#absolutely insane design choice | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thehighladywrites · 8 months

Text

𝖠𝖢𝖮𝖳𝖠𝖱 𝗆𝖾𝗇 𝗑 𝗁𝗒𝗉𝖾𝗋𝖿𝖾𝗆𝗂𝗇𝗂𝗇𝖾 𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋, 𝖧𝖢’𝖲

summary: being girly in a world full of haters can be hard sometimes! I mean, people hate all the time. but these males don’t let any disrespect towards you slide. They protect you through and through 👀

warnings: fluff, tw:beron😒

amara’s note: this went from being an azriel fic, to rhys and azriel, to batboys, to batboys+lucien and finally all of them. Honestly idc bc i love all of them🤭🤭

Rhysand

Fashion bf x barbie doll gf

I can’t think of anything more cuter than being his doll.

The man does everything for you,

Picking out materials for dresses, designing them for you, working with a private seamstress to bring his visions to life

He knows you best and always supplies the cutest, girliest outfits ever

This man is so attentive and caring, he doesn’t even have to ask what you want to wear, he just knows. It’s like you share a brain

Rhys absolutely loves it when you ask for his advice on hairstyles and fashion choices. He literally goes into designer mode and fixes you up reaaaal nice

When you guys are in the Hewn City, you don’t care, you still wear your pink girly clothes bc who’s gonna say anything to the high lady?

Sparkly accessories, high heels, pretty makeup and cute hairstyles is your trademark.

Rhys loves that you are super girly, he likes the dynamic of him being dark and mysterious and you being bright and bubbly

He protects you like crazy, no one is even managing to say something insulting to you bc rhys takes care or it before the sentence even forms in their mind

Cassian

brooding bf x sunshine gf

This combo is top tier

At first, Cassian might've thought you were a bit too cheery and too involved in yourself. I mean, who else has a massive stash of fragrances, lotions, sparkly jewels, clothes, tons of bags, and enough shoes to fill a closet?

Also, who in the world is that insanely cheerful? There are a million things to focus on, and you're there pondering over matching shades of pink and which bag to wear for the day.

He tries to keep his distance, but you're so inviting and warm that he just melts and falls head over heels in love.

Cassian also falls in love with how much you care for yourself and how adorable you look every single day.

You notice how you’re always seeing him always in plain, simple athleisure or leather. So, you take matters into your own hands and whisk him away for a shopping spree, upgrading his entire wardrobe. Despite his potential, he's been stuck in a rut of black, plain, and boring clothes, and you're determined to change that.

After just a few weeks of being together, this guy has a full-on skincare routine, knows how to coordinate outfits flawlessly so he looks very put together and handsome

He has even mastered the art of silky-smooth hair thanks to you. You've truly leveled him up in every way.

Everyone can't help but notice how much more refreshed and attractive Cassian looks, and it's making you second-guess your decision to help him level up because now, people are hitting on him even more.

Azriel

Scary bf x shy gf

Top tier combo again

No one really knows how such polar opposites ended up together, but suppose they do say opposites attract.

Azriel is stoic around everyone who isn’t the direct inner circle. He lets loose around his found family but even more so around you

Really, he is super comfortable and funny when you’re alone

Azriel notices how soft spoken and kind hearted you are very early on

He is very attentive and your style is actually first thing he notices

The frilly skirts, cute tops, styled hair, cutesy nails and an aura that screamed femininity

He considers his daggers as accessories while you wear cute headbands and ribbons in your hair

Azriel’s fav activity is watching you get ready for anything, whether it be for bed, an event, in the mornings or date nights

He just adores watching your moves, how much effort you put in, the different techniques you use and how you pamper yourself

Pride fills him when he sees how relaxed and put together you feel and look. There is nothing he likes more than seeing you happy with yourself

I also believe az can be traditional and likes the dynamic of having a girly girl mate, or you being all feminine and sweet while he is more masculine and protective

Bro let’s actually talk about protection

No one, I mean absolutely no one, insults you and gets away with it. No matter how snarky the comment, Azriel deals with it.

You’re not as confrontational as him and often hide behind his wings and that makes him even more protective if possible

You always calm him down when someone says something, and he listens to you. If you don't want him to deal with it then and there, he won't ever confront someone in front of you.

Azriel just handles it later, putting fear into people for even daring to approach you.

He wouldn’t do anything remotely scary or frightening in fromt of you. Azriel keeps his work and personal life separate, especially from you

Az couldn’t dream of accidentally putting you in danger, so he never, EVER drags you into his work

You’re not stupid, you know the toll his work takes on him so you are there for him without being too involved, you know how to cheer him up from whatever he is doing behind closed doors

Eris

Arrogant bf x dark feminine gf

Power couple through and through

Eris is canonically extremely well dressed and that makes this dynamic so special

Eris adores splurging on his seamstresses to create matching outfits for both of you.

Best dressed couple in Prythian, hands down

You two are fashion icons, inspiring countless people. People look up to you as their inspiration. Established luxury brands pay you handsomely to flaunt their designs at balls, where all eyes are on you.

Speaking of matching, y’all have matching smirks and cunning mind, and since you’re mates, you have a way of communicating and plotting without anyone knowing

Before, while B*ron🤢 was alive, Eris was ridiculed for having soft hands, clean nails, and good hygiene, which always disgusted him. Why was being clean looked down upon? It disgusted him, knowing that people purposely rather be dirty than clean

Everything got better when you came around and his father passed away. Finally, he had someone who didn't judge him, someone who actually encouraged him to look his best.

You often sit in his lap, plucking his eyebrows as he wears a face mask, his hair pushed back by a cute alien headband.

You often also get manicures, and at first, Eris was like, "This is where I draw the line." But when you suggested just a clear coat and cleaning the nails, he went along with it.

No one knows though. That's the only compromise; I mean, he's still the High Lord, and people can't know he gets manicures. He'd be ridiculed for some stupid macho reason.

Anyways, when it comes to protecting you, no one does it better than him. Not only will he destroy the person with his words but he will blackmail and psychologically torture them. It might seem mean but that’s the price of people not properly respecting their High Lady

Lucien

calm bf x hyper and outspoken gf

you are an absolute sweetheart, there is no one that hates you in the slightest.

In this scenario, I think you're known for rescuing stray animals. It's not like collecting Pokémon cards; instead, you're the person who steps up when there's a stray kitten in need of care.

You definitely live in a cute cottage in the woods with him, not worrying about anything with him there

Your house is an explosion of adorable decor, with pink accents everywhere you look. It's filled with super cute and girly decorations in every corner.

When you start dating Lucien, he notices how hyper you are and how you juggle multiple tasks at once.

Lucien is like your calming anchor, keeping your energy balanced and the vibes serene.

One of your biggest hyperfixations is clothes. Whether it's dresses, coats, pants, shoes, fabrics, or makeup, anything feminine is right up your alley.

And Lucien makes sure you don't overexert yourself, always looking out for your well-being.

Since you're so hyper, you're sometimes loud in certain moments. It really hurts when people tell you to shut up and calm down.

lucien doesn’t let it slide tho

This man defends you however he deems necessary, whether it's with his words or hands.

Just know, he always has your back, no matter what.

No one is suffocating your light and energy if he has anything to do with it.

427 notes · View notes

heliads · 1 year

Note

Can I pretty please request Carlos Sainz x reader where she’s rly shy and gets worried that maybe he wants someone more outgoing but he tells her he loves her any way she is? Your writing is amazing 🫶🏻

anon i love you wholeheartedly please let me speak on carlos

masterlist

You are not who you are supposed to be. There are qualifications for being the girlfriend of a Formula One driver, you’re sure of it, probably even a style guide somewhere if you only bothered to look it up. Perfect hair. Clean makeup. Pretty, but doesn’t try too hard. Willing to give up their whole life to follow one man on mad jaunts across the planet. Wherever your guidebook is, though, you must have lost it long ago, because you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing, and worst of all, it’s starting to show.

You never should have gotten into this position in the first place. That isn’t to say that you hate it, far from it; dating Carlos Sainz is the best thing that ever happened to you, making you the happiest wrong person at the right time to ever exist. In every other universe, he’s probably seeing models or actresses, but here, he has you, and you’re willing to fight off every multiversal version of you just to keep everything as it is right now.

Your butterfly effect was quite stunning, actually. You ended up getting tickets to a Grand Prix through last minute cancellations. They were great, came with paddock passes and all that, and while you were lingering through Ferrari hospitality, Carlos happened to drop by to visit a friend and he noticed you while you were in line to get some water. He’s got the confidence of, well, a world class athlete, an adrenaline junkie, a professional race car driver, and so he introduced himself.

Sometimes, it’s just as easy as that. A father’s cousin’s roommate buys two tickets to a Grand Prix, then a stranger’s roommate’s brother gets sick, and suddenly you’re touching down off a plane overseas and walking through the door of paddock hospitality. You wear red, and you are seen. Just like that.

It took one more weekend before either of you knew that you wanted what you had to last for good. He texted you, followed you on Instagram and blew his cover of seeming cool by accidentally liking a post of yours from six years ago. And, when he saw you again, he knew that he wanted the spark between you to be something more, something like a bonfire.

Coincidence may have supported you thus far, but you don’t trust it not to abandon you. At the end of the day, you are you, you are Y/N L/N, and you are so far removed from Carlos’ world that it stuns you to think that you were even in his orbit so long as to meet him. If there are powers that be somewhere in the universe, they’re either playing a cruel joke or messing around to give you a helping hand.

Hopefully, it’ll be the latter, but truly who knows at this point. As if it wasn’t surreal enough to introduce Carlos to your friends and family as Carlos Sainz, Formula One driver. As if it doesn’t blow your minds that people have started making Instagram accounts just dedicated to posting photos of you and your boyfriend whenever you’re seen out together.

The problem lies in the insanity of it all. You are not from this sort of life, you weren’t born into a silver spoon dynasty and you barely know how to interact with any of them now. You get along with the other WAGs as best you can; Heidi’s lovely, sure, and you were friendly with Charlotte until she disappeared, but sometimes it feels like it’s just you and your boyfriend against the world. Of any ally to pick, Carlos would be your top choice each and every time, but still. The fact remains that he will go out and race and leave you to your own devices, and you lack the extroverted impulses to social climb with everyone else.

This, then, is the main concern. You can pick out whatever designer clothes you want, goodness knows Carlos has offered to buy you anything already, and you can get your nails and hair done before each and every race, but that doesn’t change the fact that you, at your core, are never going to enjoy the paparazzi circus whenever you have to brave it.

It’s just not your scene, that’s all. You’re on the quieter side, happy to spend time with a few key friends but increasingly nervous in large crowds. Formula One is all large crowds, as you’ve discovered; thousands of fans, hundreds of engineers and team members, plus drivers and girlfriends and best friends. So many eyes, all on you. So many voices all shouting over each other.

You love Carlos, though, and you love him wholeheartedly, so you gather up your courage and go to race weekends when you can. Every time Carlos sees you in the crowd, he smiles so widely his friends tease him for weeks, and he runs to you first after every podium and strong finish. You want to be there for your boyfriend, truly you do, you just wonder if all of this should come easier to you than it does.

Also, you wonder if Carlos wishes the same thing. He has been nothing but perfect to you, so the spirals of guilt currently tangling their way through your insides are purely of your own creation, but what if he truly does think like that? Carlos must see the other WAGs, how they shine and sparkle with attention instead of feeling the urge to run. Wouldn’t he want that? Wouldn’t he get frustrated that you can’t be like the rest?

Thousands of girls in the world, and he picks you. You don’t know if it’s sweet or genuinely frightening. He wanted you out of everyone, yes, but he could replace you in a snap, swapping you out like some useless part on his car. There is nothing about you that cannot be replicated in any other girl. Even Charles did it, in a way, got himself a new girlfriend that’s a dead ringer for Charlotte. Carlos has no reason to keep you except for something he knows and you don’t.

The guessing will drive you mad, maybe, but you’ll lose your sanity long before that just trying to keep up with everything in his fast-paced life. You’ve been to prior F1 races, obviously, it’s how you met Carlos in the first place and it’s also how you kept him, but this upcoming weekend is different, this is Barcelona. Carlos is the center of attention at his home race, and every step he takes, a new storm of people is flooding in to ask him for autographs, selfies, anything to remind them that he’s real and right before their eyes.

Carlos doesn’t ask for a whole lot, and he certainly didn’t force you to come to this race, but you saw the hope in his dark eyes when he brought it up oh-so-casually at a dinner last week. You had assured him that you would go there to cheer him on along with the rest of his home crowd, and Carlos had been delighted for the rest of the evening.

You are happy to go, truly, but it’s taking everything in you to keep your smile up in front of the reporters and crowds and fans, and it’s just the first day. All you’re handling right now is qualifying, not even the actual race. In the back of your mind, a voice whispers that it’s only going to get worse from here on out, but when Carlos looks back at you as you wind through the paddock, you just smile and tell him you’re glad to be there with him. You’re here for him, after all, and Carlos is busy enough with race stuff that he won’t want to hear your complaints.

That’s what you keep repeating to yourself throughout the entirety of that day. Carlos qualifies well and is properly pleased about it, as he should be. The possibility of a podium or perhaps even a win for his home race has been one of his top goals for the season, and he’s as close as he can get to it right now. He earnestly talks about it the whole drive back to your hotel, but once you’re back in the safety and peace of the room, the conversation abruptly switches back to you.

Carlos sheds his jacket at the door, watches you flop down onto the bed with a smile on his face, then asks you pointedly, “And how are you doing, amor?”

You smile back at him, the expression trained to perfection after being tested so many times today. “Great! Glad that everything’s going so well for you. I’ll be cheering for P1 tomorrow.”

In truth, you’re tired more than anything. People kept coming up to you all day, assuming that taking a selfie with Carlos’ girlfriend was at least half as good as getting to see him. They gave you all manner of gifts and things to give to him, extracting promises that you’d tell him dozens of different people wished him well. You knew you’d get a lot more attention when you started dating Carlos, but the lack of personal space and privacy at the races is truly unlike anything you’d experienced before.

Carlos has been dating you long enough to pick up on this, apparently, because he furrows his brow and sits down on the edge of the bed next to you. “I’ll be glad to see you tomorrow, but do you want to tell me what is really on your mind? Don’t try to tell me otherwise. I know you, no?”

You sigh, covering your face with one of your arms. Carlos deflects from this attempt to hide by gently pulling your arm away, pressing a kiss to your forehead to make up for it. “Talk to me, cariño.”

You look sorrowfully at him, but when it becomes clear that Carlos won’t let you go until you confess, you give in. “It’s just a lot, I guess. The people and the cameras and everything.”

Carlos frowns. “I can get them to go away, you know that. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

You look away. “I just thought you wouldn’t want to hear it. All of the other girlfriends have no problem with it, just me. I thought you’d want me to be more outgoing, so I tried, I really did, it’s just hard for me, I don’t know why.”

When you dare to risk a glance up at Carlos, you’re surprised to notice that he looks genuinely hurt. “Sweetheart, you didn’t think that I would actually be unhappy about that? I just want you to be happy. Don’t think about me.”

You let out a low breath. “I know, it’s just– I want to be like the rest, really. I don’t want this to be a reason–”

You cut yourself off, distracted by Carlos’ hands still wrapped around yours. Carlos picks up on the obviously dropped subject, though, and looks at you with fresh concern. “You don’t want it to be a reason for what?”

“That you would break up with me,” you whisper.

That’s it, then. That’s the truth. If you can’t live with Carlos’ lifestyle, why wouldn’t he leave you for someone who could? It makes perfect sense to you, but judging by Carlos’ expression, that logic couldn’t be further from his mind.

“No, Y/N,” he says, “That’s not right at all. I don’t want to break up with you, like, ever. Not because of this. I don’t want someone else, I want you. I love you, querida. I love the girl who showed up out of nowhere and made me forget about every other woman in the world. I love the girl who shows up to my home race even though it stresses her out because she wants to be there for me. I love you, Y/N. No one else. Just you.”

And, well, in the face of such passionate declarations, who could stand firm in their own self-pity? Certainly not you. You smile and let him kiss you again and again until you can’t see straight, and after that it is better, it is all better. Hearing it straight from Carlos is better than trying to guess at it. It lets your worries finally sink off into nothingness. It’s just you and him, just what he wants. Just what you want.

f1 tag list: @j-brielmalfoy

#carlos sainz #carlos sainz imagines #carlos sainz x reader #carlos sainz oneshot #f1 #f1 imagines #f1 x reader #f1 oneshot #formula one #formula one imagines #formula one x reader #formula one oneshot #f1 carlos #f1 carlos imagines #f1 carlos x reader #f1 carlos oneshot

1K notes · View notes

some-triangles · 8 months

Text

I am now at a level of obsession with Disco Elysium where I am watching at least a little bit of every playthrough I come across. Last time this happened was with Undertale almost a decade ago. With UT this helped me get a very thorough handle on the way the game was designed and with the subtler bits of player manipulation. DE is not subtle about anything and so instead I'm getting insights into the people playing it, particularly as it spreads beyond the youtube leftist bubble.

The one I'm having the most fun with right now is by this guy named Brady, who is a therapist specializing in addiction. The fun part is not so much his insight into Harry as an addict - again, the game is not subtle - but his absolute discomfort with politics. He refuses to engage with any of the ideological choices, and that makes the game a bit of a bumpy ride for him. It's particularly striking because he's willing to read into everything else that goes on in Harry's brain - he breaks out his Johari windows and his CBT flowcharts and pins the butterfly right to the corkboard - but he shuts down when the game asks him to pick a side.

To extrapolate wildly from one dude's hangups, I think this is just part of the deal with therapy. The aim of a therapist is to make the subject more functional (particularly these days, when if you're lucky insurance will pay for ten sessions, and you better document exactly what worksheets you made your patients fill out) - and being functional means being able to be happy and productive in the society you're currently living in. If I go to a therapist and say I'm bummed out about all the murdering my government is doing they will suggest I stop watching the news, or, if I'm lucky, they'll try to help me figure out why I feel guilt about things I can't control. Delving into the whys and hows of said murdering is actively counterproductive.

This is not to say that therapy is inherently bad, or, like, counterrevolutionary, because making you a more functional person does help with a lot of things, including your ability to help others. It's just a useful thing to keep in mind when therapy and politics bump into each other. I read this paper when I was googling ABA for podcast reasons and it stuck with me. The thesis boils down to: because the world is imperfect and people need skills to live in it we should continue to torture children, and we don't have enough research to conclude that torture could be traumatic. This is on one level reasonable and on one level insane. It depends where you stand, and whether you think "ability to express affection towards parents" is worth that kind of intervention. But the authors wouldn't construe this as a political argument.

Anyway: with all this in mind, I very much recommend reading "The Saint of Bright Doors", which we will be covering on wizards vs lesbians soon.

#disco elysium #the saint of bright doors #in the ways therapy can be helpful category Brady also points out how Harry sees everything in terms of power dynamics #which I never noticed because I also do that. I wonder why??

528 notes · View notes

lovewireds · 3 months

Text

been meaning to post my designs for these little guys forever. insane splatoon rambling under cut to explain design choices and lore related things ... read my autism boy

btw this is a repost from our art side blog this was written and drawn like months ago <- minorly rewrote some things tho

thx splatoon users drfreeman & drcoolatta for fueling my splatvrai autism brainrot ... i hate u /J

GORDON

idk how to explain this but Theoretical Physicist is inkling coded . maybe its cuz splatoon species social hierarchy

Native ink color is Orange, but he has Dark Brown tentacle roots.

Uses custom weapons to attach in place of his prosthetic; It works best with Splatlings but can be adjusted to attach other weapons.

If the thing above didn't make it obvious, he's a Splatling main. He switches out depending on his mood though.

sighhhhh technically an Agent... stares at the ceiling...Main character...

His arm loss is like pretty much the same as in-canon but it's with the octarian army shrugs. don't ask me why he doesn't just regenerate it cuz hes a squid thats for me to know and you to find out. (get partially sanitized loser)

Born & Raised in Inkopolis pre-splashtags; He wasn't informed of the switch to Splashtags being expected when participating in most activities around Inkadia.

TOMMY

I forgot why i made him an inkling why did i do that. I think it was bc i didnt wanna make them all octolings but i was wrong srry we all make mistakes /hj I ALREADY REDREW HIM ONCE IM NTO DOING IT AGAINNN

Native ink color is orange-brown.

His hat has an eye guard for sensory reasons; He covers up as much of his skin as possible because he doesn't like the feeling of foreign ink on him.

He isn't a specific weapon main, he just uses any long-range weapon to minimize the possibility of getting ink on himself. If he has enough guarding, he prefers to use N-ZAP '89.

Makes his own gear for sensory reasons as well :) It's legal when ur dad's the G-Man.

Exclusively plays in Turf Wars, Anarchy Battles, etc with friends. He hates playing with people he doesn't know.

Born in Splatsville !! He feels like a Splatsville resident. His occupation is resident I cannot imagine him doing Anything

His dad is that creepy curtain in one of flounder heights windows /j

BENR(E)Y

Octoling bc I wanted him to be sanitized :) Other than the visual part of being sanitized, I thought him being clinically dead fits /hj also lore reasons below

Pre-sanitization, his native ink color was blue.

Great Turf War veteran; He didn't do anything in the war itself, he was just enlisted lol. He was primarily security for the Octarian Domes in the years after the war. Yes, that also means he is over 100 years old.

"Raised" (debatably) in Octo Canyon.

E-liter main (4-star Base + 5-star Scope) and avid squidbagger. He also uses any heavyweight weapons (dynamo, tenta, etc)

Absolutely hates working at Grizzco, he only does Turf Wars and Anarchy Battles. He only works at Grizzco during Big Runs. The type of guy that does X battles.

Professional Anarchy / Ranked / X Battler btw. That's literally 90% of what he does.

Got on Gordon's azz over him not having a Splashtag; i wonder what that parallels.

BUBBY

Genuinely don't have a lot to say about his design. He gives off Splatoon 2 Octoling vibes (showoff /hj) also i wanted to make his hair wispy like it should be.

Native ink color is a light blue-gray gradient.

The drawing doesn't give it credit but I swear those are glasses not goggles .. they're opaque-colored slanted oval glasses !! ^_^ u can interpret them as spiked or just eyelashes, both are right.

oh also the text under bubby says "Is Best" in some splatoon font we downloaded awhile ago . i think it was ripped from splatnet

Blaster main. I don't know how to explain this one but it feels right.

helps with the practical Map props (ie ink rails) and with some weapon gear manufacturing ^_^ tech guy

COOMER

Was going to make him an Octoling for the convenience of making his hair curly but i didn't want to make all of them octolings + i think his personality generally fits Inklings more.

Native ink color is an off white gradient.

Slosher main cuz he likes moving his arms. this makes sense to me. Also is a fan of Splatlings and other Shooters.

i felt ill trying to design coomer without making his eyes two lines with eyelids

War Veteran...Stole some octarian tech and got fucked up super limbs. Cyber Inkling stealing from octos !! [inkadia crowd goes wild] /j

anyways outside of the war™ he's a data researcher. just generally. he does shit with splatfests and eggstra work.

If you splashed him with ink he would stand unmoving. He would not shake it off.

DARNOLD

Ok i'll be honest the Octoling choice is primarily bc Octolings have the afro style & inklings have no textured hair styles (i didnt have the energy to design smth that could work) . His personality fits octoling too though :3

Native ink color is red-orange.

The fucked up guy that makes those drink effects people never use ( i use them ... )

He doesn't participate in Turf Wars or Anarchy Battles, but he works some gigs at Grizzco for extra cash every once in awhile !

the type of guy that goes after flyfish cuz no one else will . god bles !!!

not a lot to say about his design & his place in inkadia , it kinda speak for itself . he just wants to get by and make his drinks in peace . #autism ... he is pretty much exactly the same as his canon self

206 notes · View notes

felassan · 1 month

Text

Snippets. 🐺💜

Nathan: "This team has done some amazing work 😍" [source]

devs Mack Carruthers and Greg Towner worked on Morrigan's transformation in the new trailer [source]

Violet: "🥰 can't wait to share more with you guys 👀" [source]

Violet: "Happy to finally have my first authored blog (with help from my AMAZING TEAM of course!) to share with you guys!!! Check it out and pre-order DATV now! 🥰🥰🥰" [source] [bloglink]

In this thread, Derek highlights a compilation of shots from the trailer that he made, worked on in-tandem with others, or polished

Derek: "And that’s all the stuff from me in the trailer! I feel so incredibly lucky that so much of my work made it into this AMAZING trailer. Can’t wait for you guys to see more. 🧡 I wanna add: it takes an army to make these scenes. While I did character layout, camera animations, animation polish, bug fixing and technical stuff, there’s still a plethora of folks who touched these scenes. Matter of fact, our work still isn’t done. So I gotta thank: writing, level art, VFX, lighting, sound, character art, performance capture, actors, production, and my fellow Cine folks who I worked on these scenes in tandem with. It all came together into one incredible package. 🧡 For anyone who’s curious, here’s a breakdown of what I do: - mocap assembly - scene layout (characters, props, cameras, mocap) - camera work (animations, framing, polish, etc.) - scene polish (character and camera animation polish, bug fixes) - integration - bug fixing" [source, two, three, four] Derek added: "PS: I count these as Cine folks, but to clarify - also huge thank you our incredible Creature and Character animators. They did some really insanely mind blowing shit. Dunno how they do it." [source]

User: "Okay, but is it on purpose that the drink/flask thingie is positioned almost like the stomach in Manfred It's like kinda in the correct area too if I'm not mistaken [image of Manfred]" / Derek: "Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what character art was going for here 😂" [source]

Dev Tony: "Been hard at work bringing these scenes to life with an amazing team of cinematic artists and designers. Enjoy a small teaser of our work." [source]

Derek: "I worked on a few of [Lucanis'] best scenes. HE OWES ME." [source] / User: "Very much looking forward to seeing where his story goes. I have a feeling it'll be spicy." / Derek: "Oh it’s a doozy." [source]

Derek: "The hair in our game is ASTOUNDING." [source]

Derek: "Our lighting team are absolute MASTERS at this, every bit of work they did was incredible!!" [source]

Derek: "I can absolutely tell you that there are a PLETHORA of dialogue options, major choices, and a huge amount of variability. Trust me - it’s been challenging to work with all the variability LOL" [source]

Carly: "game dev is so collaborative, a lot of stuff in the trailer i've helped out on! most of the work id say i "own" isn't gonna be in flashy trailers, but hope we get to see some of it over the next two months ! :)" [source]

Crystal: "Some really beautiful cinematics shown off in this one. So proud of our team!" [source]

Carly: "ive worked on at least one romance scene for each follower and i still squeak when they flirt with me im With y'all" [source]

Dev Matthew: "👀 This is so hype! Might be a tad of my work in there as well. 😉" [source]

Siggi: "It's so exciting to see the some of the shots I worked on and worked along-side come to life! I was afraid that my work would never see the life of day. I can't wait for October!" [source]

Siggi: "My biggest contribution was the assan work I think. I got to do a lot of look and movement development on him. I even animated his whole intro scene." [source]

Siggi: "Look at my babies! LOOK AT THEM! They're smiling!" [context: Assan and the dragon that rises from the water, and having worked on them] [source]

Carly: "forever grateful to siggi for helping me onboard but okkkk their animation work is sooooo killer, set an amazing standard for the cines !!!!! 🙏🙏🙏 so excited for y'all to see" [source]

Dev Zara: "October 31st!! So excited for folks to enjoy it. And to finally be able to publicly share my animation work." [source]

Camille: "Time for you to meet some of them dragons ! And I don’t think you’ll be able to slay them so easily hehe" [source]

Varric's Bianca: "That’s us!! That’s our game!! 😭❤️ never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted that I’d end up where I am, working on my dream project. I’m so immensely grateful to this amazing team!" [source]

ikhandle: "Congratulations team! This has been an honour to work on! Amazing job all around." [source]

Michael: "the team really, really cares about PC." [source] / User: "The trailer was awesome! How soon do you think we'll hear about PC specific features? 👀" / Michael: "pretty soon! i know its in the works." [source]

For a while there was an error on the Steam listing of the game's PC specs. it said the recommended PC spec is the same as the minspec. the recommended PC spec is PC spec is i9-9900K. it looks like this has now been fixed [source]

ikhandle: "One of my dragon shots just made the trailer! 🐉🐉 Huge shoutout to the Cinematic team for absolutely crushing it—these are some of the best cinematics I've seen in years. Truly an honor to have the privilege to work on Dragon Age. Congrats to the whole team on their outstanding work!" [source] (context: dragon shot at the end of the trailer when the red one pulls a pike out its body)

ikhandle: "Had a lot of fun animating this big boi. Y’all not ready for him 🦴☠️🪓" [source] (context: the giant skeleton) / User: "Does he have a name? 👀" / ikhandle: "I’ll ask 😂. I’ve named him SeñorBones for now." [source]

The cinematics in the trailer are running REAL time in engine [source]

ikhandle: "Everyone has done such an amazing job… a lot of hard work to get these out. Shout out to the whole team!!’" [source]

Jess: "😎 I'm uncontrollably hype and I work on this….." [source]

Dev Yanni: "Dragons go roar! *internal screaming in excitement*" [source]

Nick: "Nuts to see how far this has come. Way to go to the BioWare team." [source]

#dragon age: the veilguard #dragon age the veilguard spoilers #dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #long post #longpost #morrigan #queen of my heart #hype hypeeeee

108 notes · View notes

supernova351 · 5 months

Text

My opinions on the different character iterations in Trigun! (Some of these are serious…. Others less so)

Trimax Vash: My girlfriend who’s suffered more than Jesus

98 Vash: My little comphet king. You are trying so hard all the time

Badlands Rumble Vash: He’s ovulating and somebody needs to do him about it (it’s me I’m somebody)

Tristamp Vash: I like his new design solely on the basis that it was a choice Vash made to look more human, not studio orange trying to make him more fuckable. Come on. He already was.

Trimax Wolfwood: She has eldest daughter syndrome she has religious trauma he walks around wearing a suit in a hundred degree heat he’s bitchless and terrified of his girlfriend I want her

98 Wolfwood: Insane. He failed to knife fight a robot in the same episode he blew his priestly cover by shooting the same robots he failed to knife fight. This was the episode he was introduced

Badlands Rumble Wolfwood: Rack +10 waist -5 whiteness x 29

Stampede Wolfwood: hes trying so hard and it’s so pathetic I’m gonna punt him down a staircase (affectionate)

Trimax Knives: So cunty with it she slays absolute penis. She has a PRESENCE!!

98 Knives: Cartoon ass super villain. Just so pathetic it captivates me

Stampede Knives: I can’t verbalize how much I want to break a chair over his head. Just fucking let him have it.

#trigun #trimax #trigun stampede #vash the stampede #trigun maximum #nicholas d. wolfwood #vash #vashwood #millions knives #I’ll do the other characters later I’m tired and I’m the middle of class

194 notes · View notes

shinidamachu · 3 months

Text

inukag was born to be shipped by me and I was born to ship inukag as well

For ages now I've been meaning to write about the reasons why I ship Inukag as fervently as I do and @inukag-week felt like the perfect opportunity to indulge myself, so here we go.

I want to start with how aesthetically pleasing they are. From their perfect size difference to the complimentary color scheme of their outfits plus contrasting hair and eye colors, Inuyasha and Kagome just look absolutely good together.

Their character design makes it clear from the get go that they're visually a great match. The association is so strong that the audience becomes unable to picture one without the other, as if they're two halves of the same item. Different, yet unequivocally a team, a pair.

Decades ago, they already had that classic quality to them and I bet they'd never get out of style even decades from now. And the rich lore that surrounds the pairing only adds to that aesthetic: the well, the tree, the beads, the robe, the sword, all of it enhances how iconic they are. Even something as ordinary as star gazing becomes uniquelly theirs.

Futhermore, I just absolutely love the entire concept of it. The subvertion of the fairy tale archetype, the idea of a love that transcends time, of soulmates who actually work on building their bond. Loving each other was both inevitable and a choice they made every single day.

Inuyasha and Kagome were just two teenagers from different worlds — literally and figurativelly — discovering together what love was. This made their relationship very compelling, because the excange between them is insanely substancial.

And their overall dynamic is so wholesome. There was a push and pull, a give and take, that made it fluid rather than static. Every single milestone felt organic and kept the audience thirsting for the next one.

Nothing felt forced or rushed. The slow burn was competently written to showcase their relationship being build on a very strong foundation, consistent in intimacy, mutual trust and acceptance — recurring themes for them and for the story — and so the stages of their bond had such a natural pace, it highlighted how genuine and healthy it was.

Consequently, there are so many aspects of their connection to explore. There's a never ending room for angst and for light hearted moments and you can adopt a more mature perspective or go for comical instead: they manage to be versatile without being generic and to embod the best clichés in fiction without becoming one themselves.

It's hard to think of a trope they couldn't pull off or an alternate universe that doesn't work for them. It gives the fandom plenty of freedom to be creative and to have the best time with it.

Plus, their chemistry was off charts. The romantic tension bleed through every single interaction. Their passion is so strong you could feel it even in scenes that had nothing to do with romance. And they didn't even need to kiss to achieve that level of synchrony.

They were also compatible. Inuyasha and Kagome balance each other quite nicely. Even in a relationship, they still keep their individualities and remain interesting both as characters and as a ship.

The very thing that dooms most pairings — opposite personalities — is precisely what keeps them together. Inuyasha and Kagome are completely different from each other, but they're actually extremely similar where it actually matters: their morals and goals.

And they longer they stay together, challenging one another, growing through trials and tribulations, inadvertently learning what each other's needs are and fulfilling them, easing each other's sorrows, covering each other's backs, saving each other's lives in every possible way, learning each other and learning with one another, the more their dichotomy turns into a duality, because they gain a more nuanced perspective of themselves, of each other and of the world.

It's a level of understanding, closeness and respect incredibly difficult to match. And for Inuyasha and Kagome, no one else even came close.

Another thing is that they're not just complementary to each other, but to the story itself. Their romance enhaces the overall plot. It has a structural placement in the wider narrative, strengthening its core themes and fulfilling the characters individual arcs, ultimately resulting in a more compelling journey.

So many romances are disposable to their own story, but Inukag was detrimental to theirs. Inuyasha and Kagome's interactions served as pivotal points of their respective arcs. Taking only the narrative into consideration, their relationship holds a lot of weight and greatly influenced everyone around it and it tied everything together.

That's why their happy ending felt so satisfying: it feels earned because everything went full cycle. All of that symbolism, all of those parallels paid off. Anything different from what we got would simply lack narrative and thematic cohesion.

And even if they didn't end up together, they could never be circumstancial. There was a real reason why they met, a reason why the fell in love and why they had ever lasting impacts on each other's lives regardless. It wasn't just love for love's sake.

This is what makes them, in my opinion, an epic ship.

BONUS: their soundtrack is lit and their quotes are simply legendary.

#Inukag Week #Inukag Week 2024 #Kagome #Inuyasha #Inumeta #Inukag meta #Inuyasha meta #Inukag #Kagome Higurashi #Excuse the dramatic title I just couldn't help myself

125 notes · View notes

atopvisenyashill · 2 months

Note

imo rhaenyra’s “madness” being that of a cult leader capable of convincing her followers to do ostensibly insane things cuz she’s just that charismatic & self-assured in the correctness of her beliefs is way cooler and less sexist than the typical ‘she went crazy’ targ nonsense, "ohhh ‘mad queen’ daenerys she’s so crazy it’s that classic targ madness just like her ‘mad’ ancestor ‘mad’ king aerys you never know with those ‘mad’ targaryens" that’s so boring lol, give me something believable

YES i honestly don’t understand and have been increasingly annoyed by these really disingenuous “oh so when rhaenyra slaughters innocents it’s totally fine bc she has the divine right 😒” criticism when it couldn’t be more clear that’s not what’s happening. i mentioned this with the white stag before, how people are taking the most bad faith reading of it imaginable and saying that’s objectively what the writers intended when….it’s very clear the writers are intending for a more nuanced exploration of the entire concept of the white stag, YOU (general you, not you anon) are purposefully taking it in a negative way because you like being pissed off. what an obnoxious way of engaging with the story!

and i feel the same here! the main criticism i see of rhaenyra is that a) she’s not allowed to get her hands bloody/she’s always in the right and b) they’re making it seem as if she has the divine right to commit violence due to the prophecy. there is absolutely no narrative basis for these readings though, it’s COMPLETELY people projecting.

the reason she doesn’t do anything earlier in the season is because she also isn’t doing anything in the BOOK during this section because of her grief. i think criticism of HOW they wrote that is valid - the fact that she doesn’t speak at all in the first episode was a heinous choice, i get what they were going for, but it fell so flat that as Professional Writers they should have realized they were missing the mark there - but this constant “rhaenyra doesn’t get her hands dirty” “rhaenyra is too perfect” is so fucjing obnoxious. they’re ✨building up to it✨ guys, it’s why they did the stuff with Aemond not meaning to kill Luke and then actively attempting to kill/harm Aegon, it’s why the Green Council goes from squabbling to actively suppressing Alicent’s voice, it’s why Rhaenyra's convos with Jacaerys have gotten increasingly more angry, on and on. Sorry you all wanted Rhaenyra to be a Born Evil Queen, but if they’re not doing that with Alicent, why would they do that with Rhaenyra? "Oh they only had Jacaerys call the dragonseeds mongrels because-" my comrade in christ they took Alicent making the decision to lock the smallfolk into the city and gave it to Aemond to make her look better and make Aemond look worse it's the exact same thing and they're doing it because they're trying to have a conversation about the cyclical rot of feudalism and the way these people are completely trapped by their own design in this cycle of violence!!!!

and YES very much, this gets into point b which is like....THIS is Mad Queen Rhaenyra, THIS is Rhaenyra the Cruel! It's Rhaenyra holding onto this prophecy that gives her the divine right to be violent, that represents her father choosing her over everyone else, that represents her own worthiness as a ruler, that every single fucked up thing she's suffered is worth it because the fabled hero will come from her line, because Jacaerys will follow her onto the throne and there will be unending peace, because Viserys chose HER he loved HER he only ever loved HER, and she HAS THE RIGHT but what does "have the right" even mean. "oh they always portray her as morally in the right" NO THEY DO NOT YOU ARE MAKING THAT UP. Rhaenyra thinks she's morally in the right and the show is constantly making her face the consequences of her own actions, and showing that (again, and I cannot overemphasize this enough, just like Alicent, just like Viserys, just like Aegon, and while they do it sloppily with them, just like Aemond and Daemon!) Rhaenyra will close her eyes to the glaring faults of the people around her and the violence she is helping to perpetuate because to her in the end, all of this suffering has to be worth it and she has this fancy little prophecy that is showing her it is worth it. That's so interesting! It's fascinating! "Well I think she-" Well that's just your opinion man! I'm having a fucking ball watching her step closer and closer to the edge and insisting that she's staying still, she's playing safe, it's everyone else that is taking the leap. That's fun, that's engaging, that's a good way of depicting that dichotomy of how greatness can so easily turn to madness.

#asks #anons

86 notes · View notes

technofantasia · 2 years

Text

One of my absolute favorite parts of golden wind is the singularly horrible outfits that the main characters wear, but not just the fact that they're terrible, no no. Sure, they all look like they got dressed with their eyes closed in a boutique for clowns, but the REAL kicker is that they did not always dress in this way??

We see the characters' backstories. We see how they used to look. And almost ALL of them USED TO WEAR NORMAL PEOPLE CLOTHES!!! Why? Why the sudden shift to kitchen sink fashion?? And, of course, there are layers to this, too.

Like. Giorno is his own whole can of worms, concerning exactly what happened between middle and high school. Sure, there's the whole hair color change thing which I refuse to acknowledge the canonical reason behind, but whatever, I can ignore that. Why suddenly decide on that hairstyle? That wardrobe? Especially considering that in every other way he's not exactly the flamboyant, attention-grabbing type... The only explanation I can think of would be, I don't know, he just happens to have a surprisingly eclectic fashion sense and high school was the first time he was able to be on his own away from home to indulge it. First opportunity to show off his individuality and he went whole hog with it, I could see that. Yeah sure you go giogio!! have as many heart shaped boob windows and ladybug brooches as you like

Abbacchio, too. It looks like he mostly dressed normal for his job, but the second he left, he transitioned to his current look? Either that’s just his usual taste or his emotional crisis led him to an emo makeover. Or both. In either case, I suppose that’s valid and I support him. His weird eggshell hat is the only part of his outfit that’s really that out there anyway

But the others??

Narancia. Mista. Fucking Fugo. They all dressed at least mostly normally right up until they joined Passione, at which point they switched on a dime to looking Like That. Sure, some aesthetic preferences seemed to carry over, like Narancia’s boyish style, Fugo’s suit pattern, and Mista’s navel window + crisscross pattern + hat. But they still used to wear, yknow. People clothes. So... Why??? What on EARTH happened???

Well...

Strangely enough, Bucciarati looks like he’s ALWAYS dressed Like That. Same hair style, same colors, same patterns... Given how much everyone else’s backstory outfits clashed with their eventual outfit choices, it’s almost weirder to see that Bucciarati clearly has clothing and style preferences that match up from past to present.

So. I can’t help but wonder.

Did... did the others just assume that, since Bucciarati (and maybe also Abbacchio) dressed Like That, that was just The Mafia Style??? The Style Of Clothing That Mafia People Wear???? So, in order to integrate themselves into Passione, they’d have to start dressing Like That too??????

Actually. Given that all the members of La Squadra and Polpo and the boss’s personal guard and the boss himself ALSO dress Like That... fuck, i don’t know, maybe they were right and that IS just The Mafia Style!! The fact it also happens to align with Bucciarati’s/Abbacchio’s/Giorno’s personal fashion sense might just be a coincidence!!! Who knows!!! Who cares!!!

Where do you even go to BUY clothing like that??? Are there special, under-the-counter sections of clothing stores that specially cater to Badcore fashion for mafia members??? Do the designers earn a special commission for designing clothes no sane person would wear that fit as uncomfortably as humanly possible??? Didn't they say at some point that mafia members try to dress inconspicuously to blend in???? RISOTTO IS LITERALLY JUST WEARING A JESTER HAT WHAT KIND OF CIRCUS IS THIS

But yeah so the logistics of part 5′s character designs drive me insane and I love it

3K notes · View notes

betweengenesisfrogs · 11 months

Text

A HOMESTUCK MANIFESTO

I want to think about what comes next after Homestuck.

That’s a challenge to the world as much as a personal mission statement.

I want to see writers and artists and creators making the next Homestuck, taking its themes and binding them into new fabrics, giving life to new creatures even more beautiful and uncanny than the original species.

I hunger to see new forms of story and image evolving with Homestuck in their DNA.

This process is already underway. Homestuck is a massive boulder dropped into the waters of culture, and the full wake of its ripples is still to be felt. But let’s call attention to this process and ask: what would happen if we engaged in it more consciously? If we sifted through our feelings about Homestuck to create something new, deliberately, with great and wonderful purpose?

The tools we need are within our grasp. Homestuck presents itself as magic, but it’s a work constructed in time out of specific storytelling choices. So let’s understand those choices. Let’s understand how Homestuck did what it did, and use Homestuck’s tools to build art that grips the soul of future generations as strongly as Homestuck did ours.

What follows is not a traditional literary analysis. It does not cite its sources; it does not seek to give us a comprehensive understanding of Homestuck. If it does, it does so only to the extent it suits its larger purpose.

Our goal here, our quest, if you will, is not to understand the Homestuck that exists, but the Homestuck that comes next.

Let's begin.

0. THE WILD GARDEN

Let’s lay the absolute groundwork here.

Homestuck is constructed as a re-appropriation of itself. Or to put it another way, it’s a big improvisational move, a process of “yes and”-ing so hard it develops a sprawling continuity.

Tiny details are constantly re-contextualized to become part of something else. A joke might turn tragic. A silly aside might turn into something profound.

But it didn’t have to be that way.

It’s crucial to understand that what we experience as continuities were in fact choices made at specific times. Homestuck is a garden where seeds were scattered in every direction, grown en masse, then weeded down to create patterns and forms.

The shape of the garden is designed to conceal the gardener’s hand. But the gardener’s choices are there, every step of the way.

If we are to follow in its footsteps, what choices should we make?

Let’s talk about themes.

1. THE MEANING CRISIS

Nobody in Homestuck knows what they’re doing.

And neither do we.

All the old idols have broken down. The values we were taught in our childhood fail to measure up to the problems of the world we live in. We grasp after careers and lives we were told would make us happy and wonder why we’re left empty. The selves that we were told were us now fit us about as well as clothing we’ve outgrown. Crises loom, political, economic and environmental, and everywhere it feels like the people who are supposed to guide and lead us aren’t doing enough.

It's widening gyres and slouching beasts all the way from here to Bethlehem, is what I’m saying.

The reason people go absolutely insane for Homestuck is that it depicts this crisis of meaning. It shows the questions we might want to ask, and attempts to provide some kind of answer.

The protagonists of Homestuck struggle with what I’ve called “received narrative.” That is, they’ve inherited stories from their families, from the world, that they try to use to define their lives, and it doesn’t work. But these stories are so familiar that it’s hard to think outside them. They have to develop new stories by which to live. Sometimes they succeed, but other times they can’t escape the gravity of the ones they were given.

With me so far?

Great. Now understand that all this was improvised and discovered largely accidentally over the course of ten years.

Here’s a seed that became quite an impressive tree:

The streets are empty. Wind skims the voids keeping neighbors apart, as if grazing the hollow of a cut reed, or say, a plundered mailbox. A familiar note is produced. It's the one Desolation plays to keep its instrument in tune.

It’s a joke. But it was never just a joke. There’s an idea here of dissatisfaction with the stereotypical idea of American suburban life. Egbert here is looking for something more, dissatisfied for reasons they can’t fully articulate. This is typical fantasy protagonist stuff, but there’s something more here, too.

Eventually it’s redirected towards the idea that there really is an unseen riddler. But let’s put that aside for now.

This page, in its moment, says: your life is not the full picture. There’s something else out there, waiting, that’s going to change everything.

That's a potential set-up for a very powerful payoff. It gives us the sense that Egbert and all their friends are going to have to rethink what they know. That this suburban life is not going to be enough for them, that somehow or other they’re going to encounter something they aren’t prepared for, and they’ll have to find a new way of acting and being. That, try as they might to avoid it, they’re going to change over the course of this journey.

But to understand how they change, we need to talk about SBURB.

2. THE PORTAL FANTASY OF IT ALL

A lot of people like to joke that Homestuck is an isekai. I think it might clarify things to use the term portal fantasy instead.

Portal fantasy is simply the fantasy subgenre of characters, usually kids, going to a magical other world. Maybe they make friends, maybe they learn lessons and stuff. You know the drill. I don’t have to to tell you more because the story structure is already so familiar. That’s what gives it power.

Portal fantasy differs from the related Japanese genre of isekai in that isekai in its current form is much more heavily based on video games such as MMORPGs. In the most pervasive isekai narratives, protagonists are rewarded not so much for achieving personal growth as being able to exploit the game mechanics of a game-like system. That’s pretty different from your typical Narnia scenario.

The influence of portal fantasy is everywhere in Homestuck, especially in the beginning. We have nods to the fantasy films of the 1980s that gave us our contemporary idea of this story structure, such as The Neverending Story (itself, in its original book incarnation, a phenomenal commentary on the genre). Our protagonists are genre savvy; they recognize what’s happening here.

But it doesn’t fit quite right. The odd note is first sounded when Egbert asks Nanasprite if what they’re doing is going to save the world. They’re bit unsettled to learn the answer’s no, that something else is going on here. Next we have the fantasy worlds: the planetary lands each present a veneer of exciting adventure. But their inhabitants, the consorts, aren’t fully-realized people, they’re largely cute animals going through the motions, not really understanding the story they’re telling. The carapacians are a little better, but they’re still trapped in a fatalism that feels uncomfortable.

As things rev up in Act 4, we learn about doomed timelines from alt-timeline Dave and Rose, how your entire existence in this setting may be fodder for something other than you. When we learn the true purpose of SBURB and its froggy details in Act 5, we see that SBURB is more like a biological creature, mainly interested in its own reproductive desires. It was never really about the portal fantasy at all. The kids are just along for the ride.

So when we see that Rose wants to tear through SBURB, find out a way to escape fate, and snatch meaning from the jaws of futility, it makes sense. We’ve been given hints already that this is the conflict at hand: the characters vs the story that’s telling them.

(Note: it’s certainly possible to have a reading that SBURB is not evil so much as empty, that it reflects what you bring into it, that its will for you is your will for you. But that’s also a difficult thing, right? If you lack self-understanding, it’s a struggle to bring about your ideal reality.)

What we haven’t mentioned yet is that this is all mediated through the lens of video games. Which makes perfect sense. Because where do we seek meaning, especially as kids? In imaginary worlds that make more sense to us than real life, that give us achievements to take pride in and clear objectives to pursue.

SBURB evokes mechanics from games like Final Fantasy. We see its players complete objectives, cast magic spells, gain power-ups with colorful costume changes. But unlike the narratives implied by traditional video game progressions, leveling up doesn’t mean you grow as a person or process your trauma. Later, in Act 6, when we meet a player who has made his life about winning the game (Caliborn), it’s horrific to behold.

Homestuck is a portal fantasy, but it’s fundamentally a portal fantasy about games. It’s a portal fantasy that shows us how characters seek meaning in being the best at arbitrary game mechanics, but ultimately fail to find it.

So I guess…it actually is an isekai? Huh. Wild.

(But seriously, Homestuck is actually fairly prescient in predicting the ideas that come out of isekai and LitRPG. It’s engaging consciously and deconstructively with the weird ideas of self-fulfillment these genres are drowning in.)

So what might a Homestuckian work look like? It will almost certainly critique a false narrative we live by. It may comment on portal fantasy, or our personal satisfaction that comes as easily as playing a video game. But it doesn’t have to be limited to these things. It might talk about our popular TV shows and movies. It may take apart what’s flawed in Marvel, the latest triple-A game, or the modern dark fantasy novel.

Among its tools will be discomfort. Showing a disconnect early on between our character’s expectations and their happiness can serve as foundation to build on, so that when the flaws of the genre narrative are revealed, it feels like the truth. We may see characters who accept their narratives passively, or rebels like Rose Lalonde, who chose to rip everything apart in search of something better.

These are only some of the possibilities.

When I tell you the stories we live by mislead us, what is your relationship to that? If you were to tear these received narratives apart, what would you focus on, what would you try to say? The art that comes out of this question will be deeply personal to the soul who makes it.

But here’s another question:

Just who is giving us all these narratives, anyway?

3. THE PARENT FLIP

The world we live in was not made by us. It was shaped by forces that predate us, over which we have no control and are born into the grasp of without the knowledge of how to escape.

For instance, our parents.

The guardians who raise us provide our template for how to interpret life. We spend a large part of our lives immersed in the world they built, believing as they believe, living by the values that they instruct us in, so that we might carry their goals forward to the future.

This is an effort that is certain to fail.

Because the problems of today aren’t the problems of twenty or thirty years ago. At best, their messages can only to help in a limited way with the crises we go through as we live our lives. At worst, they actively hinder us from dealing with them productively.

If we are to escape the broken patterns of our world, then we need break out of the stories an earlier generation gave us.

How are parents discussed in Homestuck?

Initially? As jokes.

If we take our “future knowledge” goggles off for a moment, we can see that the early depictions of the kids’ parents are a goofy parody of standard parental tropes. Mom and Dad are nameless, faceless, exaggerated cartoon stereotypes, and conflict between them and their children is initially expressed through a silly video game fight.

There’s a seed of something real here, though. What we’re parodying is a familiar trope of tension between parents and children in kids’ fiction and YA fiction. But that trope exists for a reason. This conflict is rich with potential for any story about growing up. And Homestuck has smuggled the idea of it in as a silly RPG parody.

So we can extrapolate, for instance, that there’s tension between Egbert and their father in part because Egbert doesn’t know yet who they want to be, and that Rose and Mom’s relationship is awkward and contentious, with alcohol involved. We see that there’s something profoundly uncomfortable going on between Dave and his Bro, and Jade’s life in the shadow of a dead Grandpa suggests a psychology that’s not entirely a healthy one.

Understand that I’m not saying that all this was there from the start. Rather, a choice was made to develop these interesting possibilities out of the jokes, to tell a story about how parents that act like these ones might have affected their children.

A major turning point in this regard is when Egbert learns their father’s seeming clown obsession was the result of a failed attempt to connect with them. It’s quite silly, but it plays around with the idea of a gap in perception between parent and child. It’s also a sign the story’s starting to take more of an interest in character psychology, suggesting that what Egbert processes consciously is not the same as their deeper unconscious feelings. This in turn can become a setup for a portrait of Egbert as someone who represses things they don’t want to think about. From this moment, in the long term, comes June Egbert.

When the psychology machine revs up for all the characters in Act 4 and Act 5, it’s able to do so because this foundation was laid.

We also, as early as Act 3, get hints that the parents have intentions and personalities outside of how the kids perceive them. The original purpose is to hint at a larger conspiracy around SBURB, with Mom building a secret lab, Dad trying to investigate the mystery, and Grandpa jumping in and out of time. But what this suggests is that the psychology of the parents might at some point come into play.

But the most exciting development in the relationship between parents and children is Act 6.

The great role reversal. The parent and child flip.

How do you make your faceless parent figures into characters?

By making them kids.

We’re so used to this concept now t that it’s hard to remember how wild it is that Roxy is a teen version of a main character's mom. But the concept is genius. Meeting these characters on the same level forces our protagonists to understand them as people and reflect on their fallibility.

For us as readers, it adds detail and nuance to the cartoonish portraits we got in the beginning. Conversely, we also see what our protagonists might have been like as parents themselves—and turns it from a story of “parents just don’t understand” to a story of how people, despite their best intentions, can wound each other.

(The Homestuck Epilogues are a difficult text to evaluate, but one of the best things within them is Egbert’s arc in Candy, where we see how Egbert might have done as a parent, how their struggles with finding purpose in the world might lead them to embrace a narrative of parenthood yet struggle to have a good relationship their kid. It’s brilliant, and the culmination of everything we’ve talked about here.)

Thus the Homestuckian work of art will be concerned with themes of parents and children. It will play with the boundary between what children understand about their parents and what they don’t. It will show parents as people—fallible people, who make mistakes with severe costs, whose stories fail their children and themselves. It may build from a simple base of what children understand, or it may weave parent and child perspectives together. It may even show us how children fail when they become parents themselves. It will show us the cycles we are trapped in, how we wound and are wounded by our context.

And it will force us to look for a way out.

4. CLASSPECTS AS SIGNPOSTS

Hey. You want to know a secret?

Come closer, and I’ll whisper it to you.

Classpects aren’t actually all that complicated. Ultimately, they boil down to one thing:

Symbols we can use to construct a self.

If Homestuck is about a crisis of meaning, then classpects are part of its answer.

What do we do, when the world gives us no story we can live by?

We make one. We make one out of whatever symbols and messages we can find and put together from the stories we’ve read, from the people who teach and inspire us. Such collages are powerful things. They give us a way out of the dark, they give us a sense of something we are and can be, where there was nothing before.

They give us, in short, a personal mythology.

Classes and Aspects have often been read as codes to be unpacked and solved. It might be more productive to see them as creative tools, signposts designed not to narrow down meaning, but to allow us to explore it.

For instance, the portrayal of Light in Homestuck is unique. As a symbol, it combines notions of brightness, knowledge, future, luck, wealth, and narrative focus. These things aren’t inherently linked out in the world, but they are here, and that’s a choice, and an interesting one. It encourages us to imagine connections between these concepts, and to see if they have any relevance to ourselves. Identifying with the concept of Light, in other words choosing to value clarity, luck, and importance, might be a powerful tool for finding one’s way in the world.

Classes play with signposts at an even more basic level. Sure, we can talk about what a Knight does in the context of the story.

But a knight is already a powerful symbol. We bring so much cultural context to it. The word conjures up images and narratives of devotion, duty, violence, the slaying of dragons, armoring oneself against the world, and the rescuing of princesses. If we put that together with a concept like Time, we get a distinct character. If we put that together with our own experience of the world, we can create powerful concepts for who we want to be.

Interestingly, this complicates what we said about SBURB. As much as our protagonists struggle to find meaning within it, there’s still something there that they can latch onto. Classes, aspects, denizens, even consorts and lands—these things don’t have to be devoid of meaning. We can choose to affirm them; we can build something out of them, and say, yes, this is me, this is myself.

But it’s a double-edged sword.

We are responsible for the narratives we choose to live by. And we may find ourselves falling into a narrative that hinders us more than helps us, that creates a self-destructive self.

What does it mean to believe deeply that you are a thief, that taking from others to benefit yourself is the best way or comes to you the most naturally? What does it mean to tell yourself over and over that you’re a prince, with all the attendant baggage of power and grim responsibility that comes with that concept? Or, to follow the path further, what does it mean to tell yourself over and over that you are a destroyer or must be destroyed?

If we are to escape the story we’re trapped in, we must take care, lest we trap ourselves in a story of our own making.

Homestuck never quite resolves the ambiguity around these symbols of self, around whether SBURB hurts or helps, whether classpects are things you create or things that create you. But this ambiguity is a productive one. It gives us symbolic tools we can use in the creation of meaning, and it shows us the side of them that should make us wary.

The work that is to come after Homestuck will be about symbols. It may show us how we seek them in popular culture, or the people around us. It may use some of the clusters of meaning that that we see in Homestuck, but it will not be limited to them. It will write its own language of symbols, joining Light and Time to notions like Memory, Need, Rupture, and War, and be filled not just with knights and princes but brigadiers, lancers, healers, druids, taxidermists, sentries and waifs. It will build with tarot cards, enneagram types, and Babylonian gods. It will place all the signposts we’ve created in millennia of existence into new contexts and meanings.

By such means will it show us a way forward.

There’s one kind of symbol we haven’t talked about yet, however.

The kind that holds a mirror up to the world.

5. THE POWER OF ALTERNIA

There’s a reason dystopias have been so popular in young adult fiction. Sure, they’re cliché now, but they speak to something raw and visceral.

When you’re growing up into a world that doesn’t make sense, it’s natural to find refuge in emotional extremes. Stories of blood and violence, fates worse than death, and governments that demand horrific things of their citizens speak to the anxieties of the adolescent mind. They validate the feeling that something is wrong—that the world we’ve inherited is broken and unfair and has no place for us. And they’re right.

Alternia taps into these dystopian feelings perfectly. What makes it so fun is that it’s an inversion of a teenage fantasy. It’s a world where there are no parents, where kids can have access to power and violence, where you can sit around and play video games and design your own house. It almost feels like a response to the “parents don’t understand” themes of the early acts.

But the dystopia’s there, and it’s sneaky. A land of lost boys and girls isn’t actually all that great to live in. It’s lawless, survival of the fittest, with children killing each other left and right. And the future adult roles most of the troll kids aspire to are a glamorous veneer over competition for slots in a fascist military hierarchy. Which is to say nothing of the blood caste system as a way in which the kids are taught by their world to abuse and exploit each other. Crushes, personal slights, competition for status, group dynamics, attempts to define identity – all these familiar teenage dynamics play out on a backdrop of maiming and murder.

Which is perfect. Because when you’re young, all those social interactions genuinely do feel like life or death, and adulthood a regime of exploitation and horror bearing down on you. Alternia is a heightened, exaggerated version of reality. It expresses an emotional truth, not a literal one, validating our most intense feelings and giving us a road map to understanding them.

No wonder so many people wanted to skip to Act 5 and get to the trolls.

(See also Hiveswap Friendsim and Pesterquest, which explore these themes really really well.)

And Alternia, for a world where parents aren’t really a thing, tells us a surprising amount about the parental generation. In mid Act 5-2, Ancestors are added to Alternia’s wordbuilding, and we learn that as much as the trolls skipped having traditional parental figures, they were never devoid of role models. The deeds and exploits of notable figures throughout ancient Alternia gave them models to think about each other and themselves—even when those models were toxic ones. In a way, this isn’t so far from the human kids at all.

Furthermore, as time goes on, we acquire an origin for Alternia’s fascist worldview. Doc Scratch, manipulator of society, stands in for all those aspects of the world that work to create the false narratives we are born into, a true evil father figure – or uncle, if you prefer. And he's an extension of the ultimate evil father figure, Lord English, who controls not just Alternia but the timelines of the human children as well, whose belligerence and apathy give us aeons of toxic narratives and abuse. We see that story played out in Alternia in every interaction, in every moment, the beliefs its architects live by.

This is the power of dystopia—it can hold a broken mirror up to the world we live in.

Therefore the Homestuck that will come after Homestuck will worldbuild gardens of horror. It will not pull its punches but show us insidious societal systems and the effect they have on the people who live under them. It may depict fascism, authoritarianism, feudalistic tyranny, or all three. It will be unafraid to evoke blood and guts but use them to paint a picture of what we want, what we fear, and how we break under our false horizons.

As it depicts the path out, so, too, will it have its reverse side—it will show us all the hells and purgatories we’re trapped in.

6. SAILS TO THE WIND

Much has been written (including by this very author) about Homestuck’s metafictional aspects – the way it comes to foreground a more direct clash between character and narrative.

But the point I want to make here is that the metafictional angle wouldn’t work without these earlier choices. They allow the comic to talk about these concerns long before any notion of canon rears its head.

There are many ways of approaching these themes, and we don’t have to be limited to notions of Ultimate Selves and Beyond Canon to explore them. Such things are valuable, but they are only one retelling of the myth. If we are to make the next Homestuck, we must make our own.

I want to illustrate the space of possibility by offering some examples of works that explore similar themes. Note that I’m not saying these works were influenced by Homestuck in any way, but rather that they use some of the same tools to speak to the same questions, anxieties and concerns.

In trying to make what comes after Homestuck, we might consider:

Revolutionary Girl Utena, which foregrounds the archetype of the Prince as duelist, tyrant, and hero and dares its characters to break free from the false reality that shapes even these aspirations and dreams.

The Familiar by Mark Z. Danielewski, author of Houseof Leaves, whose core narrative concerns an twelve-year-old girl in thrall to an entity whose intentions are unclear but may be shaping the fabric of reality itself; which depicts the inner lives and uncertainties of her parents with just as much detail as they struggle, and sometimes fail, to make the right choices to help her; a story which, even in its incomplete form, explores a notion of a greater S.E.L.F that is not just you but also those who share something with you, where characters from other realities blur into transcendent archetypes in this one.

Digimon, perhaps the quintessential work of portal fantasy, not only Digimon Tamers, which steers the genre into a place of trauma, cosmic horror, and adults horrified by children saving the world, but also Digimon Adventure, which creates strong character arcs for eight very different children as they try to navigate a strange alien world, and shows us their struggle to reconcile with their parents as part of the process of understanding themselves.

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende,foundational text for Homestuck, which tells us not only about the rich possibilities inherent in reading oneself into fantasy worlds, but also the terrible potential for harm in making oneself an emperor over them.

Pale, by Wildbow, author of Worm, an urban fantasy story about three teenagers thrust into a world of magic and murder, a world where symbols literally create reality, where concepts like Carmine and Aurum have a powerful pull, where the Self is something that can be nourished or taken apart and put back together, a story where the parents are not just supporting cast but fully realized people forced to reckon with the ways in which they have deeply failed their children, and which contains perhaps the most thorough investigation of the question of “is it good for children to go on magical adventures?” ever committed to the page.

Heaven Will Be Mine, by Aevee Bee,in which the giant robots we pilot through space become the symbolic manifestation of our inner selves and our way of bringing about our ideal reality, and, relatedly, We Know the Devil, in which the repression of those selves causes them to burst out from us in terrifying and glorious new forms.

Crow Cillers, by Cate Wurtz, an often trauma-filled horror comic in which a group of kids and, eventually, adults, tries to fight back against an ever-present death cult that has its grips on every corner, all the while encountering Psyforms, beings made of pure mind, while characters from television and cartoons dance in the margins and all the while the line blurs between audience and art until it becomes difficult to tell who created who—a story that asks what it means to find meaning in stories when the corporate entities that own them are trying to devour us.

It's a tragically short list, I know. But perhaps it conveys some of the angles we might take.

We can also look at works that are known to have inspired by Homestuck. There aren’t many yet, but there are a few.

Undertale is famous for its Homestuck influences, with parallel timelines, an idea of agency that persists across them, and a contentious relationship between player and character, but for my part, I’m just as interested if not more so in Deltarune, which seems to be slowly building a grand thesis about portal fantasy, where the kids' adventures in the Dark Worlds seems to be offering them an escape and helping them become their best selves—but hints at a coming challenge to that simple worldview in the question of who’s really experiencing that escape.

The Locked Tomb, by Tamsin Muir – This is the big one, that really shows what building on Homestuckian themes can achieve. It turns out there really is an audience for weird aggro formalism in scifi publishing if you make it sufficiently gay. But smartly, like Homestuck, the Locked Tomb builds its weird mysteries gradually, adding on layer after layer on the solid foundation of characters we can follow and get invested in. There’s so much to notice – there’s the highly categorized teenagers involved in a murder feud, there’s the constant whiplash of humor and tragedy, there’s the endlessly open spaces in the story to interpret and project on to.

But to me, what stands out the most is the portrait of God and his court as every bit as emotionally chaotic as the sniping teenagers. You go to heaven, and God’s making out in the corner with his friend group, and you look for the adult in the room but the adults in the room don’t know what they’re doing and they never really did. It’s a portrait of the parents, it’s a portrait of the Ancestors, it’s a portrait of the gods of the new world, and it’s exquisite.

The Locked Tomb gives us a world at war with its own mythological narrative, rich with angst and irony. It’s a worthy successor to everything Homestuck was doing. It shows us how much these themes can say to us, and it gives us a hint at how powerful Homestuck's legacy might be.

7. THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMESTUCK

There’s a lot of discussion about how to continue Homestuck. How to do it justice. What post-canon might look like, and what it might not. What fan comics, what fan fics, what semi-official works truly live up to the spirit of its characters and its multiverse.

To be clear, those discussions are awesome. I’m so glad those things exist, and it’s wonderful to see them unfolding.

But I don’t want the process to stop there. I'd be disappointed if it was only about adding to and re-articulating Homestuck itself.

I want this—

—This multifaceted, complicated, emotionally laden thing that is the experience of engaging with and creating with and interpreting Homestuck—

To go out into the world and to be infused into the world, to become waves spreading further and further. I want to experience the Homestuck artistic movement, the Homestuck school of thought. I want it to be an influence on the fiction of the coming generation of authors, and the next, and the next.

I want Homestuck to be one of those albums that's too obscure to be known by the general public, but everyone who listened to it went on to start an enormously successful band.

Homestuck can appear like a thing that was conjured out of the ether, but it isn’t. It’s a product of a particular time.

But that in itself is profound. When you create art, you reach back to all the things that have shaped you, and you listen to what the world around you needs, and you try to say what needs to be said. Which means you're a part of a history and culture that needs to say those things, which will be different from the things that needed to be told yesterday, and different from the stories that will be needed tomorrow.

There’s no otherworldliness to it, no platonic other reality. But for all I've talked about art being made of choices, there's still something transcendent here.

To make Homestuck—and to make art inspired by Homestuck—means being a node in a web formed of millions of people, where a light passes down the chain to you, and for the briefest of moments, you get to be filled with its presence, before it moves on to the next person in the chain.

That light isn't yours. Not really.

But at the same time, you do get to choose how that light manifests.

And to engage with that process consciously—to think deliberately about what we want to create—that gives us power and agency over that process, our sense of the world, and ourselves.

So let’s do this. Let’s make the thing that Homestuck is telling us can exist, the thing it’s paving the way for, the thing we know in our soul can come to be.

Let’s make the next Homestuck happen.

—Ari

POSTSCRIPT

“To put out a manifesto you must want: ABC

to fulminate against 1, 2, 3

to fly into a rage and sharpen your wings to conquer and disseminate little abcs and big abcs, to sign, shout, swear, to organize prose into a form of absolute and irrefutable evidence, to prove your non plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life… I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles… I write this manifesto to show that people can perform contrary actions together while taking one fresh gulp of air…”

— Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto 1918”

"The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence....the cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of re-turning to dust...This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories...I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess."

— Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto"

“What we need is works that are strong straight precise and forever beyond understanding... let each man proclaim: there is a great negative work of destruction to be accomplished. We must sweep and clean…to divest one's church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them—with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn't matter in the least…freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.”

— Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto 1918”

“These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,

If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,

If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,

If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.”

—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

𖤓

#homestuck #homestuck analysis #what comes next after homestuck #the future of homestuck #homestuckian art #you are actually 100% sure walt whitman said that

321 notes · View notes