#i'll miss you 3ds internet

[starryguykai]

When I first started wanting to branch out with the games I played, I had no idea where to look. SO!

The following under the cut is a very long masterpost of indie games I recommend, sorted by category and alphabetical order, with short descriptions and links to their store pages.

Titles italicized are free, and I'll be updating this as I play more 👍

EXPLORATION

Babdi - Babdi is a beautiful and quiet brutalist city, with your only concrete goal in this game to get a train ticket to leave. This game takes about 1-2 hours to fully explore, and it has a lovely sense of place and scale.

Hollow Knight - A tiny bug knight explores a ruined kingdom, looking for answers. This game has had its praises sung a lot, but I cannot recommend it enough, with a melancholy atmosphere, very charming character design, and lovely art direction that balances skillfully between being cute and mournful.

Rain World - You are a slugcat, a creature in the middle of the foodchain, exploring a broken biomechanical ecosystem. You must learn about each microbiome in order to survive, and get enough food to hibernate before the deadly rain comes. This game has fantastic creature design and programming, my favorite background art direction of any game I've ever played, and insanely intricate lore. I highly recommend getting the Downpour DLC-- it not only fixes the personal gripes I have with the base game, but adds an immense amount to the story and world with five new campaigns.

Somnium - Your email got lost in transit, and you have to explore a early-2000s webscape to recover it! With art direction that captures the whimsy of the early internet, and very charming character design and writing, it takes about half an hour to play and I was smiling the whole time.

Outer Wilds - An open world game about space exploration, xenoarchaeology, and physics. This is my favorite game of all time, and in order for the game to work, you can't say much about it! It also has a horror dlc with its own story.

FPS

ULTRAKILL - Humanity is dead. Blood is fuel. Hell is full. Inspired by Dante's Inferno and Greek mythology, you play as a machine tearing its way through hell in PS1-like graphics. Its hard to oversell the strength of Ultrakill's concepts and how well they're executed-- this game is constantly saying "do you know what would be so cool" and is right every single time.

HORROR

Go to Bed - A very simple horror game about going to bed (it should take less than half an hour to play).

Signalis - A robot named Elster fights her way down through a sick facility to fulfill a mysterious promise. I can't say much about it without spoiling, but its prose, gritty combat, and art direction are phenomenal.

SOMA - Simon Jarrett goes to the doctor to get his brain scanned, and wakes up 100 years in the future, in an underwater facility full of robots with human consciousnesses. This game has a "safe mode" where the "monsters" don't kill you, which I recommend as its more accurate to the world, more convenient to play, and in the majority of cases, doesn't reduce the horror. Even playing in "safe mode" it was the most intense horror I've ever experienced by a landslide, and is very dear to me in its environments, writing, and concepts! I would highly recommend checking the content warnings, as well as playing when you're both emotionally and psychologically stable.

Subway Midnight - A young woman takes the subway, where many people have gone missing. What could go wrong? Really lovely combination of 2D and 3D that makes the most of its limitation of "walking through a subway car" to create a game that's charming, beautiful, and very unique.

PUZZLE

Freshly Frosted - A game about making donuts! You arrange donuts with a series of conveyer belts, the factory's work lining up with the music's beat. Its very relaxing, and the narration is very pleasant. A really great game to wind down with at the end of the day.

Manifold Garden - You solve puzzles by changing the gravity of an infinite world without fall damage. This game definitely has a learning curve while getting used to the physics rules, but the puzzles are clever and intuitive once it clicks! Its also very pretty.

Mini Motorways - You connect cars to their destinations through plotting roads, bridges, and motorways. Like Freshly Frosted, its a simple concept, but something nice to wind down with!

Smile for Me - A game where you communicate through nodding and shaking your head! You are the local florist's kid, staying in a "wellness resort", a bizarre cross between a hotel and psychiatric ward. Your mission? Make people happy! Really sweet with an unsettling undercurrent that gets addressed in an interesting way.

Vignettes - You rotate objects to make them transform, and explore different areas and themes as the forms fluctuate. Another simple, but beautiful game, with really fantastic art direction!

ROGUELIKES

Going Under - An unpaid intern battles her way through the dungeons of failed start-ups. A criminally underrated, super fun anti-capitalist satire with a huge variety of builds, that uses the "corporate art style" in a beautiful way!

TEXT-BASED

Citizen Sleeper - You are an escaped Sleeper, a cyborg with partial human memories, who fled to a massive space station. The company that made your body programmed for planned obsolescence: what will you make of the time you have? This is a constant game of juggling food, health, and money as you roleplay and explore, with beautiful character art and prose. It feels like a sad hug, housing a wide variety of very touching stories.

GUTLESS - A short story of an angry man traveling to the bottom of the ocean. Raw, harsh, and visceral. This story is NSFW.

In Other Waters - By the same devs of Citizen Sleeper, but an earlier game! You are the AI in a marine biologist's suit, and guide her as she navigates through the waters of an alien world. The only visuals you see are dots, walls, and elevation maps to mark your surroundings. If you're a fan of the deep sea or speculative biology, you'll love this game!

Please Tell Me You Love Me - Your old favorite online rpg game is shutting down, and you're having one last hurrah with your guild. Short, sweet, and will leave you with a smile.

The Ouroborous Incident - A notorious tech company releases a strange new product. An interesting short story with a fun conclusion, it dips in and out of sci-fi, comedy, and horror, while sharing information through different tabs of updating text threads, transcripts, and news reports.

UNSORTABLE

Inscryption - A grisly roguelike card game that takes place in an escape room, where you're trapped by a mysterious man that you can only see the eyes of. I recommend going in not knowing much, as this game has a lot of surprises. You play the story by default, but it also has an endless mode that is very fun!

What the Golf? - A very silly game about golf, made for people who hate golf. Takes the concept of "golf" and plays with it like silly putty, and has a ridiculous variety of mechanics.

[sweetmariihs2]

List of inspirations that I noticed in ✨️The Amazing Digital Circus✨️

an almost-essay (PART 1)

When I watched the first episode for the first time I started to notice several similarities to other subjects that I also like and know, other fandoms and popular things on the internet, and I soon thought about sharing them on Tumblr (which I'm doing now).

I know there will be things that other people have noticed that will be missing from the blog, but I will try to include all the things that I remember recognizing at that moment. Feel free to share them, though!

I don't know the formal names of some things I'm gonna mention, and also my english It's not the best, I'm trying to practice my writing <3

I'll have to divide this blog into two parts because Tumblr doesn't support more than 10 images per blog. grrgrrgr I really wanted to put everything together but I can't. At the end of the blog I will put a link to part 2 and you can continue reading [when i finish the part 2 of course]

1 - Popee the Perfomer

Popee the Performer is a low-budget animation made in 2000, at the time when 3d animation was still a new technology. It's a collection of shorts and they talk about three circus performers' interactions. People found this on the internet in 2021 and they started a new fandom on top of it. What makes this show talked about it's the disturbing situations the characters put themselves through. There are a lot of violent scenes and sometimes the characters die by the end of the episode, but when we go to the next one they're just alive again, and that makes us question if they are living stuck in an eternal loop with no way of getting out of that small circus setting.

The 3d is pretty simple, mostly because it's old, but that makes me think about the connections between PTP and TADG are the aesthetics, the whole "disturbing adult cartoon about serious topics with a children's colorful aesthetic" thing, and also those connections with the Nintendo 64 graphics. I'M GONNA MENTION IT TOO!!

And a part of this fandom also it's part of Raggedy Ann and Andy's fandom. They were pretty close in 2021.

2 - Raggedy Ann And Andy

Ragatha, next one

I'm kidding there's more

Their fandom started around 2021 because the YouTube algorythm just decided that it was time to recommend a video about Raggedy Andy to EVERYONE! And that's how I discovered them too <3 (I WAS THEREEE I WAS THERE). Andy got the main focus and he was everyone's dream boyfriend lol

Also that's completely unrelated but I wanted to say that I'm one of the people whose video was recommended to everyone through YouTube algorythm and helped the fandom to grow even more (I'm so proud of myself guys I'm sorry awnqbehdjwndbwjdnh)

I believe that if that first video that helped me (and more people) to discover them were never recommended to us, maybe Ragatha wouldn't even have that design!! It's alright that Ann is a doll from the 1900s, but the whole "Raggedy Ann And Andy" thing wasn't a fandom topic, they were just normal ragdolls and they were recognized only by grannies and "the anabelle doll" (this one makes me pissed)

3 - Nintendo 64 (and old 3d art)

And this recognition that it is a fandom united this subject to other famous fandoms, leading to the same audience, and this audience is also TADG's audience. I'll talk more about this at the end of the blog! (Edit: Part 2 of the blog. *silently cries*)

And there's this blog:

That low budget 3d aesthetic it's turning really popular recently. I'm not much of an expert on the subject since I don't know much about games, but I recognize it from the old graphics and my biggest reference is Mario 64. There's a good explanation for it being so popular, I have a theory that it's related to liminal spaces, but I'm not sure. Still, it's worth mentioning.... and also that bubble character really looks like chain chomp!!

They're besties

4 - liminal spaces (backrooms and the "dreamcore" aesthetic)

happy balloons because the backrooms scare me (i hate it)

I think if you're on Tumblr it's very likely that you already know what the backrooms are. A part of our reality, but outside of it. There are floors and floors of eternal levels, where you wander in the same place and don't go anywhere. As if you had broken the matrix and were trapped outside, in a bug. This has become very popular on the internet and it's interesting that it is being used as inspiration for creating a show.

Furthermore, there was also the popularization of aesthetics such as dreamcore, traumacore and weirdcore, which consist of images that look like they came out of a dream. Things that you recognize, but don't know where they came from, like a deja vu, which makes you uncomfortable. It's extremely linked to the backrooms, since it's the same feeling. Many of the images are things that take us back to childhood, to the past, but they are not right, as if they were corrupted. Old 3D is also used a lot to make some of these images, like the example I gave of the Nintendo 64. The fandoms are all interconnected!

In this whole concept they also like to be inspired by childhood characteristics, such as old images of toys, empty birthday parties, playgrounds, and it also takes us to that famous sensation on the internet that I don't remember the name of, but it is basically feeling afraid of a place where people should be going, but they aren't. Abandoned places. The fear of being alone. All those topics revolve around each other. They makes us question abour reality, "do I even exist?" (I know I do, but writing characters that way and exploring the possibilities is kinda nice)

I know a brazillian youtuber that made a good video about it, her name is Replai and in the video she talks about how Poppy Playtime's art was made, but I know that most of the people reading this don't know how to speak in portuguese so... yeah. It's a good video.

5 - Children's aesthetics (but something's off)

This gif speaks for itself. It's that traumacore/dreamcore/weirdcore thing that I was talking about.

Still talking about that empty feeling of knowing that something it's familiar but don't knowing where it came from, childhood memories can be related to this, as they are vague, distant and sometimes carry a feeling of sadness. I'm not a great expert on the subject, but somehow the way that's explored scares us, I know there's a good explanation on the internet. This reminds me of the reason why people are afraid of clowns: they wear this fixed smile on their face and try to appear friendly, but it's this frozen, empty expression that leaves us afraid that there are other intentions underneath. And the fact that they are so related to childhood and children's innocence makes us fearful, because we don't know if they can do any harm to them. (of course, this all happens subconsciously, you don't think about it that way but your brain activates this instinct of fear) (not you YOU, people with that phobia)

I refuse to believe that these things are not interconnected. There is a strange feeling that can be explored from this childish aesthetic and connection to childhood.

Many media are using this aesthetic as part of their stories, especially horror ones. Five Nights At Freddy's was a pioneer, exploring this in the early 2010s, and then there were other franchises like Poppy Playtime, Bendy And The Ink Machine, other FNAF games (and there are also discoveries of things that do this unintentionally and that were created before this popularization, like Popee the Performer. In music we also have great examples like Melanie Martinez's old albums, during the Cry Baby era. There are also other aesthetics who like to explore this childlike-creepy vibe, and they're a little unrelated to all this stuff, like Morute/Dollcore). Whenever I talk about this I remember FNAF SB Daycare, as it is the result of all these topics we have talked about so far. The Security Breach DLC "Ruin" decided to explore this fear of empty, abandoned places, but which once had happy children walking through the corridors. This feeling is very scary.

Do you remember when I gave clowns as an example? The circus is also a way to explore this scary+childhood feeling. A place where there should be lots of games, but which only causes fear, as in the case of those scary clowns. It's quite common in the media for the circus to be used as a focus of terror, however in the internet version we were talking about just now, it doesn't have to be directly a horror circus, just feeling that childish sensation and feeling that something is wrong is enough. Enough to make us feel uncomfortable. It's like the characters were suffering, but they can't scream for help, and it's a disorted vision of how a circus should look like. Hi Pomni!!

The Daycare Attendant also explores that.

6 - Bendy and Fnaf (for the same reasons I already told you all, but one more)

Jax it's Bendy's and William Afton's lost son. We don't need no DNA test.

(I'm obviously just kidding btw, his design was probably inspired by them, MOST ESPECIALLY BENDY and maybe the Cheshire Cat from Alice because of his smile??? Idk)

stay tuned for part 2 <3

[shock-micro]

Hi, I'm Mira! I'm a silly gay robot on the internet. "How," you might be wondering- don't worry! I have a two greek letter answer for you: θΔ. I'm also transfem, if you couldn't already tell by the trans flag in my profile picture.

I used to do Minecraft stuff, trying to make the game live up to its visual potential while staying within the confines of the vanilla game's engine, but now I'm kinda just burnt out of the game as a whole. Oh well! Now I just generally like looking into the visual and game design of various games.

My interests are mostly gaming-related, but I've tried to dabble in art occasionally. I like all sorts of games, like Pokémon, Minecraft, Celeste, Hollow Knight, Rain World, Risk of Rain, Ultrakill and probably even more that I'm missing, and definitely more after this post is made.

Feel free to send me asks whether we're mutuals or not!

I do have a sona, designed by a good friend of mine, @quantumpickle! I don't quite have a reference sheet, but I don't really care if you get it inaccurate- I love seeing how different people interpret the design. Whatever you do, though, don't forget the body fat- it's a reflection of who I am, at the end of the day. If you want a good picture of what I look like, look at Pickle's amazing work:

My posts are mostly reblogs, but I always end each session of scrolling with a post of my own, to know where to end next time I log on. I try as best I can to keep this account safe for work in both reblogs and original posts, though I am an adult. I will say something if this ever changes.

I am plural, sharing a body with a rabbit girl named Moon. She doesn't have her own sona yet, having recently (as of this post) decided to no longer associate herself with the character that first helped her manifest. You'll know it's her- she uses blue-colored text, and I typically don't type in proper grammar on Tumblr.

Hello, all! It's Moon- I'm not typically around as much as Mira, but it's always a pleasure when I can be~

I do have a partner, and I will always talk about them given the opportunity, but I carry a certain form of love for all of my close friends. The people I know mean a lot to me.

I love the simple things in life, from food, to nature, to the contrast of light and dark in both a literal and literary sense. I often find myself overwhelmed by everything that goes on in the world, but I find comfort in knowing the bad stuff is only a few bad people out of a beautifully diverse species.

If you couldn't tell, I generally prefer looking on the bright side and finding something to love about things rather than staying miserable all of the time. I don't get out much, and so I'd much rather give people that light to hold onto than spread the same old bleak story that you've heard from countless other people, regardless of how important it is to share. Change is built on hope, after all.

Normally people put a DNI in their bio or their pinned post, but I don't really care to do that. If you're a bitch, I'll block and move on. I don't care how you use a label, or where the other folks in your head came from, or whatever other queer-adjacent drama is the hot topic, I accept you regardless. I'm ace, I still love my partner, I can love anyone, I use it/its pronouns, I'm robokin, I've got another goober in my head whose origins are unknown, do you really think I'd hate you for being you?

That's actually an important point- even if I do think something someone's done is unforgivable, I believe that bad people are still people. In some ways, that makes things better, they have lives outside of what they commit, but it also makes things worse when you realize someone woke up and actively chose to perpetuate genocide. Some people are genuinely that bad, others are just misguided and can be helped. Ultimately, it's not my job to "save" anyone. I just try to provide a light of kindness when I can.

Wow, that was long-winded for a post that's just supposed to describe me. I suppose that's in-character for me, though. Agree with me or not, I don't really care, as long as you're respectful. I hope you've found this post helpful in understanding who I am as a person, long-winded as it is. Have a good one, whoever and wherever you are.

...now how do I pin this?

[genericpuff]

Remembering My Roots - Rest in Peace, RateMyDrawings

I've talked about my old art before on here, but never really fully in-depth about the site that hosted it. I was reminded of it today while going through my FB memories and felt like I should actually write a true eulogy towards what once was.

Once upon a time, before LORE | REKINDLED, before Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH], before I had even started drawing webcomics, I entered the world of digital art through one website - not DeviantArt, not Pixiv, but a little site called RateMyDrawings. Back in the day, it was one of the most popular browser-supported art tools, offering multiple different art tools that were, at the time, revolutionary. A flash drawing tool which could replay the progress of your drawing (but the tradeoff was that you had a limited amount of 'ink' aka recording data), a Java-supported tool that was essentially Photoshop Lite (but didn't come with the recording), and later, a more refined tool supported by HTML5 (?) that offered more 3D-like brush tools. There was also DrawChat, a live drawing flash tool where you could draw with others and chat.

And on that site, I created my first works of digital art. No drawing tablet, just a mouse and a loooot of patience. They'd host contests every now and then to win budget Wacom tablets. Sometimes I'd enter, I'd never win. I did eventually get my first drawing tablet, but by then, I'd moved on from RMD onto actual software such as GIMP and Photoshop Elements.

That site is gone now, one of the first art site deaths I'd ever experience in my teen years. I was around 12-13 when I started using this site and I adored it. When people talk about missing the 'tight-knit communities' of old, I don't think of DA, I think of RMD, my first home. Unfortunately, the site couldn't survive in the 'modern' era of the Internet, overshadowed by more advanced tools and art-sharing sites like Deviantart, Facebook, and Instagram.

But I did manage to backup some of my old art pieces before the site finally became completely shuttered in the early 2020's. For a while the site was awake but lacked any content or features, with a message from the site's creator Mick that it might come back, it might not.

It didn't. The old ratemydrawings.com URL now redirects to the inactive FB page. Any attempt to bypass that kill screen like before leads to an Error 404.

But while the site was in its comatose state - before it was shuttered permanently - I was able to access my old profile and extract some of my art pieces of old. I posted them to my FB about 3 years ago, and today they showed up in my memories.

I share a lot of art pieces from creators like Rachel Smythe in an attempt to preserve media. But I also need to remember to preserve my own. So here are a handful of the 100+ pieces I drew on RMD. Enjoy ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

Don't be confused by the '1987' part of the username, I picked that number because I was a huge Zelda weeb and 1987 was the year the first Zelda game was made. Whoof.

What's ironic is I actually didn't have the Featured Artist award last time I was actively on the site, so it clearly happened while I was inactive in its final days. The one award I wanted the most and I wasn't there to witness getting it. RIP.

Unfortunately that's all I really have in the way of high-resolution drawings as I wasn't able to preserve much else (though if I find anything more I'll definitely add it to this post!) That said, I was able to nab some screenshots of my homepage via the Wayback Machine where you can see more of the pieces I did back then:

There are so many dorky ass drawings here, some from Time Gate (because it's that freaking old!!!), some are screenshot recreations from anime that I enjoyed (a very common trend on RMD), some are collaborations. There was a point where I learned how to color with the mouse by using low opacity colors and layering them one at a time. Really upped my game there LMAO That Ocarina of Time Link drawing was the first one I ever did that made it to the front page of RMD and y'all, I was so proud, the site back then I think had 50k users total which is nothing compared to the Internet today, but achieving that was one of the greatest things ever LOL The Skyward Sword drawing that followed was one that really felt like a milestone in terms of my art evolution, I felt like I was finally creating something good. I believe I did that Skyward Sword drawing off another DA piece at the time, it was really common to do redraw challenges on RMD what with the technical limitations of the site - I suppose redrawing stuff I liked back then should have been foreshadowing LMAO

That feeling wouldn't last forever ofc once the art high wore off, but even to this day I look back on the pieces from that era fondly. It's where the mysteries of digital art finally started to 'click' in my brain, and I had still barely gotten started.

I also have a few drawings preserved that were done after I got my first drawing tablet, and you can really tell with the improvement of the lineart LOL That said, I think I was around 18-19 when I did these:

Now, one thing that I really enjoyed doing on RMD were collabs - specifically, trading collabs where users would exchange drawing files through the RMD PM system with one another to do steps of a drawing together. Often times I took the role of coloring other people's lineart pieces, which is probably where I started to really learn digital art coloring and come into my own with it.

A collab with user "lime":

Collab with user "Mikai":

A collab with user "Overik", which I specifically remember struggling with because, at the time, my computer monitor's screen was messed up resulting in the entire thing basically being a fluorescent pink:

A collab with "Mist04" that I don't remember doing lmao:

Collab with "Adzumi" (?). I'm fairly certain that's who it was, I definitely remember the process of painting this one, I had loads of fun with it:

Collab with user "ForgottenArtist", IIRC this one was more of a coloring page where they gave out the file freely for others to color, so this was my version. The forums on RMD were great for that sort of thing, people would literally just upload their drawing files for people to have fun with:

So I guess I drew this next little thing in 2021 when the site was still 'live' but not functional, I completely forgot I did this though LMAO Basically the main URL took you to that kill page I showed above, but if you knew any of the extension slugs, you could bypass that kill page and get into the rest of the site, which I was able to by using my username URL. So I got into the Java drawing tool and made this little thing in the hopes I could upload it. Of course, it didn't work, but hey, it was worth getting a screenshot, I suppose:

It's equal parts nostalgic and bittersweet to go through these drawings. Life back then feels so far away and yet I still remember it so vividly, the hours I'd spend drawing on the family PC, feeling more at home with the friends I made online than the ones I had in real life, listening to music that I still listen to to this day. It's far away now, but it still lives through me, in the work I do today. Even someone like me can go from being a complete noob drawing with a mouse to a professional making their living stabbing ink into other people while still drawing the same stories they drew as a child.

There is one piece I had to dig up outside of FB memories, fortunately it wasn't hard to find because I knew I had shared it ages ago on my FB so the search bar saved my skin. My very first digital art piece, of Sheena Fujibayashi from Tales of Symphonia, one of my favorite games of all time.

My very first digital art drawing:

Recreated in 2019:

Past me went through a lot, and they'd be doomed to go through even more still (they hadn't hit the plague yet). And yet they're going to survive, they're gonna keep getting better and better with each passing year. Thanks past me - you've done a lot of dumb shit in your life, but sticking with your craft wasn't one of them. Thank you for walking - through all the good and the bad that you've had to weather through - so that I could run for us both.

[kobblefort]

Rushsly: Into the Depths 1

Sorry for no updates yesterday; I spent the entire day making food, watching longform YouTube videos, and working on some other artistic outlets. In the interest of maintaining my anonymity until at least the end of this project and possibly indefinitely after that, I won't be sharing them (well, I can't send home-cooked food over the internet anyway - yet! Get on that shit, techbros!) but you'll be relieved to know they turned out well. I'm only just now sitting down at the computer this evening after a day that mostly tanked due to me starting to feel under the weather, but I think I know the cure - and obviously, it's the single greatest simulation game of all time, Dwarf Fortress.

There's no better way to start off a session than crashing the game, so I decide to make a nice and agonizingly slow "quick"save and throw Rushsly into Stonesense, the isometric-3D fortress visualizer which is notoriously stable when used with the Steam release and mods. Well actually it was working fine before I tried to maximize the window, then it crashed. I could find some way to blame the program for that, but I've been reading "The Inner Game of Tennis" lately, and though I'm not very far into it, I get the gist that I probably shouldn't, but also I shouldn't blame myself either? When I say not very far, I mean literally 4 or 5 pages. Are you even allowed to say you're "reading" a book when you've barely made it past the foreword and preface? Fine. I'm browsing The Inner Game of Tennis, and I'll consider myself reading it in 20 or 30 pages. Anyway, the fort looks pretty unassuming from the top, besides that "chimney" which is not actually there, but I can't get anyone up there to destroy the "downward staircase" tile without creating another "downward staircase" tile, which I'd need to get someone up there to destroy on and on over and over forever for the rest of my life. It doesn't have an "upward staircase" tile below it so it's purely a cosmetic blemish. Clear glass tiles also look very funny in Stonesense.

The furnace floor, where I already had to alter the stockpile by a single tile so I could put down a floor tile to stop the growth of a young tower-cap. I fucking hate floor fungus!!

The catacombs really do look a bit shit from this angle sorry kobbles. The little magma pockets do look cool though.

The (secondary now, I guess?) production floor is such a fucking mess and I hate it but I'm never going to do anything about it.

The tavern and chief's chambers look pretty cool though! I like that the dogs get sprites but my kobbles are just the letter "k." I feel bad for the people in the bedroom below who have a clear glass ceiling. Imagine trying to sleep and a bunch of motherfuckers are dancing above you and you can not only hear but see it the whole time. What a life!

And the only other floor of any visual interest is the barracks+hospital+dungeon floor. I like that stonesense makes the wells into faucets. Kobbles got plumbing lol

It always hurts to give a miner a different job, since I like it when the mining gets done fast, but since he wasn't particularly great at it anyway: Zhag, the miner who did not give a single shit about breaching the caverns, has been transferred to the military right around the time that a couple years of constant training starts really paying off for On Speechlessmonstrous and Zomrca Lulledjackals. In fact, it's sparring with one another that brought on this "level-up."

Two girls, both keenly aware of their bodies and the way they move, pushing each other to greater and greater heights of martial prowess. I don't care who you are, that's yuri. And also they're drunk. But kobbles, like dwarves, are basically always drunk. There was a time when I'd be like "Same! That's so me, lol!!" but it's long been over. I don't actually miss alcohol, I just miss the way alcohol used to feel, the effect it used to have on me. For the last little while, whenever I finally gave in to the temptation to knock some shots back every 2 or 3 weeks I would just suddenly jump-cut straight to the next day, waking up with literally all my clothes on including my goddamn socks like a fucking bastard feeling absolutely miserable in every physical sense and terrified that I had fucking humiliated myself and made lifelong enemies in the 25 Discord conversations I didn't remember starting. Now if I try to drink at all my body just says "no, fuck you. Go to bed" and all I can bring myself to do is lay down and get five to seven hours of miserably low-quality sleep - while still lucid enough to take my socks off, thank fucking god. I can't complain, really. The time from my early 20s when drinking made everything beautiful and everyone into my friend has long been over. If I never wake up in a stranger's bed or literally drooping halfway off the couch of their back porch again it'll still be too soon. But it's fine for kobbles to drink I guess. They were literally programmed to do it

At only 136 steel bars, it feels a bit too early to be getting the kobbles into steel armor, but new weapons and shields should do them well - provided they're not all too attached to their current gear. The dream is, eventually, adamantine, but to tell the truth I've never actually gotten that far in a fort. They either died in a horrible violent tragedy or from the miserable slowness of FPS death far before we could chance upon any Hidden Fun Stuff. To be completely honest, despite making a few attempts as early as early as 2009, even installing it on the computers at my high school and getting away with playing it all through study hall because nothing that looks like that could possibly actually be a game, I really never figured the game out or had any real success. I just didn't have the patience to either learn to read the ASCII or manually check every tile every time I wanted to know what anything was. This was back when carp were serious threats and rhesus macaque invasions were commonplace - the Brazil era, as I've literally just now decided to dub it - but half the things I take for granted really weren't even in the game yet. Also, on those same high school computers I managed to install Cave Story, and I got all the way to Hell before getting hopelessly stuck, which is what happens to me basically every time I play Cave Story, though I did manage to beat Hell & Ballos just once as a kid. I like to joke that my soul is stuck in Cave Story Hell forever until I finally beat it one more time, but sometimes I get scared it's not a joke. One time my friends came over while they were tripping on acid, and I was stoned and playing PaRappa the Rapper, and they were watching with so much delight but then I got to the bathroom level and just couldn't fucking do it, failing attempt after attempt, and one of those same friends professed to me years later that he feels like part of his soul is still trapped in the PaRappa the Rapper bathroom level, instead of experiencing the catharsis of the big concert finale level. The other friend from that time is no longer my friend because he burned down his fucking house with a turtle and several dogs and cats inside. All the dogs and most of the cats escaped but the turtle did not and since then he has been in permanent rehab because every time he almost finishes up at a halfway house he decides "you know what, I should take mushrooms right now. I should get so high on cough medicine that I can't even pretend to function for 5 minutes. While I'm in this fucking halfway house that I could be free from if I just waited one or two more weeks to take these mushrooms or cough medicine." I mean I can't really begrudge him the drugs but, well, actually I think I can. I can begrudge anyone for anything if I want. He also had a pad on the floor where his dogs could shit instead of just taking them out, I mean that's not just on him that's on his whole family being fucked up. Basically just fuck that guy

We'll be breaching the first cavern layer in earnest soon. I'm not quite sure what I actually want to do down there - fungiwood and tower-cap don't actually interest me, considering how much wood we have on the surface, and farming has been going so well that we don't really need anything edible from down here, either. Maybe I just want to stir the pot. Maybe I just want conflict. You know there's a reason why people who play this game say "losing is fun" and it's beca

Oh Fuck Oh Shit No No No Oh Shit Get The Fuck Out Of There Everybody Get The Fuck Inside Right Now Oh Fuck Oh Fuck Oh Fuck Oh My God Please No ... errr .......

Everyone has more than enough time to get inside safely, because... it's a fucking giant tortoise. In the time it takes for everyone who was topside to get safely into the base, the weretortoise has... not moved a single tile.

The moat bridge is retracted, marksmen are poised and (hopefully) ready to fire, but uhh... I don't want to say I overreacted, but I may in fact have overreacted.

Its kill record is not impressive, either. I'm more impressed by the names of some of these places it's been. "Grayhatchet" is actually pretty cool. "Questsloshed" that one sounds kind of horny... "Womansoak" That's what they call me when I walk up in the fucking club LOL !!!!!!!! Sorry. I'm going to be normal again.

The were-tortoise reverts back to a lobster (yes I have the mod that adds crustacean civilizations installed on this world) and skitters away off the map and far from my mind. Honestly, he might be more intimidating in this form. However strong the were-tortoise form might be, it's not exactly effective. Another thing I learned is that the statue "radar" does not actually tell you where or which statue was toppled, it literally just says that one was. If I wanted to put in a bunch of effort, I could set up a system where I have statues of one material put on the west, another material on the east, other materials north and south, maybe even go 8-directional with it, but I kind of don't care. The reason that people who play a lot of Dwarf Fortress say that "losing is fun" has two reasons. First of all, there is no real "winning" in Dwarf Fortress - you can become the new Mountainhome of your civilization, sure, but that's more of "the best game state you can attain" than a victory. It ultimately just comes with more challenges: an entourage of picky, problem-causing nobles and a king/queen/gender-unspecific-position-of-royalty/whatever else show up to make demands, and it's not like you export a certain amount of wealth and roll the credits or something. The second is that, since you cannot win, getting your fortress to be perfect, infallible, and autonomous only actually serves to make the game boring. Losing is not just a learning experience as far as the actual mechanical game goes, but an exciting event that changes the story and landscape of your world. After this fort inevitably goes down in flames I am going to keep playing in this world and Rushsly will be not just a memory in my mind but something that existed and changed the culture and history of The Land of Nails, the biggest continent in The Dimensions of Portent. (Kind of a lame name though. Why don't you portend to go fuck yourself, lol. Not you the reader, just a general unspecified "you".)

There's motherfucking gold in them there hills, tons of gems too. I'm prone to ignore stuff like silver and cassiterite because it's not that valuable and more important not that interesting to me, but I can absolutely be tempted by the glint of gold, and much like Sonic Adventure 2's breakout MILF Rouge the Bat I always love a good gem. If you don't think she's a milf you're looking at the wrong pictures - the wiki is wrong, the writers and designers of the games are wrong, she is a 43 yr old cougar. And me well I just want to be the pudgy twink 10+ years younger than her that she is just ever so slightly emotionally abusive towards, not in the traumatizing way just the sexy way. Like "the hurting your feelings but then you also get aroused from it and afterwards she's like yeah you know i didn't actually mean it" way.

Fucking kitchen full of fucking miasma

Just USE THE BARRELS YOU FUCKING BASTARDS

Like why do they do this

With nothing but perfect timing, a metalcrafter falls into a strange mood that makes him cry out for:

-metal bars (He's already taken a platinum one)

-logs (We have plenty all over the fucking place but he won't grab any)

-silk cloth (We have 100s of these too, he won't take any)

-bones (which means we have to slaughter an animal in the same disgusting butcher room with the miasma and all the meat already just sitting on the floor.)

Zylr has made an enemy out of me but I am honor-bound to help his bitch ass create a masterpiece so fuck it.

He takes the bones and... just keeps bitching. I don't know. Does he just want more bones? Because I'm not going to be heartbroken over killing another horse. Fuck it. I'll gladly kill another horse. I hate horses and want them to not exist.

And yes, he did literally just want more bones.

And downstairs, they finally started putting things in barrels. Not before letting our food & meat stocks drop by literally hundreds of items, but I guess a win is a win. kind of. Not really a complete win yet either there's still very much some shit on the floor. Fuck it I'll just make them throw it out too. What were you really going to do with horse nervous tissue, like be honest. As usual I had to run cleanowned in dfhack like 5 times to make the kobbles actually start taking out the garbage but they did it. (I know the military backpack glitch but I don't understand how meals got claimed as owned without even making it out of the kitchen (I don't feel like explaining the military backpack glitch right now but I can later if someone asks me to (We're kind of losing the fucking plot here though (and suddenly I care about that))))

Zylr had the good sense to offer this to me instead of keeping it as a personal treasure, and I mean, 20k value ain't bad. Most interestingly is the chain either has an image of itself on it, or is making a reference to another platinum chain that exists somewhere. It would be really funny to just put it in the dungeon and tie criminals to it, but it feels weirdly appropriate to put it in one of the churches, so I'm going to do that instead.

AMBUSH TIME!!!!

The fucking pricks are going after our bird towers. It's so personal now.

Their necromancer doesn't even make it past the first row of traps.

A boar that their necromancer resurrected literally kicks one of them to death. I don't think these guys are very good at this.

With their... leader(??) and three of their most fearless caged, and one of their least lucky shredded into fucking bits, the stragglers just awkwardly wander off the map to go hide. They didn't even make it past the third row of traps on the very first level.

They also did not even make a dent in our bird numbers, despite them being the only targets they were able to even take shots at. Though this does serve to prove we need to reinforce the Bird Towers to prevent unnecessary loss of bird life, that's literally all it proved. They will one day be back with more, they may come back with the idea of maybe not walking straight into the trap hallway, but for now they are idiots who barely managed to kill a single goose.

Unfortunately, speaking of idiots, our marksbold squad was deployed up to the fortifications above the trade depot, and despite getting a clear shot on one of them, fucking did nothing because the ones with bows keep picking up bolts and the ones with crossbows keep picking up arrows. Since different types of ammo is a mod thing, there's no actual option to force them to use one or the other, I guess our best bet is to just dispose of all the bows and arrows and force everyone to use only crossbows. I don't feel like doing that right now though and I've also hit the 30 image limit again so you'll just have to find out whether that even works or not on the next exciting episode of Rushsly. I probably should have ended it on a cliffhanger but I think it's funnier if the thing you have to look forward to is just me cleaning out some traps, figuring out to do with some prisoners, and trying to fix a military logistics problem. This ain't that new-fangled Witch from Saturn Ion gundam show this is the classic 1979 gundam. WHO WILL SURVIVE?

[blue-kyber]

Just got back from watching Avatar 2: The Way of Water.

I'll just say these few spoiler-free things:

This is a remarkably beautiful movie.

It's not as bad as the critics say.

Kiri is precious. Kiri is my daughter now. Protect Kiri at all costs. (it helps that she has my original SN when I began my internet life. Those of the old guard still call me Kiri. It was a Jedi OC I created around 1999.)

THIS IS IMPORTANT. If you are prone to motion sickness like I am, take dramamine an hour before the movie starts.

I'm not joking. This is my serious - and still slightly green- face. *circles her finger around her face*

There's a ton of camera jostling and quick panning, along with your eyes darting all over the screen to absorb everything. Dramamine will help you enjoy the experience.

It costs about $10 at CVS.

I highly, HIGHLY recommend getting it even if you don't think you'll need it.

I had to leave to go out to my car for some fresh air and puke into a plastic bag. Thankfully, I have a fully stocked med kit in the back of the car that I'd added dramamine to. Adults can take 1 or 2, so I took 2. An hour later, I began to feel better, though a bit drowsy. Still felt like I was going to yack again a few times throughout the film. I paid $21 to see this movie in 3D. I really wanted to see it, and wasn't going to let motion sickness stop me. I suffered through the rest of it. Though I missed a good 20 minutes of the movie. I'll need to rent it when it's available.

I still feel the residual effects of recovering from motion sickness over an hour later.

I've had issues with this illness all my life. Car rides were straight up torture as a kid. I would tell you everything you wanted to know if the car would just stop moving. Looking outside never helped. The sheer amount of willpower and a mantra needed to not barf while praying desperately to god to make my suffering end is incalculable. And I spent a lot of my early life on the road. I was never more happy when I got my license. I can only travel if I'm in control of the vehicle.

So, please, PLEASE heed my warning:

TAKE. DRAMAMINE.

[belethlegwen]

SW -> Giantess

So I was scrolling the ol' hornyjail twitter feed when I woke up this morning and came across a post that featured a line that said "SW has been sidelined and hijacked in favour of SM" and like I have some thoughts on that [Content Warning: Discussion of uncomfortable treatment/vague mention of graphic, lewd materials and unsolicited behavior, mention of anti-woman sentiments/behavior.]

I've been actively looking for this material on the internet for 20-25 years or more now. Back in the day, at least for me, it was significantly harder to find and usually involved me finding forums and message boards, mostly for other fandoms, trying to find people creating things that looked KINDA LIKE G/t (back then as far as I was ever aware, it was only ever referred to as SW/SM-- Shrunken Woman/Shrunken Man-- and Micro/Macro) and hoped I could follow breadcrumb trails to maybe some sites/boards that were more SPECIFICALLY for size-difference art/writing/discussion etc.

Everyone seems to have already made clear how back in the day, there was no strong "SFW" focus in any part of the community. You would find that material, yes, but it would be mixed in with and sandwiched between some pretty aggressive, violent, graphic and vulgar stuff a lot of the time, so you were playing a pretty risky game of roulette every time you looked.

The first message boards I ever found that I could participate in myself were EXCLUSIVELY SW. The website was SW-focused, the boards were very much the same, and as someone who had ID'd most of my life up to that point as a Shrunken Woman/Occasional-Regular Switch, I felt I could fit in there. I was right, to a degree. They were definitely hungry for women to be in their community.

I was on this particular board for a few years, around the time I was 19-21, and it always just felt... aggressive toward women. I realized much later that a lot of the community on the boards, specifically, were anti-woman, but at the time I was young and sheltered and it was hard for me to really differentiate between "No they like women they want them in the community a lot" and "Hahaha wow if you are not a specific, very submissive kind of woman they uh... really don't like you or want you to feel like you belong here". There was ONE openly queer woman on the boards, and the men on the forums regularly referred to her as "the only Giantess we let in here" and STILL often treated her like crap if she was engaging in discussions and sharing her own creations of art/writing/ideas etc.

I'd shared a few pieces and drafts and stuff there early on. Writings, and I even used to do doodles back then. It was always met with unsolicited, often graphic, sexual comments about what I could "add" or how this person would "change it" to fit their specific desires. The site was decidedly NSFW, so I never really complained about it openly but I sure did wish it would stop happening.

The few times I made requests of the fiction writers and 3D modellers and artists and stuff for pieces that were SW related and that I would enjoy, it was all decidedly more SFW/gentler and I got legitimate pushback for the suggestions from one or two of the people I requested from (it was normal back in the day for someone on a message board to be like 'I'm taking requests for short stories/doodles, just drop them here and I'll get to them if I like them') OR when they didn't pushback and actually created my request, it was either much more graphic than my request OR me and the artist would both get kind of harassed for not providing something that fit SomeRandomForumGuy918's specific crank-turner.

It is possible, and I'm not arguing against it, that I just managed to miss SM or even more... woman-friendly SW sites and boards and the like back in the day. But I'm not kidding when I say that SW was the dominant section of the entire G/t sphere back then every time I went looking. There was some SM stuff but it was almost ALWAYS set-up for pretty aggressive Revenge-focused SW art/fiction. But for real? I've felt that the massive change from seeing Tiny-Woman/Giant Man focused art to more Tiny-Man/Giant Woman, Tiny-Woman/Giant Woman focused art was just a progression of what I experienced and know a few others experienced on those forums back in the day.

I was on those specific boards maybe 2-3 months interacting with people before I realized I was becoming more Giant-leaning personally, just for a sensation of safety and respect. When I started writing/discussing more from the Giant perspective, the men of the forums became pretty notably hostile and, again, would point toward that other woman as "This is our Token Giantess" and basically implied I get back in line. I went from being predominantly a Shrunken-Woman/sometimes a Switch, to "Nope, fuck this, fuck y'all, I'm a Giant now and when shit sucks, I'mma hit the bricks". If I feel safe enough around you to even discuss being small as a fantasy, or having my self-insert be small around you without like, a big spotter for safety, it's because there's an incredible degree of trust.

And part of it kind of sucks? I miss the bliss of what I refer to now as Naivety, back when I could enjoy fiction and art and discussion and fantasy where I was a tiny person, but people kind of abused the shit out of the idea that myself (and others on the forum) wanted to be at least a LITTLE vulnerable in that way and would get legitimately pissed when we weren't as submissive as they wanted at any given moment.

I guess this is just an extremely long-winded post to say like, I know I'm not the only person from that forum or likely others who USED to like being SW or female/femme tinies and creating art and writings and discussions from that angle, who were chased out of it and either chased out of the entire community for good or were chased out to the point of changing the whole perspective and power dynamic just to feel a little bit safer here. I guess my biggest thing is that... my hackles went up at the wording of "hijacked" specifically because like, that just triggered me back to the entitlement of the gross-ass dudes on this forum. I didn't "hijack" your precious SW content, I was made to feel unsafe and unwanted for participating in a way that catered to my needs more than other people's so like... fuck that?

I can trust MYSELF to be a gentle giant, to respect someone else's feelings and boundaries and space. It has been decades since I have easily trusted that anyone else would offer that to me if I were a tiny. So I don't let myself be tiny very often, basically ever now.

If I were to sum it up not-at-all correctly, I guess I'd say: Treat your tinies with kindness and respect, or they tend to become bitter, jaded giants to get away from you.

In like, the GOOD side of this post, I will say that finding the SFW G/t community in the past few months has been a legitimate life-safer for me. I love y'all, I love getting to interact with y'all, it is just... so much safer and more respectful here for both giants and tinies compared to the fires I had to go through when I was younger. As what feels like a comparative Ancient in this community, it really means a lot to see "Oh no, we caring and respecting now. That's our jam" happening a lot, happening prominently in this space. I get to share my content without aggressive comments like "Why isn't it THIS THING instead?!" and people are sharing their works without having to worry about it fitting specific boxes they don't want it to.

I am living for seeing people creating what THEY WANT TO CREATE and just sharing it as-is. "I made this for me, because I wanted it. Maybe you want it too? Maybe you will like this??" and guess what: I do want it! I do like it! I love that you are sharing things you love with me and that I get to share the things I love with other people who want it too! How fuckin' rad!! I've even made friends through tumblr since I arrived here a little while back that I feel I could trust to respect me if I wanted to go into the fantasy-space as a tiny again. That's fuckin' neat. Y'all are stellar and I love you.

[littlewalken]

Dec 18

I do it because I have to, I usually do it myself when possible because I come from an environment where I was an afterthought in my own house and actually had a sit down with the dogs and 1-2 of the cats letting them know we all mattered less than the horse, who was blameless and knew no different, and I knew I mattered less than them but I still loved them.

Of all of us I am the only one left in the household. If not seeing most of my everything, which I can never sort and thin out if I can never get to, for a few months means I am free from the Life Ruiner and then get to live somewhere for a good long time and can actually make friends I think I can do it.

I'll have my Husbands dolls back out and hopefully dressed somewhat properly in time for season 3.

At least Crowley got painted.

And come next Depeche Mode Day-

Fletch is by Kumik, I think his head is called K18. If you're in to 1/6 scale but haven't fallen down the "military/licensed" rabbit hole you're missing out on some neat shit.

Yeah, the catalog was supposed to help me remember who half these guys are, manufacture wise, they're all hybrids. Thang with the lollipop are the same people who did my Andy Bell so the name os somewhere here in the blog. The Daft Punk heads are 3D printed keychains with a hole in the bottom for neck pegs.

Some day we keep saying we'll go to Santa Cruz and fuck yeah Alex/Marco/Bill comes with.

Can't tell if Aziraphale and Guy Man are using the same body.

And yes, I used to run that website with au naturale dollies doing different poses, The Wayback Machine has it, but I let that go when I had a severe clusterfuck of real life shit and running any web site was no longer important. It's saved because my page on Puppet Up is cited in Wikipedia. That's how you really reach internet immortality.

I just went all autistic and recapped the show for my own memory's sake.

On Thursdays we dress like queers.

*And when they double the price of the storage unit we have to pay it because what the hell else are we going to do?

[jeriafterdark]

Weekly Tea #1 (and Happy Halloween!)

So sometimes I've been so busy I haven't been able to reblog or post much, but I'd like to take some time during the week to catch up on what's been going on in the WOH/Junzhe/LLD fandom~ Let's spill some tea, I chose only a few of the biggest things that happened recently~

Under the cut:

1. ZZH fan-made 3d Model

2. GJ new endorsement sports the same ZZH shirt

3. Anniversary of One Night in Nanjing

4. GJ face as his co-lead falls on him - I love it

5. Fan comic summary of ZZH unreleased variety show

6. Apology from Internet Water Army netizen?

1. Someone made the most beautiful 3D model of ZZH

I think it's well known that we all miss and love him, and one fan definitely took it to the next level. Check them out, it is SO DETAILED. He even has PORES. My god.

2. Gong Jun's new endorsement showcases him wearing a very familiar shirt...

ZZH was filmed wearing this shirt in Ace Actress earlier this year. A fan also asked MAISON sans Titre if the shirt came in larger sizes for a person of ahem, 188 cm stature, and the customer representative said no shirts would fit him, but a large size would fit someone who is 181 cm tall. SO nice flex GJ, wearing ZZH's shirt in his new endorsement <3.

3. Anniversary of Oct 31, 2020 - One Night in Nanjing

I'll write up a more detailed summary of what happened October, 2020 in the JunZhe universe later, but for now:

For those who don't know, there's a famous LLD/JunZhe story that happened on the night of Oct 31, 2020. Filming WOH wrapped up around early October, 2020, and ZZH had his personal mini concert where he appeared as a Disney Prince/Princess on Oct 18, 2020. That mini concert is famous because ZZH invited GJ to come about 3 times, separately, on different public streams lol. GJ did not come, but he sent some flowers~

On Oct 31, 2020, ZZH had a photoshoot in Nanjing's Kempinski hotel. The next day, he was scheduled to fly out to Beijing.

Later on October 31, GJ, a huge fan of e-sports, attended the League of Legends tournament in Shanghai. The show ended around 10-11PM according to his vlog (he had a great time, what a cute lil nerd :D). Then in his vlog, GJ appeared in a rest area - Yangcheng Lake - which is on the way to Nanjing from Shanghai. The trip is a 4 hour trip one-way, so he must have left right after the game finished to drive to Shanghai.

The next morning, Nov 1, GJ had nothing scheduled. He had a dentist appointment on Nov 2. So everyone in the fandom assumes he drove up from Shanghai to Nanjing in one night to meet ZZH. ZZH later posts on Weibo a very cute/vague comment about the "little blue boy." Ahh, what a sweet story.

4. GJ's face during Legend of Anle filming... I just- HIS FACE, HAHAHA, blink twice if you're in distress

5. Fan comic about ZZH's unreleased episode of variety show

I won't show it here unless you'd like to see it, but it's a very cute and well-translated comic strip about supposed events during his last variety show that he filmed in August :( He's just being very cute, in a haunted house type of show, scaring people and eating a lot of rice lol.

6. On apologies from a water army soldier (not sure if it's legit or not so be forewarned)

Today I saw a translation about the 813 incident (not going to link it because I don't want people to be riled up). It comes from an anonymous user on a CN platform who says they were part of the hired "internet water army," paid to slander a certain celebrity during August. For those who don't know, the internet water army is like paid gossipers who spread whatever they're paid to spread - good/bad rumors, could be real people, could be bots, etc - what's really easy to agree on is it's a very backhanded way of manipulating public opinion. Anyway, the user expresses supposed very deep regrets about the whole thing, being from a poor background and seeing easy money without realizing the actual impact it would have on a human being. Aaaand you know what, I kind of believe it. I'm resigned on that whole thing - it happened, nothing will uncancel ZZH unless ZZH does it himself when/if he wants to. People are allowed to express regret over royally f*cking someone over, especially in today's anonymous internet age - it's very easy to do cruel things to people because you don't really have to face them or their aftermath. If the person was really poor, well, I get it. It's happening all over the world, massive wealth inequality, billionaires scraping your pockets for change - I mean, c'mon, this user had the "eat the rich" mentality imo. And it's not that I disagree or agree with it, I just understand if people were pushed to do morally grey things so they could have extra money and maybe get back at someone who's rich. It just sucks that our economies/power structures push for these things to happen. If I'm well off enough, I wouldn't have had a second thought about participating in the water army for petty $$$. But if I'm not well off? Well, who knows? I personally wouldn't do it.

Thanks for coming and enjoying some tea!

[ordinaryschmuck]

Why I (Want to) Love Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure

Salutations random people on the internet who most likely won’t read this. I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

When I heard Disney was making an animated series based on Tangled, acting as a continuation from the original movie, my initial thought was, "Why?"

Sure, Disney is infamous for its unnecessary sequels of the story after happily ever after, with the many, many, many failures that follow suit. Even then, though, most of these continuations were movies that kind of have the potential to tell more of a story. But what more could be said about Tangled? Sorry to spoil a movie that's over ten years old at this point, but by the end of it: Rapunzel lost her golden hair, was reunited with her parents, fell in love, and lived happily ever after. Her losing the golden hair is the most essential part of that list because how can you do a series based on a Disney princess when her most iconic feature is gone? Then I found out that the series forced a way for her hair to come back, and my new initial thought became, "Oh man. This is gonna suck, isn't it?"

Despite the hesitation, I decided to give it a chance anyway. After all, I've been pleasantly surprised before. Things like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and even The Owl House (yes, really), were shows (and a movie) that I didn't think would be that special. Only to find myself enjoying nearly every minute. So after watching Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, I can certainly say I was surprised...but it was entirely for the wrong reasons.

And to explain how requires spoilers. So if you haven't checked the series out yet, I highly suggest you do it to form your own opinion. Just keep in mind that it's a bit of a mess, but it can be an enjoyable mess...sometimes...let me explain.

WHAT I LIKED

The Animation/Art Style: The series swapping from 3D to 2D might have been the most brilliant decision anyone could have ever made with this series. Usually, when an animated movie gets turned into a show, the most noticeable downgrade is always the animation. Whether it’s not as detailed or not as fluid, it's always subjective that the movie is better animated than the series. But by switching up the styles, the contrast becomes objective instead. 2D and 3D animation each have their pros and cons, so deciding which one is better is nothing more than a matter of opinion. So by changing the style, Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure avoids getting complaints of being a downgrade from the original movie. It also helps that the art style of the series is really unique.

The best way to describe how the show looks is that it's like a coloring book brought to life. At times, everything looks like it was drawn and colored in with crayons, which sounds like an insult, but in actuality, it's one of the best features of the series. As much as I love most animated shows nowadays, I will admit, they all look a little too similar at times. Then here comes Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, which tries to incorporate a whole new style that successfully sets it apart from most shows.

As for the animation itself, it's really well-made! It's remarkably expressive when required, while the movements are really fluid during the correct scenes. Sure the fighting can be a little floaty during some action set pieces (yes, those exist here), but the dialogue and comedic moments are really where the series shines with its animation. I may have problems with the series as a whole, but I give credit where credit is due for the perfectly executed effort that I see in every episode in terms of animation.

Rapunzel and Eugene’s relationship: This was not something I was expecting to enjoy from the series. In the movie, Rapunzel and Eugene were fine. They were the typical Disney couple that worked off of each other enough that it was always entertaining, even if it was unbelievable that they fell deeply in love with each other after, like, two days. They weren't bad, but they weren't anything to go crazy over.

But the writers for the series said, "You know what, let's make these two adorable in nearly every scene they're in." And they are!

Even though I don't believe in their relationship in the movie, I fully believe it here. Both characters have a large amount of faith in one another on top of having endless love for their partner. Like how Eugene knew Rapunzel would be fine when taking out an airship or how Rapunzel couldn't bring herself to say a bad thing about Eugene when making Cassandra a sparring dummy of him. It's legitimately pleasant to watch, to the point where I put Rapunzel and Eugene in my top ten list of favorite fictional couples. They're that good to me, and it's one of the reasons why I don't jump on the bandwagon of shipping the two main female characters together. I'm all for LGBTQA+ representation, but give Cassandra her own girlfriend. Rapunzel's taken, and most of my enjoyment of this show comes from her and her man. So, you know, keep things as they are.

Cassandra (Seasons One and Two): Seeing how I've already mentioned her, let's talk about Cassandra, shall we? Because when making a series based on a movie that had only four prominent characters, with two of them being comedic animal sidekicks, you're going to need to introduce more members to the main cast to write more potential stories. And Cassandra, in Seasons One and Two (I'll get to Season Three), is a worthy addition. She acts as a strict straight man (I know the irony) who interacts well with Rapunzel and clashes perfectly with Eugene on occasion. She was passably entertaining in Season One and developed amazingly in Season Two. Her growing frustrations with Rapunzel's actions lead to a slow build-up that made her betrayal heartbreaking but somewhat understandable. And as for the results in that betrayal...yeah, I'll get into that later. For now, I'll just say that Cassandra was a pleasant addition to the main cast, especially when she was a part of the main trio, and she's yet another good surprise that the writers supplied for the series.

The Songs: The songs are...not going to be for everyone. Most of them are passable yet kind of generic, while others sound like they belong on Disney Junior (Looking at you, "Bigger Than That"). But when Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure makes a hit, MAN, it is a home run. Numbers like "Ready As I'll Ever Be" and "Nothing Left to Lose" are sung phenomenally, orchestrated well, and are songs I can listen to on repeat multiple times. And "Waiting in the Wings" is not only something I consider to be the best song in the series, but it's also something I'd place as high up on Disney's best due to how f**king incredible it is. "Waiting in the Wings" is a powerful ballad that manages to be both tragic yet inspiring on top of how well it sums up Cassandra as a character. The writers may not always be on top of their game when it comes to music, but songs like these prove that they know how to earn that Disney name.

And that’s all I have for the likes...Oh boy. That’s not a good thing is it?

WHAT I DISLIKED

It Peaked at Season One: It did. It really did.

Season One felt like the writers had a grip on what type of show they wanted: A slice-of-life series with Rapunzel dealing with the issues of her kingdom with a meager threat of these black rocks growing in the background. It was all cute and well-balanced for the most part, but that all disappears in Season Two. Because now it's sort of about this adventure, but because Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure set itself as a slice-of-life series, there need to be these small-scale stories that intertwine the grand narrative being told. The issue is that the story comes to a grinding halt one too many times as fans are forced to sit through these filler episodes that, while not all of them are bad, still feel like a distraction. And by Season Three, the series does feel more focused while having some slice-of-life episodes added to the ongoing story instead of distracting us from it. But the writing isn't as strong, there are several plot holes in the narrative (how did Rapunzel's sunstone get into her dress?), and there is way too much time going back and forth on Cassandra's morality. They claim that she's a villain while arguing that there might still be some good in her, and they continue this train of thought for nine episodes when it really could have been settled in two. For me, it's a bad sign for a series when the first season is the best one. Because if it's all downhill from there, what's the point of even watching?

It Tries to be Epic: This might have been the worst decision the writers could have made.

Now, here's the thing: I don't mind grand epic tales of adventure and battles against demons. If anything, I'm all for them...when it's appropriate and fits with the tone of the series.

Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure suffers a similar problem Frozen II has, in which the writers felt like a big, life-threatening adventure was the perfect continuation of a meager, personal story about the relationships of characters. It isn't. If anything, it's completely missing the mark about what the original story was about. And sure, sometimes writers can succeed in telling personal stories through grand adventures. Just look at The Owl House and parts of Amphibia. But with those shows, it's established within the first few episodes that action and peril will be a series staple. With Tangled, while there was some action and peril, it's all very subdued compared to how high the stakes got raised in later episodes in the show. Especially in the series finale.

And, I mean, c'mon. You're making Rapunzel an action hero?

Judy Hopps? Yes.

Moana? Maybe.

Raya? Most definitely.

But Rapunzel? The character who’s all about optimism and seeing the best of others. That's the character you're going to morph into a hero that fights against an evil demon laid dormant for years? Did you even watch the original movie? Yeah, sorry, but I just don't buy it.

If you want to tell an epic story that gets the blood pumping for fans addicted to adventure, go for it! See where the wind takes you. But make sure to set that tone as early as possible while also making sure that it fits with the characters. If not, the end result is a series that feels like it's trying to be something it’s not.

Eugene is Kind of an Idiot at Times: It should be noted that Movie-Eugene and Series-Eugene are practically two different characters. In the film, Eugene was more or less the straight man, as he often questions the wackiness in the world around him and keeping Rapunzel grounded in reality. For the series, most of that personality got transferred to Cassandra. Thus making Eugene's new role in the series act as the egotistical imbecile. Sure, he had those moments in the film, but not as frequently, and it really pains me when the writers really lean hard into a minor aspect of his personality. Sometimes there are moments when Eugene acts like his original self. But it's all small scenes that are spread apart with entire episodes where he has half a brain cell. I'm sure some people didn't mind this change to the character, but as someone who adores the movie version of Eugene, I can't help but feel disappointed.

The Villains are the Worst: Now, I don't mean the one-off villains that show up, cause some chaos for a bit, and disappear at the end of the episode. Those are characters with fun personalities, occasionally cool designs, and do their job as villains of the week. It doesn't matter if their motivations are laughably simple, as their purpose is to be enjoyable characters above anything else. So I actually enjoy those villains...it's the ones that act as season-long antagonists that really grind my gears.

The purpose behind these types of foes is to build up how evil they are throughout the season. The issue is that the writers try to give these characters, or at least two of them, a point. To be fair, this can work. Just look at Killmonger from Black Panther and sometimes Karli Morgenthau from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. You understand and probably even sympathize with the logic and reasoning these characters have. It's just that their actions couldn't be farther from what you would do. The problem with Varian and Cassandra is that they have the motivation, but it's not written suitably for the story.

Cassandra is a whole can of worms I'll get to in a minute, but Varian is someone I can easily discuss for a brief time. Because while I can comprehend his pain for having his father frozen in yellow rock, I don't think turning evil is the best decision to go with that character. Because A. Everything is his fault. He blames Rapunzel for not helping him, but even if she didn't have a crisis to deal with, there was nothing she could have done to stop it. His frustrations are not only unjustified, but given the fact that this wouldn't have happened if he listened to his father in the first place, it feels like him becoming evil is too drastic of a turn. And B. Varian worked much better as a supporting character rather than a primary antagonist. He was just this hopeful, if not a clumsy scientist who wanted to prove himself, who causes minor catastrophes due to not thinking ahead. Turning a character like Varian into a villain is a bit of a misstep because if the guy acts hilariously incompetent as a good guy, it makes little sense to have him be intelligent and ten steps ahead of Rapunzel when being evil. If he were to become more serious and careful when helping the rest of the main cast, I'd consider that character progression done properly. But becoming a villain is just an overreaction.

However, none of that compares with my issues with the main antagonist of the series: Zhan Tiri. This goes back to my problems with the series making itself too epic. Because if Zhan Tiri existed in any other show, I probably wouldn't have any problem with her. She's built up well throughout all three seasons and is kind of threatening at times. But she doesn't belong in a series based on a movie that dealt with a small, personal issue where it wasn't even the character who killed the villain in the end. It was her love interest and animal sidekick. Even if Zhan Tiri works well as a character, the fact that it doesn't feel like she belongs in the show makes her too distracting to enjoy. And that's why these villains suck. If not poorly written, they don't belong in a series that should focus on small-scale issues. And if you can functionally write an antagonist that appears for only one episode but flounder with ones that show up in several, well, that's just embarrassing.

Cassandra (Season 3): OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH BOY, do I have some words to express with this character. Like with Movie-Eugene and Series-Eugene, Cassandra from Seasons One and Two is frustratingly different from the psychotic IDIOT from Season Three. Basically, just take the issues I have with Varian, multiply them by ten, add them with some bafflingly stupid decisions, and you still wouldn't get how much Season Three-Cassandra frustrates me!

First off, her motivation...what the f**k were the writers thinking? The big reason why Cassandra betrays Rapunzel and motivates all of her misdeeds was that Cassandra's mother was Mother Gothal...EXPLAIN THAT LOGIC TO ME?! Because Cassandra should know what type of woman Mother Gothal was. She should know what Mother Gothal did to Rapunzel in the first eighteen years of her life. So how is Cassandra being abandoned by Gothal the central motivator to cut ties with Rapunzel, who is probably an even bigger victim in this scenario!? Seriously, Rapunzel was cut off from the rest of the world and treated as an unknowing prisoner because she was beneficial to Gothal. Cassandra was adopted into a household with mutual love and got to actually live her life. In no way does it make sense for her to be angry at Rapunzel.

Nor does it make sense that the writers try to play it off as a good thing in the song "Crossing the Line!" Sure, it sounds nice, but thematically, it gives across the opposite feelings that the audience should have. Because if Cassandra cutting ties with Rapunzel is meant to be tragic and awful, why is the music suggesting it's the best possible thing that's ever happened for the character? If you like the song, fine, but even you have to admit that it's thematic nonsense.

But, sure. Cassandra's evil now, and she considers it a good thing. Whatever. I'll take it as long as it leads to good stories...but here's the thing: In the penultimate episode before the three-part series finale, Cassandra asks a question. A question I would have never expected her to ask, despite everything that has happened in the last season. A question that was so baffling, I had to legitimately pause the episode to process the fact that she asked something so stupid. Because Cassandra, the character who is intelligent and grounded in reality, asked, "Am I the bad guy?"

I was honestly shocked to find out she was shocked! How, in the flying, everlasting, cock-a-doodle-doodling F**K does a person like her not pick up that maybe, just maybe, she isn't the hero in this story!? Call me crazy, but endangering the lives of people you once called friends and family, dressing in black, AND HAVING A GIANT EVIL-LOOKING TOWER MADE OUT OF F**KING SPIKES aren't qualities I would give to a hero!

If Cassandra was like Thanos, a character so wrapped up in his ego that he can't even notice how evil he is, I would understand. But she doesn't have an ego. Anger, yes. But for the most part, her personality is based on having logic and reasoning. So turning her into a villain and having her unaware that she's a villain is an act of lunacy that I am incapable of understanding. I don't know who's idea this was, but whoever is to blame...you've got issues.

>Sighs<...This series isn't good, is it?

IN CONCLUSION

I like the animation and some of the characters...but that's not enough. Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure is a mess of a show that tries to do too much for a story that should have so little. Meaning that it's a D+ for me. I want to enjoy it and give it a higher grade, especially with how much I hear people praise this series. And if you do enjoy it, all the power to you. Your opinions are valid, even if I highly disagree with them. Because for me, this is a show that I won't get myself tangled up in again in the future.

[real-starkinder]

March update

Hello Friends,

No beating around the bush, I am a fragile mess, these days. Trying to be brave, after facing some really rough challenges.. We won't touch any of those topics for a while. Let's just say, I'm a Hermit with baggage & a fucked up life - but who isn't?

Been searching for the right job for a long time now... That's finally ended. I haven't officially started, so I don't want to blog about it yet - out of worry that I'll jinx it. In the meantime, I have been making plans and getting things accomplished that have been on the back burner.

Trying to make goals for an unpredictable future... What else is there to say?..

It's wild - At this point, I'm not even worried about being broke. I've been there, done that. A couple of times, actually. It's safe to say, I will find a way to survive.

As the self admitting Leech that I am. Which is something that my inner child had to face recently... You see, I've always had someone to rely on - a safety net. It's a fortunate thing & I am so grateful. However - It's time for me to start relying on myself. Being accountable & making sacrifices that other have made for me. It's time to stop being a Hermit & try again.

I don't want to survive the way a Leech does anymore. I'm glad that I've gone through this discovery. I will be brave & try to do this for myself. Especially because it's what I want & I am the only one in this Life who is going to fight as hard as she can to make it happen.

Right now, I'm at the library, so I can use their Wifi - One of the sacrifices to our budget, this month, was our internet. Really daunting how much we take comfort for granted, sometimes. I enjoy reading & have been doing that more, instead of looking for something to watch on Youtube - like, I have to really search these days, too... Ugh.

However, I do miss using CSP.. Something I should have done while we could afford it was invest in the program, instead of renting it monthly. I have been renting Clip Studio Paint for over 6 months now & I know I'll be using it for a long time to come. When I can afford it again, I'll be purchasing it. It's such an amazing program.

In the meanwhile, I downloaded Blender... So I will be overcoming my anxiety of 3D design/modelling this month. I will be starting off with a donut, so I can learn how to use this program.

I think that's all I have for this week... Hunger is saying 'let's wrap this up & go home'.

Have a good weekend, Y'all!

[pepsimaxolotl]

I'm going on holiday or vacation whatever

You'd think I'd be happy but I'll be away from my computer and switch and probably have no internet 😓 Not to mention I won't be able to lock myself away from my family all day like I usually do edgy teen everybody! I'll be away for 6 days down south of the country to visit my stepdad's family. It'll be a long drive but I have packed a few things to help me keep sane... Like what you may ask? Well I have my 3DS with some Pokemon games (platinum, black 2 and ultra moon), a shit ton of sweets and pop and most importantly a brand new sketch book.

In other words I'd like fusion requests to draw in the sketch book. Idk if I'll give them away or do them all. It'll just give me something to do. I'll jot them all down in the back. Keep in mind they'll only ever be lineart or sketches since I'm doing it traditionally and I hate colouring traditionally.

Thanks for everything, I'll miss you!