#also the art is really neat and the game is free

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

for some reason im really feeling the Queer Euphoria in this chilis tonight, specifically: being so ambiguous its hilarious. there is No label to describe my orientation/gender. like yeah i use nonbinary bc technically it fits but also bc the flag Fucks. if asked, my only correct answer would be "Wildcard, Motherfucker!"

[flash-from-the-past]

Submachine 10: the Exit

[alastors-wife]

Kinda miss sharing my art ngl

[indierpgnewsletter]

New TTRPGs on Itch.io for October and November

Another regularly scheduled roundup of games that have been released on itch.io that caught my eye over the last two months. Usual disclaimer that I haven’t really read or played these games; they just seem cool based on the pitch alone. Also, most of them now come to me by people using this form.

In no particular order:

RAD: A Mausritter-style OSR game set in a post-nuclear fallout Soviet Russia. (Hipólita)

Five Fires: A game about being a hip-hop whose art can change the world. This is a free ashcan of a game that has been in development for a long time. (Quinn Murphy)

Tabletop Gone Mad: This game features Madlibs-style adventure sheets where you all sit down and make it up together and that alone seems fun as hell. (Linnie Schnell, Twice Rolled Tales)

Ara Ġejja l-Mewt Għalik: A game about the personification of death in Maltese folklore. Uses blindfolds and spinners! (Għar Gremxul)

// electric sheep //: A solo journalling game where you document (made-up) dreams and make friends. I found the idea of a playalong audio version really neat. (Skylar K. Swift)

Vanity: Glass & Stone: A solo game inspired by Snow White and Medusa where you explore a labyrinth of mirrors, trying to outrun a curse. Based on the Wretched & Alone system so you play with a jenga tower. (Marco A. Torres)

Sound Check: A Firebrands-hack about being in a band. You rehearse, party, fool around, and get ready for the big show. (Misha Grifka Wander and Envi Wiklund)

Insatiable Cravings: A two-person game where one person plays a ravenous monster and the other person is making a meal for them. Supposed to be half-sexy, half-spooky is my read. (J Strautman)

Meet Me Where I Am: This is a larp-ish game about intimacy and negotiating boundaries that is clearly very personal. (Morgan Eilish)

Salvager’s Isle: A supplement for Bump in the Dark, a lovely monster of the week and blades in the dark hybrid game. This has three scenarios or adventures all set in the same weird location, Salvager’s Isle. (Mynar Lenahan)

[ellielatinagf]

Ellie Williams hc <3

I’m a new author. Might not update much but I will when I can! Sfw. Not proofread.Free Palestine 🇵🇸

Ellie would definitely be an iPad kid. She would also get mad when you interrupt her while she’s eating ramen and on part 36 of the Lorax movie on tik tok

She prefers silver jewlary over gold. She might have her ears pierced and put small earrings in them. Definitely has some simple black metal rings

The girl can skate. Not saying she’s the best but she can do some simple cruising. But she tried to do tricks to impress you and ends up with bruises and cuts

Cannot talk to women for the life of her. When you met Ellie you complimented her outfit. She got nervous and wanted to compliment you back but damn you were hot. She ended saying “oh thanks nice elbows!” The poor girl never lived that down

Is a Fortnite god. But one time she was so hyped for the game that when she died at 2nd place she flopped on the couch so hard she broke a couch leg. Jesse was laughing so hard you could hear him through the headset

When she was little she used to put on a hoodie and her hair on her forehead and used to pretend she was a boy. She would take pictures of herself on her little iPhone6. You somehow got the pictures and laugh at them every now and then

Ellie actually keeps her nails neat and clean. She’ll clean then and file them so they’re not too long. She’ll even put on a coat of clear nail hardener. And for some reason it’s actually really hot

Has drafts on tik tok of her trying to do the “one line” challenges and a bunch of other tik tok Games. However she also has some drafts of guitar playing and a couple thirst traps here and there

She’s your personal chauffeur and will call you her passenger princess. She will blast your shared playlist and have one hand on the wheel and the other in your hand. She likes to mess with people so at a red light she will look at the car next to her and go 🤨✌️

Your saved as “babe💋” on her phone and your contact photo is a cute picture of you in front of a statue or piece of art from a museum. Meanwhile her contact name is “smelly ellie” with a silly picture of her tripping or making a funny face

*Smelly Ellie calling*

You: Hey Smellie

Ellie: STAWP🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️

As of her occupation, she might actually be a co owner of a guitar shop that Joel bought. Either that or she might work as a mechanic in Tommy’s shop

She follows NASA on Instagram and liked every picture they post of a new image of a star or planet. She’d also send it to you and spit fun facts about it

Her favorite character on SpongeBob is Patrick. She thinks he’s so underrated and a comedic masterpiece. She watches every episode of the new spinoff “The Patrick Show”

The girl has the weirdest conspiracy theories that sound so weird but she makes them make sense. Like you’ll both be out at a restaurant eating and she’ll start telling you how she thinks the world will end

I don’t know about this one but I think she’d also be interested in the ocean. Marine life is just as cool to her and loves aquarium dates (when she’s not hunting down Abby)

When someone says something dumb on Instagram or Tik tok comments she’ll report them and then forget about it. Then when they reply two weeks later saying the user didn’t violate guidelines she��ll get mad again

I feel like no one talks about high school Ellie enough!! The girl played sports like maybe lacrosse and basketball. Joel was in the stands with her uncle Tommy cheering her on and you were with Dina holding a poster and had made a jersey with her name and number on the back. She was a little embarrassed but loved it

She and Jesse tried to convince Dina to let JJ enter a toddler race for a cash prize of 100 dollars

Sorry if this is so bad omg I’m just starting out but thanks for reading!!! This was fun I’ll definitely do more! Don’t be shy drop some recs!

Free Palestine🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

[esprei]

I just recently got into the submas Fandom and people kept telling me about Emmet x Volo being bad and toxic.

But when I looked into it, all I saw was your art of them and some. And it's not toxic at all??? What are people talking about?

You show them so nice and healthy wholesome together. It actually makes me interested in that ship.

Is that wrong of me? I just think your art of them is pretty neat.

Maybe more people should see how you show their relationship and stop not letting people have nice things.

hey there! first of all, welcome to the fandom! :D hopefully you'll have a great time! and I can do my best to explain this from my perspective at least. or... at least from what I've experienced/seen. (sorry, this will probably end up being long ;;) so to preface, it's not wrong of you at all to be interested in the ship! Emmet and Volo themselves have had zero interactions with each other in canon up to this point, so their interactions/relationship/etc are a blank slate, free real estate sandbox that's up to one's imagination and fanon interpretation. there's nothing inherently wrong about putting them together because they have no dialogue between them or anything that can be referenced as "this is how they would go together, this is how they would interact because it's been established that way in this game or piece of media". all we've got is their dialogue and individual personalities that we can glean from official sources (i.e. Pokemon Masters EX, the Pokemon Special manga and BW/BW2 for Emmet and Legends Arceus for Volo). really the only thing that "connects" Emmet and Volo is Ingo ending up in Hisui. and the reason I say this "connects" them is because a popular theory is that Ingo being sent to Hisui was a direct result of Volo having Giratina open the rift to try and drive Arceus out. but none of this is actually ever stated in canon, I believe. (also when I've seen some people talk before about this theory, there's basically this implication that Volo did it out of malicious intent, as if he knew he was going to bring Ingo specifically to Hisui by doing it and...? I'm so sorry, but no, I just cannot get behind this at all. Volo's sole purpose of getting Giratina to open up the rift was to drive Dialga and Palkia mad in order to bring Arceus from out of hiding - that's literally what he says in the game's dialogue.

I highly doubt that he had any idea as to who Ingo was at all before he met him at some point in Hisui for the first time). but yeah. i only bring this up because it's kinda what I think started the idea of Emmet and Volo interacting at all? maybe not exactly, I can't remember because it's been too long and I both don't remember and wasn't too directly involved when all of this started. but essentially Emmet and Volo even being considered interacting kinda revolved around this idea that Emmet is looking for Ingo, finds out that Volo was the reason for the rift that caused Ingo's disappearance, and that now leads me into the part of why I think the ship is seen as toxic. so. the main reason I'm pretty sure that people say that the ship is toxic is because of how much a lot of early art/works portrayed it (based on what I just explained above). and it's totally fair. because admittedly it did start out with some violent aspects and really just Emmet doing things I personally don't think he would ever do. for example, beating the crap out of Volo for being the reason Ingo disappeared. Emmet being violent in order to demand answers for the sake of getting his brother back. etc, etc. and this really put a bad taste in people's mouths because it really just cast Emmet in a bad light. that, and it was a toxic, unhealthy portrayal of an enemies to lovers trope. and Volo was kinda portrayed as conniving/sneaky/manipulative/etc, and yeah. just things like that I think made popular for it ended up giving the pair a bad rep early on when Legends Arceus was still a popular topic (we're talking like... I dunno. late March into April and on of 2022? ...2022 was when PLA came out right?) honestly though? the beauty about a ship like this is that, as i said before, it's a completely blank slate. it's free real estate. you can portray it however you see fit because there's absolutely zero canon to base it off of (as far as the two characters themselves interacting with each other goes). it can be as wholesome as you want it to be. or it can be enemies to lovers. it can be rivals to lovers. it can be just two guys who happen to meet on the Battle Subway or in Gear Station and connect through a shared love of Pokemon/battling and develop a relationship that way. just because the ship itself maybe had the majority of its portrayal in the beginning as unhealthy doesn't mean it's forever bad, toxic and all around unsalvageable at this point. and while I certainly don't expect anyone who's perhaps uncomfortable or otherwise turned off from the ship because of its roots to suddenly turn around one day and warm up to it because it has potential to be portrayed in a wholesome or positive way, I also don't think it's very fair to blanket label the whole ship bad and toxic just for the fact alone that a lot of the early works for it were depicting a not-so-healthy relationship between the two. i mean that was like... two years ago at this point. things can change. anyway, this is getting long like I knew it would so I'll stop there XD I hope this at least maybe gives some context as to why the ship is seen that way by some? but at the end of the day there's no canon official way to portray it. it has potential to be healthy! and there's nothing wrong about being interested in it. that's just my two cents on it :D

and lastly, thank you so much! it really warms my heart to hear that you think my art of them is pretty neat! I really do want to draw more for them, just... you know. time and motivation 😅 but hopefully I can do something again for them soon!

[transparencyboo]

I have been playing the Japanese version of Spyro the Dragon (1999) again, and I am having a really good time with it. People say it's bad, but I'd say it's a great game and certainly a fun way to experience a classic from a different perspective. It has a different pace, but I quite like that. I think it deserves to be remembered for more than just being a 'fun fact' about where Ripto's name came from at the very least. Maybe we'll talk about it more in the future. If you're a Spyro fan you should totally enjoy it though, and I think it's honestly worth owning just for the box and manual alone. It's just really neat! It has this illustrated story inside with some lovely art and deep lore about our boy's birth. Japanese Spyro is also a lot more of a cute little rascal than his rambunctious western counterpart.

These sketched instructions and helpful tips for the opening area of the game are also very cute and nice to look at. I especially like the one where Spyro sits and looks out over the area. Compared to the US and PAL manuals the amount of effort that was put into this one just blows them out of the water.

When we got this copy last year Kiki also helped me scan the front cover of the manual to make it into a pretty nice wallpaper. She did a superb job as usual. I've been using it for a while, only switched it out for the OutRun video thumbnail recently. If you like it please feel free to use it. It will make any desktop into a magical moonlight vista.

[cupcakeslushie]

Hi! Scott Pilgrim anon again.

Thank you so much for answering my previous ask!

Feel free to ignore this message, but I’ve been dying to talk about this show, even if it’s just me blabbering on and on and on my own. I guess, I just want to put somewhere my thoughts. You seem cool and the way you draw the turtles in the Scott Pilgrim anime style is really neat.

I discovered the graphic novels pretty late but I liked the story instantly and I’ve enjoyed both the comics and the movie so much. I was so excited for the anime.

I agree that the anime is truly a great amalgamation of the comics and movie, but it also stands out as a very unique take on the story. I love how they adapted O’Malley’s art style and how they managed to get the whole cast from the movie!

I was initially a little doubtful with the anime-style of the animation, because I was scared that the contrast in portraying the “normal” world and the video game fighting scenes would not be as evident as it was in the movie… but I stand corrected. The two styles meshed up perfectly and made the whole show even more ridiculous (in a very good way).

It was fun to remove Scott from the narrative and explore more the other characters. I liked that so much.

Each of the versions of Scott Pilgrim truly have their strengths and weaknesses, but I think that all adaptations achieved successfully the same level of weirdness and extravagance, which are what initially made me love the graphic novels (and then the movie too).

Im also happy that the sense of humour remained the same in all adaptations. I loved seeing some of the jokes being kept in this adaptation as well.

The only thing I am grieving is the anime missing my favourite joke (“Amazon.ca, what’s the website for that?”), but I think I can forgive that.

Thank you again and sorry for bothering you.

I do love that “Amazon.ca” joke. Another one that we didn’t get to see was Scott jumping out of the window to hide from Knives. That’s a classic!

[mayordoi]

songwriting with meiko 🎙️

i have a few things to comment abt this which will be isolated under the cut so the post doesnt get too bloated :] mainly small hcs about meiko/kaito/miku hhhh

an idea that briefly popped in my head when i was brushing my teeth that i did not want to let get away. it was ambitious and i liked the concept of using my hc'd versions of the younger crypton vocaloids (miku's beta design and meiko/kaito's v1 designs) interacting with each other, so i went for it. i designed the general vibe of the background in animal crossing, ol reliable for these kinds of things, since i knew i wanted to cram as much detail in the environment as i could. i made a post about it on my personal account here since i was quite proud of this build.

as i was decorating, i kept spontaneously making headcanons for the younger meiko/kaito/miku unit in order to understand how to populate their living space with accurate clutter. i ended up totally overdecorating the whole thing and only referenced a small portion of the interior (like, why'd i go so hard on thinking about the yard? thats just what happens when i try taking this route) but i did like some of the ideas i came up with to explain my decorative choices. here's just a ramble.

oh yeah i guess i should get something i mentioned in the tags of that art i made w all the crypton gang's "younger" versions out of the way: i hc the character vocal gangs' "younger" designs to be their "IF" or beta designs. and meiko and kaito's younger versions are their V1 designs, mainly inspired by how they appear in the earlier project diva games (every time i look at them i just see them as awkward teens still trying to figure out who they are lmao)

also mentioned there that sakine meiko and meiko are one in the same and the fanloid and vocaloid arent separate entities. sakine meiko was meiko in her early music career as a relatable teen pop idol, with the "sakine" family name being made up to create that image. once meiko grew into an adult, she put the persona behind and just went by meiko, and around that time she met kaito and theyd be musical partners for a while

meiko sort of adopts miku into their unit when she recognizes her potential and serves as a mentor to her after then. kaito is the same but acts more as a supportive guardian in comparison. rin, len, and luka would come along later of course.

yeah i really fuck with the idea of the crypton gang being a little family :] i think it's neat! and this art/animal crossing build was a fun way to explore that hc a little

meiko is a physical media fiend, especially for music. loves collecting cds and vinyls and the like; they're littered all over the house. loves rock music too

kaito on the other hand has a knack for gardening and tends to the very modest garden outside their house. also collects a lot of art he finds in thrift marts and such for novelty's sake

miku always dedicated herself to improving her craft and finding her voice thanks to the help of meiko. she was also kind of a nerd at this era. very serious and dedicated

these folks did not know how to clean shit up, everything left lying on the floor ends up being an intentional decoration (probably not clear in this but i did like scattering stuff around to the best of my ability in the AC build)

ummm that’s it for now i guess i had less than i expected? but i’m glad to get this down somewhere lol feel free to share your own hcs if you wish, i love hearing them

[starlightwayfinder]

hi. sliding in. is there anything u have been compelled by recently. maybe music or a book or the way light fell on smth (idk how to ask stuff like a normal person but feel free to gush about anything you want, if you'd like to :3 (no pressure of course!))

Thank you!

Speaking of the way light fell on something… I’ve actually been waiting for an excuse to gush about some of Scala ad Caelum’s art and ornamentation. I have a few headcanons and inspirations of my own, too. (I can’t take my own screenshots at the moment, so I’ll just see what I can find online.)

First—there’s a lot of cool things themed (appropriately) around light and color.

This stained glass platform is one of my favorites in the game. Stained glass is nothing new in the series, but this one is especially iridescent, which makes it extra cool in my mind. I also think it’s neat that stained glass was chosen to represent hearts, as if the light of their hearts is shining through/illuminating it.

Here’s some real life examples with a similar effect!

Similar to the stained glass are the mosaics:

You can really see the influence of Daybreak Town with these! The fountain is probably my favorite—it looks almost like a sun from above.

More real life examples—to me the swirls are reminiscent of wind and waves. For a headcanon of mine, I imagine there was someone in Scala who made kaleidoscopes kind of like these.

In addition to matching the aesthetic of the game, they also tie nicely into the theme of light.

There’s a fair share of things that relate to the sky and wind, which ties into the theme of “the heavens” as well. The pinwheels are like tiny versions of the windmills, which I think is super cute. I couldn’t find a picture, but there’s also a lot of dandelions. (In addition to drawing another connection to Daybreak Town, I like that they fit the theme of wind too.)

Okay so street lamps are kind of a given for a city, regardless of symbolism—but I think they’re the epitome of beautiful design so I have to gush about them, haha.

Just… look at these!! They are light and darkness,,, and you can even put flowers on them? I think the globe ones resemble the moon also. They’re so beautiful. I couldn’t find a good picture, but the ones in KH3 have banners hanging from them as well.

Last but not least is the printed/painted artwork. The Daybreak to Scala mural is my favorite—I love how it’s layered and moves to tell the story.

For headcanons, I like the idea of there being more of these mechanized storytelling displays. Maybe ones that depict fairytales of the other worlds. These puppet theaters aren’t exactly what I mean, but they’re the right idea:

And finally, I know Scala has some amazing libraries. I want to read all of these books!

[herrscherofmagic]

A look at the past & future of Honkai design: Simplicity vs. Complexity (Part 1)

Link to the YouTube channel of the person whose thumbnail I yoinked off of Google Images for this; it was the best image of the new Hyperion that I could easily find which is why I used it for this.

TL;DR:

Original Honkai Impact 3rd designs tended towards large, simply shapes that gave battlesuits (and other stuff) a strong "mecha" vibe. Many newer designs are trending towards more complex designs that do away with these simple and recognizable shapes, instead using more overlapping textures and ornamentation to create detail. Some designs balance the two, using large and relatively simple shapes that still carry enough detail to stand out as newer while still keeping the original vibes.

Because of this, I think there's gonna be a very clear visual split between Part 1 designs and the APHO+Part 2 designs because of this split between simplicity & complexity, and some Part 1 designs feel off because they stray too far from the original design motifs, making them feel out of place even if they're still good designs on their own.

~

I've been thinking a lot about the design philosophy of Honkai Impact 3rd for quite a while now. As someone interested in concept art and illustration and who's played video games for more than 3/4ths of their whole lifespan.

And obviously I'm not alone in this, given how often I've seen discussion of Honkai's character design. Whether it was the march of the pastel battlesuits or the techwear of the part 2 cast or the upcoming Garuda Fu Hua battlesuit, many people have had many opinions both positive and negative.

But I've wanted to do a sort of "deep-dive" for a while now, because I think HI3rd is a really interesting case where we can see the co-existence of (sometimes drastically) different designs made years apart from one another. It's normal for the style of a franchise to grow and change with time- my personal example is Halo, with obvious differences between Halo CE, Halo 3, and Halo 4 in mind. But typically that has been done over the release of different games over many years, not so much in consecutive releases within the same game. HI3rd's not alone in this regard, of course :)

I don't want to label anything as "bad" or "good". I can like or dislike something, and that's my personal opinion. Of course I COULD try to label designs as bad or good, but I'd want to back that up with serious analysis and get the opinions of other players, and that's way too much effort for a reddit post. Instead, I want to present some different designs in Honkai and share my thoughts, so others can feel free to agree, disagree, elaborate, etc. More of a matter of casual discussion rather than trying to present some solid theory, I guess you could say?

What I will say is I intend to label designs based on whether (or how) they fit into HI3rd's aesthetic(s), so that's the main point- not so much whether an individual design is good or not.

To start with, I'd like to talk about the simplicity vs. complexity of Honkai designs because I personally feel like this is the biggest problem I have with HI3rd, outside of story issues that is. Not because of designs being "good" or "bad", but because I feel like Mihoyo has been moving towards a new design philosophy that's different from what I loved most about HI3rd when I first started.

I opened with the comparison of Hyperion because I think it's a perfect example of this concept, and if we can understand what the difference is with Hyperion then I think it'd be more apparent with battlesuits as well. I also have another image that highlights some of the biggest differences between the two models:

I had mixed feelings about the reveal of the "new and upgraded" Hyperion during the moon arc. It's a neat design I'll admit, but I felt like it deviated a lot from the original Hyperion, not as a difference in fidelity and detail but rather as a difference in the fundamental design of the ship.

What I like so much about the original Hyperion is, as you might have guessed by now: its simplicity. Hyperion was comprised of much larger, blockier shapes with more clear silhouettes. It's actually the same reason I love the design of Halo's UNSC frigates, funnily enough. I'm a huge sci-fi fan and I absolutely adore spacecraft and vehicle design, so I really appreciated the design of Hyperion cause to me it felt very original.

The new Hyperion retains most of the same characteristics, and it's still recognizable as a version of Hyperion. But it bothers me just how much the design was changed. Many of the simple shapes of the design were broken up into smaller parts or almost totally changed, like the cannon going from a sleek polygonal barrel to a spikey... thing.

To me, it feels like Hyperion was redesigned with the idea of trying to make it more "futuristic" or "tech-y", or perhaps it was even designed with some retro anime motifs in mind like the Space Battleship Yamato. But it seems as though this was done by adding many objects that broke up the original silhouette, as well as inventing lots of new detail instead of adding details to complement what was already there. The shape of the winglets was greatly changed; the vent-like structures were totally changed; the barrel was completely changed; most noticeably, the bridge was drastically changed.

The new Hyperion model is technically "better" in terms of fidelity and the amount of detail it has, no doubt about it. But I think changing the fundamental shapes of Hyperion so much really hurts the charm of the original design, to the point that I was actually quite disappointed to see that Mihoyo used the new Hyperion design in the CG of the Captainverse Hyperion farm event. It seems as though Mihoyo wants to consider this as the new default impression of Hyperion, and not a special one-off thing from the moon arc.

I think this can be seen across other aspects of the game, too. In general Mihoyo has moved away from simple designs and towards complex designs, and I think there's been a lot of hits and a lot of misses with this.

For instance, I'd like to compare the three Herrscher Kiana battlesuits: HoV, HoFS, and HoFi.

There's a clear trend of an increase in complexity across the three battlesuits. HoV's design uses fewer and larger shapes, HoFS adds more and smaller shapes, and then HoFi is almost totally devoid of any large clear shapes.

To me, this is what distinguishes a battlesuit that "feels like Honkai" from one that doesn't.

Everyone starts the game in Chapter 1, and most long-time players have spent more time with older battlesuits than newer ones simply because they were playing the game before these newer battlesuits were even released. I think it's safe to say that even though HoFi is the grand "Kiana in her greatest form" battlesuit, most players will still have seen HoV's design more often because of the years that it's been around, and its prevalence in story content.

Most of those older designs were rooted more heavily in the mecha vibes early Honkai had. For instance, even though HoV is obviously not wearing a mecha battlesuit, the large blocky shapes are still reminiscent of armor, two examples being the large frames on her wings and the large white pad-things(?) on her sides. There's other obvious cases like White Comet being a skin-tight battlesuit which used glowy energy bits for its attacks, but I use the example of HoV because it shows that HI3rd was fully capable of creating battlesuits within the mecha theme without being limited to literal "mecha" designs. HoV's battlesuit is far from mecha in its nature, yet still fits perfectly with that aesthetic.

HoFi has pretty much none of that, though. It's a pretty design for sure, but it's also nearly completely divorced from that original aesthetic. There's few easily-recognizable shapes on her design, with the (very little) clothing she wears being almost entirely detail and ornamentation. It definitely fits the "Princess Kiana" or "Goddess Kiana" theme in isolation, but I don't think it delivers on that theme in the context of Honkai Impact 3rd.

Yet look at HoFS. HoFS definitely has more detail than HoV. Yet there are still lots of large blank areas that define clear forms; for instance, the armor on HoFS' waist. It's reminiscent of that of HoV while still adding more detail. This gives that same effect of a slight mecha vibe. It's still an appealing design and it still feels more modern than HoV, but it also manages to retain much of the same design language.

That being said, I have to admit I ADORE the Honkai wings that HoFi has, though I wish they were a little higher in the air. That's one thing that I think Mihoyo absolutely nailed with HoFi, and I wish more of that aesthetic was kept in the rest of her design.

What's also interesting is that (in my opinion) neither of the other two main Herrscher Trio designs suffer from this. For instance, consider Mei's battlesuits:

I've included Lighting Empress as a reminder that old =/= good. I'd like to make it clear that just because it's an "original" battlesuit doesn't mean it's a good one. I said before that I didn't want to label stuff as good or bad but this is a clear exception and I hope y'all can understand why, lol

We can certainly argue about whether HoO Mei's design really fits the image of Raiden Mei. It's a vast departure from her other battlesuits when it comes to her palette, for better or for worse. I didn't like it at first but it has grown on me, and I think part of that is because of that concept of simplicity vs. complexity.

HoO has way, way more detail than the other two Herrscher Mei battlesuits, no doubt about it. But it also retains many large and recognizable shapes. Nothing on this battlesuit is bulky like HoT or other older battlesuits, but it still gives off the feeling of being armor despite being so thin. Much of the detail is created not by overlapping layers of ornamentation and texture, but rather by using intricate shapes with clear silhouettes and light detail inside that outline.

And HoTr is obviously a mecha design, so I don't think we need to elaborate on that one :)

The point is that it's absolutely possible to make detailed and beautiful battlesuits without getting rid of the original shape language that HI3rd was built on. HoFS is a bit dated now but still much newer than HoV, yet it keeps the vibes. HoO is also far newer, yet it still fits the theme of battlesuit. HoFi, though... not so much.

Finally, I want to talk about the elephant in the room: the Part 2 character designs.

Once again, here's the link to the YouTube video by Matt Is Playing, where I pulled this image from!

Much like HoFi, there's very little trace of the OG Honkai mecha aesthetic in these battlesuits. It's not to say that they are inherently bad because of that* , but it doesn't quite feel like "Honkai Impact 3rd".

*except Dream Seeker, I'm sorry but what the heck is going on there???

But the thing is that this design philosophy isn't even new. In fact, it's years old by now... because we see this in APHO.

For a long time now, APHO has had battlesuits that tip-toe on the very edge of the original Honkai aesthetic. So the designs of Part 2 aren't actually some new and drastic shift in Mihoyo's design philosophy- rather, it's reinforcing a design philosophy that was introduced with APHO.

These new characters all feel out of place if we compare them to the original battlesuits. They don't use the same simple forms, instead using dense and overlapping details. But if we compare them to the APHO cast, they fit right in. We can argue about the merits of the new character designs in other terms, but I think these discussions have to keep in mind this context.

I'd say the APHO designs work well in the setting of APHO because they're following the same aesthetic. As we enter Part 2 and once we see more of the story and setting of Part 2, it's very possible that these new character designs will feel more natural and more like "Honkai Impact 3rd".

But it's a different Honkai Impact 3rd.

This is why I think the idea of "simplicity vs. complexity" is so important to understanding Honkai Impact 3rd's designs. I think Mihoyo might be trying to emphasize two different phases of Honkai through this design philosophy. These are going to be two very different halves to the same game, with the designs of Part 2 possibly becoming as distant from Part 1's designs as Part 1 is from HSR.

You have the OG mecha action vibes from the good ole St. Freya days, and we have the sleek tech-wear of the era of exploring Mars, world-hopping in the Sea of Quanta, and fighting literal aliens.

For better or for worse? Only time will tell.

As a bonus, I'd like to include some extra comparisons, though I won't be adding any more analysis. It's more about having extra examples to keep in mind. Also, I think these ideas can apply to enemies and weapons as well, but that's a larger discussion I'm not yet ready for so that will come in a follow-up later on!

[saharaadesertt]

˖˚˳⊹Blue Lock University: an Uni AU (pt 2)˖˚˳⊹

included: aryu, bachira, barou, hiroi, kunigami, niko, ootoya, yukimiya

note: back at it again thanks to the support of part one (thank you so much!)

all of my HC's are not canon, if there are any overlaps i most likely did not see them :3

aryu

definitely in fashion

makes it known that he is in fashion 😭

dresses for his 9am class looking like he walked straight out of the MET gala

known around campus for his consistent outfits and hair

despises any classes but his major work and complains about it

makes his own clothes and people watches the campus to find someone "glam" enough to model for him

probably makes clothes encrusted in diamonds, super flashy

bachira

takes after his mother and is in art

ngl i feel like bachira can make some pretty good surrealist art, he legit has a monster inside him

works with acrylic paints and watercolor

always has his headphones on playing music around campus

wears the most comfy clothing that can easily be washed or discarded if they are ruined by paint

sometimes does collab pieces with his mom :')

barou

hotel management... it suits him

the cleanest person on earth... roommates want to be with him

has more free time than most so tends to play video games and read novels

also a gym bro/fitness buff

wouldn't be surprised if he was into bodybuilding as well

drinks protein shakes like water and eats healthy asf

most definitely a good cook

loves to have guests over and treat them with hospitality!

hiroi

animation!

wants to work in video games

goes to college out of state because he wants to get away from his parents as evident from his accent

one of the most laid-back students ever

usually attends class with earbuds or headphones in

a natural at tweening and programming

actually pretty good at math if needed as well

the type to sleep in and miss class but preform well when needed

kunigami

idk why but he screams history major?

either that or something in humanities

i think before he was the wild card pick he would've made a great teacher

maybe something in education for him? hmmm

either way he's a good student

always is in class and gets top marks

also another gym rat

probably hangs out at the gym with barou

super knowledgable about his craft and also a trivia buff

niko

again, hear me out

i feel like he would be a good writer

literary arts or creative writing

probably writes super edgy things ngl

a homebody

the type to have a lot of stationary and pens at his desk

i think he's a neat freak but less so than barou

enjoys writing about people he sees people watching

ootoya

another business frat major type of dude

the definition of a player but one day a player girl will break his heart, give him karma, and change his ways

dresses pretty well and looks low effort at the same time

loves going out until 4am

messy asf

the type that never does his dishes

barou would beat his ass

yukimiya

a fellow fashion major, business+advertising minor

probably recruited by ayru for modeling

due to his eye condition, he tends to stay late in the studio in order to complete deadlines

a huge fan of the beanie + long coat + turtleneck combo

super popular among the girls but he doesn't really care because he's all about chasing the BAG

started his own glasses company with cute frames that is doing fairly well

[eccentric-nucleus]

actually if i'm gonna make a games rec post.

here are some games i have enjoyed recent-ish.

kenshi. an open-world squad-based rpg with base-building elements. get stronger by getting beaten up. lose a fight and get knocked out, have your weapons and food taken by the bandits that mugged you and left you bleeding to death. get rescued by some slavers that capture you and sell you into slavery. free yourself from slavery and limp away until you roll in hours later with a whole squad of overpowered fighters. then head a little bit too far south and get murdered by skin bandits. they take your skin. this is a completely self-directed game; there's no "main plot", although arguably "figure out the history of the world" is kind of the main 'story' mystery. there's also a bunch of unique recruitable characters with custom-written interactions. i usually recruit exclusively from freeing slaves but you can do w/e.

wildmender. a survival gardening game. this one came out recently and the devs are still releasing bugfixes; it's unclear if they'll make large content patches in the future. apparently multiplayer can still be pretty glitchy, and there's a water flow bug that i've been finding very frustrating. the way biomes work is kind of unsatisfying. kind of slim content-wise, but still, i really enjoyed what's there. out of all of the climate change terraforming anxiety games i've seen, this has been the one i've most enjoyed.

hellpoint. a scifi soulslike made by a team of like 12 people. previously i had thought things like "it would be neat if dark souls was less linear". hellpoint is a great example of why that might be a nightmare. the areas are connected in such a complex way, with one-way routes and branching unlock keys and secret paths and hidden doors behind hidden doors that it gets profoundly disorienting. a hint: almost every single hidden door in the game (there are a lot) is the middle panel of the same exact three-paneled-wall geometry. once you notice what it is you will see it everywhere. also, the enemy designs are hot.

crystal project. remember playing fan translations of final fantasy v? remember wandering around in old mmos? crystal project is kind of a... turn-based rpg mmo-influenced platformer. with a job system. you can sequence break the game from the tutorial level and also at basically every other point in the game too, although until you know what to look for it might seem like there's a linear critical path. but there's a lot out there. hint: play on easy mode. the combat gets tough later on and the game absolutely expects you to be finding and exploiting some class combinations.

astlibra: revision. a sidescrolling rpg. it must have been released episodically originally or some of the chapter pacing makes no sense. also it was originally released with a mess of art sourced from all sorts of places; 'revision' is a re-release with a more unified art style. it gets extremely anime all the time. there's a whole obligatory section where you have to ask all the women in a town about what kind of panties they're wearing. it's rough. i enjoyed how chaotic the systems are and how much Stuff there is to pick up and upgrade and unlock. the plot goes some unexpected places though it doesn't quite stick the landing, i still enjoyed what it did. also karon should be the love interest instead.

silicon zeroes. a cpu-building puzzle game. this straddles the line between the tech/code games that are literally just "learn a new language and code in it" and ones that are more structure-themed like, idk, spacechem. connect modules to assemble solutions to problems. it takes too long to get to chapter 3, which is where they start asking you to make entire cpus.

ashen. another souls-like. i just really like the environments in this one. the initial area looks gorgeous and the way it changes through the game is really neat to see happen. the seat of the matriarch is wonderfully awful to traverse and i wish there had been two or three more dungeons like it in the game. you can't level up; you gain stats mostly by progressing sidequests and the name quest. i eventually ran out of things to spend money on AND inventory space to store items. the late-game tuning is a little rough but until then it's great. a hint: there are three weapon types and within that type nearly all the weapons are identical. you get thrown so many weapons that don't matter; don't worry about collecting all of them. see above re: running out of space and things to use money for.

i guess it would be cheating to recommend minecraft regrowth or morrowind but i have also been playing those.

[alexissara]

Upcoming Sapphic Games Goddess List

Hey, well to my check in with upcoming sapphic games, this list cover every single game I saw in my research that is in active development that showed signs of sapphic content. This list because of time of writing potentially may contain a game or two that was released or just by the time of you reading this later but I am doing my best while looking at everything I can to figure out where gay may be. Games on this list are filled with my opinions and don't represent the companies opinions and I wasn't paid or anything to put any games on this list. This post is split into 5 categories Non Visual Novel, Narrative Games, Make Your Own Gay, A Gay Exists and Potentially Gay. So feel free to skim across sections.

Non VN

These are games that are not visual novels that are centered on an explicitly sapphic character. This character's sole romantic interest does not need to be sapphic but the sapphic desires have to be seen as a core part of the character or game. 

Cycle

All Lana wants is to figure out the mystery behind her mother’s death. She embarks in a Megaman Zero inspired journey into a strange tower to get her answers. Lana has a girlfriend who is a core part of the story and is prominently shown in the trailers, art and stuff. I believe I even saw her fighting side by side with her girlfriend in a boss battle in the latest trailer. 

Contains: Sapphic Lead, Her Girlfriend 

Thirsty Suitors 

Enter the world of a Southeast Asian bisexual disatar Jala in one of the most stylish games I’ve ever played [the demo of]. It blends some fun skateboarding, with a really neat turned based RPG, and apparently even a cooking mini game into one complete package. The RPG combat is fun, funny and delightful. The story hinges on two romantic relationships that have broken down for Jala, both of whom are women, one she recently broke up with that leads her to go back to her home town and the relationship she fucked up big time in her home down with her former best friend. She battles against her not so evil exes in these RPG style mind palace fights where they resolve their feelings current and former and come to some kind of resolution. 

Contains: Bisexual Lead, at least two ex girlfriends 

Boss Game [PC Release]

This game is already out but it has a PC release coming up and that’s amazing and great and opens the game up to more people. A pair of Girlfriends need cash and so they take gig work hunting demons but as they take the jobs they start to figure out what’s really going on and to do the right thing. 

Contains: Cis Lesbian [lead], Trans Lesbian [lead], A non binary character, a bisexual character 

Kitsune Tail 

A mario inspired adventure about a little gay fox girl trying to save her crush from also a cute villain she might be into. It’s a super adorable platformer with a very light hearted tone invoking classic games with a modern queer twist.

Contains: Sapphic Lead, Sapphic VIllain, Sapphic Damsel 

Love’s Crescendo

This is a Rhythm game visual novel hybrid about a couple of lesbians who are both doing music in their lives at this pivotal point. Valerie and Cadence complete each other, musically. This romantic musical adventure gives a lot of sweet and cute moment for these two and nice musical gameplay. 

Contains: Two Lesbian of color Leads 

Narrative Games

These are Visual Novels and similar games where the gameplay is mostly reading a story, maybe making choices along the way or playing a few mini games but the mini games do not comprise the core gameplay loop of the story. 

Love In A Bottle 

Ankora is a lesbian love demon looking for love, in a visual novel point in click adventure she can choose to go after four different ladies. This game boasts a bit of dress up on on Ankora you can unlock while playing the game. It’s a rare dating sim where everyone is a clear adult and everyone is another kind of fantastic creature. 

Contains: Let’s Go Lesbians, Let’s Go 

Pen Pal Princess: A Queer Romcom Visual Novel 

You play as a queer princess looking to make her own love story. This is a game about online dating in a modern fantasy setting, it’s a cute and sweet concept and feels so relevant in a world where so many queer people date long distance. 

Contains: Sapphic Lead, some amount of sapphic romance options

Flower Knight Hú Dié

A solar punk RPG with a lesbian main character, Hú Dié. After the Flower Knights failed her most important friend she wanted nothing to do with them but she finds herself thrown into a situation dealing with the monsters and more that infest the world. 

Contains: Lesbian Lead, Sapphic Romantic Interest 

High Elo GIrls 

You play as a black college dropout who gets drafted into an all women esports team. You can choose if she is Top, Jungle, Mid, DPS, or Support and the kind of relationship she has with each woman. I am not currently aware if polyamory is an option but there is some degree of customization to the relationships. 

Contains: Sapphic Lead, 5 women to romance including at least 1 trans woman. 

Hardcoded 

You're a sexy trans girl android and you are gonna have sex with some people. There is mysterious in this cyberpunk world you gotta solve and the best solution for a service android like you is fucking your way to the top. You explore, make out with hot women, and do your thing. 

Contains: Lesbian lead, Big old lesbian cast [maybe they have some other sexualities and genders]

Make Your Own Gay

This category goes over games that queerness is an option but I believe it is possible for a heterosexual who doesn’t like gay people to play the game and just kinda, miss the queerness. This is typically games where you choose to ship characters together, normally your avatar character. This places games under a pretty high bar because straight people are not very smart on the whole and are really bad at reading media critically or engaging it.  For me a lot of these games are obviously queer in some way and also these games are not out, so I have no way of knowing for sure. This placement is not an insult and I actually expect several of the games in this part of the list to be some of my favorite games. 

Fields Of Mistria 

In this game, you start a farm in a new town, connect with local villagers learning their stories and potentially even romancing some of them, your gender does not matter. Enjoy a cozy environment of lovely people and enjoy a wonderful farming adventure. Explore dungeons, fight monsters, and more. Customize your character with a selection of appearances and customize your home and make it feel like it’s truly your own. 

The games special thing is an amazing 90s anime aesthetic. It’s magic for farming system also seems particularly streamlined. 

Contains: Women, Men and Non Binary characters you can romance. Customizable character. 

Moonstone Island

In this game, you start a farm in a new town, connect with local villagers learning their stories and potentially even romancing some of them, your gender does not matter. Enjoy a cozy environment of lovely people and enjoy a wonderful farming adventure. Explore dungeons, fight monsters, and more. Customize your home and make it feel like it’s truly your own. 

This games special thing that it has monster tamer with a really fun deck building element for your attacks. 

Contains: Women, Men and Non Binary characters you can romance. Character who you can just assume is whatever gender, they are never gendered. 

OVA Magica

In this game, you start a farm in a new town, connect with local villagers learning their stories and potentially even romancing some of them, your gender does not matter. Enjoy a cozy environment of lovely people and enjoy a wonderful farming adventure. Explore dungeons, fight monsters, and more. Customize your character with a selection of appearances and customize your home and make it feel like it’s truly your own. 

This games special thing is that it’s kinda like pokemon and has cute little slimes. 

Contains: Some women you can romance  Customizable characters. 

Story Of Seasons: A Wonderful Life 

In this game, you start a farm in a new town, connect with local villagers learning their stories and potentially even romancing some of them, your gender does not matter. Enjoy a cozy environment of lovely people and enjoy a wonderful farming adventure. Customize your character with a selection of pronouns and appearances [She/He/They] and customize your home and make it feel like it’s truly your own. 

This games special thing is that you grow old and die and get to see your kid grow up. 

Contains: Women and men you can romance. Customizable character including three sets of pronouns. 

Fae Farm 

In this game, you start a farm in a new town, connect with local villagers learning their stories and potentially even romancing some of them, your gender does not matter. Enjoy a cozy environment of lovely people and enjoy a wonderful farming adventure. Explore dungeons, fight monsters, and more. Customize your character with a selection of pronouns and appearances [She/He/They] and customize your home and make it feel like it’s truly your own. 

This games special thing is that is has online multiplayer and fairy shit. 

Contains: Some Women you can romance. Customizable character including three sets of pronouns. 

Lakeburg Legacies 

A city, kingdom, town, world building type game where the game centers around pairing the people you put into your town, having them work jobs and create resources and them creating babies. You can decide what characters you want to move into your town and pair them with your gender of choice so you can filter out men totally if you don’t wanna see them [except you can’t pick babies genders]. It doesn't’ appear to have any trans stuff going on and the characters are like randomly generated silly things with a few traits. Still it’s a fun type of this game and I could see myself enjoying a few loops of it. 

Contains: The ability to pair people up with the gender of your choice. You can’t control the gender of their babies. 

Our Life: Now and Forever 

This is a truly deeply in depth life sim that trades the depth of romantic options opting for two to give you a truly ridiculous amount of customization about yourself from growing up and transitioning changing your pronouns to altering all sorts of things about yourself and relationships. This is a game about living your life from childhood to adulthood together with someone.

Contains: Genderfluid and Lady Romantic lead, your able to pick your characters pronouns, transition them during the course of the story, and more. Customizable kind of relationship dynamic from love at first sight to slow burn. 

The Office Type

What if office stuff was hot, you can date that hot office stuff. It’s a dating sim where you can pick your pronouns and stuff and date all sorts of office themed hotties. 

Contains: Choose your own romances and choose the genders of all the options in the game between Lady, Guy and non binary. 

Imperial Grace

A diplomacy and romance visual novel where you make choices for your kingdom and choose who you would like to smooch. 

Contains: Contains Customizable Queen, 1 lady you can romance, has a detailed list of triggers for players to be aware of what their getting into. 

Solace State

A cyberpunk story about building a revolutionary movement as Chole. YOu build relationships with people and communities. Chole can hack people’s brains and get information on their thoughts. A moral system that seems to be based around your choices in not a binary way but a, how do you evaluate the ethics of doing the actions your doing to make the world better. You can make the world worse or better in the game. 

Contains: 1 Lady you can romance 

Call Me Under 

An Eldritch Horror romance where you can pick between three sets of pronouns He/She/They and romance a collection of hotties in this 50s inspired horror world while trying to figure out about the missing people in town and the other horrors brimming of late. You can be half siren or a human depending on that things in the story will change. 

Contains: Several Women and Non Binary romantic options, a Sapphic Polyamarous route, character who can pick between human and half siren and She/he/they pronouns. 

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical 

A muse has died and your character got her power, now the worlds a musical and you gotta solve her murder otherwise you're gonna be the one who pays for her getting killed. It’s a unique musical visual novel with a big cast of big names. 

Contains: Woman Lead, two romacable women [? not confirmed], main character is probably canon bisexual but couldn't confirm in demo so here for now [but probably actually a narrative game].

Spirit Swap

Spirits are all around us and matching 3 pops them. In this match three game you play as Samara and look for love while trying to fix the issue with the spirits in town to utterly amazing low-fi tracks. For people looking to take a break from the story of the game you can also enjoy several other mods including playing against other players. 

Contains: Multiple Romantic options of varying gender including sapphic ones. Main character is probably canon bisexual but in the demo her attraction to men was a lot clearer to me then her attraction to women and I think a straight person might not catch she is gay. 

Love Shore

A true cyberpunk adventure where you pick between one of two protagonists. For our purposes your Farah.  This game is probably not properly a make your own gay but your not gonna get any sapphic content in one route and I think you can technically avoid it. Regardless, this game boasts a really awesome weaving plot and some sexy horric monsters you might be able to kiss too. There is some hidden stat elements which is a neat part of the game and it overall seems really cool. 

Contains: Your selection of one of two protagonists, one of whom is a woman and queer. You got to choose her to get to the sapphic stuff with at least three romance options that are ladies.

Gales of Nayeli 

This game is still really early in development as far as I know so it’s hard to say how much will remain consistent but I was told directly that Nayeli and Keri could have a romance and Nayeli is the title character of the game so the main character of the story is sapphic to some extent [they also assured me it wouldn’t be the only sapphic pairing in the game]. I simply cannot judge if that is something we see in the story because we’ve not got that kind of trailer yet. There is also an avatar, one we can assume can have romances, you can pick their pronouns but not edit their appearance. This looks like a really fun strategy RPG in the vein of Fire Emblem, with grid based tactics and if your into that and want some sapphic stuff, this is one to keep an eye on. 

Contains: Sapphic pairings between party members, self insert character who you can choose the pronouns of but not edit the appearances. 

A Gay Exists

This Category is for games with ensemble casts, in which a sapphic character might exist in the game, be playable, be unavoidable but they are also not the focal point of the story but instead just a small part of the story. A gay does exist in this game they in theory could even be in the lead but you might not know it like a game starring Wonder Woman or Harley Quinn where in canon they might be bisexual but the game simply might avoid ever stating it. 

Granblue Fantasy Relink 

Set sails through the sky in a high flying action RPG with a wide cast of characters from the popular gacha series Granblue Fantasy. It features the canon bisexual icon Rossetta as a playable party member seemingly from the start of the game. 

Contains: At least one playable canon bisexual. Player insert who can change genders on the fly. One playable subtextual sapphic knight. 

Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising

Bullshit could or could not be blazing in this Arcsystem Works fighting game follow up expanding the cast of Granblue Fantasy Versus and the general contents of the game. We don’t know the full roster but the roster of all the last game is included giving us for sure several pieces of representation. 

Contains: Two Trans women, one canon lesbian, several more subtext sapphics. 

Potentially Gay 

These are upcoming games I think probably will be sapphic to at least some extent in any of the above categories. Simply put, unlike the one’s above, I Am not confident enough to include them in the lists above because we simply haven’t seen any evidence to show that sapphic stuff exists. At least not in any trailer, demo, interview, or whatever that I researched when putting together this already very long list, so please be easy on me. 

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood 

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a card creating, fortune telling, narrative game about revenge, isolation, and more. You play as Fortuna, a witch who has been put into isolation without her magic or the ability to see anyone else by her Coven’s leader. She calls on a mystical being and makes a pact so she can get her revenge.  During the game you can express romantic, sexual, etc desires and it seems like you’ll be able to craft some relationships as well as the cards. 

Rune Factory 6 and Rune Factory Dragon 

In these games you’ll probably be able to pick your pronouns, romance people regardless of gender, and use magic to enhance your farming. Both will likely contain dungeons with simple combat and a light action RPG story to play. You probably can get married and have kids, you maybe won’t be able to customize your character beyond picking gender but you probably will be able to customize your house. 

Fantasy Life I: The Girl Who Steals Time

The first fantasy life made it where you could only be straight but at this point, Fantasy Life would be the last remaining life sim series to not let you be gay unless they totally cut out romance.  I think literally the last life sim with romance to not let you be gay was like Rune Factory 4, a 3DS game.  This game isn’t a farming game but it stands out next to the sims and other similar games as well. 

Hades 2 

The first one had a bi guy lead, I assume this time you’ll be a bi girl. 

Dark Deity 2 

The first one had an gays, I assume this one will have an gays as well, hopefully more, I wasn’t totally in love with how they did supports in Dark Deity 1. 

Beastieball 

Really this one is just vibes based, the art style says “queer” to me. Also your little beasties can start romances with each other and tehy don’t have genders but I bet you could do some making your own gay shipping with your little pokemon. 

En Garde! 

The vibe of the main protagonist is serving lesbian.  Please Devs at Fireplace games, tell me she kisses a woman, even in private, I won’t tell anyone if I am not allowed too, the game looks fun and I just want her to kiss a girl. 

--- That is all for now but if you enjoyed me doing all this research and putting it together in a really nice place for y’all then consider backing me on Patreon or Ko-fi or recommending me for work,I got my card on my page with professional contact info. Other than that you can always just follow me, reblog, share on whatever other social media sites are your poison.  If you know any other sapphic games that are not yet released PLEASE let me know,  want to know them all and I’m going to keep a new list after this article goes up for a few months from now when a lot more of these games are out or maybe next year around not E3 time again.

[thecurioustale]

Art Begets Art and the Law Should Respect This

I believe in the tradition of folk art, which is to say: Borrow liberally and lovingly.

It's a practice we've been mostly sterilized from embracing in our modern corporatist society, where all of the big-name, commonly-recognizable "IPs" are imprisoned behind layer after layer of obnoxious lawyers with nothing better to do than torment the innocent. It's a terrible thing, a deprivation of our cultural oxygen—a crime against art and ethics.

As an artist myself, I often have to thread the needle of building upon the inspiring works of others while still remaining within the letter of our outrageous IP laws. It's something I think about a lot.

In Galaxy Federal, for instance, I mentioned last time that the name "Galaxy Federal" was inspired, among other things, by the mention of the "Galaxy Federal Police" title screen of the original Metroid game. When I was settling on this title for my series, I also found that Galaxy Federal is the trademarked name of a bank. I spent considerable time and mental resources, years ago, to determine to my satisfaction that it is permissible under the law for me to use this title.

I have to do way too much of this bullshit, and I know it'll still be for naught: If I ever do become an even remotely successful author, I'm sure I'll be sued anyway, probably for something I never even realized was an "infringement" despite all my vigilance. Because, at the end of the day, for big corporations and for IP trolls, our IP laws are just a racketeering scheme—a side hustle. I mean, Best Western trademarked the word "seniority." If someone wants to sue you, they're gonna find a way.

I am not really a "from scratch" writer. I don't sit down at a blank page and just come up with prose from first principles. My art is almost always inspired by things that I experience in my life, or by the ideas that result from those experiences. Sometimes—frequently, even—my inspirations come from things that are copyrighted or trademarked. I have written in the past about the influence of the video game The Secret of Mana on me as a kid. Among many other inspirations, that game has a neat sandship in it, and that's why the desert easts of Relance are prevalent with sandships.

Over the years I've become a pro at reinterpreting IP-blocked inspirations into usable, original ones—both in terms of the legal research I've done and the skills I've developed at transforming an IP-blocked inspiration into something usable. I've also become more knowledgeable about what I can get away with quoting directly: Certain things cannot be copyrighted, and trademarks have a finite zone of applicability.

It's all a very needless and skill-intensive ballet to achieve something that should be directly accessible. Obviously, there do need to be limits. As an artist myself, I am keenly aware that I wouldn't want to have no special claim to my own work. But if I were to rewrite our outrageous IP laws—and over the years I have amassed considerable material for a book on this—I would make it vastly easier for artists and the public in general to "borrow liberally and lovingly" from the sources that inspire them. Our current IP laws are like a crime-ridden police state: The security is in all the wrong places and just doesn't work. We could relax the laws considerably without hurting artists, and potentially even tighten them in other respects to better combat trolls and thieves.

But in the meantime, here's my advice: Don't let it daunt you. Dance the friggin' ballet. Get good at transformation. Liberate intellectual property from its prison in spirit if not in substance. And, when you're fearless and/or sufficiently obscure, just straight-up pirate. I think society has a duty to reject unjust laws through word and deed.

I don't usually don my pirate's hat, but I do sometimes. When I published the Prelude in 2015, for a limited time I also published a free companion soundtrack consisting entirely of, gasp, copyrighted music. Nowhere is the horror of our modern IP laws more evident than in the realm of music. What I did was basically create a curated playlist, to help set the mood of the story. I don't know if anyone even availed themselves of that soundtrack, yet for me to license all of those pieces to make my limited-time links lawful would have cost me thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars! All for something that it's possible nobody other than me even listened to. That's a crime against art. And it's a crime against artists. Our draconian IP laws hurt small artists the most. If I had had thousands of fans, I'd have been able to pay to play—and I would have done so, or perhaps I would have spent the equivalent money to hire composers to write an original soundtrack. But, as a nobody-artist and a poor person, whose own Curious Score musical compositions are long in the making, the lawful avenues are all unassailably closed off to me. This too is an injustice, of another sort.

Doing the companion soundtrack was the right thing to do in the tradition of folk art. None of those other artists (or, let's be real, the corporate goliaths that hoard most of this "content" in their treasure-vaults) was deprived of a single penny; in fact that's one of the great lies of the IP lawyers and their corporate masters: Cultural interchange usually improves income for people whose work is quoted by others. Borrow liberally and lovingly—and give credit where credit is due.

That's the way it should be.

And, one day, that's how it will be again.

[lilyblisslys]

watching this iii showcase late bc of work but here are some of my unasked for thoughts

>slay the spire 2; neat! Will be interesting to see how they switch it up (or if they do)

>i like vampire survivors and also I have yet to play any of the dlc, most of which I own

> what’s even going on with risk of rain 2 rn, doesn’t gearbox own it now? It’s not exactly indie, is it?

>that anime/jet set radio inspired game looks cool! Maybe someday I’ll pick up bomb rush cyberpunk (is it me or is it never on sale)

> I keep meaning to look at that Vampire Survivors-esque thing that is clearly trying to be Hades, but I find that games trying to be Hades don’t understand that the reason hades was amazing was more about the quality and quantity of writing than anything else

>a lot of these sim games look cool! Cataclismo, let’s school, and Layasoma(?) summit kingdom look sick as hell

>darkest dungeon 2 free update! The progression system in that game is a fucking mess, a game mode that….fixes(?) that would be neat? Idk

>wizard of legend 2 taking the heartbreaking route of getting rid of a gorgeous pixel art style for an “eh it’s fine” 3d style. Will still probably pick it up

>33 immortals looks sick as fuck, aesthetically and conceptually. I’m really rooting for that one. Interesting to see how the hades aesthetic has trickled down for indie stuff (I’ll explain this thought later)

>the main character in this prince of Persia platformer looks like hatsune miku binder Thomas jefferson. Why is a Ubisoft game in this big indie showcase…?

>forgot about it until the end recap but “Wasteland but it’s in Australia” is kinda tempting but also this doesn’t look like something I’ll ever play