#me after ignoring animation tutorials

[underratedgrapeju1ce]

felt like animating a bit of bucky and gios argument from my COOL FIC YOU SHOULD TOTALLY READ HAHA (please)

[rhenuvee]

Playing Animal Crossing New Horizons with HSR Men

Warnings: ugly villager slander, established relationship (can be platonic or romantic)

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Argenti: Your fellow knight of beauty grows quite fond of the game, immediately finding the freedom of creativity in decoration endearing. He always gives you compliments on your OOTD, and takes screenshots whenever you design a new area on your island. Argenti gave himself the gardening job- spending his bells on red rose seeds. He gets proficient in following the flower guide, and is very proud of himself if he ever gets a golden rose on your island. He loves the villagers, finding them each very cute, and even beauty in the "ugly" villagers. "Did you see the villagers wearing the red rose on their head? I must say I am flattered they love it so much. Though, I am more happy that they appreciate the beauty of our island." He enjoys documenting the beautiful places in your island with photos <3

Aventurine: From the beginning he points out the fact that Tom Nook is a capitalist, which makes you roll your eyes thinking he thinks this game is silly. However, it is quite the opposite as it doesn't take him long to get out of his home loan debt and is somehow extremely lucky. It's unfair to you that he could just log in on any given day and have the best deal for turnips. However because you are his favourite he says he’s willing to buy you whatever you want, he guesses. He happens to be able to catch rare species like the Coelacanth, and it infuriates you but you really can't be if it's helping the museum. "445 bells per turnip, sounds like music to my ears~" "What's that? You want this violin? Well I guess I could spare you a few bells... is one million okay?"

Blade: Let's not kid ourselves here- it takes a lot of convincing and help from Silver Wolf to get him to even be in the presence of Animal Crossing. He says he would much rather stand and look at the wall (SW: "You already do that everyday"). Eventually he sits himself next to you, and listens to your giddy rambling about what to do in the game while he puts on a serious face not saying anything. After the preliminary tutorial/startup gameplay, he finally says, “…why is this rat harassing me for money.” However, the loans aren't the worst but the villagers chasing him down are. He purposely ignores them and grumbles when you tell him to answer ):/. He prefers to watch you play, but because he sees you smile and laugh at his sarcastic comments, he thinks it's not so bad.

Boothill: He's definitely down to try it out, but he ends up being a bit of a troll. He doesn't really mind cute/ugly villagers, until he judges them for what they say. “That’s right, (y/n) did catch all those fish.” “Did he just ask me if he could call me Muffin.” “WHAT DO YOU MEAN I GOTTA PAY ANOTHER LOAN?!!?” Yeah… he quickly feels the grindy-ness, complaining that Tom Nook was working him like a forkin’ dog. A little bit of comical rage, but he won’t lie he is enjoying it. He also asks if there are any guns and he is disappointed, so he opts for the net. He's a little rough and rowdy, but he does it in style. That being said, he 100% spends his extra bells on a cowboy outfit.

Dan Heng: He agrees instantly- aw :(. He knows you (and March) have been begging him to play. He’s is fairly good at it- gets out of the tent quickly, masters catching creatures, a nicely organized house… He’s quite resourceful too, chopping down trees and going to mystery islands to farm the heck out of it. The villagers love him, both of you often seeing them run to him with the little sparkly flowers. And even though he's normally serious, you can't help but fawn over how sweet he is with the villagers. "...She wants to call me Shmoopy, do I-" "YES." Villagers asking him to catch a fish? He's immediately on it. He remembers their names and treats them like real people :(

Dr. Ratio: "Is it educational?" Bro is such a nerd. You deadpan at him, and sass him for expecting this to be IXL or something. He is also one to get through the tutorial part easily. You expected him to be overly critical of the game, but he finds appreciation in the museum: both the creatures and the art. Is it a farfetched idea that I think he'd know how to tell the reals and fakes right off the bat? "Do you really think Da Vinci spilled coffee on his work?" At least it saves you the troubles of wasting your bells and getting a fake. I think your island would not be a mess, and would have at least a few statues (you know the ones) which add his touch to it.

Gallagher: Honestly he's happy as long as he gets a little area for himself. Kind of a wild card this one- somehow calm and chaotic at the same time, and it's puzzling because how is he doing such weird things with a straight face? Trolls the villagers quite a bit (he's lucky ACNH villagers are nice) by hitting them with a net (just once though) and giving them different catchphrases every time they ask. "Why is Bob saying 'spaghettini' at the end of his sentences?" "Um, because I thought it'd be funny? Also I'm kinda hungry so-" "Gallagher ):/" Despite the randomness, he is wholesome at times. He is also one to compliment your new outfit, and stargaze with you on the new area you decorated.

Gepard: He's busy so you weren't expecting too much from him, but he takes pride in having a well-rounded island. He gets so excited when he catches a new species that you don't have yet- what a cutie. Also goes full throttle when there's a bug-off or fishing tourney. Despite being a video game, I feel like there will be some way he messes up taking care of plants. The flowers overgrow, the turnips rot, and he doesn't understand why the trees aren't growing? But with some tips from you along with your island designing skills, your island rank moves up and he is BEAMING. "Zucker asked about you." "...he did?" "Mhm, he asked how you were doing, and said he saw you laying out pathways on the island."

Jing Yuan: He finds it so cute when you ask him to play. Lowkey like Blade where he likes watching your happy expressions when playing. He's happy that this game provides him a way to relax while not getting bored. Secretly an enjoyer of villager drama: "Wolfgang wants to apologize to Audie with this present. What happens if I don't deliver it?" "Again? Ah, just give it to her quickly." "...what if I don't." "...Jing Yuan." Oddly I feel like he'd enjoy the group stretching (what an old man), and encourages you to join. Like the "Dozing General" he is, there will be times when he's inactive and gets the bed head.

Luocha: You weren't expecting him to enjoy the game, but he's surprisingly willing to be resourceful. His storage is full of materials, which you scold him for because this is the reason for his empty undecorated house. But he always has things you need so you can't exactly complain. Also one to be pretty smart with managing bells and resources, able to maximize their worth. When the island gets visitors like Label or Flick, he has items ready. "Luocha... where did you get that coat?" "This? It's a designer piece, from Miss Label." I'd say he does have a sense of beauty in design, so thankfully your island is gorgeous.

Sampo: Sympathizes with Redd like a true scammer. "Aw look, he just needs a bit of money to get started... he even gave us a 'cousin's discount'." However, a rivalry starts with Redd when Sampo's first art piece turned out to be fake (scammer gets scammed moment). He asks if he can be the salesman that he's supposed to be. When villagers run up to him to offer bells for an item he has, he accepts thinking it'll get him a deal along the way. Unfortunately friendship gets you nowhere in terms of home loans. I'd say he's pretty good with the turnip stonks, so there's a balance. Also TRASH ISLAND. I'm sorry, but your man is a hoarder, "But what if I need this?" (Literally me.)

Welt: When you ask him to play he asks why the animals are crossing. He finds the style and characters are so cute, and he can see why you enjoy it. This is definitely a way he gets in touch with his "youthful" side. He loves the creative freedom in the game, even getting indecisive about how to design your island, and thinking of what outfit to wear. He once made a simple t-shirt for fun, but was surprised when he saw a villager wearing it. It'd be so cute and funny when he learns new emotes- and he just spams them with a straight face. Not gameplay related, but I feel like in his free time he'd draw you both in villager form <3.

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[sweetcarrotsandroses97]

~ Loud Silence | 1 | JJK

Pairing: Doctor! Jungkook x Assistant! Fem! Reader

Summary: Your life was grey. Just like his thoughts, like his emotions, like his memories. And you ignored it all, the pain, the sadness, the unbearable silence... All because your heart told you to stay when your mind screamed at you to get away from the drowning force of Jungkook's obsession.

Warnings: ANGST, employer x employee, patients in a coma, medical terms, detachment, low self-esteem, diseases, symptoms, death, Jungkook is married, fluff?, yearning, child neglect? (let me know if I missed anything!)

Word Count: 2.6k words

A/N: Chapter 1 is here, darlings! I am so excited for this story and I hope you will like it as well. I'll do my best to keep updates as fast as I can but please be patient with me.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments, darlings! I'd love to hear from you!

☕Caffeinate me so I can keep on writing! ☕

“Remember you have your fencing practice after your chinese lessons today. They were all moved an hour as Mr. Min had an impromptu. Then you’ll have your piano lessons at five instead of four sharp.”

Your words were met with a boring sigh and an acknowledged hum. Ji-hoon was busy with today's study material you had given him that morning. He sat at his desk, hunched over the textbook while a YouTube tutorial of the math problem he was solving was paused on the large screen of his computer. 

“Thanks, (y/n)”

His reply was dry, monotonous. Your heart clenched but you kept your straight face. Adjusting your posture, you lowered your tablet with Ji-hoon’s updated schedule and looked around his big room. The bed was made to perfection, the books on the large shelves were cleaned and organised and the curtains that often covered the ceiling-tall windows were open and the view of the gardens could be appreciated if only the boy would turn around and admire nature. 

You turned around, ready to leave Ji-hoon to his studies. The sound of your heels on the white polished floors filled your ears. It was a sound that was too loud, or maybe the room was too quiet. Instead of Ji-hoon’s animated storytelling of his day, he sat in silence contemplating his assignments, instead of the big screen in his room playing some sport as background noise, the smart TV was off. You didn’t remember the last time he had even turned it on. 

“(y/n)?”

You stopped. It had been the first time in days, maybe even weeks or perhaps months, since Ji-hoon had called your name with emotion. With the lace of doubt and vulnerability in his words. 

You turned around and watched as he leaned back on his chair but looked at you with doubtful eyes. His hands fidgeted with the pen more than usual and your heart sank at how nervous he looked. 

You tilted your head to the right, a subtle movement that seemed to bring him out of the lake that drowned his thoughts in doubts. Ji-hoon took a deep breath and you waited until he spoke. You didn’t pressure him. You never did. You already knew how much pressure the boy had, the weight he carried on his shoulders was one no fourteen year old child should carry. 

“Did you ask him? What did my father say?”

You blinked. Staring at Ji-hoon with the same monotonous gaze he already got used to when looking into your eyes. 

“You already have everything you need here. Your father doesn’t believe that you going to school would benefit you in any way.”

Ji-hoon turned back to his desk, his eyes downwards. The grip on his pen loosened and it pained you how soft his voice sounded when he spoke again. 

“Of course he doesn’t.”

His mumbled words pierced your heart. You wished there was something you could do to help him. To ease his loneliness that stood rooted in his heart. But that choice was not yours to be made. And so, you tilted your chin up, your grip tightening on the tablet in your hands. 

“Your father knows what is best for you, Ji-hoon.”

But the boy just scoffed at your words. For he was not sure whether to feel sad or disappointed or angry or frustrated. For he felt it all at once. You didn’t linger. Your steps echoed once more on the polished floor as you left the room that was too big for a teenage boy alone. 

Once in the hallway, you leaned back against the closed door. It pained you to see Ji-hoon so helpless when it came to decisions that concerned his life, his experiences, his memories. But it pained you more, that it had not always been like this. 

There had been a time where he had smiled, where he had laughed. 

The household had been happier. And yet, now all it was left of that happiness was the shadow of laughter in the wind. 

You walked down the large hallway, the lights hanging on the walls illuminated your features, your steps were calculated; monotonous. The house was big but silent. Your heart was lonely yet it still yearned. The sunlight streamed through the tall windows and as you turned left to descend down the large staircase, you paused. 

Looking over your shoulder, you looked at the portrait of Ji-hoon and his father, renowned doctor and scientist, Jeon Jungkook. And yet the boy was the spitting image of his mother. With a sigh, you turned away and continued your journey down the stairs. The ground floor was just as silent as Ji-hoon’s room and with quiet professionalism, you walked to your right, going into Jungkook’s study. 

You didn’t look at Jungkook’s piling paperwork on the desk, you didn’t pay attention to the already filled bin by the chair that was mostly empty. You didn’t dare look at the portrait of her. Jungkook’s wife. It was a painting he had commissioned after they had gotten married. A piece of art that now hung over the dry fireplace.

Seo-yun. 

A name that was once a blessing of the household was now a curse. You didn’t look at her portrait. You didn’t have to. That painting that looked like a mosaic was engraved into your heart due to Jungkook’s melancholy when he gazed upon it. 

Instead, you walked to the very back of the room and into the door Ji-hoon was forbidden from ever entering.

The warmth of the empty house, the soft colours of the walls and the faint smell of books vanished when you crossed that door. The lights were white, blinding in their nature. The smell of chloride and antiseptic reached your senses. Your heels announced your presence as you entered Dr. Jeon’s private lab. 

He was aware of you before you uttered a word. Jungkook sat on one of the stools, his posture rigid as he looked into the microscope once more. 

“Sir, the conference this Friday has been cancelled. Doctor Kim called, his flight was delayed and he will not make it so the board decided to postpone the event.”

Jungkook looked up at you, his gaze met yours. Calculating and monotonous. The lab was in pristine condition. A sea of exams and samples were on the table, all labeled accordingly. And yet the whiteboard that hung over one of the walls was filled with loose handwriting. Notes, thoughts, symptoms, hypothesis… Jungkook’s mind was plastered on that board. An organised chaos. The eye of the storm of his subconscious. And the contrast was big. Between his wild mind and blank stare, it almost felt like falling down a rabbit hole of confusion where nothing was clear and nothing was known. 

“Very well. Is there anything else I need to know?”

You straightened, letting your hands fall to your sides holding the tablet with your right hand. His stare was intense, dark compared to his pale skin. It had been some time since he went outside and allowed the sun to kiss his skin. 

“No, sir. Everything’s on schedule.”

He hummed. It was a deep sound that reverberated through your spine and tingled your nerves. Jungkook went back to look down at the microscope with the same indifference he lived his daily life. His hands were firm when he adjusted the lenses, his jaw was tense while he scribbled away notes and observations on a notebook at his right. 

You wanted to speak, to ask him so many things. But you didn’t know how to start. You never knew if it was wise enough to start speaking with him. He was so volatile, so silently unpredictable. Your perfect, rigid posture sagged a bit as you let out an inaudible breath. The lab was quiet, too quiet. Just like Ji-hoon’s room. 

You hated it. 

You hated that silence that strangely calmed your mind as well. 

Jungkook changed the sample he was observing, his movements mechanical. The latex of his white gloves stretched as he flexed his fingers and he spoke without looking at you. 

“If you have something else to say, (y/n), do it and go. I have work to do.”

You swallowed, remembering all the times he had spoken softly to you, all the times he asked if you could assist him in any of his experiments. All the times you had felt seen by him. Jungkook may be your employer, your boss and perhaps you were just his assistant, his secretary and Ji-hoon’s caretaker. But you missed the times when you had been more; or at least when he had made you feel more than that. 

“Ji-hoon asked again, sir. He… keeps insisting on the idea of going to school.”

The doctor let out a deep sigh, almost in annoyance, in exasperation. It hurt to think that he saw his son like that. 

“He asked me to tell you to reconsider it. He is lonely, sir.”

Jungkook let go of his pen, the sound as it hit the notebook was dry and it almost echoed in the silent laboratory. He leaned back slightly, his eyes bored; nonchalant. But it took you a second, a single heartbeat for you to see the vulnerability behind his icy glare. 

“What should I do, (y/n)? Must I throw him into the world carelessly? If I do not make it, Ji-hoon will be the only remaining part of Seo-yun.”

Your gaze softened for right now, he was not the famous and brilliant doctor, he was a man whose heart had been broken by his own passion, by the hands of science. He was a father scared to lose his one and only son.

You took a step forward, intending on consoling him, advising him. But that single step brought him back from the dark pit that were his thoughts, his doubts. His walls rose, his eyes hardened and he straightened once more. And before he pushed you out completely, you spoke again. With that same professional voice, that delicate tone you always used when addressing him. 

“You are a man who would do anything for his family, I have witnessed it more than once. You are taking into account his safety, I’ll just ask you to consider his happiness as well, that’s all.”

Your eyes flickered to the glass wall. The only wall that separated the lab from the confinement area where Seo-yun lay. She was on oxygen, her slender frame as pale as ever. She lay still, unmoving. Barely breathing. Kept alive by the sleep Jungkook drowned her in. 

You didn’t linger. You couldn’t. So you turned away, not once looking back and missing Jungkook’s soft eyes as he watched your retreating form. You left him thinking, and that was something few had ever achieved.

The smell of cooked ricotta lasagna filled the spacious and minimalist kitchen. The warmth of the oven radiated towards you as you washed the used dishes. It didn’t take long for Ji-hoon to paddle into the kitchen, guided by the delicious smell of homemade food. 

“What are you making, (y/n)?”

He asked out of politeness, already knowing the answer. He sat down on one of the stools on the counter and you felt his eyes on your form while you gave your back to him. Putting away the last of the spoons you had used to make dinner. 

“Ricotta lasagna, I know you like it.”

You dried your hands, missing the way Ji-hoon smiled at your words. Though it was a fleeting reaction, it didn’t not reach his eyes. The timer on your phone went off and you silenced it, grabbing the oven mittens, you took the refractory out, the glass warm against your covered hands. 

You placed it on the counter and took the mittens off. The smell was delicious and this time, you didn’t miss Ji-hoon’s delighted smile at the thought of the homemade dinner he liked so much.

“You should call your father.”

Your voice was soft as you spoke while grabbing a knife and cutting the lasagna into neat portions. The golden cheese stretched slightly as you pulled the first piece free, steam curling into the air. 

Ji-hoon pursed his lips, the smile vanishing from his youthful yet handsome features. His shoulders stiffened as he rested his elbows on the counter. His eyes dulled once more and his demeanour returned to that loneliness that crept into his heart like poison ivy. 

“He won’t come.”

The boy murmured. You looked up, frowning gently at the sad acceptance in his voice. 

“Did you ask him?”

“There’s no need. He’s always busy.”

His tone was light, almost indifferent, but you knew better. You placed a plate in front of him, offering a small smile and hoping the food would content him, if only for a short moment. 

“Eat first. I’ll take him a plate, maybe he’ll come next time.”

Ji-hoon didn’t argue. His silence pained you. He simply looked at you with doubt and hope in his eyes at the same time before he picked his fork and began eating his lasagna. Without another word, you plated another portion and covered it with foil to keep it warm. Grabbing a tray, you added a glass of water and arranged the covered dinner before your feet carried you out of the kitchen. 

You passed the big dining area, the table too big by the solitude that ruled over the house. They walked past the grand staircase, the yellow light from the big chandelier illuminating your features. 

You entered Jungkook’s office, once more ignoring the staring and gentle portraits of his broken family as you went directly into the lab. The sweet aroma of freshly made food was left behind when you entered the lab for it faded into the crisp sterility of his workspace. 

Jungkook was exactly where you expected—standing by his microscope, brow furrowed in concentration. He barely acknowledged your entrance.

“Sir, dinner.”

You placed the tray on the nearest table, making sure it wouldn’t get in his way. But the sound of the tray hitting the steel counter made him speak in that cold and monotonous voice of his. 

“I’m not hungry.”

You didn’t move, only blinking at him as you studied him with an unreadable gaze that guarded the secrets of your heart. 

“Ji-hoon was waiting for you.”

Silence. 

For a moment, you thought he’d ignore you entirely. Then, with a sigh, he straightened, removing his gloves before finally looking at you. His gaze flickered toward the tray, lingering for only a second before shifting back to you.

“I have work to do.”

You swallowed the words you wanted to say. The ones about how Ji-hoon had barely touched his food after you left, how the boy’s excitement had dimmed the moment he realized his father wouldn’t come. But Jungkook knew. He had to know.

“I’ll leave it here. At least eat it before it gets cold.”

Jungkook said nothing, he turned his gaze away from you. His dark eyes were fixed once more on the chamber where Seo-yun slept. His jaw clenched, his thoughts were a myriad of emotions he hadn’t been able to decipher since that day when his life turned dark and his hopes died like embers. 

But even in the silence, you noticed. You saw his pain, his obsession, his dedication, his melancholy. You saw it all. Even when the house, when his work, when your heart drowned in this loud silence that cursed your existence.  

And so, you left. Leaving Jungkook alone with his thoughts. Alone with his doubts and guilt. He noticed when the warmth of your precedence left his lab, he noticed when he could no longer smell the floral aroma of your perfume. He noticed how your steps faded into the house, away from his and his grey emotions. 

And yet, later that night as you passed by his lab again, you noticed the tray was empty and Jungkook stood in front of the glass that separated him from Seo-yun. Drowning in the loud silence of his thoughts. 

February/01/2025

Current Taglist: @toosweetforyall @jksusawife @ttipa @mageprincess7 @chxiosworld @babyitscoldoutside @user-190811 want to be tagged? Let me know!

[cal-kestis]

HOW TO: Do A Crystallize Gif Transition

Hi! I was asked to explain how I did the transition effect in this gifset, so here's a quick tutorial! Disclaimer: This tutorial assumes you have an intermediate understanding of gif-making in Photoshop using Video Timeline and requires the use of keyframes.

PHASE 1: THE GIFS

1.1 – Determine how many frames you need. Since you need at least 2 scenes for a transition, consider limiting the amount of frames you'll use per scene. For a transition between 2 scenes that's 540x540px, I would recommend no more than 30 frames per scene (for a final gif that's 60 frames). Even that may be pushing it depending on your coloring. Just be sure to consider the dimensions and colors of your gifs in relation to the amount of frames to keep your final gif under Tumblr's 10MB limit.

1.2 – Import frames, crop, resize, convert to smart object for Video Timeline, color, blend, etc. Do this as you normally would! If you need a tutorial for the basics, here's my tutorial. :) Please note, the methods in this tutorial only work with gifs that are converted into smart objects in the Video Timeline workspace.

Tip A: I recommend using scenes where there's a lot of one color (or scenes where you can manipulate it to look like that). The crystallize filter on a gif creates A LOT of movement that can feel a bit chaotic. Having your gif be primarily one color reduces the eye strain a bit imo.

Tip B: I like how this effect looks with blended scenes because it allows me to use different "crystal" sizes (more on this in Step 2.2). Check out the USERGIF Resource Directory for plenty of blending tutorials!

1.3 – Move all your gifs into one document, group into folders, and arrange. Once everything's in one doc, keep everything organized in a group folder! I have just two scenes, so that's Folder 1 & 2. Within those folders are the gifs I blended, which I labeled by gif color. Then, simply drag Folder 2 so it continues right after Folder 1. (Make sure none of your adjustment layers from Folder 2 accidentally affect Folder 1! You can do this by clipping your adjustment layers to match the length of the gif as I did, or using clipping masks.)

(Ignore that lone Hue/Saturation layer lol. I decided last-minute that I wanted my gif to lean more pink than red.)

PHASE 2: THE FILTERS

2.1 – Duplicate each scene. We're going to use opacity keyframe animations on these duplicated scenes that allow it to go from "normal" to "effect" and vice versa. The filters will only be applied to the duplicates. In the screenshot below, all of my duplicates are highlighted:

2.2 – Apply the Crystallize Filter. Above your sharpening settings, apply this filter by going to Filter → Pixelate → Crystallize. On the pink gifs, I made the crystals bigger (cell size: 45), and on the black and white gifs, I did a cell size of 25.

The different sizes help break up the uniformity of the crystals imo, creating more of a mosaic-like look, which is what I wanted to match my gifset concept.

2.3 – Apply the Oil Paint Filter (Optional). Filter > Stylize > Oil Paint. Here are my settings (they're the same for both crystal cell sizes):

Brush – Stylization: 0.1, Cleanliness: 8.6, Scale: 0.1, Bristle Detail: 0.3 Lighting – Angle: -60, Shine: 0.7

This filter helps soften the cells a bit while adding some texture (left: no oil paint; right: with oil paint):

2.4 – Repeat steps 2.2 & 2.3 on all duplicated scenes.

PHASE 3: THE KEYFRAMES

3.1 – Add opacity keyframes. The very start and end of each scene needs an opacity keyframe set to 100% opacity. Move 0.09 seconds from each of those points, and place another opacity keyframe, this time set to 0% opacity. We're basically making the crystals fade in and out. Please reference the screenshot below for keyframe placement:

If you need more info on opacity keyframes, check out Phase 2 from this fade transition tutorial I did on usergif.

3.2 – Repeat step 3.1 on all duplicated scenes. All the keyframes in Folder 1 should line up exactly and all the keyframes in Folder 2 should line up exactly!

PHASE 4: THE DUPLICATES

4.1 – Convert back to Frame Animation. If you're not sure how to do this, I've written out the steps here. I rec the action linked in my general gif tutorial which I shared earlier!

4.2 – Delete duplicate frames. Whenever you use keyframe animations, you'll get duplicate frames. That's just how it works, unfortunately. If you follow my steps exactly (specifically the 0.09-second spacing, which follows my tried-and-true 0.03-second rule), you'll have a total of 12 duplicate frames exactly — 3 duplicates per keyframe section. Just manually delete them! You can spot the duplicates by eye, but with this spacing, it's usually the 2nd, 5th, and 8th frame for each transition section. The selected frames below were my duplicates:

If you want to learn more about why there are duplicates and the math behind it all, I explained it in more detail in this ask.

4.3 – Export and you're done!

I hope this tutorial helps! Let me know if you have any questions :)

[userpeggycarter]

i was requested by anon to make a tutorial for this gifset and here it is!

DIFFICULTY intermediate/difficult. basic giffing knowledge is definitely required.

while my gifset has a fair amount of animation, the only handmade animations can be found in the second and fifth gif. the rest are assets (the checkmarks, the sharpie circles) (either gifs or videos) i found on the internet and pasted over my gif.

THE BASICS OF TIMELINE GIFFING

if you gif with frames, you will need to use a timeline for the animation to work (keyframes). i’m a timeline giffer anyway so this was another Tuesday for me. if you never used that method of giffing, however, it can be confusing, especially if you never used a video editing software before (the timeline works like video editing). 

so, here’s a breakdown of what is the timeline:

the player icons work like any video/music player in existence. ignore the volume icon.

the gear icon indicates the quality of the reproduction while editing it, not the quality of the end product. think like it’s Youtube reproduction settings on a video in order to save your 4G data, but with RAM power instead. this is very useful if your computer isn’t very powerful to begin with and gifs with VFX are very heavy to handle. 

i always click the loop option inside the gear panel because i like to see how the gif will be viewed by the public, i find watching to play only once isn’t very productive. you can stop and restart the reproduction by pressing the space bar on your keyboard.

every layer of your PSD file will have its own bar. the length of the bar means the duration of the gif, so a longer bar means a longer gif and a shorter one, a shorter gif. for everything that isn’t your gif/screencap-based (ie, coloring, typography, lightning, shapes, etc) can be dragged by the extremities as much as you want, making the asset last as long as you want. the only layer that is limited by its maximum duration is naturally your gif, but you can also drag it to make it shorter.

you can also drag a whole layer bar by clicking it and dragging it, making the start and finishing point different from the rest. be careful while doing that otherwise you will end up with blank frames, messing up the looping of your gif completely.

there’s a needle you can drag across the timeline and it works just like on a vinyl disc, the moment the needle drops, it’s the moment/frame Photoshop will show you.

you can also trim your stuff by cutting and deleting snippets of the bar. for that, you will drag your needle to the desired moment, use the scissor tool and then press delete to erase the unwanted bit.

it’s important to point out that the timeline only allows 0.03x or 0.07px speed, no matter what the speed the gif was before converting to that method. if the original speed is closer to 0.03x, then PS will define the new speed as 0.03x. if it’s closer to 0.07x, then it’s 0.07x. i always change the speed to 0.03x before converting to timeline for the sake of not screwing stuff up, which means i see my gif looping while editing in a faster way than Tumblr users will see when the gifset is posted. this takes a while to adjust to if you’re new to timeline giffing, but eventually you don’t think it’s jarring anymore.

that also means you will need to correct the speed after your gif is completely finished. to do that, i use this action.

you can zoom in and zoom out using the little mountain sliding bar. this will be useful later in the tutorial.

if you zoom to the max, you will see all the numbers above your layer bar. these are time marks. the thing is, they seem a bit weird at first. the bigger numbers indicate SECONDS (01:00f, 02:00f, 03:00f, etc), while the smaller and repetitive numbers indicate frames (5f, 10f, 15f, 25f). that means that the smallest drag of your needle possible (from point A to point B) refers to an interval of 1 frame. you will need to take this into consideration while animating stuff.

you can color code your layers, if you think that makes it easier for you to see what you are doing. this is something i do, not only in Photoshop but every Adobe product with a timeline. to change the color of a layer bar (the default is purple), you can right-click on your layer in the layer panel and click the color you want. the colors are the very last thing in the list when you right-click it.

another organization tip is the use of folders. if you create a folder in the layers panel, a folder is created inside the timeline and any layer inside of that folder will disappear from the panel until you click the little arrow next to the name of the folder in the timeline panel. you can color code your folder as well, making every layer inside of it the same color or even different colors.

THE BASICS OF KEYFRAMES

every change related to any property selected (transformation, opacity, style, text warp, position of the layer mask, activation of the layer mask) will be computed in the exact moment in the gif you change it. if that doesn’t happen, you can force Photoshop to do it by clicking the small diamond next to the property name.

let’s say you want an animation to start 0.5 seconds after the gif starts, so you will drag your “needle” to 0.5 seconds and then make the change (making a text bigger, moving a shape, etc). 

Photoshop will automatically bridge the gap between the state of the gif at 0 seconds and 0.5 seconds, thus animating your gif. 

to start animating, you will need to click the little clock next to the property you want to animate. make sure you click the clock while your needle is at the exact beginning of the gif.

every change (keyframe) will be marked with a small diamond under the layer bar, at the exact moment you changed it. that means if you make jarring changes in a short amount of time/frames, the animation will be quick and abrupt. if the interval is very long, the animation will be slow and smooth.

the selected(s) keyframe(s) will have their diamond painted yellow, while the unselected ones will be grayed out. 

you can right-click the diamonds to delete or copy them. if you have many diamonds and want to delete them all, you can click and drag to form a square and select all of them just like when you do to select many files at once on a PC folder. there’s also the option “select all” under the right-click panel.

you can also drag them and change their timing that way. if you have more than one diamond selected, if you drag them, their interval will remain the same, but the starting and finishing point of those two diamonds will change.

THE SQUARES BAR

the easiest of the two animations. this one doesn’t require keyframe animation, but i put this in the last bit of the tutorial for the sake of its flow.

first, i added the empty squares. they last as long as the gif lasts. after 6 frames, i added the first colored square and made that square last until the end of the gif. i repeated this in a staggered manner (+2 frames delay each colored square) so the colored squares appear at equal intervals. 

THE STATS BAR

the most difficult of the two, but don’t worry, you got this. 

first, you will need to structure your stats, ie, add the text, the dividing line and the pointed lines. that is, if you want to follow the exact design i used in my gif, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.

next, you will create rectangles that fill the entire stat bars. you will add a layer mask to each one of them and with a layer mask selected, select a rectangle about the size of your original rectangle, then paint it black. you will notice the original rectangle will disappear. if you delete the layer mask, the original rectangle will appear again. that is because you didn’t delete the original rectangle, you just hid it by using a layer mask.

there’s a chain icon between the layer and the layer mask in the layers panel, click it to unlink them.

click the clock next to “layer mask position” with your needle at 0 seconds/frames. drag your needle to the moment you want the stats to end and use the arrow keys to move the layer mask. you will notice the original rectangle will slowly be revealed by you moving the layer mask. you will also notice that a small diamond will appear in the “layer mask position” line in the timeline. you created a keyframe!

if you press play, you will see the animation from the bar going from null to full!

FURTHER READING/VIEWING

this tutorial uses layer mask animation to reveal text too!

a video tutorial for better visualization!

another keyframe tutorial, this time focusing on coloring!

if you still have any questions, feel free to contact me!

and if you (or anyone) else want, i can go in depth in animating each property, i just did a quick overview + explained the stats animation.

[anonymousblackmale]

Masterpost Of My Biggest Fantasies

This is a running list of my fantasies that I update periodically. Guess which fantasies I've accomplished. Updated on 4/4/25 Hatefucking. Apology head. Spreader bars. Throat training. Fake safewords. Tapout sessions. Watching you beg. Sex in a fitting room. Guided masturbation. Fingering you in public. Trading favors for head. Pillow princess sessions. Hour long head sessions. Fucking off your makeup. Redeemable sex coupons. Getting head while gaming. Giving you a facial in public. You eating her cum off my dick. Fucking you in front of a mirror. Getting head while on the clock. Quickies during my lunch break. Making a blowjob tutorial video. Weekly throat therapy sessions. Watching you play with my cum. Getting head while I watch anime. Pimping me out to your girlfriends. Fucking in front of another person. Getting head as a birthday present. Wireless vibrators in public settings. Getting head while I'm on the phone. Stroking my dick while you're driving. Uploading a home movie on the internet. Fucking yourself with a mold of my dick. You gifting your friend a mold of my dick. Leaving my cum on your face until it dries. Getting caught having sex & not stopping. Eating you out until you use your safeword. Getting randomly texts of your cum selfies. Getting head under the table at a restaurant. You making me cum in a room full of people. Sending you outside with a mouthful of cum. Playing voice notes of our sessions in the car. Cumming in/on your food & watching you eat it. Calling me so I can hear you cum over the phone. Secretly making you cum in a room full of people. Getting head in the backseat of a moving vehicle. You teaching another woman how to give me head. Giving you head while you watch your favorite show. Watching our sex tapes as we make another sex tape. You talking another woman through it while I fuck her. Sending you videos of me stroking my dick in your bed. Watching someone else watch one of our home movies. Holding a full blown conversation while I'm getting head. Pulling up on you unannounced specifically to eat you out. Watching you make yourself cum after I bust on your face. Facetiming me at work while you're playing with your pussy. Seeing your conversations with other people about our sex life. Completely ignoring you while you try your hardest to please me. Fucking another woman while you play with your pussy in the corner. You waking up in the middle of the night when you feel me enter you. You sending another woman to take care of me while you're out of town. Watching you struggle to hold a conversation on Facetime while I eat you out. Watching you play with yourself while listening to an audio of us fucking. Watching you dominate another woman & then immediately subbing for me. My dick already being down your throat at the the stroke of midnight on January 1st. Secretly taking pictures of my dick in your phone for you to randomly stumble across. Posting selfies on IG of pictures you took while I was inside you/with my cum in your mouth. Focusing the camera on your face & making your describe what I'm doing to you in real time. Leaving you tied up and blindfolded in the room & making you wait until I'm ready to come back. Watching you struggle to please me with your mouth while your hands are tied behind your back. Fucking you while you’re having a conversation on the phone & the other person doesn’t know. Fucking you while you’re having a conversation on the phone & while the other person actively listens. Making you tell me every single detail of your week while I’m eating you out & stopping when you get distracted. Sending you to the ice/vending machine at the hotel after I cum on your face, so you can make a cum walk video. Making you play with yourself until you’re a cummy mess, then cleaning up the mess you made with my mouth. Sending you out to run errands with a remote control vibrator & secretly following you so I can watch your reactions when I turn it on.

Cumming in your mouth before we go out & and making you keep it there until/unless someone speaks to you, at which point you swallow it in front of them. CLICK HERE FOR A MASTERPOST OF ALL MY TAGS

[ssavaart]

Hey Scott!

Love you and your art tutorials. Really a big fan, you got me into painting again when I couldn't get out of bed due to depression. I love watercolor!

You being an idol of mine, I checked out your movie, Animal Crackers.... I don't know if you intended it to be that way... but I did feel uncomfortable over your representation of Roma people. As a Spanish partial Romani myself I was just surprised to see those stereotypes of mystic, over-sexualised fortune tellers. We have so much more in our culture! I'm pretty young myself but even at the time this movie came out I understood it wasn't the best take.

I'm not here to critique you. But I did use to see you as a role model. I try to separate that from the rest of the movie, and your past art from you as a person but its hard because otherwise, I know you are in favor of good representation. Could you please address this? Use it as an opportunity for growth? Acknowledge it used a slur?

I just want my rose tinted glasses back.

Love, Yair.

Hi Yair! Thank you so much for the lovely message. I'm so happy my videos helped you in any way. Regarding Animal Crackers. Thank you for asking. When I wrote the graphic novel for my 5 year olds back in 2008... the term "Gypsy" was commonly used for "wanderers with a hint of magic" in books, tv, and movies and it wasn't considered a derogatory term for Roma people. Not generally. I thought this to be true when I wrote the script in 2011. I thought this to be true when I made the film in 2014.

But when the film came out... I started to see comments on twitter and instagram and facebook with people calling the film "racist" for using the term Gypsy so much.

It was at this time in the fall of 2020 that I learned of the significance of this word and how it was used as a derogatory term for the Roma people. While it was not done intentionally, I take full responsibility for this. I wrote it. I had the actors use the words. I was the one who put it in the movie. The blame is completely on me and my ignorance. And I am truly sorry. Shortly after this, I reached out to the European Roma Rights Centre and got on a call with them and we discussed the history of the Roma people and how (if I get a chance to make a sequel) I can educate the world about the Roma people and how hurtful the term "Gypsy" is to them. I can't undo any harm I may have caused in my movie, but, hopefully, I can make some amends with a sequel, working with the European Roma Rights Centre to portray the Roma people in a positive light, and educating people on how harmful stereotypes can be.

Thanks again for asking

Sending Big Hugs from the Hobbit Hole. ♥♥♥

Scott

[distinguisheddwarffriend]

Today on Hobbit-Headcanons:

What would the company of Thorin Oakenshield enjoy about the Modern World?

One of my WIP transports the company to our world shortly before they're supposed to reach Rivendell, and into the apartment of my OFC.

So here is a list of things I think each character would enjoy about the Modern World:

Thorin: Google Maps, Siri (will totally argue with her like she's real), Shows like The Crown, Game of Thrones, but also Bridgerton, Democracy (yes you read that correctly), Rock music

Fili: Birth Control (can finally fuck around without risking the royal lineage), Superhero Movies (has an huuuhe crush on Black Widow), Tinder, Martial Arts, Feminism, Henley shirts to show of his muscles, bars & clubs

Kili : TikTok (LOVES cat videos, Top Content Creator about Archery, 'deep thoughts'/rambling, 'prank my uncle/brother with me', does EVERY challenge, accidental thirsttraps & flustered by the comments), Parkour, Man Buns & (Hipster-) Fashion, LGBTQ+ - Community , karaoke bars, team sports, the zoo

Bofur: modern music (especially pop songs with dirty lyrics), Tumblr (is no. 1 shit-poster), music festivals, arts&crafts blogs, Christopher's Streets Day

Bifur: Google Translate, Modern Medicine, Pain Medication, ASL, RomComs (trust me), helps out in an animal shelter, country music

Bombur: Cooking Shows (has his own Online Show), Kindergarten (he had so many children, the reprieve would be SO appreciated), international foodstuff to try

Dwalin: Guns, MMF, store-bought cookies, sport shows (AGRESSIVE fan for whatever team he randomly picks), Barbecues

Balin: Twitter (the political possibilities!!!), mental healthcare (he's sending the whole line of Durin he had no time for their shit), Spa Days, public schools, classical music

Oin: Modern Medicine (Duh), hearing aids, physiotherapy

Gloin: bitcoins, the stock market, Facebook (posts daily about Gimli)

Dori: hair tutorials, fashion shows, tracking devices (has totally microchipped a drunk Nori at some point)

Nori: hacking, movies with the lovable rogue as the MC (Pirates of the Carribbean, Deadpool etc.), spy movies (duh), the mafia (yes, he becomes a boss within weeks)

Ori: Wikipedia, public libraries, tutorials for EVERYTHING (knitting, cutting your own hair, how to talk to royalty, fancy war cries, you name it), fantasy novels, public schools

Bilbo: Food blogs, the "ignore call"-button, Instagram, university (will mayor in at least three subjects), museums

Gandalf: the Internet as a whole, email/ instant messaging, yard sales, modern weed, museums (has a knack for finding cursed items), adventure movies (after watching Indiana Jones he seriously debated obtaining a whip)

[neopronouns]

[if alt text is not accessible for you, every image in this post is a line divider resembling train or roller coaster tracks, with dark dull pink rails and warm grey crossties. end id.]

welcome to my blog!

i'm dexter, and you can find more information about me here. i'm 23 and i mainly use he/him, ey/em, and it/its pronouns, but any other pronouns that are not she or they are good too!

i also run @mogai-headcanons, where i made edits of folks' mogai/liom/etc. headcanons, and @neopornouns, a request blog like this one for 18+ terms, and my main blog is @rarnbley.

please read my dni before following me and read my general rules and blog rules/open requests before requesting!

requests are currently closed! [pt: closed! /end pt] if you're interested, you can also read my request whitelist to see what requests i'll be most excited about!

here is every request currently in my inbox. my queue currently posts 7 times a day between 10am and 4pm cst.

here's a quick list of frequently asked questions — i recommend you look through this before asking me a question, since i get a lot of asks and may ignore yours if it's answered here!

q: what program do you use to make your flags/edits and how? a: i use gimp on desktop! here's a simple flag tutorial i made and a basic flag splicing tutorial for multi-flag icons.

q: what's your header/icon? a: my icon is rambley the raccoon from 'indigo park' over the kenomel flag and my header is a gif of rambley's cute emotion animation with lyrics from the song 'rambley review' from 'indigo park'!

q: are you alright with requests involving [insert media]? a: if it's not in my general rules linked above, probably yes! if you're concerned for a specific reason (source content, shitty creator, etc.) please let me know in your ask; i don't know what's problematic about every piece of media!

q: i don't see my request in the inbox! can i resend it? a: yes! just resend it and let me know that you sent it previously while requests were open.

q: can i put your terms on [insert wiki] or [insert other social media site]? a: yes, as long as you credit me and do not reword my definitions, add additional definitions, etc.

q: can you tag [insert thing]? a: yes, i'll try my hardest to remember! feel free to remind me if i forget.

q: how long will it take for my request to be posted? how long will it take for you to get to my request? a: i can't definitively say, sorry! i try to make it so the queue has a month's worth or less of posts in it, but as for getting to your request, i don't really know for a number of reasons.

q: [insert post] should be tagged as eyestrain! a: thanks for letting me know! i struggle to determine what is eyestrainy a lot of the time, so i tag things as 'eyestrain' when i'm certain and 'potential eyestrain' when i'm not. if you're photosensitive, i recommend blocking both tags to be safe.

q: can i use one of your edits somewhere? a: yes, and i would strongly prefer if you credit me somewhere if you do.

q: are you alright with spam likes/reblogs? a: yes, and i appreciate your support and enthusiasm!

q: [insert nice thing] a: i cherish you so much and your ask probably will sit in my inbox forever along with all the other incredibly sweet asks i've received over the course of this blog!

q: [discourse] a: please Do Not.

lastly, here's a few resources you may find useful!

my taglist application, for if you want me to tag you in my coining posts/edits

my deviantart for flag templates and symbols

the pride-flags deviantart, which has a ton of high-res flags for mogai terms and more flag templates/symbols

my guide to finding mogai terms by name (and ensuring that you don’t name a new term after a preexisting one)

a guide to how i create names for my terms

an archive of pupyzu’s term suffixes carrd

a list of other mogai blogs i enjoy (hasn't been updated in a while, sorry!)

a beginner’s guide to request etiquette

my redbubble shop, where i’m happy to upload any other flags i’ve personally designed or edits i’ve made

[animalcrossingshowdown]

someone sent in this ask and I spent literal hours putting together this tutorial but then it wouldn't let me post it and when I went back into my inbox the ask was gone?? good thing I copy and pasted it, so here it is in its own post

I'm not sure if this will work with programs other than photoshop, but this is how I do it. I know @shinobi-bacon has a tutorial here on how they do it which is pretty different from the way I do it, so if my tutorial is confusing maybe theirs will click with you better lmao. I stole the greenscreen idea from them anyway

SO FIRST, you want your villager on a green screen background. to do this, go to harv's island and use a custom pattern to make the walls and floors bright green. If the villager you're using has green in their design, you'll have to pick a different colour that isn't in their design, but for most villagers green is fine.

if your villager has every colour on them like pietro or stiches then rip you're gonna have to do some manual editing frame by frame. try to choose a colour that doesn't touch the edges of their silhouette too much in that case because it'll make life easier for you

so once you have them in green purgatory, record them doing their emote or whatever. I just use the built-in screen record function that the switch has. press and hold this button to record the last 30 seconds that your switch displayed:

next send that video to your computer and trim off the start of the video so it starts right before a recognizable part of the animation. for this emote I cut it off right before the blink. if you have a slow computer, you'll probably want to trim the end off too so the video is only a little bit longer than one full animation loop

(you can use the video editing software of your preference, I just use quick time player Edit -> Trim)

okay time for photoshop. go File -> Import -> Video Frames to Layers

for "range to import" select "from beginning to end" (or you could skip the last step about trimming the video and select a range here, but I find it kind of finicky), and make sure "make frame animation" is checked

once imported, if it doesn't pop up on it's own, go Window -> Timeline to get your animation at the bottom

click through those frames at the bottom until you find an easily recognizable frame (I chose the first frame where her eyes are closed) and delete all the frames before it. in the layers panel, the layer from the frame you've selected should be the only one turned on. delete all the layers below it

now go through the frames to find the next identical frame. this is where the animation loops. delete that frame and all the frames after it, as well as all of their corresponding layers (note in the picture, frame 121 is selected, and it's exactly the same as the frame from the start of the animation)

hit the play button on the bottom left to double check that it loops properly

next, make sure both THE FIRST FRAME AND BOTTOM LAYER are selected, and crop and reduce the image to your desired size. you can do this step later if you want, it's just that doing it now will reduce the load on your computer and make it run a bit faster. just as long as the first frame and bottom layer are selected, you can do this at any time

SAVE HERE because if you mess up this next part it's a pain to fix, but it's easy to quit and start over if need be

now it's time for my best friend the actions panel !! say hi actions panel !! (Window -> Actions). what the actions panel does is record your steps so you can quickly automate repetitive tasks.

in the actions panel, click the folder and name it whatever you want

then click the little plus and name that whatever you want and hit record. You'll see the dot turn red to indicate that your actions are now being recorded

now with the BOTTOM LAYER AND FIRST FRAME selected (ignore that I have the wrong layer selected in the pictures, I fixed it after), go to Select -> Colour Range

click on a part of the canvas that would be green

shift+click on the rest of the green background and adjust the fuzziness until just the character's silhouette remains

hit OK, now the background should be selected. go Select -> Inverse so that the character is selected, and click on layer mask.

click the next frame button (you MUST click the button, not the actual frame. you need the recording to recognize "go to next frame" and not "select frame 2"),

then keyboard shortcut option + ] to select the next layer up (again, you MUST use the shortcut so it knows to move up one layer and not just "select layer 2"),

and then stop recording.

now just repeatedly click the play button and it will do all those steps we just did for each frame :)

this part is usually where it gets messed up for me. if it did something weird like duplicate the same frame or layer your animation over a static frame, just quit and reopen that save I told you to make earlier. the action recording you just made will still be there when you reopen photoshop, so just select the first frame and bottom layer and repeatedly hit play again. if it STILL doesn't work, you probably did something wrong

the recording is now saved in photoshop forever until you delete it, so you can reuse the recording for other gifs! but if they use a different colour background, you'll need to make a new recording (you can see I have separate ones for blue and purple screens). also if you were working with one of those colourful villagers and parts got masked out that shouldn't have been, you'll have to go frame by frame and manually fix them. that's why we masked out the background instead of deleting it.

now it's time to make it into a gif! go File -> Export -> Save for Web. make sure Matte is set to "none" so you don't get those weird white flecks. colours and dither you want as high as they can go, but you can lower them if you need to make the file smaller (though I'd recommend resizing the image smaller first). the bottom left shows your file size. currently as of January 2024, tumblr allows gifs of up to 10MB

and there ya go! gif! :)

[ecargmura]

Medalist Episode 1 Review - Unpolished Gems On The Ice

To be honest, I’m not too familiar with Studio ENGI as I never watched any of the animes they produced, but before Medalist aired, I’ve read and heard many people worry about the quality of this anime because the studio is notorious for producing not-so-great quality anime. I just went in not really expecting too much because my opinions should be formed from my own thoughts and not from those around me. It’s safe to say that the first episode of Medalist was superb.

Both Tsukasa and Inori are people with a passion towards figure skating, but start the sport late. In the case of Tsukasa, he started in middle school, but never got formal training since he was considered too old to become a professional athlete. Despite that, he was still able to become an ice dancer due to his friend Hitomi needing a partner and after that, he spends his days listlessly spending his days on what he should be doing as a skater. While he is recommended as a coach by Hitomi, he’s not too sure about it until he meets Inori, a girl who is passionate about figure skating but cannot express it well, especially to her mom who doesn’t have much hope or expectations for her. Tsukasa sees innate talent within Inori and decides to become her coach and help her become a national medalist.

The overall message of this episode was so good. It really hits well that you should pursue what you want regardless of your age. Tsukasa loved figure skating and wanted to compete professionally, but he was considered too old for formal training. Inori loves figure skating but she’s at the cutoff age of being able to train and compete in tournaments. Despite that, these two won’t stop to do what they love and I really, really like that! It shows that being “too old” is just a social and societal stigma people place onto others in an attempt to discipline them. Like, I sort of understand that super well. Like, I’m a writer, but I do get a bit caught up in wanting to publish something in my 20’s as a lot of debut authors get published in that age group, but once I hit my late 20’s, I realized that I can write whenever I want and my age doesn’t matter if I want to get published. That’s why I feel more relaxed when I write compared to my early 20’s.

The characters are really nice! Inori is super shy and socially awkward. I feel like I’m seeing a bit of my younger self in her as I was the quiet kid growing up and had a hard time talking with others. The way she expressed to her mom about her passion for skating really made me tear up. She has very low self-esteem and it’s because there isn’t any positive influence around her. The kids in school ignore or belittle her and her mom has no hopes for her. I know that Asian parents are very strict when it comes to their kids. While they want their kids to pursue extracurricular activities, they forbid them from making it their actual job and want them to study hard, get into a good college and have a job that pays well. Asian parents in general are realists so it clashes very well with idealists. While Inori’s mom is unlikeable, she’s not hatable because she represents the realistic sides of Asian parents.

Though, I would like to know more about Tsukasa. Why did he want to pursue skating as a middle schooler? What’s his philosophy when it comes to skating? I feel like we’re only seeing the passionate and sillier sides of Tsukasa that makes him a tad one-note and a doofus, but given that he’s an adult and this is an on-going story, I can expect to know more. I also want to know more about Hitomi too!

The animation was pretty good in contrast from all the fretting! The CGI skating was fluid and the regular 2D animation was solid. I especially liked all the skating tutorial portions and Inori sliding down a staircase via handlebars. I think I liked the funny expressions the best!

The voice cast is really good! The Japanese version has quite a star-studded cast, but Inori is voiced by a new face, Natsumi Haruse—I think this is her first role! I think Inori’s voice is adorable and it doesn’t make her sound too jarringly old. In English, she’s voiced by Madeline Dorroh. I’ve never heard of Dorroh, but looking at her past roles, she mainly voiced video game characters and rarely does anime roles, so this is practically a big break into the anime industry for her—good luck! For Tsukasa, he’s voiced by Takeo Otsuka, who you might or might not know as Jinshi from The Apothecary Diaries and Aquamarine Hoshino from Oshi no Ko! I think this is the second time I’ve heard Otsuka be super loud—the first was Ichiyo from Haigakura. In English, he’s voiced by Jonathon Ha, a Korean-American like me! He’s a new face in the dubbing world too but as a fellow Korean-American, I just can’t help but want to root for him! Good luck to you too, Jonathon!

The supporting cast is also full of well-known names. Inori’s mother Nozomi is voiced by Ami Koshimizu who you might know as Sailor Jupiter from Sailor Moon Crystal and Ryuko Matoi from Kill la Kill. Hitomi is voiced by Emiri Kato, who’s known for voicing Becky from Spy x Family, but did you know that she’s also the voice actress of Kyubey from Puella Magi Madoka Magica? I honestly can’t wait to see who else is in the cast in both English and Japanese!

If you’re watching this anime, or planning onto, what are your thoughts on the premiere?

[magnoliaroad]

4 Seasons Back Yard Remodel + Crystal Yard

My 4 seasons remodels of the Petz 5 Back Yard are now available for download! And because I went on a bit of a side-quest, I’ve also made a bonus version, a fantasy, crystal back yard!

You can read my creator's notes below:

I somewhat wonder if it's fair to criticize the original Petz 5 playscenes too harshly. It's possible that the development team faced tight deadlines or budget constraints, factors that may not have been entirely within their control. However, regardless of the circumstances, the end result was a disappointingly sloppy product, and it's difficult to ignore some of the glaring flaws. While I can understand that the developers were working with dated software, there are certain flaws that can't be attributed to software limitations. Rather, they seem to reflect a clear lack of attention to detail. Here's what I mean.

The more you look at it, the harder it is to decide which flaw is the worst. The blatant MS paint spray paint "touch-up" in the upper left, that there was no effort put into blending in the skybox, or that they neglected to add textures to the roof.

Alright, enough ranting there. None of this is to say my playscenes are perfect either, but they were a labor of love and I hope that this is evident in the final results.

SPRING

I smoothed out the grass texture to give it a more velvety, manicured lawn appearance. I brightened up the dingy looking fence to a more brighter white. The original playscene had a hole in the fence, and while it might add "character", I opted to cover over it for a more polished look. I added bushes behind the fence to cover up the skybox and to conceal the bottom of the houses.

Speaking of houses. Wow these needed a big work-up. The texture work (or lack of) on these is just bad. I'm no expert in house construction, but even mostly-brick houses will have some accents like trims to break up the monotony of a fully-brick façade.

Because of how fuzzy the brick texture is in the original, I drew in the mortar lines of the bricks to enhance the texture. I added roof shingles, siding, and trim boards to the house to make it look more like a typical suburban house. Despite these edits, it's still not a "great" house - the way it looks through the windows, it looks like the house is one room lol. I wish I could put better houses in the backdrop but because Tinker doesn't allow me to edit the animated blinds, I'm constrained to keeping them the shape that they are. Oh well. We can use our imagination.

I added landscaping rocks to make the flower bed look nicer. I also added some landscaping details like bushes, garden lights, and string lights for ambiance.

[ Enlarged picture of the garden light I made ]

I also worked to improve the skyboxes in all 4 seasons of the of the Back Yard playscenes. It would be lengthy to get into the details of all that but here's a before and after of the night skybox. You got to love them high-quality MS paint stars in the original.

SUMMER

I had a hard time with the summer one because it was hard to come up with ways to make it look different from the spring version. I did make the grass, bushes, and tree leaves slightly more vibrant. Originally I had some flowers by the bushes but I just wasn't really happy with them. At the last minute, I made the decision to remove them entirely. This makes the playscene a little more "plain" but I think some people may want a more "plain", undecorated version so that they can dress it up how they want with toyz.

FALL

Fall is my favorite season, so this was a joy to make. I toned down the color of the grass and added fall landscaping motifs. Recoloring the tree's leaves was done by using Photoshop's gradient map feature. If time permits, I may do a tutorial on this in the future.

Gradient mapping is a powerful tool for recoloring almost anything. It can give way better results than methods such as hue/saturation, replace color, etc. And thanks to photoshop actions, applying this recolor to all the animation frames took just a couple of minutes.

Unfortunately, the fall leaves look "bright" in the nighttime version of the playscene. There does not seem to be a way to implement a darker version of these leaves for the nighttime playscene. If you look at the sprites in Tinker, you'll see that there are two sets of animations for Leaves A, B, and C and they're labeled "PropsAd" and "PropsAn", which would lead you to think that the developers originally intended for there to be a set of leaves for the day time, and a darker set for the night time. I guess the developers scrapped this idea because this does not work in the actual gameplay. When I experimented with this, the game appears to randomly display the nighttime sprite even during the day time, effectively ruining the intended affect. I'm not sure why the developers scrapped this. Either they had issues coding this properly or were just didn't want to put in the effort to make two sets of leaves.

WINTER

Instead of doing recolored leaves for this scene, I made all the leaves transparent and added holiday lighting to the tree. I know the lights aren't perfect - it was kind of hard to make out which direction a branch was going, so it has hard to maintain 'perfect' perspective.

CRYSTAL YARD

This is a bonus playscene that I made because I got a little side-tracked as I was working on the 4 seasons back yards. This is inspired by the Suramar zone from World of Warcraft, so it has a bit of that fantasy, night-elf feel and color scheme. It's been years since I've played WoW but I still appreciate the enchanting aesthetic of the elven zones.

I used gradient mapping again to recolor the leaves to give it this lavender, shimmery, iridescent look. I did a little bit of gaussian blurring and layer effects to make them look a little more "glowy" than the originals.

As before, Tinker won't let me edit the blinds, so it limited what edits I could do to the houses. I would love it if I could have done curtains instead or something. I did my best to make these houses look a little less suburban and more elven. It's not perfect but it was rough working with what I had.

KNOWN ISSUES / THINGS I COULDN'T EDIT

As far as I'm aware, there is no way to turn off the snow effect for seasons like summer where it wouldn't make sense. This probably involves some code-editing that is beyond my technical skillset.

The winter playscene still has the green grass footprint when your petz walk. The sprites for these are not housed within the .env itself but in the Petz 5 Rez.dll file. It would probably involve a bit of tweaking in the code to switch the sprites to something else.

The fall leaves are "bright" in the night time version because there is no way to implement a second, darker set of leaves.

I cannot edit the blinds animation. Tinker gives you an error when you try to edit this sprite. This unfortunately limits what edits I can make to the house and the fence because of where the sprite is positioned.

If anyone does know of solutions to these, do let me know as I'd love to enhance these scenes further!

ICONS

Making the icons for these was also a fun little project. For some odd reason though, the game puts a stray pixel over them when I import them through LnzPro. I did my best to disguise them but there does not seem to be a way to fix that.

BEFORE / AFTER

With all that rambling out of the way, visit my main page over at Magnolia Road > Resources > Playscenes to download the goodies!

[raisengen]

Design of Strife's design is a real mystery to me.

After thinking about it, I think the intention is:

You play it like reverse CC: fight a hard enemy while helped by a large number of buffs, then whittle down the buffs until you're fighting them au naturel. This then unlocks the next difficulty, rinse and repeat.

Within battle, you're meant to exploit the lava fissures by deploying operators on top of them, managing the burn damage in exchange for bonus damage against enemies.

The thing is, the game is absolutely terrible at conveying this. There's no effort to make sure you know about the buff system, and there's no effort to make sure you know how lava fissures work.

The most the tutorial has to say is "if you use buffs you can't unlock the next set of stages". OK? The buff system isn't even available at the time they say that. It's not even unlocked until you lose a run at that rank (and even then it's relatively easy to miss). And besides, all I've been told is that I shouldn't use them, and since they're off by default maybe I should just ignore them.

Compare to CC, where you have to pass through the contract selection screen every time you start the stage.

The lava fissures have no tutorial at all, forcing you to rely on the poorly-worded tooltips. (Did you know you can long-press on special tiles to bring up a notification explaining them?) And you're unlikely to intuit their interactions, either; the lava only hurts friendlies, unless you put an operator on top, in which case they can scoop up some of the eruption and throw it on your enemies. Of course. They didn't even get a good animation, since they appear to only hit low tiles, but still deal damage to high tiles.

Compare to... pretty much any event with a stage mechanic, where they have dedicated tutorial stages focused on the interaction.

If these are (well, were) meant to be the experiments for new high-end content, then surely you should want players to be able to engage with it as intended, right?

[i3utterflyeffect]

Could you provide a summary of the Rain World lore, or point to any good videos that do that? I’m interested in the Creatures™️ and want to know more about what you’re basing them off of

I'm so sorry anon i tried to make this short. this is all copypasted from a document. the power of autism killed me

if my frothing is too much here's a video by daszombes that probably summarizes this all

IN MY DEFENSE THO this video is also like, 20 minutes long.

im like. going into game mechanics and going into it in a similar way to how a normal player might be introduced to the game. and doing a bunch of shit abt it.

ANYWAY!!!!!!!! Summary of Rain World. Let's go. For context purposes I will be telling the story of Survivor and then going into lore, other stories, and Downpour. Obviously spoilers for everything Rain World and Downpour.

WARNINGS

Mentions of general death and animal death (duh)

suicide

child death (briefly)

fictional speciecide/genocide

potential existential crisis fuel

let's get started.

Your name is The Survivor. You live with a family of five. A little sibling, a baby sibling, and your two parents.

The reason the game is called Rain World is because of the heavy rains that buffet your land-- somewhat manageable from the place your home is at, but in many cases, lethal-- not only because of the flooding, but also because it rains hard enough to give you blunt force trauma that will kill you.

You escape these floods using shelters, hiding and hibernating at the end of each 'cycle'-- the time between each downpour.

During one rain, you fall down, plunging into the abyss as you are seperated from your family. Your mission is to go home.

You find yourself in a dilapidated urban sprawl-- it's something close to it, anyway. Not a city, but incredibly industrial. The world is overgrown. This little yellow thing shows up-- it's called an observer but we'll call it by the nickname Iggy for now-- and it directs you to food and then shelter during the barebones tutorial.

You'll go a few cycles, and discover some base mechanics.

KARMA: Karma is, essentially, a way to keep track of how you're doing. Every time you survive a cycle, your Karma goes up. Every time you die, it goes down. You start with 5 base symbols, each granting you one level. Karma is required to navigate the world, as each reigon requires a certain level for you to get in. We'll talk about this later: Karma is actually pretty important to the lore.

CYCLES: Mentioned previously.

DEATH: You are never truly dead in Rain World. Each time you die, you return to your last shelter, restarting the cycle-- but Rain World is special because it's not just you who knows. Creatures have a chance of coming back to life at the end of every cycle, and they will remember you. There's a system that coincides with this--

REPUTATION: Every species has its own perspective on you, and your actions will change their perception of you. Killing a lot of lizards of the same color might make them afraid of you. If you don't, and instead treat them well, they might ignore you. You are prey, so balancing reputation is important-- and I can only think of one creature that won't try to kill you if your reputation's bad. Even the fish will personally drown you.

One creature is incredibly dependent on reputation that it can make or break a run: Scavengers. If you're kind and often trade, offer pearls (they love pearls), save them from enemies, etc., they'll treat you well. Get a bad reputation, though, and you're dead within seconds. Some animals are just skittish though-- there's literally personality values determining how creatures will act. I love that so much.

I think that's all the important lore-based stuff.

After a few cycles, Iggy will direct you to where (at the time you assume) your family is, and you'll follow them through the areas, going through a large building, a garbage waste, and eventually reaching a unusual ocean lined with pipes and with a sunken building in the distance. As you get closer, you discover that Iggy was not directing you to your family, but instead asking you to go to this building.

After a lot of swimming (and running in terror as the giant leviathan worms try to crush you with their metal jaws), you'll meet HER. A blue humanoid with wires spilling out, attached to the room by a mechanical arm-- similar to the ones you might find on a train.

You cannot understand her at this time, but her name is Looks To The Moon; We'll come back later.

After assigning you a fetch quest, Iggy drags you all the way back, and I'm not entirely sure what the beginner's route is, but I'm pretty sure it's (unfortunately) Dark Level Spider Hell.

Eventually, you crawl through that pit, run away from the centipedes trying to kill you, encounter giant birds with mouths like scissors that really want to kill you that are very very fast, run from them, and eventually make your way up to the next area.

THE LEG & THE UNDERHANG

The Leg is an alarming change from the semi-natural formations of the ground. This place is industrial. It's a metal beam-column, reaching up into the endless sky. This place is infested with lizards, and a scarier enemy:

Daddy Long Legs, also known as The Rot. These are blind… Biological lumps of… something. They're black and blue, and completely blind. But they have great hearing, and the rot will find you if you're not careful. And it will consume you.

Keep the Rot in mind for later. It's important for the lore-- basically crucial.

If you can escape this hellscape and make your way to the top, you'll find yourself in a building larger than you can comprehend.

FIVE PEBBLES - SUPERSTRUCTURE

This area is simply labeled Five Pebbles. This will make sense later.

There's no gravity here, but there's lots of lights and strange things-- things that look like they'd belong inside of a creature, and little bite-sized rainbow things. These are called Neurons, and you actually need them for the fetch quest.

There's a lot of things going on, but you won't be able to admire it too long-- this place has Rot inside it too, and it's much harder to avoid when you can't control your path due to being weightless. It's pretty terrifying, but in a way, this place is kind of majestic.

You explore the sprawl of access shafts, and you begin to hear music-- the most acclaimed and chilling track in the game-- as you reach the General Systems Bus. The first time I arrived here, I was completely awestruck.

RANDOM GODS

A large room, with a single chamber isolated in the middle. Projected lights surround you, and you have to climb your way towards the top to enter the unusual room.

Inside is another robot, similar to Looks to the Moon, except he's pink, he wears a cloak, and most of all, he seems shocked at your presence, because the gravity in the room returns, and everything falls to the ground-- including you.

He talks for a moment, before seizing you with the power of Gravity™️, and lifting you up. He implants The Mark Of Communication into your brain-- a mark allowing you to understand the language he speaks.

The following dialogue occurs:

. . . ...is this reaching you? A little animal, on the floor of my chamber. I think I know what you are looking for. You're stuck in a cycle, a repeating pattern. You want a way out. Know that this does not make you special - every living thing shares that same frustration. From the microbes in the processing strata to me, who am, if you excuse me, godlike in comparison. The good news first. In a way, I am what you are searching for. Me and my kind have as our purpose to solve that very oscillating claustrophobia in the chests of you and countless others. A strange charity - you the unknowing recipient, I the reluctant gift. The noble benefactors? Gone. The bad news is that no definitive solution has been found. And every moment the equipment erodes to a new state of decay. I can't help you collectively, or individually. I can't even help myself. For you though, there is another way. The old path. Go to the west past the Farm Arrays, and then down into the earth where the land fissures, as deep as you can reach, where the ancients built their temples and danced their silly rituals. The mark I gave you will let you through. Not that it solves anyone's problem but yours.

Turns out, this entire massive superstructure IS this guy; Five Pebbles is his name, and this puppet is merely a more interaction-friendly extension of his larger form. He's also not very happy with you climbing through his structure, and kicks you out onto the surface of the structure.

Now, let's go back to Moon and get some more information. We'll go to the west later.

Moondown

Looks to The Moon greets you much more pleasantly than Five Pebbles:

Hello little creature. What are you? If I had my memories I would know… You must be very brave to have made it all the way here. But I'm sorry to say your journey here is in vain.B As you can see, I have nothing for you. Not even my memories. Or did I say that already? I see that someone has given you the gift of communication. Must have been Five Pebbles, as you don't look like you can travel very far… He's sick, you know. Being corrupted from the inside by his own experiments. Maybe they all are by now, who knows. We weren't designed to transcend and it drives us mad. It is good to have someone to talk to after all this time! The scavengers aren't exactly good listeners. They do bring me things though, occasionally…

After giving her a neuron, she will thank you.

These neurons are essentially their brains. She only has five left. She was previously a superstructure like Pebbles-- Who she calls her little brother-- but she has collapsed. Giving her these neurons can help her regain her memory.

You can also eat them! Don't do that. You will permanently kill her if you eat all of them. Also, she remembers if you've done that and won't talk to you.

Quick summary of the vanilla ending:

You go underground, find some religious stuff by an ancient culture before whatever culture created the upper world, you find a big golden ocean, you swim down, and… uh…

You get grabbed by a big worm that sends you to the ascension realm??

I don't fully know what the ending is. No one does. We call the big worm Jerry though, and he's a Void Worm.

Anyway, let's talk about the real basics. The juicy stuff:

Iterators and Ancients

Looks To The Moon and Five Pebbles are complex machines called Iterators, created by a dead race named the Ancients.

These Ancients have left the cycle by using something called Void Fluid, a corrosive material from the core of the world that cancels out your revival. This is called 'Ascension'. We'll talk about this more in a minute.

The Ancients way of life is structured around the idea of leaving the cycle of reincarnation, and they eventually succeed-- however, they decided that they should leave a gift to the 'lesser life' of this world, and allow them their own escape-- with less risk and an immediate payoff. Remember what Pebbles said?

A strange charity - you the unknowing recipient, I the reluctant gift. The noble benefactors? Gone.

Yep; The Ancients basically desired worldwide extinction, from what we can tell. And they didn't bother to create that solution themselves, instead tasking a bunch of sentient, functionally immortal beings, to throw themselves repeatedly at a proverbial wall trying to create this worldwide cleanse.

Iterators were made for this.

But let's talk some other things real quick before we dive into that mess.

KARMA AND YOU

Karma. These symbols are fun and also important.

You see, the base symbols Survivor starts with are representations of what the Ancient Monks call the 'five natural urges'. These don't change the gameplay at all, but karma is crazy important in lore.

Let's take a look at the base five.

KARMA 1: VIOLENCE

The lowest level of karma, this symbol generally represents anger, hate, and violent acts. The symbol is used in several others-- the ones for 'The Hunter' and 'The Outlaw', gotten by eating only meat for 3 cycles or committing needless bloodshed.

KARMA 2: LUST

Yeah. Lust. I've heard this can also be percieved as a desire for material objects (take that with a grain of salt), but other than that, I don't think I need to say more.

This symbol is used in the passage 'The Mother'.

KARMA 3: COMPANIONSHIP

The desire to form connections with others in general, not just friendships. Frequently found scrawled in areas with scavengers, and also used in 'The Chieftain', 'The Friend', and 'The Mother'.

KARMA 4: GLUTTONY

food… hrng….. Anyway this one is the desire to eat good food I assume????? What else is there to say, really?

It's used in The Hunter passage, as well as the Marytr (starve for several cycles intermittently), and Iggy uses it to point you to food.

KARMA 5: SELF-PRESERVATION/SURVIVAL

The urge to survive. This is why people pretty frequently talk about the ancients having a suicide culture-- not to mention that the others represent signs of depression. It's used in 'The Saint' (survive without using weapons) and 'The Nomad' (pass through 4 regions successfully) and, most notably, it's own passage: 'The Survivor', in which you survive five cycles with this amount of karma. It is the highest karma most slugcats can ascend to without Echoes-- We'll talk about Echoes in a minute.

There's one oddball karma that breaks from the formula, so I'm just going to mention that briefly:

7/7 KARMA: PEACE (O)

For some reason, this Karma is used in some other stuff, and only if it's your current highest Karma. Seen in 'The Monk' and 'The Saint' passages, it basically just means peace. That's all. This one's weird.

Let's get to arguably the most important topic:

ASCENSION AND ECHOES

oh god. where do i start. um.

Okay. So basically. Ascension is a separation from the cycle that keeps you from returning, or 'respawning'.

For ancients, this was simple-- they extract fluid from the core of the world named Void Fluid, and you just… Dive in, I guess?

There was a mass ascension at some point, leaving everything they created behind. But this is all lore for the ANCIENTS. Let's get to the slugcat method.

To ascend, you must reach true max karma (represented the symbol ⊗-- a crossed out circle) and go through the Depths and go into the Void Sea, but you can't get Max Karma yourself. There's two ways:

Visit Five Pebbles and gain the Mark Of Communication

or…

You can visit Echoes.

If someone has many vices, such as being arrogant or egotistical, or other connections to the world, they leave something described as a stain of their ego trapped between reality and ascension.

Ghosts, essentially. That's what they're called in the code as well. They will speak to you if you have the Mark, and a few will reminisce and admit they never even wanted to ascend. Whatever these beings are, they give you extra Karma, elevating you to the next level.

Now that your crash course on that is over, let's talk about the iterators, for realsies.

THE GREAT PROBLEM

Being made for a seemingly impossible task was not easy for them, especially after the ancients, well… 'dipped', I guess you would say.

No one could really get to the solution, despite having many cycles to do so, even before the Ancients left. Previously, the Ancient lived atop them in cities, so it was a very noticeable thing.

Some turned to other things: Art, companionship, creative projects, watching the world outside, talking with friends.

Others balanced between these things, finding something like a job and personal life balance.

And some went insane.

You see, the ancients created a 'Self-Destruction Taboo', which attempts to prevent the iterators from attempting to hurt themselves, only causing more damage as they try to work around it and find their own way out.

This wasn't common at first, but something happened that caused it to spiral out of control:

Sliver Of Straw and the Triple Affirmative.

The triple affirmative is a signal that informs all iterators that the Great Problem-- How to ascend all life-- Has been discovered. Three affirmatives:

Affirmative that a solution has been found.

Affirmative that the solution is portable.

Affirmative that a technical implementation is possible and generally applicable.

Here's the thing: The problem wasn't solved. Moon explains it best:

Do you know Sliver of Straw? She's quite legendary among us. Sliver of Straw is the only one to ever broadcast a specific signal: that the Big Problem we're all working on has been solved. The triple affirmative. […] She's also one of few that has ever been confirmed as exhaustively incapacitated, or dead. We do not die easily. Sliver of Straw sent [The Triple Affirmative] and the ensuing commotion was historically unparalleled, before or after. I still remember it. But… nothing happened - except that Sliver of Straw was apparently dead. When the dust settled we were all still there blinking at each other. Everyone had a theory. Some said that she did have a solution, but that the solution itself was somehow dangerous. These later became known as the Triangulators, who think that a solution should be inferred without being directly discovered. Some said she never had a solution, she just died. And when the systems broke down an erroneous signal was sent. One camp claimed that dying was the solution. Either way, after that these different factions developed, as well as a huge forensic effort to recreate and simulate Sliver of Straw's last moments. Some of the simulations were wrapped in a simulation wrapped in a simulation, in case something dangerous might happen. Nothing much has come from it.

Sliver of Straw also abbreviates to SOS, and their name is similar to needle in a haystack.

We're still not sure what happened: The one fan-theory that pretty much seemed canon due to a challenge level was debunked. SOS remains a mystery. I've got my own thoughts, but we're not talking about that here.

Anyway, after Sliver of Straw died, there soon became more and more self-destructing iterators, with one common method resulting in a term for it's failure: The Rot.

Remember that? Yeah. They slowly destroy an iterator, but it doesn't truly kill them. They're still alive in there, somewhere.

Let's talk about how the Rot works once we get to the point where it begins in the main storyline.

THE COLLAPSE

Looks to the Moon was constructed upon a shoreline, and there was originally no plans to create Five Pebbles.

Almost all Iterators are incredibly far apart, even in their local groups, so it would have seemed preposterous at the time of her creation.

However, her surface became inhospitable some time after her creation, and traversing the ground beneath her would have basically made any attempt at evacuation worthless.

So a solution was proposed-- Two iterators connected by a bridge. They could safely leave her to her own things, and meanwhile, the ancients could spend their remaining time NOT dying.

I'd love to talk about the politics surrounding Five Pebble's creation, but that's unnecessary and this doesn't need to get any longer.

After their creators passed on, Pebbles slowly became despondent and began talking in a private group, using the psuedonym 'Erratic Pulse' to obtain information on how he could circumvent the Self Destruction Taboo..

The local group has 3 others. Two are important, one isn't. (sorry Chasing Wind </3)

Seven Red Suns, or SRS, is our current topic.

They are someone Five Pebbles looks up to, and ended up giving him this info, which they regret.

There's also No Significant Harassment, who is mischievous and good friends with most of the group before everything falls apart.

Here's some in-game dialogue:

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment SRS: I can't stop dwelling over mistakes that I've made. I could just delete those memories of course, but that feels irresponsible. NSH: Oh? What kind of mistakes are we talking about here? SRS: I once gave someone some... sensitive information... the kind that could be dangerous if acted on. SRS: Yet I should have known they weren't in the right state to use that information responsibly. NSH: I take it you won't tell me the content, or to who. SRS: No, I will not, out of respect. NSH: Look, if you ever want to talk about it I can. We can share this little problem of yours. We were made to solve them after all! NSH: You're worried they're going to get themselves hurt by messing it up? SRS: They already have.

You can find the pearl containing this 'sensitive information' in other campaigns.

Here is Moon's comment on it:

This information is illegal. Someone probably tried to send it by a pearl somehow rather than risking being overheard on broadcast. It's an instruction on how to circumvent the self-destruction taboo. The problem with breaking taboos is that the barriers are encoded into every cell of our organic parts. And there are other taboos strictly regulating our ability to rewrite our own genome. Attempting to circumvent the issue using this process would be extremely risky. That's not to say that there exists any known methods that would avoid putting the user in harm's way. Those barriers are there for a reason. Where exactly did you find this pearl? I imagine you dug it up from somewhere within the surrounding facilities, in which case that wouldn't leave many options as to the recipient. That would explain a lot of things…

Pebbles used this pearl, and because of this, his water intake majorly increased, leaving Moon without any water at all: Iterators need water to function, though, as without it they can't flush out the massive amount of excess materials that is made by their operations. He didn't notice, not until Moon contacted him directly-- And he was angered by this, but not without reason.

Failing the pearl caused him to break the genome reprogramming, causing biological parts to be converted into Rot.

When Moon falls, he shuts out all the other iterators, and goes radio silent.

You're caught up on the backing lore. Now... Campaign time.

TIMELINE: SPEEDRUN EDITION

SPEARMASTER

A messenger made by Seven Red Suns who can make spears outta bone-- a little bit trypophobic but I forgive them it's not their fault. No mouth btw. those spears are how it eats. slurp

Delivered the pearl containing the Taboo bypass, but Seven Red Suns sends you back, with a message of worries regarding his physical and mental health, trying to tell him to open up and talk about his feelings. Pebbles gets mad. He kicks you out, as well as the pearl you were carrying. Did I mention that he rips it out of your chest? That pearl was embedded in you.

Anyway, you can take the pearl to Moon because she's still standing, and she encodes it with a goodbye, telling you about how she's about to collapse. You run to the communication arrays and broadcast that message for her, before returning home to Seven Red Suns.

ARTIFICER

"God Forbid Women Do Anything", Genocidal Revenge edition. Artificer had two babies. Scavengers saw one take one of their precious Porls. Baby is dead. Artificer runs but the other baby gets dragged to hell by leeches and drowns.

Anyway, Artificer returns on a genocidal rampage, locked at Karma One: Violence. You use scavenger corpses to get through Karma gates. The only thing that can sate your hunger is blood and flesh. You are continuously aimbotted by Scavengers but you keep coming back to kill more and more.

You're also explosive, did I mention that? I don't think I mentioned that. She explodes. She's very angry. She can launch herself through the air and maul people.

You can get to Karma 10 through echoes, but you're still denied by the void. It's unclear if she becomes an Echo or not.

You also have another ending! If you go to Five Pebbles, he'll say 'hey, that drone you have is a citizenship drone for my city, scavengers are ripping the city apart, I see that you hate them, and if you kill their chieftain we both benefit'!

If you choose to go that route you can tear through the scavengers, have a boss fight, and get a cool mask. Who cares about being empty inside since you can no longer go on a genocidal murder spree and being forever chained to the mortal realm by your anger and bloodshed when you have a cool mask?

Moon is also dead, she's not there.

Blood and violence. Rip and tear.

Slugcat pup was killed so let their corpses rain from the heavens, etc.

HUNTER

You are rot, rot is you!

Actually, you're a messenger slugcat made by No Significant Harrassment. For some reason this guy ended up giving you the rot for reasons still unclear to us. Unintentionally? Intentionally? Who knows. Your cycle count goes down instead of up.

You have limited cycles to speedrun to Moon and MAYBE ascend if you're lucky.

Go through Pebbles? He gives you extra cycles and wishes you the best of luck. Kind of depressing that you're both condemned to the same fate.

Get to Moon; Deliver a pearl that's a message of well wishes and cares from NSH. More importantly, deliver a slag reset key and restart her. She gets her neurons back. She's alive! And unable to help you.

Now? Run.

Your biological time bomb is ticking, and when you get into negatives, it shows. Not only does it turn permadeath, but you begin to experience collapsing into seizure-like spasms randomly, a growing hunger, and according to the wiki HALLUCINATIONS?

Ascend and you get a happy ending, but if you die you're gonna get a horrific surprise in the next campaign!

Fun fact: original hard mode campaign. Hunter is more skilled than the other vanilla slugs, but their world is harder too.

GOURMAND

Food. That's it. Just food. It's either going to be the easiest slugcat or the hardest one.

You eat your list of foods, maybe visit the iterators, and fuck off back home. You don't even have to complete the list. You can just Fucking Leave.

If you do complete the list tho you get slugpups. I like em. Cute slugs.

you can also CRAFT NUKES btw. did i mention that? Gourmand has crafting mechanics and also can craft nukes if you do it right. Not joking

You can also regurgitate an entire living squid. How? Gourmand.

Also by the way Hunter may or may not have popcorned into a mindless mass of rot if you failed to ascend them. Oopsie.

SURVIVOR

See introduction.

MONK

Survivor but babey mode (affectionate)

Remember Survivor's little siblings? Monk is one of them. They're a vanilla bannana boy and my favorite little guy.

You basically choose a route and if you've already completed it with Survivor there's a happy sibling reunion. Oh, there's two routes now, by the way. Once you complete Gourmand you can go home to the Outer Expanse. No one's there but you're both chilling.

RIVULET

WELCOME TO HELL.

This is probably the one that gave Downpour its title. The rain happens every three minutes, maybe less if you get unlucky. The rain shelters are failing and the world's succumbing to Rot.

Go throw yourself into Moon, and you'll discover Monk has given her two neurons and a dress; thank you Monk :]

You also have the mark of communication from someone (who knows who) and you have a pearl for an iterator system that Moon doesn't have called the lymphatic system. Apparently the rain's bad because Pebbles isn't doing well, but how bad can it be?

…hey, why is the citadel covered in Rot? That's weird and annoying.

Was there always this much in the overhang? It's kind of obnoxious.

Finally, you're at Pebbles, so let's-

Oh.

OH.

THAT'S JUST… THE ROT.

THAT'S WHAT IT'S CALLED NOW. OKAY. FUCK.

Pebbles is so sick he can't even maintain zero gravity, it's going on and off.

Dive into the water of the newly discovered path and RUN.

When you get to him, he asks you to disconnect his only life support-- a Rarefraction Cell-- and deliver it to Moon. A final apology. Leave him to listen to his music pearl in peace, it's the only thing he has left.

Take that cell, run to Moon. She knows exactly where it came from. She doesn't know where her core is anymore, though.

Time for the Submerged Superstructure.

Most of Moon's remains are underwater, now infested with kelp, water lizards, and scavengers. But you can swim down, down, down into the creaking metal, the shrieking waters. Let it swallow you whole.

Eventually, you will reach her Heart. Place the Rarefraction Cell inside, and you're washed away.

You are washed to the top, and descend down to find her where you left her-- but renewed with new life.

She'll contact Pebbles one last time. Happy ending, right?

Not yet.

SAINT

THE TRUE TRIPLE AFFIRMATIVE

Saint may seem peaceful at first-- Fragile and unable to throw spears, fluffy to fight the cold seeping into the world-- but they are arguably the scariest one out there!

The world is ending: Iterators have gone silent, and the world's being blanketed in snow. You're up above it all-- so your first instinct is to go east. To Pebbles.

But he's gone.

Descend, and you'll only find a heap of scrap metal: The Silent Construct. His remains.

You're collecting Echoes.

On the way, you talk to Moon. She tells you about the state of the world. How it's dying. That she might be the only one left.

The world is passing into a new era: one that doesn't need them.

At maximum Karma, Saint becomes something unique.

You gain the ability to ascend anything.

You can go back.

You probably are going to ascend Moon. Only a mercy, right?

Return to the silent superstructure, and find that Pebbles remains. He's still holding that pearl. The music is scratchy. Distorted.

How long has he been here?

However long it was, it was enough to pick off all his neurons. And despite this, he's not even granted the mercy of an ending; he can barely even think or speak. It's cold out here, and you can't imagine it'd be kind to leave him here alone. He has to go, too.

And with that, you descend to the depths.

RUBICON

The Void Sea doesn't have anything for you. In fact, you will only discover yourself in a hellish world where it seems to be flipped upside down, and the remains of the old civilizations that are probably familiar by now are succumbing to the void.

You're burned if you touch the void fluid. You must fly to avoid it.

So you go. You ascend many things that are either trying to kill you or keeping you locked out of other paths.

And finally, at the end, you go up, and ascend.

You swim up. The slugcat tree is here, but it's not what you're looking for.

You drop by a chamber-- one containing the two ascended iterators.

They're free, and finally together. Once you ascend, you can see the future and the past in a cycle.

They look at you, and it's not a circle. It's an endless spiral into entropy. Your future goes on forever.

But you keep ascending.

It's not long before the Void Worm finds you. It offers you ascension, a reprieve.

And you kill it.

You're trapped in the cycle forever. An echo, ever recurring.

And it continues on.

🎉CONGRATS!

you are now a rain world expert. consider yourself lore'd. feel free to look at the critters and beasts on the Miraheze Wiki. (thank you miraheze this is so much better than fandom wikis. we love you)

[oodlyenough]

6-2 magical turnabout

I gotta admit I was deeply skeptical of this one, because it felt weird to jump back to Apollo and Athena and Japanifornia after the tutorial, and I'd heard about the uh questionable way Phoenix and Trucy's relationship is handled, and the Gramarye retcon stuff was a mess ...

but I actually really liked it! At least as much as Turnabout Academy, where I think they are similarly "so dumb it loops back around to being fun" (not a bad place to be for an AA filler case). What gives this one the edge is that SOJ has actual gameplay again. Thank fucking god. I can click things! I can investigate! There are minigames! I have to solve puzzles myself instead of waiting for NPC Athena to do it for me! These are the most basic elements of an AA game and somehow Dual Destinies had none of them, making SOJ feel like a revelation. So I think that makes this my fave case since AA4? Wow

Anyway let's get into it

I like the idea of defendant Trucy. Trucy was so ignored in AA5, and even in AA4 where she was a major player we rarely dealt with how she honestly feels about things. So it was nice to explore that a little more. Being a defendant is a rite of passage for an Ace Attorney character. She's all grown up now.

A magic show as the scene of a murder is a really fun idea also. It just gives great excuses for the shenanigans that take place in any murder case, and the solution feels less contrived bc it is with a perpetrator and a set design where those things are expected and facilitated naturally without a shit ton of contrivances and coincidences.

Apollo and Athena, for all my complaints about how they cannibalize each other's screentime just by simultaneously existing, are a fun team. And this time we actually got a lot of interactive banter because we actually got to CLICK STUFF wow so great much gameplay.

I do really enjoy Athena. I wish this franchise would get out of the habit of creating these interesting but half-baked characters just to park them immediately in the next instalment to create more interesting but half-baked characters. I have the rest of SOJ to go but I don't imagine Athena will have much of a role to play in it, just like how Apollo got shafted in DD to make way for Athena, and Trucy fared even worse. The main cast is so bloated the games can't balance everyone.

I am THRILLED Ema is back. Some of her new sprites are sf cute too. Overall, I have to compliment SOJ's sprites, which are very detailed and have lots of different animations. Many characters have new/more expressive ones, and they look way better than DD's 3D models.

The Gramarye lore is a hot mess. I do not believe the new writer remembered that Trucy is a Gramarye on her MOM'S side, since apparently the "Gramarye creed" was "passed down from my father, from his father", making it... the Enigmar creed. I also, generally, could probably have done without some of the way the Gramaryes were discussed here. They were pretty obviously a toxic shitshow nightmare in AA4, and Phoenix explicitly wants to protect Trucy from the truth of that. Here, we introduce the Jonkler out of nowhere, and have him cursing Magnifi and taking his revenge on ... the toddler... and it's all just a little bit weird. The poster of him being CANCELLED is the funniest thing I've ever seen though so I can forgive a lot of it just for that.

Also where is my man Valant. Why the hell would Trucy invite the Onceler to her show and not him lmao. Justice for Valant!!

I've also never wished Apollo knew his heritage more than in that last bit where Tony Stark was raving about how he defeated the "last" Gramarye lmao.

Nahyuta is ... fine so far. Honestly I know he's so unpopular in fandom but he's kind of fine so far? Not an immediate fave, but not even in my bottom two. The bit where he talks about studying Japanifornian culture made me think of the Dalek that "knows everything" because it downloaded the internet in 2013.

I've been semi-spoiled for Apollo and Nahyuta having a history together, and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised that the game is not concealing this, but teasing it right from the off. I liked that in Apollovision his dialogue box is labelled "Nahyuta" even though everyone in-dialogue is calling him by his surname. I suspect this might be more a game dev limitation (character limit?) than anything else, but even if that's the case, it's a happy coincidence. The real test will be if they manage to stop Nahyuta and Apollo from feeling like a redux of Edgeworth and Phoenix, or Athena and Blackquill. Much of my issue with the end of DD was that it felt like we were just revisiting the trilogy's greatest hits without the same depth. But... whatever. I'm intrigued enough, at this point.

The biggest problem with this case, the elephant in the room, is Phoenix, who is inexplicably not there for his daughter's debut, did not even send flowers (apparently), and does not even talk to her on the phone in the last scene. This is exceedingly stupid and reeks of a total narrative oversight because they're not even trying to make some kind of point about Nick being a bad father. It's just a total lack of thought or effort. But ... anyway I have a whole other post written up about how Trucy and Phoenix's relationship is written in all the games, so, more on that another day, I guess. TL;DR Canon is a liar sometimes.

The "Gramarye[Enigmar] Family Motto" stuff, which is already so similar to the Mia Fey wisdom, could've just been collapsed into one thing: Trucy as a performer adapting that lawyer motto to her own life would be a nice way to show how Trucy is influenced by Phoenix, as well as Apollo and Athena. But uh, well, the game doesn't seem to care much about Trucy and Phoenix, so. I also find the "smile though your heart is breaking" mantra, including the JUDGE telling Trucy to look happy lmao??!?!, is like, kind of weird tonally, to the degree where I wonder if there's a culture gap happening. But I don't know enough about Japan to say.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this case. SOJ is off to an OK start with me so far, at least in comparison to DD.

[kob131]

Lily Orchard and Pokemon: Gen 1

Because the only response to this video should not be a four hour react stream highlight reel.

So Lily Orchard made a retrospective video on Pokemon...9 months ago that has risen back into prominence due to a Youtuber making a video on it, criticizing it.

It's also, again, a four hour video that's just a highlight reel of him reacting in real time to the video. Personally, I can't stand this kind of video so...

Here's what I have to say.

<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

"Gen 1 bashing is done without merit!"

Lily argues that people bashing Gen 1 are doing so without any kind of merit, pointing out people complaining lacking features, having bugs and not having story. This she counters by saying "Pokemon story bad."

... I know that sounds reductive but the reason why I am saying this is because A- I already know what Lily thinks about the story of the game she's hinting at (Gen 5) and I can tell you she's not putting very much thought into this and B- that same foreknowledge and the fact that one of images she's using to represent this is a meme basically mocking people for preaching about Gens 4/5. ... So knowing her, she's just doing this to be contrarian.

This is a problem in her video because in her introduction, the thesis statement of this whole essay she is writing: she states that the goal of this video is to look back at the games and judge them as they hold up. Yet here she is shrugging off VERY big issues that seriously date Gen 1 and make it age horribly, which should be a major factor in Lily's assessment...because at best, she's being contrarian.

... That is not a good idea.

"*Insert her recaping the journey of Gen 1*"

Yeah, this is why I decided to take on this task. I already know most of Lily's video is going to be her detailing her playthrough of the games. This means fuck all to me for the most part as an autist I already have clear memory of all these games even years away from playing them so I can skip most of her video.

But this does mean that unless you're familiar with how arguments are structured in Youtube videos, like me- you'll have to wade through Lily's crappy attempts at a comedic retelling of the games to know what she thinks. Which makes a fucking four and a half hour long video draaaaag.

"See? Gen 1 doesn't hold you by the hand and lets you just fuck off!"

The idea here being that Gen 1 is good because it doesn't hand hold the player. Issue is- This is the first Pokemon game. By all accounts, because this game is introducing a rather new take on an underexplored gameplay style, tutorials such as these shouldn't be optional. Especially since money is so limited early in the game so you can't easily get more Pokeballs after wasting your supply on experimentation.

Having a quick catching tutorial showing that you need to weaken a Pokemon before catching it could alleviate any confusion. Pokemon can only get away with this due to it being so easy. ... A flaw that is going to rear its ugly head later on. She also ignores why the tutorials are so quick in the earlier gens- the tutorials became longer because they were integrated into the story and used to demonstrate characters. If you don't have a story or proper characters then of course the tutorials will go by quick. It also means there's less to stimulate the brain to encourage people to keep playing.

Pokemon's gameplay, minus any discussions of difficulty, has never been the most engaging. Turn based gameplay's flaw is that's very static and slow, meaning most of the time the act of playing the game doesn't stimulate. This is usually subverted by fancy animations, challenge or, in Pokemon's case- entertaining characters and self expression. The extra length of the tutorials is a side effect of the game's compensating for their less stimulating gameplay.

"See, early game bug types aren't bad! Poketubers are wrong because my Butterfree never lost a battle!"

This kind of exposes another issue of Lily's- she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about.

She takes issue with people calling Pokemoen like Butterfree bad by brushing off their complaints of 'Butterfree has no STAB moves!' by pointing out coverage and status moves. But she completely ignores that people brush off Pokemon like Butterfree for having no STAB moves because, since you have 6 slots on your team, it's pretty easy to get a diverse team that can cover whatever Butterfree does but through STAB. Psychic moves? Alakazam or Hypno. Sleep moves? Hypno, Venomoth or even Parasect. Stun moves? Literally any Electric Type.

Then we have her overlooking another aspect of Pokemon: Base Stats. For those who don't know: Base stats are a set of numbers that dictate what number a Pokemon's given stats are. Things like IVs/Evs/DVs and Natures act as multiplers to a base stat. So as you could guess- a base stat is the building block of a Pokemon and dictate how it plays. Butterfree's base stats in Gen 1 are (HP/ATK/DEF/SP.ATK/SP.DEF/SPD) 60/40/50/80/80/70.

For reference, Charmeleon has 58/64/58/65/65/80. A non-fully evolved Pokemon has roughly similar stats to a fully evolved Pokemon. And this is all exasperated by how easy the game is, because Butterfree's status move pool? Largely inefficient because if you actually know what you are doing- you will be able to KO a Pokemon faster through simply attacking with a stronger Pokemon than disabling it then attacking. And most gamers will default to the most efficient solution. Hence Butterfree's status as a bad Pokemon.

"See, the game is trying to tell you how good status moves are by enforcing it through Brock and Bide!"

Yet another case of Lily not knowing what she's slathering about because A. The actual effects of status moves don't matter, just that they don't deal damage. A better case would be a leader that uses status moves to their advantage.

And B. Lily says that Bide I'd the perfect move for Onix. ... Bide, a move that deals damage based on the amount of HP lost, is perfect for 9nix, a low HP and high defense Pokemon...meant to lose as little HP as possible.

Lily literally posts Onix's stats to prove her point when said stats contradict her.

"Blue isn't a mean rival! He's just a friendly rival and gamers praise Bianca and Cheren just cuz they suck off the player!"

What the fuck, where did that Cheren/Bianca stuff cone from?

Okay first- Blue starts the game by going "Gramps! I'm fed up with waiting!" and "Heh, I don't need to be greedy like you! Go ahead and choose-" and "WHAT? Unbelievable! I picked the wrong Pokémon!"

Blue is quite clearly not intended to be friendly nor likeable.

Second- People like Cheren and Bianca because they go through arcs related to the themes of Gen 5, with Bianca's desire to travel leading her on a journey of self discovery (truth) and Cheren learning that his valuing if strength may have been wrong (ideals). Do they say tge player is great at battling? Yes...because from the story's perspective, you are going X-0. They're reacting to this fact instead of shrugging it off.

"Lavender Town has no value aside from creepypastas and showing how weak Ghosts are to Psychic in this gen! It isn't that creepy!"

... Uh, Lily? You didn't bring up how you can only identify the ghosts after beating Sliph Co, who are so scary you can't even fight them. Or how the trainers in the Pokemon Tower all act very weird, almost like they're possessed. Or that the Tower has a fucking purifying circle 8n the middle. Or...you know...bringing up the fact called DEATH in this very kid-friendly world.

You uh...you do know what a 'retrospective' is, right?

"The game expects you to face challenges in order despite being open world!"

Lily, the game is not open world. You are still going through strict paths with locked off sections. This comes with the implication that you will be facing challenges in a linear order. You not understanding what the game actually is does not make it bad.

"See? Butterfree isn't bad! It's my best Pokemon!"

Lily, these games can be beaten by a six year old. I beat them as a six year old.

That means nothing.

"Ugh, Sliph Co is soooo bad! It's the worst in the game because it's obtuse and you can just exit to heal up! Rock Tunnel is SOOO much better for being challenging!"

... Lily, Rock Tunnel is full of dead ends and unlike Sliph Co- YOU CAN'T AVOID ENCOUNTERS UNLESS YOU STOCK UP ON REPELS.

You can also exit Rock Tunnel to heal too. No, 'challenge yourself by not exiting' is not a justification. You're just not thinking.

'Psychic types are only strong in theory! Status moves exist so do neutral hits! Super Effective STAB isn't the only path!"

But they ARE the most efficient. And for the average gamer, efficiency is king.

"You can crumble Alakazam with physical hits without super Effective hits!"

*proceeds to spend her entire footage locked in a Fly V. Recover loop when a Butterfree STAB could solve this*

Also gotta love that she goes off about Alakazam not having the tools to deal with Physical attacks...as it uses a move to halve Physical damage (Reflect).

And finally- She is using Sabrina as her example. Who is operating off Gen 1's wonky AI and keeps using Psywave. In the hands of, you know, a real person or a better AI who understands basic elements of the game- Alakazam can easily wreck teams with hard hitting Psybeams. And Alakazam's poor Physical Defense doesn't matter here because it's SPEED makes it so it will hit first and managle a team before they can counterattack. This is where Lily's refusal to understand competitive bites her. THIS is the issue people have.

"Nobody likes going through Seaform Islands!"

Okay this is another issue with Lily's video here: She doesn't engage with content that isn't directly in her face. Later she'll talk about how she doesn't care about things like cut mechanics and that she's focusing on gameplay but part of Pokemon's gameplay and the reason people like it is the sense of discovery you get from exploring the game. Like say...finding one of a kind Pokemon that are relatively strong but are hidden away in sections that are optional (Moltres, Articuno, Zapados and even fucking MEWTWO).

Like...the fuck Lily? All you're doing is just making a truncated let's play by this point.

Side note; Some of Lily's jokes do land at times. Like her commentary on how Giovanni acts after being defeated. Though she does call him 'elderly' strangely enough.

Also I JUST caught some of Lily's gameplay footage. Her Primeape's moveset is Submission, Strength, Rock Slide and...Thunderbolt. She wasted her Thunderbolt TM on a Pokemon with rock bottom Special...when she had fucking Rock Slide.

This is the woman talking as if she knows the mechanics of the game.

"Gen 1 and 2 are so good because they allow for player freedom unlike later Gens like 3 and 4 where GF TELL YOU how to play instead of letting you play how you wish!"

Hey remember earlier when Lily talked about how the game was supposedly 'open world' but complained about how there was a strict recommended order based on the badge numbers on the Trainer Card?

How the fuck is it that much different than just enforcing the order? Not to mention that, considering how fucked Johto's level curve is- that making a firm order where you can more easily control the difficulty is probably a GOOD thing.

And that's where Gen 1 ends. Overall- rather shallow. I also expect to be covering more Gens in posts since problems like these tend to be recurring issues and don't require being brought up all the time.

It's not as painful as Lily's usual stuff...but I feel that will change soon.