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ystrike1 · 4 months

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Dark Castle - By faun_me (8.5/10)

This one is a rich and heavy story. Slow burn. Alot of lore. The love interest is an 8 foot tall half human rat man. Memory loss. You've seen some of these tropes before, but they're done well. The art improves steadily as well, and the creature design is well above average. No generic dragons here

Our nameless heroine has no memories. She knows so little that her common sense is gone. She isn't afraid of demons. She has been dragged into the demon realm for unknown reasons. She's being stalked by a friend that looks human, and his demon master desires her. Luckily, she is captured by another influential demon.

At first he seems very nice. He doesn't welcome the stranger warmly, but he doesn't throw her to the wolves. She would die for sure out in the open. The ruler of this castle, Nemalla, doesn't know she's someone else's prey. He really becomes her protector by accident. He even investigates the cloud in her memories, out of pity. It's....a refreshingly normal reaction. Our confused heroine doesn't get special treatment right away, BUT the male leads personality gets established. He's not unreasonable, for a demon.

His kindness is not too good to be true. We see his life outside of his conversations with our protagonist. He's a feared and fearsome leader that doles out capital, cannibalistic punishment with his own hands. He is weighed down by loneliness, because he never expected to rise so high. He was trying to survive, but success left him alone with many enemies.

He is never overtly awful to her, even though his daily life demands a manly/harsh attitude.

The lore is a ton of fun.

Our heroine is ugly. Her features are hideous. She has no tail. No soft fur. Her white skin is gross and unseemly. She does not elegantly blend into the dark, the way a sultry demoness would.

We get hints.

Nemalla is attracted to her, even though her looks are repulsive to any demon.

It starts out very innocently. Nemalla likes her company. He's used to fear and hate, but having a friend is a precious new experience. It soothes his mind. When he shoos our protagonist away to focus on work he regrets it. He muses over how to invite her back over for...him.

He doesn't just want her to regain her memories.

He wants to hang out.

Our protagonist must regain her memories on her own. Nemalla can only help her so much. That's the rule binding her amnesia curse together.

She remembers her name when he takes her to his gorgeous personal garden, to impress her.

Simona.

He tells her to stop.

Names are power in the demon realm, but she gives it to him.

He does the unthinkable.

He shares his name with her too.

He explains the gravity of their exchange.

Knowing a name means you can influence that being, in this particular realm.

Nemalla knows many names, because he is powerful.

Simona has nothing, and she has foolishly given her name away.

He considers...showing her. Punishing her to give her a reason to think. To be less innocent, but he doesn't do it because of his perverse attraction and his loneliness.

Nemalla was imprisoned before. He was at the bottom, with less than nothing. There's an extremely creepy scene. It kind of comes out of nowhere, and it's a red flag. It is why I'm reviewing this series.

Nemalla sees himself covered in blood, back in his chains.

Simona appears, glowing with ethereal light.

He looks at her like she is his only savior, and the illusion snaps away.

Nemalla isn't dreaming.

He had that visceral vision as soon as she touched his hand.

Simona has a friend named Alter.

He kisses her while she's asleep.

He grabs her while he's wearing a mask, and he torments her. He tells her nothing. He lusts over her in the shadows, and his master wants her too. I don't care if he's hot he made a terrible first impression, and the way he treats Simona screams "annoying yandere". You know what I mean. The kind of persistent guy that exists to be slapped around by the real male love interest. He's not that intimidating.

Hopefully his master will be better.

Boom.

Lore drop.

Nemalla was born a prince. The son of a queen. That queen...became lovers with a demon outside of her marriage. The bastard prince was eventually thrown in the dungeon, with his mother.

She died there next to him.

It's implied that she loved her half demon son, and he loved her, and that makes their story even sadder.

It also explains why Nemalla is attracted to Simona neatly. (He likes demons too)

It's nice that it's clear he likes HER, not just her body.

The master who wants her has not revealed himself yet, but I have no doubt. I have total faith in Nemalla. He is absolutely going to tear the other men after her into shredded demon beef.

(Important note: Nemalla can probably change shape. His real body most likely is the rat demon body, but I do think he'll try to seduce Simona with a hot humanoid form at some point. He's already done for. He thinks about her whenever they're apart.)

#yandere #male yandere #yandere male #yandere boy #recommendations #recs #rec #recommended #webtoon #Dark Castle

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femsolid · 11 months

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About the media in which male always get to talk more, can you give the source of that, especially when talking about books? I've been looking for this for my final school paper but couldn't even find something about the bechdel test used for literature.

Disney films may focus on female characters, but when it comes down to statistics, these women barely speak. Thats’s right, there are some Disney films with as much as 2% female dialogue.

Media also distinguish between males and females in a more subtle way: importance. ‘Children scanning the list of titles of what have been designated as the very best children’s books are bound to receive the impression that girls are not very important because no one has bothered to write books about them. The content of the books rarely dispels this impression’, remarked Lenore Weitzman and colleagues in their classic review of Caldecott winners, nearly a third of which had no female characters at all. And of course there are characters, and then there are main characters. The Dr. Seuss books are rightly classics, adored by children and a joy of rediscovery for parents. Yet as Lamb and Brown observe, in all the forty-two books he wrote, not one has a female lead in its central story. The power of the media to dish up a stripped-down, concentrated version of cultural values enables it to represent the higher status of males in this uncomfortably blunt fashion. Even in contemporary picture books, researchers find that this is a habit that dies hard, with writers and illustrators still less inclined to feature female characters. For example, the most recent analysis of the Caldecott winners and runners-up, together with 155 best-selling children’s books around the same time, found that males, overall, were featured nearly twice as often as females in title roles, and they appeared in about 50 percent more pictures. Nor does the use of gender-ambiguous animals or characters in books help to increase female numbers. This is because mothers almost always label gender-neutral characters in picture books as male. If it doesn’t look like a female, it’s male. I’ve tried labelling neutral animals and characters as female when reading to my children – it feels extremely unnatural, as you will discover if you try for yourself. (The reason is probably that we have a tendency to think of people or creatures as male unless otherwise indicated. In other words, as has been long observed, men are people, but women are women.) As within the pages of books, females tend to be underrepresented on TV and computer screens, and to miss out on central roles in advertisements and even cereal boxes. A recent survey of 19,664 children’s programmes in twenty-four countries found that only 32 percent of main characters are female. (This drops to an even more dismal 13 percent when it comes to nonhuman creatures like animals, monsters and robots.) And, a survey of the 101 top-grossing Grated movies from 1990 to 2005 found that less than a third of the speaking roles go to females, with no signs of improvement over time. As the Web site of the Geena Davis Institute, which sponsored the research, asks, ‘What message does this send to young children?’

- Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine

#ask #media

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dragonpropaganda · 5 months

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you should talk about your thoughts on rw fanon (looking with huge eyes)

Oh god, there's a lot of major misconceptions have concreted into fanon, mostly around ancient society and ascension.

First things first! Ascension is not death! They are entirely separate things treated entirely separately by the text of the game. I can see where the interpretation is coming from, but it doesn't really align with how the text treats either subject. Five Pebbles may want to remove the self destruction taboo, but from his reaction to the rot it's clear that he doesn't want to die. Conflation of ascension and death only comes up as an offhand possibility that pebbs makes on iterator 4chan, when he's going into the possibilities of scenarios that even the other sliverists are doubtful of! (let me make clear that I am not a sliverist by any means)

Ascension is more of talked about as a form of transcendence, yeah? A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads talks about their sitution as being "To have grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void…", not as them seeking an end to life.

The beta dialogue goes into more detail, mentioning the "infinities of time and space" and the "boundless fractal planes of spirit and reality...", though this dialogue was cut and it's hard to tell how much it reflects the concept as in the released game.

As for the cultural misconceptions... there's A Lot to talk about, but the first that comes to mind is the common conflation of the five natural urges and the christian concept of sin.

It is true that the negation of urges is mentioned by moon as an alternative method of ascension, but much of what we know about the culture of the people who the fandom calls the ancients (which makes discussion of the depths a mess but that's something for another post entirely) points towards the urges not being seen as shameful.

Even the first urge does not seem to be particularly scorned! Being a warrior is presented as a cause for bragging in the Shaded Citadel pearl, being comparable with being an artist and a fashion legend. The second urge, also does not seem to be suppressed. Multiple sources attribute some level of honour to parenthood! The aforementioned pearl also mentions Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel as being a "Mother, Father and Spouse" without any hint of shamefulness. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections expresses pride about having progeny, mentioning it alongside their owned land and esteem among their peers.

After some peer review, an esteemed friend has told me to add a section on purposed organisms as well! This is not so much my area, so I might be a bit off on some things.

As moon says, the majority of purposed organisms were tubes in boxes, and that the primal fauna of the world are almost entirely extinct. A lot of the fandom seems to ignore the first part, and i can't say I blame them, but the evolution of the creatures is so much weirder than people think.

Concept art for the creatures has this interesting quality to it, where the organic parts of the creatures have an almost... melty quality to them.

In the concept art, the flesh appears as if it's almost defying the machinery to form an animal shape. It's as if it's conquering its own artificiality the way the foliage grows over the (stone, brick and concrete, not mostly metal as some think!) ruins.

Of course, it's hard to really tell how much of this reflects the finalised concept, most of the integration is much smoother in the game, in line with a seamless kind of biomechanical design. There was always an intention of biomechanical strangeness, as shown in this screenshot of the devlog before the term "slugcat" even existed!

That said, the melty nature of the concept art shows a level of wild change inherent the biomechanical nature of the creatures, as if they truly are the result of these "tubes in boxes" almost revolting against their own boxes.

and considering centipedes... some tubes may not have had boxes in the first place!

#rain world #rain world lore #rainworld #rw spoilers #please note! my role in downpour development does not make me an authority on what is canon or not!#my domain is entirely within challenge mode and arena which aren't canon anyway #my lore analysis is just lore analysis with no looks behind the scenes of anything vanilla #downpour was made as a fan expansion and the rewrites were just done directly by james #we didn't get any disambiguation on the lore (and thank fuck for that honestly. analysis is the best part)#though the hills ARE made of bricks #this is canon not because i say so but because it is visibly true in some areas of the game. part of the text and thus canon. weep.#i could go into more detail on most of this! purposed organisms aren't my area of expertise tho so i might be a bit shaky on some of that #anyway if anyone has any fact checking to do. please do so #media analysis is a dialogue!

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bogleech · 1 month

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Also going to finally make a pinned post for all my stuff:

BOGLEECH - my tumblr blog is named after this website I created around 2002 and still update. Thousands of pages worth of content focusing on creature design as well as real biology. My review of the original Legend of Zelda monsters might be the most straightforward example of my articles. Links to some of the most popular content:

POKEMON REVIEW ARCHIVE: - I rate and review each and every single Pokemon, in Pokedex order, on its merits as a creature design. I also do so as someone whose favorite animals are all parasites.

DIGIMON REVIEW ARCHIVE - same, but more chaotic.

CREEPYPASTA COOKOFF ARCHIVE - for several years I hosted a yearly writing contest before it grew too big for me to keep up with. There are over a thousand user submitted horror, fantasy, sci fi and surrealist stories here emphasizing unconventional, original ideas you seldom see from the "creepypasta" community!

The original "MORTASHEEN" Monster Archive - since the early 2000's I've created and illustrated more than 800 creatures and counting for my own monster-catching world, now set for release as a tabletop RPG setting.

AWFUL HOSPITAL: SERIOUSLY THE WORST EVER (page one): an interactive comedy-horror-sci-fi webcomic I started in 2014 about a medical facility that could maybe be better.

Some of my other internet stuff:

PATREON - constant work makes my patreon updates inconsistent, but the content backlog goes back years with a huge amount of exclusive art and writing. I try to put up new exclusive stuff whenever I can.

ETSY - I design all sorts of original enamel pins like these, plus I sell zero-maintenance terrarium plants (just leave them in a jar!), original books and other things!

COLOR THE ABYSS (available on the above etsy!) - a 30 page educational deep sea coloring book! Includes a few famous favorites like giant isopods and hagfish, but mostly focuses on less popular, often much weirder animals.

UNBELIEVABLE BUGS - also regularly restocked in the etsy store, 30 of the strangest and most surprising arthropods most people have likely never heard of, illustrated by myself and @revretch, written for even the youngest kids to understand (but will likely teach you something new at any age)

My Itch.io and Ko-fi - both sell digital versions of my books, including some creepypasta collections and my first novel, "Return of the Living," about a world of entirely ghosts suddenly dealing with the appearance of ghost-hunting monsters.

TWITCH CHANNEL - I now try to stream something at least monthly, sometimes weekly when possible, from horror games to books and art.

YOUTUBE CHANNEL - archives my twitch streams and other little things.

INSTAGRAM - look at pictures of my huge weird collection of toys and Halloween collectibles

BLUESKY - I'm going to put mainly just updates to my stuff on here. SEE ALSO:

HUMANS-B-GONE - a science fiction animated series by my partner @revretch, about a world of kaiju-size, technologically advanced insects and arachnids to whom vertebrates like us are just pesky little "gubs." Also has a tumblr account @humansbgone

#art #pokemon #digimon #biology #animals #halloween #monsters #creature design #creepypasta #horror

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earthstellar · 2 months

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Brave Bang Bravern!: A Review for Transformers Fans

I've seen so much about this on my dash that I had to give it a try, and I gotta say, as someone who hasn't watched any new anime series since around 2008 at the most recent and I also hate the fucking military, this is a pretty good show.

THERE WILL BE SOME MILD SPOILERS. Nothing major. I'm not gonna spoil anything critical or mention characters that are introduced later etc. At of time of writing, only 6 episodes have been released.

Understanding Genre: The Trailer is A Lie

Now, while there is a trailer here, I want you to largely disregard it.

Why is that? Well, we need to talk about the "big two" robot show genres in Japan, which are as follows:

Real Robot -- This refers to a typically military setting or other serious setting, in which robots are handled as realistically as possible in terms of how they work and how they are applied. There tend to be less individual/sentient robots and more "suit" type mechs right along side human-made, more realistic machinery and mech designs, although that isn't entirely unique to this genre. Usually this stuff is labelled as sci-fi/action outside of Japan.

Super Robot (THIS IS THE SHIT TRANSFORMERS FANS GENERALLY WANT) --Essentially borderline seemingly magical robots with their own rules and in universe backstory for how they work, which isn't necessarily tied to realism. Usually this stuff is labelled as sci-fi/fantasy or space fantasy outside of Japan, since a lot of these tend to be space robots. They can be "driven" by pilots or just straight up sentient robots who are vibing with some human companions, although it's not exclusively that. It can be both, it can be neither, but no matter what, Super Robot shows are less about strict realism and more about really cool shit with robots that are basically their own people and exist according to their own rules.

Now, the trailer for BBBB (the acronym for the show is based on the Japanese title, which is Bang Brave Bang Bravern) is a COMPLETE FUCKING LIE.

It wants you to think this is going to be some dumbass GI Joe shit.

While there are elements of dumbass GI Joe shit, this is largely just to set up the premise for why shit is happening in the first place, and to help introduce the main threat (alien space creatures with fucking light beam lasers) as well as bring in our main characters under the premise of everyone having to work together to address this alien threat to Earth.

What we care about here amongst Transformers freaks is gay space robots, and this show delivers.

Getting Into Bravern: First Episode, Mild Plot Spoiler Summary

It wants you to think this is a Real Robot show.

The first episode sets things up as though it will be a Real Robot show.

There is a threat to Earth, a mystery space alien mechanical enemy, and nobody knows what the fuck to do. A military exercise between multiple nations using Titanostriders (which look very much like Shiro Masamune Appleseed-style mechs, human made in nature) to practice battle drills who are now instructed to swap over to real ammunition and go to fucking town.

Nobody knows how to do that.

They're skilled with the Titanostriders, sure, but it turns into a shit show. The alien mechanical enemies are using fucking space laser shit, it's a disaster---

--And then Bravern drops in from the fucking sky and it IMMEDIATELY TURNS INTO A SUPER ROBOT SHOW.

There's a "get in the robot, Shiji" moment where one of the Titanostrider operators, Isami Ao, is encouraged by Bravern to get inside of him.

He does. And immediately has no idea what the fuck is going on, Bravern is largely in control, and starts to blast his own theme song inside his cockpit as diegetic music while Isami is generally losing his shit, as one might do.

Humanity's reaction to Bravern is Real Robot genre type, where it is handled seriously by all the characters and organisations involved in universe, however Bravern is very much a Super Robot genre character who brings more of a Super Robot energy to the show at large.

The serious elements are mostly balanced by how fucking silly Bravern is, and there are some excellent moments in this show (currently only 6 episodes have been released) which make it entirely worth a watch.

Fun Things About Bravern Himself

Braven is very, very, very gay for his pilot.

Chances are, you've seen the screenshots of some of these moments on Tumblr already, but the delivery of these lines is magnificent.

Bravern sings his own theme song. It's the voice actor for Bravern doing the vocals, and the song itself is reminiscent of 1970s orchestrated big band energy mecha themes. For Transformers fans, it has a very Transformers Victory theme kind of vibe to it.

You gotta hear it, it fucking rules. The album cover shows Bravern holding a giant microphone.

Bravern is generally light hearted, doing his best to motivate his pilot while not hesitating to enter the action and try to defend humanity.

Now, why does Bravern care about humans so much? We don't know, but we'll talk about some mysteries in a later section below.

He is surprisingly insightful at times, while also fucking around and enjoying himself. (You may have seen screenshots going around Tumblr of Bravern with a loop of hot dogs strung around one of his chevron points on his forehead. This follows a scene in which he wants his pilot to take a break and associate with his peers for once, as a way to relieve stress. So they go to a bar, it turns out reception is positive and someone even brings weenies out for Bravern since he's too big to fit inside, lol.)

Generally, he's a very interesting mech, because we have so little information about him. He's fun, and clearly vibing, but he's also borderline if not outright obsessed with his pilot and has unknown origins, which has lead to some darker interpretations and audience discussion.

A lot of people have compared Bravern's energy to Rodimus, and generally I would agree with that. He has his high-energy silly moments, and his more serious personal moments (primarily with Isami, but also with Smith), and I think these aspects of his character work well to create a fun mech with the potential to be deep in a believable and effective way, with an equal capacity for being a doofus.

Bravern is obviously the number one reason to watch the show for most people, and I would say that if you're purely here for a giant gay space robot, then this is going to be a decent watch.

The Military Sucks: There Are Militaries Involved Yet Somehow This Is Still Watchable

I hate the fucking military, so at least the military here is depicted in an acceptable way (so far, at least). In episode 2, they waterboard Isami to interrogate him for information he doesn't have regarding Bravern, which is a realistically shitty and awful thing for the military to do-- They don't sugarcoat how fucked up the military is. These people very much have the capacity to harm their own staff, and they will do so if it means they might get an edge over the enemy.

At the same time, the actual characters in the military are depicted as primarily doing this shit out of a genuine personal desire to defeat these horrendously destructive space entities, which have attacked at least some of their home towns and home countries, so it's more personal rather than purely being a military directive that people are being forced to follow.

In this way, it's not really realistic, but everyone is on board for their own largely humanitarian aid type of reasons (there is a mission which is basically just locating survivors of an attack and then getting the fuck out) which makes the military context feel less oppressive and shitty.

Part of why this is more OK than other military depictions is because the military forces involved here are international (collaborating to defeat a global threat rather than kill each other's civilians) and because the military is clearly losing this war.

Because it's an international effort, this brings more diversity to the show-- There's a surprising amount of English interspersed between dialogue in Japanese here and there, and the military board consists of representatives from multiple nations, including some Germans who at first believe Bravern is some kind of secret American operation, lmao.

Bravern calls the military out on its shit, and essentially tells the military board to stop with the suspicious infighting bullshit and drop the internal tension because otherwise they'll all die to this mechanical nightmare creature threat.

They actually listen, which means this is an unrealistic portrayal of the military, lmao. I think they struck a good balance so far between showing that the military sucks and has problems, while also making sure that you're not really cheering for any given military force, but rather, you cheer for individual characters who just happen to be stuck doing this military shit as a premise for anything to be going on in the show at all.

So it's not the worst when it comes to the military shit; At least so far, it's watchable, which as someone who passionately hates the fucking military, is surprising to me.

It's less GI Joe and more "we just needed a reason for these characters to be involved in this situation".

Of course, your mileage may vary, but personally I found it easy to tune out or just skip through any military shit that got grating and I didn't miss anything important by doing so. At the very least, you can skip around and ignore a lot of this stuff and get right to the gay robot if that's all you want to do. It becomes clear pretty quickly what's going on if you skip around a bit, so no worries there.

Fun Speculation: What is Bravern?

Only 6 episodes are out at the moment, so there's tons of shit we don't know yet.

Bravern has a notable resemblance to a type of enemy in the show, called a Death-Drive.

Death-Drives are mecha who are distinct from the "minion" type enemies (which almost resemble flying saucers with laser gun arms and light shields), and have their own unique character designs and names.

Why these things are here, how they are here, why they are interested in Earth, and everything else is currently unknown.

Bravern looks like he could possibly be of the same mechanical species, although we don't know if that's true (yet). He has abilities that the other mecha don't seem to have, but how far this goes and what it might mean is not yet clear.

Bravern also seems to have knowledge of human media (he references The Abyss at one point and he likes 3D printing figures of sentai show characters lmao), and was immediately able to speak to the humans using language they would understand, so it's unclear if Bravern may have been studying Earth for some time before his arrival or why.

He is obsessed with his pilot and cares for him so much that he extends some care towards others purely based on their relation to Isami as co-workers; Why? What makes Isami special?

How does Bravern know seemingly every human language? How does his piloting system work? How similar is he to the Death-Drives-- Are organic beings critical to them in some way? If so, why are the other mechs killing so many of us? (These are big questions especially by the end of episode 6, due to some spoilers and a spoiler character who shows up later.)

We know little to nothing about a lot of the key elements of the show, including any motivations for the Death-Drives or what they are, what's up with the fucking UFO looking laser things, etc.

There's more to speculate on, but that would be getting into deeper spoiler territory so I'm gonna hold back on that for now.

Summary: It's Gay and Cool and Has Interesting Ideas

Bravern's not the sole source of gay vibes in this show, but it's fun that he is also a source of gay vibes in this show.

The designs are great, the Titanostriders remind me of Appleseed style mechanical suit designs which is nice, the Death-Drives are super interesting, Bravern is fucking fabulous but he's not too goofy to take seriously, and the military is unfortunately present but it's clear that they suck and are generally losing (and since the conflict is not between different groups of humans but rather is about human collaboration to defeat a non-human shared threat to our entire planet, this goes a long way to make the military shit tolerable).

It pretends to be a Real Robot show but has so much Super Robot show sprinkled in that you might as well consider it a little bit of both which the show balances pretty well.

I haven't watched an anime since around 2008 at the very latest, so I don't know how this might compare to any other robot animes since then and I am certainly not an anime expert by any means LOL, but this has been a fun show to watch so far.

It does have its problems, of course, but if you can get past the setup for the first episode (when it's still pretending to be a Real Robot show), from the moment Bravern arrives towards the end of that first episode, the show gains momentum and starts to get interesting very quickly.

It has some issues. But we're only 6 episodes in, so at the moment, they have plenty of time to potentially address those issues and we'll see where things go.

I'd recommend it if you want to give it a try!

I think there's enough here to appeal to the usual Transformers crowd and you might end up liking it, or at least having fun while watching it in the background.

If you end up wanting to to tap out then no worries-- I think it's worth giving it a shot and if it's not your thing, no problem.

Each episode is around 25 - 30 minutes, so while the first episode might feel like a slog to get through because fuck the military, once Bravern shows up the show actually gets started and I wouldn't blame anyone for just skipping to that point in the first episode and going from there, because there's nothing in that opening that you won't be reminded of or be able to figure out. It mostly just sets up the intro to the human characters and the collaboration training session, introduces the Titanostriders as a thing, and you can always go back and watch that part later if you want to.

All in all, pretty decent! Obviously we're Transformers people so we're here for the robots, and the robots are interesting and fun, and that's all I need to have a good time.

Hopefully this was a useful summary if you're interested or have seen Bravern stuff on your dash! :)

Thanks for reading!

BONUS: I forgot to mention this somehow, but there's a lot of overlap between Transformers and other Brave shows involving actual Transformers re-used in Japan for these shows; There's a good video about it here on YouTube which explains some of this, but if anyone's wondering, yes Bravern has a grounder alt-mode and it's pretty cool. Will we get a transforming Bravern figure??? We can hope!

There's another video here which mentions some of the Transformers elements in other Brave shows/Yuusha, which might be interesting for those of you who are unaware. :)

#maccadams #maccadam #bravern #bbbb #ba #bang brave bang bravern #long post #bravern review #transformers

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adobe-outdesign · 6 months

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Lickitung line review

Lickitung is fairly forgotten about in the grand scheme of things, but I do like it quite a bit. The tongue thing is super in-your-face obvious and is a very unique theme (it also might be vaguely based off of an akaname yokai).

But what makes it work for me isn't just that it's a weird abstract creature with a tongue—it's that it's a very organic, cool-looking creature with a tongue. I love how its very vaguely salamander-esq in the face but is also bipedal, with a huge tail that mimics the tongue. It feels like something that could exist, and I always enjoy those kind of designs.

The stomach markings are also pretty interesting; it's an usual pattern that I don't think any other Pokemon sports, and they add a lot of shape to the body. Color-wise, pink is an obvious choice, and the cream works well to accent it. I do wish the pink was a bit deeper or more saturated as it feels a bit washed-out, but otherwise, this is a solid weird tongue thing.

Lickitung also had a beta evo design in the Spaceworld Demo. I like the rolled tongue, mustache, and markings... but the way it's some kind of Indian snake charmer(??) feels uncomfortable, and the body shape needed to change more.

Speaking of evos, Lickilicky is also as a weird tongue thing, but unfortunately it's not particularly well designed. My favorite thing about Lickitung is, as I just said, that it feels like an actual animal—but Lickilicky is anything but. The completely circular body, perfectly straight tongue, and stubby legs make it feel more like a toy.

But my other issue with it is that it doesn't really feel like a progression of Lickitung. Lickitung's thing is, surprise, the tongue, so you'd expect the tongue to be longer or more prominent in the design. Instead, it's shorter. Yes, it can presumably extend to be longer, but why would you de-emphasize the most important part of the design?

Similarly, the markings are reduced down, making them once again feel like a regression instead of a progression. They at least attempted to add something with the markings under the chin being more bib-like, but that's not enough to make the entire design work. Also, the wi-fi markings don't add much at this point and they would've worked at least a bit better in white.

You want to know an easy fix for this problem? Make Lickilicky the pre-evo. It feels weird to imagine Lickitung evolving into Lickilicky, but a Lickitung surrounded by little baby Lickilicky? Adorable! It would also make sense with things like the bib and the little curl of "hair" at the top.

If there's one thing I can give Lickilicky, it's that it at least has better colors than Lickitung. That, and the :P expression is kind of fun. Otherwise, though, I don't think this one works much at all.

(I also have to give a quick shoutout to @inprogresspokemon's Lickitung evo. This, to me, is a much better direction at all—it emphasizes and doubles down on the tongue paralysis thing and it still has a very organic body shape.)

Anyway, overall, Lickitung has a strong theme and a nice abstract design that conveys said theme well, but Lickilicky feels like a step backwards and would've been much better as a pre-evo. Maybe consider putting an everstone on this one.

#lickitung #lickilicky #pokemon #pokemon reviews

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theminecraftbee · 2 months

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so, first, accountability statement: I plan on trying to finish the “zedaph steals a baby” fic by the end of the month and god is that one-line summary no longer accurate but we’re sticking to it, said here publicly so now I have to do it. obviously I also have recursive exchange and the writing I have for hotguy comics zine, but I am not SUPER worried about either of those time/inspiration-wise at the moment and also for Reasons I know it won’t be long until I have more free writing time after that, SO.

various items that are on my potential writing docket, I am curious which of these appeal most:

I dust off the supervillain support group au. two ways this could go: I chip away at the second arc of my original outline and acknowledge this will be like a 300k fic I’m not ready to feel “done” with or “ready to post” with for ages, or I re-work it into something a little more doable and less ambitious keeping the same premise (ren runs a support group for supervillains, doc pov as he starts to heal and redeem himself). this MAY honestly be a target for “if I don’t hate the first 50k on re-reading it and I can actually make my brain write the second arc, do a slower release schedule and then start releasing chapters before I’m done writing”? but this ALSO runs the risk of “I stopped writing it, which is often a sign I was having trouble writing it”.

pearl monster au, which has been cooking in my head for a long while. the basic premise is “one day, pearl, with no memory of how or why this happened, wakes up in a facility as a monster and must try to figure out how she got there, escape, and find her way home, even knowing she may be irrevocably changed”. now with bonus season 10 fish flavor to add to this creature design I’ve been iterating on in my head for forever! this one is ALSO an experiment for me in “can I write a fic where I can’t write dialogue for basically the entire first act”, which would be interesting to see from me, you know?

the related “bigb folklore au”, where after secret life bigb is woken up by Cat and Dog by the tracks of the King Snake, which bigb can recognize as the railroad track, and decides to journey down the railroad to see if he can figure out what the fuck is going on. I need to do video review of life series bigb for this one. this is my excuse to get Weird and Metaphorical and also assign everyone to various animals for no reason, along with using some very specific aesthetic I have wanted to use for some worldbuilding but hadn’t gotten around to yet in any of my stuff. man walks through the desert with animal, confronts train that might be the watchers, might be death, and might just be a train. also, realizes that “confront” is the operative word there and has to deal with that. you know how it is.

““office au””, in air quotes because it’s not REALLY what anyone going to an office au is looking for so much as an excuse to write weird horror. iskall, normal-ish software developer man in a boring office job who does game jams in his free time, goes to work one day to work in his boring downtown office on a payment system for a client. and then things, uh, Take A Turn. this would be a LITTLE me going “what if I wrote an au with a guy who works in tech but like, the boring side of tech I’m in. like, banks and consulting and manufacturing and shit. where you sit in meetings all day and tweak java 8 code even though that language is ten years out of date. but THEN. something exciting happens in the worst way possible.” I’m doing to iskall what I did to mumbo stuffed bird is what I’m saying. it’d be fun.

DO ANY OF THESE PARTICULARLY INTEREST ANYONE. your input will be valued. like 50% chance i get hit with a strong bolt of inspiration then IGNORE that input but it’ll be valued all the same,

#note that me telling you about these ideas is ALSO accountability #on account of both ‘anyone can make whatever based on my things forever’ meaning one of you could make one now #and on account of people will start asking me about them on rare occasion now lol

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art · 1 year

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Creator Spotlight: @scottlava

Scott Campbell has illustrated numerous children’s books, including SKULLS!, Sleepy the Goodnight Buddy, and Zombie In Love. He was author/illustrator of the much-loved HUG MACHINE. He enjoyed a long career in video games, where he art directed the critically acclaimed game Psychonauts and Brutal Legend for Double Fine Productions. Great Showdowns is his ongoing online series. Scott’s work has appeared in galleries and publications around the world. You can see more of his work at ScottC.com.

Check out our interview with Scott below!

How did you get your start in art, and more specifically, with Great Showdowns?

I went to art school in San Francisco and have been painting, making comics, and designing video games ever since with Double Fine Productions. The Great Showdowns began at the first Crazy 4 Cult exhibition at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles back in 2007, an exhibition of artwork inspired by the cult classics of cinema. The first 10 little paintings were intended to be snack-sized pieces for people to easily collect. They began with perhaps the most iconic of wild west showdowns from A Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood. I pulled some of my favorite moments from films like Ghostbusters, Predator, Exorcist, and Planet of the Apes and placed them all in simple little dust-colored squares as if they were in the dirt streets of a wild west town. They began as good versus evil but grew to all kinds of showdowns between people and objects and often moments of great love between people. I started a tumblr for them a few years later, and I have been posting them ever since. We have published three Great Showdown books and have had 3 solo exhibitions along with worldwide scavenger hunts. There are over a thousand of them up on the site by now, and i do not plan on stopping any time soon.

Which 3 famous artists (dead or alive) would you invite to your dinner party?

I would like to gather Jim Henson, Walt Disney, and Richard Scarry together for dinner and chats. They have all created my favorite and most joyful worlds. I think we would have some of the most delightful chats.

What is a medium that you have always been intrigued by but would never use yourself?

I love collage, but every time I try it, I get frustrated and just quit. Someday I will get into it when my kids are old enough to really mess around with various mediums. I plan to have boxes of textiles and magazines for them to just annihilate.

What does your work set up look like?

Oh, it’s just a table with an old mug for water and an old plate for my watercolors and not much else. I share a studio with a bunch of very inspiring people who make wonderful things, from fabricated creatures to VR experiences and films. I have probably the simplest little area in the space. I do have an old oak flat file that I love to look at.

Advice you would give to an aspiring creator?

The biggest thing I would push upon everyone would be to not fret about one’s visual style. The style will grow and present itself as you experiment with mediums and expose yourself to various cultural delights. Just have fun and try all kinds of things.

What is one interaction you had from a fan of yours that has stuck with you over the years?

I gave a game design presentation many years back on a game I had art directed at the time called Brutal Legend at a game conference in Leeds. The game followed a roadie to the age of metal in the land of metal, with demons and chrome volcanoes and hot rods growing from the ground, and rivers of happy and cheering fans. After the talk, I spoke with someone whose work I had seen in earlier portfolio reviews at the conference. She was very shy but incredibly talented. She came up to me after the talk feeling pretty emotional and inspired to the point of tears and sobbing. It was probably the most extreme reaction I have ever gotten from someone, and it touched me deep down in my guts. That’s why we make things! To bring on the tears!

From video games, to illustrations, and children's books, you've worked on many projects. What was the most challenging, yet rewarding one?

Video games take an enormous amount of work over a long period of time and rely on the skills and talent of many like-minded people. It is sometimes difficult to corral such an effort, but it is incredibly rewarding to see it all come together to create such epic worlds. That said, though, children’s books are very enjoyable in a cozy way. It’s just me right there working on a world and all the pressure is on me. I cannot rely on all the talented people around me to make it look great.

Who on Tumblr inspires you and why?

I love perusing old fashion and film blogs and artists like Bob Jinx and Neil Sanders and collections like Its Colossal.

Thanks for stopping by, Scott! Be sure to check out the Great Showdowns over at @scottlava!

#creator spotlight #artists on tumblr #scott campbell #great showdowns

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