deltoravivisection

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Update on the Deltora DS game captioning:

Yuuup as I suspected this game understands Barda.

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And yk not to get all vulnerable and stuff but leading up to the Procedure I was thinking hard about all my experiences with gender and self-perception and I've probably said this before, but I really do just wanna say how important Jasmine was to me as a kid. I wanted to be her so bad... She was the first time I had seen a genuinely androgynous afab character who wasn't either a joke or "fixed" later in the series and it really did mean a lot -- the thought that you could be not only accepted but praised and desired for being gnc, even if Jasmine is a cis girl at the end of the day. I would have figured it out without Jasmine I'm sure but I'm incredibly grateful to have had a role model like that in a book series I loved so much. Especially in the homophobic political wasteland that was the early 2000s. Even just genuinely butch girls were hard to find in kids' media so it really is special that we got one who flat-out cross-dressed and it was framed as something cool. She remains in my top 5 favorite characters ever to this day. And she just rocks in general. So basically, the post-op suffering is all Rodda's fault lol thanks for the drains ma'am.

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Sorry for no updates lately. I got top surgery yesterday so as you can probably guess I was focused on other things for a few weeks there lol. I'm still working through the optional scenes you can get when you drink the dreaming spring water. I will resume this when I'm not In Pain. Also my work schedule is changing again. When the project started I was working 2 hours on the the script most days before work, then it got halved to 1 (you may have noticed the severe speed dropoff 💀), and now I have been assigned the worst shift on the planet (11-7:30 👹) so I'll have up to 3 hours to come up with my bullshit every morning... Nature is. Erm. Interesting.

ALSO I did find a lovely translator who is working on the DS game captions, but they also have several other things going on in life so as all things on this blog the release will be slow. No real release timeline yet but they have gotten through much of the prologue and we will be revising it together 😁 Again definitely when I am no longer In Pain.

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Oh yeah, also, I haven't been working as consistently on Vivisection because I've been looking into getting the actual official 2007 Deltora DS game translated. From what I understand it hasn't been translated yet because the dialogue is stored as images instead of normal text. I think it would be cool to even just have a video of the gameplay with English captions, but I've been struggling to find the right person to hire to make a transcript because of how strange the format of "gameplay video with sporadic text" is 😅 So if anyone has a suggestion let me know.

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HEY GUYS. I AM alive. Work was just really stressful over the holiday and I've been taking a sort of tumblr cleanse for the sake of my brain. Popping on here quick to share something really cool that I found at a used book store:

A proof copy of Rowan and the Ice Creepers! A New Years Eve miracle... I bought it obviously, but I actually still need to read ROR from the beginning, so I have not actually looked through this thing yet. Ik it's probably not worth anything but I think this is now the most obscure/rare item I own and I'm deeply enamored with it. It's in pretty good condition too! Sadly they only had like 5 other Rodda books, all of which were normal.

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You've said that the gems can be collected in any order, but what happens if the player collects them in the same order as Adin?

Will the whole Return To Del book be skipped? Or at least the part after they pledge allegiance to the belt?

I just find the thought of Lief going:

Omg guys, we completed the belt :D now to find the heir!

And then the Shadow Lord just gets immediately banished.

YEAH THAT'S BASICALLY WHAT HAPPENS LOL. Spoilers below for those who care:

My plan is to have a secret boss fight against Dain, Ichabod, and an Ak-Baba in Withick mire that happens as soon as Lief puts on the Belt after Dain gets fake kidnapped. Dain and Ichabod are the same as their non-secret ending fights, while the Ak-Baba has similar mechanics the Shadow Lord. (Yeah I'm inserting a fight against TSL in the normal ending. ik that's goofy but a jrpg is incomplete without a game-breaking final boss lol.) The reveal that Doom is Jasmine's dad is moved to after the fight (he gets concussed as Ichabod bursts into the room), and he also explains Lief being the heir after he becomes more lucid. The crew then heads to Del, where the people are already rioting, and they break into the dungeons to free Lief's parents, and Lief's dad survives. After that, the little epilogue plays out the same as in the good ending.

I also want there to be a bad end wherein the player is enough of a dick to the tribe reps for the vow to not work, resulting in Dain and Ichabod getting the jump on the whole group and killing them.

Also also, there's a specific item that grants Lief the ability to use the only real healing spell in the game (at the cost of not granting any defensive boosts), and if he has it equipped during the final boss of the normal ending, he is able to prevent his father from dying. It doesn't change much about the ending, but I think it's fun. If I ever were to adapt the other parts, which I almost certainly won't, I would have it so that Lief can use this item on Glock's neck wounds in s2 and Lindal's broken arm in s3, resulting in an alternate route for each series where the party gains a 4th member for the entirety. Which is an insane thing to do and one of the reasons I have to Not Try To Do It lest I spend 20 years of my stupid life on this project lol.

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Going with the solution I put in the tags. Just gonna have each of them have a long conversation the first time you speak with them and then go to generic dialogue after. I think if I have each of them talk about a different subject it'll be enough info that it doesn't feel like a copout lol

Genuine dilemma rn: I think it would be weird to not give the Kin optional dialogue since they're Important, but 1) there are like 6 of them and 2) idk what they would even talk about 💀 they occupy the same ecological niche as like herbivorous dinosaurs what kinds of hobbies or political opinions could they possibly have...

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This too is yuri

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Genuine dilemma rn: I think it would be weird to not give the Kin optional dialogue since they're Important, but 1) there are like 6 of them and 2) idk what they would even talk about 💀 they occupy the same ecological niche as like herbivorous dinosaurs what kinds of hobbies or political opinions could they possibly have...

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Have you ever done a voice-claim for the main cast? Or is that not something you've ever considered?

Regardless, I'm absolutely in love with this project and your designs. Always looking forward to more updates!!

Hmmm I haven't posted about it but I do have a couple vague headcanons. Not for everyone, just for a few characters lol. Also, I don't know a lot of VAs so most of my HCs are musicians instead. Erm:

Lief is the least-serious HC, but I think it's very entertaining to picture him sounding like Reviewbrah LMAO

Lindal sounds like Daniel Armbruster specifically in this song

I think I've posted this one before but I kind of picture Steven sounding like Chris Bowers Castillo for some reason

Tom, Ava, and Laughing Jack all sound like Tom Cardy doing slightly different voices lol (weirdly enough this is the only voice claim here that's actually Australian oops)

Based on vague memory I was gonna say I imagine Doom sounding like Razer from GLTAS but on actually listening again I was WAY off base, and that voice is actually super fitting for Ranesh imo. (I remembered his voice being a lot deeper than it actually is for some reason. I do think his tone during more intense scenes is accurate to Doom though LOL) I swear to god I picture Doom as someone specific but I can not for the life of me place it.

WAIT. OH MY GOD. I FIGURED IT OUT. Doom in my head has the same cadence as Goemon from the Lupin III part 2 dub. Oh my god. I don't even know if that's a good headcanon in fact I think it's bad but it's really funny...

Very not solid on this one but if I had to put an example to how I imagine Barda's voice I guess I would say Cloudfodder (like, the pitch and general quality of it I guess)

Similar situation with Jasmine but I'm a bit more confident in this one. Pointing at Findlay for her.

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Like I have to just sit down and Go For It. Like some characters I have a clear vision for, but sometimes the characters' personalities manifest the more I write because I would get bored if they were nothingburger people lol. Doing this has made me really like the version of Gla-Thon that now lives in my head...

Writing NPC dialogue is like an endless loop of "UGH I don't care about this character I don't want to do this" then by the end giggling and clapping at every turn cause I made them so awesome

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Commissioned some equipment designs from my good friend thrallcreates a while back and forgot to post them here ^___^ (can't @ him he doesn't have tumblr but go follow him on insta and twitter) SO hyped about these things. Will probably edit them a bit but you will be seeing most of these in some form or another in the game. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 14 are Lief, Jasmine, Doom, Dain, and Barda's primary/starter weapons respectively and I think they look excellent as is. 7 is a dagger made from one of the wennbar's teeth and 8 is a greatsword made of a Sand Beast's limb. The rest are miscellaneous. I'm a HUGE fan of 9c and 10b. Just fantastic.

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A thought flits through my mind, waking me in a frigid sweat: "I'm making these characters too leftist. I'm making it unrealistically woke. There's not even a fascism sidequest." I remember this is a fangame for Deltora Quest published by Schoolastic a children's series about the power of friendship, and not one of five spiritual successors to Disco Elysium. It's seriously not that deep. I fall asleep again, normal for a fleeting moment.

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Writing NPC dialogue is like an endless loop of "UGH I don't care about this character I don't want to do this" then by the end giggling and clapping at every turn cause I made them so awesome

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I like that the Grey Guards needed like an instant-kill thing to make them a huge threat, but instead of some kind of gun analog or like crossbow contraption Rodda was like "hmmm acid bomb."

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i have no one to talk about this with but ive started rewriting all of deltora quest but its with my ocs. like one of those fandom "naruto in lord of the rings" aus but its my guys and im forcing my friend to read it and get excited about the twists. anyway your blog is so epic please keep up the actual productive shit 🫡

LMFAO THAT RULES. Are you going to post it anywhere when it's finished?

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man I've been dicking around getting nowhere for too long I need to lock in and finish some damn dialogue