#(they still keep pointing to that very same tutorial though)

[emeraldblonde]

I tried to mod something and the good news is, it didn't crash the game. 🥳 The bad news is, not what I was looking for lmao.

Like, don't get me wrong. I've seen way worse (the stuff of nightmares) on a modding channel I've been teaching myself this stuff lately, so. It's not like I completely fucked this thing up or anything like that.

It's just... I still gotta ask though.

What went wrong here?

[fox-guardian]

hii i hope this is ok to ask but i love how fucking HUGE you make curly look, do you have any advice on how to draw muscular frames? :o

thankies!! i love drawing him Robust-Looking <3

as far as advice goes, when it comes to anatomy i always recommend the channel proko on youtube, they have all kinds of videos about how to draw anatomy with each area of the body broken down. basically, if you're trying for anatomical accuracy with muscles and stuff, their vids are a great way to grasp how muscles work!

as far as general shapes and vibes though, i have a couple quick tips of my own <3

the biggest part, if you can imagine, is proportions. typically tutorials will tell you the average shoulder width for a person is about 2-3 heads wide, so if you're making someone Bigger and Beefier, you'll wanna go past that a bit. (and making a character's head smaller is gonna make their body look bigger by comparison, so if you wanna go crazy, shrank that thang)

For example, Daisuke (who i draw as lean, but still with some muscle, especially in his arms) is 4 heads wide at his shoulders, while beefcake curly over here is 5 (sometimes more depending on the drawing lol). something as simple as broadening the shoulders already gives a character a beefier-looking silhouette.

[ID: Simple rough sketches of Daisuke and Curly from Mouthwashing with colored circles showing how many heads wide their shoulder width is. Daisuke is four, Curly is five. end ID]

~~~~

"but what if i don't know how to draw the muscles and am not going for realism/don't feel confident enough in that yet? how do i give a muscular vibe without as much detail?" FEAR NOT it's super easy. here we use the power of SHAPES!!

i draw jimmy and curly with the same "skeleton" or base frame, so i think they're a good example of this next bit. despite having the same bones, i broaden the fleshy parts on curly's limbs (focusing on his shoulders cuz he has big ass shoulders) and keep his upper arms wide before tapering down into his hands (muscles tend to be largest at the base of the limb and get smaller up to the hands/feet but there's plenty of design exceptions). i carry that shape language down into his legs (which i emphasize with his fitted calf-height boots). meanwhile jimmy stays fairly squared, especially when fully clothed

[ID: Simple sketches of Jimmy and Curly from Mouthwashing with notes describing their shapes. Jimmy has a rectangle over his body and is noted as being "relatively rectangular" and the shapes of his limbs are mostly straight. Curly has a trapezoid over his body and has a "top heavy shape" with limb shapes that taper down and in. end ID]

~~~~

and honestly, a good hack to make a character read as more muscular or robust is to give them a buddy that contrasts that. once again, jimmy will assist.

even in a simple drawing like this, giving jimmy the opposite tapering to his limbs just emphasizes curly's hugelargeness by comparison. it also shows that you don't need a lot of detail or realism to convey Beefiness

[ID: Another, more simplified doodle of Jimmy and Curly, pointing out that Jim's limbs taper outwards while Curly's taper in. end ID]

~~~~

another final quick tip i have is: the neck makes a difference!

people with more muscle tend to have thicker necks (it's because of the muscles there, if you can believe it) and it's kinda become one of my fav bits of drawing curly lol. idk why <3 necks fun to draw <3 for him, i draw his neck starting at the very edges of his face and widening out at the bottom to match the shape of his head and to flow a bit more into his trap muscles, but you could go Even Further Beyond if you so Choose. i've found this is a surprisingly good way to convey Beefy Person Beefy even if you don't have as much anatomical knowledge.

[ID: Four bust sketches of Daisuke and Curly comparing their necks. The first two show them both facing forwards. Daisuke's neck is slimmer and straight, while Curly's neck meets the edges of his jaw and has a wider base with higher trap muscles. The second two shows them in profile, with the back of Daisuke's cranium sticking out past his neck, while Curly's is even with his neck, showing how thick is is from the side. end ID]

~~~~

in review we got:

widen shoulders relative to the head to convey a Broad silhouette

taper limbs inwards from base to extremities to emphasize the shape/size of the muscles

give em a less muscular buddy for contrast

thick necks help a lot in conveying a muscular build

and of course, i know i only used men in these examples, but these tips will work just fine regardless of a character's gender. please draw more beefy women ily <3

i hope this made sense and helps you and whoever else might see this uwu

if anyone has any questions about it i will. Try. to answer them. making these posts is oddly difficult lol

[celestial-sphere-press]

what kind/style of endbands do you usually do? they look so good 👀

hi!! sorry for taking a while to answer, I wanted to make sure I could give you my best answer.

I usually do what's called a "double core" endband. I use double core endbands over the "bead on front" method because bead on front style is not great for uneven distributions of color, irregular patterns, or using more than three colors. Functionally it works by having your extra threads wrapped up inside the thread that is showing, forming the smaller secondary core. Ultimately you are doing figure 8s around the main core & then your secondary core of thread. This keeps things pretty neat & tidy. The tutorial I first used was this one by DAS Bookbinding, though I don't think his endband tutorials are his best ones. Another binder I've spoken with endbands about a lot is maleeka, who recently did an endband tutorial herself.

maybe I should do one... but it takes a lot for me to get enough motivation to make videos. I'll take this opportunity to write up some tips I've shared when people ask instead:

1. Endband core material is the MOST IMPORTANT component. You need a core that is stiff but flexible - it should NOT be floppy because it wiggles everywhere under the tension of the thread, but still needs to flex with the opening & closing of the book. You want something that doesn't compress, to reduce tension shifts in thread creating a lumpy endband. Have a smooth core is less critical but helps to avoid snagging threads & allows you some leeway on sliding threads around for adjustments. My personal choice is smooth leather jewelers cord (link is just an example, I get mine from a local craft store).

2. Thread size. All your threads need to be the same size; it will be visible if you are using two different sizes, and mess with your front core. Additionally, I know lots of people will use larger twists of multiple strands of embroidery thread, which can work, but is more likely to compress & alter its size in unexpected ways. A single strand is preferable. If you want something thicker you can find some thread weights that are heavier twists intended to be used in a single strand, not pulled apart. I prefer smaller sizes because it works better for the gradient designs I like.

3. Silk thread is your friend (if you can spend the money on it). It reduces fuzz (no fuzz like you get with cotton/DMC embroidery thread), it's usually easier to manage, has a more compact twist, and a higher shine. I use Japanese silk hand sewing thread in size #9 (9号). There's multiple brands (Tire, Daruma, KNK/kanagawa, etc). Here's a wholesale listing (minimum 20,000¥ for international). A non-Japanese brand is Guterman silk (German brand). Both the Japanese & German threads come in a heavier weight (Japanese is #16, Guterman is buttonhole).

4. Thread tension is the most important part of the actual technique. You need to ensure the threads currently wrapped in the secondary core keep tension when you are working the thread around them.

5. Working on a curve. This is only really relevant if you're doing an endband on a rounded book, but the circumference of the curve means there's more real estate on the outside vs inside of the curve. Sometimes this can cause bunching on the secondary core. My own solution to this is that sometimes I wrap the primary core but drop a wrap here or there around the secondary core (only between two wraps of the same color I'm dropping). I uh... don't know of anyone currently recommending this besides myself so I can't point to any pro endorsement for this method, it's just what works for me. Forgive my terrible writing:

6. Pattern management. I... don't really plan much how my patterns sit on the spine, which is not very helpful. HOWEVER you can do some pattern management on the fly, if you really want your pattern to end at a certain place. Thread can be packed more or less densely on the core, resulting in some pattern compression; you could also strategically drop wraps in less noticeable locations. An unintended example: I was replicating the pattern on this endband (left) when I realize I wasn't packing the thread as densely as I had the first time around (right), which resulted in the overall pattern taking up more space. You can do this on purpose, if you need to.

this was way more than you asked but it gave me a chance to put all this in one spot. Best of luck in vanquishing the dreaded EndWyrms.

[secretlittlerandezvous]

Lost In The Woods (And Feelings) - William Eklund

Summary: Y/n and her best friend, hockey player William, go on a week-long camping trip despite having zero experience. As the days go by, Y/n realizes she’s in love with William but believes nothing can happen between.

Words: 849

Y/n had no idea what made her to agree to this.

Camping. A full week of camping.

She and William had been best friends for years, ever since they met back in Sweden. And even after he moved to San Jose for his hockey career, they had managed to keep their friendship intact. FaceTiming at odd hours, sending each other stupid reels, meeting during any kinds of holidays. All that became a new part of their daily routine. And somehow, in between their late-night calls and playful teasing, they convinced themselves that going on a camping trip together was a brilliant idea.

It was not.

“Are you sure you know how to set up a tent?” Y/n asked, arms crossed as she watched William struggle.

“Of course,” he said confidently, before glancing at the tent bag. “I mean… how hard can it be?”

It turned out to be very hard.

“William, that’s not where the pole goes.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Are you a camping expert all of a sudden or what?”

“I don’t have to be an expert to know that the tent is not supposed to be collapsing,” Y/n protested, stepping back just in time to avoid being caught under the falling mess.

William groaned, rubbing a hand down his face before turning to her with his best innocent smile. “Okay, well, time for a different plan.”

Y/n rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “You’re cute,” she muttered under her breath, not realizing she had said it out loud until William shot her a smirk.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly, turning away to hide the blushing.

After what felt like hours and with the help of YouTube tutorials, they got the tent set up. It still leaned to one side more than the other, which made Y/n secretly question its stability.

That night, they sat by the fire, eating burnt marshmallows because neither of them had the patience to cook them properly. The air was cool, stars lit up the sky above them, and for a moment, Y/n let herself pretend that this was just their life.

Just the two of them, away from everything, no worries about distance or careers or the inevitable goodbye waiting for them at the end of this trip.

“This is nice,” William said, stretching his legs out and tilting his head back to look at the stars.

Y/n hummed in agreement. “Even though we are world’s worst campers in history?”

“Especially because of that.”

She smiled, leaning her head against her knees. “I don’t think I’ve laughed this much in a long time.”

William turned his head to look at her, his expression softer than usual. “Me neither.”

The way he was looking at her made Y/n’s stomach flip, but she forced herself to push the feeling away.

As the days went by, Y/n found herself slipping into a dangerous kind of comfort.

…

They got lost on a hike. Twice.

"Are you sure we’re going the right way?" she asked.

"Of course I am," William said, though his eyes were filled with uncertainty.

"That’s what you said twenty minutes ago, and we ended up in the same place," Y/n pointed out.

"Fine. I’ll check the GPS - oh."

"What?"

"There’s no service."

Y/n groaned. "Great. We’re going to die out here. With no water and food."

"Relax," William said, placing his arm around her shoulder. "Worst case scenario, we have to eat berries and live in the woods forever."

"Oh, fantastic. That was totally my life plan."

He grinned. "Could be worse. At least you’re stuck with me."

And that was the problem.

The more time they spent together, the more Y/n realized she didn’t want to be stuck with anyone else.

But she also knew nothing could ever happen between them. He lived in San Jose. His life was there, his career, his future. She was in Sweden, and as much as she wanted to believe in something more, reality was much different.

On their last night, as they sat by the fire, Y/n found herself staring at the flames, lost in thoughts.

William nudged her gently. “You okay?”

She forced a smile. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

“About?”

She hesitated before answering. “How things are going to go back to normal after this. You’ll go back to San Jose, I’ll stay in Sweden…”

William was quiet for a moment. Then, he shifted slightly, turning to face her fully.

“Would you ever move?”

Y/n was taken aback. She turned her head to look at him, trying to read his expression. “Move where?”

He shrugged, but there was something careful about the way he asked. “Anywhere.”

Y/n swallowed, her heart pounding. “I don’t know. Maybe. If the reason was good enough.”

William held her gaze for a second longer before he let out a small, almost nervous chuckle. “Good to know.”

Y/n wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but as he reached over and squeezed her hand lightly, she wondered if maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t as alone in her feelings as she thought.

[popponn]

xavier rarely wakes up before you. most of the time, you will find his eyes still closed with his arms clinging to you or around you one way or another. but, on the days when his blue eyes are the ones that greet you first thing in the morning, you will be greeted with a soft whispered ‘good morning’ spoken in his morning voice. these kinds of mornings will start slowly with a shared smile and quiet conversation about mundane, small things. it could be the cat he saw yesterday or that particularly funny part from his dream. then, it will end with his nose brushing against yours gently. sometimes it will lead to a kiss, sometimes he will simply stay there with your forehead against each other’s. sometimes, it will lead to long hours of cuddling and going back to sleep. it is after all that, he will finally start his day along with yours. though, of course, as an end note, even if he doesn’t wake up first, please do always let him begin his days with you. he will still be drowsy—like always—but in a very embarrassingly obvious manner that his expression can’t hide, he will be happy.

zayne seems to develop a habit of taking care of your clothing at some point. it is subtle enough, but it is undeniably there. he often crouches down to tie your shoes for you—without you asking, despite your protests. if you say he doesn’t have to, he will simply say that it is more effective or faster that way, or that he simply doesn’t see a reason not to. if you feel bad, you could return him by doing a favor anyway, he reasons. afterward, it will continue into him adjusting the scarf around your neck, tidying a crease on your collar, or zipping up your jacket right before the two of you go out. he too doesn’t shy from putting your lipstick or lip balm on for you. at some point, during a break day, you might find him sitting on the sofa, reading and watching tutorials about skincare or makeup. if you approach him, expect him to ask you to watch it along with him, though in through mister doctor fashion it might lead to journal and research about cosmetics that he will read to you.

rafayel loves your attention. and it shows—in a very annoying way that unfortunately has found its way to be adorable to your heart. he unabashedly wears a smug smile and keeps on mentioning how you couldn’t stay away from him whenever he spoons you. if you are the one spooning him, turns out he is not above acting like a spoiled brat who demands affection until he is sated. in a way, it is similar to having a puppy that is a fish and a lover at the same time. but beyond all his louder actions, there will always be a part of him that is softer in the way of a cozy rain and a warm blanket. it’s the part of him who will always listen to whatever you say and the part of him that will, will always have you as his ‘happy ending’ no matter what. the part of him that shows itself in the form of a smile full of yearning even when he cups your face with both of his hands. he has his secrets and his affection for you is not one of them. yet, despite everything, it still feels like he couldn’t quite manage to get all of it out for you. so, at least, when it is time for him to give you a glimpse into how much he holds you dear, do give him your undivided attention.

[lj-lephemstar]

Progress Checkup! (Aug. 2024) | Scratchin' Melodii Devlog

Hello again, strangers! I thought it was about time to add another devlog again! This time I'm trying out a more in-depth approach to this, to somewhat make up for the lack of gameplay previews. Let me know what you think!

For starters, I've revamped the rhythm system 🤯 (like... again! 🤯) Don't freak out, though. Surface level gameplay-wise, it works mostly the same as it did in the last demo, so you won't have to re-learn much. I just needed to redo some things so it'd be easier for me to work with in the long-run while developing the rest of the game. Way less headaches await me now when working on new levels. In the process, I was also able to incorporate some neat new aspects to it and make the core aspects of it better. If you're familiar with older rhythm games, it's now a tad closer to what the dog was doing.

The opponent's icon has been covered up to avoid spoilers. I might be updating all of the character icons soon, actually.

I still plan to revamp the game's tutorial at some point. Something I've noticed is that often, new players don't seem to understand the purpose of the beat dots. Initially, I thought the idea that "on the beat dot = on beat" would come as second nature to new players without need for explanation. However, I hadn't considered that many players are likely to be more familiar with rhythm games that don't even have beat dots in this manner, so they're probably inclined to focus more on getting as close as possible to matching the order of the suggested inputs, and in this game, even at the cost of being off-beat if they aren't keeping up. So, I think the most important thing I need to emphasize when I give a new in-game explanation of the mechanics is the beat dots and really getting new players into the mindset of prioritizing the tempo. I think I should also have the tutorial's gameplay portion try to discretely get the player used to the control scheme to help people who haven't particularly memorized where all of their controller's buttons are without looking. This'll probably result in the tutorial song shown in the demo being replaced in the full game. I do still like its instrumental though, so maybe that will be repurposed for another game feature, at least.

There's probably some guy out there who just REALLY loves Astral Advisory as the tutorial song that will be very upset to hear this. In solidarity with them, I've depicted their enthusiasm with this rather silly image I've created.

As for other levels, now that I've got the updated rhythm system up and running, the 3rd rival battle of act 2 is almost complete. If you didn't like the Pow-Notes in Supastar Tennis, you might not like me very much after this! So far, I think this level has some of the best and most ambitious animation work I've done yet, so I hope you'll look forward to it. Not sure when I'll show a gameplay preview of this level, but I probably will at some point.

Also, I've made a new logo for the game! I'll gradually be phasing this one in to replace the old one, but until the full game releases you'll probably still see the old one hanging around too in some places.

That's all I can talk about for now, but thanks for reading! - LJ

[elyvorg]

The Real Reason That Sissel Refused to Help

(or: the subtle genius of Ghost Trick’s tutorial)

“I just want to find my own lost memory. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

Here’s a post in which I talk about this particular part of Ghost Trick’s story, which I’m keeping as vague as possible outside of the spoiler cut, but those who’ve finished the game should know what I’m referring to. What’s actually going on here is rather interesting, and paints our friend Sissel in a much less negative light than the face-value assumption I tend to see most people jumping to with this.

First, though, I have written a fic illustrating this idea in narrative form rather than lengthily explaining it. If you’re interested, I recommend you go read that first before reading this, because being shown is more fun than being told!

(Also, spoilers, obviously. Go play Ghost Trick if you haven’t; it’s so good and absolutely not the kind of thing you want to be spoiled for.)

So, in the original timeline, Sissel refused to help Missile save his mistresses, stating that he just wants to find his own lost memories.

It could easily seem at a glance like Sissel’s character development over the course of the game is that he started off selfish, only caring about his own mystery, and it’s only through getting attached to everyone throughout the night that he begins to care about others and the bigger picture. As such, his refusal to help Missile in the original timeline is easy to read as being born of that, since this was early on when Sissel still only cared about himself.

But… it’s not actually that simple, because Sissel isn’t as selfish in the beginning as one might think. Sure, he’ll say things like “I have to focus on my own mystery”, or “this is all for my own benefit”. But that doesn’t actually match up with his actions. His own mystery may be, in theory, his number one priority, but a remarkably close second priority for him is to save the lives of any dead person he happens to come across. Even very early on, before he’s grown to care about any of these people!

He doesn’t hesitate to save Missile, despite having zero reason to assume that this little doggie will be any help with his mystery. The second time he finds Lynne dead, when he’s getting to talk to her and learns that she doesn’t actually know much about him and probably won’t be able to help him because she’s got her own case to pursue tonight, he still reassures her that she doesn’t owe him and he’s going to save her life anyway.

And even right at Lynne’s very first death, in the game’s opening narration, Sissel makes a point that he doesn’t want to stand back and let her get shot, and that he feels bad for her, despite her being a complete stranger!

Evidently, even right at the beginning, Sissel isn’t selfish. He just thinks he is. Because cats can be tsundere like that.

Sissel:  “Why am I so determined to save this woman? After all, it’s not as if I know her. My reason is twofold. Number one, I’m not the type to leave women lying around, discarded like trash.”

(Here’s a bit from later in chapter 1 featuring Sissel being amusingly surprised by his own altruistic streak. He seems to expect to only care about himself – yet here he is, not wanting to leave a stranger lying dead if he can help it. Not so selfish after all, huh?)

So if that’s not the problem in the original timeline, then what is? Why does Sissel leave Missile to deal with saving his ladies alone when he’d have no reason not to try and help? – after all, he hasn’t been given a fake time limit in this timeline! He’s not even in a hurry with his own mystery! For that matter, Sissel was still there in the junkyard at the beginning – why didn’t he just save Lynne himself?

We can get a good indication of what the issue is from that very same opening narration I was just talking about.

Sissel:  “Now, I’m not the kind of guy who can just stand back and watch a poor woman get shot. But I have just one little problem… I’m already dead myself.”

Sissel:  “I feel bad for her, sure. But what can I do? I’m dead. But just as I was thinking that…”

The real problem is not that he doesn’t care about saving a stranger’s life. Rather, it’s that, because he’s dead, he doesn’t think he can. He’s not expecting to magically have ghost superpowers; why would he?

And it’s just as he was thinking that he can’t do anything (which, while part of his screen-filling monologue narration, was still his thoughts and therefore something any nearby ghost could hear)… that Ray speaks up to tell him that actually he can save her.

Sissel:  “Huh?” (Me? Save her? Uh, how?)

Immediately, Sissel questions the notion once again, not with a why but with a how. It’s not that he doesn’t want to; he simply doesn’t think it’s possible.

This general idea continues throughout the entire tutorial, which is absolutely packed with lines that show Sissel being deeply sceptical about the idea that he could possibly save someone’s life or alter someone’s fate.

Once Ray’s taught him about his basic ghost tricks and he’s managed to delay Lynne’s death by a few moments… she still ends up dead anyway. And Sissel thinks that’s it. Because of course he does. Even if he can stop time and manipulate objects, he has zero reason to believe that his powers can undo a death that’s already happened.

Sissel:  “In the end, it looks like her fate remains unchanged. So what good are these ‘ghost tricks’ of mine? But just as I was thinking this…”

Sissel:  “It looks like my ghost tricks didn’t do much good.” (She still ended up just as dead as before.)

He even ends up feeling like his new superpowers are barely worth anything, because he can play a few little tricks on someone, but that’s not enough to save someone’s life, is it?

Ray:  “Isn’t it a shame to see such a pretty young woman lying here discarded like a piece of trash?” Sissel:  “But what can I do? She’s already dead.”

Ray:  “And while she’s resting, you can save her life.” Sissel:  “Oh, sure. You make it sound so easy.”

And again, he’s very dismissive of Ray implying or telling him that he can do something about this. After all, how could that be possible any more?

In particular, there’s this vital little bit of trickery here…

Ray:  “Now what do you suppose will happen if you possess a corpse?” Sissel:  “Nothing, because I already tried that, remember? And nothing happened at all.”

…in which Sissel assumes his powers just don’t work on corpses, because he’s already tried and failed to do anything with “his” corpse. If he’d been alone, without Ray to guide him through things, he most likely wouldn’t have even tried to possess Lynne’s corpse in the first place, because he would have had no reason to believe it would achieve anything!

(Meanwhile, Missile in the original timeline also had zero reason to believe he could do anything for Kamila, but he was so anguished and desperate that of course he would have tried anyway. He’d try anything to save her, because he is good and loyal and Dog. So he was able to discover his time-rewinding powers where Sissel didn’t, and thus he passed that knowledge onto Sissel in the game’s timeline.)

And as Ray tells Sissel that he can in fact rewind time to redo the last moments of Lynne’s life, he’s completely dumbfounded and bewildered by the very idea of it.

Sissel:  “Are you serious?! Back through time?!”

Sissel:  “But this is crazy! None of it makes any sense!”

Ray:  “To the time four minutes before this woman was murdered!” Sissel:  “H-Hey, wait a second! I still don’t know what you’re talking about!”

What is this lamp even talking about?! Of course turning back time isn’t possible! He had no reason to believe it was possible, even as part of his new wacky ghost powers.

(Meanwhile, when Sissel is saving Missile in the game, we get a little exchange that shows Missile being completely unfazed by the idea that Sissel’s brought them back in time. It’s no weirder than humans walking around on two legs, right? One way or another, the cat can barely wrap his head around it, while the dog sees it as perfectly plausible.)

One thing Ray says more than once during the tutorial is, “The best thing to do is try it.” Because Sissel is being so stubbornly cynical that he will not take this desk lamp’s word about how useful his powers are and has to literally be pushed into trying it himself in order to believe it, every time.

Even after seeing for himself that he can go back in time and watch Lynne’s death again, Sissel still manages to be pessimistic about this.

Ray:  “And there you have it. The last four minutes of her life.” Sissel:  [strained] “No…!” Ray:  “It’s kind of ironic, when you think about it. A woman toyed with by fate, and a man toyed with by a ghost.” Sissel:  “But she still died.”

He went back in time, and she still died. There’s still apparently nothing he can do, right? No, Sissel, just have a bit of patience! This is just the mechanic that lets you understand what happens before you dive in and start changing things; you’ll get your chance soon!

And once he’s finally successfully saved Lynne…

Ray:  “You used your powers to avert that woman’s fate.” Sissel: “So I did that?”

Sissel still has a moment of being surprised at the notion that he was capable of something like this.

It’s really striking to me, watching over chapter 1 again with this thought about original-timeline Sissel in mind, just how many lines to this effect there are throughout the whole thing. The writers did not need to include this many moments of Sissel being sceptical, or even any of them at all, really, in order for the tutorial to do its job as a tutorial! But they’re here anyway, because it is in fact really important to the story that Sissel is somebody who would not have tried hard enough to figure out that his powers can undo deaths unless he had someone holding his hand through it the whole way.

The way old-Missile talks about it when he’s explaining himself at the end, it’s easy to get the takeaway that the most important thing he did as Ray was to take advantage of Sissel’s supposed self-interest: by not contradicting his misconception that he’s the man in red, by telling him Lynne is the key to his mystery (a half-truth at best), and by giving him a fake time limit. And it’s not that those things didn’t help, but they’re not really the most important thing at all.

The most important thing Ray did for Sissel, the thing that Missile absolutely most needed to spend those ten years waiting to do, was exactly what it appeared to be during chapter 1: to teach him how to use his powers to save lives. Because the number one thing the Sissel from the original timeline needed but didn’t get was, quite literally, a tutorial.

There’s a little bit more to it than this, though. So, okay, Sissel in the original timeline didn’t know he had the vital time-rewinding power. But then that begs the question: why didn’t Missile just tell him that while asking for his help?

For that matter, why did Sissel leave Missile shortly after being asked for help? It can’t just be because he urgently had to go and look elsewhere for answers to his own mystery, because he’s not pressed for time here. And he was apparently chilling at the junkyard just eavesdropping on the investigators’ conversations before Missile showed up. Why the sudden shift in locations now of all times, when there’s someone here who’s actually talking to him – the first person Sissel would have been able to talk to all night – and asking him for help?

The issue here, I believe, is that this isn’t just a matter of Sissel’s lack of understanding what his powers can do. It’s also a matter of emotional state – both Sissel’s, and Missile’s. Both of them would have been incredibly stressed out and upset, Sissel due to his loss of memory and seeing deaths in front of him that he doesn’t think he can do anything about, and Missile due to his mistresses’ deaths that he also can’t do anything about, even though he has a superpower that lets him try but it just isn’t quite enough.

How would Missile and Sissel’s interaction go when they’re both so upset like this? There’s actually a fun little bite-sized example of this in the actual canon timeline. During the last desperate struggle to escape the sinking submarine…

Missile:  “Sissel! Y-Y-Y… You’re not telling Miss Lynne to leave poor Miss Kamila behind, ARE YOU?!” Sissel:  *sigh* “Could you just be quiet for a minute, Missile?”

Missile and Sissel are bound to be both extremely anxious and stressed in this situation – trapped in the submarine, Lynne and Kamila in danger of drowning if they don’t do something. And in that state of mind, it seems that Missile is prone to eschewing logic to be even more loudly desperately protective of his mistresses… while Sissel especially does not enjoy Missile being Loudly Boisterously Dog in his ear when he’s stressed out. After all, cats and dogs have very opposite and very incompatible ways of dealing with stress!

So it follows that the conversation between Sissel and Missile in the original timeline would likely have been an incoherent emotional mess, in which neither of them properly communicated their side of things at all. Missile must have just never even thought to tell Sissel that he can rewind time and therefore saving his ladies is actually possible in theory, because that was already obvious to him! He wouldn’t be capable of understanding why Sissel would be so reluctant about this.

As for why Sissel wasn’t just reluctant to help but outright ran away and sealed the deal – I think, more than anything, it’s got to be down to the fact that he couldn’t stand having Missile being so loud and energetic at him when he was this upset. Especially not while repeatedly saying that he can save them, which would be the exact thing Sissel has been miserably convinced that he just can’t. It follows that he’d just have wanted to run and hide somewhere Missile isn’t, where he can have some peace and quiet. Cats who are upset often like to hide and isolate themselves to feel safer.

There’s one other part in the game’s tutorial that suggests the problem originally might have been partly a matter of Sissel’s emotions:

Ray:  “Hello there. How are you feeling? Not very well, I imagine. A terrible tragedy, what happened tonight.” Sissel:  “………” [neutral face] Ray:  “Ah, ignoring me, are you? It’s a little too early for you to be so stiff and cold, I’d say.” Sissel:  [smiling] “Ah, so it was you. You were that voice in my head, right?”

This is very noteworthy, because Ray is the only person in the entire game who ever takes the time to ask Sissel how he’s feeling. He wouldn’t be feeling great after waking up dead, watching a woman die in front of him and failing to save her, would he?

It seems like old-Missile, with his years of wisdom and time to reflect on everything, realised that his approach to getting Sissel’s help last time really was way too focused on his own problems, and he never even stopped to think about how Sissel must have been feeling. So here, he presents himself as a friend, someone who cares about Sissel and his journey, because that’s exactly what Sissel needs! This poor kitty must have felt so lonely and sad and helpless in the original timeline. But hearing Ray’s words, and realising that this desk lamp is someone semi-familiar, does seem to cheer him up at least a little bit here! Sissel really is a character whose core desperate need is to just not be alone, even if you’d be hard-pressed to get him to admit that at the beginning.

Interestingly, way back when I first played Ghost Trick, on the DS soon after it came out, I found myself intrigued by Sissel in the original timeline. I vaguely toyed with the idea of writing a fic exploring how he was feeling and why he refused, though I never got around to actually doing so. Then recently, the game coming out in HD rekindled my hyperfixation and made me think about it some more and actually end up writing that fic after all. And the thing is, back then, I didn’t remotely consciously understand any of this stuff I’ve just explained here. But even so, I find it neat how I still had this wordless sense that what was going on with Sissel must have been so much more than just selfishness – that he must have been so sad in that timeline and that had to be the real basis of why he didn’t help.

[starlos-art-stuff-lol]

Wouldn't it be messed up if Portal was like, a time loop or something

Chell escapes in Portal one after a few hours of puzzles, but she immediately passes out and get dragged back in. Chell's sent to sleep for [9999999-] And when she wakes up, she spends another few conscious hours escaping again, but for real this time.

At least, that's what seems to happen in the story.

As a player, you experience the game very differently from Chell.

For example; imagine you're a new player. You start Portal 1, and after the tutorial/easy section, the puzzles start to get harder. They take longer, one of the puzzles seems to require timing in a way that almost feels like it goes against the game rules. You take a lot of time to complete the puzzles, you die multiple times, and that's fine. The game is meant to be played that way. You beat gladOS and escape. This playthrough is for fun.

You start up portal 2, you watch a few cutscenes/scripted events. It's fun that you get to walk around and look at whatever you want, though the room is a bit dim, and Wheatley is kind of the same color as most other things, so it's not Immediately easy to find him when he's talking to you. You solve more puzzles, get betrayed by Wheatley, learn to never love anything, solve more puzzles, shoot Wheatley into space, get broken up with by GladOS, and you're confused by the turrets singing some opera song at you before you leave. You assume it's the devs saying "good job" but like, it's kinda out of place.

...

...So that was fun. Really fun actually. The humor was great, the characters were endearing, and you check out the multiplayer campaign.

You decide to play again.

...

You wake up in that one room again. You question why this bedroom is covered by glass from 3 sides. You hop through the easy levels with ease. You poke a stick at some of the levels, seeing if there are other ways to beat them, and you don't find any. You hop skip and jump through the test chambers, remembering the solutions to most of them. You don't fall for the fire pit near the end, which you didn't the first time, but you didn't know how to escape it and didn't think to portal out of the chamber. You beat gladOS pretty fast now, after figuring out how to beat her the first time. You try to explore, you think about this game know knowing the context of Portal 2. This playthrough is for lore.

You start Portal 2. You try to see if you can do anything in the starting room, which you can't. You know Wheatley's fate, you try to avoid getting attached, but you still hesitate to plug him into gladOS's body. You solve puzzles, trying to explore but find that this game is a lot more streamlined than you previously thought, despite it's scale. You try to save the defective turrets from incineration, but after a certain point, you run out of patience as they just keep coming. You decide to jump into Wheatley's Pit during the part where he kills you, just as a bit, and discover that he has unique dialogue for that. You hear the adventure core tell you to make Wheatley say a certain thing so he can snap back with a quip, and then Wheatley says that thing. None of that happened in your last playthrough. You realize that the turret symphony is GladOS's love letter to Chell, and it's kinda beautiful. You tear up a bit.

...

You finish again. Now what? You love these characters now, but there's not much left to discover. Do you play the game again? Just because?

Sure, why not?

But what's the goal now? Maybe you can try to blast through the games as fast as possible? Sure, you think you've memorized the test chambers by now.

...

You boot up portal again, pushing against the wall until the portal opens and co.pleting the tutorial as fast as possible. You dash through the levels, but end up on several hangups. You think about how you could have done this thing faster, or how you could have avoided that death. You beat the game in only a few hours. This playthrough is about speedrunning.

You start Portal 2. You frantically run around the starting room, unable to skip the cutscene as it's an in-game event. You hop through the wall, grab the portal gun, and blast through the puzzles. You're slower here, you feel like you're getting snagged on ledges more often, and the puzzles are harder to both remember and perform. By the end of the game, you feel like you could have gotten a much better time. Regardless, the whole ordeal is only a few hours.

...

You could have done less, you could have gone faster. You need a better time.

Again.

...

You press start, you speed through the levels. You run face-first into the corner of a wall, but otherwise make few mistakes. This run is about better speedrunning. You shave half an hour off your time.

You press "new game", you still can't escape the first cutscene, but you ignore everyone's dialogue, you figure out the physics of the game and stop getting stuck walking into ledges, you shave an hour off your time.

...

You're content with this. You aren't a professional speedrunner, but you went pretty fast.

...You're still not ready to let go of this game, yet.

You look online for exploits. Maybe you can find some deleted content.

You figure out how to activate debug mode, and realize you can use this to look behind the scenes.

...

You start the first game again, and turn on noclip. You give yourself the 2-portal portal gun immediately, and start checking out the out-of-bounds areas. You're freaked out by the giant white angelic glowing void beyond the game, but get accustomed to it quickly. You find an unused cake room, you look in the "scientist-examination" rooms outside of most of the chambers, which aren't that interesting, but it's nice to see them. You attempt to teleport between levels, but you find it easier to travel by elevator, if only because you don't have to type as much. Honestly, there's not much to find. This playthrough is about going beyond the bounds of the game.

You start the second game again. The setpieces for this game are a lot more expensive. You finally escape the apartment at the beginning of the game, and realize it's fully modeled from the outside too. You spend hours just looking at the gigantic setpieces from the outside, marveling at how gigantic and beautiful everything is. You don't think to look for Easter eggs more than thrice, as you're so dedicated to simply looking at all the complicated functions of everything. You also notice the light bridge is humming, like it's literally singing. It sounds familiar. The moon exists upside-down, below the boss battle, which didn't even occur to you until you saw it. It seemed like a cutscene up until now.

...

You've gained a new complex appreciation for this game. But you can't help but wonder if this was how you were supposed to experience things. Probably not, but like, whatever. You go into Tumblr and look up portal 2 fanart

...

...

...uhh, where was I going with this?

OH RIGHT TIMELOOPS

Uhh ok so. Thanks for reading all that. Bonus post time

So, what would The Portal Series's gameplay loop look like in-universe?

I mean, it wouldn't look like anything, the characters keep forgetting, but like

Chell remembers, in theory

I mean, she learns, you learn when you die, she should too, since you're controlling her

Imagine waking up in a mysterious place, not knowing where you were before this point or how you got here, so you have to escape.

And you die in a pit of acid.

And then you're not dead. You're at the point right before you died.

First of all, fucking ow. Second of all, how do you not die again? How did you undie just now? (You don't know you're a fictional character in a video game lol idiot)

You die over and over, eventually, you beat the person who keeps killing you, but you're so exhausted and starved that you pass out immediately after getting flung outside.

You wake up, in a small apartment. An electronic voice is telling you want to do. Your last memory is setting dragged backwards, supposedly into the facility again. You don't want to die, but you can't seem to open the door out and your robotic male not-gladOS caretaker doesn't seem to want to harm you. You go back to sleep, exhausted.

You wake up, and this tiny cute robot-

Look I'm not writing a pov fanfic for you, let's skip to the good stuff

You wake up, back in the fucking building again. You escaped, she kicked you out. She doesn't seem to remember. You don't die this time, and the same shit happens.

The blue fucker, you feel kinda bad for him, but he also punched you into a pit, so-

He doesn't remember anything either.

...

Like, that's a whole story there. Chell going crazy because her life is following Undertale RESET rules except she can't change anything without fundamentally breaking spacetime (again, she doesn't know she's a videogame character so that's what no clipping looks like to her)

That'd be so messed up right?

[password-door-lock]

Naturally, Unknown did not expect, when he brought you back to Magenta, that you’d be so glib about the whole affair. You talked and joked with him on the car ride here, apparently unaware of (or, at the very least, unperturbed by) the blindfold covering your eyes. You didn't seem at all fazed by his rough handling as he steered you through the compound itself, and you even complimented the design of his crisp white suit. So perhaps Unknown should’ve been prepared for your reaction when he finally took off your blindfold in the intelligence room. 

Instead, he’s a little caught off guard by the way you move your hand up to cover your mouth and stifle your laughter. “Oh my god,” you giggle.

“I told you I had a present for you here in paradise,” Unknown points out, trying to sound smooth and unbothered. He doesn’t understand what you’re laughing at. The gift he picked out for you might be simple, but he feels it suits the occasion and fits your interests well enough, 

“Yep,” you manage between giggles, kneeling down to examine the gift that Unknown left out for you. “It’s just… earlier, I thought you were hitting on me.”

Unknown thinks back to your compliant behavior throughout this entire ordeal. “And you went along with it.” Apparently, this whole time, you’ve had some sort of crush on him. Maybe if he’d known what to look for, he would’ve picked up on the signs. 

“Um, yeah?” Your amused expression has transmuted into one of disbelief. “Anyway, what was I supposed to think? You called me and told me to entertain you with my frightened face!”

“Yes,” Unknown confirms. He did, in fact, say that, which might explain why you’d think he was interested in you. In your defense, he is interested in you— but he doesn’t see how that would be mutually exclusive with the gift he’s given you. “But I also said I had a present for you, prince(ss). Did you think I was lying?”

“I thought it was a euphemism,” you admit, “Like, ‘yes, hello, cutie, I have a little gift for you,’” You lower your voice into an annoyingly passable impression of Unknown’s most seductive sneer. He really did not expect this when he brought you to paradise, but perhaps he should’ve seen it coming. “And then you’d go in for the kiss.”

“Would you rather have that kind of present instead, cutie?” Unknown drawls, establishing himself in a languid leaning position against the wall. Despite himself, he’s looking forward to hearing your answer. You have the absolute audacity to giggle at him. 

“God, you’re so cute,” you observe without malice. To your great fortune, Unknown discovers that he doesn’t mind being labeled as something so trifling as cute when you’re the one doing the labeling. Still, you shouldn’t press your luck. “I think I’ll be keeping the socks,” you decide, picking up the parcel and carefully removing the red ribbon tied around it so as not to damage the bow. Unknown feels gratified that you’re pleased with his handiwork— he did spend several minutes following a metube tutorial to dress the present that way— though his heart sinks at the knowledge that he’s apparently missed his chance for a kiss. “The penguin print is really cute, and anyway, I didn’t bring any luggage. These socks are the only change of clothes I have.”

Unknown chafes a bit at your decision to describe a pair of penguin-print socks with the same adjective you just used on him, even if you did mean it as a compliment. “I can get you clothes to wear.”

“If you want,” you flop down in Unknown’s desk chair, looking unfairly attractive. “But… since you gave me a present, shouldn’t I get you something in return?” You fashion your lips into a pout, being obvious and really altogether corny.

But, then again, Unknown is a man who tried to lure you to paradise with a pair of novelty holiday socks from a department store Christmas bin. Clearly, corniness is not a dealbreaker for him. “What did you have in mind, sweetheart?” 

You shudder at his tone. Then you have the nerve to say, “I was thinking maybe some Christmas tree socks?”

Unknown turns around to face the wall, against which he presses his forehead. “Okay.” He had thought you’d want to kiss him. After all, you seemed so eager when you arrived. But he’s not interested in pushing for something that you don’t want to do. 

“I’m kidding,” you announce, “Let’s make out. I left my wallet at the apartment, anyway. If I got you the socks, I would have to steal them, and then we’d both get in trouble.” 

Unknown is so excited to follow your suggestion that he ignores the second part of your utterance entirely. The placement of your wallet is a topic to be explored at a later date.

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 19 - Mad Dash for the Kitchen Asuras

Here we are on Day 4. Still awaiting word that will probably never come.

Are we ready to explore the probability that we've been abandoned to fend for ourselves yet?

Also, Hiruko talks about Alexa exactly the same way my family talks about our cat.

Yeah, that's my thinking too.

Also, Miss Amemiya. Very polite of you, Ima. Darumi deserves the respect.

Ooh, good catch. If Alexa isn't here then he can't get pissy about who eats what. Though I would still have some reservations by the possibility of an enforcement mechanism of some kind. We don't know what the rules are, so eating things other than dry bread might make you explode or something if you aren't using the Infuser.

We don't know what the rules are. There is a non-zero chance that all of the food in the real world is somehow lethal to anyone who hasn't Blood Cocooned themselves and the dry bread is actually for all-a y'all's safety.

Only one way to find out. I guess Now and Then have volunteered to be our guinea pigs. If you guys explode, while try to jab your corpses with Infusers and see if that's good enough for the Revive-o-Matic.

Gaku, you work for slave wages to support a family. How is something so basic as "A rule only exists so long as it can be enforced" lost on you? Have you never had to shoplift to get by?

Now and Then have definitely had to shoplift to get by. I did not miss the part where they're orphans or some shit.

But I also would have expected better of you, Gaku. Shame on you. Go outside and steal from the pharmacy until you learn.

There you go. That's better. You know, if you're this much of a stickler for obedience to authority, I bet you aren't working a union job, huh? That might be part of your problem. You're letting the capitalists take advantage of you. If you ever see your home again, you should considering unionizing.

And stealing from corporations where needed. Learn from the orphans, Gaku. They know how to get by in this cruel, cruel world. Unless they explode.

I'd at least give Now and Then like an hour to see if something happens to them. But if y'all want to dive in now then be my guests. Since we now have the full team eating, we all get to share in whatever fate may or may not await.

To be fair, that was a staged event for shock and intimidation. I don't think Monokuma could actually summon the Spears of Gungnir wherever he wanted. He just wanted Class 78 to think he could.

Now, AI Monokuma and the Exisals, THOSE were another story.

OH WOW I FORGOT YOU WERE HERE

Full team -1 eating, I guess.

Not joining the others in making a mad dash for the kitchen Asuras?

...I kinda think that's the point, Hiruko. He gave us the tools we need to defend the school and then removed himself to a place where we can't keep pressuring him for information.

We definitely aren't going to find him, but if it makes you feel better, sure.

In any case, while they're searching the school, I have one other tutorial I need to learn about.

I mean, I'm also going to be hanging out with peeps too. Sorry, Hiruko, but I refuse to only use my time productively.

VR Training simulations are practice battles for grinding XP. Yeah, that makes sense. Much bigger and more complicated than the little battles I ran into while exploring, too.

Darumi's MVP mugshot is fantastic. 10/10.

I don't know how the level system works but it could hypothetically also be good for bringing underleveled characters up to speed. That's a problem you run into sometimes in other TRPG franchises like Fire Emblem.

Aha, here we go. This is the level-up system and--

I FUCKING KNEW IT

That WAS what the Lv.4 and MAX at the end of her two skill names meant! Hiruko's fucking near-maxed out on two separate skills while the rest of us are level 1.

She has played this game before.

Alright, while y'all look around for something we aren't going to find, I'm gonna go find out what Darumi's crying about.

Well, shit. That is a crisis. In fact, it's a bigger crisis than Sirei's vanishing because we actually have a >0% chance of success searching for it.

Why would that matter, Takumi? Even if something is cheap, it still sucks to lose it. Especially if it's something you need to use regularly. Gonna flick your nose if you think like a capitalist again.

Relatable. Sometimes you just need to let it out.

Some people's problems can't be swept under the rug by running up and declaring, "I'm your Daddy now!" Take your anti-crying propaganda somewhere else, Takumi.

[achynshakey]

Official Introduction Post?

I've been lurking on this Hell-Site for far too long without making an introduction post and seeing as a lot of the blogs here prefer you to have one I thought I'd just get it over with

I want to clarify this immediately: To avoid any confusion! While this is not a kink/fetish blog- It is a Special Interest. Because unfortunately out of all the things I could get a special interest to, it had to be sick characters. Who would've guessed? (FML... XD)

But I know a lot of people who are looking for this do have a kink or fetish so I may tag things with kink because I want you guys to see it too! No judgement here.

I do still very much enjoy seeing people's art and fan-fiction they've wrote, I just don't experience the feeling of attraction people get. However I do get really happy when I see it. I love seeing my favourite characters taking care of other characters or just borderline suffering and seeing a whole community who feels the same is exciting!

Also Send me requests! With how wack my motivation can be at times, I've just decided to keep them open permanent because while I might not get to it straight away, I'll definitely get to your request at some point. :)

Type of Content:

With this being a sick-fic blog anything sickness related? I'll probably be posting. I know a lot of people have their own triggers (Especially with Emeto) so I will be tagging everything properly to avoid that!

Just expect the regular type of stuff.

-Colds

-Fevers

-Stomach Aches

-Illness (Obviously)

-Sneezing

-Vomiting

And I will always add a TW tag at the end of my posts so you're able to mute whatever makes you uncomfortable. (Ex. TW Emeto)

(You're able to mute tags in the settings of your Tumblr profile! Actual tutorial from Tumblr here )

Fandoms:

Hazbin Hotel

Helluva Boss

The Amazing Digital Circus

Murder Drones

There are the main fandoms that you'll probably see me on here making content for.

I haven't directly interacted with the fandom too much so far but I definitely love Caine, Jax, N, Angel, Vox and Alastor. So they'd probably be priority for requests.

I'm not heavily involved in any ships and don't have a preference. But I absolutely will not tolerate ANY form of ship hate on this blog, this part of the fandom is already niche enough as is, and we don't need that toxicity here.

Feel free to suggest things though, it's always a fun thing to do when I'm not working. :)

Final bit of Word Dump:

I am fully fine with people Reblogging and Commenting on my posts. I actually encourage it! It helps a lot with my motivation and I do love seeing what people put in the tags.

But while I'm here I'm still getting used to posting to Tumblr here so forgive me if I make some mistakes with the tagging, I'm just basing it off of what I've seen.

Important Note:

I'm trying something new by posting here, While it's not the end of the world if you guys figure out who I am. If you recognize my style, I'd prefer it if you didn't mention my username or mention it to me. Thank you.

[antsday]

first impressions of good coffee, great coffee (game)

the graphics, as always, are very cute and satisfying- which i expected considering good pizza great pizza's level of quality. although i did appreciate the slight animated bits and the occasional switch of scenery for the train sidestory- gpgp introduced that mechanic in chapter 5, so it makes sense that gcgc would use the same mechanics.

i have to say: it seems to me like gcgc isn't as concerned with dialogue trees or alternate options as gpgp was. like, in gpgp you could risk your pizzaria's stability by committing any number of bad decisions available to you via the dialogue trees (ex. giving pizza to the robber, giving pizza to the robot, etc). in gcgc, it almost seems like the game is encouraging you to try out different 'personality' pathways- like the option to be nicer or more antagonistic towards your rivals- but ultimately doesn't provide any of the same consequences of being nicer or meaner. i get that it might make gameplay more stressful to have dialogue actually matter, but i think it would be neat to have it affect the story even a little bit, especially since the game seems to like providing different sorts of reply options! this MIGHT just be me though, and it is a little too early to say for sure.

a lot of people do not like the energy feature but i find i actually don't mind it all that much! personally i enjoy the extra layer of pressure it adds to get as much done as i can, while also giving me an incentive to give myself a break every once in a while. i also heard somewhere that they're doing this so that they can roll the story beats along more cohesively, so.

i do get why it's frustrating though- a lot of the story objectives, after some of the wca trials, are pretty much just "reach level x", which means you just have to keep playing to get xp, which can be hard to manage w/ limited energy. on the other hand, i think the current level system kind of needs to go hand in hand with the energy feature- once all the ingredients are available and the current story has been completed, playing for the sole sake of advancement becomes kind of pointless, like how it is in gpgp, so after most of the general "story" has passed it'll probably also start adding seasonal events and such. this is a non-issue if you're playing entirely for leisure

this game isn't all that much like good pizza great pizza, which is both good and bad in a lot of ways. i find the customers to be pickier and the coffee-making mechanics to require much more precision than the pizza-making mechanics in gpgp, which is good if you want more challenging gameplay and bad if you're mostly trying to play a relaxing game.

this might also have smth to do with where both games are at atm- like, gpgp has been out for long enough that you can kind of get to a point where the game can't really surprise you gameplay-wise, and advancing in levels doesn't matter much, so the most important aspect is seasonal events and decor. gcgc on the other hand is still new, and the story has yet to unfold, so there's much less decor options or focus and obviously it hasn't started implementing seasonal items or events.

i'd say steaming milk is my least favorite part of the coffee making process in game. this is entirely a personal gripe, but i will also mention that the tutorial doesn't accurately explain how you do it. you're supposed to put the tip of the nozzle into the milk until the cloud button hits like, the middle of the yellow bar, and then push it all the way through until the temperature hits the yellow bar as well to perfectly steam milk.

overall i think i really enjoy the game, for me it hits that sweet spot of being challenging enough to want to keep playing but still easy-going enough that playing doesn't feel all that frustrating or tiring. the cute graphics help a lot. im excited to see where it goes!!

[scapegoated-if]

it occured to me belatedly that since youve only played 3 COG-system i.f.s that you MAY be unaware of code-diving?

it can be helpful if you want to study how other COG-system authors organize their code, or how they accomplished a bit of coding that you admire. (like this isnt a critique or anything, im surprised how many times you have scenes repeat per branch. it's not good or bad to do that, it's a style choice. tone in text is hard, so im just reaffirming youre fine and im not judging. anyway, i assume its a style choice anyway. it is not one ive seen often. so, for that style of coding, idk how many other i.f. authors youll find do the same, but im sure youll still find it fun to potentially code-dive in other people's demos and explore how they organize things)

it can also be helpful to know readers can code-dive and read your code and, if you happen to have spoilery label-codes within it, get hints from it. one of my favorite demos, Mind Blind over at the blog @/mindblindbard had no idea code-diving was a thing until code-divers themself informed her they could see that she wrote the secret identity of the Supposed To be Nameless Villain in the code. she was informed really early in the i.f. though, so VERY few people saw that whoopsie as she fixed the issue immediately and was much more careful about potential spoilers in her code

to code-dive is really easy. all you have to do is go to the dashingdon demo in question, and after the final backslash in the link, add the word "scenes". and then you click on which chapter you want to read the code of. that's it. idk how to code-dive on itch.io, you are on your own there, but i enjoy the simplicity of this. it helps me a lot in understanding stats and the tone/consequences of certain scenes that my autistic ass may not have picked up by accident within the text itself

anyway, thats a thing that people were talking about a lot in 2020 thats now been kind of Unsaid in years since, one of those "if you know, you know. it's an open secret, or i guess not 'secret', just... a thing that exists that we moved on from doing tutorials of and discussing after The Brief Time We Did Them, good luck finding that tho" type of things i guess?? idk how to explain it

anyway, just something that occured to me while reading the three demos you mentioned. i have a google doc of all my favorite authors, their blog-names, and demos, my MCs names and other short facts about that MC's playthrough, and i have like.. over 30? idk. point is, id love to add more to your list once you, on your own time, publish the ones you tried and liked. feels potentially overwhelming to bot wait until youve comfortably caught up in what you already are reading. besides, all the ones i favorite might be already ones you know and therefore making my recommendations moot lol

i digress. bye! have fun!!

I was going to keep this anon ask in my inbox just to have it stored for myself, but I thought this may be useful to any fellow new writers or anyone interested in developing their own IF; even anyone reading IFs in general that may be curious about the implications of certain choices.

I have been given some useful advice about my convoluted coding on CoGs (which was how I was alerted readers could view my coding at all haha). I won’t be making any changes to the Prologue as of yet, but I have applied these tips to Chapter 1–that so far is functional as far as I’m aware thank goodness.

I will apply code-diving to Scapegoated, thank you for letting me know it exists!

In general, I don’t mind anyone seeing my coding, simply because there aren’t any spoilers outside of what occurs in each chapter at a time. I feel like I conceal a lot, even to myself, just for the sake of keeping myself in the headspace of where I am in the story. But this has been extremely useful to know, you have no idea!

You’re the goat for this, friend.

Stay groovy!

[tbatthis]

for the benefit of no one except myself i’ve been keeping a media list all year, and i felt like being long-winded as shit so here is a jumbo post about all of them. these won’t be in chronological order at all and in fact is starting with the last game i finished this year because i thought grouping them into Blocks would be fun. for me. so yeah here we go

THE PS1 JRPG FREAK’S DELIGHTS:

FINAL FANTASY VIII- the quintessential sicko’s game. a game that has like five slow unskippable tutorials where they walk you step by step through exactly how their completely bizarre equipment system works and yet is still considered obtuse. not to me though i’m a genius and i understand exactly how to snap the game in two like a twig.

yes you have to memorize a lot of weird esoteric knowledge about deliberately avoiding levelling up by turning every enemy you see into a marketable trading card, because doing this thwarts the level scaling which does not account for your actual stats. yes you then have to understand that you can turn cards into items that can be turned into magic that can be turned into doing 2000 damage like three hours into the game. and yes, failure to do that results in going “uhh i junction. fire. to attack.” and wondering why every fight takes a million years.

those are all charm points. almost no other game leaves itself totally neutral to letting you annihilate its difficulty curve in the way ff8 does. it is built from the ground up to accomodate sickos of all stripes. it rules actually.

the story is really really good. also. don’t believe the liars, and the doubters. they were filtered by squall leonheart having a “character arc.” open your heart and your mind and you will learn that LOVE is REAL and also see like four of the funniest guys ever invented (laguna my beloved zell my beloved selphie my beloved irvine my beloved etc).

this one has like all the rawest limit breaks in the series that’s important. they made unique animations for when squall uses his on certain bosses it’s very cool.

i am stopping this segment here because ff8 is one of my favouritest games ever for my whole life and i am liable to talk Forever if left unchecked so. oops onto the entire rest of the list.

STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R- the thing about saying “almost no other game” lets you be as much of a weird weirdo about it as ff8 does is that you do indeed leave room for there to be… another.

this game rules. it really does the same thing ff8 does where it drops some way too elaborate sprawling system in front of you and if you’re an evil genius you can immediately cook up a brew most foul with it. i read through all the skills you can use and found all the shit about deliberately lowering your stats to gain more exp and just did the grinch smile and watched my guys get so juiced on bonus exp that their stat debuffs immediately stopped mattering. i cannot convey how much a game neutrally presenting you with the ability to be really stupid and letting you figure that out yourself Delights Me. it is so fun.

this is as good a time as any, in the ps1 freak game block, to say that we probably didn’t need to make games look any better than either of these. star ocean 2 looks craaaazy (yeah it has hd2d remake buffs but stillll its a 2d ps1 game at its core) and ff8 is like a 25 year old game about expressionless dolls and it still makes me go like Damn, This Is The Cutting Edge……. square you can stop making 1000 billion dollar hyperrealistic monster action games and make like. a turn-based game with fixed camera angles. it will look better. it will be cooler. trust. trust.

making your lead character a whiny incel voiced by spike spencer is hilarious btw. claude c kenny you are a deeply pathetic little man and i think they were very aware of that when they cast spike spencer. he isnt as pathetic as ashton though. my best friend ashton. go play this game to see ashton he’s sooo funny i love him.

FROMSOFT PERVERT BLOCK:

BLOODBORNE (LIKE TWICE IN A ROW)- i mean what am i gonna say it’s bloodborne. it’s like the sickest game ever. game precision engineered to let you do slow edgy rp walks that lead directly into parrying a nefarious beast, thus making you feel like an extremely raw deviantart drawing of shadow the hedgehog. the Perfect Game, some may well say, if they are me.

ELDEN RING AND ALSO ITS DLC- i definitely liked elden ring more this time around because i used a Large Stick to Squash Like Bug instead of trying to look cool and also because i shed my gamer pride and just used the damn summons. the base game bosses are still designed by a malevolent gestalt entity of every guy in the youtube comments saying using a greatsword in dark souls 1 is Cheating, and so i just summoned on almost all of them towards the end. i don’t fucking care. i’m not dignifying malenia with an honourable duel. she’s mean.

anyway the dlc was actually much much better. the bosses were almost always designed around the idea that maybe you are fighting them on your own and its like wow!!! fun!!! they even have a boss who is designed to have someone helping you out, but it doesn’t feel like you’re just turning the boss off by doing that!! crazy!!! i love fromsoft games actually!!!

let’s not talk about promised consort radahn.

SHE PRESS ON MY TURN TIL I SYSTEM:

PERSONA 3 RELOAD- aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis i love aigis my best pal aigis my funny animal aigis sorry about your dead boyfriend but i think wistfully remembering him in soft focus is good for your character arc.

most of the Remakey elements of this game. are good. i like how it looks. the menus are sick. giving strega some extra scenes is nice. the new tartarus stuff is fun. etc etc

i could kiiinda do without some of the extra fake-social link scenes for sees because a lot of them kinda feel like nothing EXCEPT THE AIGIS ONES WHERE SHE LOOKS AT COOL BUGS THOSE ARE IMMACULATE all the other ones feel like they last ten million years and can be summarized as “akihiko would like to be strong” yes i knew this from his actual character arc thank you.

and also the new anime cutscenes fuckin blooooow ass they lost every ounce of sauce the original scenes had they RUINED makoto’s awakening scene and i’ll NEVER forgive them in my WHOLE LIFE. however the ending made me sob again so its ok

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI 3: NOCTURNE- now this is a sicko’s game. this is what it’s all about. can we get some damn dungeons with obnoxious gimmicks back in the damn jrpgs. and a random encounter system, too. to facilitate the feeling of being trapped in hell. can we throw the youth of the day into the labyrinth of amala, to build character. and can shoji meguro bring back his finest vocalist, text-to-speech albert.

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI V: VENGEANCE- look i like smt5 a lot. i liked it enough to get vengeance. i think vengeance is a lot better in a lot of ways. story’s way better, has my evil sexy wife agrat bat mahlat etc etc HOWEVER we have lost our way as a people. random encounters. dungeons with a REAL gimmick, none of your reversing gravity to walk two meters and then landing on one giant platform nonsense. TEXT to SPEECH ALBERT. return to the promised paradise of sickos. please.

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: STRANGE JOURNEY- now THIS is a SICKO’S GAME. trap me in the labyrinth with the hee-ho choir sir. make me solve the warp maze. maybe make the final boss like 10% less sicko though. i’m only so strongy.

I HAVE WATCHED ONE TELEVISION SHOW WITH REAL HUMAN BEINGS IN IT:

AND IT IS LIKE SIX SEASONS OF FRIENDS- look i was trapped on a plane for nine hours enroute to important oomfie activities and the only inflight thing i wanted to watch was the fifth and sixth seasons of friends. and then the hotel didnt have netflix, youtube, etc but it did have a channel showing nothing but friends all day. i have seen the episode about ross’ apothecary table five times this year due to this channel. anyway friends is like 50% funny and 50% a miserable exercise in seeing very insecure white people write jokes about how scared they are of the defiance of gender roles. joey/phoebe should have happened fuck you mike

I HAVE WATCHED NUMEROUS ANIME THOUGH:

MY HERO ACADEMIA- its fun okay. every tryhard who pretends they hate this show please stop being scared of some guy on twitter calling shows you like mickey mouse clubhouse and just like. enjoy things. if you actually hate it ok thats not very plus ultra of you but ok

JUJUTSU KAISEN- please copypaste the entire mha segment for this one. its good actually. every single popular shonen everyone starts pretending they hate it and its the worst show ever at like. some arbitrary point around 150 chapters in. whatever man. gojo is funny

FRIEREN- [sexually explicit fantasy regarding ubel has been deleted] really good show makes me very emo. cant wait for season 2. [further, even more sexually explicit fantasy regarding ubel deleted].

BOCCHI THE ROCK- more like bocchi the kino. more like bocchi the peak. more like bocchi the blorbo. insane show. never stops finding the damn gag of the century, right after having previously cracked the last gag of the century. you should watch bocchi NOW 🫵

KAGUYA-SAMA LOVE IS WAR- i guess either this or bocchi is my favourite anime. idk dont ask me. kaguya is funny i like it a lot. it has the advantage of also making me emo which. actually bocchi does that too. hm. whatever both are really good

DANDADAN- they took his balls. awesome. they ended the anime in maybe the most ill-advised way possible so i guess i have to read the manga

DRAGON BALL SUPER SUPER HERO YEAH THATS THE NAME- man i love piccolo

WAHOO YIPPEE ITSA ME:

MARIO SUNSHINE- evil video game made by and for the immoral. as such it has been a favourite of mine for years. some truly hideous stuff in here. they put mario in a pachinko machine. he’s pachinko mario. mario sunshine is in many ways a “gamer’s vampire” to me. i will love it forever even as it rips me apart.

MARIO ODYSSEY- wow a mario game that was made with joy and love in its heart instead of cruel malice. i guesssss its better than sunshine because of that but i have a perverse soul.

PAPER MARIO THE THOUSAND YEAR DOOR- wow they should make another one of these eh. wonder what ever happened to mario rpgs. wish they’d make one. ah well guess i’ll just play this one for all eternity.

WHAT IF CHESS MADE YOU HORNY?:

FIRE EMBLEM FATES CONQUEST- the last time i played fates it was on hard mode and i said i’d never do it again and then i played it one year later and did it on hard mode again. idk. i love the incest game. i’m a siscon gamer. i only ever marry felicia who is not related to you in any way but nevertheless. i’m here for dogshit story and maps that push me through a mesh sheet

UNICORN OVERLORD- vanillaware have truly provided the definitive answer to the question, of what if chess made you horny. and the answer is the game would be very good. it probably needed like more map variety because you do just have the same objective for 80 hours. however i understand this would cut into the ten billion yen budget assigned to animating an elf girl’s tits as if each one were a living breathing sentient being unto itself.

ENOUGH! MY SHIP SAILS IN THE MORNING. I WONDER WHAT’S FOR DINNER?:

ZELDA: MAJORA’S MASK- hey did you know that until xenoblade 2 this was my favourite game of all time. that it probably fundamentally warped my entire brain and shaped my tastes to forever be the guy whose favourite entry in any series is the Weird Freak that came out after the Iconic Most Beloved Game. a pattern that matches ocarina of time, final fantasy 7, xenoblade 1, mario 64, etc etc.

i mean i am a genius for it. majora’s mask is the best zelda. it is the coolest shit ever. it is so emo. it has deku link, named time magazine’s Man of the Year 2000. the only flaw….? heh…. that it set the bar too high for every subsequent zelda……

ZELDA: ECHOES OF WISDOM- okay but this was one pretty good. i’m glad we got another link’s awakening remake artstyle game. i very much enjoyed feeling like everything i was doing was some nefarious trick to circumvent the game when it is literally designed to be doing that. hey nintendo dont be scared of zelda being the protagonist. keep doing that. let her have a sword and also the power of summon bed. thanks for bringing back dekus btw i hope koroks rot in hell for a decade plus like dekus had to.

I THINK SHI-LONG LANG AND SHIH-NA SHOULD HAVE GRAPHIC ON-SCREEN SEX:

ACE ATTORNEY INVESTIGATIONS- i think shi-long lang and shih-na should have graphic on-screen sex

ACE ATTORNEY INVESTIGATIONS 2- i think shi-long lang and shih-na should have graphic on-screen sex

anyway these are the best ace attorney games. here’s hoping for a third game that features shi-long lang, and shih-na, well… oh, i shouldn’t say…..

THE “TBAT WAS TRICKED INTO PLAYING ROGUELIKES” BLOCK:

BALATRO- i love jonking out. i’m a jonkhead. what more can one say

VAMPIRE SURVIVORS- i only got it for the castlevania dlc and played that for a good bit and then had this dull realization that i was basically inhaling the video game equivalent of sawdust and went to play symphony of the night instead

I LOVE GOTHS I LOVE GOTHS I LOVE GOTHS I LOVE GOTHS:

CASTLEVANIA ARIA OF SORROW (LIKE THREE TIMES)- its da best castlevania, you know…. soma cruz…. what a raw design. what a raw concept. what a funny fucking goober. there is indeed a reason every single castlevania and also bloodstained just copied the soul absorbing shit from this game btw. lets all bow to the real king of the castle. vania.

CASTLEVANIA DAWN OF SORROW- but then again maybe this one’s the best one idk. its hard to tell. the soma sweep could well apply to two games. they really arent all that different. this one has cooler music i guess?? like it has bloody tears thats a big buff

CASTLEVANIA PORTRAIT OF RUIN- the panzeke castlevania (won’t elaborate on that). i think its pretty good but it does visibly run out of steam halfway through by pulling the ol devil may cry 4 where you just do the same areas again but backwards. only castlevania where you can say “i creampied richter belmont” and it is a legitimate boss strategy and not perverse lust for anime men

CASTLEVANIA ORDER OF ECCLESIA- they invented the coolest hottest goth to ever exist (OTHER THAN SHIH-NA) and then tormented me by making her the most boring bucket of paste ever written (UNLIKE SHIH-NA). and also her game is way too hard. i’m a sicko until a game is exactly 5% too hard and then i start crying. i will probably still play it again to see if i can unlock my gamer instinct and get good at it.

CASTLEVANIA SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT- bro they redubbed it. they took out the iconic oscar winning dracula voice acting. fucked UP. i definitely like symphony of the night but it has a lot of “i am inventing a genre please be nice” jank to it like bosses and rooms that seem to be designed around just spamming your Go Invincible For Like A Minute button. but it is raw. castlevania just is inherently raw.

BLOODSTAINED RITUAL OF THE NIGHT- it is genuinely so funny that this game features a legally distinct alucard, voiced by alucard’s original actor, but he isnt the guy you play as. no, iga just believed so hard in the concept of shanoa order of ecclesia that he went “my next game’s protagonist is Also a woman covered in ominous magic tattoos that let her absorb demon souls (not the game) and who has to kill her brother who went crazy from demon magic” but this time she has like. a personality.

i like bloodstained but the gulf in quality between the immaculate sprites of ds era castlevania and the buttttt uglyyyyy 3d models in this game really really debuffed it for me over time. bloodstained 2, when it releases in 2030, will be an unstoppable super game if it looks exactly like order of ecclesia or at least rises to the level of looking Acceptable in 3d

GAMES THAT DO NOT FIT INTO AN ARBITRARY VAGUELY HUMOUROUS BLOCK:

PIKMIN 2- one of the sicko greats….. i love jumping down an ominous hole and then as a little jape i am stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed with rusty knives and then there are falling rocks and perhaps even falling bombs. pikmin 4? a coward’s game. play pikmin 2 and learn a little something about the fragility of life.

LIKE A DRAGON: INFINITE WEALTH- i hope yakuza games never ever stop having evil white men voiced by a famous japanese actor who is hardcore struggling through the english lines. i hope yakuza games never ever stop

ASTRO BOT- god man look i knooow i knooow its good i know its the game of the yeaaar and yes i am not so heartless as to not go omg yaaay :) when i found the little aigis scrunko. but godddd the funko pop grease that astro bot is coated in. that cloying, ersatz whimsy. the reverence for the Playstation Brand as if i give a fuck about the ps5 as a box. begone, foul bot.

POKEMON SOULSILVER- “ohhh the dex selection” “ohhh the level curve” “ohhh kanto is still undercooked” i was having a comfy time with my little umbreon named shih-na and thats all that matters. also johto is the defacto region for my delusional pyrex pokemon au, so its good.

FINAL FANTASY X- we used to have it so good man. turn based rpgs used to be the king of the world. squaresoft would release three complete instant classics three years in a row and they would all be insanely good for wildly different reasons. we need to have some kinda technological dark age where everyone has to develop for At Best the ps2, and no further. that’ll sort this shit out

APPROXIMATELY 1000000 HOURS OF CERES FAUNA LIVESTREAMS- man i love fauna

THE GRADUATION ANNOUNCEMENT OF CERES FAUNA- i think this must have been how it felt to witness jfk’s assassination. i’ll never be happy again.

dont let me do this again or i will yap and yap and yap for all eternity

[jabesa0]

Hii im the same anon who asked for the jewellery rendering tutorial. Sorry i keep asking for tuts but how do you render clothes,, it's currently my biggest struggle along with actually drawing the folds 😭😭

Hey there anon!! Don’t apologize!!! I actually really do enjoy answering questions, whether it’s drawing tips or my opinions and such on mammon!! It’s fun to talk to y’all when I can!

Anyways yeah I think I can explain my thought process when it comes to clothing and such!!

(Putting it under the cut cause it may be a bit long lolol)

So when I draw clothes, my main focus is to understand and be able to get across the texture/material of the clothes I’m making!! I find that when you can get across what material it is, other people will be able to fill in the blanks of what the clothes are supposed to be!!

For example, here’s my pool table mammon where he’s wearing a gold metallic puffy jacket:

For reference, I looked for a picture that had similar material and overall shape to what I was drawing.

But rather than trying to copy the shading and folds line for line (which wouldn’t have worked either way since the angle, pose, lighting is different and would change a lot of things!), I look at which places the material looks the brightest and darkest, as well as where the clothing puffs and where it sticks to skin to be able to accurately get across the kinda clothes I wanna put my subject (usually mammon for me 🫶🥰) in!!

A few other examples would be these two mammons:

In these two pictures, mammon wears clothing that have a very distinctive texture to them, leather and knit! Even though I don’t draw every line or fold perfectly, I try to get across that it’s a knit sweater or that it’s a tight leather material by either drawing the wool stitching/pattern or having the shininess of the leather come through the dark material!

Even though it’s messy, you get what I’m trying to convey when you understand that it’s wool or leather or whatever material I’m trying to convey at the time!

Once you understand material, I think it becomes easier to understand folds!

Take this mammon for instance:

Because I understand denim fabric and because I looked at the jeans I wanna reference prior, I know that those folds/lines tend to be where the legs connect/around the crotch area, so I know to put those there! If it were a longer pair of jeans, I would put those folds around the knee areas, since there’s where denim tends to bunch up!

I think it’s very helpful to spend some time looking at fashion images online and when you’ve picked your clothing, to really look and see where clothes *tend* to fold into itself when it’s made of a certain thing! That way, when you draw something puffy, you know what spots is puffs at and where it sticks to, or if you’re drawing something that clings, you can see what spots cling to the skin and was spots have a looser fit!

I tend to spend a lot of time going on Pinterest lookin at fashion pictures and clothing and saving the ones I wanna draw mammon in, so I’ve built up my understanding of how material works! I still have plenty to learn, but I’ve built up my observation skills to a point where I can trust myself to get down a certain material once I’ve found a good reference!

Hopefully y’all found this helpful!! The way I draw is very much messy and only really drawing what I think is important and letting myself and others “fill in the blanks” when it comes to finer, finer details! My thought process is to draw enough to get the point across, even if it ends up looking more painterly and less clean than it should LOL but I’ve come to enjoy the way I draw :P!!

Anyways thank you so much for the question, I actually really love talking about my drawing process! I don’t tend to do it often, so when I do explain things, I think I also end up learning things myself when I look at my own art and explain it to all of you guys!!

[noobettes-little-box]

yay very long block tales review time yippee

this will only cover the prologue since i don't feel like doing more right now im recovering from surgery

anyways

adding the cut thing so i don't take over the whole dashboard thing

so let's start off with

THE FILE SELECT!!!!

now to most sane people you wouldn't really think much of this considering that most games have save files, however, they're still relatively new to roblox games, most of them only really have one save, some don't even save any progress at all, though those are pretty rare now. the fact this game has 4 files though is pretty cool i'd say

intro!!

summary

upon starting a save file you are woken up by tutorial terry and given three options

choosing the funny option you get taken to the first "battle" of the game

i say battle in quotes because

yea.....

it is funny to see it the first time though

answering "Yeah!" or "No" gets you the same response of him yelling at you to get out of his bed

you talk to him about the plot kinda and he reveals the game takes place in 2010 and that the hotel reception person was looking for you

going down the hall you get these three doors that teach you how the dash works

dashing is your main form of movement if you wanna go fast

this is only really useful for places you've already been to because there's lots of places you can find hidden around and going too fast is a good way to miss them

you go to the receptionist and he reveals that john shedletsky needs you for something at roblox HQ (john shedletsky is the very first roblox employee and made the famous sword fight on the heights)

and upon exiting the hotel the prologue starts!!!

overall a decent intro, it is a little short and a bit confusing on your first play through but it's still fine i think it's only like all of 5 minutes long and it sets up the game fairly well so i think it's fine

now

the prologue!!!!

summary

they're gonna update it in the next few months probably but like

i'll review that when it comes out

upon exiting you are in a place called bizville

this is like the main hub where all of the game will be connected to

the guy to your left tells you to head right to get to roblox hq, so you better go do that!

heading off to the right will take you to east bizville

there's a cafe, job center, arcade, and dog park here!

..but those don't matter right now...

once you get to hq you'll see that the way forward is blocked saying you need a sword to break through

but you only have a ball do the only way to go is inside the building

then you see them

the little shit

the first child you get to beat up

i'll talk about the battle system later

there are more little shits to beat up throughout HQ but that's about all i can talk about right now i think

if you keep going you might find some bux!!! this is always hidden around places. there's a certain shop in bizville where you can use it but i'll get to it later. if you've been exploring you would have more but this is in plain sight, and obviously meant to be the tutorial of "Hey look there's money hidden places!!"

as you ascend you will probably notice that HQ is falling apart but the workers are still working, this is a reference to

uh

something probably!

at the top you find the Red and Blue noobs!!!

they are the first boss in this game, so i'm gonna talk more about the battle system now

BATTLE SYSTEM:

the battle system is somewhat a mix between paper mario and earthbound! woaw!!

you have 3 options here, atleast currently. you can use the ball, items, or a strategy. your strategies currently are just run or defend. defending skips your turn but gives you 1 extra defense point and gives you one SP back

items vary on use but it's either damage enemies or heal yourself or damage yourself

ball is ball

you can do two hits if you press a button at just the right time!

now you don't just have to stand there and take the hit!!

you can also block, dodge or counter depending on the attack!

just like in paper mario you do this by pressing a button right before the enemy hits!

sometimes enemies can give themselves special buffs! like red does here after you defeat blue! it's very cool to know you aren't the only one with these abilities. it's even implied that the enemies use cards like the player can!

cards are just badges from paper mario, have enough build points you can have the card, but there is a max of 30 BP here. idk if there is in paper mario but there is here.

your health also does the slow tick down thing like in earthbound, which gives you time to heal. however in multiplayer this doesn't stop going down until everyone has picked an action so you better hope they pick quickly!

anyways after beating red and blue they say they're going to go tell their boss, and you get to talk to shedletsky

shedletsky says that builders (the guy who made roblox) was kidnapped and that the person who did i'd is going after the Sword Fight On The Heights Swords, a bunch of magic swords with special abilities.

he gives you a wooden sword that you can use to progress yay

upon going through the boards blocking your path before you will see the sharp little shit

most people will just try to ball them but this teaches you that the ball can't kill some enemies (atleast not without the cannon ball card but you don't get that until half way through chapter 2)

the same also goes for the sword (without sword toss)

so the ball is like mario's jump, and the sword is like his hammer, if that helps you remember

after going through the meadows a little you'll encounter the second boss of the game

noobador

this guy is red and blue's boss, and can make you dizzy, giving you a chance to lose an attack

how rude >:(

after beating them up red and blue run away saying "this isn't over" and stuff

after beating noobador you probably leveled up!

i'd show what the level up screen looks like but i'm out of images almost

heading further to the right takes you to a cave and upon entering:

Chapter 1 begins

Review:

overall a pretty good way to start the game, teaches you how to play without actually telling you anything, you're just plopped down and expected to learn stuff yourself! no tutorial guys telling you how to fight for 5 minutes, you're just thrown right in (outside of the introduction to cards.) teaches new players what they need while letting returning players go as fast as they want, good for challenge runs and things like that. it is a little short, but it is just the intro to get you into the game so i think i can let it slide. they did say it would be updated to get longer so i might have to give that its own post

good start to a good game yay