#ghost dev stuff

[toxarts]

Another update + sneak peek: Finished all of the programming heavy coding and now I'm moving onto writing (a LOT) of dialogue! I'd say I'm maybe 2/3rds-ish of the way done with what I wanna do before I release him.

As for the gif above, I'm showing off another main feature I wanted to do back with Yes Man + ED-E, but didn't have the technical know how for: taking user inputs and using them in dialogue to "remember" things about you! He'll ask you questions about a lot of things, and it'll come back up in later conversations!

[osteochondraldefect]

another doodle dump . i think i sold my soul and carpal tunnel and last braincell to this podcast and you should too!

[lakeviewkitsune]

Requests are Open! (edited forgot some info)

Rules: I'm usually chill about most stuff, although if I don't think I can write it or that it won't be good, then I'm sorry, but I will reject it.

I won't be able to talk about or mention politics here and won't be interested.

For now, I am not accepting nsfw, but I might at a later date, I don't mind slightly nsfw stuff though.

I will only write for the girls of the series listed below, although exceptions will be listed at a later date. I also only write from a g/n viewpoint or a male viewpoint. I don't think that I can write from a female perspective.

I do write yandere content

You can also ask off-topic stuff, I don't mind talking about other stuff.

Overall just don't be an ass or vague when asking stuff. I will ask for clarification if something is too vague or hard to understand.

The character limit for requests is three and please specify if request is headcanons

Send in stuff for the fandoms listed. I will work on a proper pinned/master post that will list more fandoms and info. Anyways send in stuff for.

Inbox: 13(5/21/25)

Masterlist

Under Night In-Birth

Yume nikki

Team rwby

Genshin (Up till Fontaine, I need to catch up)

Ghost of tsushima (Yuna and other women, I will write for Jin)

Nier automata (All characters)

Ena from joel g (ena only)

Dark souls 3 and 1 (Need to finish 2) also bloodborne.

Persona 4/p4 arena and persona 5 (need to finish 3)

Smt demons/waifus

Touhou (All women)

Ddlc

Also fire emblem three houses, engage and og warriors. and fates. (All characters)

Cheryl Mason(SH3)

[the-insomniac-emporium]

I don't know what made me think of this, but I was imagining what the (student) cast of Resident Lover would get voted "most likely to". I think those things are called superlatives or something? idk. anyway, so far my brain has supplied:

Angie: Most likely to start a true crime podcast (or be heavily featured/discussed in a true crime podcast) Bela: Most likely to succeed/Most likely to achieve world domination (the photo of her is, like, either a: her driver's license photo, b: a blurry shot of her from a distance, or c: a photo that she very clearly didn't realize was being taken. because she's too busy to stop for 3 seconds to let the yearbook team get a photo) Cassandra: Most likely to become famous/Most likely to die single surrounded by pussy (oop sorry not sorry) Daniela: Most likely to become an Olympian (tied with Jasmin, probs) Mia: Most likely to disappear under extremely mysterious, questionable, and violent circumstances (only to reappear on your social media's suggested friends list 5-10 years later, acting as if nothing ever happened)

[inkdragonworks]

Decided to spend the week picking at an older project that also involved Tiera. It's still pretty early on and up in the air, but it's a 2D platformer set in a haunted Hotel. Yikes!

For starters, here's a death+respawn animation.

Ledge grabbing, and Tiera being able to pull herself up, drop down, or jump off from it.

Throwing things now has a reticle that goes up/down automatically to indicate direction. She can also shake furniture for items, but doing it too long may annoy whatever else is inside them.

The hotel will have rugs, which, if Tiera stands at one end, she can throw to cause a curl to roll down it. This can catch some of the staff/residents by surprise.

Tiera can also crawl underneath it, if she prefers a more passive/sneaky route.

She might prefer staying out of sight too. The guests tend to be aggressive.

All in all, it'd be a game where Tiera has to be careful, and not screw around. I'll poke at it more one day, but for now I should jump back on Poppin & Jupa. Thanks for reading.

[omegalodon]

some of the enemy idea doodles for GrannyQuest :3

[nynjanyck]

Howdy! New To Tumblr So I'm not sure how this thing works so bare with me as I figure this out! This is a song for my game called Silly Ghoul, just a fun little ghost like character, who tries to possess you and use your body to eat food, a luxury it doesn't have in it's ghost form, but fails horribly at doing so, pretty funny i think. Still a work in progress definitely but I'm happy with this current version, so enjoy!

[mangomagicagirl]

sumire saitozaki redesign!!

TW FOR BLOOD

[visualnovelfrenzy]

So hi! My name is Shea. I’m a writer & artist. For a while now, I’ve been getting into visual novel. It started with Tkatb & it breach to getting more VNs. It’s been a blast for me honestly. I ever learned one of my mutuals @zetsubobu is into Tkatb too & that made me really happy to talk about it with her!

I’m sure the obsessing with continue as I find more visuals novels - via YouTubers I like & any I can find on itch.io.

& this is where it leads to. Making my own visual novel.

Making my own visual novel has been on my mind for a while. Originally, I did this only in private but me being impatient & new to the whole thing - I started getting frustrated & just gave up. But this time, I like to try it officially & share with it with the world.

As I writer, I plan to write my own book. Along anyway I can share my own written stories. So, along actual novel book writing, I’m gonna make my own visual novel with my own stories.

This is largely gonna be made by only me since I haven’t it shared it anywhere else aside from here & on a discord server that I chat almost daily on. I would love to do this with more people, but due to this being my first time working on something that I ain’t sure will gain traction - not to mention I might back out of depending how I go about this, it’s only me for now.

But if people are curious of what type of assistance I’ll be needing if I happen to grab people’s interest in this project. Most I’ll be needing someone who can do the sprites, voice actors, cgs & another writer who can brainstorm with me on where we’ll take the story. I’ll mostly do the writer, but the co - writer can help me think of ideas & some aspects of the story if they so wish to.

For my concept for this VN, I had several, but I like this the most. In your neighborhood, there is a haunted house where everyone has become weary of. This place trouble for the new individual that lives in that house. Doesn’t help that he has an aesthetic that fits the atmosphere the house gives. Which is emo, goth boi.

That never really bothered you since you heard & seen worse when it came to rumors & didn’t pay much mind on how people present themselves. That wasn’t really any of your business to worry about.

Eventually you befriend this interesting person that was new to where you live. Because of that, you soon find seeing why people thought of the house haunted.

With that in mind, you & LI (love interest) try to unravel the mysteries of the house while also not trying to die!

Not sure it’s the most original Idea, but I think it could executed well if I put some time & effort into it. I adore this idea since it reminds me of the themes of the Yandere VNs without going down that route. Look, I love them, but I actually want to try something different. Hopefully this will boat well.

I’m excited to do this. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull through with it after learning what I can for not only for myself, but also others. I’ll post here for updates along that itch.io page I’ll get to once I finish the demo for my VN.

Mostly the updates will be sneak peaks of my work, on the game’s progress or announcing something important when involving it.

I’ll keep you guys posted on this if you’re up to seeing what I have in store.



[toxarts]

Quick test of one of the main features I'm working on for this version of my Yes Man ghost! This option opens a fake browser that will essentially start a mini text adventure centered around browsing through the internet each time you use it. It'll tie into another feature of his I'm still working on.

[enby--ghost]

Decided to try and make some concept art for Briar, the main character of Cryptography, the game I'm planning to make

This is all I've made so far, but as someone who doesn't draw a whole lot and is very new to drawing more realistic humans, I think it's coming along fairly well

What do y'all think? I know it's still pretty rough, as I'm still fairly new to drawing, but I think it's coming along ok. I nearly lost my mind trying to make the arms look somewhat decent and proportional

[puck-luck]

sunrise celebration | luke hughes

warnings: slight somno, but everyone is awake for the actual celebration. oral, m!receiving. established relationship. praise. hair pulling. fingering. unprotected p in v. cockwarming. riding. multiple rounds (alluded to, not necessarily included in the actual fic). creampie. lazy morning sex and makeouts and all that good stuff. happy birthday luke! pairing: luke hughes x fem!reader summary: luke's girlfriend wakes him up with one of many, many birthday presents. wc: 1805

You wake at quarter to seven with Luke beside you. He’s breathing evenly, laying on his back with an arm under your neck and the other resting on his chest. He’s shirtless, like always. He’s snoring slightly, twitching in his sleep, and you pick yourself up a bit so that you can get a better view of your serene-looking boyfriend.

You place your hand on his stomach, smoothing over the sculpted skin. He’s been working out so much lately, trying to build himself up into a “unit” (as Jack has been calling him all summer) ahead of his second full season with the Devs. Your pinkie traces over the tip of his happy trail, the dark strip of hair a favorite of yours. You admire him for a while. With the light coming through the window in his room, Luke reminds you of an angel.

When you look at the clock, you remember that it’s officially his birthday. 

Your hand is still on his stomach, fingers still petting over his happy trail. Now though, your hand is going lower, to the waistband of his underwear. You don’t dip in yet, instead opting to trail your fingers daintily over his length. It’s mostly soft in his pants, only barely swollen from his typical morning wood, but he reacts when you touch him over the fabric. His cock jumps under your palm, seeming to seek you out.

You continue rubbing over him until he’s hard and leaking, his tip prominent as it strains against the wet patch of fabric. You use the pad of your index finger to stroke over his slit, bubbling out another drip of precum when you do. 

You smile, blinking lazily before leaning up and ghosting a kiss over Luke’s cheek. He bends his arm at the elbow, the one under your neck, just to keep you close. Even in his sleep, he always wants to keep you close. 

As you continue to touch him, he starts to stir. 

“What’re you doing,” Luke mumbles softly, voice riddled with sleep. His hand on his chest drifts down to where yours is, touching your wrist and stilling your movement.

“Happy birthday,” you whisper, nosing against his cheek. Luke turns his head to you and you kiss him sweetly, bad breath and all. “Happy, happy birthday.”

“Mm, thank you,” Luke hums, catching a strand of your hair between his fingers and twirling it. 

“Wanna give you a present,” you murmur, the heel of your palm scraping over his cock. You fit your fingers around his length and pump him over his underwear. 

A groan rips from Luke’s throat, more precum leaking from his tip. You imagine his cockhead is weeping and red and you really wish you could see it. 

You shift again, trying to shift down the bed without jostling Luke too much. You do, but he doesn’t seem to mind, just moving his hips so he’s in the middle of the bed. His hands go behind the back of his head, threading through his curls. He uses his hands as a rest, settling against the pillow so that he can look down at you. 

You dig your hands into the sides of his waistband, kissing down his stomach and abdomen until the curls at the base of his cock are revealed. It’s then that you nuzzle against the hair, kissing the point where his shaft meets his groin, a breath away from where his balls rest. You kiss over the tight skin as his length is revealed to you.

His tip is just as red as you thought it would be, and just as appetizing. You flick your tongue over the crown of his cock, then press a close-mouthed kiss to his slit. 

Luke barely breathes out a moan, his hand leaving his own curls to find the back of your head. He gathers your hair into a messy ponytail, cursing under his breath. “Fuck, baby,” he sighs as you circle your fingers around his base, holding him still.

You slide his cock between your lips, eyes fluttering shut as his weight settles on your tongue. You suck, creating a vacuum over his tip. 

“Fuck,” Luke curses more sharply, his hips bucking forward involuntarily. 

You chuckle when you pull away, pumping him and swiping your thumb over his slit with a graceful twist of your wrist. “Such a pretty cock, Lu. Wanna suck it all the time. Always need you in my mouth.”

Luke grins crookedly, then bites his lip. His eyes darken, still a little clouded with sleep. “Do I not fuck you enough, baby?” He teases. “You always need more, don’t you?”

“Just want to make my boy feel good,” you say innocently with a flutter of your eyelashes and another kiss to his cock. “My birthday boy.”

As you seal your mouth over his length again, bobbing your head as you take more of him in your mouth, Luke lets his eyes drift shut and the pleasure overtake him. His hand on the back of your head is a heavy weight, helping you swallow him down until your nose brushes his pelvis and the curls there. You gag around him, but remain there, drooling until his length is slick with your spit and his precum.

You relieve yourself after a moment, taking a breath and pumping him. Luke’s eyes remain closed, hanging onto sleep in your comfortable shared bed.

“Can we just stay here all day?” Luke asks, opening his eyes and blinking at you.

“My mouth might get tired,” you reply, giggling at the joke before taking him again.

Luke laughs too, dropping your hair to thumb over your hollowed cheek. “Just in bed, baby. That’s how I wanna spend my birthday. Being lazy with my pretty girlfriend.”

“Hm, we can rot after I make you come,” you agree. “And then I wanna make you come again with you inside me.”

“Gonna ride me?” Luke asks.

“Yeah, later, if you want me to,” you sigh dreamily, licking up Luke’s shaft. You reach up to bring his hand back to your hair, then you shuffle your hand down between your legs. You touch yourself over your underwear, feeling the way the fabric clings to your soaked folds. Sucking Luke always makes you this excited– he’s just that good.

“That’s it,” Luke moans. “Love watching you make yourself come. Touch your clit for me, baby.”

You obey, petting over your clit in time with the bobbing of your head. Eventually, Luke starts to shift his hips up and you release your grip on him, curving your hand over his hip and opening your mouth so that he can fuck up into it. You shift and run your fingertips through your folds, finding your entrance while your clit finds your palm. You rut your hips against the contact, filling yourself with two fingers. 

“Oh, baby,” Luke says, tossing his head back. “Always so good. Your mouth– oh. Fuck, wanna come inside you.”

He grips your hair and pulls you off, guiding you back up his body. He rolls you onto your back in the middle of the bed, pulling your t-shirt over your head and ducking his head down to take your nipple in his mouth. He sucks, biting down on the peak, then switching over to the other. All the while, he’s pushing your panties down and replacing your fingers with his own long ones.

He fills you with two, pumping them inside of you in a way that has you arching into his mouth. Luke hurries to kick his own underwear off, the blankets falling askew as he moves. His cock slides against your thigh, hard and dripping. It doesn’t take long for Luke to make you babble and clutch at his curls, begging for that length to fill you up with his cum.

Luke complies, whimpering out a gasp as you clench down on him. “Fuck, you’re tight,” Luke groans, unable to stop his hips from stuttering into yours. He’s well-endowed and he always fucks into your heat just right, able to make you come as quickly or as slowly as he desires.

The blowjob has him worked up, so this one’s quick. Luke is clutching at you desperately, kissing your lips and your neck until they’re swollen and splotchy with hickies respectively. He’s murmuring in your ear, a load of sweet nothings that have you whining and squirming beneath him, trying to hold off until he reaches his peak. It’s his birthday, you want him to come first.

“Baby, I’m close,” Luke chokes out. “I’m gonna come.”

His hips drive against you, shuddering with the effort to hold back. His thumb finds your clit, the pressure of his weight making you keen. He breathes into your mouth, panting. His eyes are wild as you find them, the eye contact making you that much more desperate. Luke presses his forehead against yours, his body blanketing yours.

“Fill me up,” you implore, holding him tight. Your fingernails dig into the muscles of his back, feeling them move as he bucks against you. 

Luke’s grunt is animalistic as his seed starts to spill into you, nothing between you. It’s exactly what you wanted, spurring your own climax on. Your body shakes, muscles tight as your eyes roll into the back of your head. Luke keeps fucking into you, biting his lip hard as the overstimulation sends a new rush of pleasure through him. He stays inside of you even as his cock softens, plugging you to keep his cum inside. He kisses your lips, then another. The series of kisses turns into a lazy tangle of tongues and hushed giggles, the occasional twitch of Luke’s cock inside of you until he starts to grow hard again as a side effect of your wandering hands. 

“Round two?” You ask between kisses.

Luke laughs and smiles, laying back and dragging you on top of him. You sit perched on his lap, cock pressing deep inside of you at this angle. You bring your hands up your body, a hand cupping your breast and the other moving through your hair in a stretch. He grins, eyes still hooded like he’s tired, and lets his hands fall to your asscheeks, kneading the skin there. He nudges you forward, guiding your circling hips. 

“This is going to be the best birthday ever,” Luke says.

“Oh, baby, you have no idea,” you promise. “We’re gonna do this all day long.”

“You’re gonna run me dry,” Luke jokes.

“Well, as long as you feel good, then I’ll have done my job.” You plant your hands on Luke’s abs and grin down at him, leaning low enough to capture his lips in a sweet kiss. “Happy birthday,” you sing. “I love you.”

Luke smiles against your lips. “Best birthday ever.”

notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUKEY! I hope he enjoys his first legal drink in the U.S. and has a really good night :) sweet lukey deserves a sweet, fun birthday <3

[idkplzhalp]

What do you know about Caroline in full? /genq

Some background for those who don't know, Caroline from Portal 2 is my favorite character as of 6 years and at some point I started keeping a big list in which I document everything such as info during development, things from devs/voice actors, debunking theories, literally any of her appearances anywhere and other silly stuff too. I also made an image folder with any potential reference or appearance to her in the series/behind the scenes, which i started to upload to a google drive folder and i need to finish it. When I finally make the entire Caroline post & drive folder, I'd wanna post it to my Valve fact blog @thatvalvefanatic. I'm super into getting canon/official facts about things and Caroline is the funnest for me to do as she's so obscure.

So here's some facts (know I have way more but this is already long enough..) since it'll be awhile since I do the big complete analysis post (or the Caroline lore bible, as I call it) that I've been promising for like 3 years lol!!!

Her heels are red! (This is her face model, Laura Dubuk, when she was at SDCC 2012 with Bill Fletcher, Cave's face, for the Neca booth)

Caroline's name was taken from Jay Pinkerton's (the writer's) mother. Erik Wolpaw says the name also means coincidentally "free man/woman". It's also a variant of the name Charles/Charlie (which is a coincidence to Aperture Desk Job's character Charlie (who is likely more of a reference to Chell)).

She's Argentinan and Ukrainian as that is her face model Laura Dubuk's ethnicity (she's stated she's Argentinian, her family speaks Ukrainian/their last name is Ukrainian (ty to the person who gave me that info!)).

The brand of her dress is "Daniel & Rebecca", an Italian brand made in the 80s/90s. Laura got the dress specifically for Caroline from a thrift store.

Caroline is referenced by Jerry the Nanobot. If you slow his audio down and reverse it, you hear "his injury is not expected to end but she's in charge instead". Hearing is subjective here but that's what I've seen as widely accepted. Though Portal 2 has done similar before with the Ghost of Rattmann track, which was just cut up audio of Marc Laidlaw reading an entirely unrelated paragraph. Or like the Dinosaur_fizzle audios from the radios in Portal 1 that people theorized was Caroline screaming from the radio, when it wasn't that at all as that update came before Caroline was created.

Unlike popular belief, Ellen Mclain did not refuse any of Caroline's lines. People spread rumors that the deleted GLaDOS related lines made her cry and that JK Simmons refused to say his lines due to how they sounded like SA, but that's not true at all.

Also, Caroline is NOT Chell's mother. She's too old and too white to be her mom! GLaDOS' arc towards Chell has been confirmed & implied to be queer/romance-esque. You can see some of that in my LGBTQ Valve post, though I need to update it, and I will be making a singular post just for queercoded GLaDOS since there is SO much. One of Valve' employees, Makani, confirmed Chell was not her daughter.

Cave and Caroline aren't married, confirmed by the Portal 2 guidebook. Though they were still likely good friends, based on some of Cave's cut lines, in which he trusts her to do a lot more.

Cave wanted Caroline to be taken care of and respected as CEO/GLaDOS! That part of his GLaDOS speech had been cut though. Those lines are, "Treat her just like you’d treat me." and "Just make sure she’s taken care of."

Portal RTX has a bunch of hidden codes you can find. There are some you use to change the design of the companion cube. Inputting Caroline's name changes it to the pillow cube!

According to Josh Weier, Caroline wasn't added to the game until one month before its release. Originally she wasn't a part of the story and Cave's assistant was a man named Greg. They didn't want to hire an actor for just a couple lines, so they decided to reuse Ellen Mclain, thus creating GLaDOS' human backstory. Though Greg was reused for Perpetual Testing Initiative and the Cave Johnson DotA announcer pack.

Caroline appears in the spinoff/tech-demo Aperture Desk Job, though only as her portrait. This confirms that she can be in other universes just like Greg, though we don't know what happened to her in this one. She's potentially dead, as Aperture Desk Job had Cave live long enough to be put into the machine. The machine was started and he killed some of the scientists. Also Caroline's portrait there is partially covered, covering her side.

I personally believe Caroline to be biromantic asexual! This one isn't a confirmed fact but more speculation. I think the "she's married- to science!" bit could indicate not being apart of traditional straight relationships, also knowing she was never married to Cave either. We already know GLaDOS is biromantic due to her liking Chell (and in spin-offs liking Claptrap and Batman for a time), and she could be considered ace to her cut line in co-op mode saying she found human reproduction ridiculous. Presumably the same would apply to Caroline.

The "Say goodbye, Caroline!" / "goodbye, Caroline!" Bit is a potential reference to The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950) or Rowan and Martin's Laugh In (1968) as both had bits similar to that, and would make sense for Caroline and Cave to reference due to when the shows aired. Some people interpret that line as Caroline being dumb, though that's not true at all! We know she was intelligent from Cave's high praise of her, and if she was actually making a reference to a TV program then it would be even smarter and show that Caroline probably had inside jokes or references with Cave.

Want You Gone says Caroline and Chell are similar (“She was a lot like you”). If true then Chell, as officially described from the Collaborative Disposition Test, “Resolute and tenacious, you won't quit until a puzzle's solved. Your inability to give up against impossible odds makes you a bad match for cooperative test partners who give up against any odds at all, racing to the internet for answers” Could give insight into Caroline’s personality. The Collaborative Disposition Test could give even more insight into her from Cave’s description “You don't see crises - only challengitunities. you choose to scale like mountains. You're a can-do, shoot-from-the-hip, silver-tongued self-starter. You're a good match for any cooperative test partner, providing they shut up and listen.” Caroline didn’t have much dialogue and we know she did the majority of what Cave asked of her/they worked together for at least 30 years. Caroline may very well be Cave’s testing partner who will “shut up and listen”.

Caroline was in the Steam 25th anniversary artwork! Art by Claire Hummel. It is her and Cave drawn over this meme:

okay that's it for now but I did find an iceberg chart I made a few months ago about her so I'm including it even tho some things gotta be adjusted because it's not 100% correct. It's the same as this but I wanna share it anyways. Happy Caroline Portal 2 lore learning. I'll make a part 2 with more stuff later.

[xxacidnekoxx]

There are things that will immediately make me start dissociating and I will leave the conversation if it's brought up to me because I do get triggered especially if things are brought up to me in one-on one conversations because I feel like a responsibility is being pushed on me

I don't like it people trauma dump to me especially about family things that's probably confusing because I always tell people to talk about their trauma but when I say "talk about your trauma" I never mean specifically to me I mean. Make art and stories about it. I don't like to have those kind of conversations one on one I will not respond like a therapist I will get really triggered

I don't like to be talked about substance dependency especially if it's methamphetamine or alcohol related I don't even want to hear about Adderall prescriptions I cant help it I will start dissociating

I don't want to talk about the voices that you hear in your head. I'm sorry if you have something going on mental health wise I really am. I don't know how to respond to that especially if talking to me one on one. I don't know what to do with this information

I don't want to hear about your church I don't want to hear about your priest I will most likely block you if you mention it

I don't want to talk about anything superstitious please. I don't think things have bad luck or good luck I don't think fairies are real I don't think ghosts are real so please dont expect me to feed into that normally with this stuff I'll just call it out and not make a big deal of it

I feel like I have been often mischaracterized and people come to me with expectations that I act a certain way and end up disappointed ..and that's why I am saying this honestly I don't know how people perceive me but there are other people who are probably better for those types of conversations

Anyway the things that I actually like talking about are things like making art , writing and playing video games. I like talking about pets and biology and I like talking about YouTube videos I like to talk about fantasy world building and game dev and I like music and movies recommendations. I like to talk about consciousness and I like to talk about party planning or bartending

[flickering-nightfall]

Watcher Thoughts

Spoilers for everything!

This is a shortened version of a much longer essay where I jotted down all my thoughts about the campaign. This is still pretty long, but hopefully it’s digestible enough.

Gameplay

Loved the initial twist. Was disappointed that we'd have another repeat with the siblings for a second. I love them but after eight campaigns, I was ready for something new. I'm not put off about not having another iterator (yet? I’m not counting Prince) either. It would have been neat, but exploring different stuff instead is good.

Got stuck a couple times, as I didn't understand what I was supposed to do to progress. I had fun exploring the regions, but exploring the majority of the first three with no idea of what to do next was frustrating. It wasn't even about story progression either - I just wanted to see more regions! But region and creature discovery felt very rewarding at least.

Portal placements were pretty wack and regions felt disconnected - you've probably heard it all already at this point. Some improvements like portal markers on the map will help (I'm certain that they'll either add it officially, or someone will make a mod). I avoided playing any region mods before this to keep things fresh, so I have zero context for any of these places. They're certainly very pretty at least.

Story

Droplets forming ripples in the water…? Yes there's a stray pixel in one frame. I made this from a spritesheet, it's not my fault, I swear

Although I would have preferred something different, I respect that the devs wanted to explore new and frankly wild routes. If it were me, I probably would have done a rare working transit system or something. Keep things grounded, group the new regions by theming so that you can at least connect them to each other. (Like Badlands + Rusted Wrecks + Torrid Desert.) I would have liked exploring ideas like scavenger societies or new biome lore instead of... rift walking through time and space madness. But I can't deny it was fun!

I really enjoyed Spinning Top (the echo), I think they’re very funny. I’m not bothered by them being able to move around - Two Sprouts, Twelve Brackets kinda imply they can too, at least enough to watch the tunnels of Subterranean. Maybe it depends on the echo too.

The decision to make a proper, repeated character out of an echo was interesting. Though I’m on the fence about the demystification of echoes and ascension. I do like Spinny’s arc and their story, and it gave me strong feelings to see them finally choose to move forward. I liked what they had to say, in terms of more lore for the ancients, their own character, and also in their final scene. 

Being tethered to the world by the sorrow of realizing you weren't loved in the way you should have been loved. Craving a warmth you can see but never feel again. The concept of peace after long-lived suffering. Able to move on because you had someone at your side, someone who cared enough to keep coming back to you, even if it was just a silent, peeping little creature. It resonated with me.

The purpose of the ending confused me at first. I thought Watcher playing with the toys was an example of their personality, maybe - distant, relatively unaffected by the events that just unfolded. And maybe that’s still true, but the emphasis on the spinning top in the campaign select screen… I’m not sure what yet, but playing with the echo’s namesake, their former beloved toys… there was something there.

I feel weird about Watcher being able to influence the world physically. I thought the point of echoes was that they were ghosts unable to interact with the physical plane. Only able to provide a bit of enlightenment for slugcat with their presence - stuck between one world and the next. Unless it’s all a dream (a trope I dislike and partially assign to Saint anyways), or Watcher is not quite an echo, in which case… hm.

Personally I'm tired of the rot, and I preferred it as a relatable and contained disease, rather than a sentient force that can corrupt worlds across time (and dimensions/timelines?). What they did with it was interesting, at least. You can explain it being Like That™ as a different strain of rot from Pebbles’, or it being because Watcher is a separate continuity. But it’s not about the explanation for me - it’s about the themes.

I enjoyed Prince as a character - I like the way they look, move and speak. But I didn’t get as attached as I could have due to my lukewarm feelings about rot stuff and Watcher’s rift powers in this DLC. Though, due to this campaign, I don’t know if I’ll keep headcanoning voidspawn as a lesser consequence (than echoes) of not being ready for ascension. The "stinging idiots" seem very intent on getting Watcher/echoes to finish crossing over into the next realm.

It seems like they want to portray the void as a force, to which the rot is the antithesis of. Prince spoke of wanting all life to go on forever, never lost - and then a force opposing its own. And it seems like that force may have won. I suppose all things must return to the cycle, or come to an end, eventually…

You can hear a single whispering iterator voice as you walk up to Prince’s puppet for the last time. That voice disappears after the karma flowers take over. Patches of them now bloom across all the regions. But the rot continues to spread! So hm I dunno what’s up with that.

Since they're adding more content later, I feel like they'll probably be character-centric threads too. Spinning Top and the Prince are probably two chapters in a broader anthology. I wonder where they’ll go from here. (Maybe a way I can unrot my save file? Haha.)

Regions

The art direction is great in my opinion. Some regions that stuck out to me:

Badlands (minus the locusts, they should really not see you while you’re invisible). The vibes are immaculate.

Torrid Desert. I usually find desert maps boring, but the sand dunes were a refreshing break from geometric tiling. In general, I really like breaks from the tile-based geometry. The first time I saw a scavenger templar/disciple (don’t remember which one) was a neat moment. I find the implications of those guys existing quite interesting.

Shrouded/Stormy Coast. Something about the warehouse crates and hanging platforms really tickled my fancy. I think the scale of it all, as well as the color provided from the crates, contributed to it feeling so good to me.

Desolate Tract: Conversely to the wavy desert dunes, this place being so flat, not boring due to the uniqueness of that, and backdropped by the wind tunnel really made me curious about this place. I hope they fix the bug that makes your FPS tank here though.

Outer Rim: Rife with secrets, both left and right. The desert portion reminded me of Kingdom Hearts' Keyblade Graveyard. Against all odds the scavengers continue to survive, and like in Torrid Desert they have strange, powered garb. Void-infused clothing? It’s interesting.

Ancient Urban: Even if I'll argue about ancient scaling forever, the actual presentation of this place was amazing. I was eating it all up and now I really want to get around designing my ancient OCs. You think it was named this as a nod to the popularized fandom term? Haha. 

Unfortunate Development: The dead coral corpse of Pebbles 2 electric boogaloo. The void worm is weird and all (is it rot-corrupted or just a faceless facsimile the rot created?), but I enjoyed the environment more. The background was a tesseract-like frame that stretched on seemingly forever. That was what really spooked me.

Brightness and contrast adjusted for viewing ease. Where is your head?

What are Starcatchers? They look iterator-like. Maybe it’s an alternate dimension thing, just as Signal Spires has the pyramid concept art iterators in the background? They could be structures that aren’t iterators, a different build type of them, or an alternate timeline, I guess. Starcatchers probably perform a function related to their name, regardless.

I remember before this DLC, some people interpreted iterator bricks as cylinders instead.

In the files Outer Rim also has a curving sky and a placeholder background where the earth is crumbling at the edge. And it’s literally called Outer Rim. Could also be a floating landmass, or sinking into the void sea, if you wanted to try out some other explanation. But I think that flat planet Rain World theory has some more evidence with this one. (I don’t think I can use flat planet RW for my space-involved AU but it is still interesting)

At the edge of the world...?

Someone (I think it was a reddit comment, I've been brain blasted with so much Watcher stuff that it's all starting to mix together) pointed out that spreading rot in the past doesn’t influence their future versions, so alternate dimensions aren’t out of the question. (Unless all regions are separate places - I wasn’t sure if places like Stormy Coast vs. Shrouded Coast were supposed to be the same or not. Or if the karma flowers kill the rot in the past, only for it to crop up again in the future and die again, but that seems overly convoluted.)

Time and space riftwalking shenanigans were already a lot - timelines/alt dimensions feel like quite a step further. In this case you are not following just the one “thread,” as Spinny puts it.

Final Thoughts

Initially I had a poorer reaction to Watcher's story, but some of it was defensiveness over the tone and headcanons I had come to like about RW and DP. After a few days of it settling in, I find myself warming up to Watcher more. I may have liked something different more, but I can enjoy and appreciate Watcher for what it is. 

If people can differentiate the canons of the DLCs (...it might be a little easier than vanilla vs. DP, because Watcher is so fantastical), I think I can have a fun time with both. 

Speaking of headcanons, giant ancients are pretty inconsistent with a lot of the environmental clues about ancient size, even the new regions within the DLC itself. I’ll post some stuff about it with screenshots and drawings later. 

Here's a couple of them...

I think literal hand puppet iterators are a good reminder that an iterator is more than its puppet. I can really imagine them as a giant machine waving a cute toy on a stick, a form more palatable for their audience. (Although that does make Moon being stuck in the PoV of one feel a little weirder too.) It emphasizes the way ancients likely thought of them as well. The concept is just neat.

However, I don't know if I would have fixated on iterators so hard without seeing puppets as more of a proper body. The superstructure is fantastic - but the puppet avatar makes it easier to identify with them as people and characters. The puppet being completely toylike rather than closer to a body-like vessel makes that a little more difficult. 

For a lot of stuff I’ve already written, especially interactions between ancient and iterator OCs, the size discrepancy is too much. So I just won’t adhere to giant ancients or tiny everything else hahaha

In general I mostly see myself using the snippets of ancient lore, region stuff, new creatures. If possible, I'd like to see what secrets can be uncovered about the new regions. 

I’m not interested in using stuff like the sentient rot when it comes to the continuities I more deeply engage with. My opinions may continue to evolve over time, we’ll see. But these are my thoughts after a few days of processing.

[convexfuss]

- GHOST PERI AU -

(AKA Petrified!Peri because that name is cool as FUCK.)

REFERENCES ALSO AVAILABLE HERE!

REGULAR COLORS / HIS BODY [NOT GHOST]

GHOST COLORS / HIM AS A GHOST

SO. You may be asking, "what happened to him?" And I am here to EXPLAIN! :]

This AU is still a fairly [pun unintended] big WIP, so some details are still all over the place/undecided, and some may change over time; constructive criticism, opinions/thoughts, questions, are all appreciated!

The general idea is, well... divergent from the finale. What if, after the chip is grabbed and Hazel, Wanda, [and maybe Cosmo? I don't recall if he goes with them/ends up somewhere else] go to fix the wand, Peri explodes. And it gets undone when Hazel wishes to fix Fairy World. Buuuttt... not quite!

It wasn't her 1 Millionth Wish that she used up on Fairy World— which is why it Doesn't Quite Fix Him Going Kaboomey. But I imagine that having 1Mil Wishes had a mild influence on What Happened and why exploding DID get fixed... sort of. [I need to brainstorm specifics on this.]

ANYWAY.

Peri looks GENERALLY normal most of the time, except for, well, *gestures at reference.* Outside of THAT [cracked wand, cracked crown [crack hidden by the glow], slightly off color pallete], there's some other stuff that's just a Hint of Wrong.

Like coughing up confetti and/or rainbows [without any other sign of magical backup [which he can't experience anymore because he did technically already die via backup.]] And sometimes the funny silly wacky expressions that happened during buildup [big ol' eyes/pupils, star shaped pupils, funny faces [like when he was talking to Dev.]

Throwing this in here. Sometimes he just stares like the TBH Creature. It's kinda silly kinda funny. I need to make a Petrified!Peri TBH emote because that fits well.

I was ALSO thinking about the idea that sometimes limbs can detach [the ghost fairy in that one ep is what gave me this thought], mostly for expressive purposes/fun silly purposes. It can be seen in this image here! Still DEBATING on this, though.

ANYWAY.

ANYWAY.

Cosmo and Wanda Don't Know He Died [because of not being right there] But something Is Off. Peri probably doesn't at first either until they [themself] put it together through context clues, and then they're like, "ooohh no, mom and dad probably don't know I exploded!" And he gets REALLY nervous about them finding out because that'd be A Lot and he doesn't want to Worry Them [because... he fucking died.]

So. There's a lot of him just trying not to Act Suspicious. Which only makes them both concerned! I have so many silly funny interactions between them that I imagine, actually!

Like...

Peri: *Talking. Suddenly... star pupils!*

Wanda: Um. Sweetie?

Peri: Hey do you see that?

Cosmo: Oooh, see what?

Peri: Over there! *Points.*

Cosmo + Wanda: *Looks over.*

Peri: *Disappears.*

WHICH. YEAH. SO. GHOST FORM. They're completely hidden when they're actually a GHOST, and has no wand/wings when they're a ghost, either [they do have wings normally, I just forgot to include them in the reference.] And I imagine whenever they poof into their ghost form that they leave a tiny bit of confetti behind!

ALSO.

He reassigns himself to Dev on his own [who didn't forget after the finale.] And his magic is kind of fucked up. Cause he's DEAD and look at his fucking WAND. So wishes kinda get fucked up when granted a bit sometimes ehehehaha...

ANYWAY.

I am also dumping my Peri headcanons onto him. They're transmasc nonbinary and use he/they pronouns and they're also aroace! :3

PLEASE. PLEASE send me any asks if you have any questions! You don't have to ask to draw them, either— just tag me in any art if you ever make any, please! :]