#[going work on these as i play pokemon infinite fusion]

[hellflcmes]

To try and get a sort of "fresh start" to this blog, here's a starter call! Please like this post for a starter from Enji. If you're a multimuse blog then all I ask is you provide me with a muse or two you wish to interact with Enji. All of these will get posted immediately as I work on my drafts for those replies to be thrown into a queue.

[sexhaver]

ive been playing Cassette Beasts for a minute and it never stops being funny to me how flagrant they are about making this "Pokemon but with features you didn't know Pokemon has always needed". off the top of my head:

super effective/NVE hits have added benefits/debuffs beyond just doubling/halving the damage (hitting Electric types with Ground reduces their evasion and speed, hitting Steel types with Poison gives them poison-coated spikes that do contact damage, etc)

legally-distinct-Pokemon will learn new moves while in your party without having to battle, and you can then straight up steal these moves from them and put them on a not-Pokemon you actually care about using, which gives an actual incentive to hunt down and raise otherwise fringe not-mons beyond completing the not-Pokedex

we all played the Pokemon Infinite Fusion fangame right? we know how fusions work? okay so this game has them as temporary per-battle things instead of permanent ones, which is only marginally less cool while being infinitely easier to balance around

attempting to catch something shows you the percentage chance of success so you know whether you just got unlucky or if you should save your Pokeballs-i-mean-blank-cassette-tapes

leveling up is tied to your not-trainer instead of your not-pokemon, so you don't end up in the classic trap where your starter is way overleveled and everything else is underleveled and then you hit a fight your starter can't solo and have to spend an hour grinding to get the weaker not-mons up to par (funnily enough most Pokemon Nuzlocke romhacks have already figured this out and give you infinite rare candies with the only restriction being that you can't level past the next gym leader's ace pokemon, because Pokemon fans have realized that grinding is the worst part of the game way before Game Freak has)

moves, not-Pokeballs, not-PokeCenter visits, and healing items are all bought using entirely separate currencies which stops you from trivially breaking the economy in half

the soundtrack, fittingly, is pretty good! the vocals were a bit much for my taste but there's an option in the settings menu to straight up turn them off (letting the BGM play on its own), which i've never seen in any other game and really appreciate

downsides:

on a game design level, i understand why can i only carry a max of 5 not-Potions and 1 not-Revive at a time - it's to put a limit on how far away from fast travel points i can get by just running away from everything and healing off damage. on a gameplay level, however, this feels pretty bad

the pixel art style is trying to look as much like Pokemon as possible without actually being Pokemon so the overworld sprites look more like beta stuff from Pokemon that they cut for looking too weird. i have yet to find a haircut that doesn't look bad

this is super petty of me but something about the bloom and lighting of the 3d environments combined with pixelated 2d sprites that still cast shadows makes me painfully aware im playing a video game. it's like they were going for the same aesthetic as Octopath Traveler but fell just barely short. i can't think of a better way to articulate this feeling but if you know you know

it does that really obnoxious half-assed style of voice acting where plot-relevant characters will sometimes (maybe every third or fourth textbox) speak the first two or three words of dialogue before trailing off. mashing through textboxes (as one does) means constantly getting jumpscared by "hmm"s and "haha!"s "okay then!"s

i get that they wanted to make the player feel involved in the story, and it has a pretty decent hook so far, but oh my god. the amount of dialogue "choices" that just transparently do not matter. you know how people memed on Fallout 3 and 4's dialogue choices all leading to the same outcome, to the extent that you were basically choosing between "yes" and "yes (rude)"? and you know how Bethesda would at least attempt to justify how both options led to you accepting the quest anyways, even if it was really dumb? Cassette Beasts has streamlined this process even further by making the options in most of their binary decisions so identical that they don't even require different followup dailogue before rejoining into the main conversation thread. a solid 2/3rds of the dialogue options in this game so far feel like checks that you're still awake. i know this is a minor issue because people aren't playing Pokemon-likes for the engaging "choices matter" approach to storytelling, and i did ignore it at first, but it's so pervasive that you really can't ignore it

[autoplaysdigimon]

I'm starting to think that my style of game blogging would work best if I just... went with my gut about what I feel like playing, instead of feeling pressured to keep blogging about the same thing for a while.

For example, my Kingdom Hearts phase has mostly passed I think, but I'm sure it'll come back pretty soon because that's the kind of person I am. Right now I want to play nothing but Pokemon ROM hacks and fan games. Next week it'll be Dragon Quest. Week after that, probably Kingdom Hearts again. Week after that, who knows, I might go back to Spyro.

Anyway did you know that they added shinies to Pokemon Infinite Fusion?

[sciencesara]

The Palworld Discourse

Why is it so bad…

I actually have a nuanced take but seeing the two sides is just irritating.

One side is mad and saying it’s a cheap ripoff of pokemon and that it used AI (how??? unsure) and the other side is just like, loll who cares, bad look defending the biggest IP by Nintendo, what’s wrong playing a parody that a smaller company has made, looks fun!!

Alright, I’m breaking this down into some overarching problems I see, and why everyone is having a weird knee jerk reaction one way or the other.

Gameplay and why it is (or is not) the pokemon game you are looking for

The company model is not anything to write home about

As an artist who loves Pokemon, I’m not mad that they ripped off Pokemon, I’m just mad that they did it in the laziest way possible

AI and the artists in the current climate

I love media analysis, let’s goooooo

Gameplay and why it is (or is not) the pokemon game you are looking for

Okay yes, the images below are pretty great, definitely selling the edgy dark “this is an adult parody of pokemon – with guns!” complete with animal abuse and exploitation vibes. Funny to see, but that’s not my kinda game, and even if it were…

That’s not what you are going to see most of the time. It’s definitely a more basic looking open world game/survival/base building/automation with menus and lists that you will be staring at, grinding and leveling up. The Pokepals are just a part of the game as a whole. It’s also early access, so the game is still not completely done yet. I can definitely see why it’s such a hit – it’s a genre crossover we haven’t seen before, even though it’s not…a great game, it still will be enjoyable for its audience. Presumably people who liked South Park growing up, idk

Syntac on Youtube

The company model is not anything to write home about

Y’all thinking I’m defending Nintendo by criticizing another game company can know I can hold hate for both simultaneously, thank you very much. The developer/publisher Pocketpair has done other games that are on Steam – one is called Art Imposter, a game similar to drawful that uses AI to generate the art (I will touch on AI later) and Craftopia. Craftopia is also an early access multiplayer survival action game by them, maybe you can tell what other game is mentioned when talking about this game…

How about an upcoming game they have in the works, in addition to the two early access games?

If you can’t tell where I am going with this, their whole premise is making riffs off of popular works, and in my eyes, do not make them out of love, or make them in a transformative way.

As an artist who loves Pokemon, I’m not mad that they ripped off Pokemon, I’m mad that they did it in the laziest way possible

The fan game Pokemon infinite fusion uses an AI to generate a mash-up of two different pokemon, but a large fan base has been making unique pixel art to replace favorite fusions, and has some amazing takes! There are rules and peer review of the submitted artwork, and a guide of how to make these look like pokemon – complexity of the design, color scheme, shading, etc. There are some hilarious deep cuts, and sometimes multiple versions of the same fusion, so you can pick your favorite.

SnooDrawings7091 on r/PokemonInfiniteFusion

Next, we have r/fakemon, a subreddit for fans to post their own designs, and they are amazing! They range from reimaginings and regional redesigns to original creatures, see below

Expert-Discount-3311 on r/fakemon

And here are some pal to pokemon comparisons

If you notice, all of these match the color scheme and body proportions of the one or two pokemon shown – all of them. There are original pals, but that is not the point. If you want a knock off pokemon game, go ahead, but in my book, even a few of these absolute fake prada bags are lazy. I love the creation of new, original designs that look like pokemon but are not. Look at the below image for an original pal that I love the design of -

Give me more of this!!! These look like new pokemon, because they use the same basic shapes, colors, and eye shapes of the pokemon style.

But others can just shrug and won’t care that much, and find it kinda funny that the company is so blatant about it (and find it weird that I have such strong feelings on the subject)

And that brings me to                                   

       

AI and the artists in the current climate

As you might know, AI has been a nightmare for digital artists, sending them into a survivalist defensive against the rise of generative art.

AI, that takes existing good art, puts it through a blender and makes something derivative with the same-wait a minute-no, I shan’t say-

If there were weird vibes of people throwing AI accusations against Palworld, this is probably why – they are so primed to be defensive right now against the use of AI that stuff like this hits that same spot in just the right way.

I have a whole other rant about how I do not like AI, but suffice it to say I feel kinda depressed that I have to scan digital photos and digital artwork now to make sure it is not AI generated before I can rely on my immediate gut instinct of liking or disliking a photo or artwork. The problem with AI generation is one of use – it makes so much chaff that the wheat of actual human work gets lost in the noise. Good luck for any new digital artist to join the market when AI can do it better off of stolen work for free. Something something the rise of derivative works overshadow smaller original ones

Anyways Palworld is meh to me and I’ll sit this one out and eye Slime Rancher 2 instead

[not-quite-a-murkrow]

I'm Aleksei, or Lyosha for short and I use he/him pronouns. Me and Koko -my Murkrow- had an ""accident"" with some DNA Splicer. So I'm not quite human, nor quite Murkrow, now. But hey, no one could really help me, so I may be like this for the rest of my life. So our body is a bit fucked up

Anyway. Before all that, I was trying to be a flying-type specialist ! I just kept my Aerodactyl after the accident. Koko's still there, living in our body, and she hates the idea of owning a 'Mon as a 'Mon herself. But I just can't let Aero go away, he's technically my starter ! :)

You can ask me anything about how the fuck my body can work. But if I feel uncomfortable answering, I will not answer !!! I just turned 18 not that long ago !!

EDIT : I CAUGHT A WURMPLE !!!!! Regis the Wurmple !!!!

ooc under the cut

This character was inspired by Pokemon Infinite Fusion

I am the same person behind @klausfromkalos and @spiritualhoenn, so same rules here.

(I'm still learning to rping here, so please be nice. That may be my third rpblog, but I'm kinda addicted to creating and playing as my OCs :') but I'm trying to stop at 3 )

This blog will be darker than the other two, but not that much I hope

If anyone wants to know, I'm considering that 100 pokedollars = 1 euro. Because I went reading on some french forums where people discuss to know how we can convert pokedollars into euros. I found that's just easier to do 100 pk$ = 1€. Pokeworld economy is a nightmare when converts in our world

Also, it can be relevant to know that I'm using the metric system

I'm french and neurodivergent, so my sentences can be weird when read. If it happens, ask me to be clearer, I will not take it badly. My name's irrelevant, but I go by just K (pronounced "Ké"), ngl I like K :p, I use They/He (Iel/Il in fr) but I'm fine with neopronouns (iel is a neopronoun in french ! ;3)

(No NSFW here. )

If interacting with an adult makes you uncomfortable, it's not a place for you

EDIT FROM 25TH MAY 2023:

So, I'm back here o/ Well, I really needed this break, though I should have talked about it before disappearing. But yeah, I'm back.

Just a few things;

1) I'll be slower to respond to anything and I'll interact less with any kind of high-stakes plot, bc I can't do it that much and no everything is set down in my life, I still need to plan like 5/6 medical appointments and I hadn't had any news about them for about 2 weeks, so I need to go easy on a lot of things (bc like a lot of people here, rp is one of my escapism) 2) I could disappear again, I'll try to say it before doing it -but most of the time when I disappear it's because I'm triggered -and I don't have a lot of clues why some things trigger me or even what triggers me. But I'm actively trying to take care of my mental health 3) My main (klausfromkalos) will NOT restart before everything settles down a lot, I'm not abandoning him bc I really like to play as him, but his character demands a lot for me to do -and right now I'm not in a good enough space mentally to bring him back now. What I'm saying is that he's still there -if anything is sent to his askbox I'll answer but I'll not be playing him like before until I'm better 4) I'm really happy to come back people ^^ <3 <3 <3 JE VOUS AIME LES GENS. BISOUS BISOUS !!!!! <3 <3 <3

EDIT FROM 19TH MARCH 2024:

If you see one of my drawings out that isn't on @ocelaw or on my Ko-Fi, stone the guy

[aeondusk]

So, I want to try and get into SMT, but as a broke ass trans girl with a potato laptop I dunno which is the best one to try

Any reccomendations?

Most SMT fans are going to have pretty different opinions on which ones are the best, but most of them are worth playing. I’ll talk here about my favorites.

It’s worth understanding that SMT is made up of a main series but also a dozen or so subseries. I’ll skip over the subseries I haven’t played or didn’t like.

Also general tips: most SMT games (read: not Persona) are hard. Brutally hard, sometimes. Save whenever you can, make sure you’re prepared. Most bosses will take multiple attempts. Don’t be afraid to completely rearrange your team for a new strategy, if the game has fusion be fusing often, and put any buffs you get onto the MC to help them survive. You cannot plow through the entire game with your initial team like this is Pokemon.

I got into the series via Persona, like many people. The Persona games have diverged pretty strongly from the rest of the series, and (in my opinion) aren’t as good. Still, it might be worth trying Persona 5 Royal to see if you like the demon fusion and turn based elemental system, which is at its peak there. Idk how well it would run on a potato pc, I played it on ps4.

If you want more story over gameplay, then I think Persona 3 is leagues ahead of its younger siblings. Unfortunately the remake doesn’t have the infinitely superior (and gay!) female mc route so I haven’t touched it. You can emulate the PSP original on a potato via PPSSPP emulation, but it’s painfully grindy and poorly paced at times, esp. toward the middle. On the plus side you can be a cool lesbian with a gynoid gf which for me is a huge selling point for me at least.

Avoid Persona 4.

Okay, actual SMT. Nocturne is called a masterpiece and for good reason. Genuinely peak of the series. The first ‘real’ SMT game I played and it made me fall in love. It’s wildly different from most JRPGs and I adore it for that. The remaster is probably the best version, and it’s on PC. I don’t know how it runs on PC since I played it on switch, but it should work fine? If it’s really too much for your pc then PCXS2 can emulate the original, although I’m not sure if that would be better or worse. Nocturne is also the one Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series.

My personal favorite game(s) in the series is Digital Devil Saga (1 and 2 are two games telling one story). They’re PS2 games with no ports, but PCX2E should run them fine. Bonus points for having canon queer rep.

If you can get Citra running you can try SMT IV, which is also very good. A little slow at times, difficulty is very hard early on and then drops off a cliff after the fourth or so major boss, but overall a very high quality game. Unfortunately I’ve never been able to get Citra to work well on my PC, and even then there’s way too many graphical issues that make it just feel Off to me.

The most recent game in the series is V, which is a switch exclusive. Or it was until literally today, because the expanded version Vengenace is on PC. The base game of V is disappointingly middling, the second half of the game feels shockingly unfinished IMO. The gameplay is fire though so if you’re fine with a little repetitive overworld bullshit and the plot just kind of. Skipping an entire act? Then yeah I’d consider it. Obviously it’s a brand new game so idk when a cracked version will appear, maybe try something else first. On the other hand good plural rep kind of? So that’s cool.

Soul Hackers is a personal favorite because hot lady I mean hot lady I mean. Nemissa. Surprisingly good plural rep with her and Hitomi. Pretty dated gameplay, since it’s a sega saturn game (I played the 3ds port) but the story is peak cyberpunk bullshit. Soul Hackers 2 was the most disappointing sequel of the decade (it was okay but painfully just okay).

The Persona 2s (there are two Persona 2s) are probably the queerest games in the series. Plot is peak esoteric bullshit. The PSP versions have several QoL features so I played those ones, but they also broke the difficulty curve so even on Hard they’re some of the easiest titles in the series. Sometimes a bit grindy and slow but in what other game do you get to kill Nyarlathotep possessing Hitler wielding the Spear of Destiny who is also your gay bf’s abusive dad? <- not a shitpost this is really the final boss of Innocent Sin. 100% worth playing just maybe not as the first game

Games not to try first:

Some people will tell you strange journey is good. These people are wrong :p Didn’t hate it but do not let it be your first game.

SMT IV Apocalypse is a direct sequel to IV. Do not play it until you play IV, it will make no sense. Even then it’s not as good as its predecessor.

Devil Survivor is a strategy rpg for the ds/3ds. They’re good but probably not a good introduction to the series on account of being so different.

Anything before Nocturne: they’re going to be jank and need a translation patch. The gameplay that makes SMT iconic was invented by nocturne, so any game before that plays more like a middling 90s jrpg. Some good stories in them but do not start with, say, SMT 2.

Catherine isn’t part of the series proper but it’s in the same universe, has many of the same writers, and is popular with certain parts of the fanbase. It’s also transphobic as hell. Avoid forever.

Unfortunately PC ports of the series are a relatively recent development. For much of its existence SMT has been a ps2 series, then a 3ds series, and now it’s being revived once more on multiple platforms. Unfortunately the ones getting PC ports are the more recent or popular games, which means Persona and nothing else. If you don’t know how to emulate, now’s the time to learn. It’s not as difficult as people think it is tbh.

tl;dr play nocturne (remaster pc port or PCSX2 emulator). then do whatever you want forever

[thescrapbookingscientist]

Bimonthly Media Roundup

-Cyberpunk Edge-runners (Anime) - Finished up Cyberpunk Edgerunners at anime night. Overall I think it was fine, I respect the unique character designs and animation, liked the soundtrack, and can respect the fucked up but realistic hyper-capitalist setting, but I can't say I really connected with the characters or was that engaged in the story as a whole. Lucy was fine, I liked her well enough, and in general the women had fun designs if little substantial screen time but I would find myself frequently zoning out as there wasn't really a mystery or engaging plot tension and I didn't care about the characters all that much when barely any of them cared about each other. That being said I don't want to be too harsh on it, it had some good parts, I liked the moon being called back as an escape from reality for example.

-Face Off (TV) - Wish that Netflix has the whole thing rather than just 2 seasons and some bonus episodes but it was nice while it lasted. The creativity on display with a lot of these creatures is impressive and its neat to see the behind the scenes of how movie monsters are constructed.

- Fallout (TV) - Waiting to watch more before I make any judgements but I did quite like the first episode, it's a good setup with some nice tension and gave an appropriate amount of time to each character based on what's going on in their plots. Interested to see more.

- In Stars and Time (Video Game) - Watching the Jello playthrough, very delightful so far, I love Time Loop stories in general and the character art is very cute. Will likely say more as I get through.

- Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (Webnovel) - Picked this back up to see if I could finish it before the anime comes out, I do quite like it but boy is it a long novel.

- The Apothecary Diaries (Anime) - Still having fun with this so decided to watch the English dub partially as background noise but partially because I just want to see it again.

- Pokemon Infinite Fusion (Video Game) -Been utterly obsessed with this game since I downloaded it, a pokemon fangame where you can fuse pokemon together to make unique new creatures. Not only are there 200,000+ possible fusions with a lot of really cool/cute/weird/horrifying/funny sprites, but it's also a genuinely good game with side-quests, fun dialogue, an original plot, and nice art all around. It's also free, which is insane. Only downside is that I have to play it on my PC, destroying my back.

- One Piece (Anime) - Yup.

- Genshin Impact (Video Game) - Somehow randomly got Kazuha when trying to pull for Yan-Fei constellations. I mean I'll take it, wow, he's been quite fun to play so far even if I'm pretty indifferent to him as a character. Anyway nice to see Rosaria in the event, she's pretty cool with her perpetual eye bags.

Listening To: How Did You Love by Shinedown, Give Up Your Dreams from The School of Rock, Everything Goes On by Porter Robinson, All the Boys by Panic! At The Disco, Willow by Taylor Swift, Rose Colored Boy by Paramore, Her Diamonds by Rob Thomas, Stray Italian Greyhound by Vienna Teng, Hey I Don’t Work Here by Tom Cardy, Pierrot by Kei, and Can’t Catch Me Now cover by Annapantsu

[yourbrains]

it's the time of year where my brain is at its worst and my mental energy to do anything hits the negatives so instead of whining about that here's some cool things going on in my life:

playing the pokemon infinite fusion game and it's so ridiculously fun and somehow also a better gen 1 remake than the gen 1 remakes??

my sister got a culinary scholarship in italy! we're having a fundraiser for her in April. also my birthday is in April :]

planning a trip to Japan!! we're going in October/November. i've been fixating on planning and its fun. learning Japanese is also good and keeps my brain fresh.

for the first time in ??? I don't hate my job, it's nice working from home and my cat lays next to me in her bed while I work

i'm on track to finish a whole-ass novel length fanfic this year

i'm enjoying watching and re-reading dungeon meshi. I got through some of it in college but forgot almost everything about it because I have goldfish brain, so it's like seeing it with fresh eyes again

das all for now

[ravenwolfie97]

2023 Art Summary

that's right folks, it's the end of the year, and you know what that means here :3

it's been a weird year for me, with lots of difficult and new things going on, but i think that overall it's been an okay time. however, art stuff did not come to me as readily, most of the stuff here this year are either sketches during dead air at work or done in a big batch in one big spurt of inspiration. as per usual, i'll let ya know what all went down. it turned out alright :>

well, without further ado, let's get into it!

Continuing from the tail end of 2022, I got more requests for newer Pokemon to draw, and it was really fun! Having grown up alongside the franchise for so long, I find it really interesting that I can pick up how to draw them pretty quickly and pretty well. These were all first attempts with whatever idea I had in mind, and it was a good time :3

The next month continued the Pokemon drawing trend after I had discovered and played around with the Pokemon Infinite Fusion generator. I loved the dedication so many people had to make their own unique combo designs, so later on I had downloaded the Infinite Fusion fan game and had some fun with that!

Additionally, my partner Stacey was planning a homebrew DND campaign called the Afterworlds where angels and demons live in their own little lands. I ended up deciding on making a Changeling Bard demon of Pride, who I named Masque. I have their initial sketches here because it was sort of a pivotal moment in my character creation process. I had a vague sense of a design in mind, which I sketched on the left, but I wasn't happy with it - it was just too boring and plain. So, I took to the internet, and I looked up various references and inspirations and ideas and came up with the sketch on the right, which was much more interesting! Definitely more fitting of a dangerous entertainer type.

Once again, the months bleed together, and Masque's design was completed! I really fell in love with them and their design, and even though we only managed to do one session with them so far (mostly due to life stuff btwn all of us) I really can't to do more things with them. More things like debuting their stage persona, Escher a.k.a Ghost! As the leader of a ragtag group of traveling performers known as the Cabaret Depayser, Escher is a much more charismatic and charming facet of Masque that keeps them hidden from those who want to hunt them down. Since I haven't got to play with that side of them just yet, we'll see how that turns out :3

In other news, Pizza Tower was all the rage this month, and I couldn't help but be swept up in it too! It's an incredibly mesmerizing and fun-looking game, with excellent animation and music and everything. I eventually picked it up myself, but haven't gotten to play it yet. I did end up really liking drawing them, kind of forcing me to embrace a more cartoonish side of my art style, and it was really fun to do.

Also uh. I got sick. like... really sick. i never get sick. so i made an art to cope. this would not be the last time i got sick like that. was still funny to draw it out though

A rather uneventful month, but hey look! We've returned to Pokemon. This time I asked to draw some from memory, and overall I did okay, even for the newer ones like Toxel here. I got the general angery baby lizard vibes down.

I also drew my friend Cake's egg magical girl OC Sunny Side and her little buddy Tama in my downtime at work. I think she's neat and I thought she would be fun to doodle :>

i truly had nothing else this month other than this one wip, gomen

I actually have a very valid excuse for this, because I was preoccupied most of the month with helping out my partner on her student film, which much like this wip was about our story Cosmic Legacy. I helped out with voice acting, voice mixing, and the music; although we weren't able to complete all of it and we still haven't picked it back up to finish it, I was still proud of what I was able to accomplish in about a month on top of a full-time job.

fun fact about this wip while i'm here though: it's based on this one shot from BTS's music video for Run, one of my favorite songs of theirs as well as one of my favorite music videos

i've always wanted to draw some group with this shot as reference, and it worked perfectly with these kids, but i still have to. y'know. finish it

Most of the month was, again, sketches from work free time. I felt like doodling some of the Destiny Guardians from my own story The Dark Side: War on Destiny from memory, since I don't draw them very often but I still like them a lot.

Circling back to Pizza Tower brainrot, my friend Atlas and I started tossing around an idea of what if, instead of pizza and Italian inspiration, it was ramen and Japanese inspiration? I was really struck with inspiration by that thought, and came up with five new ramen-inspired Toppins: char siu pork, narutomaki, scallion, boiled egg, and wakame seaweed. I thought they all turned out really cute :>

And, as my one piece of actual polished art in literal Months... Genshin dropped a teaser for the new Fontaine region and showed little glimpses of this Melusine, and I was so enamoured I had to draw her. They are so cute and I like em.

sometime in between months, i got sick. again. just like back in march. but that proved to be a little bit useful because...

SURPRISE, IT'S FULL COLOR ART

it was Artfight time once again, and I did not want to miss out. However! I kind of monkey wrenched myself by doing the color wheel challenge that had taken the internet by storm during the time I was under the weather. I ended up finishing it by the middle of July, so I only had time for a couple of art pieces for Artfight after that, which is kind of what I did to myself last year too. At least I had a valid excuse with doing another big fun art thing lol

I still have so many color wheel theme ideas that I would like to make, but after this, life would really get in the way of things, especially art-making in general, so I definitely plan to revisit those ideas later

it was around this time of year when not only was it forest fire season, and i had an ear infection right after being sick, but it was also time when i started really considering and making plans to move out across the country. it was a really busy and stressful time, even outside of myself since my parents and their aging parents were becoming a situation i had to watch unfold and help support as best i could. i doodled a little bit during work but most of my time and attention was spent elsewhere. drawing Lyney from genshin from memory was pretty fun, though. i liked him far too much even then lol

September was when things ramped up even more, and on the 22nd I, with my mom's help, had left with my belongings and began the 3-day trek from Seattle, Washington to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was actually a decent time with lots of beautiful scenery, which I'll provide here since I... got absolutely nothing done in this month.

also... coolest hotel ever. absolutely oozing with charm. loved it

and actually, i lied a little bit. once i had actually moved in and settled, as i was getting stuff to furnish the place i wanted to pick up something for a little art project to like. keep me sane. so i had found this little Dia de Muertos ceramic cat statue painting kit and fell in love with it and after many days and layers of paint i basically finished it at the end of the month and I think it turned out really cool!

and so, since September was a bit of a dud, here's an October double feature :D

Over time, I started getting into a groove and much more comfortable in my new home, so my art started to pick back up. A lot of things were on my mind: I wanted to start planning on a potential rebranding/vtuber career and made some iterations on a design for my sona's model before settling on the one here, I was extremely bored one day and decided to pick back up on a papercraft doll for my friend Cake's sona (coincidentally just in time for her birthday), I started getting back into TOME and did a redraw of Demon Alpha over a screenshot from The Owl House to revitalize my love of drawing from that franchise, I wanted to draw Masque again cuz the homebrew game had been dead on our group's end because of scheduling conflicts and stuff, and lastly I wanted to do another halloween vampire-sona piece and got the idea for a fun, spooky, sexy two-parter with some bloods. It was a good time and I was feeling on the up and up :3

This month was less up, not just because I did a lot less, but because... I got covid. Finally. After nearly four years of evading it, I think the new environment and stress got to me and got me infected just in time for my birthday :^)

I could barely get anything done during the time I was sick, but I did do a few cool things. Again, I had gotten back into TOME after watching through the A2Z movies, and the epilogue really got me, especially with the softlocke content. So I did some doodles in my spare time and only managed to get this one digitized (which i didn't post yet cuz i wanted to do the others too first, whoops)

The girl on the left is a product of a nifty design challenge I found while mindlessly scrolling thru youtube shorts, where you create an OC based on some traits of yours (here's the video i found for it). It was just a fun little prompt that got me to do a little bit more this month.

Then I wanted to practice drawing my new vtuber sona some more, and there had been this trend on Twitter where people drew characters in one of the poses from this K-pop music video GUILTY. It seemed like a cool pose idea, but I feel like a lot of the people who did it mostly liked drawing muscly dudes and rendering them or just drawing the pose to be sexy, but I was most interested in the context of the song which made it much darker and spookier while still being very sexy and fun to draw, so I focused on the spookier angle of it

and finally, December was a very busy month with the holidays as I was prepping gift-giving for work and my family, but I still ended up dedicating my time to a couple of projects in the time I could find in between

my main focus this month had been on an idea inspired by this series of videos by ABD Illustrates and based on some kinds of image combination techniques to make a bunch of genshin OCs based on a collage of every character of each body type. I had made five different ideas, each with a different element, weapon, and national origin, as well as movesets and even voicelines! But I hadn't gotten terribly far in rendering them, but I wanted to have at least a preview of one of them for this, so I started with my favorite of them all, Jack! He's the one I've become most interested in developing, and I like how he's shaping up so far :3

And, of course, as always, Pokemon runs through my veins and keeps me going. I did some doodles at work, inspired by Hoenn nostalgia after finding Alpharad's Too Many Types romhack to download for myself, as well as my latest playthrough of PMD Rescue Teams Red and Blue, including DX, which I'll be liveblogging here in the future.

Well, what a year it's been. I've done a lot more than I thought, despite everything, but I'm excited for the year to come, because I am dedicating it to all the WIPs I have gathered over the ages, and I will hope to see many of them done for the next summary! Until next time!

[halcoded]

hmm. as much as i want to play oddballz some more i also want to play wobbledogs... or maybe see if i can get pokemon infinite fusion working but i'm not sure how well that will go.

[hermitcraft-8]

well i've been switching between Pokemon Infinite fusion nuzlockes for vids by Flygonhg if you like Pokemon, Smallant and Pointcrow Tears of the Kingdom vids or you want Zelda, or chill Dorfromantik or Pan'orama games. But! I also suggest Hades lets's plays cause those always rule. Yeah thats my suggestions i hope one of them works!

ok im probably going to end up watching silent hill 4 playthroughs again like usual though full warning

[justicegun]

ok now that I’m back from work I wanna dump all my E3 impressions in one big dumb post since I couldn’t react nearly as much as I wanted

I’m gonna look at list of announced games on ign because I can’t trust myself to remember everything I’ve seen

I guess this would stretch into forever, so here’s a cut, if you don’t care! I assume you don’t.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and pretty much all of the confirmed localizations that Atlus announced pre-E3 are pretty hype. Aegis in particular, because of the Vanillaware artstyle, but shit like SMT Strange Journey Redux is nice too. Real neato.

New Assassin’s Creed looks hype as fuck, I stopped playing/caring about AssCreed a while back but giving me a bunch of cool egyptian priests covered in gold and wearing an Anubis mask with magic powers sure as fuck brings interest all over this shit 

Ashen looks dope as fuck, one of the best things in the Microsoft conference. Maybe one day Souls-like adventure games will be oversaturated, but that day is not today.

I’m just glad Cuphead is still coming out.

Detroit is hopefully going to be an interesting Two Best Friends Play LP.

Looking at the Far Cry 5 trailer was the moment where it felt official to me that FPS games now look super boring to me

Fire Emblem Warriors looks... meh. Boxart is ugly as hell, too.

New God of War: I was very into the huge World Snake being all like “hey bro do you need help”

Gran Turismo, FIFA, every sports: they sure are sports.

Kingdom Hearts 3 wasn’t really a part of E3 per se, but Roxas confirmed! Roxas is still confirmed.

Kirby! Kirby is still good. Always good.

Life is Strange Prequel: I’m curious, but not interested.

Marvel v Capcom Infinite seems to have unimpressive graphics, but it still has X and Sigma, damnit.

Mario Rabbids game: I aggressively don’t care.

Mario Odyssey: the Mario game I cared the most about in ages

Metro Exodus: looks kinda interesting, but the setting seems to be just pretty bleak and it’s a FPS, so eh.

on both Metroids: the only Metroid I’ve ever played was Fusion and that didn’t really stick with me so I don’t really feel much for the series as a whole. I am glad that fans are getting what they supposedly wanted, though.

MONSTER HUNTER WORLD LOOKS FUCKING AMAZING MY DUDE

new Ori game looks pretty alright too but I still didn’t play the first one

don’t feel much for whatever Pokemon is coming to the Switch but I’m sure I’ll be excited enough once I look at anything about it

did you guys see Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin? That shit is so cute, holy shit.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 looks very anime and there’s not a lot to be impressed about in the new trailer but boy. That music. It’s going to be a whole different story and there’s not much to go on and know what to expect, but that music. Xenoblade has such a good soundtrack you guys.

new Yoshi game is so adorable it basically won E3

and that’s finally it from me.

[talietikasero]

I went in aware of the (possible) retcons and shit but I watched the whole thing anyway. It’s some ungodly hour way past when I should’ve slept and here’s what I thought. I’m trying to be fair here when I give GG Strive’s story a 6.8/10

Visuals: This game is beautiful. 12/10

Voice cast: I enjoyed the dub. Not as much of a corny anime dub like Sign was, but the returning cast improved from that game -- or at least I thought so. 8.75/10

Soundtrack: One word: Incredible. The duo of Naoki and Aisha on vocals for all character themes -- ok they're only a duet on Ramlethal's [Necessary Discrepancy] but you know what I meant -- was a perfect choice. My favorite themes from when I played the second open beta back in mid-May were Giovanna's [Trigger] and Potemkin's [Armor-Clad Faith], but Leo's [Hellfire] really grew on me the most. 15/10

Game itself: Arcade mode was a fun challenge because I’m an idiot who did all 15 but I got really tired of fighting Nago over and over again. I’m not that great so I’m not worrying about getting the “Messiah Will Not Come” trophy where you fight him but he’s got an infinite blood gauge. Survival gives a good chunk of the lifebar back without making it too easy -- and the “mysterious challenger” at stage 10 being a shadowy Sol with neon red was an okay way to signal a checkpoint. 9/10 I’m not doing online any time soon because I don’t have a wired connection but I hear it’s ass and the tower placement is a complete lie.

Anywho, now on to the real post:

For a finale, the story was... slightly below average. But I’ll be honest here, I kinda had high expectations because of the hype from the past two (?) years, five if you count the total time between Rev2 and Strive's release dates.

The last time I was this critical of a sequel’s story was the gap between Borderlands 2 and 3, which was seven years. I'm going off on a tangent here but I'll sum it up so if you're not familiar with Borderlands you'll have an idea of what I'm taking about. In Borderlands: the Pre-Sequel, the Watcher (Eridian? that saved Athena from execution after telling Lilith and company of her adventures on Elpis with Nisha, Wilhelm, Timothy, Aurelia, and Claptrap) warned "Now's not the time for bickering, Vault Hunters. War is coming, and you will need all the Vault Hunters you can get". BL3 rolls around and there was no big war. Instead, we got a poorly delivered dumpster fire of a main campaign that spanned five planets and the main villains were some bratty livestreamer Sirens that run a planet wide cult. Seriously? The cast was poorly handled there too but I'll stop here.

In the case of comparison to another fighting game’s story, the game that comes to mind is Tekken 7 because if they aren’t a Mishima or Kazama or someone else in that fucked up family that’s plot relevant, they were given a shitty one-fight episode. Sure Nina and Claudio were in the main story mode but that's the thing: they were just there. The returning (dlc) series veterans, such as Anna, Lei, Marduk, and all the way to Zafina plus the newcomers Leroy, Lidia, Fahkumram, and Kunimitsu II weren't given much aside from a brief story snippet. Dare I say it but SFV did their new seasons newcomers and returning fighters justice as they all got episodes of their own. You read that right. Street Fighter V was better to its cast than Tekken 7 and Guilty Gear -Strive-.

Unlike the Xrd games, watching the story does not get you any money. The only difference I saw right after was that the Strive correlation chart updated. For what it’s worth, they could’ve done something like DBFZ’s story clearance unlocking a new character, or do an alternate costume where the outfit Frederick wears in the ending (and upon further inspection is the very same one he wore in the flashback) is useable in fights (it’d be hilarious but a good detail added in if you were to select that option but the name plate doesn’t display “Sol” lmao). If Ky has a palette that puts him in an open button white shirt, jeans, and what look like work boots, then let me play in the ending's lab coat, tanktop, and jeans dammit.

I kept track of how many of the playable cast showed up and played some part. Everyone except Ramlethal, May, and Faust appeared in the story -- these three were reduced to credit image cameos >:( Ram’s seen with Elphelt and Sin, while Ky and Dizzy are in the background. May’s with her crew, and Faust is in the desert somewhere or some shit with Chronus.

But even if they did show up, nobody else except like five people did jack shit. Giovanna, bless her heart, was absent for a long period then showed up to fight Nagoriyuki (who eventually sided with the good guys) but got her ass beat after he faked surrender. Potemkin helped but spent most of his time cruising at high speed trying to get to the White House. Ky and Jack-O didn’t arrive until the end either. Axl -- or should I say Will -- finally got to see Megumi again at the cost of I-No’s defeat. The dude got his girlfriend back at the loss of someone he considered a friend but the delivery felt forced as it was confirmed as she was dying -- wasn't part of her character that she has no recollection of a past? Her suddenly remembering a past boyfriend and being able to describe his appearance didn't really make much sense.

Chipp and Anji were in that comical highway chase scene, but then Anji's just wherever while Chipp's in the Pentagon control room. I get that someone had to stay behind and watch from the other side -- this role landing with Leo as he, Millia, and Zato were overseeing commentating on events from the castle’s war room like Brock and Misty during Ash's battles in the OG season of the Pokemon anime, while Daryl was at the G4 conference and Ky was on his way to the fight -- but the pacing and usage of the cast in this story was a mess. Yeah sure it has most of the GG cast in this installment's playable roster present but it didn't feel like a GG story -- really it felt like the live action Resident Evil movies where the source material's characters are sprinkled in, acting more as a "here ya go they're here don't expect much!" type thing.

Honestly, a step down from Rev because at least everyone in that arc were somewhat present with maybe one or two exceptions? Hell, even though they were added as dlc or in Rev2, Dizzy, Haehyun, Baiken, and Answer were in the main story. Being hopeful here when I say that I hope we see more of Goldlewis or get to play as him because his design is badass and so is his coffin flail weapon. On the side of fairness though, I have a feeling this isn’t exactly what Ishiwatari intended (this is unlikely but it's probably Katano's directing? Whatever in any case)? The general reaction I saw from others who’ve watched the story was that the subplots were half baked and the plot as a whole was pretty rushed. Happy Chaos / the Original as the main villain was Calypso Twins from Borderlands 3 level cringe and every time HC appeared on screen I wanted to mute it. There is the bonus story coming later this year, along with the dlc slots, so ehh? The interactions between Colin and Frederick were one of my personal favorite points even if this did turn into “Neon Genesis White House Down”.

“Brown bears don’t give birth to pandas.“

I’m sure like the others who actually paid attention to the story from the end of Xrd to Strive, my main question was this:

After the Justice / Jack-O fusion -- recall the “newly revived” Aria had purely red hair and Jack-O’s halo disappeared. During the mid-credits of Revelator, former friends turned sworn enemies turned frenemies Asuka and Frederick pretty much have one last declaration of war against each other, with Sin, I-No, and Raven as their witnesses -- Asuka even said “take good care of Aria”. Naturally from all of that, she’s not Jack-O anymore, right? Wrong. According to the game, what's inside of Jack-O is only a fragment / shard of Aria mixed in with Jack-O's projected personality (I think). How did they go from "let's do the fusion and guaranteed she'll return" to "yeah nah she ain't comin' back bro"

Xrd Revelator: "Pull this off successfully and Aria will fully revive as a human."

Strive: "Nah bruh. We lied. It just turned Jack-O human and what's inside her is only an unstable shard of Aria -- not the whole thing."

Back to the “final battle”, they don’t fight, rather Asuka removed the Flame of Corruption from Frederick's body (and somehow he got a haircut too). So really what was the fight in Rev2′s [After Story - A] for? Did he get nearly the life beaten out of him from Ky fighting dirty and left that crater in the park for nothing? Seems that way. Asuka lives on the moon and he's got a radio show now because (*bong rip*) that makes sense.

I’ll admit it’s a little cute that the feelings are mutual between Jack-O and Frederick -- he sees her as herself and not just a genetic copy but they expect us to think in the three weeks they've known each other that "oh shit I'm in love with this person" is believable -- and they live in the woods near a presumably 200+ year old space shuttle complete with the launchpad but come on now. That's some Russo Brothers level writing right there -- y'all remember Avengers: Endgame and how when he went across space and time to return the Infinity Stones, Steve Rogers threw everything away just so he could go back to his original era? The now depowered-so-he's-human-again Frederick Bulsara (the ex-gear and world's savior x times over formerly known as Sol Badguy) living in isolation away from his newfound family and friends gives off the same vibe. Especially after that one and only flashback where it's Aria's birthday and he was going to propose but the ring wasn't ready in time so he had that "error" to show instead.