#its just a screenshot trace its nothing special

[feralthembo]

my genders interacting

[tamelee]

Hello Tamelee! Do you have any advice to give to beginners regarding drawing? Maybe some exercices that helped you to make progress? I’ve seen that you learn to draw all on your own, and that’s really impressing (and inspiring)!! ❤️

Hi!! 🧡 thankyou so much (ノ・∀・)ノ♥︎ Ah yes of course!!! I wanted to make this earlier but I waited until I finished a few drawings to see if I could come up with more tips and find out what really helps for me.

✍️;

 I did learn to draw by myself, but I watched a lot of speed video’s for guidance ^^ I used to slow them down a lot and really tried to study what artists that I liked did, but I wouldn’t recommend this for beginners. Especially when you don’t really know the program and you won’t understand why they do what they do.

I used to copy the greyscale method even though I knew nothing about color so I heavily relied on values only which made everything look very muddy.

It’s actually only recently that I’m understanding the things that I do and I feel like my anatomy/coloring is improving slowly because of it. 

So, first, I’d highly recommend to instead of copying only as a study method, (like faces for example) to understand why things are the way they are. If you know how planes of a face work, it’s much easier to remember why a certain perspective is like that, when something feels off and how to fix it or how to lay down shadows. The ‘Asaro head’ is a favorite for many, the free version you can find HERE a video on the topic is HERE and learning how to shade is explained very well HERE. Sinix Design has a great video that goes beyond that and it may help you for different kind of faces which you can find HERE. If you're more interested in Anime faces (though the planes work the same), you can find and manipulate 3D models for free HERE or HERE that you can use as a reference. Of course you should always make it your own but they can help with perspective. In fact, you can find many different kinds of models on Sketchfab. Your character holding a cup and you aren't sure how to draw it in that angle? Find one, manipulate it, screenshot and study the perspectives ^^ (I don't recommend tracing or copying.)

Learn about environmental lighting and color temperatures instead of value's (light and dark) only!!! Trust me, the earlier you learn this, the better >*chants* color temperature, color temperature, color temp-

Anatomy is interesting. A lot of tutorials recommend you use photo's to learn it, but it confused me a lot. Pictures aren't always clear enough to see how the body parts are connected and I always thought it was a bit pointless to learn muscles, but it really isn't. I'm not sure how to explain it well, but a picture is often too complicated and you have to narrow it down to find its foundation. I personally think it's helpful to find an artist you like and look how they do anatomy if they have shared any sketches.

Not sure if that makes any sense xD but what I'm trying to say is that for me, looking at pictures alone didn't help me understand much of anything else at all and in some cases made it even more confusing. Clothing makes much more sense in drawings when they're simplified, but this also depends on style!

You can use a napkin around you finger and bend it to get a quick fold reference for a sleeve or something!

Studying the body means... well, studying the body. Naked, in underwear or swimwear. You can find many free references! But there are special anatomy reference packs that are being sold like these.

I don't really do drawing exercises because my ADD just won't allow me to. My motivation immediately drops to zero. So I can't say which ones are very helpful but always feel free to try anything you want and see what works for you! But if there's anything you should exercise always... it's your hands.

Trust me on that one. The pain for ignoring your pain is a consequence you don't want ;-; and sometimes it even leaves you unable to draw for a long time. Avoid issues with carpel tunnel or RSI as much as possible. There are many video's but you could use THIS ONE for example.

I do practice though with everything new that I create. I always try to learn something.

I think the thing that helped me a lot in the beginning was by getting the habit to save everything that I liked. An expression in a movie? I saved it. Favorite art styles? I saved them. Naruto looked particularly adorable in that panel? Saved. Sasuke's hair spikes flawlessly there? Saved it.

If you're quickly overwhelmed though (like me lol) then it's not a good idea to save a bunch of screenshots in a folder because you'll have no idea what to even look for. If you do this then try to keep things as organized as possible so you actually have some use for it and even narrow it down as much as you like. Some panels for Naruto and Sasuke for example I have saved in several folders like 'expressions', 'manga style' or 'outfit' for example. I don't want to spend too much time looking for things, because unlike some of you think, I don't have that much patience xD

INVEST IN EXTERNAL SSD('s) and BACK UP REGULARLY!! Like, everyday if you can, but at least 3x a week. Once a week at THE VERY LEAST. You'll thank yourself one day. Save your art-files so you have access to full versions always but post smaller files if you're drawing in large 300DPI (or more) files. Whatever program you use you can learn to reduce sizes, you don't need to save every layer always when you've finished a drawing, but in Photoshop for example you can 'merge layers 'duplicate all visible layers' as a copy and put it in a progress folder in case you ever need it, like so;

Some other things that helped me a lot also was to create my own short keys to flip the canvas and making the current layer I'm working on visible or not. Personally I have the flipping on 'command+§' and layer visibility on 'command+1'. If you're working with Windows you can switch command key or pick anything else you think would be easy! Flipping your canvas horizontally helps a lot to find mistakes and layer visibility.... I don't really see anyone talking about it, but when I'm rendering over a sketch and get lost in it, I often use this short-key to see if I'm not overdoing it or losing the original perspective which can easily happen!

I hope some of these are helpful, I can't really think of much more right now, but feel free to ask anyway if there is anything in particular! 🌷

[scarywebs1te]

Dead By Daylight: For Your Eyes Only, a fan chapter I made for a little contest in a server.

NEW CONTENT:

For Your Eyes Only introduces a new Survivor, Gwen Murphy; a new Killer, The Conspiracy; and a new map in the Withered Isle realm, the Quarantined Downtown.

NEW SURVIVOR: GWEN MURPHY

Gwen Murphy is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who wants nothing more than the world to see real sense. Although many of her beliefs are nonsensical, it took only one unlucky, correct hunch for her world to turn upside-down.

Her personal perks: Paranoia, Tin-Foil Hat and Red String, allow her to move swiftly outside the killer's terror radius, protect herself from the effects of totems, and reveal the killer's perks.

NEW KILLER: THE CONSPIRACY

'SUBJECT: ANONYMISATION, SPECIAL RESEARCH

Findings from Project Awakening and Project Apple Pie have been applied to create a unit capable of carrying out covert missions on behalf of the State.

...

A) All documents, records, possessions, photos, and evidence of the individual ever existing are to be disposed of. The nominee will surrender their life in its totality to the program and will henceforth become a John/Jane Doe.

B) Begin Intensive psychological conditioning program, erase individual identity.

C) Biometric idicators such as the fingerprints, irises, hair and face shape are surgically removed and/or altered. Plastic is grafted on in their place..

D) The body is administered solution comprised of trace amounts of [REDACTED], adrenaline, psilocybin, formaldehyde, [REDACTED], hydrogen peroxide and sodium hypochlorite for the purposes of further erasing DNA indicators.

...'

The Conspiracy is a stealthy killer, able to contaminate its environment and inject survivors to spread its deadly nerve agent.

Its personal perks: Incognito, Counter-Intelligence and Coverup, allow it to keep a low profile in chase, give information at a cost, and kill survivors who know too much.

(Ignore the random mistake on incognito’s perk description I have no clue how that happened lol)

I also have a Google doc that has their fully written lore but tumblr won’t let me paste that for some reason. If there’s interest I might just screenshot the text and post here later?

[frozensoapbubble]

I made a screenshot of this GIF by @ninjago-bingo and got this, and I immediately imagined the pre-season 1 ninja fooling around with their powers.

The Candlestick and the Electric Bat

(655 words)

"Whatcha doing?!?"

Kai paused in the doorframe of the ninja's shared bedroom. He was dressed in red pajamas, and his hair, usually moulded into perfect spikes, was damp and unkempt after the shower he'd just taken. Jay was hanging upside down from his bunk bed, arms outstretched towards the floor. He craned his neck to be able to look at Kai, who closed the door behind himself.

"I, uhm ..."

Jay let his head hang again and looked at the ground.

"You know, natural lightning always travels downward."

To prove his point, he directed a small bolt to a spot directly in front of Kai, making the latter jump.

"Hey!"

"Know what I mean? Well, I wondered if I could make the spark come back to my fingers again."

He screwed his face up in concentration and stared at the ground as if trying to hypnotize the floor boards. Sure enough, after a few seconds, a crackling, light blue channel of electricity formed between the floor and Jay's fingers. Sparks crept up, danced over his hands and traveled upward along his arms.

"Pretty cool, isn't it?" Jay stated, satisfaction in his voice.

Kai chuckled, rather unimpressed.

"You're the Master of Lightning. I'd expect you to be able to influence the direction your element takes. Besides, it wasn't really necessary to hang upside down for this. You could've pointed your finger at the ground anytime during training."

Jay pouted. "But I was already in bed when I thought of it. And it's fun."

The lightning traveling up his body became stronger, and the glow around him bathed the entire bedroom in an eerie, blue light.

Kai snorted with laughter. "You look like an electric bat."

Jay stuck out his tongue at him. "Better than a wet firecracker."

Kai ran his hand through his hair, automatically attempting to fix his look even though he had just rinsed out the last traces of gel. "Don't you dare insulting my hairstyle."

Jay cackled, but then he frowned when an idea entered his mind. "Kai, what happens to your element when you're upside down?"

The Master of Fire shrugged. "Dunno. Nothing special, I guess. I could probably set my feet ablaze, if that's what you mean."

Jay grinned and gave him a pleading look. "Oh yeah. Show me!"

Kai rolled his eyes at the silly idea of his team mate, but obediently sat down and rolled back into a perfect shoulder stand. "Here you go."

A flame appeared on the soles of his bare feet; he wiggled his toes a little, and after a few seconds, the fire settled into the shape of a neat ball.

"Works just fine. Bit more difficult than with my hands, though."

Jay burst out laughing. "You should see yourself. That's so funny. Now I know why it's called ..."

He was interrupted by the door opening once again.

"Is this a new bedtime ritual of yours?" Zane's calm, but slightly surprised voice asked.

"Would you mind explaining its meaning to me?"

Jay wiped the tears out of his eyes and turned towards the white ninja.

"Yoga poses," he grinned. "Kai gives an outstanding display of a candlestick, and I," he proudly gestured at himself, "the electric bat."

Zane eyed his friends. The Master of Fire, supporting himself on his arms and shoulders while holding his legs bolt upright, still turned the fireball between his toes, and the upside-down figure of the Master of Lighning sizzled with electricity.

"I see," the white ninja replied unfazed. "This makes sense."

He turned towards his bed.

"Please do not forget to extinguish the lights when you have finished training."

The giggles of his friends were nothing compared to the fit of merriment that ensued the next morning, when Zane earnestly asked Sensei Wu why all yoga lessons covered the candlestick pose in great detail, whereas none of them ever mentioned the equally beneficial pose of the electric bat.

[maxismatchccworld]

Welcome back to our latest - and last! - Deep Dive into the gameplay of The Sims 4 Nifty Knitting Stuff Pack. I’ve really enjoyed sharing the designs and development of this pack with you, and I hope to continue doing these sorts of posts in the future. It’s been a super cool experience, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these! In today’s post I’ll talk about the feature that is core to everything in this pack, Knitting! Once again, I have to remind you that we’re still in active development on the pack and so some things may change between now and the final game. Now, let’s talk about some nifty knits!

READ IT I PROMISE YOU GONNA LIKE IT!

In order to start knitting, you’ll need to purchase a Yarn Basket from the Build/Buy catalog. You probably remember voting on these baskets a while back. This was the winning design, presented to you now in all its colorful glory! Don’t like color? That’s okay, because we included a solid black and white variant.

We have one more knitting basket coming too! Remember this one?

The basket acts as the crafting catalyst(neat term, huh?) similar to the Easel or Woodworking Bench in The Sims 4 base game. But unlike those examples, the Yarn Basket is meant to live in a Sim’s inventory so that they can take their knitting anywhere they want to go. Knitting itself is relatively straightforward: click on the Yarn Basket in your inventory, OR, with the basket in your inventory, click on the chair you want to sit in while knitting (perhaps a rocking chair?) and select the Knit interaction. Your projects are saved to your Sim, so you can pause your progress at any time and resume later, and even juggle multiple projects at once. Starting a project costs a small amount of Simoleons for the cost of yarn, but nothing too outrageous.

(Children can knit too!) As a Sim levels up their knitting skill they’ll have access to new patterns. They’ll start with knitting socks and beanies, but as they grow more skilled they can tackle more challenging projects like sweaters and toys for kids. But if you only want to specialize in one thing - perhaps knitted mailbox cozies? - that's fine too! Just keep knitting anything and everything, and you’ll be level 10 before you know it. Speaking of knitting skill, sometimes your skill is reflected in your knitted work, or rather your lack of skill. Knitting projects can fail, and when they fail they can get weird. But it’s all subjective, and maybe you’ll end up accidentally knitting the cutest derpy companion, or the perfectly itchy sweater. No mistakes, only happy accidents!

(Just own it.) One of the niftiest parts of the knitting skill is unlocking the ability to Teach to Knit, where Sims sit down together and have a knitting pow-wow. We wanted this to feel special, so we got a really sweet animation for it (Thanks Haeju!). Now that you can infect other Sims with the knitting bug, no yarn ball will be safe!

(The knitting needles aren’t finished on the Teach To Knit interaction yet, but trust me it's SUPER CUTE.) So, what can you do with all these knitting projects? Lots of stuff! Not only can knitted objects be listed on Plopsy, but you can also Donate them to charity. If you want to surprise a loved one, try Gifting a knitted object too. If you want to destroy all traces of your knitted failures, you can Frog the object and start again! If it's a particularly nice Sweater that you made, consider Adding it to Wardrobe to make it available in Create-A-Sim to all family members.

(Everyone appreciates a nice gift!) We want Sims to be able to knit something for their whole family. Not only will Sims be able to knit Toddler Onesies, but Baby Onesies as well. So put your little grubworm in a handmade knitted outfit. I’m sure they’d thank us if they could! (And if they didn’t like it I’m sure they’d be polite about it.)

(Here’s a sneak peek at some of the concept art for new clothing for the littlest of Sims!) It also felt like a good idea to add an Aspiration to tie this passion for knitting all together. So if you want to master the fuzzy art of knitting, consider signing your Sim up for the Lord(or Lady) of the Knits Aspiration. With yarn running through your veins, there will be no knitting mountain too hard to conquer! Master the Aspiration and you’ll be rewarded with the Sacred Knitting Knowledge trait. What does it do? Lots of stuff! What does it unlock? Something special! Am I being vague? I am! Come on guys, I can’t share all the secrets quite yet.

As I’ve mentioned previously, we’re trying to get as much cross-pack functionality for knitting as we can. Cats can play with Yarn Baskets and Yarn Balls, there will be new Club rules for Knitting, new class electives at University, and knitting counts for Emotional Control, just to name a few. I’m hoping Knitting feels nice and snug alongside our other gameplay systems. Now let's have a chat with our lead Object Modeler, Beth Mohler! Conor: Can you tell us a little bit about what an Object Modeler does on The Sims 4? Beth: As an object modeler I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make objects work in The Sims 4. This is actually a very involved process, and somewhat different from the wonderful work our environment team does. We work with designers, concept artists, engineers, animators, vfx artists (basically everyone!) to make sure that Sims can use an object properly in an animation, or that all of our objects will work with each other. Once we understand the design for a new object, we will create a rig, a block model (a very generic version of the object used to help us make more of the same object in the future), and a footprint (tells us where the object can go and how Sims move around it). Once those are tested by animators and other disciplines we can model the final version, create UVs, and add textures. We also hook up and test everything in the game to make sure it all looks good. There is a lot to think about when it comes to making objects because we know players can find so many interesting ways to place and use them in game. That makes it a very fun challenge to make them work with everything else we’ve built before. Conor: What feature are you most excited to work on in Nifty Knitting Stuff? Beth: I’d say I am most excited to work on the rocking chairs! I love that we are bringing them to the game and can’t wait to see them in some cozy living rooms or on porches. Conor: What are some of the challenges you are facing working on this pack? Beth: One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that the knitting itself looks good and is fun to watch! This is a challenge given that it needs to work for everything you can create. Figuring this out takes a lot of iteration between modeling, animation, engineering, design, and art direction so that we come to a conclusion that will work the best given our time and technical constraints. Another interesting “challenge” is the fact that I crochet as a hobby myself! When you are knowledgeable about something (yarn!) in real life, working on it in the game it can sometimes be hard to separate the things you know and may expect in reality from what is possible or best within a video game. I have to make sure to keep a balance and to conceptualize how we can best convert the knitting experience into The Sims 4. As someone who also generally enjoys interior design and architecture, this is actually one of my favorite challenges and one of the things I love about working on objects in The Sims 4. Conor: What is your favorite feature you have ever worked on in The Sims 4? Beth: I think it has to be a tie between the mini fridge or the robotics table in Discover University. That pack was the first time I got to really take an entire feature from start to finish. I’ve been with Maxis for a while, but I’m relatively new to The Sims 4. Both of these objects had some complex features we wanted that required a lot of iteration. I learned a ton about the technical aspects of our game during the process as well. I’ve also worked on a few very cool things between then and now, but those can’t be shared yet ; ) As a fan of The Sims since the very beginning I am so happy to be able to share a little about what I do on a daily basis on The Sims 4 with you! I haven’t been on The Sims 4 for quite as long overall, but some of you may also recognize me from my time on Sims Mobile where I shared some of our workflows on Twitter for making a juice bar. Thanks! Conor: You shared a screenshot of the In-Progress Rocking Chair in our Rocking Chair Deep Dive. Can you share an updated screenshot now that the Rocking Chair is further along? Beth: I would love to! I hope everyone has been enjoying seeing the progress on this object so far! Here it is a little further along. This program allows us to set the rules for the object materials, footprint size and rig it should use, as well as all the color variants and swatch colors you see in the catalog.

Thanks Beth! By the way, Beth is on Twitter @SimGuruBeth, so be sure to Follow her! And thanks to all of you Simmers for following this pack’s development, this has been a really fun project in a very crazy time. A big thank you to my Stuff Pack teammates, and especially SimGuruSarah who edited my inane ramblings and wrangled the miscellaneous bits for these posts. While this concludes my design Deep Dives, we still have more forum posts with development insights on the way! Keep checking the Community Stuff Pack forum and we’ll have more fun stuff to show off in the weeks to come. Until next time, SimGuruConor

Source: The Sims Forum

[satoshi-mochida]

Publisher Nippon Ichi Software and developer Daisyworld have announced yuri visual novel Kochira, Haha Naru Hoshi Yori for PlayStation 4 and Switch. It will launch on October 28 in Japan.

Get the first details below.

■ Specifications

Title: Kochira, Haha Naru Hoshi Yori

Genre: Yuri Adventure

Platforms: PlayStation 4, Switch

Players: One

Release Date: October 28, 2021 (Japan)

Price: 6,980 yen (7,678 yen with tax)

Developer: Daisyworld

Producer: Gen Sugunuma

Director: Naotaka Ueki (Daisyworld)

Character Designer: Yuu Akinashi

CERO: Pending

Official Website: nippon1.jp

■ Prologue

A virus that is said to have come from space brought unprecedented damage to earth.

A long time has passed since that catastrophe, and now there are only the six of us in Ikebukuro.

The city has shrunk in size, and its buildings have been toppled and decorated with green grass and blue water.

The scent of an air conditioner comes from somewhere…

“This is Mother Earth!” And we’re doing good today!

When We Woke Up, We Were on a Cruise Ship

One morning, Kanako and five other girls woke up on a cruise ship. The inside of the ship was silent, with no traces of any other people. The only memory they were able to recall were each other’s names and the fact that they were on vacation together. With nothing else they can do, they began to exploring the ship.

We’re the Only Ones on this Ship

While exploring inside the empty ship, a lifeless announcement rings through the PA. “We are terribly sorry, but due to engine problems, this ship will seize sailing for a while. A rescue crew will arrive in one week.” The ship is broken, but it doesn’t seem it will sink anytime soon, and rescue will arrive if they just be patient. Kanako and the girls wonder why there is no one else on board, but decide to enjoy their time on the ship.

The Rescue Crew is Not Coming?

A week passed since the announcement, but the rescue crew never came. Kanako and her friends search the ship for a solution to their problem. Through their search they find a door that leads outside the ship. The decide to step outside the door.

Ikebukuro, the Big City with No Sign of Mankind

The world outside of the ship was an Ikebukuro in ruins. No other humans could be found in this Ikebukuro reclaimed by nature. The six girls surprised by the big city outside of the ship start their struggle for survival in Ikebukuro.

The Bonds of the Six Girls Grow through Life in Ikebukuro

In a Ikebukuro with nobody but themselves, the girls must prepare their own food and shelter. Kanako and friends help each other to make their life in the wild better for themselves. Eating together and sleeping together strengthen their bonds everyday.

The Truth About this City

Many mysteries are to be found in Ikebukuro. Kanako and her friends were too occupied to care for themselves, and did not bother trying to investigate them. But a certain incident takes them closer to why this world came to be.

■ Bonds Deepened through Survival Life

The girls sill show many expressions through their everyday struggle for survival. As they spend time together, they will find a special person and become closer at their own pace.

■ Characters

Kanako Tokio (voiced by Ayaka Fujii)

“Its going to be A-okay, if we search together!”

Age: 16

Birthday: October 3

Hobbies: Going on cruises

The protagonist of this title. A cheerful and positive minded girl who always stands by anyone who is feeling down. Her motto is, “It’ll be alright, so let’s enjoy!” Kanako rubs off on the other girls, who start challenging new things. She feels she had something to tell Akira, but she is unable to remember…

Akira Kanasashi (voiced by Asuka Kawakami)

”I’ll do anything to get a comfortable living space.”

Age: 15

Birthday: July 21

Hobbies: Cooking

A tomboy who is half-Japanese and half-Danish. She is often the one to bring back the conversation topic whenever the others go on a tangent. She is a skilled cook and has a motherly way of teaching others how to cook. She cherishes the Danish word “Hygge,” which means “a place that feels cozy,” and challenges many things for her peers.

Saori Hiki (voiced by Aitsuki Nakuru)

“OK, I’ll do it for everybody…”

Age: 17

Birthday: August 29

Hobbies: Reading

A college student who is studying space engineering. She knows a lot about machines, and is surprisingly athletic. She loves reading and picks up a lot of knowledge about survival from worn out books found in Ikebukuro.

Motoko Honda (voiced by Masaki Mizuki)

“Everyone’s favorite little sister Motoko, is back with a new cute outfit!”

Age: 13

Birthday: March 11

Hobbies: Taking selfies

A childish little sister-type that always want to be the center of attention. She is a natural moodmaker and often the things she says that she wants happen to make the quality of life better for the group. Since she is the youngest, she sometimes feel anxious. In those times she wishes that the others will hug her until she calms down (preferably Saori).

Natsuki Namiki (voiced by Nanako Oomoto)

“I’ll open it then, Can you guys line up from least scared to most?”

Age: 17

Birthday: February 9

Hobbies: Cosplay

A reliable girl who usually takes things at her own pace. She often disregards others, but can accept many things as “interesting” and observe what is happening. Harumi claims that Natsuki was born under a lucky star, and often makes new discoveries.

Harumi Azuchi (voiced by Nanahira)

“Fortunetelling is supposed to be used to live a better life.”

Age: 15

Birthday: June 1

Hobbies: Astrology

She likes astrology and tells everyone about their compatibility with each other. She thinks fortunetelling is like “a weather forecast for life,” and regards it just as a rule of thumb. She is always levelheaded and aloof, but can sometimes become surprised by the unexpected words that come out of Natsuki’s mouth.

View the first screenshots at the gallery.

[loopy777]

Non-Review: Free Comic Book Day 2021 - The Legend of Korra (Also Featuring Avatar: The Last Airbender)

With all the hype around 'Suki Alone,' it looks to me like most of the fandom missed that an additional Avatar comic with a story from each cartoon's era was just released for Free Comic Book Day. You can read them for yourself on either Dark Horse Digital or Comixology where it's mislabeled as being for ages 17+ (free accounts are required for both), but I'm sure one of the reasons you all love me is because of my willingness to jump in between you and these comics like the deadly bullets they can be. Well, I'm happy to die (metaphorically) for the sake of (a little anonymous internet) love, so I'm doing a full snarky review for each ten-page story. Also, I'm bored, and it's more fun to make fun of mediocre stuff than to praise stuff I like.

It's time for me to review "Free Comic Book Day 2021 - The Legend of Korra (Also Featuring Avatar: The Last Airbender)" or more specifically "The Legend of Korra: Clearing the Air" and "Avatar: The Last Airbender: Matcha Makers."

CLEARING THE AIR

The cover makes this look like a story about Jinora and Ikki having a sibling conflict. That's a lie. The Air Sisters arguing is merely the inciting incident for Tenzin telling a story of his youth. I should note that, as inconsequential as the Air Sisters stuff is, it's actually written very well because it posits Ikki as a victim of circumstance and Jinora as a bully who terrorizes her little sister with threats of getting thrown in jail by Metalbenders for an accident, cementing the characterization from the cartoon. This is not sarcasm. I really do think Jinora is presented by LoK as a Holier Than Thou little snot who just so happened to be naturally gifted with magic spirit-powers, but for some reason the rest of the fandom doesn't agree with me.

Anyway, Tenzin comes in to find the arguing (and Meelo just running amok for the fun of it and so far these characterizations are perfect), and rather than telling Jinora to shut her stupid face, he delivers a tale of his youth about conflict resolution.

So the meat of the story is how, when Tenzin was "a few years older" than Jinora, a pair of vandals got onto Air Temple Island and burned some graffiti into the spinning-panel things that Korra will destroy out of frustration during her Airbending training. Literally, the vandals are depicted as scorching the wood with enough smoke to be seen across a plaza. Tenzin goes after the vandals and they flee across the bay back to Republic City proper (one of the vandals is a Waterbender with a surf-plank). Tenzin pursues, catches them, and attacks them hard enough to smash some dockside crates. They are all then arrested by Metalbenders and dragged before Chief Toph. She's going to let Tenzin go (yay Toph!) and throw the vandals in jail (YAY TOPH!) and makes this face, and this entire comic is worth it:

However, Aang arrives and instead arranges to forgo the jail-time in favor of an Air Nomad Conflict Resolution Ceremony. This is nice and in-character, but I'm totally with Tenzin that these vandals should have been thrown in jail. They literally burned insulting graffiti into antiques from a genocided culture. But instead, Aang demonstrates conflict resolution by having Tenzin explain why he's hurt and what needs to be done to redress the wrong. And so the vandals help Tenzin scrub the graffiti off the panels with water and rags and mops- how, I don't know, since they were literally burned.

They also do a ceremony thing where they each take turns bending their element into a central space between them to 'clear the air' (GET IT GET IT HA HA IT'S ALMOST LIKE A PUN BUT NOT), so it's a good thing they were all Benders because this is kinda racist. This fixes all the problems and everyone is friends. Yay!

In the present, though, things are not so nice, because Tenzin's kids are still screaming at and provoking each other. Korra comes in with Asami at the end to ask what's going on, and Asami says nothing, so I still think everyone is characterized with perfect consistency with the cartoon.

I made this sound silly, but (aside from the spinny-panels getting cleaned with a little water and elbow-grease, which doesn't matter because Korra will eventually blow them all up anyway), I actually like this one. It has Tenzin demonstrate how much he's always had to work to be the Perfect Air Monk that everyone expects him to be, and Aang acknowledges how this is unfair but that Tenzin will never let him down no matter what. It also has Katara come in at the end (for just one line, boo!) to acknowledge that this was an especially easy little conflict for Tenzin to practice on and he'll eventually face worse. I found it a nice adult moment in a story that's otherwise clearly aimed at 8-year-olds.

The art is good. It's simpler than the LoK cartoon, with flat colors, but it captures the story and has enough liveliness for everyone's character to come across in their look and body-language. The brief action-sequence where Tenzin attacks the vandals is well done, moving quickly but showing the full flow of the fight and every move Tenzin makes.

MATCHA MAKERS

Apparently, "Matcha is finely ground powder of specially grown and processed green tea leaves, traditionally consumed in East Asia" according to Wikipedia. I had to look that up. I'm curious how many people understood the full reference in the title, especially since these comics are aimed at kids too young to be allowed on the internet.

This is a very simple story about Iroh in his tea-shop in Ba Sing Se. He has an assistant/waitress named Feng, a new character who wears glasses, ruining the hopes and dreams of all the fanfic-writers who were so sure he'd rescue Jin from the Lower Ring. A frequent patron of the tea shop is an elegant, older lady (very clearly Upper Ring material) named Li-Mei, who cannot go a single panel without giving Iroh a HEY BIG BOY look. She is very clearly smitten. Also, I feel the need to clarify that she knows his name is Iroh, so apparently Ba Sing Se is okay with the Dragon of the West serving tea to their wealthy. I don't say that as a criticism, I'm just noting it.

That night, Iroh meets up with his friends- the Pokemon-style spirits that we saw in Legend of Korra. (I don't know if they're the actual spirits from LoK, or just new spirits in the same style. This is because I would sooner grind matcha into my eyes than rewatch Book Spirits.) He serves them his special blend of tea and talks about how he's totally into Li-Mei but isn't going to pursue it because he's feeling old and doesn't want to take a risk. At this point, I could stop describing the plot because between the title and what I've said so far, I'm sure you could figure out every single plot beat that will follow.

The next day, the spirits trip Feng so that she drops Li-Mei's tea and Iroh needs to bring a replacement, and they've drawn hearts on top of the replacement tea with foam or sugar or milk or whatever. I don't know because I've never bought tea in a place that will even put the bag in the hot water for me. Iroh gets out of the situation without starting any love-affairs and runs into the back to tell the spirits to knock it off, dudes, they're totally embarrassing him! The spirits respond by giving him a flyer for a romantic restaurant. I don't know how they got it, so I can only assume that some Upper Ringer had their mail diverted.

Iroh refuses, so when Li-Mei orders more tea and he brings it to her, the spirits hover just out of her sight and threaten to smash the furniture. I am not making that up. They literally threaten to smash Iroh's furniture unless he asks the lady out. He submits to their tyrannical threats, Li-Mei happily accepts the date, he happily accepts her acceptance, and the story comes to a close. Iroh thanks his spirits friends for opening him up to new experience, but hopes that next time (so I guess Iroh is signing up for Tinder after this?) they won't threaten his shop.

At best, I can describe this story as 'harmless.' But it's been a long week and I just got a bunch more extra work at my day job that I really don't want to do, so I'm going to go ahead and call this story 'dumb.' It's rote, leans towards humor without actually being funny at all, and turns the spirits of the setting into Pokemon. And not even the cool dragon kind.

The art is strangely stiff. The coloring is soft and nice, but the drawings seems more 'assembled' than actually drawn. I swear there are even a few panels that reminded me of 'How I Became Yours' with janky poses, horrifying expressions, and just enough resemblance to the original cartoon to make me think a screenshot was partially traced and then ruined. (I'm not accusing the artist of tracing, BTW. I wouldn't even condemn the artist for tracing if they did. I'm just describing that HIBY feeling I got.) It was so stiff that rather than hear Iroh's dialogue in Mako's rich tones, I instead imagined Greg Baldwin doing a stiff Mako-impression with no naturalism to the delivery.

This story is definitely worthy of its "Also Featuring" billing. I'd rate it below Gene Yang's Mai and Suki FCBD short stories, but above everything else he wrote for Avatar.

So there you go. Overall, this is very middle-of-the-pack for Avatar FCBD stuff. It's very much of the nature of the 'Team Avatar Tales' stuff, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Iroh story was a leftover from that project. On Free Comic Book Day, you often get what you pay for.

[thesims4blogger]

The Sims 4 Nifty Knitting: Knitting Deep Dive

SimGuruConnor has released a forum post providing details on The Sims 4 Nifty Knitting!

Welcome back to our latest – and last! – Deep Dive into the gameplay of The Sims 4 Nifty Knitting Stuff Pack. I’ve really enjoyed sharing the designs and development of this pack with you, and I hope to continue doing these sorts of posts in the future. It’s been a super cool experience, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these!

In today’s post I’ll talk about the feature that is core to everything in this pack, Knitting! Once again, I have to remind you that we’re still in active development on the pack and so some things may change between now and the final game.

Now, let’s talk about some nifty knits!

In order to start knitting, you’ll need to purchase a Yarn Basket from the Build/Buy catalog. You probably remember voting on these baskets a while back. This was the winning design, presented to you now in all its colorful glory! Don’t like color? That’s okay, because we included a solid black and white variant.

We have one more knitting basket coming too! Remember this one?

The basket acts as the crafting catalyst(neat term, huh?) similar to the Easel or Woodworking Bench in The Sims 4 base game. But unlike those examples, the Yarn Basket is meant to live in a Sim’s inventory so that they can take their knitting anywhere they want to go. Knitting itself is relatively straightforward: click on the Yarn Basket in your inventory, OR, with the basket in your inventory, click on the chair you want to sit in while knitting (perhaps a rocking chair?) and select the Knit interaction.

Your projects are saved to your Sim, so you can pause your progress at any time and resume later, and even juggle multiple projects at once. Starting a project costs a small amount of Simoleons for the cost of yarn, but nothing too outrageous.

(Children can knit too!)

As a Sim levels up their knitting skill they’ll have access to new patterns. They’ll start with knitting socks and beanies, but as they grow more skilled they can tackle more challenging projects like sweaters and toys for kids. But if you only want to specialize in one thing – perhaps knitted mailbox cozies? – that’s fine too! Just keep knitting anything and everything, and you’ll be level 10 before you know it.

Speaking of knitting skill, sometimes your skill is reflected in your knitted work, or rather your lack of skill. Knitting projects can fail, and when they fail they can get weird. But it’s all subjective, and maybe you’ll end up accidentally knitting the cutest derpy companion, or the perfectly itchy sweater. No mistakes, only happy accidents!

(Just own it.)

One of the niftiest parts of the knitting skill is unlocking the ability to Teach to Knit, where Sims sit down together and have a knitting pow-wow. We wanted this to feel special, so we got a really sweet animation for it (Thanks Haeju!). Now that you can infect other Sims with the knitting bug, no yarn ball will be safe!

(The knitting needles aren’t finished on the Teach To Knit interaction yet, but trust me it’s SUPER CUTE.)

So, what can you do with all these knitting projects? Lots of stuff!

Not only can knitted objects be listed on Plopsy, but you can also Donate them to charity. If you want to surprise a loved one, try Gifting a knitted object too. If you want to destroy all traces of your knitted failures, you can Frog the object and start again! If it’s a particularly nice Sweater that you made, consider Adding it to Wardrobe to make it available in Create-A-Sim to all family members.

(Everyone appreciates a nice gift!)

We want Sims to be able to knit something for their whole family. Not only will Sims be able to knit Toddler Onesies, but Baby Onesies as well. So put your little grubworm in a handmade knitted outfit. I’m sure they’d thank us if they could! (And if they didn’t like it I’m sure they’d be polite about it.)

(Here’s a sneak peek at some of the concept art for new clothing for the littlest of Sims!)

It also felt like a good idea to add an Aspiration to tie this passion for knitting all together. So if you want to master the fuzzy art of knitting, consider signing your Sim up for the Lord(or Lady) of the Knits Aspiration. With yarn running through your veins, there will be no knitting mountain too hard to conquer! Master the Aspiration and you’ll be rewarded with the Sacred Knitting Knowledge trait. What does it do? Lots of stuff! What does it unlock? Something special! Am I being vague? I am! Come on guys, I can’t share all the secrets quite yet.

As I’ve mentioned previously, we’re trying to get as much cross-pack functionality for knitting as we can. Cats can play with Yarn Baskets and Yarn Balls, there will be new Club rules for Knitting, new class electives at University, and knitting counts for Emotional Control, just to name a few. I’m hoping Knitting feels nice and snug alongside our other gameplay systems.

Now let’s have a chat with our lead Object Modeler, Beth Mohler!

Conor: Can you tell us a little bit about what an Object Modeler does on The Sims 4?

Beth: As an object modeler I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make objects work in The Sims 4. This is actually a very involved process, and somewhat different from the wonderful work our environment team does. We work with designers, concept artists, engineers, animators, vfx artists (basically everyone!) to make sure that Sims can use an object properly in an animation, or that all of our objects will work with each other. Once we understand the design for a new object, we will create a rig, a block model (a very generic version of the object used to help us make more of the same object in the future), and a footprint (tells us where the object can go and how Sims move around it). Once those are tested by animators and other disciplines we can model the final version, create UVs, and add textures. We also hook up and test everything in the game to make sure it all looks good. There is a lot to think about when it comes to making objects because we know players can find so many interesting ways to place and use them in game. That makes it a very fun challenge to make them work with everything else we’ve built before.

Conor: What feature are you most excited to work on in Nifty Knitting Stuff?

Beth: I’d say I am most excited to work on the rocking chairs! I love that we are bringing them to the game and can’t wait to see them in some cozy living rooms or on porches.

Conor: What are some of the challenges you are facing working on this pack?

Beth: One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that the knitting itself looks good and is fun to watch! This is a challenge given that it needs to work for everything you can create. Figuring this out takes a lot of iteration between modeling, animation, engineering, design, and art direction so that we come to a conclusion that will work the best given our time and technical constraints.

Another interesting “challenge” is the fact that I crochet as a hobby myself! When you are knowledgeable about something (yarn!) in real life, working on it in the game it can sometimes be hard to separate the things you know and may expect in reality from what is possible or best within a video game. I have to make sure to keep a balance and to conceptualize how we can best convert the knitting experience into The Sims 4. As someone who also generally enjoys interior design and architecture, this is actually one of my favorite challenges and one of the things I love about working on objects in The Sims 4.

Conor: What is your favorite feature you have ever worked on in The Sims 4?

Beth: I think it has to be a tie between the mini fridge or the robotics table in Discover University. That pack was the first time I got to really take an entire feature from start to finish. I’ve been with Maxis for a while, but I’m relatively new to The Sims 4. Both of these objects had some complex features we wanted that required a lot of iteration. I learned a ton about the technical aspects of our game during the process as well. I’ve also worked on a few very cool things between then and now, but those can’t be shared yet ; )

As a fan of The Sims since the very beginning I am so happy to be able to share a little about what I do on a daily basis on The Sims 4 with you! I haven’t been on The Sims 4 for quite as long overall, but some of you may also recognize me from my time on Sims Mobile where I shared some of our workflows on Twitter for making a juice bar. Thanks!

Conor: You shared a screenshot of the In-Progress Rocking Chair in our Rocking Chair Deep Dive. Can you share an updated screenshot now that the Rocking Chair is further along?

Beth: I would love to! I hope everyone has been enjoying seeing the progress on this object so far! Here it is a little further along. This program allows us to set the rules for the object materials, footprint size and rig it should use, as well as all the color variants and swatch colors you see in the catalog.

Thanks Beth! By the way, Beth is on Twitter @SimGuruBeth, so be sure to Follow her! And thanks to all of you Simmers for following this pack’s development, this has been a really fun project in a very crazy time. A big thank you to my Stuff Pack teammates, and especially SimGuruSarah who edited my inane ramblings and wrangled the miscellaneous bits for these posts.

While this concludes my design Deep Dives, we still have more forum posts with development insights on the way! Keep checking the Community Stuff Pack forum and we’ll have more fun stuff to show off in the weeks to come.

Until next time, SimGuruConor

[illusionlockarchive]

pazam: a mess, truly a mess

so i usually dont do these kind of posts, i guess you could say its a call out of some sort? but i never liked that word, i prefer rather to just compile sources on WHY people would believe that a certain person is not truly as nice and understanding as they seem. consider this more of a psa post, detailing on whats going on with pazam on the sfm community, why so many people are against them.

So, a while back, tumblr user jymble made a post on the main tag stating that pazam was transphobic. they linked back to this post, which contains screenshots of pazam in a group chat stating that they do not feel comfortable with the idea of trans people. now, this did happen 9 months ago, true. however, for the record, pazam is already an adult, 24 years old, so they should have some tact. and as further and more recent events will show, they actually havent changed that much at all, at least not as they claim.

the screenshots should be in the post, but here is a transcript

[Screenshot one]

Pazam:

What????? Why?????

I literally HAVE NOT been doing ANYTHING malicious to them

And if it did I apologized

Yes I do have discomfort about them but I keep it to myself

Why are you doing this????

[End screenshot one]

‘Them’ here refers to trans people in general. Notice the defensive and victimizing stance they almost immediately take upon being confronted about their feelings on trans people.

[Screenshot two]

elliott:

of COURSE you dont

sammaku:

Like specifically

Elliott hush

Pazam:

This whole concept of transness and changing your gender physically

I hate to say it again but it weirds me out and it makes me question my own gender which flings me into anxiety, depression, and obsession

sammaku:

Its fine to not understand but are you willing to learn about it

Pazam:

I don’t want to talk about this anymore

sammaku:

That depression anxiety and obsession just comes with gender issues

(the rest of the text is cut off)

[End Screenshot two]

notice once summaku asks them if they would at least be willing to learn about it, pazam immediately deflects it by saying they dont want to talk about it anymore.

[Screenshot three]

Pazam:

Seriously??? That’s all it takes????

Wow I’m a moron

I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused to you

@.aziraphale @.elliott @.sammaku

I just don’t get this stuff period

And I’ve gotten into trouble with this stuff before

I’ll probably never understand it for the rest of my life but I’ll try to be more tactful around y’all

Especially since you’re all young

And I’m like an adult

[End screenshot three]

While at first this would seem like they had finally learned their lesson and apologized, the things they add on after the @s become quickly worrying. Not only do they admit to ‘have gotten into trouble with this stuff before’, meaning they have probably shown their transphobia in other places and been called out, but they also stand firmly on the fact that they will never understand it or ‘get’ it.

And of course, as jymble points out, the implication that the people they were talking to were only acting like that because they were young.

A while after this post was made, Pazam had posted an apology, and went onto contact jymble asking for the post with the evidence of their transphobic to be taken down. The reason? They were afraid people would see it and think they were still transphobic and not give them a chance.

In this more recent post, you can see the conversation play out between Pazam and jymbles. Long story short, Pazam feels that it’s unfair that that post is still up after they apologized, and jymble of course said they would rather not take it down, people deserve to know what they did and take their own conclusions, even if that involves avoiding them. How does Pazam respond? By flat out deleting the apology post. I’d love to show the apology post to give you both sides of the story but I cannot anymore, because Pazam in a very bizarre move just deleted it because they got mad a trans blogger wouldn’t take down their post with proof.

Here’s the transcript of the screenshots:

[Begin Conversation]

rebloggidy (Pazam’s personal):

I’m by no means transphobia-free after learning what I’ve done but at least I know my actions and am making an effort to be a better person towards trans people.

rebloggidy:

Hi again. So I hate to be that person but would it be ok if you took down that post about the transphobia claims? I know it took me 9 months to apologize but if people only see your side of the story and not realize the post I saw they’ll take it out of context and still think I’m transphobic. Do you understand?

jymble:

... i already told you im not taking down the post.

[jymble sends a screenshot of her own message in a previous conversation, the screenshot reads as follows:

however, i dont think im taking the post down, nor am i entirely comfortable with you interacting with me either. people deserve to know how you acted with this stuff, until youre really and truly *better* with it instead of just trying, and i was a direct target of it]

jymble:

you oughright told me "im by no means transphobia-free", word for word sorry, but i told you before. im not taking the post down.

rebloggidy:

I remember that. But what I'm trying to say to you is that if people who read it out of context will immediately think I'm still transphobic without the other side of it (my comment)

And I don't want people to think that in the future

jymble:

if people make assumptions without looking at the entire situation, thats on them

i am not deleting the post and thats final. people have a right to know what youve done, and they have a right to be uncomfortable

rebloggidy:

I'm ready to take down my post because frankly, I'm sick and tired of having to justifiy something that I did 9 months ago, and that people grow and learn even not 100% during that time and I'm ready to move on.

I'm still into smile for me and feel free to make a blacklist of my name so anybody who rbs my work on your dash can have it hidden or something.

Take care.

[End conversation]

a lot to unpack here, but perhaps most notable is when jymble simply stands her ground and tells pazam she wont take down the post, pazam straight up decides, without being told to or anything, that they should take down their apology. later on, they made a post stating why they deleted the post, and saying they had ‘been forced to’.

I also would love to link it here, but as of now of writing this, like, not even an hour or so after I had seen that post, it got deleted. The only memory I have of it is a conversation I had with my boyfriend about Pazam, in which I copypasted a fragment from that post that read:

“ So for those wondering where the apology post went, I was forced to delete it. I wanted to archive it in some way so I could pull it up for reference, but there was no way I could. Also I didn’t really want to see it every time on my blog because quite honestly it’s upsetting to look at.”

There are some lies and twisting of truths here. Pazam wasn’t forced to delete it, they decided they should do it as a way to somehow get back at jymble. And the excuse that it was upsetting for them to look at is just inexcusable, what matters most, letting people know of what youve done and that youre sorry, or just never addressing the situation?

But, well, I’m just hoping you’ll take my word for it. As you see, Pazam has officially deleted ANY traces of acknowledging this situation on their blog.

This worries me. If Pazam is truly as concerned that they will be seen as transphobic as they claim, why are they deleting anything that could give them a chance of showing their own side of the story?

Now, that is the end, for now, of Pazam’s history with transphobia. However! It is not the end for some other very shady things.

Namely, Pazam has consistently whitewashed characters from Smile For Me, specially Kamal, and when called out on it, simply deletes the asks.

Want to know how I know this?

I sent them an ask myself. I had come across this picture of Boris and Kamal:

And I knew that this wasn’t right. I can understand using light colors and doing watercolor, but if they can make Boris’ hair brown and vivid enough, why not Kamal? He looks like another character completely, or like he’s deathly sick! 

So I sent them an anonymous ask, perhaps a bit exhasperated, true, and my wording could be better. It went something like: “i am begging you to draw kamal with darker skin”.

I waited, checked. But nothing came of it. They never answered it.

Pazam flat out ignored when they were told they had drawn a canonically brown man with skin way too light. Not even a lone text post saying ‘hey anon, i dont agree with you’ or ‘hey anon im sorry it wont happen again’. Nothing. No word, no opinion.

And with this situation going on with them evading responsibility, I can’t say I’m fully surprised.

And, yet another thing. People had expressed concern over the fact they had drawn their Flower Kid, who is 17, in very intimate and close positions with Dr. Habit. It included nuzzling faces, cuddling in bed together, wearing his coat...

And they did hear the claims this time. As of now, their Flower Kid is 24, according to them.

Except... They do not look 24. At. All.

this is a 12 year old. at best. short body, stubby legs, big head. those are all attributes of a very young character, usually children. like, legitimately, thats how childrens anatomy is in real life. the younger the person, the bigger their head is in proportion to their body.

We have already had an adult trying to justify drawing their flower kid who barely looked like an adult if at all in intimate situations with Habit. Let’s not let it slide by again.

And yes, I’m aware Pazam claims that those pictures were not supposed to be interpreted as romantic, ‘only platonic fluff’ and that they intend to keep it that way, but I have talked to my boyfriend who is a survivor and he said it very well could be a case of someone just trying to cover their tracks.

BUT, all that being said, maybe this one particular instance could be just us being wary. Still, it does not diminish all that they have done, specially ignoring the whitewashing claims.

What you are going to do with this information, I do not know. Maybe you don’t care and will keep reblogging their content. Maybe you’re disgusted by them. But I’m just here to give you the facts. Personally though, I’m not willing to give them much of a chance after the way they’ve behaved. They are 24 years old, three years older than me, and I think I could do a better job of handling a situation like this, frankly.

[dead-ghouls]

Theres no way that i could ask for a break down of what you see in his ftes in ask format is is there?? I already love korekiyo, but I'm really curious about what you have to say.

I can do that! The only thing is that most of what he says I’ll be quoting from memory, but direct quotes can be found in his FTEs and in-game dialogue on wiki. I’ll do my best to provide as many screenshots as I can, but I doubt I will be able to find all, it’s a very long process and I dont have the whole day.V3 spoilers below, ofc. Also TW various types of abuse, you know the drill if you played the game. Long post!Let’s start from what we know about Korekiyo. What makes him Korekiyo, what makes him stand out, what’s special about him. 

- Unique outfit- Long hair- His deep knowledge of anthropology- His interest in occult/speaking to the dead- His deep relationship with death, grief and how he looks at it- His love for ropes- Being a serial killer

Now let’s break down every trait he has and where it comes from.

Unique outfit

FTE 3, he tells us his sister made it for him to suit her tastes, claiming his school uniform doesnt suit him.

Long hairI don’t remember if it was mentioned in-game, but it was mentioned in V3 manga anthology, that his long hair is a memento to his sister, since she had long hair, so he refuses to cut it. It is stated that events of manga obviously not canon, but I dont think this claim was outside of his canon characterisation. 

His deep knowledge of anthropology

In the same FTE he mentions that Sister was the one who “pushed him to research as much as he could”

His interest in occult/speaking to the dead + his relationship with death and griefI dont think i gotta find proof for that, he mentioned travelling looking to speak to the dead, the whole ch 3 with Caged Child + he mentioned having near-death experience after a seanse (see next bullet point), and that’s how his Sister came to him.He speaks about human mortality and coming to terms with it, but he himself cant do that. 

He doesnt fear death, maybe he even seeks it - to reunite with his Sister [cut to him enduring his execution and seeing his spirit happy and free, ready to meet her] but no way he could properly cope with human mortality and his own grief. That’s where all the occult stuff comes in - him telling how he tried so many things and how nothing worked (?). He says it during ch3 investigation, if you wanna look for a direct quote. Him being into occult, speaking with the dead, being possessed by his Sister - all of it is just his ways of coping with loss. He was very dependant on her (I’ll talk about it more below) and couldnt stand being alone.

His love for ropesOf course it can be a kinky thing but also look closely at this exchange:

This incident with ropes is what actually ended up “reuniting” him with his Sister. Of course he’d hold a special interest to this kind of activity after. 

Being a serial killerWell this one is obvious. Who did he kill? Girls. Why did he do it? To bring friends to his Sister. Simple as that.

Now look back at every bullet point and tell me: do you see a pattern? Yep, every aspect of his life, likes, personality, experiences, even his looks - it all traces back to his Sister. Controlling what he wears, what he does, what he likes; even after her death he is deeply affected and is devoted to doing everything in her name. Now try to recall one single thing about Korekiyo that wasn’t his Sister influence. Something he likes maybe? Something he enjoys on his own free time? Even his official dislike is a reference to a gift you might give in-game, an air refreshener that exorcises ghosts [He believes that he is possesed]. All I can think of is him telling he prefers green tea over black in one of FTEs. Korekiyo that we see and interact with in game isn’t his own person, just a reflection of grief, his Sister wants and needs. His whole existence is just a devotion to his late Sister, and it was the same way when she was alive.

Sister’s personality

From what I mentioned you should already hear the faint bells ringing in your head. “Pushed me to study” “Told me my uniform doesnt suit me” “I will kill people because her spirit told me to”He respected her, depended on her a lot. No shit, Sherlock - he was his Older Sibling. A side note, he never mentioned anyone else from his family, only said that they “had to hide their relationship from others” once. Sadly, I cant remember where it was said. No matter if he had any family present or not (having no family would worsen the case, but with family present its still fucked up) he still depended on her a lot, maybe considered her a parental figure, or at the very least - a role model. Korekiyo’s analysis on youtube brings up a very valid point - anthropology couldve been her passion as well, she just couldnt actually fullfill it because of the sickness. Explains her “pushing” him to research it.Basically we have an older sibling holding power over a younger sibling, presumably, from a younger age. More of her personality and influence can be seen in his trial. “You mustnt lose composure, you mustnt become flustered, you mustnt waver”Im linking this bit, but I strongly recommend rewatching the full version where his Sister appears. She appears to be his guardian, keeping him in check, making him act right. Telling him what to do and how to act. She appears in moments of distress when he needs comfort. He depends on her, he listens, he does everything she tells him to. Im not gonna get into the whole tulpa thing, so if youre not on board with it, I recommend reading into it more, even wiki has a brief explanation. Basically this possession is just his mind, but it does hold her true personality. So Sister is: assertive, calm, plays a role of guardian, has power over Korekiyo due her age, his respect and dependance on her, probably her being his parental figure. 

Now tell me, how this power dynamic could be healthy, consensual and (a very popular opinion in the fandom) this relationship was started from Korekiyo’s advances? How a younger sibling, that was so dependant and devoted could be in a consensual relationship with his older sibling that always tells him what to do?Korekiyo was groomed, he’s a victim. Most people in fandom hate him for being creepy and a sister-banging freak, because he doesn’t fit your cookie-cutter perseption of abuse victims. Everyone thinks that abuse victims only come in “i hate my abuser, i am currently away from them and i am healing” package. Korekiyo was never given a chance to realize it was wrong, he never got a chance to heal. He was groomed, abused, used and forced into relationship. Told that it was secret and sacred, that theyre breaking the boundaries, that’s why he mustnt tell anyone about it. Of course he believed her - its his Sister. She convinced him that his love and dependance on her was romantic/sexual love.

The same analysis brings up a good point of his Sister guilt tripping him because of her illness. Never getting a chance for romantic love, never getting a chance to make friends.

What breaks my heart is that after all of this, after devoting his life to his Sister, studying what she wanted, wearing what she wanted, killing for her sake and even being executed because of her - he says that he wasn’t enough.

TLDR - Their power dynamic is very obvious from his FTEs and the trial, he was clearly groomed and abused, never got to recover from her manipulations. And fandom either fetishisizes their relationship, excusing their nasty kinks by saying it was consensual, or hates him because they never took the time to analyze the content. He was abused, he was manipulated, god knows what else was done to him when she was alive, and he died driven to insanity, full of grief devoted to his Sister and blaming himself for not being enough. As a side-note: it is completely okay being uncomfortable with his character/everything that happened in ch3. You dont owe anyone interacting with the piece of media depicting such topics. Your comfort and safety comes first. Kodaka is a shitty fucking writer. What is not okay is hating a character for being a victim. 

I probably missed a lot, my brain is very disorganized, so feel free to ask more questions/add your own opinion. 

[honeymoonjin]

bts reaction - a video of the two of you goes viral

A/N: requested by a lovely anon :) 

JIN

the two of you were always cooking together at the boys’ dorm so you didn’t think any different when some of the others asked you to make them some dinner

little did the two of you know that jungkook and hobi were conspiring against you by placing a little camera they had borrowed off staff and filming the whole thing

as normal, the two of you found your rhythm in preparing and cooking several meats and vegetables, completely unaware that your every movement was being live-streamed on v-live

as you waited for the hot water on the stove to boil, you snuck over and slid yourself under Jin’s arm so that he was trapping you against the bench 

“i can’t see the carrots anymore, honey”

“oh, jinnie, who cares about carrots when your beautiful girlfriend is in front of you” 

weirdly enough, just like jin loves complimenting himself, he also loves it when you’re confident about your own looks, and you know how to use that to your advantage

jin smiles sweetly down at you and leans in for a kiss, murmuring against your lips “mmm, you’re right, those boys can make themselves dinner for once, i’m in the mood for a little private eatjin”

just as he begins to start grinding his hips against you, jungkook scrambles into the kitchen, just about slipping in his socks

“hyung stop! stop!”

you watch in bewilderment as he opens a slightly ajar cupboard and pulls out a camera, which was pointing straight at you

“what’s going on?” 

jungkook waves at the camera with a little laugh and then looks back up at you “we just wanted to prank you guys, but then you had to go and do...that. eugh, it’s burned onto my retinas now”

you blink in shock but your boyfriend doesn’t seem nearly as surprised. “jin..?”

“i saw the red light beeping when i went to get the chopping board”

“you knEW? and you still were going to-”

jin grins cheekily “i wanted to show off my beautiful girlfriend, is that so wrong?”

you keep a neutral face, but you can’t help but blush. “...fine, but let’s continue this show in private, okay?”

YOONGI

when it came to righting serenades to lovers, rap wasn’t generally the best medium

yoongi knew that, so for a while he had been asking jin in secret to help him improve his singing

he knew his hyung had been through trying to learn everything, and he was a great teacher

now, yoongi sat you down on his lap as he sat at the piano, delicate hands wiping down the keys nervously

he’s set up a little camera in the corner because he wanted to record the audio as a demo to send to namjoon, but he couldn’t track down the voice recorder, so a decent camera was just easier

he can just convert it to an audio file later anyway

you lean back and crane your neck around to watch him, but he pushes you back softly so that you’re eyes aren’t on him

he’s nervous as fuck, okay? he’s way out of his comfort zone here

his voice is quiet and a little wobbly but there’s a genuinity there, and it sounds so beautiful with the piano to accompany it

the lyrics are beautiful, and as you feel yourself fall in love with him more and more, you wish you could see his face right now, but you obediently watch him manipulate the white ivory instead

luckily, or perhaps unluckily, a couple of weeks later namjoon accidentally uploads the video version instead of the mp3 version on the official twitter, and it immediately goes viral

you watch it yourself, melting at the way yoongi’s eyes barely glance at the keys as he sings, fixated on you

the song is messed with a little before the release of the next album, but when he performs it in concert, the whole audience sings with him

after hearing the lyrics and seeing the real love that it stemmed from, army have taken it on board as the official song of their love towards BTS

yoongi is over the moon that people have really connected with his song, but still, the best performance of it he ever gave was that first time, when it was just him, you, and the piano

HOSEOK

you can’t dance

you know this. hobi knows this. the rest of bangtan won’t let you forget it.

but unlike the other members who just laugh at your awkward attempts to mimic their choreo during sound check, hobi wants you to be able to enjoy the thing that he loves so much, so he takes it upon himself to teach you

unfortunately, bighit smell profit like blood in the water, and they decide hobi should start doing it as a hope on the street series

so every second tuesday, like clockwork, army get to enjoy a video of (in your c o r r e c t opinion) the hottest guy on the planet deal with the dancing equivalent of a trainwreck

“honestly, seokie, just give up now. it’s been three months and my dancing still looks like i’m fighting a ghost and losing”

“i told you if you stopped flailing so much and just slowed down your arm movements you’d be much better!”

“didn’t you say i should find something that made me unique?!”

and so the sixth episode of this special edition of hope on the street becomes you and hobi pettily arguing and making zero progress

fans in particular tweet a million times about the moment that hoseok gives up, chases you around the studio and then tackles you and straddles you, forcing your surrender

it’s a very suggestive position, so you kinda can’t blame them, but now the problem is that army won’t shut up about getting more of it

they want you to suffer so that they can see how sexy hoseok looks when he gets angry

because holy fuck is he sexy when he gets angry

episode nine has him slapping you in the ass every time you miss your cue

episode eleven features him manhandling you into position when you insist you’re too tired to dance

maybe one day you’ll improve but for now you’re destined to showcase your lack of ability on an international scale with your unbelievably talented boyfriend

NAMJOON

unfortunately as namjoon’s girlfriend, your viral video moment isn’t as pg

namjoon is a real horndog, so it’s become pretty run of the mill for you two to send pictures back and forth

normally it’s on snapchat so that there’s no trace

but namjoon tells you he wants a video he can keep before he goes on tour, so he asks you to send one on your basic messaging service, that way he can save it to his camera roll

namjoon is doing a fanmeet, and they’re playing a game where one of the members streams their phone to the screen behind them and the fans have to guess who it is

most of the other members use mirroring, where the whole screen shows up exactly as it is on the phone, so namjoon assumes its all or nothing

he does his, and once he’s done instead of turning it off like he thinks he has (because his screen is no longer showing up) he’s just turned it to the setting where only videos stream

the fanmeeting is boring af (no offense army) but maybe it’s just because namjoon is missing you rn

he pulls out his phone to take a sneak peek at the video, making sure volume is down, but then your moans blast through the speakers

yup. namjoon is streaming a video of you getting off to the entire hall

fuck fuckfuckfuckfuckfcufkcufckuckfuk

his heart is beating so hard in his chest and his fingers shake as he desperately tries to mess with the settings and stop the video playing, but by the time he does, the whole room is chaos

fans are screaming and squealing and the members are either crying with laughter or look like they just want the ground to swallow them whole

namjoon is certainly the latter

but he laughs awkwardly, apologizes and tries to change the subject

army feel kinda bad for him and the way his cheeks are bright bright red so they let him move on, but you best believe shaky hand-cam videos of namjoon freaking out while his girlfriend’s sex tape plays on the big screen are going viral for MONTHS

JIMIN

in this case, it’s not a single video, but rather a compilation, that goes viral

we been knew that jimin is a slut for attention but one dedicated army scrounged up clips from all over the internet to put together a twelve minute-long video of all the moments of jimin being a needy boyfriend

there’s an entire three-minute section dedicated to his heart-eyes stare when you’re not watching

there’s a low quality video of you which all fans of bts have seen a million times where jimin straight-up grabs your hand and puts it over his dick behind stage after their comeback show

about a million different instances of him feeling you up as a way for you to stop what you were doing and look at him

and then of course there was a supercut of moments from the various Bangtan Bombs you had featured in where he whines and pouts and wiggles his shoulders when you’re chatting with namjoon and not him

the two of you see the video when you keep getting tagged, and while it just makes jimin even more whiny, you have a good laugh over it

in fact, you take it upon yourself to start tweeting some screenshots of jimin being needy, exposing him yourself

“it’s tiring being the girlfriend of an idol, but it’s even more tiring when it’s jiimin!” you tweet

of course, jimin’s feelings are a liiiittle hurt and you have to make it up to him for weeks

(and don’t think the fans don’t notice how jimin suddenly starts acting like he has the biggest dick in town)

(they’re well aware some shit has gone down every time he comes out from backstage only to have red cheeks and a dopey grin)

TAEHYUNG

this is 100% percent tae’s fault

he thought it would be fucking hilarious to post the drunken voicemail you had left him one night when you were out partying with your girls

to be fair, if it was anyone else but you, you would’ve laughed too

but that’s your voice in bubbling sobs confessing your undying love to him so it is most certainly Not Funny, thank you very much

“...and i hope you get a good sleep because you deserve it and i hope that you know how much i love you because when i look at you it’s like all the stars left the sky and they’re in your eyes and you’re so beautiful and i love you so much and sometimes it hurts me inside because you’re so wonderful and magical and. oh also, did we get milk the other day? we’re almost out of milk i think. anyway i just called to let you know i’m staying over at unnie’s place so don’t wait up. okay i love you. no, you hang up first! oh, you don’t wanna hang up on me because you looooooove me too much! goodniiight baby”

and then a solid 43 seconds of you breathing because you forgot to actually hang up, and eventually the recording stops

army think it’s the cutest thing in the world, and tae does too, but of all the beautiful things you’ve done for him in private he chooses to share the drunk one? just rude

#[your ship name]needmilk is the new trending hashtag, and army literally start bringing milk cartons to fanmeetings, telling tae to give it to you

you have too much milk, and not enough dignity

you tell fans this on twitter and then #toomuchmilk replaces it

next time you get drunk, you are determined not to call tae

JUNGKOOK

of all the things you could do with your time, become anonymous amateur porn-stars probably wasn’t the most productive or advisable

but being an idol had given jungkook both a desire to do something without being recognized as the maknae from BTS, and simultaneously a huge fetish for exhibitionism

he’s a performer, it’s in his blood, so why fuck when you can fuck and have people get off to you? that’s what he figures, so the two of you create an account

you’re obviously extremely careful about not showing your faces, and the current system you have set up is putting down a strip of tape on the bed (or wherever you’re fucking as it most certainly varies) where the edge of camera shot reaches

you keep your heads above that line, and no one can see a thing

you also try to keep out any identifying materials in the shot like clothes you’ve worn in public before, or the many figurines jungkook has lying around

maybe what makes the eventual discovery even worse is how long it takes

nobody finds out for well over a year, so there’s a preeetty hefty backlog of videos

in the end, it’s your own stupid mistake that gives it away

jungkook shoots a v-live shortly after the two of you film a video of you two doing it in his studio

you had cleared out the wall so it was just plain black, and even brought in a chair from a different room so that no one for whatever reason would recognise jungkook’s gaming chair

but he’s so blissed out from you riding him and giving him one of the best orgasms of his life that he makes a rookie mistake

he forgets to take off the blue masking tape that lies in a rough square on the wall

when he returns his studio back to the way it was and goes live, one army who clearly was also a fan of your porn videos notices the tape and mentions it in the comments

soon enough the numbers of the chat peak and fall crazily as fans leave the live to go check the pornsite and your most recent vid, and come back to compare it to his studio

jungkook tries to pretend like he’s not noticing the stream of comments talking about how hot he looks and how good his moans sound, but he realises he never wanted it to be this way

he wanted to keep this and his videos separate, and now he’s made an irreversible mistake

he shuts off the v-live without warning and runs down to namjoon’s room in tears, asking what to do

in the end the issue is resolved by deleting the channel immediately, and very few people actually thought to take anything more than a screenshot, but jungkook knows he won’t be seen as a baby boy maknae ever again

(namjoon also realizes that for the past five months he’s been unwittingly jacking it religiously to jungkook fucking his girlfriend)

(he doesn’t tell jungkook this)

[fluidityandgiggles]

Sleep Is For The Weak - Chapter 12

Previous Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 5, Last Chapter

Writing Masterlist - for previous chapters not otherwise linked, Read on AO3

Notes (I guess): Thanks a lot to @ilovemygaydad for updating y’all about my wifi situation, the wifi works semi-well now, and... well...

WRITING THIS CHAPTER WAS HELL AND A HALF AND IM SO GLAD ITS FINALLY FINISHED.

Ahem. Excuse me. I have a couple of very important things to say, though.

If any of you haven't read the latest chapter of Keep Him Safe, which is right here, please go do so. I read it the moment it was posted and... I was at dinner with my family, so I had to hold in my squealing... to be perfectly honest with y'all, I already knew what was going to happen in that chapter since I started writing chapter three, I think...? So I have known about this for a very long time, but it still made me super happy to see it actually happen in writing. So... go read KHS, y'all. You really should. It's awesome.

(Quick update: I checked my screenshots and... yeah, I've known about that since July, which is when I started writing this fic. Again, I've known about what happened in sleep for six months, and surprisingly didn't spoil almost any of it to anyone around me. I deserve a fucking prize.)

To anyone who just came over from Eva's shameless plugging of me - hello, nice to have you here. In this fucked up piece of angst we discuss queer history as well as Remy's personal history, or - as I said to myself while reading and re-reading what Eva has to say about this fic - "well, this story is as much about queer history as it is about Remy, where he came from, where he's going, where he came from cotton eye joey'n". And to anyone who's a regular reader, I'm so glad you're sticking around to read this... this thing. It's become a monster in my head, I can promise you that much.

As always, thanks to @broadwaytheanimatedseries for the original idea, to @whatwashernameagain for the original fic (can you believe it’s been six months since we came up with chapter 23?), to @anony-phangirl and @asleepybisexual and @winglessnymph for the help wherever needed, and a special one to Morgan - again - for helping me get the word out. All of those people are my shining stars and I love them so much.

Tag list (sort of): @bunny222, @ab-artist, @sweet-and-sour-shadowling, @your-username-is-unavailable, @virgilcrofters, @why-things-go-boom, @ilovemygaydad (thanks again, kiddo!), @violetblossem. @maybe-i-like-the-misery, @book-of-charlie, @thatsanswitch

(Wanna be tagged? Just lemme know!)

Trigger warning: period appropriate transphobia (the early 00s were not exactly trans-friendly). This chapter discusses rape again, this time in a bit more detail (nothing graphic, it’ll never be graphic, I promise), and includes a... panic attack of sorts. Be warned.

—————

January 24th, 2003

Emile's smile faltered.

"...so what if I got raped?" He muttered, putting down the stack of chairs he was holding. "What's done is done. They had their fun—"

"They…?" India tilted her head. Oh shoot… "There was more than one person?"

"More like three… what? Why are you looking at me like—"

The stack India was holding fell to the floor.

"Did you tell anyone?" Emile stared at the floor. Maybe she'll go away if he doesn't cooperate. "Emile! Did you tell anyone?"

"I told the doctors…" Emile's voice faltered. "What's going on?"

"I'm surprised you're even alive right now!" India's pacing was… terrifying. For some reason… she suddenly just… turned so scary. "Mixing date rape drugs with alcohol, which is what I'm assuming happened to you, is so dangerous! And I'm only assuming that's what happened because I heard from Remy that they found GHB traces—"

"I'm not proud," Emile managed to stutter. "Of… all this. I just… I can drink, okay? I made some mistakes in the past—"

"You're seventeen!"

"I made some mistakes in the past, and… this one makes me feel like all those mistakes have been trying to tell me that I shouldn't exist…"

"No… no, peach, please." He already started crying by the time she stepped in to hug him. "I get that. I really do. Sometimes I think about how much better my life might've been if I pretended like I'm 'cured' of being transgender after conversion. My cousin wouldn't have done what she did, that's the biggest plus. But… I wouldn't have come here. I wouldn't have started on my way to become a statistics analyst. I wouldn't have met Jenna. I would probably be living a sad, closeted life back home, and that isn't such a nice thing."

"You were too…?"

"I was too, yeah… as victims, we gotta stick to each other."

The wet spots on India's sweater were getting larger by the second. But she didn't mind it.

"Like I was told when I was sixteen," she said, much quieter than before. "Nobody is going to believe a man who says he was raped. We gotta stick together, whether we like it or not."

——

"Hey, isn't that that friend of yours?" Remy heard behind him about two minutes before the meeting started.

Oh, good.

"Hey, didn't you deliberately choose to forget that I live in the other side of the US from you because you wanted to be a little fuck?" Remy asked back, looking at Chris turn redder than a tomato.

"I swear to god, I had no idea!"

"Suck it and your excuses, Mendez."

"Hey, hey… come on, Remy. Won't you at least let me make it up to you?"

Remy couldn't stay angry… well, he could. But not as angry. It was a stupid reason, too…

"I will." Chris beamed at him. "But it'll take a very long time."

"...you have a week."

"I won't let you down," Chris said with the same wide, obnoxious grin, quickly kissing Remy's cheek and taking a seat.

Fuck him and his obnoxious self.

On the third of January, Remy and Emile sat down on the hotel bed in what was probably the fanciest hotel Remy's ever been to (though he never really visited any hotels in his life, no time or money for that). They were listening to Gustav Holst's The Planets as Emile performed a one-man dramatic reading of No Exit, and Remy couldn't feel more at peace.

This situation right here - all the people, all the tension, Chris right there a few steps away from him - was the exact opposite.

"Do you want me to leave?" A quiet voice said and Remy felt himself being squeezed so tight, he was sure his ribs would crack. Emile. "I can leave if you—"

"Come on, sit next to me," Remy said as quietly and took a rather far seat from Chris. Serves him right.

"Happy Friday, everyone," India opened the meeting. "I see that we got some new people after the break, so we're going to do another name round. Who wants to start?"

Emile raised his hand almost immediately.

"I'm Emile, I'm— do we mention our major?"

"If you want to."

"I'm Emile, I'm a psychology major, and I'm probably gay. Or asexual. I just… don't really know if I'm more gay or asexual yet."

——

Monday, January 27th

"Look, I find some of what you teach suspect," Emile hummed to himself as he skipped behind Remy back to their building after a particularly entertaining sols 20 class. "Because I'm used to relying on intellect, but I try to open up to what I don't know, because reason says I should've died three years ago…"

"Em, stop it," Remy half-laughed. "I get it, you're still thinking about Rent."

"It was such a good show!" Emile whined - well, sort of. "Jai Rodriguez was really good!"

"I met Idina Menzel through this," Remy said with another chuckle. "She's nice… kind of a diva, if you ask me."

"So… like you?"

"What do you mean, like me?"

"Nice, but kind of a diva." Emile nudged him. "I'll bet you she's totally selfless and sweet but acts like she doesn't care about anything in the world—"

"No, actually… she isn't." Remy sighed. The memories were foggy - it was over eight years ago - but… "Dad is working on some project with her again. Her and Kristin Chenoweth…"

"Kristin?" Emile shrieked. "Good golly, I love her! She's so sweet and talented!"

"I'm really not supposed to tell you anything," Remy laughed, and then stopped.

A figure made him freeze at his doorstep. A small, shaking figure, with braided brown hair and an ill-fitting, black, puffy coat.

Leah was rapidly knocking on Remy's suite door.

——

"Why did you think it was a good idea to come here?" Remy asked, careful not to scream. Leah sat in the living room, her hair dripping wet from the shower he made her take, wrapped up in the clothes she brought with her in her lime green schoolbag. She was waiting on her hot chocolate.

"I wanted to."

"How did you even get a bus ticket? You're seven!"

"I took money from mom and went to the bus station!" Leah huffed. "I know where the buses are, and I know how to—"

"I didn't say you don't know, Leah Mae," Remy chastised, putting the cup of hot chocolate on the table quite forcefully. "But you're seven years old! This was incredibly dangerous of you—"

"I don't wanna live at home anymore!" Leah screamed. "Mom was mean all of Christmas, and Lizzie wasn't being nice when we went back to school, she didn't want me to be her friend anymore, and Rachel was annoying—"

"Sweetie, they're going to think I kidnapped you!" Leah was taken aback. Remy was worried to the point of terrifying. "They're going to think I kidnapped you, Leah. It won't end well!"

"I didn't think…" the tears started coming out. Oh shit… "I didn't mean it! I just… I don't like being home! Don't be mad at me!"

"Oh, baby, no, I'm not mad at you!" Remy was quick to take her in for a hug. His poor baby sister… "I'm just worried, Leah. Extremely worried. Never do such a thing ever again, okay?" She nodded in his arms. "There's nothing we can do about this now, but—"

The door opened with a bang, and "I brought the bunnies!"

Leah immediately perked up. Mycroft tried to hop straight into her lap the moment he was close enough, since he already knew her and was very worried for the tiny human, but Lestrade took his time getting to know her. She was new, and he didn't know her yet, and what if she wasn't going to be nice?

"Leah, this is Lestrade," Emile said with a huge smile, closing the door and coming to cuddle them all - Remy included. "He's Mycroft's brother, and I adopted him after Christmas!"

"But you don't celebrate Christmas."

"No I don't, but you do." He booped her nose, making her giggle. "Lestrade is a nice boy. Give him a bit, he'll jump into your lap in no time."

As Leah entertained herself, playing with the bunnies and telling them stories, Remy pulled Emile to the side.

"She ran away from home!"

"I heard that when you asked me to go get the bunnies, Remy."

"She's seven years old! What do I do with a seven-year old runaway? Is it even a thing? A seven-year old runaway?"

Emile kisses Remy's cheek quicker than he could process it happening. "It's going to be fine. Call Linda, let her know that Leah is here—"

"Leah asked me not to tell anyone she's here," Remy sighed, rubbing his face in frustration.

"I understand, but… Linda is still your mom. Leah is still seven years old. She needs to go home, whether you like it or not." When Remy still seemed like he's having trouble processing it, Emile pulled him into a hug. "Do you want me to talk to her about it for you?"

Remy could only say a very weak "yes please" before Emile went back to the couch, to talk to Leah.

He was jittering. He was angry, and scared, and disappointed, and proud, and he felt everything so intensely and was so shocked and confused that he couldn't name it. He barely turned eighteen last July, he didn't even know how to drive yet, and he was absolutely, most definitely, going to be in trouble for this seven-year old child showing up at his door after running away from home.

He wasn't going to call Linda. But he couldn't keep Leah over. And he didn't know shit about raising children, for the period of time he was going to have Leah over, until he figures out what to do. Remy wanted to scream, how much he wanted to. But he couldn't.

So he did the next best thing he could do. He dropped to the floor and started crying.

He was too tired, physically and emotionally, to pick himself back up at that particular moment.

[tanblaque]

What's your theory about what's going on in off?

Warning: Lengthywriting ahead with spoilers.

(I actually wrote a whole articleto answer this, anon! It nearly reached six pages on Word, but I had to cut itdown. And I think I took advantage of this Ask to make an analysis. Do forgiveme. I love this game so much.)

Let’s establish, OFF takes placein a world that is very unnatural and dystopia-like, specters plague the land,occupants breathe smoke, water is made out of liquid plastic and solid plasticmakes out other objects, and  meat is theonly thing edible. Nameless inhabitants with the same dress code live theirlife in fear of the ghosts, and under the tyranny of the Zones’ ruthless and corruptedGuardians, withstanding a never-ending life of work.

You, the Player, control theBatter, an emotionless holy man who seeks to purify the world.

In general: OFF is about a fatherridding all hopes, dreams and affection for his terminally ill son. We play ashis persona, but we are in the view of his child.

It protects the books, but it can’t read them. Maybe we’re all protecting something, but we just don’t know what… or maybe we’re ruining it. - Elsen, Zone 2

Hugo

Hugo is sick. It is hinted in theevents of the Room when he mentions being told by his papa, and his sound clipbeing a cough. He had to take pills, and he wasn’t allowed to go outside. He lookslike a baby, but he probably didn’t grow up well, he also has no trace of hairon his head or eyebrow.

Each time you enter the Room, thesurroundings change. First, a smiley face made out of chairs is present; next afrown with tears, a bunch of computers with floors that hurts, people going toand fro, but you can’t touch them. And then the room itself turned into aprison cell. This is a manifestation of Hugo’s feelings towards his dwellingplace, dark, isolated, frightening, and lonely.

Sundays were probably special tohim in a way, considering most of the calendars noted “Sunday” and the Batterkeeps some Days with himself too as well.

There are six personalities

This game delves into psychology andmany symbolisms, which involves the characters themselves. If you would notice,most characters in the game are male except the Queen and Sucre. This supportsthe idea that all the male characters are manifestations of the father’sdifferent personalities.(I’m referencing the inspirations of this game being, SilentHill 2, where every character faces manifestations of their fears, an ill Mary;Brazil, with Jill and Sam; The Wizard of Oz; Killer7 etc.)

The Batter is dressed in abaseball uniform, manifesting how Hugo viewed his father as an enemy like the antagonist,Ballman, in his comic book. He is a Puppet, representing the Decision, beingstripped off of all emotions and empathy so that he can fulfill his goal topurify. What does purifying mean? To hide. And what are the specters? The truth.The truth that Hugo is dying. This is to achieve peace. Most parents wish tohelp their child continue living life as comfortable as possible despite their incurableillness. Talking to a kid about death is the most difficult thing to do.Valerie and the Judge are the father’s subconscious mind, the Judge being thewise conscience, and Valerie being judgment.

However, the father realized thatthe truth was undeniable. The specters were too many and the only way for themto come to an end was to finally turn the switch off, which belongs to the lifesupport of his vegetable/comatose son.

Dedan is a tall, foul mouthed, andill-tempered man. He is the guardian of Zone 1 which supports all the otherZones with its production of the elements that is vital for their world tocontinue living. He works endlessly to supply the needs and is loyal to theQueen. Dedan represents the father as the provider, who works hard to support hisfamily, and protect them. He has regards for time as hinted in the Room:Chapter 4 and his competencies. Overworking probably took the best of him. Andthus the Batter finishes him.

Japhet is a firebird thatmanifests the father’s other role who gives the pleasures and a future to his family.At some point, Hugo and his mother became engrossed with all the troubles thatthey forgot about what the father gave them, ‘peace’, 'security’,'entertainment’, that being the abandoned Mall, Library, and Amusement Park. Inthe Room: Chapter 4, he was a small humble bird, but then grew into one ofthose god-looking mythological creatures full of pride. His taking over Valerieis a symbol of being held by back his judgment, only to tear it to shreds and toallow his arrogance to get the best of him, lashing out at his people to hurtthem. He knew of what he became and is guilty of it. Thus following afterDedan’s downfall.

But that was me! It was I who made it all like that for you! Are you all so blinded by your pathetic fear of living? - Japhet

Enoch represents the father’shard attempts to feed his family sugar-coated lies, telling them thateverything will be okay, denying the truth of Hugo’s illness, even to the pointof chasing the Batter down and breaking through pipes just to stop him fromtelling the truth.

Zacharie manifests the father’spassive attitude. Careless, and being preoccupied with messing you around, he’sa deceiver. A man who wears a mask and has a heart stuck to his shirt. Sugar isanother representation of Hugo’s mother. And she’s nothing but boss hidden deepin Zone 0, obsessing over the lies. The two are manifestations of the fatherand mother’s relationship. Despite having killed Sugar, Zacharie just simplyremarks, “It’s better that way.”

The Queen

The Queen represents the mother. Beautiful,loving, powerful, and the light of Hugo’s world. She’s the Batter’s parallel,having add-ons of her own, and being much grander as compared to his simpledesign. The battle against her is an important one, as we get hints on whathappened. If you would notice, it seemed similar to a couple fighting, referencedby their dialogue, and the soundtracks played during the chapter, “Woman ofyour Dreams” and “The Meaning of His Tears”. Each word she said hurt him. Notonly was she berating him, she was also fighting to keep the lies but lost.

The Batter’s confrontation with Hugo

Each blow of his bat symbolizedthe father finally telling Hugo of his situation, however, still giving him theassurance that “There will be no more darkness”.

Unfortunately, all these eventshave already happened, and Hugo was just having flashbacks of his life. And we,the Player, spectated. We were only allowed to actually intervene when we weregiven a choice, to side with the Batter, or the Judge.

The final clash with the Judge represents thefather and his conscience. This very moment was beyond Hugo’s reach, and is nolonger a memory, but was actually taking place in the present. The father hadto make a final decision, and you were in his shoes. Pull the switch and thefather ends Hugo’s life, as well as his. Choose either way and it’s nothing butregrets, and a life of loneliness.

OFF did a good job in usingsymbolism in its narrative. It actually nearly covered most topics. Examples arebureaucracy, environmental problems, sickness, family, and imagination butstill not resulting in clichés. It’s bizarre, comedic, yet dark. Simple butstill complex. This game never ceases to fascinate me, truly the best horrorRPG.

But remember, it’s just a theory!Nothing is right or wrong, it’s all up to you. Thanks for reading.

I noticed thiswas pointed out already in @krazehcakes’ post, but I thought the exact same waybefore even reading theories online. Screenshots are property of Panzer’s textwalkthrough.

[newstfionline]

Here Come the Fake Videos, Too

By Kevin Roose, NY Times, March 4, 2018

The scene opened on a room with a red sofa, a potted plant and the kind of bland modern art you’d see on a therapist’s wall.

In the room was Michelle Obama, or someone who looked exactly like her. Wearing a low-cut top with a black bra visible underneath, she writhed lustily for the camera and flashed her unmistakable smile.

Then, the former first lady’s doppelgänger began to strip.

The video, which appeared on the online forum Reddit, was what’s known as a “deepfake”--an ultrarealistic fake video made with artificial intelligence software. It was created using a program called FakeApp, which superimposed Mrs. Obama’s face onto the body of a pornographic film actress. The hybrid was uncanny--if you didn’t know better, you might have thought it was really her.

Until recently, realistic computer-generated video was a laborious pursuit available only to big-budget Hollywood productions or cutting-edge researchers. Social media apps like Snapchat include some rudimentary face-morphing technology.

But in recent months, a community of hobbyists has begun experimenting with more powerful tools, including FakeApp--a program that was built by an anonymous developer using open-source software written by Google. FakeApp makes it free and relatively easy to create realistic face swaps and leave few traces of manipulation. Since a version of the app appeared on Reddit in January, it has been downloaded more than 120,000 times, according to its creator.

Deepfakes are one of the newest forms of digital media manipulation, and one of the most obviously mischief-prone. It’s not hard to imagine this technology’s being used to smear politicians, create counterfeit revenge porn or frame people for crimes. Lawmakers have already begun to worry about how deepfakes could be used for political sabotage and propaganda.

Even on morally lax sites like Reddit, deepfakes have raised eyebrows. Recently, FakeApp set off a panic after Motherboard, the technology site, reported that people were using it to create pornographic deepfakes of celebrities. Pornhub, Twitter and other sites quickly banned the videos, and Reddit closed a handful of deepfake groups, including one with nearly 100,000 members.

Some users on Reddit defended deepfakes and blamed the media for overhyping their potential for harm. Others moved their videos to alternative platforms, rightly anticipating that Reddit would crack down under its rules against nonconsensual pornography. And a few expressed moral qualms about putting the technology into the world.

Then, they kept making more.

The deepfake creator community is now in the internet’s shadows. But while out in the open, it gave an unsettling peek into the future.

“This is turning into an episode of Black Mirror,” wrote one Reddit user. The post raised the ontological questions at the heart of the deepfake debate: Does a naked image of Person A become a naked image of Person B if Person B’s face is superimposed in a seamless and untraceable way? In a broader sense, on the internet, what is the difference between representation and reality?

The user then signed off with a shrug: “Godspeed rebels.”

After lurking for several weeks in Reddit’s deepfake community, I decided to see how easy it was to create a (safe for work, nonpornographic) deepfake using my own face.

I started by downloading FakeApp and enlisting two technical experts to help me. The first was Mark McKeague, a colleague in The New York Times’s research and development department. The second was a deepfake creator I found through Reddit, who goes by the nickname Derpfakes.

Because of the controversial nature of deepfakes, Derpfakes would not give his or her real name. Derpfakes started posting deepfake videos on YouTube a few weeks ago, specializing in humorous offerings like Nicolas Cage playing Superman. The account has also posted some how-to videos on deepfake creation.

What I learned is that making a deepfake isn’t simple. But it’s not rocket science, either.

The first step is to find, or rent, a moderately powerful computer. FakeApp uses a suite of machine learning tools called TensorFlow, which was developed by Google’s A.I. division and released to the public in 2015. The software teaches itself to perform image-recognition tasks through trial and error. The more processing power on hand, the faster it works.

To get more speed, Mark and I used a remote server rented through Google Cloud Platform. It provided enough processing power to cut the time frame down to hours, rather than the days or weeks it might take on my laptop.

Once Mark set up the remote server and loaded FakeApp on it, we were on to the next step: data collection.

Picking the right source data is crucial. Short video clips are easier to manipulate than long clips, and scenes shot at a single angle produce better results than scenes with multiple angles. Genetics also help. The more the faces resemble each other, the better.

I’m a brown-haired white man with a short beard, so Mark and I decided to try several other brown-haired, stubbled white guys. We started with Ryan Gosling. (Aim high, right?) I also sent Derpfakes, my outsourced Reddit expert, several video options to choose from.

Next, we took several hundred photos of my face, and gathered images of Mr. Gosling’s face using a clip from a recent TV appearance. FakeApp uses these images to train the deep learning model and teach it to emulate our facial expressions.

To get the broadest photo set possible, I twisted my head at different angles, making as many different faces as I could.

Mark then used a program to crop those images down, isolating just our faces, and manually deleted any blurred or badly cropped photos. He then fed the frames into FakeApp. In all, we used 417 photos of me, and 1,113 of Mr. Gosling.

When the images were ready, Mark pressed “start” on FakeApp, and the training began. His computer screen filled with images of my face and Mr. Gosling’s face, as the program tried to identify patterns and similarities.

About eight hours later, after our model had been sufficiently trained, Mark used FakeApp to finish putting my face on Mr. Gosling’s body. The video was blurry and bizarre, and Mr. Gosling’s face occasionally flickered into view. Only the legally blind would mistake the person in the video for me.

We did better with a clip of Chris Pratt, the scruffy star of “Jurassic World,” whose face shape is a little more similar to mine. For this test, Mark used a bigger data set--1,861 photos of me, 1,023 of him--and let the model run overnight.

A few days later, Derpfakes, who had also been training a model, sent me a finished deepfake made using the footage I had sent and a video of the actor Jake Gyllenhaal. This one was much more lifelike, a true hybrid that mixed my facial features with his hair, beard and body.

Derpfakes repeated the process with videos of Jimmy Kimmel and Liev Schreiber, both of which turned out well. As an experienced deepfake creator, Derpfakes had a more intuitive sense of which source videos would produce a clean result, and more experience with the subtle blending and tweaking that takes place at the end of the deepfake process.

In all, our deepfake experiment took three days and cost $85.96 in Google Cloud Platform credits. That seemed like a small price to pay for stardom.

On the day of the school shooting last month in Parkland, Fla., a screenshot of a BuzzFeed News article, “Why We Need to Take Away White People’s Guns Now More Than Ever,” written by a reporter named Richie Horowitz, began making the rounds on social media.

The whole thing was fake. No BuzzFeed employee named Richie Horowitz exists, and no article with that title was ever published on the site. But the doctored image pulsed through right-wing outrage channels and was boosted by activists on Twitter. It wasn’t an A.I.-generated deepfake, or even a particularly sophisticated Photoshop job, but it did the trick.

Online misinformation, no matter how sleekly produced, spreads through a familiar process once it enters our social distribution channels. The hoax gets 50,000 shares, and the debunking an hour later gets 200. The carnival barker gets an algorithmic boost on services like Facebook and YouTube, while the expert screams into the void.

There’s no reason to believe that deepfake videos will operate any differently. People will share them when they’re ideologically convenient and dismiss them when they’re not. The dupes who fall for satirical stories from The Onion will be fooled by deepfakes, and the scrupulous people who care about the truth will find ways to detect and debunk them.

“There’s no choice,” said Hao Li, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Southern California. Mr. Li, who is also the founder of Pinscreen, a company that uses artificial intelligence to create lifelike 3-D avatars, said the weaponization of A.I. was inevitable and would require a sudden shift in public awareness.

“I see this as the next form of communication,” he said. “I worry that people will use it to blackmail others, or do bad things. You have to educate people that this is possible.”

So, O.K. Here I am, telling you this: An A.I. program powerful enough to turn Michelle Obama into a pornography star, or transform a schlubby newspaper columnist into Jake Gyllenhaal, is in our midst. Manipulated video will soon become far more commonplace.

And there’s probably nothing we can do except try to bat the fakes down as they happen, pressure social media companies to fight misinformation aggressively, and trust our eyes a little less every day.

[satoshi-mochida]

Kingdoms of the Dump is a SNES-style RPG with platforming elements and turn-based combat developed by the New Jersey-based Roach Games. It is currently in production for PC and Mac, but a console release is also possible if the game’s upcoming Kickstarter campaign succeeds.

Here is an overview of the game, via its official website:

■ Welcome to the Lands of Fill

Join the trashcan knight, Dustin Binsley, as he fights his way through the Five and Half Kingdoms of the Dump. Rescue the trashpicked King, defeat the totally disgusting Toxic Grimelin Army and prevent the Lands of Fill from an all-out war!

Accompanied by your best friend Ratavia, embark on a perilous quest from the Trashmounds of Garbagia to the Faucet Falls of Detergeos. Brave dank, dangerous dungeons, face-off against fearsome, filthy foes, and build a party tough enough to tackle the toxic threat!

What You Need to Know

Created for both PC and Mac. Possible console release if funded!

Toggle between FIVE playable characters and use their unique abilities to navigate dungeons, solve puzzles, and take down enemies.

We focus on engaging exploration by letting you run and jump all over the maps to find secrets and trashy treasures!

Explore unique environments and various oddball locations detailed with rich snes-styled pixel art.

Turn-based combat that takes the best from classic RPGs while adding a few new elements, such as tactical character placement and timed hits.

On Screen Enemy encounters, NO RANDOM BATTLES!!!

■ Characters

Dustin Binsley

Class: Garbage Knight (In-Training)

Weapon: His scrappy old sword, “Can-Opener”

Skill: Scrapbinding

Hometown: Tin Alley

Dustin is a young cannister from Tin Alley, who was recently granted with the honor as serving as the King’s personal squire at the 115th Annual KingsCon. However, Dustin stayed up all night drinking curdled milk and overslept the feast. And oh yeah, the King got kidnapped. So now it’s up to Dustin to take on a dangerous mission, where he must prove to everyone-and himself- that he is truly worthy of the title of Garbage Knight.

Ratavia

Class: Rogue

Weapon: Daggers

Skill: Way of the Street

Hometown: Ratlanta

Dustin’s best friend and older-sister figure. She moved to Tin Alley after leaving her home kingdom of Mammalon a few years ago. She wanted to live a simple life in a quiet place… too bad keeping Dustin out of trouble is a full time job.

Walker Jacket

Class: Gunman / Librarian

Weapon: His trusty revolver, “Bookshot”

Skill: Trickshots

Hometown: Needlepoint

A member of the Order of Book’s End and probably the most feared librarian in all of the Lands of Fill. He spent years chasing down overdue books and lost library cards but now must lend his service to a greater cause…

Cerulean

Class: Laundromancer

Weapon: Bubble Wind

Skill: Laundromancy

Hometown: Laundry Forest

This young laundromancer was often known as “shy” “quiet” and “nothing special.” That all changed on his Print-Day, when he received the sacred Star Pattern, not seen for over a century. With his sudden rise to notoriety he found himself ostracized by his fellow Wizards of the Wash. They were probably just jealous. Now he spends most of his time in seclusion working on his bubble arts.

Musk

Class: Stink-Bug

Weapon: Stinklances

Skill: Fumeshaping

Hometown: ???

Little is known about Musk. He has been working for the crime lord Big Daddy Longlegs for the last ten years, but before that no one has been able to find any trace of him. As greedy as he is grumpy, Musk isn’t all bad as he pretends to be. He possesses an exotic skill known as Fumeshaping, where he can memorize the scents of his enemies and create a stink cloud around himself in their image.

Lute

Class: Bard / Student

Weapon: None

Skill: Arguably none

Hometown: Tabletop

Lute is the disowned son of House Stringmire. He didn’t show much promise in his music studies and and often skipped his lessons to go read instead. He became an embarrassment to his family of accomplished musical instruments, and was sent off to join the Book Keeper’s Order and has become the understudy of Walker Jacket.

Watch a trailer below. View the screenshots above in higher resolution at the gallery.

[ask-the-freelance-mercs]

Reasons Why I Probably Won’t be Returning to This Blog Anytime Soon.

I want to start this off by apologizing for disappearing without a trace for so long. No matter how busy I was, I should of at least left anyone who was still interested with some kind of idea where I had gone to. I just felt like it would have been cheap to pop in here with nothing to give to you guys, but seeing as 2018 will be upon us soon, I feel like it’s only fair to be honest with you guys. This blog is most likely going to remain inactive for a number of reasons that I will be getting into under the cut. 

1. School

My second semester of college will be starting on the 8th of January and if it was anything like my first semester, I will be extremely busy with that. I took 5 classes for the fall semester and 5 for the spring in order to meet the requirements for my scholarship, and while I am doing well with that, it is an a lot of work to keep up so many classes. Any free time I had that wasn’t spent working on homework assignments I tried to spend with my friends, or relaxing with video games and youtube videos. Updating this blog was the last thing on my mind, which leads into my next point.

2. Gmod isn’t the fun for me anymore

This is by no means trying to bash any of the gmod artists and bloggers who still remain active. I know you can do amazing things with gmod and all the mods people have made to add hundreds of props and cool effects, however the process just became too tedious for me. While you can do a lot technically with gmod, I wasn’t very proud of anything I was producing despite sometimes spending an hour or more setting up one image. I don’t know if it was a mix of using other people’s assets to make art that made me feel unaccomplished, or just that I wasn’t willing to put as much time into my screenshots to make them look good, but nothing about my work really felt fulfilling to me.

3. Most of the gmod bloggers I started my blog for are no longer active on Tumblr

Again, this is no offense to any active gmod blogs I still follow. I wish you all the best of luck. However, the reason I started my own blog wasn’t really to tell my own story like it should have been, it was mostly to interact with the gmodders I admired. I honestly think my blog was the most fun when I got to do character interactions or just answer silly little asks from my friends. However, all good things come to an end, and most of the blogs I started mine to interact with are gone, no longer update, or are so far and in between updates it just isn’t worth it to try for any interactions. I’m still friends with a few of them personally, but as for blogs, we just haven’t found much of a need to update characters here seeing how limited gmod and Tumblr can be for writing a complex story, which does tie into my next reason for abandoning this blog. 

4. I didn’t know or like where my story was going.

This is entirely my fault for trying to make a blog that was more character driven than story. Interesting characters were only able to get me so far if I didn’t have any engaging situations to put them in. The story my blog ended on with the demons and everything felt rushed out, messy, and nowhere near what I waned it to be. The arcs always ended like lack luster cop outs because they were more heavily driven by character reactions than actual big, impressive moments. Again, that could be attributed to the limitations of gmod, and how big scenes take a long time to pose and render correctly, but I honestly could of put a lot more effort into my writing and scene building to make them more interesting to look at. If I ever did come back to this blog, I would have to overhaul my story. My blog got nowhere near enough asks to run on them alone, so next time I’ll be sure to have some sort of basic story set up  instead of having to craft a crap one last minute to keep the blog alive.

5. What this means for the future of me, this blog, and these characters

To start off, no. I will not be deleting this blog. I think deleting a blog just because you’re done with it is a waste of hours and hours of hard work. The blog isn’t going anywhere in case people want to look back on it, and I still use it to follow other gmod and art blogs for personal reasons. As for my characters, these are the first characters I’ve ever been brave enough to put out to the public so they will always hold a special place in my heart. I keep them alive through interactions with some close friends and in most of my art pieces, since I’ve been getting much more into digital art lately than gmod. Maybe one day I’ll revive them into their own stories, but as for their time here, it’s most likely going to come to an end. I don’t much like roleplaying on Tumblr so I doubt making an rp blog for them would be anymore successful than this blog. I could make an art blog if anyone is interested in keeping up with me, but with school I doubt it’ll be updated very frequently seeing as art isn’t my degree path at the moment., but here’s a few if teasers of what my art looks like currently if anyone is interested.

Doubt I’d make an ask blog out of it or anything, but I suppose it’d be some way to share my work with anyone if they still have any interest. Other than that, I hope everyone has a wonderful 2018, with more ups than they have downs. Sorry I couldn’t leave you with a satisfying conclusion to this blog, but it was never meant to be a grand story driven masterpiece, just a little way to interact and have fun with friends. And it did its job well enough for that, but it’s time I move on to bigger and better things.