#Fundamentals of creature design

[amalgamationillustration]

Dragins

Inspired by @dramizz-0207 recently sharing a bunch of cool dragon heads. We have pretty different styles but I think that’s cool when that’s the case because then you get really interesting outcomes from the same idea or concept.

Also you can really see my Fundamentals of Creature Design book influences coming through as I try to take real animals and see how they can be dragonified

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Fundamentals of Creature Design | Author: Alex Ries | Publisher: 3D Total Publishing (2020)

[nyamekosugargirls]

:33 >miss circle the trans-girl pan-sexual one

[xenowerm]

The three weirdos in my head!

[talenlee]

3e: Alignment Is Invisible

The entire alignment system is sick from the top to the bottom and racist too.

Content Warning: I’m going to talk smack about not just Dungeons & Dragons‘ morality system in 3rd edition, but also, in the process, talk some smack about Christians, and more specifically the Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you’re not here for that, you should find yourself a door.

Few elements of Dungeons & Dragons that lay bare its deeply incoherent roots have endured quite so long as the alignment system. Whenever discussing the alignment system, and by extension, the conception of morality presented in this game, it’s always worth remembering that the framework was devised by, and speaks to the values of, a deeply racist and misogynistic man who in addition to those larger, more structurally common biases, was also a Jehovah’s Witness and heavily informed by the way that that specific sect of American Christianity works.

I’ll spare you a detailed rundown of what I mean by American Christianity (for now, because this is about Dungeons & Dragons), but instead in the broadest strokes indicate that the alignment system that Gygax conceived of was something cosmically tracked and enforced. It was a truly objective morality system; your intention or your attitude did not matter, because there was an absolute right and an absolute wrong to each action, and characters could choose to comply with that right or not, by degrees.

This is why I say racist: It’s a hard fact in the first editions of D&D under Gygax’s most direct control that killing orc children who hadn’t done anything was a moral good; those creatures were evil creatures, and regardless of consequences killing them was good. Gygax quoted the ‘lice make nits’ line from the colonialism of the Americas to reinforce this position, but he was also quite clear that it was the act itself that had its moral valence, not the results or the intention.

This quite frankly deeply evil and immoral ethical framework was the horse to which Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition had to nonetheless hitch its wagon, and the resultant discord show a host of cracks in the way it’s supposed to work. Politicians who starve millions are in no ways doing anything wrong because they’re doing their jobs and there’s nothing evil in signing a piece of paper, but the people who enforce that law and keep orphans away from the food are also not doing anything wrong because they’re just upholding order. The core rulebook of 3rd edition had to try and address this framework without making it too obvious that elements of it were being thrown out the window, especially as the purpose of alignment shifted subtly in the more programmatic, more, let’s say, intentionally designed world of 3rd edition.

See, in 3rd edition, the purpose of alignment was first and foremost to let you target things. Oh sure, it was flavour, it helped to inform some monster behaviours or styles, but mostly, you were never going to scan the alignment of things you fought (not worth the effort) which meant that what alignment did was let you make reasonable guesstimates for smart-targeting of spells and effects. If you threw a spell that protected you from evil creatures into the mix it meant that you had some control over the kinds of threats you’d deal with and then prioritise them. In the purest sense, this was a reference point for magical spells.

Secondarily to that, it informed the moral valence of what you were doing and it was with the rulebooks The Book of Vile Darkness and its prettier but equally vacuous cousin The Book of Exalted Deeds that 3rd edition attempted to really roll up its sleeves and discuss morality in a way that could square the circle of previous editions’ heinous moral landscape and 3rd edition’s attempt to improve it by just rearranging some of the words.

The problem, such as it was, is that alignment was fundamentally invisible. You could have no control over what you did and how it affected you morally, because it was a matter of checking a list of subjects and determining what you did not what you thought or tried to do. If you killed a child and it turns out that child was a shapeshifted demon in disguise, the rules would say that you were in no way morally impacted by your desire to do it. If on the othe hand, you refused to kill the child that was a demon in disguise, because that’s a pretty messed up thing to want to do, then you’d failed to do a good act.

Now, the way the Book of Exalted Deeds tried to grapple with this was by presenting virtues that stood apart from the listed examples of explicitly evil acts. Doing mercy was shown as part of the tension with punishing evil and that’s a pretty good rules patch for the absolutist nature of things. It at least lets the player present something that’s within their control (why they did something) rather than one of those invisible wires around them.

One of the examples the book presented in 3rd edition was that if you climbed a cliff face, and in the process a rock fell and started an avalanche, then that avalanche killed people, then you were morally liable. In fact, a Paladin who did that kind of thing would lose access to their powers, while trying to redeem themselves for the sin of… climbing something.

The added problem with all of this is that no element of opposition or ambition cannot be framed with different moral outlooks that change nothing about how it expresses. A ruthless pursuit of justice and a sadistic love of control over criminals would both be expressed roughly similarly in a Javert-style inspector. A characte’rs own alignment, what they determine their alignment to be is something that can always be rationalised in terms of a framework of moral choices, and those intentions are going to be what informs the actual result of the test. If you’re doing everything right for an asshole reason, the world does not see you as doing evil acts, but your alignment can still be evil because there’s nothing in the world forcing you to change from your mindset of being a total prick.

The 4th edition system did try and push back against this with some interesting ideas of its own, but based on watching people talking about 5th edition games? Boy howdy they did not learn from that and instead decided to RETVRN to the worst version of the system so far.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[markrosewater]

As a UB in standard disliker and a person with a dislike for "fortnitification" in general and strong dislike for many of hasbros decisions, I do have to give props to the actual card designers. While I only really play Premodern at the moment, I have been paying attention to spoilers for the first time in years to see what you were going to be doing for the Final Fantasy set, and I've been very impressed. I greatly respect the flavor of the cards capturing characters and events so well, the amano and nomura art treatments, and the sort of "form and function" of various aspects of the set. Huge fan of the transforming cards and the Summons being Saga Creatures. While it's not a part of the game I wish to interact with as a consumer, I do believe what I have seen so far to be a great work of game design. I'm not versed in every FF game, but the ones I do know I feel you have absolutely hit the mark in at least 90% of the cards designs, and im not seeing anything i find to be silly (in the "Captian America is RUW because America" way, whether of not and regsrdless of if that is technically the correct colors for the mechanics). While I remain against a lot of the UB "other IP" in principle, the FF set we have seen so far is about as good as you can get for "outside concepts adapted into the MTG system and I want to pass along all the high fives the team. I may still be "a hater" on a fundamental level but I have nothing but respect for the expertise on display for this set. Very happy for the people who are excited, I'm sure this set is going to be exactly what a ton of people want.

Thank you.

I will stress again that Captain America’s top three colors are white, blue, and red.

[linked-maze]

I absolutely love your character concepts and how you re-design characters while keeping them fundamentally /them/, its so interesting! I was wondering if you would maybe be willing to draw Midna and Fi interacting in someway, maybe Midna questioning her companionship when this creature pops out of Link's sword- Bonus points for a bewildered Twilight who has never seen Fi before :D

there we go! XDDDD Twilight is so stunned! and Midna is not a fan of this new creature trying to steal her place!

[pinkydragon01]

Nintendo vs Pocket Pair is worse than you think

When Palworld came out, it took the gaming world by storm and became an instant hit with players who enjoy a mixture of creature collecting and survival base building. However, when a new game stirs up this much publicity, it catches both positive *and* negative attention.

There's no question about how similar Pals look to Pokemon, and there's much debate over the authenticity around Palworld's model designs. So much so, people were raising alarm to Nintendo to investigate Pocket Pair for IP infringement. Which Nintendo responded with a lukewarm, "We'll look into it."

After months of silence, Nintendo has now come forward with a lawsuit against Pocket Pair, but not for what we thought. The lawsuit is not about creature design, it's over *patent infringement.*

The patent in question is specifically over the mechanic of allowing the player to perform "an action of launching" to either "catch a field character or cause a fighting character to fight against a field character."

In simple words, the very act of throwing an item to capture a creature, or to summon a creature to fight another.

This mechanic is fundamental to nearly ALL creature collecting games.

Regardless of your personal feelings regarding Palworld vs Pokemon, this hopefully sounds wrong to you. This legal battle is little more than a billion dollar juggernaut swinging down their hammer onto an indie studio. It doesn't matter Pals *look* like pokemon. It DOES matter that they are demanding absolute control over creature collecting mechanics.

The patent in question does not even care if the item is sphere shaped like a pokeball. The item used for capture is irrelevant in this extremely broad patent.

Ultimately, Palworld is caught in this because of the massive attention it got, and this lawsuit is setting a deeply disturbing precedent. This lawsuit says, "If you look like a competitor to us, we'll sue you for daring to try."

And that's a danger to all creature collecting games, not just Palworld.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

Before I end up making that post I want to talk about briefly with the release of IS5 again, the concept of each IS havin a fundamental theme of unreality to them. I really like this, because it feels like in a pretty unsubtle way a solid way to ground the structure of a roguelike setting into what is normally a pretty grounded storyline.

IS1, Ceobe's Fungimist (please Hypergryph let it return), is a hallucination caused be Ceobe eating weird forest mushrooms. Nothing that happens in IS1 is real, explicitly. However, IS1 is fundamentally drawing from something, and in Ceobe's case, it seems to be drawing from her memories of traveling abroad Terra looking for the origins of her axe (and food, of course). What are things Ceobe's remembers happening to her, what are hallucinations filing in the gaps, and what are Ceobe catching glimpses of fundamental truths of the world (the Black Procession and the Feranmut skeleton that is Maybe? Lifebone for instance) is left extremely vague. Characters such as the Frozen Monstrosity do seem to genuinely exist, but there was no Frozen Monstrosity in Lungmen. Was Ceobe using something she herself experienced in place of Frostnova, or is Ceobe hallucinating the entire thing regardless? Who knows. Ceobe probably doesn't have the answers for you.

IS2 has explicit themes of madness and deception, and although I do not find him a particularly compelling character or plot device, a playwright who can literally warp reality with his plays. Much of the stage design recycles echoes the stage design from IS1, almost as if the Troupe is welcoming you, the player, onto their stage. You aren't here to discern the truth behind the Troupe, you're here to save one man, and while you are able to peel back the curtains somewhat, you never really do learn what the Troupe is. There are puppets who come to life and whose music damages your souls, there are actors driven so fully into their roles that they end up traveling to Sami to carry out their destined end, there's a Troupe Leader whose defining imagery is puppets and strings, and yet, you're no closer to finding out how this all happened than you are trying to explain why the Knights' Duel node exists.

IS3 asks the question "What if time is like evolution?" and presents its unreality in the form of a sprawling, massive bundle of alternative timelines to your own. It feels almost impossible to line up most of the events and memory mappings and endings on top of each other, and even the endings seemingly branch off into several versions of themselves. While, for example, the Irene encounter maps onto her own memory mapping story, we never see the timeline involving Lumen's memory mapping in the game at all. There is no Seaborn version of Gladiia in-game for you to fight. This is made seemingly all the more uncanny by the fact that there is actually a canon timeline going on, and the implication through the Bosky event that you are only seeing these alternative timelines because curiosity got the better of you. You came into contact with technology alien and yet familiar, and as a result, your good little timeline where you just save a girl who tries to commit identity death turns into you having to watch from the third person a version of the world where you and Mizuki are potentially the only intelligent life left on Terra for all eternity.

(No seriously, this ending is fucked up, what the fuck.)

IS4, on the other hand, gives us a reality that is unraveling, so fragile and malleable that you can cause things to manifest out of sheer force of will, something there are explicit warnings about not doing. It's a land where the living become the shambling, almost mechanical dead, and the mechanical being living creatures. It's a world where the abyss looks back at you, and finds you to be worth destroying. Gravity isn't right, time isn't right, language isn't right, snow falls black and the dead rise once again to beckon you home. There's nightmares in the shadows, and they're eating away at everything.

Sorry shit I got dark there. IS5 is Nymph's happy little storytime where she explores future and alternative versions of Kazdel through the imagination of her and her compatriots. What if Theresis and Theresa worked together and Nasti completed her designs (and maybe committed a genocide????) and Kazdel was a flying utopia city? What if the Teekaz all walked in a different direction and became the Sankta, or all became the Anasa? You know, sometimes you lose your sense of reality and become dependent on the visions you see from the Revenants, sometimes you need a little bunny to pull you out, and sometimes those Revenants might have actually caused a new reality to exist but haha, don't worry about that.

What if, hahaha, just saying what if, there was a version of Amiya in a world where the Sarkaz barely exist, where she was given the crown by a dying Theresa with no guidance on how to use it ethically? Haha I mean, what if Kal'tsit wasn't around? What if, just theoretically, there was a version of Amiya for whom the most formative person in her life was the decaying mind of a man stuck as an AI program who kept his people alive for 10,000 years? What if, hehehehe you know, what if, there were special endings you got for each of the stories you told where you went onto fight her, showing up closing up those stories, those worlds, to eternally protect them until she can find the answer to all troubles? What if the Sarkaz prophecy from Chapter 7 kept coming up, over and over again, the prophecy of an Amiya who would melt millions of lives into memories over and over again? What if this was an Amiya so immediately dangerous that the Sankta version of Buldrokkas'tee doesn't hesitate in trying to kill her?

I mean that would be a really scary story if it was true. Really it's Nymph's special storytime with the revenants. Don't worry about it.

Anyways I love pretty much each of these takes (IS2 is definitely the weakest though) and it shows a lot of thought from the storywriters about how they wanted to integrate a roguelike mode into their game.

[can-of-w0rmz]

My thoughts on Frankenstein can basically be summed up in, “Victor is a dickhead but at least he’s not an incel,” and “The Creature is a dickhead but at least he’s not a rich prick”.

To this day “ermmm Victor/Creature is the innocent guy and (X other character) is the bad guy achtually 🤓☝️” takes make me so fucking mad. THEY BOTH SUCK, AND THEYRE BOTH STILL SYMPATHETIC PROTAGONISTS. THATS THE POINT OF THE FUCKING BOOK😭

Also people who think Victor was the bad guy for refusing to make the Bride and going “huh, maybe making a creature for the sole purpose of suffering and fucking you is really fucked up and not my place at all actually?” legitimately need their fucking heads checked because do you genuinely have zero reading comprehension or life experience??? Can you read a book? Can you understand basic themes and concepts? Are you actually stupid?

Victor is a terrible guy for being self absorbed enough to cheat God and nature itself, creating a being that was never meant to be born and inflicting immense suffering on it by the nature of it existing in a way that fundamentally can not be balanced out — following the Christian influences and background in which the novel was written at the time, Victor is not God, he can’t offer the creature salvation or in any way metaphysically balance out his suffering, so he just introduces him to a life of a living hell by his own design and by the nature of the fact that Victor is just a man, and the Creature himself is terrible because the nihilism inherent to his condition as Victor’s creation turns him into a murderous incel who wants to just further the suffering Victor caused, because if he can’t be happy, nobody should, so he kills every innocent bystander who Victor loved and demands that he makes him a woman like Eve who’s equal to him in suffering, who exists for the sole purpose of being his, who was created to be his.

And Victor says no, because he has actual character development and realises it isn’t his place (also, very likely mirroring his engagement to Elizabeth if you kinda follow the same reading as me that Victor never really loved her romantically and felt forced into the marriage because of his mother), which, shock horror, makes Victor a more likeable protagonist, because again, shockingly, he’s actually a pretty good guy in this one situation making a really good moral decision for once by saying “yeah I’m not going to create a woman whose sole purpose in life is to fuck you and suffer as much as you, also what if she doesn’t want to fuck you???”

Are people allergic to the concept of character development or something?? Are people allergic to multifaceted complex characters?? You feel terrible for the creature because of what Victor has done to him by bringing him into existence, and you feel terrible for Victor because of how doomed he is (in the worst way, it’s not just him suffering, he has to watch everyone he loves being forced to suffer because of him) by his one mistake and how he doesn’t have any way to fix it. A creation with no God, and a Man with the weight of God upon him because of his own mistake. They’re both doomed. That’s why it’s so good, THE BOOK IS A FUCKING TRAGEDY WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT FOR SOME PEOPLE TO GRASP???😭

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Do you have a process for scripting your design hot take shorts? (I’m considering trying out a similar format for Cookie Run Kingdom design hot takes)

I do, yeah, but it's nothing special. With a few exceptions, the structure I follow are essentially the same as what you'd use for any typical long-form essay: Introduction -> argumentation -> conclusion.

The extreme brevity of short-form video does force me to sometimes combine or compress those discrete steps in odd ways, and I obviously take a much more conversational/casual tone than you would in a formal essay, but my videos are usually pretty consistent in following this general flow.

Lemme post an example, this is my review of the Munna/Musharna Pokémon line. Introduction, argumentation, conclusion.

Bulbapedia has it that Munna and Musharna are based on a Japanese style of censer for burning incense, which, huh, that's interesting, a pretty cool concept and it squares perfectly with the smoke trail from Musharna's head. For my money, I've always felt like they are kind of like the Adventure Time version of Drowzee and Hypno, or maybe there's a little bit of a Moomins vibe to them - like, they're the kind of odd creature Moominpappa would have encountered on one of his many adventures. And as a creature fundamentally of dreams, of the shapeless psychic, a daemon of the Immaterium, Munna really really works for me. Something in its proportions, that slightly odd hump on its back and the gem-like eyes and hanging snout, and those flowers painted onto its side in an almost childish way, it feels like the look of an imaginary friend or some strange creature you would imagine in a fever dream. Not scary or nightmarish, but not quite comforting either, just a little too odd for comfort. Musharna, with the plume of psychic smoke out of its head, continues that vibe, complementing the sleep theme by quite literally just being asleep. Its body pattern also looks a little bit to me like a pajama onesie or a muumuu, something soft and comfortable. I do also like the little tiny trick happening here, Musharna is so curled into a ball that you kind of don't notice that it actually has a longer body with arms and legs and could stand upright, and the moment you imagine this creature actually standing upright, well, suddenly it gets kinda weird and freaky again, doesn't it? They aren't impressive and they don't have a "wow" factor but… genuinely, the more I think about them, the more I become convinced that these are absolutely perfect designs for a dream-themed Pokémon. Grade: S

This isn't nearly as rigorous or extensive as a longer-form essay gets to be, nor is the argumentation particularly in-depth, but you can see the structure of it, right?

Structure and format are also extremely helpful when writing very short videos, it helps a LOT in keeping things constrained and focused. I tend to focus my reviews of Pokémon or League of Legends skins very narrowly on character design, for example, ignoring things like visual effects and voiceover, or movesets and battle stats. Similarly, all my One Piece shorts are structured around finding "the best panel" of each chapter of the manga. Format helps things stay focused and avoid sprawling, and makes it a lot easier to produce multiple scripts for a video series because you can kind of just plug your thoughts into the format without having to invent a bespoke structure each time.

[amalgamationillustration]

Finished design for the Eastern Serix, which I made using the Fundamentals Of Creature Design book. I really recommend picking it up if you want to really challenge yourself on really researching and having several passes at creating fictional creatures and really thinking about how and where it would live, feed, walk/swim/fly, breed, sleep. Really useful stuff to practice and full of great examples and references.

I wanted a tree dwelling hunter, so i tried to combine traits from a Fossa, Emerald Tree Boa, and a created gecko, I also threw in some inspiration from lemurs and frilled lizards.

The Eastern Serix is nocturnal and hunts mice and small birds, it uses its long, bristly tail to suspend its body from branches and releases when it wants to drop onto unsuspecting prey below. It then wraps its tail around them and the bristly fur stands on end and sticks into the prey, holding in place like thousands of tiny needles. It is then able to unhinge its jaw and swallow prey whole. The striped fur along its neck can be extended to form a frill to scare off predators.

[starberry-cupcake]

I'm back too soon, I'm sorry, I didn't let the last recap marinate enough and that's never a good idea because you can't keep up BUT WE'RE DONE WITH DAY FOUR!!!

previously, in nona del 9:

this happened

this is the general tag, for the uninitiated

CHAPTER 18 (eight house????? mayonnaise uncle???? duracell bunny nephew???? are you with us????)

angel teacher decides to write down an inventory in case they get looted, so that people don't ruin the kids' things

she also orders sriracha girlie to go turn down the generator

it's like when sam jackson was ordered to turn the power back on in jurassic park, idk about that

camilla trips, angel teacher caches her and I'm here thinking if camilla just stole something from her, because she'd never trip in her life

luckily for me, angel teacher asks about nona's drawing

she asks her, specifically, how she drew it and if she had seen what she draw in the picture

nona says she made it up and describes what I think might be an animal

"See these things? They're its ears. This thing is its nose, and you can't see it because I didn't draw it, but the mouth is under here. When first it was born, it used to live in a river, but then it got cold so it had to get large. I know the legs can't rotate, but you don't think that's stupid, do you?"

I thought it was an elephant, because of the ears, nose and lack of mouth in the drawing and legs that can't rotate, but idk about the river and the cold

maybe it's a mammoth

maybe it's a new zealand animal that's going over my head

maybe nona calls flippers legs and it's a whale, for all I know

in any case, DON'T TELL ME

camilla says she hasn't seen it before and angel teacher says it's a "cradle creature"

I was suggested to look up things I don't know in an online dictionary and, if it's not there, assume it's a book thing, but it's not working out with this

camilla (or maybe palmolive) says "I've heard that phrase. Somewhere" and angel teacher says "Have you?"

so maybe it is a book thing

this might be an animal that hasn't been seen by people at this time

like a mammoth for us

or a dodo

or the girl in waterworld who drew land things

and this is a point for the ice cube barbie theory, like the hokey pokey was

so, at this point, palmolive goes "fuck it" and throws caution to the wind

he doesn't say it outright, but I'm assuming it was his thought process

he asks angel teacher if, at some point, she received medical attention from the nine houses and if she's got an implant

this is noodle in that moment:

angel teacher understands, with that, what camolive might be

she goes "my colleague thought you were a prossie" and palmolive goes "What I know about sex work could fit in a teaspoon and leave a lot left over"

the intricacies of pimping and the ins and outs of sex work are very frequent conversations in this school

which is a lot more than I can say for the state of fundamental sex ed in a lot of places with conservative governments that obscure whatever can guarantee safety for all and the accessibility to education with diversity as a key part of it

and ban books, films and conversations about it

ANYWAY

they talk about the nickname the kids gave her and she says it's sriracha girlie's fault because she overheard things she doesn't understand

angel teacher is reticent towards palmolive and tells him that, if he gets close, she'll jump out a window and her body is "designed" to deny him answers

angel teacher thinks camolive is a lyctor, that they did something to her when they fake tripped, and that she might have messed up in some way, which prompted them to come out to her

palmolive swears on the life of camilla that they aren't a lyctor

angel teacher goes "Then that'll make this easier"

and my heart nearly stopped at that

WE KEEP PUTTING CAMILLA IN DANGER

CHISUS CHRIST

angel teacher, I respect you a lot, but if it's between you and camilla

nona is sitting on the ground in the blue light of varun, because she refused to leave camolive alone

and sriracha girlie enters and sees her

next nona knows, she's having the worst headache of her life and everything is a mess around her

when nona comes back from the blue screen in her head, after feeling like her brain was being squeezed out of her skull, she hears a voice cursing and trying to cancel something

angel teacher and the new person are, according to themselves, pretty fucked

new person says "You should have thought of that before you started playing teacher with the frigging Troia experiment"

angel teacher is clearly out of her depth here

I'm wondering where the fuck my wife is and if she's ok

angel teacher says she was trying to protect the kids, which I can appreciate and understand, but right now it's hard to be objective with them

WHEN I DON'T KNOW WHERE CAMILLA IS

MY REACTION REQUIRES A VIDEO, NOT GIF

angel teacher tells the other person "You discharge a firearm with me in the room, you'll get court-martialled and hanged"

which, again, makes me think...is this the most important vet in the planet???? what's this authority level?????

other person says "We play our cards right here, I can get Suffer out clean. Hell—I play this really right, nobody's going to know a thing until it's too late"

which immediately makes me think this is pash

it's insane to be on this side and know how much these people are playing with fire over here

I can't understate what a bad fucking idea this is and the only thing that can save them is that camolive and nona aren't into murdering for sport

but they're even pushing that

unknown person I think might be pash wants to finish off camolive and nona, but angel teacher is like

we suffer really has to deal with people going off like this at the worst possible moments

nona gets up and she's shot at so she gets mad because that's rude af

angel teacher is crying and saying she's sorry

but nona looks for camilla, which THANK YOU

camilla is lying on the ground, holding two bullets in her hands

she gets up and asks for an update

THAT'S FIERCE

SHE'S SO AMAZING

*absolutely insanely dangerous situation* me: where is camilla?????? camilla: *totally alright, holding bullets in her hands or having left lots of people lying on the ground and covered in someone else's blood* me: is this an awkward time to propose?

nona recognizes the other person as pash, with her distinctive machetes, but her way of talking shit and of ruining stuff was already a dead givaway

camilla asks pash why they weren't told angel teacher was one of them and pash is very quick to make clear that camilla isn't part of them

imagine not wanting camilla as part of whatever you're in

can't relate

I can't believe I survived a whole book with her showing up like only two times

IT'S FINE, I'M MOVING ON, I PROMISE

pash gets angry at nona because she made a radio call to coronabeer and nona says it was a pretend call

I KNEW THEY WERE GONNA FALL FOR THAT

I KNEW IT, I SAID IT HERE

angel teacher is like "that's the crown you always talk about?"

how many crowns do you think there are here, angel teacher?

is it a common name?

pash tells her "you just called wipe protocol on the fucking Lyctor project"

none of this is planned at all and we suffer is gonna be killed by high blood pressure with these people

angel teacher tries to stop whatever thing she unleashed and calls herself "the messenger"

not easy to stop people once you tell them to shoot freely

whatever merv wing is, I don't think they're stopping

angel teacher accepts camilla's help and says "I did call for you to be shot, though"

camilla says "No problem. So long as I can let out some deferred aggression"

nona is asked to go to the kitchen but she chooses to stay by camilla instead

when asked what she really wants to do, though, nona says she wants to find sriracha girlie

camilla is hesitant, because sriracha girlie saw something

I'm hearing alarms in my head at this, but nona, of course, is not

we're gonna regret this

pash thinks she can order camilla around and camilla is kind of like "I don't understand you very local jargon, so whatever"

not in those exact words

nona takes some time to think that pash is pretty, that her eyes are lovely and that her electric blue hair is cute

nona is easily distracted with people she thinks are pretty

because then she thinks she wants to marry camilla and adopt a dog with her

which, GET IN LINE, NONA

I WAS HERE TWO BOOKS BEFORE YOU

AND WE'RE ADOPTING KEVIN

palmolive has to agree to that too, though

MOVING ON

nona goes to the generator room to find sriracha girlie, who's curled up and has thrown up

she is saying that she made something up, which nona agrees with, even if she doesn't know what it is

I'm sure she didn't make anything up, this is all insane as it is

sriracha girlie happens to have a gun on her person

I'm worried she might have already used it

and she proves me right when she says she remembers shooting nona in the head

nona tries to lie and gaslight her

nona also feels disappointed that she won't see camilla fight

which, I relate, because we've seen her fight and

nona restrains sriracha girlie so she stays there while the whole fight is happening and, once over, angel teacher comes to retrieve them

nona asks about camilla and pash's status and angel teacher says "cuts and scrapes", which checks out with the absolute goddess, icon and legend that is camilla

sriracha girlie, upon reaching the classroom again, realizes she did shoot nona

camilla and pash have a moment in which they say the same thing and look at each other

YOU ALSO GET IN LINE, PASH

sriracha girlie is retreating, though, and I'm thinking this is it with this friendship

nona is embarrassed about sriracha girlie seeing her dead but there's no time to be embarrassed when you're getting shot

"You're out of the gang" says sriracha girlie, before shooting

so, the party is officially off, my friends

the girl who is in a cumple 24/7 has lost her party guests

JOHN 5:1

this part of the bible is when jesus heals someone who can't walk

which is, again, very telling

we find dr reverend emperor john setting a car on fire

he continues narrating his problems with getting people to listen to his ideas and plans and how he wanted them to do something about it

then, him and his team finally veer towards justice league territory and consider it's on them to save the world

P, who I'm assuming is our friend pyrrha, tells him that, in order to get them to do something, they need to scare them

so, in comes a mystery client

they ask dr reverend emperor john boi to make a puppet out of a person so it looks like he's alive

they offer him a lot of money for it, so they all consider it

meanwhile, the government and other suits continue the FTL project and are determined to ship billionares out into space

this is sci fi, nothing like this would ever happen in real life, right?

RIGHT?????

"a's little brother" (alfred?) says "money is one big shared hallucination" and ain't he right af

they all think there's something sus about the whole operation

mercygirl and augustine are in agreement and a united front, which scares everybody

they were probably already fucking

sorry, very rude of me to say, I should be more respectful

they were probably already pre-planning the lyctor orgies

so dr reverend emperor john butt, mercygirl and augustine go to the client's place and turns out the client is actually a country and the puppet is actually a leader

it remains unknown which and who

the country representatives give tons of reasons why dr reverend emperor john should go full on gepetto on this guy, but we all know he always acts like he's thinking about it but does it anyway

I don't think he thought that hard about it at all

so augustine, mercygirl and johnny boi start negotiating with these people and end up getting a couple billion doll hairs and a bomb

I'm sure that'll go great

CHAPTER 19 (THE TOMB!!!!!!)

nona wakes up, has been sleeping on chairs and has her legs and arms tied to them and a radiator

rip to you all, BOE or whoever the hell you are

nona has a tantrum

her third tantrum, she says

apparently, they're bad enough that camilla and pyrrha let her swim in the ocean to calm down, even if it's dangerous

so, nona screams as a warning to everyone that shit's about to get very real very fast

since I don't know where camilla is, I'm good, let her loose

you do you, nona

live your truth

fuck shit up

she breaks herself to escape the ties, one part at a time

there's a moment where she thinks "The plastic ties were good, like Corona had said"

and I was like "corona???????? what about crown???????"

I think it's the first time I read nona call coronabeer "corona" and not "crown"

it's not like nona is super strong but she's resilient, so she can kick shit down with patience and regeneration

I respect that

she sees people with pash's boots and has a moment of intense anger against pash for everything that went down

I mean, lying to sriracha girlie and making friends with her in the first place was on you, but still I don't know where camilla is, so by all means, nona, fuck shit up

they shoot her, as if that did anything, and she perseveres

she chases those who keep on shooting and they scream, running away, which is both fierce and kind of funny

nona screams and that makes the person running from her put their hands over their helmet

they drop a bag over her head and immobilize her so she starts to power down

"Inside the hood she heard her mouth say, savage and distinct and cool despite the trembles: 'Fool. You're killing her.' But she was only talking to herself, after all."

HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE WE KEEPING IN THIS GIRL?

IS THIS A CLOWN CAR?

I'm still rooting for the ice cube barbie theory somewhere in there

BUT HOW MANY SOULS CAN WE KEEP IN ONE PERSON?

JOHN 3:20

"Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed."

dream pov (who was referred to as harrow but doesn't sound to be her) says she forgets how to breathe sometimes

girl, same

dr reverend emperor john says they had three stages for their plan: 1) keep talking, 2) throw money, 3) reveal nuke

"We were willing to gamble on being tried at the Haugue just to stop the process. Ready to make a hell of a mess to buy time. Prepared to do anything to keep you going"

we keep talking to this pov as if she was some earth princess idk

"C— kept saying. Pick one. Are we more invested in proving this new plan is bullshit or in saving you? I was like, It's both, how can it not be both. C— was like, It can't be both. Pick one and stick to it. Decide what you give a fuck about"

saving earth princess personification who might or might not be ice cube barbie???? idk

"I found that the problem with being the death man is you stop giving much of a fuck"

girl who is referred to as harrow (but might be earth princess ice cube barbie or whatever) gets spooked about having goosebumps and dr reverend emperor john has to explain its mechanics

this is another thing to note

nobody is taking notes anymore because there's a war, so I'm keeping the notes myself

the authorities doing the project that they all think is sus continue to be sus and offer to choose 200 people for the first wave they're sending off to space

the final frontier

everyone apparently falls for their bs

they then claim they're starting to build the ship they need to send the first wave off

god and lyctor gang realize easily that they're full of shit and none of the stuff they seem to be doing correlates with actual things they should be doing if they were doing what they say they're doing

you get me?

so god and lyctor gang go to the authorities like naive kids and the billionares lie about it

who would have thought billionares lie????

according to him, they keep using the cows against him

that's kind of funny

they decide that, if they treat them like they're a cult, they'll be a cult

not like it already wasn't on its way there, honestly

a slippery slope that turned into a toboggan real fast

so, john god asshat decides to drop the science and start the theater

he starts calling himself a necromancer

*dramatic pause*

that's really interesting, actually

because we start this journey just taking necromancy for granted, it's interesting to see it originating as something science-related and then being named that as a sort of theatrical way to call people's attention

it's interesting to see a journey in which this came to exist that isn't just "necromancy exists in this universe", which would have been totally valid too

but here we see that it's actually something else that was named this way to make it seem more attractive to audiences, which is an interesting level of storytelling

very cool

AND THAT'S IT WITH THIS DAY!!!!! this is a long one, I was gonna do two chapters but then the next two were short enough. As a bonus, here's Dana who was looking at birds while I was reading this part in the backyard.

[notbxnny]

in a lot of ways randy & benson mirror each other but there’s this one gaping disconnect in which being hurt and being powerless was so fundamental to bensons childhood, and so integral to his worldview following it, that he cant really parse randys trauma. to have felt so immensely in control of his environment at that age, to have felt his own impact on the world around him so deeply that it completely stunted him. to have felt dangerous, to have hurt instead of being hurt, and this being a bad thing? hes. not really following, sort of in amused disbelief until randy starts crying. even after that he rolls his eyes at him, tells him to just forget it. like i’ve always understood benson picking a giraffe, what it meant to him then, this idea of seeming so impossibly tall and sturdy and at peace, but it took me way longer to get what it meant for randy to pick a crocodile, a creature defined broadly by its danger and violent tragedy, that those things are fundamental to its nature. their jaws will grow back their blunt hooked teeth a dozen times over. it’s what they’re designed for, they cant help that all they can do is bite down.

randy is i think is left understanding benson. not all of it, it’d be impossible for him to, but he is able to witness him in a way benson misses out on in miss beards bathroom. randy is smart, he is observant, with for what little benson gave him, both involuntarily & intentionally, he paid attention. 

[tookishcombeferre]

Character Arcs: Why I Refuse to See the New Lilo & Stitch Remake

So, I hesitated to jump into this debate because I wasn't sure I could comment on something I haven't' seen.

However, I want to comment on *why* I won't see it, and it has to do with the fact that I think three characters have been irreparably damaged because of how their narrative arcs have changed in the adaptation.

ONE: Dr. Jumba Jookiba: An Absolute Masterpiece in Progressing the "Mad Scientist Trope"

Dr. Jumba is based in an important literary trope that stems all the way back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, at least, perhaps earlier?

Therefore, to remove Dr. Jumba's accent and make him the primary villain is to remove something fundamental about *him* and what makes him different from those other scientists in literature before him.

Dr. Frankenstein. Dr. Jekyll. Dr. Van Helsing. Faust.

These are all characters that make up elements of Dr. Jumba's character design, coding, and creation. They were placed lovingly into Dr. Jumba's character through each element of his creation.

Yet, these characters usually do not get any kind of significant "redemption" arcs or anything apart from the sort of "morality play" lessons written into their novels/novellas. (Except Van Helsing who is, arguably a decent bloke to begin with.)

Yet, something changes within the monster genre with the invention of film ... particularly slapstick humor in black and white films.

In the original 2002 film, Stitch is captivated by old black and white monster films. He loves the destruction caused by giant invading spider creatures. He even recreates one of the scenes in which a monster in a black and white film destroys San Francisco.

However, what Dr. Jumba comes to realize watching Stitch in that moment/ those moments of emptiness and loss after destruction is that there isn't a deeper purpose.

And, that digs into some of the greater questions of monster literature at large:

What is humanity's purpose?

What is a monster?

What is the role of their creator?

At what point is the monster a reflection of the creator?

Yet, about that spin off genre ...

Amidst the the more traditional adaptations of monster stories in black and white film, as well as other unique and new monster stories made exclusively FOR film, came things like "Young Frankenstein."

In these slapstick and humorous adaptations, many things about the original monster stories were changed. In these movies, the creator and monster both "reconciled." This usually occurred through some combination of slapstick humor and basically proto-meme culture.

("Young Frankenstein" involves a whole tap dance routine followed by an exploding light fixture and a race through the German countryside ...)

("Young Frankenstein" From IMDB)

In "Young Frankenstein," the reconciliation between monster and creator is fast, silly, but, yet, somehow, actually, leads to some kind of meaningful commentary on humanity.

At the very end, Fredrick and The Creature talk, and they come to the agreement that the Creature is going to receive some of Fredrick's intellect. He will finally, trully, be *adopted* as a Frankenstein.

In this scene, the Creature speaks for the first time, and they do manage to settle the crowd.

And, at the very end, we close on another standard unifying human topic ... toilet humor.

So, if you'd ask me,*this* is the spirit of Dr. Jumba's turn around.

When Dr. Jumba says "Well, he's very persuasive ..." after Stitch says like 3 words?

This! *This* trope, and probably this exact movie, is where that comes from.

To deny that, and to change it, fundamentally alters the spirit of one of the primary influences of the film which is these old school monster flicks.

Besides that, the way Lilo and Stitch changed the genre of monster literature as we understand it is *undeniable.* Prior to films like "Young Frankenstein," and other parodies like it, the stories of the past remained what they were.

Yet, Lilo and Stitch, and Dr. Jumba in particular, begin to draw a perfect circle.

The hard questions of the old pieces of literature could be asked and answered, BUT they could be answered through humor and fart jokes.

Dr. Jumba is the classic Faustian, Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Frankenstein scientist who learns compassion for his creation because he finds purpose, no matter how quickly, in loving Stitch. Dr. Jumba is part of the support system created for Nani, Lilo, and Stitch because *he* needs it.

For most of the film, Dr. Jumba doesn't understand what family is or why it matters. He can't. His goal is make things that destroy things. He doesn't understand human life as valuable (or, perhaps, he doesn't see any life as valuable?) Yet, what he comes to know, through Stitch, is the value of *life.* (Look no further than the sequel film to see *that* come to fruition.)

It's this additional layer that unites two halves - the original monster stories of traditional "mad scientists" and the parodies in which reconciliation is brought about by toilet humor and bad dancing - both of those arcs and narratives deeply influence the "monster" side of Lilo and Stitch's narrative structure. And, for better or worse, Dr. Jumba Jookiba's quick and quirky "redemption" is at the center of that telling.

Gantu needs to be present as the foil for Dr. Jumba. He is the heard-hearted, almost Javert-esque, maniac who cares for nothing and no one except the mission sent for him. Dr. Jumba cares enough to ask questions.

Dr. Jumba's curiosity is his *salvation.*

Gantu's rigidity is his *downfall.*

TWO: Captain Gantu: Lost in Time ... Lost in Space ... Another Casualty of the Capitalist Race

Captain Gantu also has a role to play in these black and white monster films and, to completely remove him, is to do a huge disservice to these sources of influence.

Going back to the "Young Frankenstein" example, there is actually a police officer character named Inspector Kemp. Kemp is actually, kinda-sorta, part of the reason The Creature is accidentally freed near the middle-end of "Young Frankenstein" and is just generally really obnoxious.

(Actually, as I retrace the IMDB for "Young Frankenstein" to check my notes, I'm noticing that there are a *surprising* number of parallels between Frederick and Jumba, Kemp and Gantu, and The Creature and Stitch.)

However, all that to say, Gantu needs to be present because without him the story no longer works. Lilo and Stitch is built on the backs of monster stories in which a "mad scientist" is chased down by "the law." Without "the law," there is no story.

The beauty of what Lilo and Stitch does, however, is asking us to reframe who is *right* and who is *wrong.* What is *just* and what is *merciful.*

Gantu, in many ways, may be *right* and he may be *just.* But, that does not make him merciful. Gantu's lack of mercy is what causes his ENDS to fail to justify his MEANS.

And, that?

That is what makes Gantu so fun to root against and to despise.

To take away Dr. Jumba's quiet moments of reflection, to make him a twist villain, (and remove Gantu completely) fundamentally changes *who* Jumba is *and* what he's meant to represent. It fundamentally changes what this film *does* for the genre in which Lilo and Stitch belongs.

I could get into a whole other rant about why this is significant to me as a neurodivergent person and the extraordinary significance of Lilo and Stitch as a monster narrative that features both a monster and a clearly neurodiverse-coded main character.

But, that's likely a separate post.

Yet, know that monsters and changelings have long been a stand-in for neurodivergent and disabled people in literature, and I do not think it was/ is coincidental the Lilo AND Stitch are written as they are and were chosen to be paired together.

Therefore, to *remove* Dr. Jumba's redemption towards Stitch as benevolent creator changes not only his arc, but the longstanding commentary on the role of the creator and what they created in monster literature.

And, to remove Gantu completely departs from the "monster literature" source material trope so strongly that I'm not even sure they're following the same plot anymore.

THREE: Nani: The Most Egregious Sin has Been Saved for Last

So many wonderful Hawaiian native folks have spoken on this subject all over the internet.

Please, I implore you, go find what they've posted on this platform, on YouTube, on Tik Tok and listen to them.

It is really not that hard to find everything from scholarly articles to everyday folks talking about *why* Nani leaving Lilo in the hands of the state to "pursue a degree" is not the "happy ending" it sounds like to most of the rest of us.

As a white trans-masc dude *from the mainland,* I'm just going to say when I heard about that twist, I turned to my spouse and said "My God, it's like if someone adapted The Outsiders and had Darry leave on a football scholarship instead of staying with Soda and Ponyboy."

And. Yes. I do believe the change is that fundamental. Teleportation gun or no.

The end.

[markrosewater]

Hey Maro,

RE: SpongeBob

Not sure if you read all the notes so I want to be specific.

I agree with that last asker about the reskinned art but dislike the legendary characters specifically from a color pie perspective. I think it really violates a fundamental part of the color pie to make a characters personality not match their color. The most jarring is probably plankton, since his core motivation is constantly trying to steal a Krabby Patty.

I would have loved mechanically unique designs or reskins that were a better flavor to color/mechanic fit.

Mr krabs similarly should have cared more about treasure (money)

Overall I get the intent of trying to hit (some) creature types, but it just feels a bit hasty to just say crab=crab without a thought of who the character is.

There isn’t a Crab that creates Treasure, so we have three options:

a) match the creature types, but not the color(s) (which is what we did)

b) match the colors of the character, but not the creature types

c) design new cards.

I get why the more enfranchised players might prefer b), but it would go over the head of many less enfranchised players.

Mr. Krabs is a Crab requires much less knowledge than Mr. Krabs is black/red.