#always available for asks!

[hellsitegenetics]

Hey are you willing to BLAST Kat Bolstad’s page on the AUT website? She’s the researcher who voiced over the colossal squid video and it’s making me so mad that people’s hatred of generative AI is so strong that they’re trying to crowd out an incredible cephalopod researcher who frankly speaks with a similar cadence to David Attenborough (those documentary skills!!!) especially during a time where we need to encourage women in STEM. This is the real damage generative AI is doing.

https://academics.aut.ac.nz/kathrin.bolstad

String identified: Acat at ta AT a a caat , gatg t t a ac ca cg ca (, ct a t at). t at AT, at t t ata ata t (ta ttt, agt, .C.) a t ga Aa t, A. a caat t t aa T aa Tgaa, t ata ttt at & Atc ac (A), t t a Aa ac ttt (A), c ttt caga, a t t Ataa . at' a ac c a t ca a , a -a . a a gat c a a ca , a c a a a -ta t. a a atcat cta a t t t Atactc.

Closest match: Arctia caja genome assembly, chromosome: 13 Common name: Garden Tiger Moth

(image source)

[flowersforthemachines]

Useless Veilguard fact of the day: Day 49

If you complete Emmrich's questline and make him a lich before he goes on the camping trip with Harding, you can hear some unique voicelines.

Rook: So going outdoors is still… fun, for a lich? Emmrich: Nature remains cloaked in all its glory. Though the elements pose less of a worry. Harding: Exactly! You're a skeleton under your magic. Why are you even bringing different clothes? Emmrich: My dear Harding, a gentleman should always look presentable. Harding: (Exasperated noise) To who? The squirrels? Emmrich: That should be "to whom." Harding: I am going to stab you with an arrow. Emmrich: I really have looked forward to you showing me more of your home, Harding. Harding: Me, too. Oh! Are you going to be a lich in the woods? Emmrich: If it's not an inconvenience. Can we still have a campfire? Harding: We have to have a campfire. And spooky stories. Emmrich: Wonderful! I'll copy some passages from my diaries.

Check out the tag for more useless facts: #useless davg fact of the day!

My DAVG Extracted Audio Masterlist

[3416]

kniesy's media today is sending me.... calling mitch and auston the 2 best players in the league and saying he learned a lot from them and then saying mitch is an incredible teammate and was always asking him to come hang out at his place like...... oh 233416 you're the best ever

[mmmairon]

Idk if this is weird or not but could you draw Diluc telling me— someone they did a good job?

Not having the best time and I love your Diluc so much 😅

oh anon :( i hope this brings you some form of comfort <3

[luke-shywalker]

Idk who’s ready for this take of mine but Ben Solo’s relationship with Snoke was just like the hyper-dysfunctional unhealthy dependence on ChatGPT currently emerging in some youth. send tweet

[randomnameless]

Why do the FEH devs insist on ignoring Nabatean lore so much?

I recently had a surprisingly cordial discussion on redshit with someone about the "nabateans = colonisers" take, and one of the main points raised was that the game was purposedly foggy around Nabateans/Sothis/their story because it would obviously favor a certain narrative (and thus make another narrative look, uh, not that marketable anymore).

To be honest, we still ended up with a product that had a lead go "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and yet that lead is still marketable enough to have raunchy cipher cards and 5 FEH alts, so I actually wonder if, while pissing on that lore had that purpose, it was ultimately pointless since Supreme Leader can still sell goodies despite her incarnation in FE16.

And not only Supreme Leader - but the entirety of WC where we basically have 70% of the cast crying/complaining about their "mixed blood" or lack of and basically adding their 10 cents to the "this race and its blood is the reason why the world sucks".

I mean, can you imagine Sylvain selling any goodies and alts if Flayn replied to his "wah wah people only are kind to me and want to fuck me because I have Nabatean blood :(" by some uncharacteristic "good for you, I have to hide my ears, had to dye my hair, have to lie about my family because if the truth is found out about my identity, I will be hunted and vivisected like an animal and harvested for parts by people who call my kin abominations - just like what happens in the game where the same people who call my kin "abominations" ally with a classmate who calls me a creature and pretends I am incapable of human feelings based on my race".

FE Fodlan's main selling point is its cast of students, for various reasons, but even if I tried to kid myself, Nopes and FEH made it clears : students are the main selling point.

If you spare more time and attention to the Nabatean plot/lore, the students either grow from "likeable" to "despicable" or worse, you won't gaf about them because yeah sure, Hilda might be upset because people expect things from her due to her crust, but it would feel like a "peanut" compared to Seteth's irrational (granted, it's not so irrational since GW exists) fear that Flayn's newest friends would dissect her if they learnt she was a Nabatean, and being conflicted by finally letting her have human friends and form bonds she crave, or protect her due to the trauma from the genocide of their species.

Don't get me wrong, I love peanuts, I mean, not everyone can have a tragik of loaded backstory!

And yet, given how this verse's DNA is "can you fight against the red emperor who uwus about you", they had to add copious amounts of Earl Grey to their games so there's no clear-cut factions :

The "Your alien blood and its influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command" vs "I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

is turned to :

"Your alien blood Crests and its your church's influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command"

"I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

Sprinkle with the cast's hammering here and there that the "reforms" might be needed - but never develop on what they are - and add a few baseless and groundless takes as a toping (basically everything Claude says about tolerance and the general "isolationism/foreign policy" stuff) and you get FE Fodlan where the Red Emperor's war isn't seen as the catastrophe it is in the other entries from the series!

Now, for FEH...

FWIW, the F!F!Billy's trailer had them try to explain that Sothis was a bit pissed about her slaughtered/massacred children when Nopes never gave any reason about why she was pissed - maybe on Billy's behalf bcs Jerry's dead, but come on, she would indeed deserve the medal of the worst parent in the franchise if that was the case, since Billy can murder her daughter without Sothis taking over ! - but given that they cannot write/go against the source game those characters are from.

They tried a bit, with B!Supreme Leader and Hegemongard's FB, but then it stopped (because she had no "new unit" released since then lol) and I can understand why : Hegemongard came out before the Supreme Emblem, and Hegemongard hates dragons who are seen/perceived as gods by some of their human followers. Come FE17, and now Supreme Emblem accepts Alear because they are "one of the good ones". We can come up with HCs and details and talk about what are emblems or if Hegemongard's views were only hers at the end of AM all day long... But imo, Doylist wise, it still feels it's a retcon because the devs from the main games tried to scrap and remove the most "controversial" traits she had.

For the other characters... Well, you see what Marianne is in FEH (but even in her base games), she's one of the few characters who reacts - in a way - to the partial history about relics and demonic beasts and all... only to give sad uwus to Maurice.

FE16 (and Nopes) refused to have any "student" character react to the Nabatean lore/reveal, about what are relics and all. There are no lines, Claude shared some knowledge in the explore section of VW's last chapter, but we don't have anyone muse or think or even talk about what are relics, what are crests, and what kind of fuckery their ancestors or the ancient humans of Fodlan did.

With that in mind, FEH can't do much : either they write Marianne in a retcon-y way like what happened for Hegemongard (and they're not afraid to piss on characterisation, look at Lyon!), or they flanderise her "character" and develop her around 3 lines she had in the game in her paralogue, and continue to give sad uwus about Momo when he was at best a guy who slaughtered and murdered so much that he abused the Nabatean turned into a relic to the point where he turned in a demonic beast even if he had a matching crest, or at worst, had been part of Nemesis's piñata party in Zanado and was something of a genocider.

Tldr :

Why FE Fodlan never gaf about Nabateans : earl grey + the marketable cast has to stay marketable and you can't sell peanuts at the same price you'd sell swordfish

Why FEH dgaf about Nabatean lore : they can't afford to retcon characters + they have to sell peanut alts with the same seasoning they had in their base game.

For what it's worth though, I think FEH is more daring than the base game(s) given how they gave more lines and screentime to Rhea - through her different alts - than GW. And they even designed her Halloween!alt's lines to piss on some of Claude's assertions, while the various FB involving members of the church also - indirectly - reply to some accusations thrown their way in FE16 when, FE16, never gave them an opportunity or lines to explain that those takes were full of dung.

*"but random, maybe she doesn't know that the crests she often decries is "dragon blood"!"

It's highly debatable, especially given what she and Hubert throw to Billy in CF - but even if she doesn't, Doylist wise we still have a character who, knowingly or not, says "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and who is never called out on her prejudice. That's more of an issue regarding the general writing though, she has to be a red emperor and took pages from Ashnard's book, and yet, the player must still feel bad and want to romance her, so her mindest/goal cannot be looked at too closely, because, I guess, even the devs thought it would be difficult to romance her (thus sell goodies!) if more light was shed on the "blood from this race corrupts our people" schtick -> which in turn would also make characters whose backstory and gimmick rely on "crying about crests" be way less likeable, thus marketable and able to sell goodies.

[isat-script-project]

Your amazing work here has inspired me to want to try doing a script project for DQB2 and I was wondering if you had any advice for me?

I'm gonna assume that's some sorta dragon quest game?

Well, ISAT really is a blessing in this regard, because the game is not encrypted at all. Accessing files and all text via rpgmaker MV and VSC is incredibly easy.

okay this got really long i'm putting it under the cut.

But before you get started, there really are some things you need to ask yourself first:

How am I going to get the text from this game?

If your answer is "write it down by hand as I play" then already know that there HAS to be a better way. If you're choosing that method, get yourself emulation, save states, or endless patience, because hooh boy, I've done a little bit of that for a different project (no, I will not elaborate) but save scumming on original hardware to get different dialogue options is agony.

Is there a text dump for your game? Is there a file dump or decomp for your game? Do you have the technical know how to access it? If not, are you confident in your knowledge of the game to accurately identify where all dialogue may occur? If not, are you satisfied missing out on nothing lines and just focusing on the non-optional? Is your game linear enough to not need a closer look at the code to figure out what happens when, as isat does?

2. What's my scope?

Again, do you truly want every line from this game, or just what's "important"? I personally cannot rest until I've exhausted the fucking Menus (which is why there's a script page for those, too) because I'm a completionist with delusions of grandeur, but some people are satisfied transcribing the cutscenes and nothing else (MUCH TO MY ANNOYANCE WHEN I NEED THE OTHER STUFF.... nobody cares about the optional collectible npc dialogue BUT I CARE!!! I CARE!!!!!)

Anyways, what exactly your scope is is gonna significantly influence what your next step looks like.

3. How am I going to present this?

Making the isat script project an individual website mainly came down to how finicky the dialogue in isat is. There's conditionals stacked on conditionals and I wanted a space where I had total control over how to present these factors without influence.

For more linear games, like, say, that time I made all the fewiki scripts for Fire Emblem 6 from chapter 12 onward, it was easy enough to present the scripts on a wiki page just because the game is much more linear, there's less dialogue to begin with, and all conditional text could be nicely divided up into similar groups, like boss dialogue where the condition is just "fight boss with x character".

isat script project would not exist without my fire emblem fixation, fun fact. other fun facts include that as a child i attempted to novelize Mario Party DS by transcribing all story mode text into a booklet by hand, and I did not finish this for reasons that are hopefully obvious.

This is, as you may figure, way easier to do. There is significantly less burden on you to actually understand how a website works - I cannot stress enough that the current state of the script project is only possible thanks to Gold, and without them, we'd still be at all dialogue being formatted as <p><b>Siffrin:</b> Says some text.</p>

For a lot of older games, you can also find whole game scripts being put up into a single document. Tis common on gamefaqs, I've used those plenty. There I believe you're just working with plain ol txt.

The rule is always though look at examples and if they do something cool figure out whether you can copy it. i did not create the website layout myself, i used a base and fiddled with it for a whole weekend until it stopped exploding.

Again, like, using an existing structure like a wiki or gamefaqs or just google docs or a spreadsheet is a significantly eased burden. One of my favorite things ever is actually a text dump on github, of all places. For this one, the person putting it up chose to leave all text in as close to original state as possible, doing no trimming of things like character emotes and leaving in all original string titles of every line. This is also incredibly useful, even if it is more difficult to use for your average schmoe! (This has fucking saved me doing wiki stuff for engage. engage text dump i ADORE you)

Do you want to be as accurate to the code as possible, or as accurate to the game? Do you have the time, energy, and skills to make the visual presentation nice? Or do you want to keep it rudimentary to streamline your process?

If you ARE doing something like making your own website, it is crucial that you figure out your visuals early, lest you be like us, and be stuck in Reformatting Hell for several months, because someone figured out how to make a thing prettier and nicer to read, and now you need to update the 100+ pages you've already created.

Reformatting code like that takes just as long as making a page in the first place, by the by, because you're just not getting around copy-pasting everything line by agonizing line.

This stuff takes HOURS. If I went at it alone, I doubt I'd have finished by now, or within the next like, two years. This is a really time consuming hobby, and I love doing it a lot, it scratches my exact fixation itch, but if your game is huge, consider seeing if people would be interested in joining you? I will also say being autistic about your game of choice is also a bonus in the sustainability department.

Many a times there were just no updates (as they are now) cuz I am just. Distracted by something else. Like yes on one hand I'm going to uni now and have less time but it's not really less time if I can still put 17hrs into a new video game in three days.

Stuff like this is ALWAYS a long-term project and you WILL need to take time off from it or else you'll start seeing html in your dreams and get burnout.

STREAMLINE YOUR PROCESS!!! FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THIS WITH AS LITTLE EFFORT AS POSSIBLE!!!! Gold introduced me to Espanso, which is a program that lets you set up keyboard shortcuts to insert phrases, which was a MAAAAAASSIVE time saver in the html department, as it allowed me to just rapid fire paste in all the many html classes we stacked for the presentation of the site. even if you are doing a script on a wiki where everything does look like ['''Siffrin:''' says a thing] you will still be doing yourself a favor if you can shorten that '''Siffrin:''' to just typing :s .

As a side note, I also wanna say like. The popularity of isat script project is a complete outlier. Other game scripts may be used by a maniac like me to overanalyze the plot structure of Sonic 06, but you're very likely not going to see that recognition. I love doing this, because I want these resources to exist for myself. I don't do this for the good of the fandom, but because it is useful to me. I started this because I was writing isat fanfic, and got tired of looking up dialogue on youtube or booting up my own game.

Do I know if anyone found my FE6 scripts useful? No. Do I know if anyone is going through Veyle/Quotes and appreciating that I transcribed all the fucking battle voice clips? No. Do I know if someone appreciates me accurately labelling all voice lines from the ring polishing minigame in engage? Hell no. I don't know, I'm never going to get feedback on that. Those are wiki pages, anyone can edit them, they don't have viewcounts or comments I can look at, and the fandom just isn't as prone to taking screenshots and posting about them line by line as isat.

Isat blew the fuck up on tumblr. I'm not saying you'll get no recognition at all, but if you are relying on external motivators, you are probably going to peter out. There are pages I've worked on for other script things that I've genuienly not touched in two years because I just didn't feel like it, and that's also okay.

TLDR:

Figure out how to get the text you need with the least effort possible (and figure out whether doing that is even possible at all!), figure out what scope you're actually willing to put up with, and present it with the least effort possible, because everything else just isn't sustainable. Streamline streamline streamline. Be prepared to spend hours on this and maybe like find a new favorite podcast to just copy paste text to, because honestly, doing this is also pretty zen.

And most importantly, sparkle on, don't forget to have fun! Even if it seems big and intimidating, you can still make it just a fun side project, and slowly chip away at it over time. Rome wasn't built in a day, and with all the advantages going for isat script project (additional manpower, unencrypted files, easy tools for game examination) it still took over a year to complete.

(loop voice) Don't make the same mistakes I did, okay?

oh, yeah, one last thing, if you're not putting it on a wiki and ARE making your own website, ABSOLUTELY PUT IT ON GITHUB!!!! setting up so any changes to the main branch on github get reflected onto neocities is pretty easy and you only need to do it once, and what this allows is to just have random strangers show up and fix your problems for you. sometimes someone will just show up and fix five bajillion typos and then leave. or they'll stick around and help with more stuff and wowie you have a semblance of a team now.

if you're doing it on a wiki, find like, the wiki discord, if someone is interested in chipping in. if you're doing your own website, put it on github. do it. do it do it do it.

[hoodedhavok]

talk to me about peterose i want to know anything you've been wanting to talk about!! 🥺💗

i have so many thoughts that ive been inflicting on my friends who don't watch TNA (thank u paigey) so i am SO GLAD YOU ASKED 

first off; him choosing to leave her at the end of the season, absolutely foolish mistake on his part. monroe knows how much rose means to peter and knows that he will throw his life away for her. 

he knew about their connection even when they hadn’t spoken for 10 months, so i dont think them staying away from each other is going to keep her safe

on that note, i am begging for the writers (and peter) to recognize rose as someone who is capable. yes she wants to go back to cali basically the entire season, but she is GOOD at being a night agent, and she doesn’t shy away from a fight 

even in that s2 scene when shes being chased by solomon, she fights back, she has the knife still and succeeds!! could you imagine her with actual TRAINING?  peter and her would be literally unstoppable. 

now i love peter, dont get me wrong, but he was so silly!!! this season, he was so scared about his inability to keeping her safe, that he never saw how capable she was and so he leaves her??? 

on a happier note - i love their dynamic so much, the domesticity of their relationship - the YEARNING. the romance is there but they both know they have shit that needs to get done and i appreciate that. 

and then!! how they know each other?? on the ways that matter to each of them (rose knowing peter in the night agent sense, and peter knowing her on a normal level)

like how rose knows that peter isn’t mentally okay in the beginning of s2 and her telling him not to forget the real peter?? then peter knowing her order? knowing that she is capable of anything professionally? i love them so much oh my goooddd

thank you for asking!!!!! sorry for the essay lmao 

[ilikebigshipsandicannotlie]

Hey Virg.

Could I get a hug please?

-Squirt 🫧

Always Squirt 💚💚💚

[plushie-lovey]

FINALLY!! At long last, I've gotten my hands on a Pumpkin Kitty, after a whole year of wanting and waiting.

Her name is Latte! (Short for Miss Pumpkin Spice Latte) You can also call her Miss Spice!

[majunju]

I found so many new cool games from you:0 Can you do a list of what you play, please? It’s mostly otome, right?

oh of course! these are the otome games that i'm currently playing/have played recently:

virche evermore (switch)

birushana: rising flower of genpei (switch)

jack jeanne (switch)

even if tempest + even if tempest dawning connections (switch)

lovebrush chronicles (this one's a phone game but it's still classified as an otome game)

yumekuro (same as above)

[kindahoping4forever]

I know it’s entirely possible 4/4 are in the studio working on the new album but I wonder why the only teasers we’ve been getting lately are of cashton. Do we think muke are working on something too but moving in silence, or cal and ash just happen to have more free time to be in the studio atm while the other two are doing other stuff? Either way, sooo excited for (hopefully) more cashton bangers on the new project 🤩

I feel like there are likely a number of elements at play here!

At this point, I'm sure they already have a general feel for the vibe and sound of the album, so it may not be imperative for everyone to attend every single session. 5SOS5 primarily has 4/4 writing credits but that has not always been the norm, traditionally their albums tend to have a lot of pair credits or even the occasional solo credit (alongside whatever outside collaborator they're working with, of course).

In the case of what we've been seeing recently, Cal and Ash appear to be in studio with Elijah Noll and Colin Brittain, who they (Cashton, specifically) previously worked with on "You Don't Go To Parties." It's likely that since the band already knows that Cashton works well with that team, it's not a big deal for them to write, demo or possibly even start laying down a track without the entire band present. (Also we don't know if Luke and/or Michael have been involved via Zoom/FaceTime!)

And like you mentioned, scheduling is probably a big factor as well. When we got the first post of Cashton footage, Calum had literally just gotten back from his Australia promo trip, Luke was still in Australia for his recent shows/Fashion Week and Michael was presumably still home in Georgia. With Cal's album release so close (and Michael gearing up for the GMAB! release and album announcement), it's plausible finding a window to get 4/4 in a room is just not currently practical. And! In addition to the craziness going on 5SOS-wise, since they last worked together, Colin Brittain has become a member of Linkin Park and so if they were set on working with him specifically, they'd have to plan around his touring schedule as well.

And of course, it's worth noting that in recent months, Calum and Ashton have been the most active on IG so just because there's been a lack of similar Luke and Michael content, that doesn't necessarily mean there hasn't been any, they could have just not shared it, yk? 😂

But whatever the case, I agree with you, I too am looking forward to (hopefully) hearing some new Cashton bangers whenever the project is complete 😌

[pipeupcomic]

Hey, love your comic and art style but I only have one question. What's your comic about? I couldn't find like a summary or a blurb of it explaining to the reader what they'll be experiencing is all. Maybe I missed it somewhere.

We have a summary/blurb written but haven't posted it anywhere yet cause it's still a little spoilery! There's a certain update coming up, after which I will post it everywhere it needs to be. This is the official blurb for now:

An original comic about Piper the rabbit, a teenage girl in high school, and her best friend, Kai the fennec fox.

-SPB

[cherriesforheaven]

mama <3

[sunsetovertheocean]

Someone should invent parents that don’t fight 24/7 because I’m sick of having to constantly live on a minefield

[eatsbooks]

Eris gay awakening hcs

oh yes i sure do have those! so i personally write eris as bisexual with a bit of a comphet/keeping-up-appearances outward preference for females. he’s definitely attracted to both even so — when there is this much beauty around you, something as trivial as gender doesn’t quite matter — and in autumn, there are all manner of bedslaves for royal use. (and all manner of whores for common use.) i think fae across prythian are just generally way more open with sex and freaky shit than humans. kinda like … pleasure is pleasure. why limit yourself in any way over a life so long? the things we would take issue with, they wouldn’t even think twice about. of course there’s still varying levels of prejudice with that, but i think that pleasure is pleasure mindset is very much the case for eris, who i hc is suuuper desensitized to sex and sexual attention from a young age and uses sex with others in a very selfish, masturbatory way. where things get sticky though, especially in a traditional-values, continuation-of-the-bloodline ass court like autumn, is when it comes to romantic attraction.

allat said — i think eris knows very young that he’s sexually attracted to males as well as females. that’s nothing revelatory for him. he’ll take either or both to bed freely, and both will approach for a bite of him/his power. pretty much everyone he knows will take both to bed freely too. (beron doesn’t quite approve of this for his heir, but he’s of the you are a vanserra; you take what you want and do not ask permission mindset. even while expressing his disdain for eris when he takes males to bed, beron would still think it more shameful for eris to be cowed by him when it came to something like this. fucked up guy.) i think eris has a huuuuge hangup with being penetrated though. he associates that with domination, weakness, femininity. sex is always, always about power above all, and he always needs to be the one in control. he’ll play around and indulge himself and get real freaky, but no one is ever getting a leg over on him, and he’s only focused on taking his own pleasure from others, not pleasing them. because if he pleased them, they would be taking something from him.

so the first time he’s penetrated is really pivotal for him in his sexual journey! i (naturally) hc that it’s azriel who pops his cherry in that way. i wrote it in eiteio — but basically their hatefucking culminates into azriel eating eris out, which he has never allowed before, and eris comes in just absolutely record time. then azriel fucks into him (without any prep beyond his tongue which :/) but beyond the pain, which eris wanted out of their interaction anyway, the pleasure was revolutionary. much to eris’s chagrin. like after the fact, no pleasure he takes quite hits the same. (but that’s also cuz azris had been bonding in their fucked up way, and i hc eris as a demisexual who’s pretty much just forced into hypersexuality because of the inherent sex = power mentality among the vanserra boys, courtesy of beron’s parenting. but i digress.) i think that would be the case for any queer relationship eris entered, and this personal revelation would do a lot to help him mentally unpack his sexual trauma — if he’s with the right person.

but romantic attraction! that comes really late in life, and that is a very 🫨🫨🫨 moment for him. one that i think he would fight against initially — because again, that innate fact beaten into him of The Bloodline Must Continue. it happens so late in life though that he’s able to reckon with it eventually, because he’s already gotten to a point of deprogramming himself from beron by then. if it happened when he was still young (maybe sub 100yrs old?) then oh my god i think the crashout would be insane. because he still genuinely thinks proving himself to his daddy is 1) attainable and 2) something to strive for. so he would reject the fuck out of those feelings if they cropped up. BUT i just don’t think he has time for romantic feelings like that, female or male, when he’s young. beron has already shown him that his attention is a liability to those he loves, and those he loves are an external vulnerability he cannot afford to add to. he wouldn’t even be open to the possibility unless he was put in a Situation. but yeah — the gay romantic awakening would be a trip for him.