantic partners, children, and pizza, but the feeling, the understanding of that kind of love is understood within the context. If you say, "I love my son," I know what love you're talking about. And if you say, "I love chocolate cake," I know what love you're talking about. I don't need it explained.

What I mean is, if you don't have a word for a feeling or concept or idea, can you understand it? Would that feeling or concept or idea come if you learn a word for it? Perhaps so. The French word "dépaysement" refers to the feeling of disorientation that comes from traveling outside of your country. It can be a positive or negative feeling. In English, we only have a phrase for the negative aspect: culture shock. For the positive aspect, we would say "happiness" or "excitement." There's not a specific word for what the French are conveying in the positive sense.

I think that if Mr. Crawling said "I love you" in my language, how would I react? Would I know the kind of love he's referring to? Is it the love between friends? The love between best friends? The love between husband and wife? The love between a child and their favorite food? I guess I'd have to learn from him what he's feeling.

[knightanni]

I wonder what Mary Shelley would have thought about fnaf or poppy playtime. Mostly because of their similarities to Frankenstein. Genius makes a body, animates it with an innocent soul using science magic, their creation goes on to murder people because it was never treated with kindness, which results in tragedy, betrayal, and then some guy shows up after everything has happened to try to piece together the story.

I mean, I think she'd be like, "Yeah, that's the stuff. That's what my nightmares are made of, good job everyone."

[knightanni]

"And I am merely a shadow hunched

Above the arrowy, still strings,

The maker of a thing yet to be made."

--Wallace Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar.

I just rediscovered this quote from a poem based on The Old Guitarist from Picasso, and all I could think about was how people look when they're creating something. An artist hunched over their sketchbook. A writer sitting in a dark room, their fingers resting on the still keys. The makers of things yet to be made.

[knightanni]

WIP--Mr. Crawling

POV, he's just jumpscared you behind a corner.

I drew this with charcoal and graphite. I need to spray it with fixative and then I can add red to space where his eyes would be. I'm thinking I'll use coloring pencils for that part.

[knightanni]

Mr. Machete

So one of my favorite things about Homicipher is the fact that the monster men aren't just cute boys in spooky makeup (but it's totally fine if you're into that), but they actually look like gross monsters that you would run screaming from.

But they're also... really hot? Maybe it's because I have cuteness aggression when it comes to cute anime or manhwa boys, cuz whenever I see conventionally cute/hot boys in visual novels, my typical reaction is to feel repulsed and I-want-to-kill-them.

But like, with all of the Misters in Homicipher, I don't feel that. I actually feel like that vine with the boy who looks at a girl puffing out a huge cloud of smoke, and then he gets right in the camera and goes, "Wow."

(Which is probably because I've read too many manhwas with hot boys who think that the female leads exist only for them, so they treat them only slightly better than the dirt they walk on.)

Anyways, when Mr. Machete broke down the door... that was definitely a wow moment for me.

[knightanni]

Burnout, but it's also the hollowness you feel when such a huge part of your life that has pushed you and consumed so much of your time and your mind, is suddenly gone. And nothing replaces it. And all the projects you wanted to do still feel like things you should put off because there must be something else that you should be doing right now, even though that something else is gone now.

But I gotta say: I don't miss being in school. The constant stress of fighting myself to do everything right (instead of only halfway), the late hours and early mornings, and people thinking that my good grades mean that everything must be easy for me and that I should have time for everything else when I almost never did.

Just... oof.

shitty little comic about how i haven't been feeling like making anything recently

[knightanni]

Mr. Gap: Look mom, I'm in the newspaper!

[knightanni]

Mr. Silver-Hair, Expert Repair-Man

Mr. Gap: Hello, yes, please give me your organs. I need them for... reasons.

Mr. Silver-Hair: Uh-oh, we have pests.

*Gets three (3) pieces of tape*

Mr. Silver-Hair: There. Our organs are safe now.

[knightanni]

Reblogging to save a player's life (mine)

after replaying a thousand times to confirm every word, cross referencing and asking my japanese friend specifications (because some words in japanese that are in the dictionary just. dont exist in english in some cases) THIS is i think the closest i could get to a near perfect dictionary, if you wanna try it and you find anything odd feel free to tell me since i'm using it along with the jpn dictionary as a base for the mod i'm making. i tried to explain any that were confusing but tbh playing this game on english is truly hard mode lol! And yes! Some words are redundant, it's a japanese translation issue, i tried to give them nuance?? Both honestly some words are so simmilar it may as well be the same in english..

[knightanni]

So, I just got my first two endings in Homicipher (that weren't mistake endings): the good ending where I make it out, and the romance(?) ending with Mr. Hood (I put the question mark cuz it felt platonic to me, but I'm prolly wrong about that).

Here's my thoughts:

As someone who hates jumpscares but likes horror stories, I really liked this one. Yes, there's lots of jumpscares (Mr. Crawling Man knows what he did), but I could actually handle them, mostly because I could anticipate when they were gonna happen so I could look away until after the initial jump. Most of the horror comes from the uncanny character designs (especially Ms. Blue Clad).

The language deciphering aspect is SO COOOOOOL! I may have to make a whole other post gushing about it. One of the things that's great about it is that the words don't directly correspond to words in Japanese or English, but to <i>ideas</i>, which means that the game itself can be translated into multiple languages without changing what the monsters say. And yes, I know that all languages are about sharing concepts and ideas and whatnot, but it's different from, say, Duolingo telling you that "pomme" means "apple" instead of pointing at an apple and saying "apple" or "fruit" or even "red fruit." Basically, instead of starting with a word amd translating it to another word, you start with the idea and then you understand the word. So in the game, a sentence might read like, "Door not open" or "Body broken. Can make well?" But it would read differently for everyone depending on how you translate the words.

Best boys: Mr. Crawling Man, Mr. Hooded Man, Mr. Chopped, and Mr. Masque

Best girls: Ms. Nurse and the Headless Bride

Characters who can become the dirt I walk on: Ms. Blue-Clad, Mr. Hugeface, and Cloth Monster

(BTW yes I know their names are actually Mr. Crawling and Mr. Hood, but I like adding "man" on the end. It's fun.)

[knightanni]

Homicipher (文字化化)

Release date (Windows, Steam) English, Japanese and Chinese: November 1st, 2024

"When the protagonist wakes up, they find themselves lost in a different world. As they learn the words of the mysterious monsters that speak a strange language, they search for a way to escape. Along the way, will they fall in love with the monster men who come to their aid...? Really?

In this alternate world, a different language is used. Players will interpret and decipher characters' words through expressions, gestures and the objects they point to.

This is a point-and-click adventure game. Players will investigate items to learn words or engage in conversation to progress."

This is a commercial game by Yatsunagi! It is an otome game with horror, point-and-click, puzzle and typing elements. You can buy it from DLSite here, or from Steam here!

[knightanni]

Girl are you the Hays Code the way you consider media irredeemable if it depicts anything that strays away from the norm you're comfortable with or depicts anything morally questionable without definitively condemning it and anyone associated with it, therefore creating worse stories and content and making it difficult for people to engage with complicated issues from a nuanced and controlled perspective?

[knightanni]

Big fan of cultural sharing and appreciation

as an indian person, my favourite thing is seeing what people who aren't from here have done with my food; i'll go to an indian restaurant in a random corner of the world and they're putting oregano in their palak paneer or a balsamic wash on their naan and it's like "yes good tell me how you folded your culture into mine and came out with something new and lovely, we're holding hands across oceans bestie"

[knightanni]

The Infinite Fields Is Out!

I've completed my second weirdcore visual novel, with only 15 minutes to spare for the Weirdcore Jam.

I plan to update the game later (because it still has the default UI lol). I'd like to create my own UI assets to make them more unique. I might also try to find some voice actors! But we'll have to see. (I also need to update the game page to make it prettier lol).

Anyways, the game is FREE. Here's the link: https://knightanni.itch.io/the-infinite-fields.

[knightanni]

Another preview for my upcoming weirdcore visual novel!

This is a preview for Your Mom from The Infinite Fields, my upcoming vn for the Weirdcore Jam.

Voila! Please enjoy.

(She's so happy to see you. Won't you smile for her?)