#i got access via different switch

[wheezerbuster]

normal day in splatsville, yep.

[madhabdi]

debating if I should get a motorbike instead of a car

[kustas]

I'd love to hear your hashtag wha critical thoughts about recent developments if you feel like sharing them :)

I'll preface this with saying that for this answer I will not be making a distinction between my personal tastes and what is "objectively worst". The TLDR is I have felt like WHA's been dipping in quality since book 8 approximately.

One of WHA's strong points is its ongoing theme of accessibility, via its premise of how magic is purposefully restricted from people, and via its characters, mostly the kids, who showcase various life issues and allow the story to talk about how to solve them. Disability is an important one and was at the center of book 8, which is one of my favorites. You get to see Tartah and Coco work together for a goal (=making their friend a better mobility aid), and by doing so they brainstorm the why and then how which allows for complex notions to be carried out and explained to the reader. Cute story with touching implications that flows well. This quote in particular sums up so well what WHA is "about"

After this we transition rather brutally to the latest ongoing arc of the Silver Eve. This arc has been ongoing for years now, and three volumes, making it the longest so far, I'll come back to that, putting a star on it [*]. It delves further into aspects of accessibility the series had talked about before - access to magic, access to healthcare, and poverty. This is where this blog's namesake gets relevant. Custas is a kid who was already poor, who got badly wounded ending up disabled, and who because of that was stuck in a situation with no good endings: he can't make money in his state and needs money to get out of his state. On top of this gets added magic, and comes back the question at the center of WHA: Is it wrong to restrict the use of magic, and how?

After the arc is kickstarted by Custas getting his share of spilled beans of magical secrets revealed, enter immediatly strong players via ch.48's introduction of the Wise Ones and the king himself. The political aspect of how the world works was not mentioned before. Great chapter, interesting stuff all around, personally answered much of my questions. Immediatly after this chapter the focus in 49 fully switches to the Knights and their job, and the rest of the chapter is dedicated to a story of a sexual assault survivor and how she made it. It's a surprising topic to see pop up and it's handled with the respect it deserves. Chapter 50 goes back to Coco and her troubles. This concludes book 9 and...it makes for a Lot of stuff to deal with. Put a Second star on that. [**]

Addressing those stars before we move on:

[*] This arc is taking forever. WHA's arcs in earlier volumes only took a few chapters. This arc has taken three books thus far and I doubt we have reach its climax yet. I personally don't like it and it raises an issue the series did not have before: Will the payoff be worth it? Where it is worrying for the future of the series is that manga serialized regularly tend to up the stakes progressively until the end and it might...not work out.

[**] Too many things at once unresolved. This has already had consequences with the progressive vanishing of something WHA was once excellent at: sneakily introducing elements that get used a few arcs later in important ways. The manga has been, for a while now, accumulating unfinished plot threads via not answering the questions it opens and instead adding more and more characters. Jumping from a group of characters to another was not an issue beforehand because unlike this arc's, chapters took place at different times and/or in totally different places. The Silver Eve is both set in time AND place, making it hard to follow because all sideplot happen at once.

Book 10 continues to accumulate ongoing unresolved plots with: the royal family being shady, Agott's struggles irt. her mother, Dagda running around confused and tracked by the Knights, Custas and Ininia jumping Tartah and Coco, and Galga's accident + relationship.

Book 11 does the same adding Agott's crush on Coco, the actual festival, Jujy's inner troubles...Funnily enough, this page is a good summary of the ongoing mess.

Instead of solving all of this stuff we instead get stakes ramped up to 100 with the introduction of what I can only describe as a kaiju attack. As much as I love the horror and drama element, given what was already going on, this does NOT strike me as a good decision.

Now, we go back to the three latest chapters. These follow the same subplot: Custas' faction change and Coco's attempts to save him. This subplot has, to me, a whole lot of issues. Way earlier on in the story, even before Dagda's ambush, I had issues with how Custas was portrayed in relation to his anger, being drawn weirdly spooky for...a frustrated poor kid? Others have also pointed out it wasn't great to have one of your only dark skinned characters be a slum kid. Obviously given my handle on here, I am still a huge fan of the character. After chapter 45 (included), I already found it a bit tasteless to have so much horrors piled on him. WHA is a rather unsubtle series at time which I really, really dislike. Sure, makes it hard to miss the point, but when you're dealing with sensitive topics it can fall into touchy territory fast...

In the latest chapters, Coco appears to save Custas, the "how" part of her plan still being a mystery. Meanwhile, a timelooped and very confused Dagda looks for him, accompanied by Lulucy, who knows them both and is unaware of their ties with forbidden magic. She ends up telling him to abandon the faction he sided with by literally ripping off the brim of his hat with her magic. Meanwhile, Lulucy starts attacking him on sight. I have so, so so many issues with all of this.

Coco's story is about knowing the system in place sucks. Custas' story is about being screwed over by the same system. The story explicitly points those two out as mirrors: Custas is what would have happened to Coco without the right support. Coco's unique POV on the pointed hat witches shows us many prior times they are not the good guys. Hell, Custas himself talks about how the pointed hat's magical gatekeeping prevented him from living a better life.

To me, the point was supposed to be: the system in place doesn't work, which results in people in need not getting help. We loop back to the accessibility I started off mentioning. Yes, before the current system, bad things happened - but the current system is still allowing other bad things to happen now. So...why is Coco pushing Custas to join the pointed hats and abandon the faction he sided with? If a character who was upholding the status quo was doing so it would make sense (like Beldaruit) but Coco as a main character exists partially to point out why the pointed hats are not good. She demonstrates it to the reader via what happens to her AND knows it as a character. It comes off as inconsistent and frankly makes little sense.

Speaking of inconsistencies...why does Lulucy not recognize Custas, a child she's known for a while? Why does the young prince, introduced as a suspicious character on behalf of his family's unknown goals, become a helpful selfless little guy? Why are the Knights, originally introduced as an antagonistic faction because they are a milita enforcing the status quo, suddenly portrayed as fighting for good as a bunch of remarkable individuals?

Ah yes, the cops. I'm going to address something really fast about them. It makes me frankly uncomfortable the author chose their faction to evoke the two very sensitive topics of sexual assault and homophobia. I think the way those topics themselves were handled without greater context was surprisingly good, and it's touching in the first place to see an author who not only cares, but uses her series, destined partially for younger readers, to explain why she cares. However, Witch Hat is a very black and white series: the bad guys are bad and ugly and you should dislike them, the good guys are good and you should like them. There are some exceptions but who have been losing steam as of late. While originally introduced as a group of individuals who act in problematic ways for their day job, the Knights have slowly lost that bad guy flavor to become a fun band of colleagues/friends. They are law enforcers who enforce unjust laws, but it seems that the author's not on board with people hating them because this is the second time she gave a Knight a tragic backstory that makes them more sympathetic to the reader. First of: I do not see what's to redeem about them if the story's about changing an unjust system, so I don't get the necessity to make them nicer. Secondly: at least in my country (which has legal gay marriage and notably less sexist than Japan) law enforcement is renowned to not help sexual assault victims or gay people. The Knights Moralis are fantasy cops and cops, in real life, tend to abandon people who need their help regarding those two issues - if not worsen them, and count a majority of sexists/homophobes among their ranks. Making your unsubtly cop stand-in faction have both characters with those issues comes off as at least a poor decision if not bad taste.

(big words from the guys introduced in the story by arresting a bunch of children who were on a rescue mission for a misunderstanding they would not have cared about. Die idgaf)

Some more surface level things:

The art. The first books of WHA are noticeably more complex in their style featuring more reaslistic proportions for the characters. Latest arc has seen art lose some of the decorative "classic" flair in the linework and characters looking simpler and stylized to look way...Younger? In a way I do not like. Yes, it's expected for manga series to see their style evolve. I also want to make this clear: I consider the pace imposed on manga artists to be inhumane and if Shirahama had decided to draw her manga as stick figures to work less I'd be down for it.

The dialog. While WHA is very in your face (you may call it preachy) the dialog in the latest chapters especially Coco's feels off. A 12yo wouldn't give off speeches about the world in the heat of battle. When it's a calm scene between two characters discussing a deep thing, sure. When it's an epic public adult figure (see: Dean), sure. I'd prefer having the kids talk like kids.

Goddamn the story has become less nuanced and subtle over the time. Scenes like Qifrey getting confronted by Tartah post mindwiping his grandpa owned. The story's current "morally grey" moments just don't do it for me anymore. No, I don't want the witch politicians of the faction you established as a mistake beforehand to continue. I don't care if the fantasy cops are offended by a grieving husband pointing out they suck. I kinda wish he'd thrown hands actually

So...yeah, that's about it. While WHA's plot beats has always been impossible for me to predict, I don't know if I can trust where the story is going anymore. The fans eating it up confuse me and I might even get hate for posting this. Truth is, while some aspects have always been more or less present in the series since the start, I've felt like the really good bits that balanced it out have been going extinct. I don't know why and it's none of my business to. Some friends have pointed out we might be reaching a point where the author ran out of pre-written story and is now improvising. What's a bit concerning to me is I've also noticed she's way less active on social media, where she used to post regular bonus material for the series, this has stopped and I hope it's not because she lost her interest for the series or way worst, is overworked. Given the conditions for mangaka it wouldn't be impossible and like previously stated, I am of the opinion that no comic book series is worth putting their author's life, health and free time down. It's more important than me disliking the comic.

And regarding Custas - him joining the atelier to study with Qifrey would not be a good ending, no matter what the fandom says. It won't be cute found family. Custas has a family who's unique member wouldn't be able to follow him as a witch. That ending would separate a very traumatized child from the only adult he has in his life that gives him unconditional love and support. Custas needs to not be seen as a criminal so the rest of his life won't be over, and also a whole bunch of cash.

I'm not excited for the anime.

[swaps55]

About (writing) Horizon

@painterofhorizons asked me to go into more detail about this post, in which I whinged about the logistical complexities I was running into while drafting Horizon for Mezzo. I proceeded to write a dissertation on the topic, so here is my Ted Talk for anyone who has some time to kill. I kept it as spoiler free as possible. :D

Not surprisingly, I’ve got a number of challenges to deal with to get this scene to have the emotional impact I want it to have, but the one I referenced in that post has mostly to do with what I refer to as setting the chess board. It’s something I do for combat scenes, or scenes where the setting plays any kind of important role in understanding where characters are in relation to one another, or when I just have too many characters in one place. Ideally, before I write the scene, I lay out in my head: what does the setting look like, and who is where?

For fight scenes, this is important so I understand what combat will look like, and so I won’t lose track of anyone during the scene. How many enemies are there? Who is taking on who? What limitations or advantages does the setting provide to influence the action? How can I use that to provide characterization or advance a character arc? Etc. In the case of Horizon, the issue isn’t the combat: it’s understanding where people start and how they get from one place to another.

Here’s the challenge: I have 3, and eventually 4 groups of people or person. Let’s call them A, B, C, and D.

A and B are in very separate locations.

C joins the fray in a 3rd location that cannot be near A or B.

A, B, and C are all aiming to reach the same location: the AA gun.

C cannot encounter A or B, which means A & B must reach the AA gun via different routes than C.  

D separates off from C, and must encounter B but not A.

C needs to arrive first, then B, then A, then D.

Simple, right? D:

So instead of the chess board dictating the flow of action, I need to set the chess board in a way to facilitate the scene as I need it to play out. This means the basic layout from the game isn’t sufficient, because it’s too linear, and provides only 1 “entrance” to the area where the AA gun are, and I need two different routes to get there.

Now, am I going to waste a lot of time painstakingly explaining to the reader the layout of Horizon? No. That’s boring, and the reader doesn’t need it. But I need to know it well enough and establish it well enough that even if the reader isn’t backchecking my logic, they trust that I have not dragged them into an MC Escher painting. I don’t want people to stop and wonder, “wait, where the fuck did B come from?” in the middle of a high stakes, high adrenaline scene.

The other logistical issue I have is a very clumsy POV handoff. I do not like putting in a scene break just to switch POVs and continue the exact same scene you were just in, but there is a crucial moment where a POV handoff has to happen as a new character arrives on scene and takes over POV duties from someone who is already present. My options are:

Do the entire scene from the first POV and don’t switch. But this would completely alter the impact of the scene and shut me out of accessing some pretty critical information that only the new POV character will have.

Do the thing I don’t like: put a scene break in the middle of the scene, end the first ‘scene’ on a dramatic moment that feels like the close of a scene before jumping back in with the new character.

Do the scene break, but back up a few minutes before the new POV character arrives on scene. This does two helpful things: creates a fresh scene and minimizes the awkward handoff, while giving me a chance to fill in some of the logistics to avoid the, “where the fuck did this person come from??” problem. Because while I know where they come from, there isn’t a good opportunity for me to communicate it to the reader otherwise. Originally this is what I planned to go with, but when I got there, I changed my mind. The problem with this is that it kills the tension and feels like a bait and switch: get the reader to the moment they have been waiting for, then pull the rug and back up a few steps. The last thing I want in this chapter is for the reader to be frustrated by the way I am telling the story.

End the chapter on the POV switch and move the Big Moment to a new chapter. I don’t love this either, because it feels like a cliffhanger for the sake of a cliffhanger – if not for the POV shift, it wouldn’t occur to me to break the chapter here. While I do love it when people yell at me for things, getting yelled at for this particular cliffhanger would feel cheap and manipulative rather than earned, if that makes any sense.   

Option 2 is best for the story, but it leaves me with this clumsy POV handoff that I still don’t like.

Now, on top of all the logistical complexities, I still have the other layers of this chapter: the sheer emotional complexity of it, which causes additional logistical issues. This is some of what I am trying to juggle:

Convey scene setting through the eyes of characters who are not paying a lick of attention to their surroundings because they are preoccupied or distressed by other events.

Telegraph Sam’s distress and anxiety through the eyes of someone who does not have enough context for it. This is further complicated by it being very likely this character would have more context than I would prefer them to have, so now I have to work with that in a way that feels right for the character and right for the story. Too often, supporting characters get shoehorned into plot in ways that does them a disservice, so I try to take the approach that the POV character is now the main character in THEIR story. My job is to get their priorities and motivations to circle back and support the plot while also serving their own interests. Sometimes this is very hard.   

Portray Kaidan, a character known for thinking things through, as someone being extremely (and understandably) reactive in a high stakes and very personal moment while still feeling like Kaidan. He cannot be thinking straight, and he would not be thinking straight, but I have to sell that to the reader and make them believe it.

Not losing track of every other character in the scene,while also not having them interrupt the flow of the scene. If you are familiar with Arrested Development, imagine the scenes in which the camera focuses on two characters having a VERY private discussion, only to zoom out and reveal they are surrounded by a much larger, captive audience. That keeps happening in this scene, ha. These characters are not the focus of the scene, but they are still present, and therefore the reader needs to be aware of where they are and what they’re doing so they don’t seem to magically appear out of thin air when they do or say something.    

So how do I put all of these pieces together? Well, it’s still in progress, so I don’t have a success story yet, but the emotional thumbtacks come first. The whole point of the scene is something I have been dying to write for years. All the details and logistics that ultimately make it work are just in the way when all I can think about is the Big Confrontation, so I just spit it out, even if it’s mostly just broad strokes, because once it’s out there I can actually think about the rest. Now I can go back through and chip away at the logistics, create a deeper and richer narrative for the POV characters, turn the volume up on the side characters who play a smaller role, and sharpen the knives so those emotional moments really land in a meaningful, gut wrenching way. Doing all of this will inevitably reshape the manner in which some of these events unfold, because drilling deeper into characters often leads to new discoveries. But I can rewire the underlying skeleton when the skeleton at least exists.

The hope is that in the end, it reads like the whole thing was effortless, and you would never guess how much work and angst and handwringing went into writing it unless you read this post. Wish me luck!!!!! I need it.   

[likesdoodling]

It has been a while since I started digital art,

Quite a while.

So here is a 'progress over the last two years' since I gained access to a drawing tablet.

:D

This is my first ever digitally illustrated piece- compared to my latest one-

So, a little bit different.

I do think my art took quite a jump around June 2022, when I took a break from my Steve comic strip, (for obvious reasons- it was about Technoblade's polar bear so...) and decided to try practicing gesture drawing to see if it helped my general anatomy knowledge. This is before,

And this next one is after.

The most obvious change here is that I switched to using thinner lines. There is a gap of about two months between these.

This was when I realised that you could improve art by practicing it (mind-blowing I know), and then started to do just that. Some other notable jumps forward would be when I discovered the airbrush-

Well, discovered a new method of shading with it anyway.

Then after that I had a few pictures that I actually still like, despite them being pretty old at this point, the one below is actually from September of 2022-

I mean, the hands are a bit iffy, but the rest looks alright. This was when I was going through a bit of a melanie martinez phase-

This next one was from January of 2023, I'd only just gotten into bungou stray dogs via some random memes on pinterest about this weird brown haired guy who had lots of bandages and who had this running gag with wanting to die- I actually looked him up at one point, but that didn't really explain much. The main one that I remember was 'life is short, so make it shorter, shorter than chuuya~'

Which at the time was just kind of confusing,

Then I watched the show and it made perfect sense.

I'd discovered ascendance of a bookworm in like, 2021, but I hadn't really been doing fanart of it since I was mainly doing dsmp related stuff and I kind of assumed nobody would know what on earth I was referencing. Turns out tumblr has a lot more bookworm fans than I orignally anticipated. Instagram still has no clue. I think maybe one person out of my followers on instagram knows what I'm on about-

Then we've got these two which I am still proud of btw-

The first one is from a dystopian/time travel fanfic called viridian.

The second one was after I learned about rim lighting. It was inspired by a song actually, 'crash' by noevaii. (and yes I found that song from a sad-ist animatic, it was cool) The character isn't anyone in particular. They're both from February 2023.

Then there's probably my most liked picture on instagram, (not tumblr, since tumblr knows about bsd and bookworm, but y'know. This was even sadder than I originally intended since the last half of my comic strip was finished AFTER everything happened)

Then the final conclusion of my Steve comic strip in May of 2023.

I don't think my art really changed much in between those, but eh.

Then I switched to doing a bunch of ascendance of a bookworm stuff to see what would happen and turns out there are way more fellow fans out there than I anticipated-

Then I guess my next breakthrough in tumblr popularity, (even if it might not have been a breakthrough in art skills necessarily) was when things went DOWN in the bsd fandom with chapter 109 and I did probably one of my most liked tumblr posts I have ever done-

If you want to see the rest of that, feel free to scroll down on my tumblr page, the original's like eight pages long-

This was before anyone knew what was going to happen btw.

I still think it's hilarious that I put in chuuya having contacts. My reasoning being, they're on a film set,

It was a pretty interesting exercise in shading in monochrome.

Then I started a 30 day art challenge in October that I didn't get past day six of, but it was still pretty fun. This is the best one of those-

After that I spent most of my time studying for the jlpt n5, so I didn't really do that much art related stuff,

This is one of the two non-commission related pictures that I finished over the two months after I kind of gave up on the art challenge. This one's from November,

Then I finally finished an art commission I'd been working on for the three months prior, as well as studying. Here is an example of the type of pictures I was doing for that,

Then I was occupied with christmas and birthday presents for my siblings, both my little sisters are into ascendance of a bookworm- (completely my fault I am proud to say) so I was able to do stuff related to that, here's a couple of snippets, but you guys don't get the colour version hehe

And one of them has also read the entire fma manga just like I have so-

Anyway, it's been quite a progression since I resolved to master digital art in 2021.

I reckon I've come a fair way since then. I mean. My art skills in general are way better than they used to be. The last two or three years have been pretty interesting.

Also-

Just had to include this one, I'm gonna do a more detailed version but still-

I think it's funny so I'm posting it here. Even if it's not really related to art progression-

[helldustedstories]

@fearedelight asked: "We're in completely different leagues." // coughs and casually gets the ball rolling for what we've been talking about-- Blitz for Stolas 👀

200 random dialogue prompts // accepting

It had been a little while, since he and Blitzy had struck up their little deal, and it seemed to be going well for both of them. Blitzy and his employees got access to the human realm, and he got to have Blitzy all to himself one night a month, something that he very much looked forward to.

There was still so much he didn't know, so much he hadn't experienced, and Bitzy didn't seem to mind trying out all sorts of different things with him. He had so much more experience, after all; Stolas had only been with Stella enough to produce their daughter, and now Blitzy.

Being with Blitz was so much different than anything with Stella had been. That had been cold, calculated, a duty. Neither of them had wanted to do it, and as soon as Via was hatched safely, that had been it. He'd tried to be a good husband, but Stella wanted equally as little to do with him, and he was actually quite relieved.

But then Blitz had come crashing back into his life, the first friend he'd ever had, the first person who had shown interest in him….or so he'd thought. Until his father had mentioned in passing that he'd paid for Blitzo (as he was called then) to spend the afternoon with him, since it was his birthday.

Still, that birthday had been one of his favourite days; he had thought about it and the imp he'd shared it with quite a few times over the years, even though he knew he would likely never see him again.

Then he'd shown up at Stella's "Still Not Divorced" party, and Stolas had thrown caution to the wind (thanks to a little assistance from the alcohol in his system, as well) and flirted with someone he was actually attracted to for the first time. He'd been more than a little flustered when Blitz had reciprocated, taking charge of the situation and chasing him all the way over to the bed. Stolas had tried to match that energy, being as forward and aggressive as he dared.

The moment Blitz bit him had really been what flipped a switch inside Stolas. Blitz had awakened something in him that he hadn't fully realized had existed, shown him that he could feel something for someone else, in that way.

And after Stolas had figured out that Blitz had been the one who had stolen his grimoire, well, it was an easy choice. He wanted to see the imp again, wanted to feel good again, and what better way than to arrange a deal between them? That was how things worked; he would let Blitz and his company use his grimoire, and Blitz would spend time with him in return.

It was only after they'd started meeting fairly regularly, and Stolas interacted more with both Moxxie and Millie that he began to see how different their relationship was. There wasn't any sort of …. transaction between them; they just spent time together because they wanted to.

But he and Blitz were doing that too, weren't they? Yes, they did still have a deal with the grimoire, but it wasn't just that, was it? Blitz certainly seemed to enjoy himself when he was with Stolas, and the prince absolutely did.

So that night, once they'd both thoroughly enjoyed themselves, Stolas had tried to get Blitz to stay. There was no need for him to drive home in the middle of the night when he could just…..stay here. That was the sort of thing one did when they were together, wasn't it?

But it seemed like Blitz had something else on his mind.

"We're in completely different leagues," Blitz told him, his back to Stolas as he moved to get his clothes.

Stolas blinked, quickly moving to sit up himself, the sheet pooling around his waist. Had he said something wrong? All he'd done was ask Blitz to stay…, which seemingly hadn't been the right thing to do.

"I know there's a difference in our positions, but why should that matter?" he asked. It didn't matter to him…; did it matter to Blitz?

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I would love to ask about the logistics, legal and financial options for a world with worldwide secret organisations that are not the government because they deal with things unknown by the government. I'm not sure how to deal with this other than completely ignoring all that and say it's just the way it is or if they ever do get on the government radar, the government is just given the complete runaround with no consequences.

Addy: So first off, you're going to need to think about the dynamics of how this all is going to actually work.

- where do they get their money

- what sort of regulatory body controls them/do they have relations with (as in who protects them/organizes things as they go abroad, how do they deal with political fallout if an agent gets caught, how do they bargain for access into closed countries, who do they have in their corner)

- how do they hire people

When you get any kind of organization with power, governments want to have some kind of relation for their own security. If some random person gets caught in a high-security area, the government officials in charge aren't going to go "oh, they refuse to answer our questions, I guess we'll give up"

You're going to get invaded. You're going to get a highly organized military force breaking down your doors, taking your family hostage, and tying you up and prying your jaws open so you can't crack open a suicide tooth. If you refuse to answer questions or play along, and they know nothing about you, they are going to assume that you are a threat that has infiltrated the area to an unknown extent, and they are going to excise that influence in their country.

That happened to a mafia family once when some of their guys ended up in the secure areas of a naval base that did work on nuclear subs. Their houses got broken into in the middle of the night with strange figures holding automatic weapons, and the whole family got strung up, strip-searched, and had their teeth checked. 

When the Navy found out that it was just a small gambling ring, they let 'em all go, because they didn't really care about that.

They cared about people trying to get access to highly sensitive files in a sensitive location in a controlled & classified environment.

You can do something like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders, where it's an international service organization, but with a sort of dedicated task force for supernatural threats or diseases, but... governments don't like threats to their security

You could also have something like the Plumbers, which was an illegal group run by Nixon. They're the people who did Watergate. 

But also like... if you are *ever* part of an intelligence organization (like if you worked at the FBI food court or something), you cannot work in the Peace Corps. They will not accept you, because they do not want their reputation tarnished by aspersions of spies or whatever 

.... I think the closest equivalents I can think of are

- human trafficking organizations

- drug cartels (which are known *about,* to an extent, though the details are unknown)

- Epstein's island (money from an external source used to fund interior operations and stuff)

But seriously, how do you hire people? Who runs your food courts, how do you find interns? Who does your plumbing? What if they switch jobs (say they had a kid and want a different life), and they need to explain what they did on their resume? What about the daily commute?

Thought about it a bit more, have some extra thoughts:

I think it's really easy to look at something and go "oh, they'll just refuse to answer" without thinking about what that looks like for the people asking the questions. If I have someone in custody who I think may be part of some kind of terrorist cell (planting weird devices, asking strange questions, found in a place they were not supposed to have access to), I'm going to think that we have a security leak. Leaks are not be left to fester - leaks are arrested, charged with espionage, and imprisoned to use later as a political bargaining chip.

Everyday social interactions, if someone refuses to answer your question, you back off and let them be. That isn't how a government works, not with threats.

For the suspected terrorist/spy… Warrants, warrants everywhere. Your house, your family, your friends, your workplace, your digital information, everything - all of that is going to be pulled and examined because you are a threat and you are not talking.

If you want to give the government (any of them, really), you need to think about what that looks like and who your organization has in their corner to back them up. What's their leverage?

… can you tell I like spy dramas?

Licorice: the main obstacle to your scenario is this: “they deal with things unknown by the government.”  There are no things on the scale you’re thinking of - worldwide secret organisations - that are unknown to all governments. The security agencies of powerful governments know far, far more than they ever make known to the public. Worldwide secret organisations normally have a base of operations  in at least one friendly country where the government is sympathetic to their objectives. If those objectives are nefarious, then their activities are usually directly at some specific country, group of countries, or ethnic group. If, on the other hand, they are working for the good of humanity, then there usually isn’t much reason for them to be secret unless they’re handling something so scary (like aliens from outer space) that it’s deemed better the general public never know about it. 

One of the main purposes of government security agencies is to identify, monitor, and if necessary infiltrate, take over or destroy secret organisations. They’ve been doing this for a long time and are extremely good at it - much better than would-be secret organisations are at hiding themselves. No one gives government security agencies the runaround. Individual hostile agents may occasionally, through sheer luck or by identifying a rare blind spot, fly under the radar or slip through the net, but a whole big global organisation, for decades on end? That isn’t possible, not in this world.

[waheelawhisperer]

regarding my last ask, you mention RWBY: Amity Arena as being particularly bad. i have never heard of this game before

if you have time, and are willing to humor me yet again, i would love to hear your wisdom

First of all, I'm sorry it took me a week to answer this. Work has been absolutely brutal (I've regularly been leaving the office between 8:00 and 9:00 PM for like 2 weeks now) and I really haven't had time for anything that takes actual effort. Please bear in mind that A) I'm tired as hell, and B) this game shut down in early 2021 so everything I'm telling you is based on memory that would potentially be spotty even if I was at my best.

To start with, I'll give you a brief explanation of what Amity Arena was before getting into the reasons why it sucked ass. RWBY: Amity Arena was a PVP mobile game where the goal was to destroy your opponent's base (which consisted of a central tower and two turrets to defend it) located at the other end of the map using a collection of units derived from the show. Each player had a deck of eight units, which they could deploy into one of two lanes corresponding to the two turrets. The units in question would advance toward the opposing tower, eventually converging on the base structure, and could potentially wander between them via the use of skills or by targeting enemies that stood close enough to the border for them to lock onto and follow.

The player deployed their characters by expending a resource called Aura. The player had a maximum of eight Aura, which regenerated at a set rate over time. Each unit cost a fixed amount of Aura, ranging from 1 to 8. The order of the cards (representing the units) in the player's prebuilt deck was shuffled at the start of the match and then cycled in order as the player deployed units. The player could hold four (I think?) cards in their hand at a time, and as they played a card, the next card in the deck would appear in their hand.

There was a great deal of unit variety: units were broken up into melee and range, grounded and aerial, and some cards could deploy singular strong units and others deployed swarms of weaker units (for example, Scythe Ruby deployed one powerful fighter, while White Fang Gunners deployed three relatively weak ranged fighters), and some cards had special skills they could activate to gain an advantage (Shadow Blake, for example, could dash a short distance and leave behind a targetable clone, making her very good at drawing aggro and switching rapidly between lanes, while Shield Pyrrha could throw her shield, dealing damage to all units in its path).

(If you've noticed something about the naming convention for the units above, you're on the right track: I'm about to talk about the gacha system)

So, there were a few ways to actually acquire units to add to your deck: first, you had to progress far enough up the ranks to actually unlock them. There were specified tiers that you moved up through by winning enough, and each tier gave you access to a broader selection of units. After every game, you'd get a randomly generated crate that you could open to get currency and copies of cards. Once you had a card, you could upgrade it with additional copies, and you could use the currency you got to buy stuff in the shop (new units, cosmetics, crates, premium currency, etc). I'm not going to go into exactly how the different currencies worked, mostly because I don't remember, so suffice it to say that like a lot of other mobile games, you could buy shit with real money and it fucking sucked.

Like every gacha game (or game with gacha elements), the rates were awful. Units were divided into four rarities: Normal, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. The unit distribution in each rarity was reasonably balanced early on, but as the developers added more units, it started to skew toward the Legendary category because adding new basic units didn't make money and adding rarer units did.

To give you an example of how much money, consider this: I remember one of the relatively big-name players (inasmuch as a RWBY mobile game has big-name players) would regularly roll for units on release so he could stream himself using them and give the playerbase an idea of what they did. When Sienna Khan released, this man spent 800 fucking dollars trying to get her. He wasn't even going for duplicates. He just wanted the character.

(IIRC this guy spent low 5 digits total on this game, it was insane)

This was an egregiously bad incident that didn't represent the average player experience, but I'm including it to point out that trying to even acquire new units, much less stay competitive by enhancing your cards with duplicate copies, could get real tough real fast.

(You also had to go for duplicate copies of your core units, because matchups could swing significantly if the opposing units had enough of a level advantage - say, by allowing them to survive burst from a unit that would counter them at equivalent levels)

This is before we get into the way the game balance was consistently and completely fucked. I won't bother listing every single instance, but I will go over some of the more egregious mistakes in terms of unit design. Let's start with...

Neon Katt: Probably the single most hated character throughout all of Amity Arena's run, Neon Katt somehow managed to be more annoying in the game than she was in the show. Upon deployment, Neon skates toward the opposing tower and taunts all units that enter her range. Sounds like an okay unit idea, right? Well, you're not wrong, but they fucked up the concept. First, Neon is cheap as hell (costs 2 Aura). Second, she was initially invincible until she hit a turret, so she could run down a lane and get chip damage for free while also providing utility in the form of her taunt (Neon was a major contributor to the godawful chip meta where you just spammed long-range skills that could hit structures and avoided interacting with your opponent as much as possible until the game was over). Third, her weight value was Heavy at launch, meaning she could actually push other units, which lead to the hilarious and annoying Disco Bear strat (deploying Neon behind an Ursa Major, an extremely strong, slow, and durable tank) and pushing it at top speed into the turret while preventing it from taking damage along the way.

Nobody liked this. The playerbase begged for nerfs. The devs eventually patched out Disco Bear by making her weight Light and decreased the range of her taunt or some shit idr, but it took seven fucking months to get an actual nerf, which they did by changing her from being invincible to having an HP value of 20. Normally, that would mean she dies in one hit, but they set it up so that she only takes one damage per hit, meaning you had to hit her 20 fucking times before she'd finally die. They eventually nerfed it down to 14 or 15 or something, but then they buffed it back to 20, so fuck them and fuck Neon lol

Baby Death Stalkers: Not as obviously obnoxious as the rest of this list, but they warped the meta in insidious ways by invalidating a shitton of single-target melee units. Baby Death Stalkers dropped five relatively fragile melee units with high damage and attack speed for the low, low cost of 1 Aura, allowing players to both hold a cost-effective counter to a large number of units in reserve and cycle their deck at minimal cost when necessary. Baby Death Stalkers hard countered most single-target melee units without an AoE skill or high attack speed because you could drop them around the target and force them to land five attacks to clear them, during which time the Baby Death Stalkers could attack uninterrupted with their high damage and attack speed as the target killed one, turned, reacquired a target, and repeated the process. This was how you got the comical and frustrating sight of in-universe badasses like Ren and Winter getting their asses kicked by five baby scorpions.

Using Baby Death Stalkers to counter a higher-value card often gave the player a 2+ Aura advantage, something that could rapidly snowball, and even if there wasn't a target in the field to hard counter, you could just drop them in front of one of your own higher-value units as a cheap meatshield or toss them out to cycle your deck by drawing a new card for minimal cost.

Jinn: Jinn is what happens when you think Neon isn't obnoxious enough and decide to make a unit that's actively worse for the game. She's also what happens when you look at the issues with both the playable meta and the game experience as a whole and think "that's not a bug, it's a feature!".

To start with, Jinn was a Legendary card, which meant that not only was the game continuing to release a disproportionate amount of higher-rarity cards (that made money), actually getting her was a pain in the ass. Yay, gacha.

Jinn was capable of stopping time around any unit for 7 seconds (i.e. everything caught in the blast was essentially frozen as it was. It couldn't take action, but nor could it be harmed). This meant she could be used to protect vital units by freezing them so that they didn't take damage from active effects or weren't prioritized by enemy units or to counteract enemy threats by freezing them until the player could deploy a counter or bring a skill off cooldown, and she could do it for two Aura. This is already insanely strong, but Jinn was a structure, meaning she'd just sit out on the field without moving into range of the enemy and could be used multiple times if she survived until her skill cooldown refreshed, and her incredibly low cost meant she could both provide enormous amounts of utility insanely cheaply and help cycle the deck as needed.

To make matters worse, Jinn was very obviously not playtested, both because she was broken as shit and because she initially stayed on the field long enough that if you could cycle the deck quickly enough, you could deploy two copies of her and make your towers permanently invincible, forcing a draw at worst. You could literally just say "fuck it" and prevent your opponent from even having a win condition.

(and also some of her early interactions were bugged as shit - if she used her ability on certain units during their skill animations, she could make them invincible and jump structures to the top of their priority list, so if this happened you had an unstoppable juggernaut hell-bent on destroying your towers to the exclusion of all else)

Finally, Jinn enabled a shitton of other cards that would've otherwise been okay without a get-out-of-jail-free card vs. their counters. Some of the cards I talk about later just got... so much fucking worse with Jinn. Holy shit.

White Fang Gunner Barracks: This was honestly the card that gave rise to the worst meta I've ever played. White Fang Gunner Barracks was a structure that would periodically spawn a White Fang Gunner (relatively weak ranged unit), which was pretty forgettable initially because it took a while and only spawned one at a time for a cost of 5 Aura, but then they fucking buffed it so that it spawned two at a time. It also spawned three Gunners upon expiring or being destroyed. Three White Fang Gunners is a 2-Aura value as it is. That means it only has to spawn enough Gunners to grant 3 Aura in value to pay for itself. It spawns 2 Gunners per wave. Each Gunner is worth two thirds of an Aura unit. One wave is worth 1 1/3 of an Aura unit. If the structure survives to spawn 3 waves (which it almost always did unless you had one of its small number of counters on hand to deploy immediately and the opponent couldn't protect it from those counters with Jinn), it's not just paying for itself, it's giving you more value than its cost (6 Aura vs. 5)... and it could just keep spawning Gunners. This thing stayed on the field for 45 seconds. It spawned a wave of Gunners every 7 seconds. That's 6 waves of Gunners if not stopped - 12 total Gunners from the waves, 3 Gunners from the destruction/expiration effect, for a cumulative 15 Gunners and 9 Aura of value. Admittedly, it took time for the Gunners to build up, but once they did, they could mow down a tower in seconds and you had to constantly dedicate a response to them, while the Barracks was a set-and-forget card that let the player using it focus on other parts of the battle while it did its thing.

Gunner Barracks defined the meta for six straight months. Every team had to have one of its small number of counters, all of which could be negated by Jinn and most of which were higher-rarity than Barracks and thus it was easy to level up Barracks to the point where it could survive the burst/DoT output of units that ostensibly dealt with it. This was genuinely the least fun I have ever had playing this game.

Chip Meta: I won't go into the Artillery Arena chip meta a ton, but there was a very obnoxious point in the game's lifespan where the primary method of winning was to use cards with long-range abilities that targeted enemy turrets directly to chip them down with minimal response. It was boring and uninteractive and most people hated it, much like they hated the way the abundance of AoE and presence of Baby Death Stalkers invalidated both large swarms of units and a number of single-target units.

Launcher Nora and Rifle Pyrrha: These two units were late additions to the game that were meant to help provide counterplay to the bullshit that was the White Fang Gunner Barracks, among other things, but they were annoyingly overtuned on launch and the game died before anyone could bother balancing them properly.

Launcher Nora was a unit with massive attack range (one of the three highest in the game, iirc, and one of the very few units that could outrange turrets with their basic attacks) and high AoE damage. Being a Rare card, she was easy to upgrade, which meant that she'd often just barely survive things meant to kill her, and her absurd range meant even getting to her without a skill with the range to either close the gap or just outright hit her could be extremely difficult. If properly protected, Launcher Nora could just sit on the field and tear your base and forces to pieces with very little counterplay.

Rifle Pyrrha wasn't as bad, but she was still an example of the devs kind of rushing stuff out and not giving a shit. Rifle Pyrrha was a cheap (3 Aura) ranged unit that had a long-ranged active skill automatically kited backwards after every basic attack, making it hard for melee units to catch up to her. She absolutely shat on things like the stream of Gunners coming out of the Barracks, but represented just... one more frustrating thing to play against in a game already full of them.

This isn't even getting into the way so many units and interactions were outright bugged and how much shit just didn't work. The Apathy were a unit that periodically duplicated and initially had no cap on the number of copies they could create, meaning that if you left them alone long enough, they'd just fucking spawn enough additional Apathies to crash your goddamn phone. Checkmate was supposed to make allied units in its AoE temporarily invincible and sometimes just didn't. Sienna Khan's skill regularly bugged out. Etc etc.

Compounding every one of the game's problems was the fact that the developers were extremely unresponsive and regularly ignored community feedback. Neon went untouched for ages despite the community crying out for changes at every level of play, units like Jinn and Barracks took far too long to be addressed for the community's satisfaction, even basic QoL changes or new features the community had been begging for for years never got implemented... Like, it was real bad. Units were extremely over- or undertuned and stayed that way for a long time, patches gradually went from addressing large numbers of units to only addressing a few, the devs stopped responding...

And eventually the game just died. The incompetent balancing drove players away (the playerbase decreased to the point where most people who still bothered with the game could identify the bots the devs seeded the lower levels of the ladder with so that newer players had someone to play). The devs went AWOL around December 2020 and just kinda stopped pushing shit and the team running the social media (official Twitter, community Discord, etc) admitted that they had no idea what the fuck was going on. The game went a month or two without any new content while the community wondered what the hell was happening and posted memes to cope, and then there was an official announcement that the game was shutting in January 2021. I don't know if the devs just sucked or if the killing blow was really Rooster Teeth's influence. I know RT had a hand in it because they were pushing the dev team very hard to ship new units in time for Volume 7 of the main show's release and that led to a lot of the problems mentioned above with the game balance, but I don't know how much responsibility each party bears.

Well, that's my half-remembered history of Amity Arena. As with almost everything else Rooster Teeth has ever touched, it remains an object lesson of what not to do.

Sorry it took so long, I've been very busy.

[henrysglock]

hey so how much awareness do the alt timelines have of each other?? I'm assuming that Edward and Brenner(both) are obviously aware of multiple timelines, but like...is El??will??Henry?? When the timeline switch happens, is it like a swap of places or just, like, possession?? Also also, in s4, it's implied that henward did not have the ability to open gates until he absorbed El's powers in s3....so then, his version of the ud did not breach in the real world until then, but then, are there different dimensions that are all being referred to as the ud, or different sections of it?? Or is Edward responsible for the changes in the atmosphere of the ud in each season?? I would love to hear your theories cause i find that you're able to analyse these things in such an accessible way that it is easier to take as a well thought out canon interpretation :)

All good questions, Nonnie!!

Brenner, at the very least, is aware of both. He's got a whole Dr. Who thing going on, which heroesbyler has talked about before. Edward, if we're correct in our who's-who in the Creel house flashbacks, is aware of the timelines via his powers/time exploration. Henry, in NINA, talks about spending years with 001 in the Rainbow Room, as if 001 is separate from himself (001 being Edward, later Vecna). So yes, I'd say that by the time we hit 1979, they're all aware of each other.

As for El, she doesn't seem quite awake yet, One might say (god that was bad haha). She's definitely confused re: the events of NINA, but I don't think she's put it together that there's something weirder going on than just one man having a violent psychotic break because of Brenner.

Will, though...that depends on what he experienced in the UD in 1983. He doesn't seem to be outwardly aware of any time differences, but then again...El didn't even know Henry existed until she was reminded of him. So there's definitely a nugget in his 1983 memories.

In regard to timeline swaps: if we're talking about swaps in present/80s canon...it's hard to say. There are some dead giveaways, like Scott randomly changing houses, Will's eye color changing from being listed as brown to clearly being green, Hopper randomly forgetting that Scott exists at all in ST3 when he met him firsthand in ST1...the list goes on. It's hard to match up which timeline goes with which season, though. It does seem like we're currently in the Henry timeline, given the layout of the Creel house (door in the chess room vs no door/wallpaper color swaps in that same room), but it's difficult to track outside of that.

If we're talking timeline collisions, that's a bit different. I'm of the opinion that certain dates are pinch-points, where the timelines meet and things get messed up. The 1959 murders, the 1979 massacre, Will's vanishing/El (supposedly) opening the gate in 1983, the Russian key of 1985, and now in 1986...all seem to be these pinch-points. They're moments where a version of Henward screws things up in an attempt to break free of whatever prison he currently finds himself trapped in, and by the time we get to 1986...everything is messed up.

It's a bit easier to track in NINA (though not by much I'll admit). At least there we can track hairstyles, handedness, formality, speech patterns, inconsistencies in dialogue, etc...and we're consistently swapping between which of the two timelines we/El are viewing.

Re: Vecna's ability to open gates vs the UD discrepancies...I'd agree with you. The up-down UD, the literal upside-down, has not breached into the RSU until ST4. Before that, all we see are right-left doorways.

Within the right-left UD, there is a distinct biome. The right-left UD has the demogorgon(s) and demodogs, wherease we see none of those in the up-down UD. We also see no demobats in the right-left UD, which are the sole creatures in the up-down UD. They're distinctly different spaces, and seem to be completely separate from each other.

(This is furthered by the distinct separation between Vecna and the Mindflayer, which...we never see the two of them together. Vecna never uses the Shadow, and he's a different person entirely from the guy we see shaping the Shadow. It stands to reason that, at least in ST1-2, they are separate. ST3 is a weird situation with the possessed Billy-Heather pair, with Billy acting distinctly like Edward despite Vecna's UD not being open. There's also a matter of Billy's vision, which is distinctly different from Will's shadow-walking pre-possession. Billy's is closer to a true Vecna vision, which makes me wonder if ST3 isn't Vecna and Mindflayer guy working in tandem. It would explain the change in flaying method, which is distinctly Vecna, and it would tie up the plot hole of how Vecna got El's powers if he's separate from Mindflayer guy.)

At this point, the different versions of the UD are just being referred to as a whole...and that is a telltale sign of our characters lacking the realization that they're entirely different guys in entirely different spaces.

That would neatly explain many of the atmosphere changes/added mental components/etc. that we see between ST1-3 and ST4.

[layingeggs]

Playing more Sable. Trying not to just compare it to Zelda, but also I like how it does some of the same things at a lower scale.

I'm two hours in. I've got out of the tutorial area/canyon. I'm out in the wider open world and can start doing the main quests proper or make my own mistakes and explore wherever I like. And I've noticed that there doesn't seem so far to be any way to increase your Stamina meter?

Sable has this dinky little Stamina meter that runs out after only a few seconds of sprinting and climbing. So far, I don't see anyway to upgrade it to get more Stamina and be able to climb higher walls.

And I really like that. It gives you a very clear idea of what you can and can't climb. And attempting to climb something that's just ever so slightly out of reach is a short experiment. And attempting the same climb from multiple angles also quickly either gets you to the top or doesn't.

It also makes me feel more like I've actually earned it when I sequence break the tutorial area by climbing somewhere the devs seemed to have missed. Managing all that with just my dinky little Stamina.

Zelda ties the Stamina meter to exploration via as you upgrade more and more of the map becomes accessible. There are areas where you can't climb and you can remember to come back once you have more Stamina. I like that. But it does mean in the Zelda late game you have a silly long Stamina meter and you don't have a clear sense of what is or isn't climbable and experimenting can take several minutes and easily get you lost.

Especially when you add in clothes that make you climb faster and potions that refill your Stamina meter and potions that give you a temporary second Stamina meter.

Especially when you remember that in older Zelda games, glass bottles were almost as valuable as the main quest items like the Master Sword or Triforce, you absolutely had to have an empty bottle before you were allowed to scoop up potion and you can only carry a few bottles.

Whereas in switch Zelda glass bottles just materialise from the ether any time you cook something and you can carry theoretically infinite of them.

Meaning that you can climb and restore your Stamina meter a theoretically infinite number of times.

What walls are or are not climbable gets really messy when you start to throw in 'theoretically infinite Stamina restore'.

I think the first game I ever played that had the mechanic of 'any vertical surface is climbable, not just ladders or textured walls or walls with yellow paint on them' was Grow Home.

Grow Home also had you explore through climbing, and collect items to upgrade and upgrade to expand range of exploration.

The crucial difference in Grow Home was there was no Stamina, you were a robot who could climb infinitely, but you were climbing a plant. You needed to care for and feed the plant. And as the plant grew, the stuff you could climb to naturally expanded.

So in Grow Home, there are no unclimbable walls. There is only the plant, and how big it is, and how proud you are of growing it up that big.

Coming back to Sable, you have those very hard limits on Stamina and climbing. But I like it. Having those limits makes the game world feel much more intuitive to me. And makes me feel much cleverer for getting something you shouldn't be.

[nerice]

🚫for your ocs generally (if you got worldbuilding details about recreational drugs or something similar this is your chance to go on about that i suppose)

☕️for eliada specifically?

UWAAAAA ty for asking yes lore facts nd some familiar content coming right up >:333 !!!!

🚫 does your oc drink/smoke? do they do it regularly, or is it more on occasion or for special events?

oooohhhh vices post heckyeah letsgo!! the only worldbuilding tidbit to note here is that 'smoking' here means fantasy weed tm. there are different strains some of which have the regular weed effects, others are more like classic nicotine; that being said. here's an assortment>>

reina // loves a good red wine, thinks all other forms of alcohol are undignified + also cannot hold her liquor AT ALL but she is good at saving face until she is in private. cannot stand (jumie's habit of) smoking >:33

in tandem, garvith // like reina a fkcin lightweight which doesn't have much bearing on account of Serpent Deity That Keeps To Her Shadow but becomes vry much relevant for later with >>>

avery // also a red wine connoisseur but never gets drunk on account of garvith soaking up all of the intoxication lol. it does make her switch into echo mode more easily though bc garvith doesn't have the wits to temper their connection/her access to his powers when drunk. rip

jumie // doesn't drink at all, picks up smoking from arianna bc her tobacco mixes alleviate the frequent headaches she gets from working on the descendant chronicle late at night

arianna // graslight bottlekeep, girlweed. moderate alcoholic and everyone's weed dealer. has special fun cultivating her weed plants to have different colored smoke because she is extra like that. puts leah n sky to bed with a little drink instead of parenting them which makes jumie furious lmfao <3

sky // has a rocky start with alcohol bc it messes with her strength control (bad times) but is a riot drunk by seed arc; might get into ill-advised bar brawls here and there w. never rly picks up smoking other than the few times ari tried to convert her

gray // most alcoholism oc to never get drunk (soulless immunity) except the one time he shot himself into oblivion and achieved true intoxication which [🐇prelude] nd while he does partake in smoking occasionally (vexing reina in amasa) he usually dislikes it bc he doesn't need a headache on top of ✨Soulless Momence✨

linn // yes

☕️ does your oc prefer coffee, tea, hot chocolate, milk, water, or some other drink? how do they like to take this drink (ex. coffee with milk, hot chocolate with whipped cream, a specific kind of tea, etc)?

vibrates at this immensely bc!!!!!!!! the answer is tea but. he and fauve have an incredibly elaborate setup where whenever eliada entertains guests/clients fauve will bring out tea for them to chat over. the secret here is that fauve's Knowing Eyes [mute city heaven lore] allow her to instantly understand certain details about his visitors which she then communicates via the exact arrangement of the tea. which flavor, what is added, sugar alrdy dissolving or on an extra dish (how many cubes) which side the spoon is on, where it is facing, choice of cup etc etc etc they have a super complex system worked out which always gives eliada the upper hand in conversations. (esp for cold reading soulless upon first meeting them. as you do ;3) nobody has ever figured out this is how he does it wwww

also for final facts. study buddies liquor preferences

[kariachi]

Some commissionwork! 1900 words of OC goodness for @sxilor-1010!

~~~

“So, what do you think it is?”

The twins had bolted from their father’s room as soon as they’d realized they had a new and curious Thing to investigate, too excited to think to act inconspicuous until they were nearly to their bedroom. Thankfully, nobody had been there to see the stuttering switch from a full run to a totally non-suspicious meander as they went inside and shut the door. Almost they’d considered locking it, before deciding their family would probably have more questions if they tried the door and it was locked than if they looked inside and found them hiding something.

You could bluff why you were hiding something, but doors didn’t really get locked around their household. Hence the situation at hand.

“I don’t know,” Scorch said, half-leaning over Ignus’s shoulder as he turned the strange piece over and over in his hands. It was an odd, irregular shape, a single curve and many straight edges with sharp corners, with a mulberry crescent moon stood out against the blackness of it.

“It has to be something cool, for Papa to be keeping it in his room.”

“I mean, Papa does keep a lot of boring stuff too. Like paperwork,” Scorch pointed out.

“Yeah, but those are in his office, this was in his room,” Ignus countered, shaking his head. “He doesn’t keep just anything in there.”

“He might, we don’t know.” Ignus rolled his eyes.

“He probably doesn’t keep just anything in there,” he said. “I bet he got it off some nightmare monster or something.”

“Or-” You could see the possibilities sinking into Scorch’s mind as he picked up his brother’s train of thought. “-maybe it’s some sort of ancient artifact.”

“Or maybe it’s an amulet of power!” Scorch’s face twisted a bit at the idea, even as Ignus nearly vibrated with the possibilities, and he eyed the piece closer.

“It doesn’t look like an amulet. The shape’s all wrong, and it’s not on a cord or anything.”

“So, maybe that’s why Papa doesn’t wear it or anything, because it’s weird.” That seemed, reasonably sensible. Rolling all these thoughts and ideas in his head, Scorch pulled away and stood up off the bed.

“Come on,” he said, “I think we’ve got a book we can use.”

~~~

One’s sister being a bookworm by nature can lead to many issues, especially when one needs to access the library while not letting people know what they’re up to. After all, the twins had broken the rule to not go into their father’s room, and had taken something they’d decided was valuable at that. It wasn’t as if they could just walk up and risk her seeing what they had on them. And so, they had been forced to lay in wait for her to leave before bolting inside.

They had to be quick.

The shelf with the spellbooks they could probably have gotten to via muscle memory, between their studies and their use of the ones on the lower shelves in some of their pranks. They skidded to a stop at the foot of it, and Scorch immediately raised up on his tiptoes and stretched to reach the top shelf. Technically, those were the books they weren’t supposed to have access to- their mother had once mentioned rearranging that shelf once Crane was old enough to get into things- but they’d seen other members of the family working with them. Knew, to some extent, what was inside.

“I’ll hold the shelf,” Ignus whispered as it became apparent they were simply too short to reach on their own, and they couldn’t rely on time to drag over a chair or something and put it back after, “you climb.” Scorch looked at him questioningly, but nodded, waiting for Ignus to put his weight and strength against the piece of furniture before he climbed up a few levels. Only just far enough to grab the book they were looking for before jumping back to the ground. He waved it with a grin his brother matched.

They dashed out of the library before catching themselves and meandering back to their room.

~~~

Five. They went through five different identification spells and got nothing. Worse, they couldn’t be sure whether it was that the piece couldn’t be identified with the spells they had at hand, or if they weren’t doing the unfamiliar magic right.

Just in case, they tried each spell multiple times. Alone. Together. Changing little bits up. Enunciating as much as they possibly could. Everything and anything.

Still nothing.

“Okay,” Scorch said, setting the book aside with finality, “we’ve got to try something else.”

“Yeah.” Ignus nodded as he spoke. “If I look at another spell I’m going to go cross-eyed.” With a sigh he leaned back enough to flop across Scorch’s bed. “Maybe it’s one of those things where if you get it hot it does something?”

“That sounds, kinda risky..” Scorch said tentatively.

“We don’t have to light it on fire or anything, just get it close enough to warm up. Like with a candle.” With a quiet hum, Scorch considered this, then tossed the piece to Ignus.

“It’s worth a try.”

~~~

The fire didn’t do anything to the piece and that is all that will be said of that incident. Nothing important was damaged, nobody noticed, it’s fine.

~~~

(“If Mama asks, we don’t know where this shirt went, and aren’t even sure I ever owned it, okay?” Watching as his twin shoved the wadded-up mass of cloth under his bed to be disposed of at a later date, Ignus nodded along.

“I’ve never seen it before in my life. She’s probably mixing it up with one of your other shirts, or maybe something Big Brother used to own.” Crawling back out from under the bed, Scorch threw him a grin.

“Exactly.”)

~~~

They spent the next good while working on the solving of the mystery. If circumstances had been different mayhaps they would have given up after the fire, or at least gone to one of their elder siblings for help, but no. For one, there was no way their siblings wouldn’t have concerns about the matter if they found out. Best case scenario: they took the piece away as something potentially dangerous. Worst case scenario: They told their parents. As such, the two of them continued to keep matters to themselves.

They would try some new idea to get this mysterious piece to do something, it would fail, and they would try another.

Putting it on a cord and trying to use it as a divining object. Nothing.

Sitting there, wracking their brains for any odd things around the estate it could maybe serve as a key for. Not a clue.

Saying random spells and magical phrasings at it. Didn’t do a thing.

Doing a stone rubbing? Revealed jack all.

Holding it up to a mirror? May as well not have happened at all.

~~~

Failure got tiring after a point, and getting called away started to feel like a relief, favorite meal or no.

~~~

Dinner that evening was, an experience.

~~~

“Really? Really?”

“What was I supposed to say, ‘we took something from Papa’s room and have been trying to figure it out’? We needed some sort've lie!”

“You didn’t have to build on it!” Shaking his head, Scorch knelt to grab the piece out from under Ignus’s bed.

“I’m sorry, Mama asked and I panicked.”

“I’m not helping you this time. It’s our birthday, we shouldn’t be giving presents.”

“You say that now, but you haven’t abandoned me yet,” Ignus said, sitting on Scorch’s bed and patting the spot beside him until his twin came and sat in it. “Anyway, you have to admit it worked.”

“Yeah,” Scorch sighed. “If Big Sister asks what book exactly we got the idea from-”

“We’ll say we borrowed it from a friend a while back, can’t remember the name. Right now though, we still need to figure out what this thing does!” Though Scorch didn’t pop right back into excitement like his brother, he still smiled as he turned the piece over in his hand.

“So, identification spells didn’t work,” he said, “neither did fire, putting it up to a mirror didn’t do anything…” Humming, he tapped a crooked finger against his mouth. “I think there’s some things that do stuff when you put them in water- like stuff from dragons and sea monsters and things. We could try that?” Ignus grinned.

“To the bathroom then,” he said, shoving off the bed. “A full sink should work, right?” The enthusiasm was contagious, and all brotherly squabbles fell to the wayside as Scorch followed after him.

“I think so. As long as we can get it fully submerged.”

~~~

One ear each on the hallway, the pair stared into the sink. It was full as they could get it, with the piece sat, precariously and off-kilter, in the vicinity of the bottom. They had been stood there for about four minutes. The piece had done nothing.

“I was honestly really hoping on this one,” Scorch said. “I mean, the moon is associated with water, it would’ve made sense.” Ignus turned a look on him- not upset, but questioning.

“Why didn’t we try earlier if that’s, a thing?”

“I only thought of it while we were filling the sink. It made so much sense…” Heaving a sigh, Ignus nodded along beside him.

“Well, that’s a wash then,” he said, then gave a little laugh at his own pun. “Maybe it has to be outside? Like, under the moon and in water?” With a sigh of his own, Scorch reached in and grabbed the piece out, almost going to dry it on his shirt before he thought better and grabbed a towel.

“It’s worth a shot. Can’t hurt, right?”

~~~

Every manor that had ever existed had a pond somewhere, and when you lived there it wasn’t hard to find. Yes, when you were a pair of young boys trying to keep a secret you still had to sit back and impatiently wait for everyone to head back to their rooms so you could sneak out to it, but still. It was there, they could’ve found it with their eyes closed, and they even managed not just climb out a window out of pure pent-up energy and enthusiasm.

Ignus slipped the piece into the water, watching it vanish in the darkness, and the pair waited with bated breath.

Waited.

Waited.

Waited.

Heaved a sigh in unison.

“Okay, I think we can say water is out now,” Scorch said, nearly whined, as his brother rolled up his sleeves and set to feeling around the edge of the pond for the piece. If they lost it there they really would be in trouble. Huffing as he pulled it from the muck and water, Ignus accepted the towel Scorch handed him and set to cleaning the piece and himself off. For a long while they simply sat there at the edge of the pond in silence, each’s face screwed up in thought.

“I’m out of ideas,” Ignus said, swallowing back a yawn and glaring at the piece like it had caused it. Scorch didn’t bother hiding his own. Magic and excitement were tiring things, and they’d been swamped in them.

“It’s getting late,” he reasoned. “We’ll think better in the morning.” Ignus sighed, still glaring at the piece, but eventually nodded. Together, the two of them returned to their feet and turned, dejected, to sneak back inside.

Tomorrow then, surely, they would figure this strange item out.

[glittercleric]

There's been a lot of fuckery with my time-off sheet at work which is causing me so much anxiety, oh my gods. Ranty explanation of the situation under the cut.

I had Friday and today off. It's unclear if that was approved, as my time-off sheet has disappeared in transit between HR and my library. My boss told me to stay home regardless, but I still got a sick note just in case HR gets any funny ideas.

I had originally planned to take this week off, but had to cross that out due to my instructor signing me up for an external training. HR claims it was still approved back in July when I sent them the sheet for a different time-off request. Which is funny bc I distinctly remember that the sheet came back with a note that October couldn't be approved without the signature of my superior (which I couldn't get back then bc I was scheduled to switch libraries in September, so I knew I would get a new superior).

I called one of the highest-up people in HR about this mess at the request of my instructor. They opened my file and told me about Oct 16-20 allegedly being a week off, but then suddenly refused to look at anything else and said I should write an email. Knowing I'd not be there on Fri/Mon, I requested to write it from my personal email, which was rejected - it had to be my work email, which I can only access while physically at the library. They said they'd tell me what time off had been approved later in the day. They didn't. So now I don't know if I have this week off or not until I go to the library.

When I go in tomorrow and it turns out I do have this week off, I will be in the uncomfortable position to have to tell my team to redo the entire shift plan to factor in my absence because if I work despite having a day off, I a) cannot write it on my time sheet, so it's unpaid, unrewarded overtime, and b) I will not have insurance coverage if I have a workplace accident.

I actually wanted to have next week off. With the time-sheet lost, I cannot hand in new requests, and even if it suddenly reappeared, I'd already be too late for that because we need to give HR a week in advance for the physical sheet to arrive via internal mail and be processed by them. So I'm losing that week off. I do not have enough time left in the year that's not school, so effectively, I have to voluntarily forfeit those 5 days because we cannot take them over to the next year or cash them out.

I have other time off planned in late October, early November, and late December. It's unclear if I can take that with the time-off sheet gone, or if I will have enough vacation days left for that, which entirely depends on if this week counts or not. If I cannot take those days, they count as voluntarily forfeited too (in total, I'd lose some 15 days of paid time off in the worst case scenario).

Anyway, as you might be able to guess, I'm close to a fucking mental breakdown. I'm terrified that Friday / today aka Schroedinger's days off didn't actually get approved, so they'd technically be days I failed to show, and while I have a sick note, it's a suspicious one they could challenge - which all could theoretically end in me losing my job.

Fuck this entire place, seriously.

[heartfragment]

The long-awaited update to Book One is finally here!

A ton of new & high requested features are now available, including:

Art style selection between "style a" and "style b" for more consistency than the previous version

A male MC variation

Pronoun selection (she/her, he/him, and they/them)

Optional voice acting for Xani / the MC provided by Jessica Spencer (feminine voice) and Jerron Bacat (masculine voice)

Extra scenes & options to build romance prior to the endings

Art Updates:

The number one requested feature / update was more art style consistency. A lot of people found it off-putting that the style of the CGs was so different from the sprites. While Momoriin, the original sprite artist, was unavailable to work on CGs, the help of amazing artists Drulle and Saigogogo has allowed for a new version of CGs that match more seamlessly with the original sprites.

For those who already love the CG artstyle, you can select "style b" to see sprites & CGs both by the lovely artist who did the original scenes, Mintstea! You can also switch between the two styles at any time during gameplay, and both styles of any unlocked CG can be viewed from the gallery menu.

Main Character Variation:

As unlocked by our amazing Kickstarter backers, you can now play as a male/masculine version of the protagonist! It was highly requested that pronouns be interchangeable, and indeed they are. You can switch the protagonist's appearance, voice, etc at any time while you play the game.

This difference is not just cosmetic. A lot of scenes (especially in Clive's route and the upcoming Book Two release which includes Shannon's route) have dialogue and choice variations depending on which version of the protagonist you play as. And if you want to take it a step further, you can also turn on option MC voicing as well!

Upcoming Price Structure Change:

After the unfortunate incident that went on recently (detailed here), I've made the decision to change the price structure. But rest assured, anyone who got Book One prior to this change will still have access to the upcoming DLC for free. I'm in contact with Steam support to get this arranged, which will essentially mean anyone who has Book One right now will get access to a free DLC package, while anyone obtaining a copy after the change will get access to the paid DLC package. 

But the good news: that means anyone who hasn't yet picked up Book One because they couldn't afford a copy can get ahold of it for free! And if you like it, you can buy the future releases. <3

Book Two Progress Report:

First off, I want to offer a huge apology for the release delay. A lot has been happening, both in my personal life, general health, and my work life. As the sole writer of Heart Fragment aside from a few additional scenes provided by Nico H (developer of Entropic Float), any issues that I face directly impact the speed I can work at.

Book Two: Belief Fragments will still be available this summer (2022). Lana's route is finished aside from end programming + beta testing, and Shannon's is nearly finished being written and will then be moved into the programming stage as well. I really appreciate your patience with me!

Lastly, if anyone runs into any issues with the new update, please feel free to contact me any time, whether it is via the Heart Fragment discord server, by email (heartfragmentvn@hotmail.com), the Steam community page, or right here on tumblr.

Have a lovely day, everyone!

[everygame]

Ninja JaJaMaru-kun (NES)

Developed/Published by: Jaleco Released: 15/11/1985 Completed: 30/03/2023 Completion: Beat all 20 levels before it loops. Version Played: Switch Online Trophies / Achievements: n/a

Ninja JaJaMaru-kun is a series with absolutely no name recognition in the west, even if ININ have put out one of their stupid retro collections of the series where you don’t get all the games unless you buy a specific edition, instead of just, you know, putting out the games in one simple package (if you search for “Ninja JaJaMaru” on the eshop, you get four different options, and you have to buy two of them to get all the games. But makes sure it’s the right two!)

Of course, you could forget all of that and just download the first game via the Japanese Switch Online service, like what I did, because… like me, you don’t have any nostalgia for this series at all. It’s not like it’s Turrican or something (that’s got three different confusing collections thanks to ININ.)

I suppose what makes Ninja JaJaMaru-kun interesting though is that it was a huge success in Japan selling over one million copies–and this, remember, is coming just a couple of months after Super Mario Bros. was released. This would probably make it surprising that it never came out on NES until you realise that City Connection, Jaleco’s previous title, wouldn’t make it out in the US until May 1988, nearly three years after its original release, by which time Contra, Mega Man and Castlevania have all come out, rendering the simple arcade thrills of a wee car driving (or a wee ninja jumping) around a bit old hat. And, to be honest, there’s enough of a similarity between City Connection and Ninja JaJaMaru-kun as side-scrolling platformers that if you had to release one, you’re probably going to release the one that everyone understands (cars) rather than the one with a more specific cultural reference point (ninjas.) Even 80s ninja action films were having their last gasp by 1988 (American Ninja 2: The Confrontation probably the last notable release, and that came out in 1987 and didn’t do that well.) Although I suppose they could have tried to claim JaJaMaru was a reptile of some sort and ride the rising Turtle craze...

That all said, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I quite liked Ninja JaJaMaru-kun, to the point where I would happily say I liked it quite a bit more than the NES port of City Connection. It’s an extremely basic little platformer, something that clearly speaks to the pre-Super Mario Bros. era of Mappy and Ice Climber. Every level features eight enemies, two on each of the four levels of the level (er, look at the picture if this doesn’t make sense) with for the majority of the levels the last top right enemy a “boss” that’s a bit harder to kill (until in later levels they turn into a normal enemy and aren’t quite as bad, somehow.) You can jump, and shoot shurikens that don’t travel especially far, and to get between the different levels you can destroy platforms above you, which sometimes expose power-ups (or bombs, if you’re unlucky). Ninja JaJaMaru-kun only dies to being shot by enemies, not touching them, and for about half the game, you can just shoot the enemies, but from then on you have to stun them by jumping on their heads (or by manufacturing a way to make them drop a level and fall over) so you can shoot them.

Oh, and the power-ups are things like a little cart (?) that allows you to just run into all the enemies at full speed. And if you collect three… you ride a giant frog (???) that freezes all the enemies and allows you to jump about eating them–basically making beating a level trivial.

Additionally, at the top of the screen you can see the “Catfish Pirate” and Princess Sakura who you are, ostensibly, trying to rescue–which you can only do in a special bonus level where you get to shoot your shurikens upwards at the Catfish Pirate, accessible if you collect three sakura petals that Princess Sakura infrequently drops during normal levels. Which you can’t hang around waiting for, because if you take too long in a level the Catfish Pirate starts going mental chucking bombs at you. 

In description, it doesn’t really sound like all that, and it’s honestly a bit… kusoge-adjacent, considering it’s got jerky scrolling, poor animation, dodgy collision detection and really not that much going on. But it’s sort of weirdly pleasant to play once you get into it, with the “jump on an enemy to shoot them” mechanic quickly becoming second nature making clearing off levels efficiently feel quite rewarding. It’s not all gravy; sometimes the boss enemies are going to juke you in way that feels genuinely unfair, and you can sometimes get caught in little collision-loops that just end up in your death.

But I can kind of see why this was a phenomenon–at least at a time when Super Mario Bros. hasn’t yet set the tone for everything yet to come. 

Will I ever play it again? I can’t imagine I will, and it hasn’t done enough to make me put up with ININ’s bullshit to get the sequels.

Final Thought: “But wait,” you might be asking “what’s the deal with the giant frog? I mean you kind of just glossed over that.” 

Well, turns out it’s a reference to The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya, a series of Japanese books that was published in the early 1800s, in which a giant frog that lives on a mountain teaches the main character magic, including the ability to summon and ride giant frogs. This apparently also inspired some characters in Naruto, and is probably also why that Pokemon Greninja is a ninja frog. The more you know!

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