#'how can we emulate this to look exactly like a thing. while making it also robot.'

[ex-vespidae]

i was gonna talk about how i don't really understand why people like robobot so much but i honestly think i just don't like sci-fi robot themes all that much? I realized this because i just remembered that the main reason i picked pkmn scarlet instead of violet is because i thought the robot stuff looked boring

[suffarustuffaru]

Looking at your past art has me really loving your drag king Natsumi, do you have any more thoughts on them? I'd love to hear them. Also just your genderbend ideas in general. They are very interesting!

for future reference, here is where i drew some drag king natsumi + sapphic ottosuba :) i definitely plan on making more genderbend au content in the future thats for sure! :o i have another older art post on this here also (i am. too lazy to find it rn but its there somewhere!!) but i have some in depth thoughts about fembaru for sure yes :3 ty for finding my genderbend ideas interesting!! :D !! id be happy to talk about them more :o

im gonna start with outward design stuff / gender presentation first!! :D bc in my head, afab subaru probably looks almost exactly the same. in general, canon subaru’s most likely at least a little androgynous (and i think he probably is judging off of how much he passes as the opposite sex!!), and we know hes got his dad’s spiky black hair and his mom’s mean eyes and general facial shape, has a long torso, that sort of thing, so i think afab subaru would look similar :o

plus i like to treat fembaru as basically just the mirror/foil/inverse of canon amab subaru anyway, so yep natsumi schwartz is gonna be her male persona!! canon amab subaru was mistaken as a girl when he was a child, and he also went to high school (iirc it was high school but at the very least he was about the same age he is during arc 1) for three days as natsumi yes and passed for three days. iirc he would put on the girl’s uniform and wig and stuff on the way to school and out of his parents’ view and then put on the male uniform and take off the wig before he got home!! plus you know he’d generally practice makeup most likely and wig styling and all sorts of things in private.

so definitely afab subaru is doing similar stuff but in the opposite direction now—looking more masc and presenting as a boy. while amab subaru can put on and take off a wig, in my head, afab subaru would probably have to have shorter hair. so one day she just got a haircut thats short enough to where she could style it masculinely but longer enough to where it could still be kinda considered feminine enough!!

im not 100% sure how to draw her hair yet but in my earlier post and a few of my sketches it kinda looks like either a long mullet/wolfcut or a messy bob :3 i think you could probably say that her hair looks more like a wacky bob when shes more feminine and a wolfcut when shes styling it more masculinely?

(^^ my take on fem wrathbaru is here also LMAO)

i also base my fembaru design off of canon natsumi!! with the side bang (though i sometimes draw it on the wrong side akdnd)!! meanwhile fembaru’s male natsumi would have canon amab subaru’s hair :) (which you can see in my earlier post as well!!)

(i like this illustration actually <3)

i also like to hc that on top of subaru wanting to look and act more like his dad in canon, he did also kinda want to resemble his mom when hes presenting more femininely :o also for genderbend aus it depends on whether you ONLY want to genderbend subaru or if you wanna genderbend everyone along with subaru too, that sort of thing. i like to play with both possibilities :o

but in general, i like the idea of subaru either way trying to honor both her mom and dad. maybe to subaru her mom is what an ideal woman should be perhaps, and her dad is the ideal man, bc subarus parents are her biggest role models, so she tries to emulate both at different points in her life. she tries to be the perfect soft sweet girl like her mom and it doesnt work. she leans into being a bit of a delinquent and it doesnt work. then she cuts her hair and learns to present more masculinely and tries to copy her dad only to fail again. :((( then she gets isekaied……

i feel like afab subaru might get a bit more shit for getting into trouble too :(( or for being too loud. shes not very traditionally ladylike, i think!! boys will be boys and of course your daughter takes after you, kenichi, but dont you think shes a little too rough around the edges now?

anyway otherwise in general, i also like the idea that over the course of each arc in the fantasy world, subaru grows her hair out!! and once its long enough she can put it into a ponytail like her mom again :,)))

(male rem is here too <3)

also i like to give fembaru the maid dress instead of the butler outfit!!! probably not with the garter and stuff but 😭😭 its a pretty dress and fembaru should get to express herself both masculinely and femininely :3 in my head, i think subaru would be shy bc AGHH THIS DRESS IS SO REVEALING THERES NO WAY ID LOOK GOOD IN THIS IM NOT PRETTY AT ALL and rem and ram (genderbent or not) are probably like nonsense just try the dress. its your uniform to work here. and subaru does and huhhhh. maybe i dont look half bad ? :,) (bc of course subaru’s insecurities either present themselves the same or slightly different when genderbended). and of course when rem and ram warm up to subaru eventually ram can be like “you dont look as bad as i thought youd look” or something and rem can be like “subaru-kun youre very beautiful anyways!!!! <3”

and also i do think subaru would cut her hair a bit again or style it different for natsumi adventures later in arc 7 <3 just to have that symmetry again. the situation probably might go a little different but yep this is how id handle it 👍

and of course you can give subaru the canon natsumi hair bow sometimes when shes feeling fancy :3

OKAY and now im gonna talk about more character stuff!! lets talk about subarus whole thing with isekai and genre savviness and all that.

one of canon subaru’s many many Many parts making him up as a character and making up his story in general is a deconstruction of the isekai genre!! power fantasy and characters being cardboard cutouts for the male mc to triumph without a struggle—that sort of thing. but afab subaru is a female lead now, and female isekai is different.

id have to do way more research into this and watch more female isekai and shoujo and stuff (ive been Really wanting to watch im in love with the villainess…… someday i will…..). buuut from what ive noticed so far it seems like for male lead isekai the fantasy here is the Power and Prestige, but female lead isekai’s fantasy seems to be the Romance!! not that you cant have OP abilities in female lead isekais and not that every isekai is 100% the same of course. but that seems to be the common tropes from what ive seen so far? male isekai protags have girls throwing themselves at him as trophies, female lead isekais have their male romantic interests and the evil evil villainesses are defeated somehow and perfectly out of the way <3 the fantasy is that youll be loved by The One—the perfect boy(s) <3

and i think amab subaru is less likely to check out much female lead isekai but i think itd be fun if afab subaru would probably focus on female lead isekai but also a bit on male lead isekai as well!! she wants that absolute path to glory AND love. (and ahahhahahaha please ignore the gazillion ikemen anime figurines in her room hahahahahhahhahahahah AND DEFINITELY IGNORE THE SILVER HAIRED ONES. ESPECIALLY THE ONLY GIRL FIGURINE SHE HAS THATS BEEN GATHERING DUST UNDER HER BED—)

but also bc i think amab subarus more likely to go nah i wont look at girly media while maybe afab subarus like godddddddd i want instant OP abilitiessssssssssss and godddddddd i want hot girls around m—WHAT. WHAT. WHO SAID THAT WHO SAID THAT—

anyway so subaru gets isekaied and shes like SWEEETTT A NEW BEGINNING AWAY FROM NOT BEING ABLE TO MEET EXPECTATIONS HAHAHAHAHA IM THE ISEKAI PROTAG!!! THIS IS AWESOME!!! (is about to get her shit rocked). and shes like ooooh do i have any abilities (nope) and oooohhhhhh shit do i have a villainess. AM I THE VILLAINESS???? no way right. anyway lol wheres the ikemen who’ll ill marry one day. the ikemen that falls in love….. with a commoner……… like myself teehee… and they get married…… and the villainess is CONQUERED….

anyway so what im saying is. ………….fembaru is a femcel. AND a pick me. AND a disaster bisexual. you could practically imagine a vine boom after each of those.

i think the biggest most important to me with genderbend aus is keeping the humanity of the characters the same the best i can!! and fembaru is STILL subaru, of course shes fucking cringe!! of course shes got a heart of gold but its under layers of cringe!!! of course shes a nerd who doesnt have any friends at first and trips and stumbles through all the shit being thrown her way!!

also if male subaru is bi then so is fem subaru okay. we’re equal opportunity here. and also amab subaru has issues with his masculinity and uhhhh slight things with women (see: his boob comments in season 1…….. subaru i love you but cmon man). so. afab subaru i think has got a terrible case of internalized misogyny / homophobia / PROBABLY SOME COMPHET TOO LMFAO 😭😭

i think general plot beats (whether its only genderbending subaru or genderbending everyone) goes mostly the same but again, slight differences. im gonna go with only subaru being genderbent atm bc thatd have more differences i think :o

yes ok so subaru’s gonna see reinhard and go GASPPP oh my god. pretty ikemen. ohhhhhh oughhhhh hes so pretty. hes clearly main lead material… ohhhh what do i do ive never talked to people in so long and hes so PRETTY FUUUCKKKKK BUT I DONT WANNA BOTHER HIM EITHER AND PUT HIM IN DANGER. um um um um mmumimimm HE CLOSED THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US TOO???? what the hell what the fuck what the fuck shit shit um think THINK SUBARU THINK YOU HAVE CHARM RIGHT?? YOU CAN DO THIS. YOU CAN CHARM A HOT GUY. ARGGHHH— *explodes*

but also subaru sees emilia and gets that “do i wanna be her or be with her” feeling 😭😭 bc emilias so….. cute…. pretty… and NICE TOO?? WITH A FUN PERSONALITY??? SHIT SHES GOT EVERYTHING!! she went out of her way to save me 🥺🥺 and im just dragging her down 😔😔 BUT FUCKKKK I HATEEEE HOW GOOD SHE IS. and then :,)))) theyre both dying in the warehouse… and the first time subaru feels the touch of another girl in a more intimate light is her and emilia holding hands as they die…………….

SO YEAH THEN SUBARU RBDS :,,)))) so like. do you get what im saying. emisuba and remsuba and satella are subaru’s first sapphic heartbreaks and heartaches. muahahaha!!!! insert more evil laughter here!!!! bc since subarus a girl her relationships with emisuba and remsuba are definitely gonna be perceived (both by other people and rem emilia subaru) more so as friendships first and foremost.

so….. subarus getting the codependent homoerotic teenage friendship bright and early HAH. but i cannot blame her!! i too would go insane if i was put in a new unfamiliar world and i met this cute girl i was both jealous of and a little into and then we both died and the last thing i felt was searing pain and her soft fingertips!!! i too would go insane if i thought this maid was my friend but then she tortured me and—and—

but yeah you know how amab subaru has his whole weird complex bromances with reinhard and julius and otto?? now itll be like that but with emilia (the julius and reinhard…) and rem (the otto….). emilias the girl subaru’s having “do i wanna be her or be with her” weird rivalry shit with (subaru’s internalized misogyny probably also adding to this bc Obviously theyre rivals) and rem’s the girl who brutally betrays subaru personally (worlds worst homoerotic teenage friendship breakup of all time 😭😭) but then she later becomes subaru’s loyal best friend???? crazy shit.

and like emilia and rem are totaaally villainesses in subaru’s way (except emilias sweet af and misjudged by the entire world and subaru doesnt have the heart to fight rem and also shes chugging copium and trying not to think about failed loops. or about her gay feelings). toxic yuri is toxic yuri-ing. subaru doesnt wanna be explicit about it….. emilia isnt sure of her feelings other than stuff like caring a lot abt subaru… and rem is. Rem. so theyre all in gay situationship limbo HAH.

also as an afab person too rip subaru for also having periods while the whole world is ending on repeat 😭😭 LMFAOO. im sure theres medieval fantasy remedies though (and rem is 1000% spoiling subaru on her period)

also no one can tell me that echidna and rem WOULDNT still be into subaru as much as they are in canon. subaru regardless of gender fascinates echidna and her greed. subaru regardless of gender is someone rem will grow very very attached to. and if anything, rem would get way more bold with afab subaru.

bc the thing with female relationships is that i feel like theres a higher level of intimacy that you gotta go to for it to be considered more romantic or homoerotic. with guys it could be like holding hands and other people might be like WOAH THATS GAY, but if girls do the same thing its like aww youre such good friends. i think rem would take advantage of her and subaru being the same sex and she’d probably keep trying like “hey um um wanna cuddle together?? in the same bed?? and bathe together teehee?? i can help do your hair and dress you up? and make lots of cute dresses for you ? :) <3 🥰 and i can even massage your bo—I MEAN YOUR BACK. YOUR BACK!!” or it’ll be like. rem gets a little too happy that her and subaru’s periods get synced up or something 😭😭 shes Not Normal (and unfortunately subarus probably a little too into that)

also unfortunately the other time a girl touched subaru intimately was satella squeezing her heart :(((( and hahahah between that and rem and emilia and later echidna…. ohhhh poor subaru and her terrible toxic yuri 😭😭 her sapphic experiences and experiences with women have not been 1000% great.

but also of course subaru is so very not normal. you have the canon typical “lol every memory is a good one <3 even rem torturing me teehee <33” and also i just think itd be funny if you as an audience is lead to believe subarus jealous of emilia and rem’s boob sizes and no. no shes just gay. shes GAY.

and stuff like everything going on with julius and otto gets recharacterized too. bc subarus a girl and the guys are guys its probably gonna get perceived more both in and out of universe in a more. Quite Literally Straightforward light. esp bc subaru’s still gonna be into reinhard and julius lbr HAH.

i want arc 3 to still be an absolute fucking disaster with fembaru. let fembaru be flawed and ugly!!!! so in my au thoughts here itd be like. subaru feels jealous and threatened by lots of people. emilia, though its subsided a bit after becoming friends and after learning a bit more abt emilia as a person. but also i think subaru could feel so so jealous of the royal candidates!! esp crusch priscilla anastasia even though subaru will 1000% think theyre bitches at first during arc 3. bc theyre such strong determined women who seem way more confident than subaru herself is…. and also im sure there’ll be complex thoughts from her on felix too bc crossdressing… gender presentation… is a complex thing for subaru.

and subaru with julius is like. “get away from emilia!!!! shes mine!!! shes MY best friend that im homoerotically codependent on and obsessive of!!!! and also youre just trying to steal reinhard’s ikemen male lead spot huh!!!!! bastard!!!! (i hate that youre so pretty too)” and everything of course blows up in subaru’s face. im sure at some point in the story subaru might get slutshamed for having all these connections to people and romantic threads (especially since shes afab) but also its like. wow shes such a stupid girl lol causing a racket.

and uh being a man beating up a girl looks a little worse due to gender roles and stuff but lot of the knights are still gonna want to go after subaru and julius is still gonna want to save subaru. :,,)))) arc 3 emisuba breakup….. worlds worst sapphic breakup of all time…. and later rem will be the one that got away also :(((((

but yeah i think in general this subaru’s connections would be a little more. subtexty with the girls bc she’d be more hesitant to be explicit. but a bit more explicit with the guys bc itll be easily perceived as romantic in and out of universe. and of course subaru i think will be flustered in different ways between the girls vs guys—with the girls its OHH GOD I CANT BE GAY I CANT BE GAY NOOOOO I HAVE A RIVALRY!!! IM SO JEALOUS OF THEM!! BUT. BUT I LIKE THEM!! OHH GOD. with the guys its OH NO. GOOD LOOKING GUYS???? FML. FML!!!!! WHERES MY MAIN CHARACTER CHARM??? HOW DO I TALK TO GUYS???? JULIUS STOP MAKING FUNNOF ME!!! >:(((

also brief note on otto bc things are probably gonna go different here qkdnd. like i definitely am of course of the opinion that otto fell in love with subaru. in every damn arc in every damn main route otto side content hes getting unhinged over subaru in a way that i think makes a little less sense if you dont view it as otto just Not Being Normal About Subaru in a perhaps vaguely homoerotic way.

but subarus afab now!! and ottos still a guy!!! and reinhard and julius are friendly with subaru right, but at around arc 4 things they dont show explicit romantic interest. (i think arc 5-6+ julisuba and juliemisuba would be 👀👀👀 though.) but otto?? in a universe where subaru is a girl??? well now its more acceptable for him to be grow openly head over heels for subaru. but also its probably also more pathetic bc now its probably gonna be more obviously taken as otto having a crush on subaru.

and subarus had her arc 3 development right. but here its like. you wanted a male character who’d fall in love with you and be loyal to you and do Anything for you???? here you go!!! but also given otto is Like That and gets worse by arc 7-8 i think hes gonna seem a bit more sinister. not that canon otto with canon subaru isnt sinister but theres different connotations to male otto paired with female subaru. bc it sort of follows straight dark romance rules, right, with the cunning possessive male love interest and the female protagonist…

i doubt anything explicit would go on between otto and subaru in an au like this bc 1. otto and his avoidant attachment LMFAO and 2. subaru and her issues also and 3. subaru in main route is Not as into otto to the same extent or degree otto is HAH.

and fembarus probably like. i think itd be funny if she was a little disappointed otto wasnt a girl 😭😭😭 but then later hes weird about crossdressing and shes like why dont you wanna do it huh 👁👁👁👁 why are you weird about it 👁👁👁👁 im staring at your glass closet right now—

and also its like. “WHY ARE YOU THE FIRST BOY TO ACTUALLY BE IN LOVE WITH ME WHAT???” which i think is hilarious but i also think it could be fascinating in terms of playing with gender!! bc otto may want to be in control of things, but hes also so subservient to subaru anyway. otto and subaru are both androgynous; otto can pass as a girl and subaru can pass as a boy. if you wanna simplify things further you could also explain this as—otto is a man who looks like a woman who’s pledged his servitude to a woman who looks like a man. very intriguing imo!!

but of course ottosuba power dynamics are Always shifting over and over like a game of tug of war, but the most common thing is that otto will bow his head to subaru but under the surface ottos trying to be in charge. that sort of thing!! and the idea of male otto servicing female subaru is an idea rezero ao3 seems to like also but :,) lets just say its not fully to my taste haha :,,))

and otto is definitely not gonna beat up subaru’s ass so easily this time around bc itd look so bad and he’d know that lmfao 😭😭

but i think theres a lot of potential to play around with gender roles and such with all of these dynamics!! im very passionate about making my genderbend au ideas as wild and layered as possible :o !!

this is all my main ideas atm (and id love to draw stuff like more drag king natsumi or fem reinsuba :) ) but yes i hope this all makes sense :D !! thanks for reading this far and thanks for the ask!!

[spontaneousglitterbees]

[DRV3 Postgame AU Masterpost]

Sorry it's taking me a bit to answer asks, I read every one and cherish them -! I'd figured I'd doodle a bit in the answers, but then ah. This one changed course from 'whats up with shuichi' to 'actually we're overdue for exposition'.

Oh, backstory?

Since Class 79 is at Hope's Peak For Real in this AU, Danganronpa can't very well be like canon. Our solution: infighting, sabotage, and plenty of Drama! Discussion under the cut.

I'd call it a non-Despair AU; the world's not over, and I'm currently thinking V3 is the only killing game at this point in the timeline, catalyzed by good old-fashioned envy (and, truthfully, indignation that strangers get to live out your fantasy while you and your friends are stuck in the building next door... the nerve!) Our mastermind isn't exactly a master hacker, but she's also not working alone. This Team Danganronpa isn't trying to physically harm anyone, but showing off their collective capacity to coordinate and maintain a takeover like this is bound to catch the administrator's eye. All press is good press, and there's a lot (of investor funding, mostly) riding on stories of TAPP's success, so HPA is incentivized to intervene ASAP. The team did not account for the aftershocks of making their peers virtually kill each other. Rantaro is having memory issues, Miu has to catch her breath (to her chagrin), Kiibo doesn't have a body, Kokichi has his cane... and that's just the beginning.

Whoops.

TAPP is kind of like "what if instead of synthetically pouring all of the talents into just the one dude, we experimented on some charity cases to see if we can just artificially build an Ultimate from the ground-up". The tech in the flashback-lights is definitely at play here, though HPA proper wasn't planning on a full memory wipe/personality override (but kept the theoretical capability in their back pocket in case things went south as Advanced Gaslighting) but uh. A bunch of highschoolers took hold of the controls, which is how you get a bunch of kids that sound like characters. They still are.

In this case, Team DR is like at least 3 at most 10 disgruntled teens in the Reserve Course tired of being overlooked. More looking for mischief than harm, but hey, if they can convince the interlopers being Ultimates isn't worth it and they should leave the school after all this and free up the floorspace? They won't argue. One of the things that strikes me about DR as a series is how its internal logic is less concerned with logistics than matching the emotional weight of what it can be like to be growing up and going through high school, so I'm trying to lean in that direction. I'm not completely sure what all this means for the THH and SDR2 crews, precisely, but we'll cross/burn that bridge when we get to it I guess!

This comic taught me a lot of new tools and techniques, hence it feels to me like it took forever but I am super stubborn and couldn't work on something else until the script in my head was actualized, which turned into 'the whole thing being done'.

There's a lot of easter eggs and little jokes in the first page in particular, should you seek them! Consider this another 'cut' in case you want to try and read the Small Handwriting on Rantaro and Miu's desks for yourself.

First:

I already brought up some of them in the WIP so I'll try not to repeat too much and just link here

Kokichi could join the toast, but doesn't (and yet he still sits with everyone). Kiibo doesn't drink anything at all but does want to be in the toast, so he gets a bluetooth speaker. Surely he will blast some vocaloid shortly.

That's Kaito's notebook Kichi is doodling in; Kaito draws a bunch of stars, and I tried to sort-of-almost emulate the drawing on Kichis whiteboard and also get across that it lacks line confidence (sketch over and over the same lines) and he keeps creasing the paper because post-press it doesn't take much activity for his hands to hurt. Also kinda wanted to imply that Kaito not only knows Ouma has his notebook, but probably gave it to him because he's learned it's inevitable Kichi will tease him and draw in it and at least being upfront about it he won't manage to hurt himself trying to steal it (phantom thief or not!) Kokichi's pride is a little hurt at first, but it becomes another of their small routines they don't acknowledge out loud that nevertheless are a kind of familiar comfort for both of them.

Space debris at terminal velocity is no joke man even a paint chip won't just crack your helmet (which you'd only survive via cartoon logic and presumably-magic duct tape) but easily crack your skull at least. I did a project on it in high school once, I should really look for it tbh

Rantaro’s To Do

Set up weekly meeting

Check what is up w/ Kiyo

Make sure Kichi goes to therapy this week

Call Rillianne

Rantaro’s Reminders

Blue: Class

Red: Study

Cyan: ‘Council (or w/e)’

Green: ‘Travel Nerd Time >:P’

Purple: ‘Hang out w/ me ~!’

Orange: Group Project

Yellow: ‘Call ur family this week, srsly’

Miu’s Notes (“Polygraph Improvements”)

Before install into K1-B0’s new body, improve algorithm for fig. (figurative) speech.

Consult Ishimaru?

- Gonta can get in contact

ALSO

I really did make some actual charts based on data from the character bios comparing things like height, birthdate, etc. vs. victim, killer, or survivor status (tho that is a gantt chart template and not filled in, oop). TL;DR the most interesting one to me is this:

Where basically when you account for how many students across the games are stated to have each blood type and the proportion of those students in a certain role, things are pretty even (AB has so few students its bars arent really representative of a trend, I just included them anyway) the type Os are disproportionately likely to be killers. For the record, there's one confirmed type O victim, and it's Nagito. I have no idea what this means. But if I am blursed with this knowledge, now you are too!

The code in tsumugis glasses isnt an easter egg bc i was getting tired and frustrated but the pods are roughly (no kiibo shifts things a bit) in class trial configuration, and on the base layer before all the Rest Of The Panel got added you could kind of tell who's who. Not so much anymore, so: Saihara has his hat on, for the record, and Kokichi is on his side while everyone else is on their back. Might even be a little restless, the feeling of underlying unreality playing substitute for some of (only some of, they're still being monitored) the surveillance anxiety. Fun!

And hey, as always, and especially if you've gotten this far: Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed!

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form: Follow Up - Keeping Obsolete Technology

Right.. sorry about that. There seems to be a big confusion what I really want in that question about not removing obsolete technology. Basically, none of the restricted to hobbyists. I'm aware of that - but that is not at all what I want in my world. Everything should still be mainstream. There aren't really much safety features that would steer a manufacturer to not produce phonographs the way they used to (and I absolutely do mean models without USB drives). Phonographs need to be readily available on the market exactly just as they did previously and still being mainstream. You should be able to walk into any general A/V store and buy Blu-Ray players and these old-style phonographs. No 'emulators'. You want to buy a Windows 3.1? Go directly to any shop selling Windows products and you can buy one just as easily as you can get the latest model. You go to a game shop, you can find old style Ataris just as well as your latest VR. Vintage cars.. right.. again. No. In fact we shouldn't be calling it 'vintage' because that means cars that have been around for a long time, not newly manufactured models. Manufacturers should be readily continuing creating new cars with the same old technology, only with added safety features that make them road legal. And these should also be mainstream cars on the modern market, side by side in a car store with your modern vehicles. And maybe just next door is your horse/buggy store and a bicycle store. All mainstream transportation options. Cycling is still popular as a main transport option in some places like Netherlands. Picture a place just like that includes horse/buggy. Any time someone looks on a main road, they should be able to see electric vehicles, bicycles, and horse/buggies.

Ebonwing: Producing every iteration of technology ever created at scale forever is going to be staggeringly expensive and will only get more so the longer that happens. Additionally, you mention that you want phonographs to be without USB drives–so none of the technology is upgraded to be compatible with more modern tech? That just seems inconvenient for customers, and when things are inconvenient to customers someone may just step up and create a more convenient model, which people may then be more inclined to buy. 

It’s your world; you can do whatever you want with it, but a lot of people will possibly find this immersion-breaking and I have a hard time thinking of ways to make this plausible. 

Licorice: Some old tech has made a comeback. You can buy vinyl records and record players nowadays in mainstream entertainment stores. People have decided that vinyl gives them an experience Spotify just can’t match. I’ve noticed Polaroid instamatic cameras making a comeback too, recently. And of course some old tech - physical books, for example - has never gone away.

If you want a world in which old and new tech exist alongside each other and are equally popular, you are going to have to give your people a reason for making these choices. There are reasons some people still drive horses and buggies (religious reasons; as a hobby) but there’s also a reason why the car has overwhelmingly replaced the horse and buggy as the main form of transport in every part of the world where people can afford it. Imagine the daily commute to work in a horse and buggy. How long would that take? And who’s going to look after the horse for nine hours while you’re in the office? Cars don’t need that level of care. And in fact, the daily commute as we know it really only became possible after mass public transport - i.e., the train - was invented. 

Capitalism depends on new tech ousting old tech. Since the days of the Tulip Bubble investors have staked their money on a new or improved product replacing an earlier version and bringing them big profits as a result. Without this kind of incentive, people aren’t going to invest in inventions, and so most inventions will never see the light of day. 

Of course, if you want your world to be the way you describe, you can do it. I can’t imagine what such a world would look like, but I can’t say it isn’t possible. It would almost certainly look very different from our own, economically, socially, and maybe politically. 

Addy: For cars... the reason old cars look so boxy to us is

1) metal shaping was a lot more expensive, so there was a huge cost to making things round

2) aerodynamics modeling wasn't as well-developed or as much of a priority. Gas mileage gets huge improvements from the more rounded forms we have today.

Horse + buggy would not be able to maintain modern road speeds. Also doesn't have like... any safety features. Also, horses poop and need to eat and exercise. If you've got a countryside estate, that's one thing (or if you base a carriage/taxi service out of the countryside), but in a city? The logistics make it impractical. Bikes are easy to store, and they don't get startled and bolt.

Even for buggies, you have centuries of development of wagons, and then many, many types of carriages and buggies. Landau, phaeton (single or double), gig, sulky… all from different regions, companies, and generations. And then many more types of carriage besides. Are those all being sold, like how all models of all car companies are still being sold? Or USB drives, are they still selling 8 MB USB drives? Not 8 GB, 8 MB - those first came out under 25 years ago.

The thing about technology is that it is a tool that serves a purpose. If something else serves that purpose better, faster, and at a lower cost, then simple prioritization and cost-benefit analysis (by consumers!) means that the better, cheaper, more effective choice will be chosen.

That's also why we see inefficient things preserved by hobbyists - they're people who care enough about the history of the thing that they're willing to put up with its inefficiencies.

So in your world, if you're looking for why people would keep obsolete (and I say obsolete because they're sub-optimal at their original intended purpose) things around, I'd say to look at what benefit these objects serve.

Like for Windows computers, as in your example, what would a 3.1 version give that a more recent (say 5-10 years) version can't? For the companies, what money are they making that is worth the cost of upkeep and production? Because keeping old products viable takes money. Getting them to work on modern hardware, patching up security flaws, customer support, manufacture, etc - those all take money. How are the companies making a profit off of these products?

CRT TVs are very, very good at producing images with little lag, to the point that they're still used and prized by Smash players. The thing is, CRT TVs require a very complex assortment of manufacturing steps and tools to make, and it's no longer profitable to produce them. So people stopped making them. Since their production is so capital-intensive, it's... exceedingly unlikely that we'll ever see a new CRT TV being made.

Also, what's the scope of this? Does this pervade society, or is it mostly a wealth/entertainment thing? Are there farmers using plows, or are they using tractors? How common is homespun fabric? Are there still wooden sailing ships alongside modern cargo ships (and if so, how do they make enough of a profit for it to be worth it)? Do riverboats still use coal to power steam engines? Are they maintaining historical metallurgy, or are they using modern alloys? For radios, are people still using vacuum tubes and 1800s wiring, or are they putting modern materials inside of an 1800s-looking shell? (There would be SIGNIFICANT audio quality differences)

Because there's a difference between a 1970s car and a 1970s-looking car with a modern engine and modern piping.  A farmer who uses an animal-drawn plow will live a harder life than a farmer who uses a tractor.

There's also a difference between novelty experiences (like horse-drawn carriages, which I've seen in some towns during the holiday season) and everyday experiences. There's also a difference between shared community historical pieces (like having a local library with old computer models available to use) and having those pieces commonly used by the everyday person. At the end of the day, a person only has so much space in their home, and they only have so much money to spend.

So when looking at this, I have a couple questions I'd recommend throwing at your world.

What does this tradition achieve/do for the community? What is its purpose? People don't do things for no reason; there's always some kind of motive.

What's the scope? Playing old computer games is one thing, designing infrastructure to support vastly different modes of transport is another. Semi trucks do not play well with horses or pedestrians. (Are there separate roads, such as cars only for long distances?)

Also, things like cars. Are companies required to support every edition of every car they've ever produced? Because many old cars fundamentally are not safe, just due to how they're built. Safety tweaks were added over time, so it can be difficult to separate where one era ends and the next era begins. There's no distinct line

Also also are they still selling the Ford Pinto? Because that car would legitimately catch on fire if it got rear-ended

Why are people supporting this? How does it benefit them? Personal enrichment is a valid answer here, but what motivates people to spend money on older versions of things?

If someone wants to play a modern video game, an old 128 MB computer won't cut it.

Why are companies maintaining this? Keeping up all of that capital tied up is going to be incredibly expensive. What's their trade-off?

If you want to make this world work, go for it! It seems like an interesting idea. Just remember that the big thing about having something be mainstream is that the people involved have to think that it's worth it. Applying that at a small scale, like a library archive system thing, is very different than applying that to the average person.

How can you have a world like this? You get people invested and you make the money worth it. It's how you do that that's the issue. Companies, in the modern day (and the back-then) produce objects that people will buy. They continue to produce those objects so long as ○ people still want to buy them ○ the company makes money off of people buying them (income>expenses) ○ the company can't make more money doing something else (opportunity cost). If you've got two job offers, one that pays $10 and one that pays $50, and they're in a similar location and a similar amount of work, what would keep you from taking the $50 job? If you took the $10 job, you'd be missing out on an extra $40 – that's opportunity cost. The money you could be making if you did something different.

So how are you convincing your mainstream culture, individual by individual, to take the $10 option?

Wootzel: It crossed my mind that one potential explanation for this kind of technological society is if most world powers have 1) Patent laws that severely limit the number of patents that people as a whole can obtain (either with a numerical limit, or really broad application of what is considered too similar to another patent) and 2) Strict laws against any kind of manufacturing without patents. 

As the others have explained at length, I still don’t know if this would be sufficient explanation to make it really believable that some truly obsolete technology would still be made alongside newer stuff. It’s probably impossible to make an old car as safe as a new one (unless it only looked old on the outside and was made of different materials, and even then), and old computers generally have security vulnerabilities that could make them hugely risky for any purpose other than hobbyist use. 

But! If a mix of tech levels is what floats your boat, nobody will tell you that you can’t just do it anyway. There probably isn’t any way to make a world like this pass as real-world plausible, but there’s nothing wrong with embracing the wackiness and doing it anyway. That’s what fiction is for. When you have elements in your world that probably wouldn’t ever occur in real life, it comes down to how you present them. Don’t try too hard to justify what you’re doing, and if your audience sees you cheerfully rolling with it, they’ll likely cheerfully roll with you.

[judgeanon]

Plastic Skies of Betrayal - Model 12: F-5E Tiger II “Area 88″

So this model is a little special. I know I said the same thing about the last one, but while the Raptor build came with a heavy dose of anxiety and frustrations, the next build turned out to be a nice planetary alignment of materials and people all coming together in an incredibly rewarding project. Just like the Raptor, however, talking about it involves talking about other things first. In this case, a late 70s manga that set up camp in my brain months ago and refuses to leave. 

Have you ever heard of AREA 88? If not, you’re about to.

So there’s this plane called the Northrop F-5 Tiger II, which I’d actually never heard about until I played Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War. That game famously starts you off in an F-5 and locks you there for the first four or five missions, so I became pretty well-acquainted with this tiny little fighter. Some people might recognize its shape from the original TOP GUN, where it was painted black and used as a stand-in for Russian MiG planes, but on the other side of the Pacific, a lot of people know it best as one of the signature planes of one Shin Kazama.

Shin is the protagonist of AREA 88, a manga by Kaoru Shintani that started all the way in 1979 and ended in 1986, the same year TOP GUN came out. I first heard about it while looking at some model kits, and since I was (and in a lot of ways still am) elbows deep in fighter jets at that time, I started to dig a bit deeper. Three OVAs and half a manga series later, I was absolutely hooked. The air combat is fantastic and the manga pulls a bunch of incredible visual tricks to render it, but it’s the intense melodrama of the characters that really kept me in. It’s a tremendously engaging, compelling and interesting series from every angle. And funny enough, I’d actually seen it once, over a decade ago. Just not as a manga or as an anime.

As it turns out, AREA 88 had a videogame for the SNES that had been brought to the West as “UN SQUADRON”, and I had actually played it back when my computer was so underpowered that all I could play were emulated retro games. Running into the game’s source material again in the midst of a wild craze triggered by another videogame was a strange but fun little return, and along with my growing obsession with said source material, cemented my decision to make my next model AREA 88-themed. And the universe seemed more than happy to provide.

My current favorite hobby shop turned out to have a 1/72 Tiger II model for a very nice price, made by the same company that made the F-16 model I’d built some months ago. To make things even better, it was also the exact same kit I’d already seen a much better hobbyist than me turn into Shin’s plane and upload tons of great reference pics online. All I really needed would be the decals, so I asked the shop’s owner if he could get me in touch with someone who prints customs decals. He obliged, although in the end that wouldn’t be necessary.

The build itself was pretty sweet, although not without its hiccups. There was no family drama to distract me this time nor lingering feelings of guilt. Even money was no longer an object. Feeling more relaxed than usual, I took my time with it, and challenged myself to add a few extra touches. For example, taking the thinnest brush I have, dipping it in red paint and giving the stick a little button,

The other thing I also tried out was, for the first time, primer. Yes, I’m a dummy. Yes, I’m not sure how I got this far without it. But I’d never actually needed primer before until disaster struck and some patches of paint began to fall out of my Raptor model kit. I’m still not sure what caused it exactly, but priming models from now on seemed like the smartest solution. As we say down here, better to prevent than mend.

That said, I don’t think I fully understand this whole priming thing yet. Without an airbrush or a spray can, I just used a brush to coat the kit with it, right off the bottle. I’m not sure if this is a good way to use it but at least it smelled really good. And not in a thick chemical kind of way, just genuinely sweet smell. But anyway...

Painting had to be paused for a moment after I let a friend borrow my white paint, so for a week or so only the Tiger’s tail saw any paint, but once I had everything back things moved pretty quickly. I was a bit worried about the blue part since masking tape and me don’t see eye to eye. Still, it worked out alright, and any imperfections were quickly corrected with a bit more paint. Which is something I really appreciate in model-making: if you mess up, you can usually paint over it. Usually.

Like with the stick, I took the time to paint a few other little details like the position lights. Decals and weathering also worked out pretty well, thanks to HobbyBoss’ decals being really good and the plane itself being really small compared to the last couple ones I’d made.

The other thing I felt quite proud of was my paintjob on the transparent parts. I’d been scared of canopies for so long that a bunch of my first models are still purely transparent there, but thanks to a couple of really comfortable brushes and some experience, I’m feeling far more confident about it nowadays. Plus, I’d fallen in love with this shade of blue, so adding more to the plane was its own reward. And speaking of canopies, another little touch I’ve been adding to the planes since the Raptor is to give the whole thing a coat of matte varnish, but then use gloss for the canopy, giving it a nice shiny finish. Although that led to a moment of anxiety when a drop of varnish went inside the canopy and stayed there, giving it a very ugly thick white curve that I feared was permanent. In the end I went to sleep and woke up to the varnish having completely dried out and disappeared, so that’s a good life lesson: sometimes you just need to sleep things off.

So with that and a combination of black and gray panel liner, the Tiger was done! ... or was it? After all, this wasn’t just any Tiger, this is supposed to be Shin Kazama’s Tiger. It was still missing a couple of very important touches. But for the time being I was pretty damn satisfied with the model, top to bottom.

A couple of weeks passed and I never really got around to contacting the guy I’d been recommended, but then I ran into something interesting: a local hobbyist in our local version of eBay was offering custom display bases for model kits at a pretty affordable price. I’d been thinking about getting or even making a humble display base for pictures and stuff, but when I noticed that he was offering custom touches, an idea came to my mind. And that idea lead to a frankly pretty amazing moment of pure human connection.

So after I got paid, I reached out to the guy and asked about getting a 1/72 base made with some extra touches. First, he asked for a picture of the model I wanted to go on the base, so he could take some measurements. Feeling pretty proud of my work so far, I sent him a picture...

... and I swear, the very first thing he said was, and I quote:

“Oh, is that Shin Kazama’s F-5 from Area 88?”

To which my answer was “Ok, that simplifies matters.”

On top of immediately understanding the assignment, new friend even offered to throw in a little extra: a Shin Kazama scale figurine, free of charge. I said yes, of course, ‘cause momma didn’t raise the kind of fool that says no to free stuff, and also asked if he knew anyone who could help me with the decals. As it turned out, he did know a guy. And the combined efforts of three different people living nearly 400 miles away from each other all came together to make something that makes me incredibly happy.

Like everything else I’ve made so far, it’s not perfect. The tail decal couldn’t be easily printed in transparent paper, so it was printed on blue paper that’s ever so slightly a different shade than the one on the plane. But the results are still more than good enough for me.

In the end, this kit turned out to be a very welcome de-stresser. The difficult parts turned out to be a lot less difficult than it seemed, and the base and decals story is something I know I’ll always talk about with a smile on my face. In a hobby that’s usually pretty solitary, that little bit of long-distance camaraderie went a long way. And left me a very nice base for all future projects.

[magicaldragons]

order in the court!

a ryu si-oh analysis

this is part two of his character analysis, and we'll be talking about:

2. the mafia mindset

before we jump in though, let's talk about his mental stability.

ryu si-o is someone who has grown up, completely accustomed to violence. and while this could make him incredibly unhinged, it's surprising that the way he is portrayed in the show is unrealistically stable-minded for someone in his position and with his experience

not once has he: 1. been truly doubtful of any of nam-soon's actions 2. been suspicion of her many absences (but rather been worried instead) i see none of the paranoia that a man of similar personality and trauma would have.

and this could be a plot hole, but if we take it into consideration, especially with the possibility of him noticing her inconguencies and choosing to look past them, it means that he's been able to maintain a realistic view of the world, as others see it, and he's not absorbed into a mindset that was embedded in him as a child.

this also means he views himself as a separate entity from the mafia, but retains the way of thinking + the lessons they've taught him.

we see it, when:

as a child, he wanted to run away, and wished for revenge at some point in the future.

in the way he created an antidote for the drug that pavel supplies, completely against orders and wanted to keep that part of his business separate from pavel

and the way he sees the mafia as "the bad guys" or worse than himself

with his views on strength equating to power & freedom, it makes sense that the second he thinks he's found an ally someone loyal to him with the most physical strength he's ever seen, he'd immediately think he has a chance to leave the mafia, because his only options at any given time before that would have been:

Reject the mafia, face certain death.

Work quietly under their control, but risk death unless he proves himself to be worthy at every given moment.

Become strong enough to overpower the mafia, so they wouldn't be able to hold the threat of harm/death over his head.

he's been pushed into a corner, and wants to leave the mafia, but the only way he can achieve this by thinking like them, and doing things their way, since he's been trained to be one of them his entire life, so we see him react to fear with violence and to uncertainty with false confidence.

we've talked about how he sees himself and the mafia as separate entities, but what about the similarities?

he's very straightforward, because the mafia has no reason to use manipulation, when they work perfectly fine using brute strength and threats, which is exactly what ryu si-o has learned – we have not seen him even once, using emotions or words as a mask, he's been completely bare. using charm is one thing, as he's done often in the earlier episodes, when speaking to strangers, but he's been blunt in his intentions and his approach from the start, which is very mafia-like

his logic & strategy when threatening anyone in his way – his 'smarts' basically

how he responds to any unfavorable situation with either strength/violence or by holding some sort of leverage over people, which is exactly what's been done to him, and therfore what he's learned to emulate.

his concept of loyalty, or people being "his". he is definitely naive in his readiness to interpret an invitation of friendship as a declaration of loyalty, but in his mind, a person on his side equates to someone being in "his mafia" or as "his person".

lastly, literally: the way he carries himself

[enihk-writes]

[shared body]

character: cho sam

summary: a series of what i think happened to cho sam before and after chung myung took over his body, very stream of conscious questions and headcannons i have. might not make sense.

author's note: idk if yall have read the manga called the one within the villaness where the protagonist is the og owner of the body but gets in a limbo within her own consciousness so she is very aware when someone else has possessed her body, she also sees the other person's memories before the possession etc. will get into more details below.

═══════════════

BEFORE

CHO SAM who was probably a child born into a decent household with a roof over his head and food during meals until something happened to his parents / guardians that caused him to be abandoned at a young age. young enough that he cannot defend himself but probably not so young that he doesn't know his own birthname, talk or walk. considering that he might be getting bullied by the older beggar children around him, either because CHO SAM is really easy to take advantage of since he's meek or it's easy to take advantage of him because he's grown up sheltered

CHO SAM born into a decent household means there's a chance he's learnt how to read and write at some point, so there's also a chance where he learns about history and it's there he learns about the war, cheon ma and of course, the plum blossom sword saint. if we base this on the webtoon appearance, CHO SAM might notice that he has similar physical traits as this legendary hero so i don't think it would be far off to assume that in this case, the boy might begin to look up to the plum blossom sword saint as his own personal hero or something close to that. i think it's the type of thinking that would make sense to a child.

CHO SAM who might have prayed to the sword saint and looked up to him by trying to emulate that guy's behaviour in his everyday life from what he knows about the sword saint which was not a lot and vere mostly verbal accounts of someone else's observation which would have likely been heavily embellished, but CHO SAM doesn't know that yet.

CHO SAM on the day he 'dies' finds himself on the receiving end of an older beggar child's beating for some insignificant mistake he's made. i think that CHO SAM would have prayed to anybody out there for help, salvation, anything to get him out of this place because it's worn him down so much.

when the next hit on his head comes, CHO SAM squeezes his eyes shut but when he doesn't feel the pole hit his head, he opens his eyes to see that he's not exactly in control of his body. it's moving the way he's not asking it to, he's speaking in a way that's unfamiliar to him, he's in his body and not all at the same time.

AFTER

CHO SAM learns pretty quickly that something or someone has taken over all functions of his body and he's not exactly been kicked out of living in it either so he's not too sure what to call this.

while it's not immediate, there will come a point in time when the body will assimilate and manage to accommodate the two souls living in it, CHO SAM is the only one between the two that knows of this.

CHO SAM eventually learns that the one who has possessed his body is chung myung, the same plum blossom sword saint he's looked up to like some god his whole life. and at first, he's excited, then he's confused and then now he's a little conflicted. because for what reason is it his body out of everyone else's that gets 'chosen' for this possession? he may never know the answer.

i think that CHO SAM can't do much other than to watch what chung myung does in his body, he might be in awe at chung myung's abilities and probably wonders what else he can do.

(slight tangent) while i think that all of chung myung's skills and abilities he's amassed over the years is no joke, there's another thing that i've been thinking of — did chung myung, to an extent, luck out when he possessed CHO SAM'S body instead of anybody else? like if it had been someone who had lesser potential do you think chung myung would have taken a way longer time to reach the level he is at currently? or would it not even matter because he's got a lifetime's worth of experience so something like a little bit of physical setback is nothing to him? who knows. i'm just pulling things out of my ass

when CHO SAM first glimpses at chung myung's memories, he cannot look away. they've both lived like this for so long that it's only natural that they begin to merge a little. how much of the current chung myung is him and how much of him is chung myung type of thing. it is surprising that none of CHO SAM'S own memories have surfaced to show itself to chung myung, maybe it's because it's not really chung's myung own body?

when chung myung gets injured, CHO SAM obviously cannot feel it, but the sight of blood scares him nonetheless. is it because he feels for chung myung or is it because he is looking at what used to be his physical form getting marred like it meant nothing? chung myung as someone who cares so little for his own well-being that he would push past his injuries to do what he is supposed to almost out of instinct but he holds back and tries to tend to himself every once in a while as though he is reminded of someone's nagging.

CHO SAM doesn't know how to feel in this situation, should he be angry at chung myung for treating his body, their body, so carelessly? again he wonders if this body can even be considered his anymore, or shared together, or has the roles flipped to make CHO SAM become the intruder to this body?

SPECULATIONS FOR THE END

what happens after chung myung accomplishes everything he sets out to do? does he vanish? is he granted entry into heaven where he meets his loved ones that died? will he hesitate to rest in peace?

(if cm chooses to die) : CHO SAM wakes up but for the first time in years he's back in control of his own body but so much has changed and he still feels like a child in this now grown up body so how is he going to navigate through all of that? he's seen all the feats chung myung has achieved and now how is he going to keep up with that precedent?

(if cm chooses to live) : what will CHO SAM do? will he try to make himself known to chung myung or will he accept that there isn't much he can do and goes along for the ride? say some god or spiritualist finally set CHO SAM free and let him be separated from a fate he was never destined to have, he can finally live as he wants but will he leave? nobody in the world knows who CHO SAM the beggar is, but he knows all about the people who have come into contact with 'him' in some way. do they want to know about him though?

═══════════════

end thoughts: i know that it's not a very coherent post but i needed to get the thoughts out my system before i start having brain worms and stop sleeping at night

[secretgamergirl]

Wire Witch Hex - Wearing Many Hats (Font Design)

Lately most of the traffic I'm getting on this blog has been people stumbling onto my multipart series on how a computer works. Glad people are enjoying that as much as they seem to be. My reason for teaching myself all of that (besides just the joy of learning) is I'm very slowly working on designing a new video game console that anyone sufficiently motivated can build for themselves as a neat little DIY project. There are so many moving parts to this project that for now I'm focusing mainly on just the controller and its unique features. To avoid having to make a whole working console, with software, to test it, and make sure I have something to show for all this if the rest doesn't pan out, I'm designing the controller to also be more or less compatible with the NES and SNES (which secretly use the same input standard, just differently shaped plugs at the end of the cord).

This means all I'll need to test and demo my controller is an SNES ROM that knows what to do with my scroll-wheel outputs, a setup where an emulator accurately handles those signals, and later a cart I can slap a couple EEPROMs into and test on real hardware. Oh and I also need to teach myself enough about SNES development to actually create every demo I want to run, do all the art, code it up, and compile it. This is a big job, and I'm not getting paid, so maybe consider throwing me a little money before we dig into this?

Since... really the last time I reported in on this, I've been studying away trying to learn all this, and hey, have a compiled ROM image that'll display a blank screen in any color I want, and a third party program that IN THEORY with a bit of massaging will convert a 256x256 image into an SNES character ROM image. AKA the file with all the graphics. My ultimate goal for this demo cart is to cycle through several very simple games, showcasing how my controller works with each. So I need to cram every image any of these are going to need into my one big image file, which I'm slowly picking away at, but the one thing I knew from the start that I'd definitely need is to throw some text on screen explaining the controls for each demo. And since it's not like there's a built in font in in the system, I had to make my own.

This is not my first font-making rodeo. For this one, my thinking was, I'm going to be in a fixed 16x16 resolution per character (because I forgot the specifics of how the SNES actually tiles graphics), some built in spacing so I can slap them all right up against each other or some border and still be readable, and I wanted a nice little shadow built into every character in case they end up on a low contrast background. Let's zoom in on what I have here so far, in case you don't feel like downloading the file and blowing it up to something more readable.

The first thing I want to note is that after finishing the first 4 rows of characters here, I double checked, and while the SNES CAN break backgrounds into 16x16 tiles, the absolute minimum is 8x8. If I were really trying to be space efficient, I should have designed around that. Several of these characters would easily fit into a 16x8 space, that level of compression would also let me have just the period and comma and be able to build a colon, semicolon, or apostrophe from those, and most importantly, I rendered this with all of the lowercase letters exactly 1 pixel too tall to fit into a 16x8 space and let me double up there. Since I'm rather happy with this font so far and I'd eventually like to make some version of it available for, if nothing else, other people writing software for my eventual console here, I will likely, at some point, make a more space-optimized variation. I'd also like to cover a wider range of characters. At the very least, have some accent marks, wouldn't be too hard to add support for Cyrillic. Pretty sure I can get Japanese and Korean text in keeping with this look. Maybe some other languages. Anyway though, let's talk about what I've got.

My general design rule here was, where possible, make lines 2 pixels thick, and have each white pixel cast a black pixel shadow immediately below, to the right, and the diagonal between them. This gives a pretty convincing relief effect in my opinion, and keeping the shadows this thick keeps a nice firm edge there so it's even generally readable on a pure white background. Within each 16x16 tile, I was extremely strict about keeping a 1 pixel margin clear at the top and bottom of each image, and 2 or 3 on the sides (often 3 on the left, 2 on the right. With capital letters, I went with a generally rigid and blocky style, trying to stretch things to my arbitrary margins. Lowercase letters I restricted to just 8 pixels tall, and those featuring tails are given special permission to drop down an extra pixel, leaving the shadow right on the edge of their true bounding box.

While it wasn't an intentional move at first, several lowercase letters ended up with a decidedly rounded, squashed look, particularly g and q. I found that to be both kind of cute, giving the whole font a real unique character, and eventually started to actively lean into it (which may not be super obvious, I started with W as it's kinda the letter than needs the most breathing room and worked outward from there), and did my best to distort all the rounder shapes and in particular the highly mirrorable b d p q set, as I seem to recall once reading the more you avoid identical shapes with those, the more legible the font becomes for people with dyslexia. Similarly, I made a point of distinguishing the shapes of the Ms and Ws, and added a little whimsy to the numerals. Overall I'm super happy with all the lowercase letters (except for e and s being too thin, but that was an inevitable compromise), and if I ever have the time to kill it's very likely I'll revisit this someday and apply this squishy rounded aesthetic to the capitals too.

Your eyes were probably drawn really quickly to the parentheses here, where for at least the moment I'm breaking my rules about blank space and shifting them inward quite a bit rather than centering them. That's going to look really bad if I use them in a sentence (like this), but the main reason I'm including them right now is so I can list button prompts with both the icons representing what's actually going to be on my controller, and the SNES buttons sharing the same signals. So something like: "GO (A) Jump" and I think the half-spacing and closeness to what they enclose will look pretty nice in this one specific case.

As a final note, the particular hardware I'm working with absolutely supports the ability to mirror any image horizontally or vertically, as well as change the palette. If I truly wanted to cram letters in as efficiently as possible at this font size, I could, for instance, have an 8x8 right-angle segment, build a whole H just from mirroring that, also use it for the legs of the A, P, F, the left side of the D, etc. This however is incompatible with the shadows I'm using for extra readability. And of course for other projects I HAVE made a perfectly legible 8x8 font before.

I'm pointing this out because hey, if you do the math, JUST these characters I've set aside for having arbitrary on-screen text, as is, are consuming 5/16ths of my total graphical memory, and I'm probably never even going to display most of these anywhere. Again, not a huge problem for the simple demo pack I'm making, and that 256x256 drawing space isn't a hard limit. Spending an extra processor cycle to change an index value and access a whole other page of image data is a pretty common practice on the hardware, but especially with older computers and racing to get things ready to draw before a screen refreshes, it's good to at least be mindful of the tradeoffs with that sort of thing.

And again, my sole source of income at the moment is patreon donations, so if you're excited about seeing updates to this weird project of mine or you're learning useful things from any of it, maybe consider throwing me a little support?

[robo-ky888]

So I wanted to make a video on why Robo Ky is my favorite fictional character period but I don't feel confident enough with my skills to do this sort of thing justice so I'm scrapping the project for now. I'm gonna upload the script here but be warned, it's my first ever script so sorry about that. Thank you for reading.

Introduction

Robo Ky. a character that first appeared as a story mode exclusive boss only as a palette swap of Ky and was only made fully playable in the 3rd entry into the series, is my favorite character in media. But…why, why is this random one off character that usually places around C tier on tier lists and was relegated to cutscenes and spin off games past his debut game my favorite in all of media, especially when Guilty Gear has so many amazing characters like Faust or Sol or even Johnny or Slayer. Well today I intend to tell you why and frankly, i'm not trying to win anyone over with this one or spark a new “Robo Ky revolution” or anything, i just really REALLY wanted to get this out there and this was the only way i knew how to do it. I hope you all or even if you dont, i hope you learn something new about one of guilty gears most original characters.

Who is Robo Ky

Robo Ky made his first appearance in Guilty Gear X Plus for the Playstation 2 in 2001 exclusively in cutscenes. He was portrayed as a palette swap of ky and to play as this version of Robo Ky, you had to select ky’s gg version which had different attacks. This version of Robo Ky looked way different as he was portrayed as having tan skin and a much slimmer frame, looking more like regular ky. This also applied to guilty gear petit as he works exactly like this in that game as well. I actually played this game on an emulator once and inputted the code to play as Robo Ky right away and even got his ending, which is probably one of my favorite photos of the funny man. After these two middling appearances, we finally see Robo Ky take on a full move set in guilty gear XX released in december of 2002 in japan and march 2003 everywhere else. In the first installment of the game, he is unlocked by completing Story Mode or via time release (96 hours). This is the only version of the game Robo Ky is an unlock in and in all future versions he is unlocked right at the start, as perfection should be. Its moveset and gameplay is surprisingly different from ky and if you know anything about Robo Ky, this is probably it. His gameplay revolves around maintaining your heat and battery gage as when you use certain moves, the corresponding bars will increase or decrease, if the heat gage fills up too much, you overheat and explode, if you run out of battery, you can't do specials until you get the energy for them, think of it as tension that empties and fills faster. For example, his special skill fires a bullet from his elbow which increases the heat gauge and his DON'T GET COC-KY! Uses up a bit of power. Heat goes down naturally and your main tool for rebuilding energy is gimmicky, no that's the actual name of the move, Gimmic-KY. He even has a delayed get up which can really throw people off and he even talks shit at you while he is getting up. Now why am i explaining any of this, to most people none of this even matters, but i thought this was really important to explain because Robo Ky does not play like anyone else in the entire cast, not even ky himself. They may share some of the same moves, around 9 or 10, but Robo Ky plays so differently thanks to his gauges and his weird attacks that i was drawn to it as soon as i saw it. His uniqueness is truly what makes him stand out and while he isn't the BEST character in accent core (thank you zappa), he is my absolute favorite to play and i will die on that hill.

Story reasons

In the guilty gear universe, Robo Ky was created by the Post-War Administration Bureau as a sort of assassin robot to take care of anyone trying to get in their way. This is his main objective throughout his entire story, to eliminate someone who is in his way, but that is the most barebones way of explaining it so let's go more in depth. The way fighting game canon works in general is….questionable as everyone has multiple endings and routes, it's hard to know what is canon and what isn't but i will give my best interpretation on what is Robo Ky canon.

In X’s story, Robo Ky actually scans ky and stalks him throughout his chapter until they fight and surprisingly he actually gets the jump on the defective original as when you play this story, you will always have a portion of your health missing.

Unfortunately, Robo Ky does canonically lose but this is one of the most intimidating scenes we see Robo Ky in and one of the only times he is taken and shown off as a legit threat. The next time we see a Robo Ky unit is in XX where the number of Robo Ky are actually quite thin and because of their middling performance, they’re up for discontinuation.Nevertheless, this guy named crow who has been working on the Robo Ky’s for awhile decides to send one particular Robo Ky on a mission to gather combat info as a sort of last mission.

Throughout the mission, Robo Ky argues with crow, is generally rude and dismissive and just goes on fighting, collecting data, all that until crow essentially decides “hey bud, your insides are acting real FUN-KY so get back here” and you actually get a choice as a player for if you want to return to the lab or not but for this overview we will be looking at the ending where you do not decide to return to the lab.Robo Ky must have only heard the word KY when crow said he was acting FUN-KY as he only has eyes to kill the defective original, much to crows dismay. Eventually, you actually do find and fight ky but the prince gets away and robo-kys damages are too severe so he gets back to the lab…only to be met WITH A COPY OF JUSTICE WHO IS ESSENTIALLY AN ULTRA POWERFUL KILLING MACHINE.

(Here is pt 2)

[mrmallard]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers.

Thanks for the ask game!

A lot of these are probably gonna seem kind of "base", or like highly specific.

1: Getting lunch at work

I don't always get lunch at work because I'm either about to be super late, or because I've been spending too much money and I need to try and cut back to make rent. Lately it hasn't been as much of a problem. Either way, getting lunch at work always makes me happy.

We can order in from a local cafe/restaurant, and every day has its own associated special. My favorite special is on Wednesday - it's a chicken burger with chips (fries) for $13. The burger has half of a chicken schnitzel on it, which is cut in half again to make two burger-sized patties, as well as mayo and lettuce. Eating is a general pleasure whether I'm at work or not, but getting to sit down and eat well after working my ass off for like three hours straight is a real highlight of my work day.

2: Video games

I've always been super into games, and even as I've gotten older games have probably been the most influential media in my life. I'm able to take a step back and acknowledge real life; I'm not exactly well-adjusted, but I'm not living in a fantasy world either y'know.

I could cite at least thirty games here. I love Tetris. Life is Strange fucking rules. I've been playing Runescape on and off for almost twenty whole-ass years of my life. Minecraft has gotten me through some of the toughest years of my life. Turn-based RPGs were a fairly late-stage thing I got into as a teenager - my favorite games growing up were like Jak and Daxter, and eventually Sonic the Hedgehog - but now it's probably one of my favorite genres, and I am certifiably Not Normal about Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest.

It's probably bad that I don't have a more sociable hobby, but man - video games are the best. I love video games.

3: Final Fantasy in particular

Look I'm really deep in the Final Fantasy mines rn so I'm just gonna vent.

I'd dabbled in RPGs before, with the PS2 pack-in demo disc including a demo for Dark Cloud and with me eventually owning both a Harry Potter game and Pokemon Yellow and Crystal on the Game Boy Color. I'd also tried to emulate Chrono Trigger, but keyboard controls and general impatience left me feeling kinda bleh about the whole thing.

Final Fantasy was beyond my scope as a kid, and I actually wouldn't come into direct contact with a Final Fantasy game until high school. I lent a friend of mine Tekken Advance - which is a 2D sprite-based port of Tekken 3 for the GBA, with mixed results - and he lent me Final Fantasy X in return.

I did not like Final Fantasy X. At all.

I grew up on Jak and Daxter, and Ratchet and Clank. I grew up on Pokemon and - of all games - Rocket Slime on the DS. The shortcomings of the Game Boy Pokemon games were whatever, because they were Game Boy games - they still had their own flow and charm, while FFX felt dated and stiff.

FFX came out around the same time as Jak and Daxter, and that game runs circles around it! Real-time shadows, 60fps, dynamic character animations etc. Ratchet and Clank was the same. Of course, it wouldn't come out until way later that Naughty Dog games were basically freaks of nature, with the first Crash Bandicoot going so far as to overclock the PS1 to run properly, and both the Jak games and RnC - which used the same engine as Jak and Daxter, and proprietary code from the games as well - being borderline un-emulatable for a good while, because the tech was so cutting edge and unlike anything else on the market that any support for those games would have to be tailor-made for how they ran.

But that's the comparison I had. It's the early 2010's, and FFX fails to impress even among its own contemporary releases. That's how I felt.

Time passes. I get really bummed out at one point, and there's nothing that I want to play. I just want to sit there and play a game at a steady pace, and I don't want that game to ask very much of me - I want to make progress without the active gameplay that a Jak and Daxter would ask of me.

And then I remember that jank-ass PS2 launch title that I basically forced my way through until I gave up. I'd given it back to my friend years ago, and I went down to the game store and bought my own copy. Worst case scenario, I wasted a few bucks on a game I would continue to dislike - but I was listless and bummed out, and I wanted something to play.

I bought FFX-2 before I even finished the first game. Playing FFX again just hooked me in for good.

I played Final Fantasy 5. I played a bunch of FF1's GBA remake. I tried to emulate FF6 and FF8 (the latter after demolishing Kingdom Hearts 1), but like Chrono Trigger, something just didn't feel right and I couldn't progress. I end up playing FF13 and its sequel, I watch playthroughs of 7 and 9 (though I did play a significant portion of 9), and I get into spinoffs like World of Final Fantasy.

Today, I'm knee-deep in Final Fantasy at most points of the day.

I appreciate the games on their individual merits, but I really love the connective tissue. I'm a huge FF5 guy, and Gilgamesh on the Big Bridge is one of the huge, hallmark moments of that game - his appearances in later games, starting with FF8, create an organic sort of expanded universe through the Void that was introduced in the same game.

I like that Final Fantasy 5 and Final Fantasy 13 are ridiculously at odds with each other concerning their approach to game design. I like how FFX is this beautiful game based on like southeast Asian culture, and how FF8, in comparison, has you fighting fucking dinosaurs with a big sword that has a revolver barrel on it. Final Fantasy is a ridiculous, endlessly robust franchise, and I love it dearly.

4: Songs with wordy lyrics

This one's as honed-in and esoteric as possible. I love a song that goes crazy with the wording in the verses.

I don't have any screenshots on this phone, because I've made endlessly detailed posts about this before, but I'll offer some examples.

The champion of this type of songwriting has got to be Dar Williams, with her song Iowa being absolutely packed with lyrics. At one point, between verses, she manages to squeeze in a little interjection that adds so much flavour to what she was already saying - it's like "once I had everything, I gave it up / for a corner of the driveway in the woods I've never felt / and for you, I've come this far across the tracks / ten miles above the limit and with no seatbelt (and I'd do it again)". All the verses in that song are that wordy, but that "and I'd do it again" is EXTRA EFFORT between this verse and the next part of the song, and it's just such an awesome song that she gave 110% on.

But even smaller lyrics that get unexpectedly wordy in an offbeat way are very pleasant to hear in a song that might not be super wordy in the long run. Idylls of the King by the Mountain Goats is this huge, grand, romantic song (in an album about two people basically stuck circling the drain and pulling each other down with them, which is arguably most famous for being the album with No Children on it) with structure like "this place, with its old plantations / these roads, heading out towards the sea" and "your eyes, twin volcanoes / bad ideas, dancing around in there" - very effective, emotionally evocative lyricism, sure, but the second verse busts out this line:

"and I dreamed of vultures, in the trees around our house / and cicadas, and locusts, and the shrieking of innumerable gibbons"

And the WAY he sings "the shrieking of innumerable gibbons" just SCRATCHES AN ITCH IN MY BRAIN in a way that's super hard to describe.

Maria Mena also has songs that do this, though I won't touch them due to subject matter. Overall, wordy lyrics in songs make me very happy.

5: Hawaiian shirts

I'm not always a very outgoing or cheerful person in real life, but Hawaiian shirts help me to make up the deficit. They're bright and outgoing, communicating a laidback sort of vibe, and they're very open and breezy which is great for ease of movement. Hawaiian shirts make up a significant portion of my wardrobe, and I really relish the opportunity to get more because even the act of throwing one on and buttoning it up - or god forbid, taking a buttoned up shirt I've worn before and just sliding into it - honestly makes me feel so good. Not a lot of clothes fit me, but my stable of Hawaiian shirts never lets me down. In the words of a great philosopher: they're comfy and easy to wear.

[sociallyanxious-eros]

The Inevitable Entrance of Bigots into the Pagan Community

Did you know that one of the philosophical basis of Fascism is the idealization of the past and the rejection of anything considered modern?

Before explaining and showing all of that, I want to make clear my intentions with this post. I was doing small research about what the witch community was up to these days, the discussions being made, the conflict of ideas, and stuff like that, so I ended in a text explaining the differences between Revivalists, Neopagans, and Reconstructionists. I won’t be explaining each one here, I will focus more on Reconstructionists because this one is where things can get tricky. For instance, reconstructionists try to revive and bring back ancient religions as closely as possible and emulate them as close as possible. 

When I read about this I thought to myself “Wait, why does it look like Fascism?”, but, as always with that stuff, we need to check the context, so I went after and discover that: it is Fascism, except when it isn’t. So I’m writing this to help people identify when it is Fascism and when it isn’t, and also to people be careful when they’re writing about these topics.

So let's start with the more obvious things, why the eagerness to bring back ancient religion could be a Fascist sign? To answer that I’ll bring some historical facts.

First of all, I’m talking about Fascism as an ideology, as a movement, I’m not referring to types of fascism here, like Italian fascism, nazi fascism (German), or Integralismo (Brazil), each fascism has its types of characteristics because of the country and political scenario it was trying to be applied, however, Fascism (with capital F) has its own basis, 2 of these are:

Chauvinism - the belief that your nation/race is superior and/or more virtuous and, therefore, should be the only one to exist

Conservatism - a political philosophy that seeks to preserve and promote traditional values

I only mentioned the 2 that are important to what I’m talking about here, but know that there is more, also, Conservatism wasn’t a main topic of Fascism until the 20th Century, which means, is a Neo-Fascist thing, however, Conservatism is exactly what attracts so many bigots to ancient religions.

Also, there are people who are conservatives but aren’t fascists, however, they’re both bigots so doesn’t really matter here. 

But, let me make this very clear, enjoying and/or liking ancient religions does not mean someone is a fascist, so let me talk about the context and other signs:

Someone is spreading fascist/conservative ideology if:

They say modern society has degenerated

They say ancient culture/values/religion are the truthful Western culture

They idealize the past and call it “golden times”

They’ll say ancient art was beautiful and compromised with beauty, while modern art is ugly and/or disgusting

They’ll say they came to help restore good Western Culture

They talk a lot about Western culture and how it has lost its meaning

They love to hate modern art and call it degenerate

They’ll use the word “degenerate”

Someone just like ancient history/culture and is not a bigot if:

They have no problem with any modern religions/cultures

They’ll talk about other cultures without criticizing them to value the “golden ancient time”

They don’t idealize the past as a peak of society's values

They don’t try forcibly to bring back the past to the detriment of existing cultures

They don’t call modern art/culture degenerate just because they think ancient art it’s really the valuable one

You must have noticed that I used the term “ancient culture” or even “the past”, but didn’t specify which one. This is because each Fascism movement and even each conservative has a different ancient culture/religion to idealize. Neo-nazis, for example, have already appropriated Vikings runes, and celtic symbols, like the Black Sun, it’s common to see nazis create this idealization of the Viking man as if it was the best and only example of true masculinity. Here in Brazil, fascist movements like Bolsonarismo, idealized the period of 1964 to 1985, the period of the military dictatorship.

However, is important to say, that when a bigot is just conservative they’ll probably idealize Christianity and/or the crusades, if they’re fascist, but don’t rely on a specific segment, they’ll probably idealize ancient Roman and/or Greek mythology.

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Now I’ll bring some examples of clear Fascist ideology being spread that sometimes people won’t notice:

These types of profiles:

These types of posts: (notice the way of saying that “art used to be good”)

The vaporwave aesthetic as a whole:

These types of memes:

The idea that Western society has lost its meaning and “degenerated” because of [insert oppressed group here] is Fascism 101, babes.

The rejection of Modern Art

I’ll open this last topic just to talk about art a little bit more because one of the best examples of fascism rejecting “modernity” is the demonization of modern art. In 1937 the nazi party organized in Germany the exhibition “Degenerate Art Exhibition”, just by the name I think you know what it’s about. It was just pieces of art considered “degenerated” or “garbage”. Some of the works there, as expected, were just pieces made by jewish, roma artists, or anyone that was being killed by this disgusting government. Others were just Expressionism art, or any other piece that didn’t fit the “beauty” criteria this absurd ideology was so obsessed about.

Conclusions

As I said at the beginning of this post, my intention with this isn't to point fingers or to call anyone a fascist/conservative, I want people to easily identify when the text they’re reading is just conservative/fascist garbage, and be careful to not spread this discourse even more.

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Resources

Wikipedia Pages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_Art_exhibition Degenerate Art Exhibition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism Conservatism

Documents/Texts:

https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/ADL%20Hate%20on%20Display%20Printable_0.pdf Hate on Display: Hate Symbols Database (notice how many occult runes and sigils were appropriated from ancient religions)

Videos:

https://youtu.be/Sx4BVGPkdzk How to Recognize a Fascist by ContraPoints

https://youtu.be/v5DqmTtCPiQ Who’s Afraid of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games and Fascism by Jacob Geller

https://youtu.be/T6EOVCYx7mY Is Art Meaningless? by Philosophy Tube (if you want to know some fun things about art)

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Special Section to Brazilians

https://youtu.be/3qNmIXaFSr8 Integralismo, estudo de caso sobre o fenômeno fascista por História Pública (tenho algumas discordâncias com ele, mas esse vídeo é bom)

[thevindicativevordan]

Comics this week (especially The Ultimates)?

Anonymous asked: Comics this week ? (also, have you dropped Immortal Thor ?)

Yeah my rent got raised and my medical bills hit me hard, so more cuts were needed alas.

Batman #148 -Dropped this as well, with the end of Zdarsky's Zur arc being underwhelming I can't justify continuing to read this. It's been merely ok, sometimes interesting, but far too familiar and repetitive in how it rehashes familiar story beats. Once again Batman drives the Batfamily away, only to acknowledge he needs them and reconcile. Until someone comes on board with a new story direction, I'm tapping out on Batbooks.

Kneel Before Zod #6 - Zod already scored himself a mistress? He and Sinestro can bond over their love of evil blue women. I thought for sure that other cell was a trap for Zod, glad he suspected the same and didn't take the bait until he was sure. I wonder if he and Emerald Empress are going to join forces? YJ made Ursa into EE, so perhaps Casey is taking inspiration from that. With the return of the Retroboot coming, will this Emerald Empress belong to that Legion's history? I'm expecting that to be the case.

My Adventures With Superman #1 - Even with my financial problems I still want to support MAWS any way I can, and happily I enjoyed this. No surprise with Campbell writing but it feels exactly as what it's been advertised as being, a lost episode of the show. Bloodsport is my Gluppo Shitto after how much I enjoyed The Suicide Squad, so I'm happy to see him appear here.. Another competing shady government agency in Checkmate too, I really want to see Bloodsport appear in the show. Frankly I wish he had gotten Slade's position as the second in command for Waller. I was wondering how they were going to differentiate Amazo from Parasite since they both do similar things, but MAWS Parasite doesn't actually copy powers merely absorbs energy, so now Clark is up against someone who can go toe to toe with him and has his own powers. That will be useful experience if he ever has to face Zod or Bizarro.

Ultimates #1 - Ahhh but this was easily the best first issue of the week. Camp is able to emulate Hickman's style while retaining his own voice, and of the Ultimate line he's the only one besides Hickman who managed to tell a complete story in an issue. We get Cap waking up and reacting to the United States no longer existing, Doom and Cap nudging Tony in different directions, Tony talking about how he hasn't yet "conquered time" (duhnduhnDUHNNNNN), the compression here is refreshing and makes the issue feel meaty. Camp even directly tackles the murkiness of Pym getting his powers. Hank was so afraid of becoming like 616 Hank that he refused to take Tony’s offer, but he still kept the orb. Seems like we won’t get the typical wife beater Pym storyline for this universe thank goodness. He and Janet are married too and Janet is perfect, reminds me of EMH Janet.

There was also an interview with Camp where he outright states that he wants you to be uncomfortable with the Ultimates killing. It would be easy to make the charges of terrorism a mere smear but it looks like he intends to embrace the label and interrogate if terrorists can be heroes - exactly in line with the idea of the 6160 Ultimates being the equivalent to the 1610 Liberators. Curiously he teases that Doom's changing eye color might not be mere colorist error. If that's the case, my theory is that Maker merged Reed and the other three into one body, or even Reed and Doom, similar to how he merged the four hirelings in Ultimate Invasion #1.

[dancingisdangerouss]

Okay so writing this I’m not fully here atm so forgive me if this is weird, but can I request some headcanons of any of the EH characters comforting you after losing your best friend if possible? Just lost mine so Im craving some comfort- 🤪💀

Oh god I’m so, so sorry to hear that. Of course dear, I’ll do my best with the ones I know. I’m sorry for your loss, love (not sure if you mean by death or by losing the friendship itself, but grieving is involved in both. People forget sometimes that grief comes in a lot of different ways). It’s never easy losing someone you love.

Al:

He’s not the best comfort, namely because he doesn’t fully grasp the concept of loss. Judging from his reaction when he killed Max, he’s obviously upset but still kind of just like “oh no! Anyway…”

But he tries. He certainly wouldn’t want to lose you/have you taken from him. I headcanon that he and Max did also have a rocky relationship with some bitterness attached there, so that’s also a factor in him seeming so cold about his death.

He doesn’t like seeing you upset unless it’s something he caused (and even then, only if it was intentional). So he won’t really know what to say to offer comfort, but would definitely be a physical comfort.

Just like, letting you lay with your head in his lap while he strokes your hair, wiping or kissing your tears and massaging your shoulders. Holding you to his chest, silent as he lets you sob and talk about it. Even if he has nothing to say, he’ll listen attentively.

He’s…he’s also selfish. We know this. So I’m sure he’d somehow manage to eventually turn it into something to benefit him, like encouraging you to cuddle and cockwarm him on the couch, or indulging himself by going down on you because “it’ll help you feel better.” He’s an ass. 🙄

Ernst Toller:

Ernst would be incredibly sympathetic to your pain. He knows what it is to lose someone you love, and he’s dealt with existential questions and self-doubt.

He would offer spiritual comfort if that would be something beneficial to you, but he’s not the type of person to force beliefs on you if you’re not religious.

Ernst would be there for you in whatever way he can be, whether that be to be a listening ear, to offer words of wisdom/advice/comfort, or to just gently hold you in his arms while you cry.

Just a major softie.

Paul (Valley of violence):

There’s not as much known about his character, but we know he’s loved and lost, and no longer feels worthy of love or affection.

We saw how hard he took it when he lost his best friend. He would understand your pain, and feel comfortable opening up to you about his own, as well as his past.

Basically a support group/therapy session wherein you’re both getting mutual support for the things you’ve endured. Maybe even just sharing fond memories of those you’ve lost, then sharing a drink and watching the sun setting.

Arthur:

Arthur is wise (not beyond his years tho, he’s old lmao). He may not be empathetic, but he is very discerning, and would know exactly what words to say to make you feel better.

It’s always hard to tell with Arthur when he’s being genuine or not. Sometimes, I think he’s so deeply rooted in his own facade of himself that even he doesn’t know when he’s being sincere. So he’ll coo at you and be loving and soft and sweet, but you will never truly know what he’s really feeling.

Arthur does of course care for you, but his way of caring may look different from other people. He knows what “care” looks like and will emulate it, holding and rocking you in his arms, brushing a hand through your hair, etc. But it’s hollow love.

However—you sometimes catch him showing his own way of caring, keeping a consistent eye on you everywhere you go, ensuring you’re eating enough/sleeping enough/etc.

He may not have much compassion toward the dead (he shot our baby in cold blood and admitted to Khonshu he enjoyed doling out his punishments), but he doesn’t like seeing you in pain, so he does what he can to offer comfort, both in fake and earnest ways.

[cyberloops]

So I bought a decent multi-effects pedal after I got the new bass. Basically the bass version of the one I had for my guitar.

But then I kinda went down the rabbit hole of cheap, affordable pedals and decided to waste a few bucks on the cheapest of cheap multi-effects pedals that I could find. I narrowed it down to three options, and decided to go with the Donner Multi-Pad100. Partly because the reviewers I saw were all pleasantly surprised. Mostly because it's shaped like an SNES controller, and I'm easily influenced.

This is what it looks like compared to an 8bitdo SNES gamepad replica. It's a little wider, and it's a chunky boi. It has to be to fit a 9 volt battery inside for when you don't have access to an outlet or a USB charger.

I started it out with a tremelo effect, mixed with some heavy reverb and light delay. Then I switched from tremelo to a heavy chorus effect at the end. It's pretty easy to use. The dials on the right control the basic effects, the dials on the left control an amp emulator to try and make it sound like you're running your guitar through one of several classic amps that would probably cost more than my monthly paychecks to buy in real life.

The build quality is kinda crap, I could barely get my headphones to plug into it. But the sound quality is... not bad? Maybe even slightly good? This is me playing a sub-200 dollar electric guitar through a 50 dollar multi-effects pedal and recording it directly into my computer. After only poking around with this pedal for a few minutes. Just long enough to figure out how to make the built-in drum machine work for backing.

It also has a clip on the back, so if I wanted to literally clip it to my belt or my guitar strap while I'm playing, I totally could.

As for the guitar I used, my guitar is a Dean EVO XM that I've had for... twelve? Maybe thirteen years now. I'm pretty sure that's literally their cheapest model. And I bought it right when they dropped the price, whenever that was. (I suppose I could look up when the price dropped to figure out exactly when I bought it.) There are knockoff no-name-brand guitars out there that are more expensive.

So yeah. For this thanksgiving, I think I'm thankful that we live in a world where a cheapskate like me can still get my hands on musical instruments and equipment to keep making music, even I've only got a part-time job.

If anyone is curious, the other two that I was debating getting were the Mooer PE100, which usually costs around 90 bucks but was on sale for 60 bucks while I was looking. It has more features and is definitely worth more, but the way it worked was basically the same as my nicer Zoom G1X pedal that I already have, so I decided there was no point in just getting a cheaper, crappier version of something that I already have. And the other alternative was the Cube Baby. Which apparently isn't sold under the name of the company that makes it, they basically just license it out to other companies who can brand it themselves, so there's like 5 different branded versions of it on Amazon. And it seemed nifty, and maybe even a little better in some ways than the one I got. But I looked at a whole bunch of reviews while things were slow at work, and eventually made my decision. For better or for worse.

[dangerous-advantage]

Been thinking about Future Leo. We didn’t see a lot of him, but I can’t stop wondering. (Spoilers?)

Leo is an interesting character to me. I know the fandom has a specific idea about why he is the way he is, and while I mostly agree with it, I think my interpretation is a bit different.

Leo and Donnie both crave validation, it’s just in different ways. In my opinion, Leo isn’t insecure about himself as a person (mutant?) In fact, he’s very confident in his own abilities.

He says it himself— he’s the face man. The people person. When he and Splinter fight in the ring, he knows exactly what to do to manipulate the situation to his advantage. So he’s not insecure about himself.

What he is insecure about is his role in the team. More specifically, he bases his ideas of validation off of how much use he can be to the team. (This is definitely up for debate though.) Along with this, he has a lot of insecurity/anxiety about stepping out of this role/taking on a more serious one.

In the same episode, when tossed into the ring, he asks Splinter, “Why can’t you just trust me?” This shows that the type of validation he seeks (and needs) is directly related to this. While he is confident in his abilities, he craves the validation and trust of others.

To gain this, however, he needs to apply this specific skillset in more situations. This is a bit beyond the “face man” act, though. He wants to earn their trust and show his usefulness, but his insecurity about his role on the team holds him back from taking more of a leadership role.

(I also don’t know if this iteration of Leo really consciously wants to be leader, at least early on, but it’s obvious that he has the skillset to do so and even excel in the role, as we see in the movie.)

With all this in mind, I can’t help but think about Future Leo.

We don’t get to see a lot of Future Leo, but what we did see offers a very interesting viewpoint: Leo, as a leader. Not only that, an experienced one at that. But how did he get from the Leo we know to the one we see in the alternate timeline?

In what I think was probably supposed to be a “it’s-the-end-of-the-series-so-we-can-do-whatever-we-want” joke, Splinter makes Leo the leader. When the movie came around, however, they had to incorporate this into the story. They couldn’t just ignore it, after all.

So, Leo in the movie is the now leader. It’s been two years, but you can see he struggles with this still. He has certain ideas of what being a leader is and is trying to fit himself into those ideals, often at the expense of the team.

Yet, I don’t think this was ever a conscious choice. Leo’s always been the face-man; it’s what he’s good at. Unlike many other versions of TMNT, his conflict with Raph is based not in jealousy, but in what I think is respect.

Leo looks up to Raph, and I think he knows that Raph does have good leadership qualities, but has a hard time emulating them because he’s stuck in his own head about the whole thing. That same anxiety and insecurity about his usefulness and his role in the team affect his leadership; like stated before, he doesn’t feel immediately comfortable in the role and therefore puts on a show. He acts like how he thinks a leader should act.

He obviously also doesn’t have a great understanding of the responsibilities of the role. So, definitely some growing pains.

This is the character we are presented with.

The movie reveals Leo’s mistake was a direct cause of the apocalypse. Raph had the key; he only lost it because of Leo’s cockiness. Leo, who is trying to measure up as a somewhat new “leader” bites back, as we saw. He is probably a bit embarrassed by this, but he also doesn’t have any idea of the stakes attached to this action.

(Side note: I don’t think Raph is as angry about the fact that they lost the key as much as the fact that Leo potentially endangered himself as well as everyone else, because, once again, he has no clue of the stakes.)

At this point, Casey meets up with them and everything starts going accordingly. But in the timeline without Casey, this obviously happened differently.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about a possible timeline between Leo’s mistake and Casey Jr. being sent back in time. (Enough that I might write some fic dribbles about it, but that’s an idea for a different post.)

I think it would be fitting if Splinter died first, possibly to save his sons, and then Raph relatively early as well (maybe 3 months in?) I don’t know when Casey is born, but in the movie, it seemed like Raph was dead by then (or died when he was still very young?) So earlier on.

At this point, Leo would have lost the guidance of not only his father, but also his brother. I can see the turtles leaning on Raph more heavily during this period, maybe Leo even handing the reigns back over.

In this case, when Raph died, it forced Leo to take responsibility. I’m not sure how much he would’ve changed within this time, but the guilt weighting him down must have been immeasurable. It would have only worsened after Raph’s death.

I can see two main paths for this: either Leo has been utterly changed by his time so far in the apocalypse, and is more capable of a leader when Raph dies, so is able to take over. While this is fine, I like my second idea better.

Leo, crushed by guilt and grief of everything he has already lost, loses Raph, too. The others turn to him, because it seems right. He puts on a brave face and acts like he knows what he is doing, even though inside, he isn’t prepared for this role at all.

This is what allows him to begin leaning more heavily on his team, which allows him to slowly begin learning how to be a better leader overall. Still, the first few months or even years are incredibly difficult. I could talk at length about my ideas for this, but this is already too long, so I’ll wrap up my thoughts.

Future Leo, as we see him, is a tired yet optimistic character. At the point when he finally sends Casey Jr. back, it is only himself, Mikey, and Casey (as far as we can tell.) We know that Donnie and Raph are dead by this point.

There are some major things about this scene that interest me, and I think they support the idea that April is, in fact, also dead. The first is the photograph.

Leo is able to draw an (albeit messy) image of the key on the back of the photograph and give it Casey. I think about this.

While it is possible that he has seen it a lot or recently, I think it’s more likely that he’s spent so much time obsessing over that one mistake he made when he was young, visualizing it over and over and thinking of what he could have done differently. And who wouldn’t? It’s the mistake he blames for the entire fucked up apocalypse. To be able to recall it with such detail so many years later indicates just how much time he has spent, tossing and turning, the guilt eating away at him as he thinks of what he could’ve done differently.

An even more damning piece of evidence is this: he has kept this photograph with him since before the apocalypse. This photo is obviously incredibly important to him. It’s all he has left of the life he used to live, and might be the only remaining image of his family back when it was whole.

Yet he gives it away. Why?

Well, two more things. One, he just saw Mikey disintegrate in order to open this gateway. Not only that, he knew it was about to happen. Mikey told him, after all.

Two, he has nothing left to continue on for. It is very likely he was the last of the group left, the last bastion of humanity. But if humanity is gone, and if his family is gone, what does he have left to fight for?

Casey went through the portal, Mikey was dead, and Leo, who has always based his sense of self on his usefulness to the group and the support of his family, was left with nothing.

I think, in the moment where he decides the only way to fix his mistake is literally to tamper with the time-space continuum, he also decides a much darker fate for himself.

He lets Mikey sacrifice himself, gives up the photo for the chance to do good because he knows there is nothing left. When he runs from that portal, I don’t think it was an accident what happened. His death was a conscious choice. He just wanted to go out fighting, hoping for a better future for another version of himself.

A dark end to a dark future. There’s nothing left for him. He is a core of the person he used to be, eaten away by guilt and grief. He isn’t jaded, but he carries a certain aura of resignation. This Leo learned his lessons the hard way.

I have a ton more I could say, but this is already way too long. I’m not sure where I was going with this and it ended up all over the place, but I’m fine with where it ended up.

Anyways, thoughts? Different perspectives? Etc?

[dat-physics-boi]

How computers play Chess

I just watched this video and it got me thinking on chess AI.

For those unfamiliar, chess AI will evaluate possible future positions of the current board, then evaluate which of them are most desirable, and then it’ll play the moves to get it there.

If a future branch for example has a lot of good but also a couple really bad boards, it’ll go with a safer branch instead. It always plays the move that maximizes it’s future state. Once it finds a forced checkmate sequence, of course it will follow that branch until it’s opponent is defeated.

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However, back when chess AI was in it’s infancy and just did this, humans could still beat it for a while. The positions in the future were evaluated on if there was a forced checkmate sequence as well as material points. Different chess pieces are worth different so called material points, and by evaluating future boards on material point advantage, the AI could take all it’s opponents options and eventually win that way. But humans still sometimes won. Why?

Well, they understood something that the AI didn’t, but they couldn’t formulate what exactly that was.

So the solution: Make an AI that emulates humans.

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The second generation of chess AI then proceeded to use a combination of the brute force “look for a forced checkmate sequence and material advantage“ approach, but mixed it with emulating actual human played games too, emulating the winning side, of course.

This made the AI much better at openings and endgames. And the mid-game was already it’s strong suit, no human is better at tactics than an AI that can calculate into the future that far.

After that advancement, AI completely outpaced humans. No human alive can beat such an AI anymore, and those are used to evaluate positions of human games. The most prevalent and powerful of that type of AI is called StockFish, and it has gone through countless iterations, each one improving further and further away from the human skill-cap.

But a problem remains: The developers have no real idea what it is we humans understand better, that enabled us to beat the first generation of chess AI.

They knew it was some “positional advantage“ but had no way of quantifying that, no way of making the AI understand that. Except by letting it emulate humans, who do understand and utilize that concept.

~~~

And then this AI from the video i linked came on to the scene, AlphaZero is it’s name. And from how it plays, i think it’s creators have finally found what humans did differently that allowed them to best 1st generation AI. I believe it simply changed the way it evaluates/rates how good future boards are!

And the measure it rates them by is the amount of possible legal moves the AI will have at that future board vs. the amount of possible moves their opponent will have.

The extreme case is a forced checkmate sequence: The enemy has no moves except those that lead to the king being unable to move, as well as attacked.

A checkmate.

So first of all, if AlphaZero evaluates future positions like that, it doesn’t have to make an exception for forced checkmate sequences. Those just happen to be favored naturally. No if-case needed. And also no more evaluation based on material points.

This enables the AI to apply pressure on it’s opponent, because pressure means less possibilities for them, more for the AI.

Many things GothamChess said in the video point to this being the case:

it likes long bishop diagonals

it likes it’s own king to be mobile

it doesn’t care about sacrificing pawns, and will gladly do so

it closes down positions, but usually on the enemy side

The first two points are simple to understand if it evaluates future boards on how mobile it’s pieces are supposed to be.

The third also makes sense, as pawns are just in the way of it’s own piece moves. A pawn can only move one square, a piece in way more ways. So it’ll gladly sacrifice a pawn just to make it’s own pieces able to move more freely.

The fourth point can be understood as minimizing the enemy movement options.

This way of evaluation allows AlphaZero to incorporate things like trapping pieces and developing moves into it’s natural behavior. Developing moves were previously relegated to emulating human openings, but that was because the material point evaluation didn’t account for them. They don’t have to be handled like that anymore, possible move evaluation naturally leads to the chess AI playing developing moves.

So yeah, that’s the next generation of chess AI. The kind that evaluates boards not on material points, but on movement options.