#pseudo pixel sorting

[protography0]

"Losing Face"

[source/stock image used: x ]

Glitch art/ditherpunk art made in GIMP with a free stock image from pexels.com. Makes use of (fake) pixel sorting. (Open in new tab for best resolution)

I stumbled over 'pixel sorting' and remembered there is a filter in GIMP that gives a similar effect. Played around with it, and looked at glitch art/pixel sorting and the phrase 'losing face' popped into my head, so that was how I got the idea to make this piece.

I then also played around with dithering options and arrived at two versions I really liked, one of which you can see here - the second one will likely be posted in the future.

I think ppl know what it is like to be so embarrased you want to disappear, to mess up in a way that feels like makes you lose a part of your confidence - maybe even your sense of self (in how others perceive us).

Fitting to make this piece in a Glitch Art style then, as this art style (from what I read) is meant to embrace imperfections and mistakes.

[jwbstuhr]

an HSL color graph (S = 1.00) rendered with 16 colors in computercraft (361x101 characters)

all images in this post in their original state (pre-tumblr upload) are available here

elaboration on exactly what this is (+ how it is, why it is) below the cut:

first and foremost, this is a regular HSL color graph at S(aturation) = 1.00 (or 100%):

computercraft has the same basic color palette as minecraft dyes; it has only 16. it lets you control the text and text background colors per character, and it has a stripes character that takes up ~33.33% of the total area of each character unit (it's a monospace font). this enables a sort of pseudo-256-color palette:

with some math, you can compare the similarity of the RGB of any HSL value with the average RGB of each character unit and match it to the nearest, which can then be used to render an HSL graph. i had to slowly composite several screenshots of the program (craftos-pc) to get this whole thing captured in one image.

here's a close-up, in case tumblr or your viewport displays the original image too small to discern:

and yes, if you're curious, i did crunch down the image in an editor to see what it would look like if each 6x9 pixel character were just a single pixel:

overall, i spent about 7 hours on this, and i'm really honestly not quite sure why. welp! time to see how i might be able to improve this.

[swearingcactus]

pain receptors and frayed nerves

“I hate you.”

V doesn’t really mean it. His head’s too fucked right now, the pain from the relic just pushing and pushing, clawing its way on a spot behind his eye. He’s just sick. He’s just trying to say things to alleviate the pain. He doesn’t really mean it.

Johnny knows this, could practically taste the fog in V’s brain firsthand. “Come on, kid. Get up.” He coaxes, he wants to put his hands out, push and pull V up from his curled up position on the dirty concrete. He holds out on it. Might make the episode worse. “At least try to stand, get some fresh air.”

“No.”

“Gonk next to you’s gonna piss on you if you stay here a second longer,” Johnny tries making light. It doesn’t work. V just sniffles, curls into himself even worse.

“V, come on.” Johnny prompts again, his tone’s not as snappy as he wants, worry starting to lace the words. When V doesn’t move, he goes to put a hand on V, who jerks away sharply. Blue pixels scramble and Johnny glitches away, sighs as he comes back into focus.

“V–”

“Stop it. Just stop.”

“We need to move.”

“Just leave me alone.”

All this bitching isn’t cute. Johnny has half a mind to start his own bitching, knock it off. Get your ass up. We don’t have time for this. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we figure out a plan to get to Mikoshi, the sooner you feel better.

“Come on, V. Let’s go.”

V’s all pain-receptors and frayed nerves. No coherent answer comes out and Johnny starts to think about the pseudo in his pocket.

“I hate you so much.” V says, unprompted, and Johnny stops all thought of the pseudo, like a knee-jerk reaction.

“Haven’t you ruined my life enough already?” V asks miserably, and Johnny looks up to see he’s opened his eyes to make contact.

He doesn’t really mean it. Right? Johnny thinks he doesn’t really mean it.

“V.” Johnny says again, and it feels less of a name and more of a plea. V scrunches his face hard. Then coughs, spits out some more blood. Goes to push himself up, staggering and balancing himself next to the wall.

Johnny’s heart flutters with some sort of relief, maybe pride, a sense of fuckin’ finally combined with thank fuck.

“I wish you were dead.”

This one’s easier to stomach. But Johnny grimaces and tenses at what he knows will come next.

“I wish I was dead.”

Johnny needs to believe V doesn’t really mean it. That it’s just the pain talking. That he’s not all there.

“Come on, V.” Johnny coaxes again, nods his head to the open space. “Come on.”

V sniffles and rubs his eyes blearily with both hands. Then sighs and starts walking gingerly away. A few steps and breaths later, with fresh air, V opens his mouth, “When I said I–”

“I know, V.”

He doesn’t, actually. But it’s easier for both of them if Johnny does the thinking and convincing the both of them that he doesn’t mean it. A broken mind’s enough trouble for V, no need to add heart into the mix.

also posted on ao3

[2headedb0y]

omg i didn't even look at the background i was too distracted by kage but the pixel work is so well done wtf... i love the room and the bits of mc's personality we see.... also having tumblr in the game is something i haven't seen before haha im super excited to see more updates hehe

Thank you thank you, I can't take credit for the pixel work, these are assets I paid for from 3 different artists who will be in the credits :) I just combined their tiles to design the maps and set up which ones "collide" with the player etc.

I wish I could do the pixels myself, but I would literally never finish the game if I had to make all the assets from scratch 🫠 I know you're not saying I should, that's just me justifying things to myself haha.

Plus they all did a fantastic job right? There's a plot relevant reason MC has a childish bedroom despite being an adult, and she's a very private person who doesn't normally let people in her room, so that's also gonna come up.

Tumblr in the game was something I decided to add yesterday I think? I thought some kind of social media should be included since it's a pseudo dating sim set in a sort of sci fi modern world.

Edit also if you see this edit can I get your opinion on something? Do you think I should try making Kage semi transparent in this sequence? And his hand holding the phone? I'm wondering if that would make it more clear that he's not in the room with MC (I mean I guess it will be obvious during actual gameplay, but maybe it would feel more like a "vision" if he was semi transparent)

[dreamcatcher-roulette]

Since I enjoy collecting things (big surprise) this year I've been working on collecting every Dreamcatcher music show performance in a quality that doesn't suck ass (aka not the seven pixels that YouTube compresses the official uploads down to). It went pretty well!

Pseudo research report under the cut (because I'm a massive nerd).

Scope

I started this project with the goal of collecting a full set of "music show performances". I didn't realise quite how ambiguous that definition is. After some deliberation I settled on the following as constituting "regular" performances:

Show Music Core

Inkigayo

The Show

Show Champion

M! Countdown

Music Bank

Simply K-Pop

Everything else I classified as misc. Most notably I left K-Force Special Show in the misc category despite there being quite a few performances on that show in the early days. This mostly came down to how I'm storing the files — I've organised the regular ones by era, but the K-Force Special Show performances frequently happened in between comebacks making them difficult to sort in that fashion. That and difficulties in ascertaining whether I do actually have all of them.

Methodology

The first step in collecting anything is finding out what you need to collect. I was surprised at how difficult it actually is to get a complete list of all of a group's music show performances. There are some fan sites which do a good job of presenting a lot of well categorised individual links to Dreamcatcher's appearances but I was hoping for something more "from the source" (aka the music shows themselves) and ideally machine readable to cross check that nothing is missing, since, for example, a collection of links to all official Inkigayo performance uploads is not a list of all Inkigayo performances (some never got official uploads). I ended up finding /r/kpop's music shows wiki fit my needs the most. The information is all in tables and sorted by music show and date which what I wanted.

Unfortunately, the main tables of /r/kpop's music show wikis only list debuts and comebacks, so I had to index and search all the individual pages to find what I was looking for. This involved spending a couple of afternoons opening up nearly 2,000 tabs of Reddit* and then downloading them using the SingleFile browser extension (Reddit rate limits you quite harshly and so I had to open a bunch of tabs, check they loaded, wait, and then repeat, which slowed it down a lot). While maybe a little overkill I did this for multiple reasons. Firstly, Reddit's search sucks, and I didn't trust it to find all instances of what I was looking for over so many pages. In contrast Everything's in-memory file content index beta is really good. But secondly, this is much more extensible, and now I can find any other group's performances as well (between 2017** and 2023).

*Reddit does not archive Simply K-Pop well at all (which caused some initial confusion), but the official Arirang website works fine as an alternative (albeit one that is somehow even slower than Reddit at opening new pages).

**Reddit's music show wiki pages start right before 2017. This is very convenient for a Dreamcatcher archivist, but, unfortunately for me, curiosity got the better of me and I did venture further out into the unknown. For 2014-2017 I have some scattered archives from various official websites, Twitter accounts, and Korean catch up services. I'm less confident in my music show data for this period in the general case but because the rough start and end dates for the two Minx promotion cycles are known I am confident enough that all the gaps I have in there are genuine gaps and that I'm not missing a performance date.

Once I had my wishlist I then had to go out and, you know, find them. And figure out what "best quality" actually means. I learned a lot about video encoding against my will. I also learned that HEVC is fucking haunted. When multiple sources were available I ranked them as follows:

2160p HEVC > 2160p h264 > 1080p HEVC (one weird edge case I didn't know what to do with) > 1080i h264 > 1080i MPEG2 > WEBDL (usually some kind of web livestream or online catch up service recording) > YouTube

Which I represented in my spreadsheet as:

This should be mostly uncontroversial, however, there is a slight complication in that the 4k broadcast copies are not all native 4k but often upscaled from the 1080 source (I can't find specifics on this as the information, if publicly accessible, would be in Korean, and there is only so much Google Translate can do, but the technical broadcasting details probably aren't public to the extend I am interested in regardless so I'm mostly basing this off information gleaned from secondary sources). As far as I can tell there exist two "grades" of upscales: one of which is upscaled by the network before being pushed out to a UHD channel, and one of which is upscaled by the end user by either recording a HD channel in 4k or running an existing recording through an upscaler. Traditionally upscales aren't very desirable due to providing no real material benefit you couldn't get from playing the 1080 copy on a 4k display yourself. Or, for people with an archival mindset like myself, because ones that actually look a bit crisper introduce "magic" pixels which may or may not have ever existed. See below for an example of this taken to the extreme (note the faces):

No one wants that, right? AND YET SOMEONE THOUGHT THAT WAS SUCH A BIG IMPROVEMENT THEY DELETED EVERYTHING ELSE, AND NOW IT REMAINS THE ONLY COPY I CAN FIND. Monsters!!! Anyway.

While upscales usually aren't desirable, I did come around to the idea that the network upscales deserve their place at the top of the list. There are a couple of points working in their favour: one is that they are, presumably, upscaled much more directly from the source, allowing them to avoid some of the data loss that being encoded into 1080i h264 and then upscaled would cause. The second is that quite a lot of them are encoded directly into HEVC, which makes the confetti and flashing lights look noticably smoother than the regular deinterlaced 1080i copies. Also, finally, as a touch of personal preference (especially in the case of 4k h264 where the second point doesn't apply), these do come pre-deinterlaced which is nicer for my chosen method of playback. Although some of those points apply to non network upscales too, the "impurity" of them far outweighs any benefit in my eyes, as I have more faith in whatever the network standard is than some random person on the internet trying to "fix" a file.

So how did I tell the difference? Also a frustratingly difficult problem, one which applies not just to spotting fake upscales but also to finding real TV recordings instead of lower quality catch up service clips. For the 1080 copies one of the biggest things was that the TV broadcast copies (unfortunately) always come through in 1080i. 1080p is suspicious. It means something has been touched (although sometimes in a way that is forgivable when nothing cleaner exists). File sizes are also a good sanity check. A single song in h264 should be in the 200-400MiB range, MPEG2 is 400MiB+. (For reference YouTube, and other inferior WEBDLs, usually come in at under 100MiB). This is a good reminder of why size does not always equal quality, because, in this scenario, worst to best is 100MiB < 450MiB < 250MiB.

On the 4k side: Music Bank, Show Music Core and Inkigayo are currently broadcast on UHD channels with a UHD variant of their channel names in the top right, which is a good indicator that something was recorded from a UHD source. (Although I've found 1080p copies recorded from UHD channels, so the presence of the logo doesn't mean no downscaling has occurred). Recent "4k" M! Countdown, Show Champion and The Show recordings, in comparison, appear identical in channel watermark to the 1080 copies. This and the fact that the only 4k copies I've found are from a source known to dabble in AI upscales means that I'm not going to trust these are genuine without further proof, and this was the main category of files which I decided against adding to my collection. (Note that The Show was in the past the only show that was broadcast in 4k, first on UMAX UHD and then on SBS F!L UHD, it is only recently that that seems to have stopped (or, no one has been recording it)). I paid less attention to the 4k file sizes than for 1080. 4k HEVC seems to come in pretty reliably at just under 1GiB, but 4k h264 is all over the place due to I think some differing quality profiles between uploaders (a range of 1GiB to nearly 3GiB). The latter is annoying because it means I can't figure out what the "true" recording should be, but I did develop an internal ranking of the trustworthiness of sources which was the tiebreaker when two differently sized 4k h264 recordings existed.

I prioritised collecting existing cuts where applicable (although many were not cut nearly as meticulously frame perfectly as I would like) but there were quite a few where I had to cut them out of full broadcast recordings myself. There were also instances where only the main performance was saved in 4k leaving interviews behind. In those cases I decided to keep the highest quality available for the bits in which it was and store the other segments separately.

Results

Alright, the fun stuff! I have successfully catalogued:

317 Dreamcatcher music show performances

34 Dreamcatcher miscellaneous appearances

46 Minx music show performances

16 Minx miscellaneous appearances

Those links go to mostly complete YouTube representations of what I found with exceptions listed in the descriptions of the playlists. You can also of course find a published version of my beautiful spreadsheet here. Finally, if you've made it this deep I would like to just quietly tell you I'm more than happy to share the originals, but please message me privately as I don't want to publicly host questionably copyrighted content on my good and morally upstanding posting images of dreamcatcher photobooks blog (for legal reasons the entire existence of this collection is a joke).

Honestly I'm pretty happy with the completeness of the collection after my first pass. The list of ones I would consider "missing" (aka not good enough quality) is:

It's almost all Simply K-Pop, which makes sense as it seems to not be archived with the same enthusiasm as the others. The missing M! Countdown, meanwhile, does kind of hurt, since it's ruining an otherwise perfect run. I'm out of ideas for now but am not going to give up on it forever, I have seen evidence that proper recordings exist, so I'm sure they have got to resurface eventually.

As can be seen in the breakdown for this section the percentage of MPEG2 recordings is also a pretty major victory, with the vast majority being h264:

For Minx things look a bit worse:

But then again I hadn't been expecting much to begin with. To be honest, watching all of these to check quality did drive me a little insane. There is a reason I don't own Love Shake and Why Did You Come To My Home, and it's not purely the irresponsible financial decision, it's the thought of spending that much money on something I actually really don't like. Watching Minx performances is amusing for a little while, but man, am I glad Dreamcatcher exists instead.

It's also evident that people were holding to completely different standards even just a few years earlier, as this is where all those MPEG2s in the overall numbers are hiding:

Future Work

While I'm confident I've successfully catalogued the "music show performances" as defined in the scope, I know there is still much more to be discovered under Misc Appearances, as those were filled in not via a predefined wish list but just by what other recordings I happened across in my search for the original goal. The obvious next step would to be a little more systematic about finding out what I'm missing in that category by scouring some Dreamcatcher specific archives, but because I've already exhausted the full collections of my two main sources of recordings I'm not confident I would uncover many more performances outside of YouTube in that way, which isn't really that appealing.

I'm probably more likely going to do something about my performance outfit images collection which has been slowly but steadily increasing over the years. I'd like to put them into a proper searchable database alongside performance dates, which would have a similar effect of cataloguing the missing performances, but with the visual element that the spreadsheet lacks.

But then again, I also might not :)

[nitrosodiumfmp]

Developer Research Part 2: Dynamic Pixels

This studio is the one behind Hello Neighbor, an infamous horror (?) puzzle game from the golden age of mascot horror. (Mascot horror is a relatively new genre, referring to derivative walking simulators that focus more on recognizable characters than horror). While the game has been rightfully savaged, it would be fair to say that throughout its long development cycle, it retained a very interesting aesthetic. In the first few Alpha builds, the game looked vaguely realistic, though it retained an edge of wackiness to it.

As you can see, even in Alpha 1, a point in development people point to as being more grounded, the house has multiple decks, balconies and floors essentially stacked on top of each other. I jokingly referred to this crooked architectural style as the 2fort-Yharnam Spectrum, and the vibrant colours definitely make it stand out. Beyond that, though, there's another angle to the strangeness of it. The windows are slightly crooked, and there's a train going through the house.

Beyond being there just to add to the nonsensical architecture, the train immediately acts as a sort of lure for players - not only is it something to strive for, getting to the top floors of the house and riding the train (albeit something you can't do in this build), it is a moving component and makes the level more interesting. Of course, on a primal level, the human eye is designed to lock onto movement, but moving components, at least in my opinion, make a level seem so much more alive and real. Even looking back to my early research with Kingpin and Half Life 2, there's always some flickering screen or rusty wind turbine adding a tiny bit of motion to an otherwise still screen. But, back to Hello Neighbor. As Alphas evolved into Betas, the art style essentially extrapolated, shedding the more realistic elements and leaning harder into the surreal.

I'm not a massive fan of the new Seussian look everything has; some of it looks good, but most of it is garish, over-the-top, and does not inspire an atmosphere of horror in the slightest. What I do think is interesting, however, is the look of the machinery around the neighbor's house.

Everything appears wacky and cobbled together, covered in levers and gears and valves and gauges and rivets. There's an interesting focus on brass, giving the whole thing a pseudo-steampunk vibe. It is definitely in line with my aesthetic for Sinister Workshop. However, it's clear through watching various video essays that people didn't like the overly vibrant later Betas. That's fine, since I planned for my game to be considerably gloomier, while retaining the strange machinery aspect I have borrowed from Hello Neighbor.

Edit: Dynamic Pixels' other work is on tamagochi-esque mobile games, such as the MewSim series. It's not too relevant, just vector art-esque designs, very simplistic and not too interesting either. It's not like HawkSandwich where there's a definite vibe in all their work, Hello Neighbor seems like a one-off.

[miloscat]

[Review] Dead Cells (ATV)

I'm not sure if it's the first "RogueVania" but it's a cool one.

Another recent Apple Arcade addition, this roguelite platformer from a small French studio hooked my interest with the recent announcement of a DLC pack crossing over with Castlevania. When that made its way to this port it was on. As always this version has touchscreen support but I played it on Apple TV with my trusty Dualshock 4.

The teething problems began when the game refused to save my progress on shutdown. The system had neglected to log me in on Game Centre, so my initial few hours were lost. Forcibly closing the app was also a necessary part of my experience at times, due to a strange audio bug that interpolated rhythmic interruptions into the music. Not ideal when the Castlevania rearrangements were a selling point of that expansion. I could turn the music off in settings, but it also affected jingles which were tied to sound effects volume, and I relied on audio cues for gameplay. The audio hitching also got worse over time, and additionally caused stuttering in the game itself. Yikes.

When I got around these issues my experience improved. There's a huge variety of weapons and abilities, and you're always unlocking more. Since the weapons can handle quite differently, it keeps your basic combat mehcanics fresh on repeated runs (although none of the passive "mutations" seemed very powerful or interesting to me). Having all the DLC enabled straight away in the Apple Arcade version also gets you a lot more stuff as well as levels to pass through. Between each stage is a rest zone where you can power up, and use your "cells" (the higher tier currency) to unlock permanent stuff. I had a much better time with the meta-progression when I realised you could partially invest these in things rather than saving them up (and in my case, often losing big chunks of them).

I did lose motivation at times thanks to how easy it is to suddenly die. Losing an hour-long run with a decent build before getting to my goal was a bummer, especially towards the end when all I wanted to do was finish the Castlevania content. The randomness factors into this too: the procedurally generated levels work well, but the heavy luck quotient on whether you get a decent weapon or synergies gets old. Naturally it's the nature of this kind of game to be that way, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Castlevania was a good fit for guest-starring in this game. The basic gameplay is kind of similar, the areas having that bit of exploration and mapping. Combat here is based around having two slots for melee and ranged weapons (one of each usually works well), along with a powerful dodge roll which should get a lot of use, as well as two skill slots for deployable traps/grenades/pets/buffs/etc.; the crossover items fit into these in fun ways. The rich, moody pixel art environments acquit themselves well, with series regular baddies making for cool reinterpretations into the game's exaggerated, pseudo-pre-rendered style for enemies. The jokey tone to interactions nicely balances the legitimate worldbuilding.

Although it's rough going at times, there's a lot to like in Dead Cells. Even if it's just pointing at the screen and saying "I recognise that" when they do little shoutouts to other indie hits. (This actually makes for some particularly cool gimmick weapons too.) The Apple Arcade port seems to be a bit buggy on my setup unfortunately, but having all the expansions included—even the brand new Castlevania one—is a big plus. It's the sort of game you could sink a ton of time into and still be finding new things, or just have a few successful runs (eventually) and call it a day like I did. I do recommend using a guide to find the permanent movement unlocks first though.

[catcrumb]

How do you stay motivated to do dailies? I really admire your dedication to these funky fresh cats. I've tried doing my own dailies (drawing, writing etc), but always lose steam about a week in. Was there a point when it became second nature, and just fit really easily into your routine? Or is it always going to be a bit of an uphill battle?

my big rule is that it doesn't have to be "good." that was the first and still the most important rule. some days i have the willpower to get out my tablet! some days i have my mouse! and some days i just wiggle my finger in the shape of a cat on my laptop's trackpad, slap some random thought i had onto it, and hit that post button. doesn't have to be perfect. doesn't have to be a work of art. could look like complete shit. just has to be a cat.

like this guy? very low effort! i had a headache that evening after doing a bunch of things i needed to do, and was like "ah fuck i still gotta do today's catcrumb". this took me thirty seconds. but that was that day.

something that has also helped me a lot is making my rule "one per day", not "once per day". after drawing the one i posted tonight, i drew two more doodles that are gonna be tomorrow's and the day after that's catcrumbs. so i don't have to draw for the next day and a half! the queue function is one of the big reasons i really enjoy tumblr as a platform. (the queue, tags as undervoice, tags for archival purposes, easy chronological and sortable archive/portfolio, and the anonymity. not to mention the vibes. also ive been here for over a decade and can't leave)

also, i use mspaint because it has a limited toolset, so it's just less overwhelming and not as daunting as the beefier art program i have for other art. if i had to open up clip studio paint every day....... i would not have lasted two years lmao.

and tbh the limited toolset has made me feel freer to try new things! like with color! when i was drawing mostly in Digital Art Programs and the edges of school papers i rarely ever got to coloring because i would spend so long on the lines. but with mspaint i draw with the pixel-pencil so it's easier to use the fill tool. this is one of my first little "landscapes" :) i drew it in february 2020. i still think about it a lot!

(also, i've found that the landscapes, which i spend more time and effort on, get less of a response than the scribbly ones. which i'm not bothered by, because 1. it makes me feel less pressured to do the big labors of love 2. it makes me feel unashamed when i only have energy for a quick scribble 3. my loved ones adore my little landscapes, and that's more important to me than Number Goes Up. but also it's fun to see the number go up in response to my scribble. it's a win/win.)

and finally there's accountability. i have a very firm rule with myself that i draw for ME, and my followers are a side effect/bonus of me posting it publicly. i do not create for an audience. to quote:

The difference between an inner-directed process of discovery and a kind of outer-directed pseudo-creativity that in its pursuit of attention gets overwhelmed by desperation.

but that doesn't mean that attention doesn't matter to me. i would not have gotten as far as i did if i hadn't shown my art to my friends/mutuals and gotten very sweet responses from them. that was what made catcrumb happen: the people who i know, am close to, and whose kindness is personal to me. i adore and appreciate the kindness of strangers! but it has to come in second to the kindness of friends, because otherwise you will go crazy. i'm pretty lucky that i have the sort of homebody personality that has little interest in strangers, which helps my brain not get rotted by clout.

so i showed my art to my friends, i got encouragement, they thought i was funny, i kept going, because i liked amusing myself and my friends with my little drawings. and then the snowball went further down the hill, etc etc. nowadays my main motivator is that i told my mom about catcrumb and she would definitely say something if i didn't post. sometimes just knowing that someone would notice is enough.

i hope this is useful. i am a person with a couple of brain problems that have made me debilitatingly incapable of forming and maintaining habits my entire life, so i'm honestly shocked that ive managed to keep a daily habit going for two years! ive never managed anything like that before! maybe because it doesn't Matter. i don't do catcrumb for money - ive thought about a patreon, but i couldn't do it. my executive dysfunction is too powerful, and catcrumb has always been about being the teeniest task to execute.

and it makes me smile. i like drawing little cats sitting around smiling or yelling or holding an object. :~)

tl;dr keep the bar as close to the ground as you possibly can

[toomuchdragons]

I wanted to highlight some of the best dragons in my lair on my clan profile. Experimented with the rendering of these, sort of a pseudo-pixel art. I think they came out looking pretty neat (although blown up by tumblr they look kind of bad...)

The dragons depicted here are Shade the balloon boy, Seraphim the ancient, WingWing and her wings, and Eve the Halloween dragon.

I’ll probably make a few more later for other special dragons in my lair.

[acheronist]

i so desperately wish there were more youtube channels similar to thelittlefears... like simply reading short little horror fiction pieces in a sort of unnerving pseudo-asmr style with 0 ads. just a cheap microphone, unsettling stock footage clips that have with approximately 15 pixels, a well written creepypasta and the lovely dulcet tones of a canadian bitch from a decade ago

[just-antithings]

The Homestuck fandom was glorious. The avalanche of unapologetically weird and shamelessly creative fanmade media is still astonishing to me even now, almost a decade after I joined the fandom. It shaped me like nothing has before or since, in a genuinely good way.

It's a little wild to see some of the newcomers turn around and shame other fans and creators for stuff as benign as shipping "problematic characters" or pseudo-incestuous relationships. The creativity of the fandom is what's drawn new people in after the conclusion of the comic and those same people are turning around and going "Hmm, y'know what y'all need? Some moral policing!"

What you've got to understand about Homestuck is that:

A) Every character has done something problematic. Even your fave. Yes, especially that one.

B) Everything is canon and non-canon simultaneously. So what's the point of starting discourse over something as inane as shipping pixels when your understanding of irredeemable relationships is solely focused on what's ~canon~ when that concept was intentionally made fluid by the creator?

It's totally fine to dislike certain ships or character portrayals, but it's not fine to be dicks to each other about it. We're all weird little nerds here in the Homestuck corner anyway, let's just coexist in peace.

Anon, you've managed to perfectly capture what I loved about the Homestuck fandom.

In paradox space, everything is canon. You're fav is perfectly wholesome cinnamon roll, and the most depraved murderer ever seen. It's not the sort of work that can be moral policed without being a massive hypocrite. It's really a shame that a lot of the current homestuck fandom is full of antis.

[hexihertzgameart]

An Introduction to Hexi-Eibhin

Greetings y’all

I am l Eibhin-Hexi . I am a being from the depths of the unholy womb of mankind's primal fears, also known as Ireland. I have many interests, including Art, Writing, Sociology, Philosophy, Psychology, Pixel Art and more

A particular interest I have gotten into again is writing, and I am interested in getting in touch with Tumblr's Writing Community. I can't wait to show y'all my work, and to see yours.

My works are primarily in the realm of Fantasy. I enjoy worldbuilding and the interaction between the benign and the mythical. I also try to include Queerness in my story when it feels right.

Byeee

My Projects:

Return To The Mushroom Kingdom (2020 - Present); Mario Metroidvania Fangame project that is sort of dead but is still being worked on pseudo-regularly. Set after Super Mario World, Mario finds himself back in the mushroom Kingdom in the midst of an Invasion by the Koopa Troop.

Current Status; Seeming Haitus, likely abandoned, probably for the best

Fiadh and the Ironcrow (Working Name, August 2021 - Present); Fantasy Story surrounding the Adventures of Fíadh Kelly, a wannabe adventurer inspired by the tales of Slaochraí, bands of warriors who use weapons made of a pseudo-magical metal. However, as she begins to achieve her goals with the help of former Slaocrha Athra Uí Dotyrn , she starts to get a darker look at the career she always dreamed of. Current Status; Portions have written drafts but currently on break, plan to continue with it.

Sea of Clouds (September 2022-Present)

A toxic expanse of clouds covers the remnants of the past world as humanity rebuilds in the Empyrean, fighting to become the next civilization to unite the world under their image. Aspiring Inventor and Adventurer, Fewynd is a young Boarnest Forager who aspires to create a way to explore the world below. When he abruptly ends up with Princess Pendasyl of Yendosa, he and his project becomes a target of his home goverment, the Yazulindon Empire.

Current Status: No written drafts, concept sketches exist though no proper comic panels exist. In development

Mortal Coil (November 2022 - Present) After drowning at sea on a boating trip, one Olly B. Diaz ends up in the Underworld. Looking to return to their life, they sign up to become a Psychopomp. Shenanigans Ensue.

Status: Purely conceptual for now, will be likely kept in the back log for Sea of Cloud's Sake. Jokes at the expense of Heinrich Schliemann are guaranteed tho :)

[skellebonez]

So I was recently thinking about your Extra Assistance AU and then I thought about Smartie Kid and how funny Syntax's reaction to MK trying to be the "smart one" would be.

MK:*does his A sq + B sq bit*

Syntax:*eye twitching* I don't know if I should laugh or cry...

-Pixel Anon

I am ashamed to admit that I had SOMEHOW never thought about this episode in this AU.

Syntax would absolutely react like that, yes. He would slowly grow more horrified over the episode as MK completely misunderstands how statistics work. He's glad when MK figured out the trick, however, and maaaaybe begrudgingly acknowledges MK can be smart sometimes.

Also! Considering we have confirmation in the finale about how MK only acts the way he does sometimes to lighten the mood, I can also see Syntax recognizing his genuine intelligence. There's multiple kinds of it, be it with knowledge or wisdom, study or experience, but MK's highest level of intelligence is emotional in my eyes.

There's a lot to think about with these two in this au, both comical and serious, and I feel that over time Syntax would start to think of MK as almost a pseudo-nephew of sorts.

[lovely-necromancy]

A Cure for Insomnia Ch 20

You find yourself in a forest

Odd when did you get here? Had you walked here? Driven? You...you can't seem to remember. How on Earth did you get here?

(The contents of this chapter are sexual in nature please don’t interact if you are below the age of 18)

Oh Gods you hoped you didn't have an episode while driving again. Even under normal circumstances just the thought upsets you but after finding out Toby's life changing accident the thought now left an acidic taste in your mouth. Similar to when you're sick and have the residual vomit in your mouth no matter how many times you brush your teeth. A very unpleasant experience.

A tall figure looms in the distance taking you out of your musings. You've seen him before, haven't you? Long spindly tendrils stretch out from behind the figure, much like the whisps that led you through the shop the other day. Had it not been for their serpent like movements you'd have thought the being was just another tree in this dense dark forest.

This sure didn't look like the Monongahela. You close your eyes for a moment, just resting your eyes. Your head feels so foggy right now.

You're so tired too, have you been sleeping? When was the last time you slept? Why can't you remember?

It's fine calm down, you just need to think. The fog is so thick, it's hard to focus. Why can't you just focus?

Come on YN, you need to focus, focus, focus!

In an instant that figure is right in front of you. They are so much taller, craning your head back doesn't do much to get a good look at them. You can't make any features out on the shockingly pale face. And here you thought Toby was deathly pale, you may as well have been staring death in the face.  Given the black suit and red tie you might actually be.

Being dead would explain the fogginess of your memories and why things aren't exactly connecting. Had Toby killed you? No, he wouldn't. Maybe the two of you got into an accident on the drive home.

But where's Toby then? Had he survived the crash? Is it bad to hope he's dead too? That boy wouldn't be able to handle another traumatic event. Hell he seemed one major inconvenience away from peacing out when you'd met him, he still has those moments.

Where are you going to go? This wasn't anything like you were expecting, but the again Hollywood's never given you any sort of accuracy before why would they be the ones reporting on life's biggest mystery?

A tendril slips its way around your throat tilting your head up to stare into the pale face of the figure before you. Squeezing as it does, gently not so much to actually suffocate you.

'You are not dead child, you could not be further from it.' a masculine voice echos in the empty space of you mind. The voice rang so clearly it rattled the walls of your brain.

A literal 'brain goes brrrr' moment.

If you aren't dead then...this has to be a dream. The only other explanation for why everything feels so fuzzy and you have so much brain fog.

'Correct, you are in a dream...of sorts. I've summoned you here to review your progress thus far. I must say you've far exceeded my expectations, no thanks to my failing puppet.' the tendril tightens around your neck, again not enough to choke you out. Just a very firm squeeze.

Firm enough that it has you pressing your thighs together. Haven't you taken care of this yet? This situation is so embarrassing because even though you can't see the expression of the being before you they have an omnipotent air around them.

They sense your hunger building, maybe that's why the appendage around your throat tightens once again. You're left a bit breathless.

'I'm very pleased with both of your results. A reward is in order,'

The figure's head moves slightly as their attention shifts to something behind you.

'I believe he'll benefit from this as well.'

He?

Without a moment to think anything else, not like you could in your current state, you were turned around. Where you came face to face with....another faceless entity? No the man in front of you clearly had a face – had the tall pale being not? The man's face was there but you couldn't really make out what you were looking at like it was pixelated in some way to protect his identity on the evening news.

You could see that he had a mop of brunette waves, unlike the tall one who was to your knowledge completely bald. More tendrils wrap themselves around you, on your legs and around your mid section. Legs are spread apart as you're lifted off the ground.

Open and inviting to the form before you. Just what kind of reward is this?

Before you can protest you quickly become aware of the fact that you are naked.. Bare chest on display as nipples harden in the chill of the air. You squirm to try and get away but the hold the tendrils have is too strong for you to break out of. Your legs are lifted until they are face level with the person in front of you.

Yup totally a dream, just a monster fucker having a wet dream. Normal everyday thing.

'To be quite honest it's less of a reward and more a test. But it should prove enjoyable for both of you.'

Hearing the sound of a zipper you freeze, out of shock rather than fear. You were joking when you'd called this a sex dream. You've never had one before and it's surprising to say the least. Do all sex dreams start this strangely?

A pair of fingers find their way to your mouth. Without thinking you opened up and took them in. Letting them go as far back as they could. They played with your tongue, dancing up and down it. Pressing hard here giving a rub there, shoving it between the two of them making sure your saliva coated every single spare centimeter of them.

You found it a bit difficult to breathe around them let alone swallow. They had a salty with a hint of something metallic, like he had an open paper cut. The texture was rough and very different from your own fingers, you could feel divots near the nail bed and loose hardened skin scrapping the inside of your mouth. Sometimes when you swallowed around the fingers you'd get a sharp thrust in return, like he was trying to hit the back of your throat with only his fingers. You nearly took in his pinkie like this. A harsh groan would follow and you'd moan along.

All the tendrils on your body gave a light squeeze at the show. You heard a whisper of 'Good pets.', this time it was echoed through the forest surrounding you.

“Fuck off.” the man who currently had his fingers nearly reaching down your throat growled out.

Before he he gently grabbed on of your legs, moving your body closer to him. Flutters of lips trailed their way up from your knee to your inner thigh. A playful nip stings a few inches from your core. Involuntarily your thighs press together, squishing the head in between the,. It wasn't long before you felt warm breath blow onto your core. You could hardly keep back the trill when a pair of lips wrapped around your clit and a tongue started to dance circles around it. It was a simple set of motions but ones that seemed to hit just right. You didn't know whether to be thankful or hate the tendrils for preventing you from bucking right into the pleasure.

Taking deep breaths to collect yourself didn't work if anything it made for a pseudo pant which left you even more feverish than the lapping at you clit. He flattens his tongue against you and you shudder as he slowly drags it along your slit giving a flick to the hood of you clit. He angled his tongue so he could carefully dance that line between your clit and it's hood. Toes curling you aren't able to contain yourself anymore. A panting and flushed mess as you moan around his fingers, a trail of saliva runs out from the corner of your mouth and down the expanse of your neck. You can't stop your hips as they weakly buck towards him, still stifled by the tendrils stilling them.

The man between your legs stiffens.

Even with him looking right up at you, you can't see past whatever fog is playing at your mind, but you do know that he's just as much of a mess as you are in the moment. Just from going down on you, the poor boy, now you really want to shove his face deep between your legs and not let up until he can't breathe.

Maybe you can.

Your hands haven't been bound like your legs, so you should have no problem grabbing his hair and pulling him in.

'Oh, he'd like that very much. Give it a go pet.' the disembodied voice says, once again in your head.

Wasn't there a body to go with that voice earlier? Yeah, there was, where'd he go?

Your legs are still bound by the tendrils but the tall man is no where in sight anymore. What a strange dream.

A wet dream you remember as your focus returns to the man between your legs. Might as well make the most of it.

The man seems distracted as he glares at something behind you, but you know nothing it there – you've just checked. This gives you the perfect opportunity to grab a fist full of his hair and drag him back down to your puffy lips to finish what he started. He was more than willing as he needed no further instructions and went straight to giving light kitten licks to your aching clit. Frustrated pants and whimpers leave you as he just works you up and pulls back. He's teasing at this point and seems very pleased with himself.

“Pl-please.” you keen  when he pulls away for a second time. Instead of answering your plea he massages the meat of your thighs as he stares up at you from between your leg. You can see one hand in between his own legs most likely toying with his cock like he toys with you.

Just the thought of his cock has you bucking into him, but it seems to do the trick. He begins to suck on your bud again. This time you have a bit more mobility and can grind your hips down in time to his sucking. It's getting wetter and sloppier down there by the second, like he's trying to collect all the liquid in his mouth but can't really hold it there.

For a third time the pleasure stops, and you feel like crying. It's so unfair your first wet dream and you're saddled with an edger.

You let out a whimper and raise your hips again in a pathetic attempt to demand his attention back to where it's needed. While his face is still featureless to you there's a sense of smugness around him. Oh joy a sadist. A harsh spit rings through your dream bubble. But you don't feel anything land on you.

A wet squelching sound can be heard. The blood just doesn't know where to go anymore, to your face or to your core? Clearly none of it's going to your brain when you only thought it , 'Oh shit he's jerking off.' on repeat.

You're very thankful that the tendrils are just holding you up instead of keeping you spread now as you're able to squeeze and rub your thighs together. Trying to get any friction to alleviate your ache. All while you cry and choke around thick fingers.

“Pretty mouse.” his voice is a rumbled timber.

Fingers press harshly into your tongue before slowly pulling out and spreading you legs back open for him. His thumb trails your inner thigh, the nail scratching the unmarked skin as it went. Making your breath hitch in the back of your throat as he let out a breathy chuckle.

He began toying around with your folds with his two spit soaked fingers, “Yea, li-ike that? Make some more pretty noises for me.” His fingers twirled around the entrance of your pussy. Lighting the nerves on fire with each passing circle they made.

Gods, he hasn't even been in you and you're already about to cum. But he was ignoring your clit now. Snaking a hand down you settle it above his and before you can even touch it he's smacking your hand away.

“Nuh-uh mouse.” he gives a sharp smack to your bud, making you jolt as you let out a little 'eep'.

He laughs at your reaction, “Don't worry I'm going to-to-to make you feel so good.” he smirks, “in time.”

That'd be a no for you. You can take three edgings but four is just asking too much, especially for a dream. You aren't one to be bratty often but you're already pent up in the waking world like hell you'll let yourself be edged in the dream one too.

“Fuck you're cute, even when you pout.” suddenly a hand grasps your jaw and pulls you down, it's a bit uncomfortable with your bindings still in place. Your faces are just inches apart right now and you still have no clue who he's supposed to be but sometimes faces are hard for brains to make up. He could just be someone you saw in town once and don't remember.

He leans in and kisses you. It doesn't take anything for you to open your mouth and let him in, there's a hint of tang on his tongue. No discernible taste just a bit of tang. He makes sure to glide his tongue across every inch of your mouth, making sure you taste yourself. You can feel his smirk in the kiss as you moan. Can feel the pumping of his hand on his cock now that you're so close together.

The thought of his cock makes your core pulse with need. And as if he can read your thoughts he pulls away, leaving you panting and horny. “Now that's a cute look too.” The tip of his middle and ring fingers are in you spreading the ring of your entrance far apart. “But then this on-one's my favorite.”

As you writhe and moan you can't help but think of how much you hate that boyish lilt in his tone right now. He scissors his fingers and twists them this way and that, occasionally plunging them as deep into you as they can go. And while your panting and whimpers are lovely he quickly figures out that you're much more receptive to the teasing of your entrance. The way just the tips of his fingers work in lighting up hundreds of nerve endings.

How he can leave you right on the edge of orgasm only to take that away by pulling out slightly or diving in further. It's a good game, but he eventually grows bored of just your facial expressions and wants to chase his own release. So, he leans in towards your core to watch the way your walls clamp down on his finger tips as they spread you apart. Trying to squeeze around the foreign objects to eject them out but if he surges his hand forward the walls constrict in a way the feels like they are trying to suck him deeper into your depth. All the while you moan and whine, just for him.

So enraptured with your being he isn't really paying attention to you anymore. You want to end his teasing, you just want to cum. It's not surprising at all that he hardly noticed you grabbed a fist full of his hair. But he certainly notices when you pull him to your core and hold him in place. The pressure on his scalp letting him know just how tightly you have him.

There's a moment when he does nothing, just stares up at you from between you legs. Through hooded eyes he continues to make eye contact as he brings his mouth to your clit, even as you buck into him.

“Good boy.” the words just tumbled from your mouth in a moan.

One that gets echoed by the man kneeling before you. It's a needy little moan, one that changes things.

“Good boy,” he goes faster, not just on your clit but he also starts stroking himself faster.

“Ah – aaah, good  boys wai-it oh – wait to cum.” his hand slows and you hear a mumbled 'Good boys wait.' causing your grip to tighten as you pull him up by his hair to look into your face – even if you can't see his.

“Did I tell you to stop?”

“N-no!” you can feel the shiver that runs through him.

Big guy isn't so tough now that you found his kink, damn this dream sure is exploring a lot of your owns though.

“That's right, now you've been awfully naughty. Edging me like that. Doesn't seem like you want to be a 'good boy'.”

“I want to – want to be a good boy, very good boy.” his hand is still going, you'd honestly be surprised he hadn't cum if this weren't a dream.

“Hmm, finish what you started. Then...maybe you'll be my good boy.” a series of moans followed as he bucked into his hand. Apparently you'd said a trigger for him and he came just from that alone.

You want to find it in you to play up being upset with him maybe even play up how he wasn't a good boy after all – cumming like that. But you could tell from the way his shoulders sank in that he felt ashamed that he didn't last until you were done with him.

Sometimes a gentle hand is needed. “Oh my poor baby. I didn't know how excited that'd make you.” you cup his face gently. He's trying to make himself smaller. “Now now of that, you can make it up to me.” He perks up.

“You want to make it up to me right?” you slide back away letting you hands fall off his chin, and he follows your movement leaning to feel your touch again.

You give him a smile and stroke his cheek, “Then make me cum.” it was a breathy whisper as you took the opening to initiate a kiss with him. No tongue was involved this time just an urgent need and movement of lips.

You pull away from him and get a small whimper in return. Pay back would sure be sweet right now had he not riled you up this much then got off himself.

He's sliding back down between your legs, barely giving himself a chance to settle in before twirling his fingers just outside your entrance. Face diving to lick several long stripes along your slit.

'Seems everything is in order here. I trust you both will behave in my absence.'

“What?”

Waking up horny and unsatisfied with the fainest memory of your wet dream fading further and further from memory was definitely one way to start your Saturday. But it wasn't the preferable way or a fun one. Especially when it involved a pair of soaking panties and an hour to even satiate your needy pussy.

[bidokja]

i think what’s really interesting to me is the Method through which kim dokja’s face is censored. it’s not a direct visual method, but is instead a method of cognitive dissonance/interference. there’s not some sort of black bar over his eyes and his face isn’t some pixelated mosaic. people would AUTOMATICALLY recognize that something is going on here if that was the case. no, instead, it’s something much more subtle and therefore much more effective (and i suppose much more insidious).

because they DO see a face. we know that people can look at him and he’s not some faceless or distorted or blacked out person. he’s just a person with a face. and while they are looking at him they can place him as kim dokja. we also know people can clearly perceive his individual features. if they only concentrate on his eyes, they can clearly see what his eyes look like, down to the way his lashes are. if they’re only focusing on his cheeks they can tell what his skin looks like. if they only look at his mouth they know exactly what its shaped like.

but then as soon as they try and actively recall or put together what his face is like - his face as a whole - ....they can’t. there’s nothing concrete to work with despite the fact that they are actively looking at him, or that they have previously noted what his smile looks like, or that his eyelashes are a specific length, etc. they know all this information individually but as soon as they go to grasp it all and put it together it turns to smoke. and then they either make up vague features for him or - more insidiously - fake features are put into their heads somehow. so no matter what they manage to scramble together it just feels...off. it feels incorrect. or more aptly, it feels Wrong. because it is. its never going to actually be what he looks like.

and that’s why people default to describing him as ugly (despite descriptions of his individual features which paint him as someone rather attractive and almost delicate looking, actually). he’s not ugly. and it’s probably not that the pseudo-face for him inside their heads is even ugly, either. its just that cognitive dissonance. its that Off feeling. but people don’t realize that, obviously. the vast majority don’t even realize his face is being censored, and even the ones that do figure it out (including kdj himself) only figure it out pretty late in the game.

people have no clue that this dissonance is being manufactured in their perceptions. so when they see his “face” and feel weird about it, they don’t automatically think “oh my mind is being fucked with”, they just shrug it off and say “eh he’s just a plain/ugly dude.”

it’s all just so fascinating and actually VERY disturbing if you think about it.

[askmerriauthor]

Starbound AU World and Character Lore Notes

More things worth being aware of for characterization and such, either based in canon lore from Starbound itself or extrapolated off reasonable evidence to support the notion.  Part 1 here.  Part 2 of ??? submissions:

Economics in a Post Scarcity Setting So as discussed in the previous post, the generation of matter and material goods is a trifling affair.  Additionally, energy production and consumption is moot.  Starbound exists in a truly post-scarcity setting where things still have value based on their usefulness, but that value doesn’t become an exclusionary facet.  As far as I can tell there’s basically no genuine poverty; there’s plenty of people who live rough (particularly the vagabond remnants of the Human species in the wake of Earth’s destruction) but it doesn’t appear to be out a lack of resources.

There is an economy in Starbound; their system of currency is “Pixels”.  Pixels, simply put, are energy condensed into a stable, tangible block of yellowish pseudo-matter.  When combined together in to larger volumes they are formed as bricks, generally ranging amid values of 1k, 2k, 5k, and 10k total.

So what does this mean in the setting?  Well, Pixels aren’t used to trade for goods - they are the goods.  All manufactured material wealth, goods, and comforts in the setting are generated via a method called ‘Pixel Printing”, which is basically a mix between 3D printing technology and Star Trek’s replicators.  Remember back in the first post where I explained that matter and energy are 100% interchangeable?  Yeah, that.  If you need something, you just print it out from a Pixel Printer station using Pixels as the fodder to produce a given item.  So the “cost” of the item isn’t necessarily its actual value, but rather how much energy is used to make up its physical form (and perhaps address any additional service costs related with the use of the machine).

Now just because people have all this amazing access to technology doesn’t mean that there’s no desire for wealth.  There are mega-corporations in the setting and individuals do covet Pixels to line their coffers with.  As in any scenario, the greater means you have available to you, the more comfort and security you can live in.  So there is an actual economy surrounding Pixels and the production of goods-and-services for individual consumption, though access to said Pixels is pretty easy overall.  There’s even a refining/recycling process in which raw ore (base/precious metals, radioactive elements, etc.) can be converted into Pixels directly.  So what this likely means in-setting is that any goods sold on the market are either re-sold whole to a buyer who wants them (as used/damaged goods do still exist very commonly about the galaxy), or are recycled down into core components/raw energy to then be converted into Pixels.

Aside from Pixels, there are other naturally-occurring elements which bear value to the people of the universe.  Their value is based on their usefulness; things like raw ore, fuel, diamonds, naturally-grown food, animals/animal byproducts, and other materials that presumably cannot be generated via Pixel Printing are still precious and sought-after.  Food apparently can be produced via Pixel Printing, but there’s still a high presence of naturally-grown/produced edibles in the setting alongside artificial foodstuffs.  Might just be a matter of personal preference/accessibility or cultural preservation.

Fuel and Energy Consumption While the methods of conversion between matter and energy are 100% efficient, that isn’t to say there aren’t still inefficient methods of energy production at use in the setting.  Starships use a fuel called “Erchius”, which is an unstable isotope found on otherwise barren moons throughout the galaxy.  It’s unclear exactly what this fuel is, but it exists in both a liquid and solid crystalline state.  The liquid form basically provides a single unit of fuel while the crystal form provides two.  Whether it is naturally a liquid that eventually crystalizes to a more condensed state or if the liquid is a run-off from the crystal isn’t known.

Erchius fuel is the means through which faster-than-light (FTL) space travel is obtained.  It is possible that it is also used to power teleportation relays, but that isn’t known for sure.  What is known is that Erchius crystals are an extremely valuable commodity and mined seemingly exclusively by the Lethia Corporation - a Hylotl megacorp which owns and operates an unknown number of lunar Erchius mines throughout the galaxy.  As mentioned before, Erchius fuel is unstable and appears to have radioactive/mutagenic/corrupting side-effects on those who are exposed to its raw form for too long.

Also, it’s directly correlated with eldritch abominations possibly from another reality/nightmare dimension, and Ruin itself.  So it’s basically Hell Energy ala Doom.  Use responsibly, kids!

Because of the way FTL travel currently works compared to previous incarnations, it can’t really be examined too closely in terms of consumption and expense.  In past builds the amount of fuel used per FTL jump directly correlated to the distance traveled, but in the most recent build it’s just a flat cost.  This may change in the future, so there’s not much use in speculating at the moment.  It is entirely possible to exhaust your supply of Erchius fuel, however, so running out of gas is always a possibility.  Well... sort of.

You Never Run Out of Gas Energy use in this setting is highly efficient, if not perfect in the majority of cases.  It gets to the point that items which use energy via batteries (weapons, vehicles, teleportation nodes, construction sytems, etc) basically never run out of fuel once supplied with it.  Even guns that shoot bullets and grenades never run out of ammo - they just spawn their own ammunition and don’t have any reload functionality.  At most an item may need a cooldown period before it can be used again, which can be interpreted either as a hyper-efficient fuel source recharging itself automatically, or a piece of technology requiring a period of time to recalibrate itself following extended use so as not to burn itself out.  

When it comes to starships, their core energy system appears to be functionally limitless.  While you do have a finite amount of Erchius fuel required for FTL travel across the cosmos, your ship is fully capable of moving swiftly amid planets within the same solar system in a timely fashion at no additional cost.  This likely means that the ship is capable of moving at near-to-light speed on its own 100% efficient energy source, while exceeding light speed requires Erchius fuel to achieve.  Whether Erchius fuel and FTL travel is mandatory in-setting to actually traverse from one system to another or if it’s simply a matter of convenience vs. time cost isn’t clear, but presumably one could travel among the various star systems at impulse power over a substantially longer period of time if forced to do so by circumstances.