#my mlp era….its coming back…..

[lockandkeyhyena]

rainbow crash!

[karamell-sweetz]

welcome to my blog!

pls drop a like once you’ve read this post! | last updated 24 jun 2025

IMPORTANT: REGARDING PALESTINE/GAZA CAMPAIGNS

i am currently not in a position to be able to donate to any campaigns. i sincerely apologise if it seems i am ignoring the situation by not donating, and i ask you to please be courteous to myself and others in a similar position. i also ask you not to monitor my lack of response or donations.

however, i am able to boost any campaigns if i am contacted. these will be tagged with ‘🍉’. if i am contacted through direct messages i will reblog the main campaign post from your blog.

BASICS

my name is karamell! its a pleasure to meet ya :D

i go by she/her and am cis female :3 not too fussed abt pronouns tho!

at present i am 18, my birthday is the 16th of june. i’m australian + filipino, so sorry if i post something at an ungodly hour for your timezone lmao

this blog will be for my fandom reblogs, art and countless ramblings! i am also studying animation for university so you may see some of my work here (most likely tests or studies).

i have a separate account dedicated to undertale multiverse content -> @karamellz-multiverse-l0g (i don’t post there a lot because undertale is on the backburner for now!)

i am also self-appointed chairwoman of the rui kamishiro fanclub! not that that’s too important… but i like saying it lol

BYF

i don’t tag my reblogs/queue usually so uhh good luck poring through that >< all of my original posts are tagged for convenience though, you can find my tags in the search bar :3

in relation to that i’m VERY multifandom so srry if you get bombarded with stuff that doesn’t relate to you haha! but hopefully you’ll like the stuff i rb too, i’m a firm believer in the power of brainrot spreading and most of my fandoms are from the same niche anyway!

i dont have a dni because realistically i cant rlly control who sees my stuff, but if you or the stuff you post make me uncomfortable i’ll just block you. no hard feelings <3

FANDOMS + FAV LIST

project sekai - rui kamishiro, tsukasa tenma, wxs, n25, okay actually its everyone i love proseka soo much

vocaloid - miku, una + deco*27, n-buna, kikuo, pinocchio-p, inabakumori, picco, harumakigohan, maiki-p

d4dj - unichørd, hapiara, lyrilily

bandori - pasupa, morfonica, hhw, ras

enstars - trickstar, alkakurei

love live - rina tennoji, shioriko mifune, hanamaru kunikida, ruby kurosawa, you watanabe, ayumu uehara

cookie run kingdom - sugarfly cookie my beloved… also a fan of PV, white lily, milky way and any pink cookie

fragaria memories - romarriche

milgram - amane, yuno, mahiru

undertale (utmv) - xtale, ink, murder time trio

danganronpa - shuichi saihara, kaede akamatsu, k1-b0

twisted wonderland - heartslabyul (deleted the game because UGH the grind)

denonbu - harajuku district

revue starlight - lalafin, karen, aruru (i love all of them tho)

mcyt (idk if i’ll reblog anything from here but i know a little bit of the dsmp lore and am attempting to understand life series??)

other things you may see: lalaloopsy + other doll lines from that era, mlp, warrior cats, cute art i think is nice, lunime gacha games (i was very much a ‘gacha kid’ back in its prime), puyo puyo, writing stuff, THE COLOUR PINK, webcore, memes, cool crafts, yorushika, other teenage girl things idk

TAGS

🍉 - palestine and gaza campaigns

karamell yells - ramblings and random stuff, may include headcanons and analysis

karamell doodles - my art! mostly fanart at the moment

karamell’s wips - works in progress (stuff i’ll never finish probably)

karamell’s pocket - posts i want to come back to

karamell gaming - random game screenshots

karamell rolls the gacha - my gacha pulls of varying luck

karamell’s mailbox - asks, submissions, tag games, all that fun stuff

karamell’s rq pile - drawing requests (which are always open btw, feel free to send some in if you’d like!)

karamell stop missing the blonde clown - thirsty? brainrot posts about tsukasa tenma because boy do i love him

karamell’s confections - various big projects (videos, edits, etc). all the cool stuff i make that isn’t normal art basically

karamell’s burning pile of ocs - see image below:

(utmv submissions for this will be posted on my sideblog)

UPDATE: the number is now 350 instead of 244!

when in doubt. rui scribble - various random scribbles of rui kamishiro because i like drawing him

karamell asks a question - mostly polls and stuff i need help with

say hi to my sideblog guys - self rbs from my utmv sideblog @/karamellz-multiverse-l0g. just for a little bump! :)

ALLIURA - general oc posting, inc. OCtobers, oc challenges, animatics, doodles etc. i might make a sideblog for this later when i have more time to work on it

bringingbackmythteam - collaborative oc universe with my friends!!

TAGS FOR MINI-SERIES

karamell’s project precure au - project sekai x precure (updates never)

wxs revue au - project sekai x revue starlight (updates randomly)

karamell’s birthday treat cafe - food-themed fandom birthday drawings (on break for a bit)

kamikou seniors trio - tsukasa ena rui posts because i want them to hang out

the mizuruiena agenda continues - mizuki rui ena hanging out + general posts about them together

rui dress agenda - rui in dresses what did you expect

rui fanclub sekai - read my blog description. just silly things about a hypothetical rui fanclub

pomegranate-induced haze - rui’s 2* card from old times read-aloud (honami mix 3 event) sent me down the pomegranate symbolism rabbit hole

[event] tiering adventures - karamell hates tiering. separate tags for kasa4, rui4 and wxs world link

NEW! the bookstore princess and a guy named nakayama - a yearning-induced nakashira au that got out of hand

FIND ME! (links are underlined!)

instagram - _karamella.cake

youtube - karamell-sweetz!

tiktok - karamell.sweetz

pinterest - karamellxsweetz

art fight - karamellxsweetz

ao3 - mirai_spxrk

FRIEND ID (GLOBAL SERVERS ONLY)

bandori - 4636316 (karamellxshowtime!) (i might be out of friend space tho)

d4dj - ffzoJpPf (mirai.chørd)

project sekai - 168505012555628545 (karamell?!)

enstars - 7709727947 (karamelloid) <- i am not active here anymore, boycott happyele!!

that should be all. enjoy your stay on my silly little corner of the internet!! 🫶

[princesscolumbia]

So it's been long enough and I'm expecting to come back to it, but my oldest popular fanfic, Fission, is now up on AO3. If you're not aware, I started penning this work back in 2006 as Ranma 1/2 was starting to lose relevance in anime pop culture. Inu Yasha was taking its place as young women were becoming an anime watching demographic in the USA and, as gender-fluid (literally) as Ranma's core audience is, "Dog-demon-boy hearts girl" had greater appeal to the wider young women demographic than "boy-who-understands-how-important-an-emergency-tampon-is hearts girl".

It also was released in the age of After Fuku Fic (AFF). During the Fuku fic era, there was clone after clone after clone of the core idea of "what if Ranma were to become a senshi?" Every member of the Ranma cast got shoved into a seifuku, it seemed, and any characters on either the Sailor Moon or Ranma parts of the equation that didn't fit just so were often discarded. This isn't to say the sub-sub-sub-genre is bad (I'm writing for it, so clearly I don't think so) but people just got tired of it.

And I dropped Fission in the middle of that and found myself in the rare company of people who wrote a fuku fic that even people who'd been completely burned out on the idea still wanted to read it.

Life happened, and I wound up reading (and writing) MLP-centric fics, then She-ra, and lately dabbling in The Locked Tomb. And yet I still keep drifting back to this oldy but goodie because I've just got so many stories in that sandbox I want to tell.

So without further ado, I present to you...

Fission

A Ranma 1/2 & Sailor Moon fanfic

by Princess Celestia

Ranma is having A Day. The usual wacky relationship hijinks wind up with him tripping while running from his self-declared love interests (it has to do with martial arts, several foreign laws, and an okonomiyaki cart...long story) and falling off a roof (...again, long story) to pass through a stream of water from a broken pipe, triggering the magic that cursed him to turn into a girl with a splash of cold water. But today the wacky cranked right up into the weird when he DIDN'T collide with the other person who also happens to be standing in the spray of water. Usagi is having a pleasant day, actually. She's spending time with her boyfriend, taking in parts of Tokyo she doesn't normally get to, and in all enjoying herself when she gets a call about a monster attack. She ducks into an alley and starts to transform into Sailor Moon when a pipe bursts and sprays her with water right as someone...doesn't collide with her falling from the roof above. The destiny of both Ranma and Usagi has been altered by a random accident that nobody could have planned for or anticipated. Nobody around them is even remotely prepared.

Konatsu pulled his wooden sword and bounced a few more paces away from the youma, "Where are you going, Ranma-sama?"

Ranma was already pelting out of the room, "To get body armor!" he snapped back.

He darted into the next room and leapt into the pool. Body armor, body armor, body armor... ran through his head as he felt the water cover his form. He felt, for the first time, a surge of magic accompanying his transformation, then for no reason that she could at first figure out suddenly shouted out under water, "MOON... AQUA... POWER... ACTIVATE!"

Konatsu had backed far enough away from the monster while goading it onward that he was able to see what Ranma was doing in the next room. Suddenly, both he and the monster recoiled as water blasted from the pool, light and sound sweeping the room.

Ranma was caught up in a strange transformation like she had never experienced before. She somehow knew it was distinct from her usual Jesenkyo curse. She felt her clothes dissolve into magical mist, then felt ribbons brushing her form. She felt the fingerless gloves, the panties and bra, the fuku, the boots, everything form up on her body. She was even more intently aware of something even stranger going on just in front of her chest. She felt magic streaming out of her, but somehow leaving her even more replenished than if she had just taken a nap. Whatever was going on, it was additive, not subtractive. Two distinct colors flowed from her, one white, the other black. It began swirling together, forming the yin/yang symbol that was familiar to any martial artist, but most especially to her thanks to it's unique meaning for her life. It suddenly hardened into what looked like a crystal, then attached itself to her uniform at the join where her sailor sash met just below her neckline.

This all took place in under three seconds and was completely unseen by Konatsu or the monster thanks to the light show. What Konatsu did see was that, launching up from the explosion of water, light, and sound, was Ranma-sama, but not as the ninja had ever seen her before. He gasped in ecstatic surprise, tinged with a hint of girlish jealousy, "Sailor..."

"MOON..." shouted out an enraged Ranma, "CHESTNUT..." her boots slammed down in front of the youma, "STRIKE!" Ranma-ne-Moon's arms became a magically enhanced blur as she began raining blow after blow against the youma. Incredibly, the youma was blocking or deflecting the punches. Sailor Moon bounced away, and the monster lashed out with an unnaturally long reach against both martial artists.

To catch the whole thing before I write the next chapter, check it out on Archive of Our Own.

[blackdeathfan5]

Hi thi sis an old photo of me. Im Adam Snowflake. And I made Cupcake Puppies, as toby fox for my little sista ashley emmas.

Thats my atlernate reality blog you now have acess too yeethaw.

Cupcake puppies are like my seires pony pails. As dark and angst storymodes each meant every series to be a different war, and sometihing dark eaach generation in a seires, each series is determined by me and thi sis there official art style, which like pony paiils and my little pony its famous cencer that i made, is usually drawn by profits, except anyone can trace cupcake puppies, they just usually cant come up with new ones they didnt map out on a dollmaker, why mlp and pony pails its uncecer are usually prophets only in designs. Cupcake puppies [pictured above cookie monster my oc rn] (working on a puppet show hes in called seseme street right now), are demons, unlike angels that are my litle pony, or imps that are meant to be my littlest pet shop that i also made. That are suposed to be angsty and drama filled. This time periods cencer for them is sweetyTailes, not to be confused with the beasitlity implied verison of them known as Sweatydogs as the puppies are meant to engage heavily with fetish, taboo, hate filled drool, as long as its not nazis less it be progressivly left leanign as to why that depiction exists as all cupcake puppies become ex that ever touched that asa a rule. Yes a world of books with stupid dog drawings is my existnce, and i made them for ashley emas. The atler who mdae it is erin greenday, and toby fox together.

Most fans with age regression trauma or infantilization or atuism who like cupcake puppies have a reside of me gogin as a baby CUPCAKE A LITTLE PUPPY. and its a thing fans often go through called THE FROSTING. where we all get nerdy numbys about the fact that cupcake puppies and goo goo doll over it. Babying ourselves to how cute and incoent AWEEEE A PUPPY! that the puppies are. And hten we pick our frosting hoping to be cupcake puppies. No i never promised these to religions ashley emmas did, and she had every right, and my only rule was so that i coudl still depict most of them. And so certain pallates come as angel worship staues, but usually nope nope nope. Religions free. But if you see my work watermarked thats where thats from.

Cupcake puppy drawing tutorial by toby fox. Toby fox and adam snowflake are the same person with mpd dissorder. So its kind of like both names are just used so.

so yeah. They are cupcake pupies. Anyone can write them, and all art styles between generations have to be shared like with my pony pails series. Take care and enjoy angsty puppies. Your generations you make up have to be a conflict as a series. as series 1 is the holocuast and the cold war. And only I can determine series. As the emoji system. As its my series. But i still do it based on popular vote, its just series 1 no one else was making puppies and their for my sister and she survived the calliope endevour and was extremly sad, and wanted art out of it as her "RESPIRATION" as its called. No before you ask, Centaur World I wrote as my alter Bret Shoto###n (His penanme as me), is about all my kidoe series meeting togetehre. And crossing over. :)

Hey toby!? Whats the deal on your timezones!? Tic Tic. Pesky sewer mutants. KIDDING. We all love monkeys here. Um lets see. I woke up in an archins case sent all the way back to like vicotrian era and world war 2. And as a time traveler I consider myself sucessfull. evnet hough this isnt my usual fuckign aroudn with timezones. So im braodcasting to when i wake up in the future. Several years behind you all! And a few sceudeld past it. Till I end up back in my nromal time period again. It was a goo darchins case being the baby puppy dion. but Oh god.T his is Magick .com beep beep im a sheep. So yeah. Im several timezones behind whenever your reading by spoofy with vpns my timezone. As weve always had cmputers and timezones since bce. And the hsitory of it. Is I was raiseed in victoria once but it was victoria engalnd, and now im out here doing things writing aleister crowley again, and everyones like OOOH MORE SHERLOCK HOLMES PLEASE WE CALL YOU DOYLE. And im like doyle what? And their like youll see auther youll see as mr.lexington of those impacted books. And im like. IM NOT THAT OTIS. Theirs two of us. And beleive it or not im not the posesd one that has william as my copilot everythings brrr. Thomas edison was a witch. Kidding. Thats a meme post for you. Only use it if you know your meme! I kid i kid. So yeah im stuck in the first ever victoria which was where i did not belong as an, archisn case. [Link to medical weekly study on my diagnosis Archineses and Omophonious linked and tied as parkesersen]. And here is the link to parkersens. Just incoude them as articles next to mine in the post if you print this at the ned of the newspaper. As tumblr does have several newspapers named that. You guys are lame and behind the past. Anyways take care and enjoy my cupcake puppies.] [How to print this in a newspaper: You list a short sumery of the cupcake stories i wrote with a bookguide or review like stropica or poparena on youtube, and you showcase the art midpost, and writing, and to the links you show them later republished suemrizeed with a mla format source to medical weekly the links]

This is also generation 1 of cupcake puppies which is object heads, as generaiton one is dedications to the FarCrys of Face. So STONEHEADGE the literary concept. as the way i draw them. What makes an generation of cupcake pupies? wjgoweijgwegwjiegi. Welp take care.

[becauseiamarobot]

this is literally my roman empire ngl The situation with what was gonna happen to Jem after Season 3 is a mess and I'm not certain we'll ever know for sure what "the plans" were (or even if Hasbro/Sunbow/Marvel/etc. ever HAD a consistent plan for how to continue the show or how to bring it back) but it's really fun to sift through what their plans COULD've been and how it tied into the broader media landscape at the time: 1. the show was cancelled in 1987 alongside the other Sunbow Hasbro cartoons and wouldn't have come back for a few years at least. Sunbow's model of outsourcing to external studios was getting too expensive because Toei upped their prices between S1/S2 and AKOM were overworked and really inconsistent as far as animation quality goes, which meant there was a four year period where Sunbow couldn't basically couldn't finance anything until 92-93 (when MLP Tales and Transformers G2 happened) or like 95-ish (the GI JOE XTREME/Beast Wars era) 2. Also Sunbow were reeling from like... three consecutive movies flopping, which led to the cancellation of the Jem Movie in 1986 and The Mongrels being reworked into The Stingers (and hastened the shift from Toei to AKOM) 3. Season 3 was a concession to introduce the 1988 dolls and give them screen time to promote them, but by the time it aired retailers weren't interested (allegedly the Misfits sold super poorly, but I've never heard a direct quote on this) so the dolls were on their way out too 4. By the time Jem season 2 aired in 1987, MTV was beginning it's legendary network decay and the broader pop cultural feeling was that an entire show based around music videos was no longer appealing to kids on its own, so part of the plan to remove the bands was to refocus on Jem and presumably Pizzazz as movie stars, since that was more evergreen in their minds. this probably would've either been a good idea or a terrible one, since like some of the best episodes of the show are the hollywood ones 5. the music rights to Jem are also currently a mess, which means they probably heavily relied on external musicians they didn't wanna pay any more, coupled with the animation for the videos being intensive and therefore expensive there was also defs a budgetary incentive to get the bands out if the show/dolls continued 6. Sunbow got bought out by a German company in and forced to make absolute dreck like The Cramp Twins for the European market, and them owning part of the rights to Jem and some of the other cartoon properties caused a rights SNAFU that stopped a potential Jem reboot in the 2000s (despite everyone wanting to do it and the jem fandom of the time organizing a big "Save Jem" campaign) and meant the property was toxic until the 2010s, when Hasbro negotiated with Marvel over ROM/Micronauts/some of the other stuff they co-owned and bought the Sunbow library out 7. all of this information could be wrong, because we're working off leaks and rumours and interviews from twenty years later and sadly so many of the people involved in making the show aren't around any more

So if this happened it likely would've kicked off around 1992 if the dolls were reintroduced to store-shelves, and if the show came back it would've been massively changed visually and probably writing-wise as well. I choose to believe it probably would've been 3d and animated by Mainframe like Reboot/Beast Wars, if only because a LOT of Jem writers wound up working on that show over the years and i choose to believe in a more whimsical world

I have no idea if that plan was going to translate to the show or just the toylines but the idea of Jerrica going full diva and kicking out her own sisters out of the group is honestly hilarious

[skullsnbruises]

For your Noms are weird au, got some questions for ya ;D

1. Out of all the SBI do they all have storage stomachs and if yes who struggles the most with instinct.

2. Who are humans in this au that are gonna be centred around?

3. How did this forced culture mash come about

4. What kind of time era is this being set in?

5. Can we get a rough plot line of what you have planned for this au?

Pleases and thank you!! Looking forward to what is to come of this au!!

-💍

AAAFHFHG THANK YOU FOR QUESTIONS >:D

OKAY

Those who have storages are Tommy, Techno, and Phil. Wilbur is the one left out LOLL. Out of the three who do!, Tommy struggles the most with instincts, and so he puts a HUGE amount of distance between himself and any + every human, hes been told that those feelings are evil and wrong bu society as well so he pushes it down. Techno and Phil dont have those feelings so strongly so its pretty easy to control. And since wil doesnt have a storage, he doesnt get those instinctual feelings :)

SO FAR MY LIST IS, The giants are: Wilbur, Phil, Techno, Tommy, Puffy, Sam, Ponk, Dream, Eret (not sure if the last few will be too much a part of the story), And the humans are: Quackity, Ranboo, Tubbo, George, Deo, Niki, and Jack. THATS JUST AS FAR AS IVE GOTTEN TO DECIDE, anyone else not on the list im still debating on and yet to have made a part of the plot>:) Its gonna mostly be centered around SBI but i will write about others and flesh out their stories!!

SO humans had known about giants living in mountains/ the outskirts of human towns/cities/so on, but, out of fear had been avoiding interacting like the plague! within the past few years of the universe though, a certain human (IVE YET TO DECIDE) decided to be a sort of ambassador and bring the two races together in society! obviously it didnt go too smoothly, and humans pressured giants into changing their ways and set a shit ton of laws biased against giants :/

This universe takes place in modern times!!!! also for background, humans and giants used to be close but time made them drift apart :( (which led the ambassador human previously mentioned ^ into wanting to bring them back together. just imagine theyre like sunny starscout from mlp SOB; i might make them karl :) )

What i have so far is that the beginning at least will be centered around tommy and his struggles ! so he goes throughout the majority of his life afraid of himself and uneducated on his own anatomy. he struggles making friends (mostly with humans) and is scared of what hes feeling. he imagines himself as the scary giant the media portrays him as, and doesnt realize his instincts are harmless. one day he stumbles into a "Devourer Cult": a group of giants with beliefs that theyre better than humans, and wish to eat them (fatally :((( ) tommy doesnt fully relate but feels sympathy, believing he understands how they feel, until he realizes that they have horrible intentions and are behind a few missing human persons cases D: he does the right thing, ratting them out and getting them turned in and arrested. (totally wont bite him in the ass later when they get out) After this, tommy finds himself being celebrated at his school for his brave endeavors of turning in his own kind, and thus two humans start to befriend him!: Ranboo, who congratulates him and thanks him for 'saving them', and Tubbo, who is suspicious on how Tommy found out about the cult. [JUST A ROUGH PLOT IDEA, I HAVE LOTS OF STUFF STILL PLANNED AFTER THIS AND BEFORE IT BUT THATS THE MAIN PLOT THE STORY WILL FOLLOW. FEEL FREE TO ASK MORE]

THANK YOU IM VERY EXCITED TO SHARE AND FLESH THIS IDEA OUT. I EVEN MADE A PLAYLIST FOR WILBUR OF THIS AU

-Tommy[he/him]

[takashi0]

Why do you like Homestuck?

The original Homestuck was an experience quite unlike anything else. 

I tried getting into it when it was still kinda early on but it just didn’t click with me, but I tried again at the insistence of my cousin and the second time the jokes started landing with me better. I’m just one of those people who needs to be sufficiently motivated to start reading things like novels or else I’ll lose interest, but thankfully Act 1′s jokes (and the question of “What’s the deal with those troll weirdos?” I wanna find out) kept me going. I could go on about how Homestuck was a fantastic representation of 2009 to mid 2010′s internet culture. And about how even though Hussie got rid of the command box as the story outgrew its roots as a successor to Problem Sleuth and his earlier works that were homages to old text adventure games, the way Hussie himself would respond to theories and predictions from the fandom itself made it clear that the story had outgrown him and become something bigger that in a sense was owned by the fandom itself.  But other people have already done that and done it better than I could hope to.  I could also mention Hussie’s usage of metanarrative themes and just how insanely hard he goes when it comes to thematic significance of how he builds characters, the trolls especially. 

But that’s what people like LaureledEevees, OptimisticDuelist, and the MSPAwiki are for.

There’s really a lot of things that draw me to Homestuck.

The Character writing is really strong, pretty much everyone involved has strong personalities even if their time in the spotlight is relatively short, and they grow in interesting ways and bounce off the other cast members in fun ways

For that matter, Character Design alone’s pretty good too, especially on the Troll side of things and once the human kids start alchemizing actual outfits/ascend to godtier.

The worldbuilding from SBURB itself to Alternia is pretty rich and memorable, and the Classpect system is just one of those things that’s fun to build OCs with and implement on other characters.

The music that accompanies it is one fucking banger after another (which is to be expected when Toby “Undertale” Fox is involved with a good portion of it)

It’s really goddamn funny a lot of the time. If you so much as chuckle at the followup to “John: squawk like an imbecile and shit on your desk”? Chances are you’re probably hooked. Assuming it doesn’t take until Act 2 or 3. 

Without spoilers, the sheer level of STAKES the plot goes through and the overwhelming, dominating aura of dread where characters can and WILL die at any time, repeatedly, and if they don’t fight tooth and nail and accomplish things in just the right ways the depths of their failure are beyond fathoming is pretty awe-inspiring.

The characters go through Hell and back and through tons of tragedy and bad shit that makes for some damn good storytelling

And to be fully honest to God truthful it just takes me back to a much, much better period of time in my life. A time when the absolute Hellworld of the discourse that’s spread to the entire world via twitter and is currently ensuring the collapse of society/sliding of it into further nightmarish dystopian authoritarianism was contained solely to tumblr and was small enough for people to rightfully mock it instead of it growing large enough to ensure that your life was ruined because of how the powers at be realized what an amazing tool cancel culture was.

It takes me back to a better, simpler time. When it shared its spot with MLP as the king of fandoms. When the HUB existed and we thought it would be the savior of western animation on television before it burned out like a candle at both ends. Back in the era that tumblr calls “Cringe” as if overly enthusiastic doofuses weren’t INFINITELY PREFERABLE to the absolute joyless and spiteful Hell that exists now. Back when there was an outpouring of creativity that wasn’t stifled by FanPol. The last shining years of the internet’s Live and Let Live culture that would soon be shredded by the woke zombies who want everyone to be miserable and gain clout from it. 

Back in the day when I still had some measure of hope for humanity and when I wasn’t horribly nihilistically depressed and constantly in fear for the state of the world. 

Before the SU fandom. Before Voltron’s fandom. Before Kpoppers. Before hollywood started taking the fun out of movies and the normies just let them do it. Before Funimation fell from grace and Sony gained a monopoly on Anime distribution in the West. Before the constant fucking screaming of ORANGE MAN BAD!!!!!!! for four fucking years straight when people just adamantly refused to let you talk about ANYTHING OTHER THAN TRUMP FOR FOUR. FUCKING. YEARS. 

And especially before the absolute abomination that was the Homestuck Epilogues and HS^2, which I and many others already covered on how much it took everything that people loved about Homestuck and shat all over it. 

Just.

It gives me good feelings, you know? And I think we could all use some of that these days. As much as we can. 

[jacscorner]

Random Thoughts @ 2 AM

Something I've been really wanting to do lately is do an ask blog. Like, I think that era of Tumblr is kind of over, if not just dying lately, cause a lot of the blogs I followed back in the day are in the dirt, but there's still some out there. I tried one for a bit some time ago, but I wanna make it separate from this blog. Like, I'd maybe 'promote' it here, but for the most part, I just think it'd be fun cause I think that kind of story telling is just really fun and interactive.

And if there's one kind of ask blog I liked were the wacky AUs. Undertale and MLP cornered the market hard on these, but, like, they were so fun and creative and I can't help but smile a little fondly over some. And I think Tumblr is just the perfect powderkeg for AU stuff back in its prime.

Personally, I think "Space" and "Sci-Fi" are my favorite kinds of AUs. Just injecting a good amount of Sci-Fi flavoring can create interesting dynamics and storylines. Like, here's just a few I'd wanna start and actually might:

☆ A bunch of Pokemon Protagonist exploring Ultra Space and hopping dimensions in a space ship!

☆ Pinkie Pie as a spaceship captain, with a crew of randoms as they go from planet to planet doing daring do.

☆ Space Land from Mario Party 2, but taken to the extreme. With maybe either Donkey Kong or Princess Daisy as my main lead for pulp sci-fi adventures against Blackhole Bowser.

♡ An ask blog about Pauline as the mayor of New Donk City, with Samus as a reoccurring guest character/long-distant girlfriend.

☆ My favorite MHA Characters being put in the role of Voltron-ish Mech Pilotes. (Definitely not likely since that implies I can draw Mecha well, lol)

☆ Animal Crossing characters in a Space Opera with Mecha. Think Super Robot Wars or maybe even Into the Breach.

☆ Star Fox 2 blog, following Slippy Toad and Fay.

♡ Something more story focused; Captain Syrup kidnaps Princess Daisy and chronicling how that goes. Maybe with Luigi to rescue her. Super Luigi Galaxy...?

♡ Samus Aran, but as a Wild West Bounty Hunter instead of a Cosmic One. Maybe with guest stars from other Nintendo characters.

♡ Samus Aran falls from space into Hyrule. Maybe takes Link's roll or maybe goes on an adventure with Link. Would definitely have Samus X Zelda - come on, Link has, like, 4 other girls he can romance, I wouldn't be leaving him out in the cold.

♡ A Bean the Dynamite dedicated blog. Taking some inspiration from the comics, but with my own spin.

♡ A big Fairy Tale/Folk Tale crossover with Femboys and Maid Cafes.

Fuck, plugging all of these is gonna take me a while...

[wixelt]

Stargate: “Hoag” - Mass X’over Idea

About this time last year, I started watching Stargate with my dad. We watched the original movie and SG-1. And Atlantis. And the SG-1 movies. And Universe. And Origins.

We finished the franchise somewhere about a third of the way through 2020, though with how this year’s been it feels like that was years ago, now. And for a lot of the time we were watching it and for at least a little while after it, I had a thought that wouldn’t go away and that I kind of liked.

Namely that I wanted to write a Stargate fanfic of some kind, possibly even a crossover. A mass crossover, in fact. As with most of my fan-fiction thoughts, no matter the work, they eventually fell onto my pile of half-started ideas. I’m awful at keeping to things and not getting distracted by “new shiny” ideas like some kind of fanfic magpie, even when I like the idea.

That said, this was a concept I really liked, so i’m going to share the basics of it now, as far as I got with it. Maybe it will inspire someone else, or maybe i’ll come back to this someday.

Regardless, though here’s the notes:

- Post-Universe, the war with the Lucian Alliance is still going, and despite the slightly dire situation things were headed toward last we saw, the SGC’s winning. The LA are on the back foot, and is starting to break into smaller factions. One of the larger LA factions decides to cut their losses and make a run for it, their space fleet making a beeline for the Supergate the Ori Army built to link the Milky Way and Alteran Home galaxies, having either deciphered or stolen the codes required to dial it. The SGC puts together an attack force to intercept the faction at the gate and stop their escape. The fleet is accompanied by several characters from existing series.

- The battle’s one sided, but the LA faction continues to make a run for the gate. And then it happens. I’m undecided on the details, but a mix of weapons fire on the ships trying to pass through and other circumstances - in much the same way as that classic episode of SG-1 - causes the open Supergate to “jump tracks”, the destination shifting to somewhere not in the Alteran Galaxy. A side effect of energy on this scale causes all ships in the vicinity to be pulled through.

- Emerging on the far side, the surviving ships exit through what seems to be another Supergate, albeit of less refined design. Later study will show it to be Ancient, instead of Ori. This lesser design proves unstable, leading to the SGC fleet being forced to destroy both it and their crippled ships to force a ceasefire with the LA ships, stranding a cast of both old and new faces wherever they’ve ended up.

- As for where they’ve found themselves, it’s the Hoag’s Object galaxy, they eventually discover. For those unaware, this is a real ring galaxy more than 600 million light-years from the Milky Way (~200 times further from Earth than the Pegasus Galaxy). It’s a galaxy for which we have a low understanding of the mechanics behind its formation - which sparked my interest as the ideal location for a Stargate series with an underlying mystery beyond just “get home”, in the tradition of Atlantis and Universe. It’s a fun place to read and speculate about.

- The base of operations for the “Hoag Expedition” as they try to contact Earth (a challenge when their arrival method and much of their equipment has been destroyed), is the “Spire”, an automated Ancient outpost which is, as the name implies, a massive pointed tower in space. The story behind it, as the cast discover, is that the Ancients were very interested in what was causing Hoag’s Object’s structure, and sent a large automated seeding ship to the galaxy, with the intent that it would automatically drop Stargates on various interesting worlds and other locales - similar to the Destiny - also seed a few worlds with human life, as was their MO to an extent, then take up a preset location and convert itself into a stationary... station, that would serve as the Ancient’s home once they were ready to arrive - a local Supergate also being constructed as one of the projects they were intending to test alongside their studies in Hoag. Like Destiny, though, they never arrived. The Spire was dispatched late in the Ancient’s time, likely around about when they were fighting the Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy. After that, they focused on ascension, and the Spire lay forgotten, its systems waiting for a crew that wasn’t coming.

- Some of the first things the expedition discover on arrival are tied to the local gates. Firstly, they can’t dial home. Even when they work out where they are relative to Earth, they can’t calculate what the 8 symbol address required to dial would be (for reasons made harder by the second point). There’s no indication what the address would even consist of, given there’s no “dial Earth” address in the Spire’s database - presumably the Ancients didn’t know where they’d end up dialing from, and no-one ever arrived to clarify. Secondly, while the local gates are Pegasus-era 3rd generation Stargates, they have a different color palette - being purple rather than blue, because I like purple - as well as a completely different set of symbols. These symbols are determined to be a very symbol numeric system set up in 5s, presumably because the gate seeding was automated and chose a structured visual system. I actually created a guide for this system. As might be obvious, this gate network has more symbols them any other - to account for Hoag’s Object being a larger galaxy - featuring 41 non-Point of Origin options:

- As I mentioned before, however, I wanted this to be a mass crossover, which is where the Ancients’ MO of seeding human life comes in. Like the Pegasus Galaxy, you can still have those human cultures, but how far out Hoag’s Object is - as with Stargate Universe - allows for more alien cultures as well. Which naturally lets you drop pretty much any non-Earth (or otherwise, in some cases) setting into this concept amid other, more original planets and have it turn up as the expedition does what Stargate does best: explore new worlds. RWBY? No problem. Avatar? Eeyup. Fairy Tail? Definitely. Madoka Magica? Trickier, but even with that being set on Earth the Incubators have to come from somewhere, right? MLP? Simple, if the Equestria Girls world is considered the local side of the mirror and Equestria another reality. Heck, you could even throw in something as out there as Hermitcraft and probably make it fit.

- And yes, I did briefly play around with gate addresses for a few of the above places, too, but didn’t get very far due to waning inspiration (the above symbol system itself was already my 5th or 6th attempt to make something workable). I did include my meta-logic for choosing the symbols, though:

- There were other ideas I had for this whole thing, too. I played around with the idea of writing this on a forum thread on somewhere like SpaceBattles or Sufficient Velocity, and maybe I still could one day, where other people could write in the setting too if I got enough traction (always been a big fan of interactive and/or collab ventures). Also played with the concept of a story-line of two Goa’uld “brothers” who had left the Milky Way in centuries past in search of new pickings, finding Hoag’s Object and setting themselves up as gods over multiple worlds (one of which may have been RWBY, if that gives you an idea of where that was probably going), but that fell apart once I started questioning how they got to Hoag’s Object when the Spire and its gate hadn’t been touched before the SGC arrived.

All that aside, though, this idea is out in the open now. If someone wants to play around with it, they can. Or if people want to ask what i’d do with various settings or features, i’m happy to give it some more thought to get the creative juices pumping again.

For now, though, enjoy! :)

[monkey-network]

Good Stuff's Best of 2019

WARNING: Just wanted to say cheers to you for making it through another year. I send you best wishes for next year to be fruitful. Thank you, take care out there, and enjoy. (Best of 2017) (Best of 2018)

Dedicated to Russi Taylor, John Witherspoon, Rip Torn, Tartar Sauce, Caroll Spinney, Peter Matthews, and the many of KyoAni lost in the arson incident. You all did wonderful; rest in peace.

Welp, I figured the last year of this decade would be the most chaotic one by far, then again everything peak after 2012. As for now, I am counting down the best cartoons/animations/comics I’ve seen and loved this year in no particular order other than #1. Same rules apply: No sneak previews of future projects, no repeats, and this time anything goes.

Runner Ups: Superman Smashes the Klan, Marvel’s Aero, Infinity Train, Enter the Florpus, Amphibia, Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart, Helluva Boss, Meta Runner, Lego Movie 2, Forky Asks a Question

Anyways, Badda boom bang whiz, let’s do this shizz...

10. Super Mario Bros GT

Nostalgia can be quite a mystery, especially one that can come out of nowhere. Super Mario Bros Z kicked so much ass as a kid that now, it still frustrates me to this that it got a cease & desist from Nintendo, even the reboot from the same person couldn’t last long. But the gods have offered a slight miracle in the form of this new spiritual successor that has heart and soul put into every pixelated frame. There is much to celebrate with Youtube animation, where many say it’s dying due to the algorithm and all of the site’s corporate bullshit, but it’s stuff like this which helps me understand why we should celebrate. Against all odds, channels like Smasher Block willfully put their works out their for the people and continues to because on top of getting a little dough, it’s what they want to do.

9. DC SUPER HERO GIRLS (2019)

Awwwwww yeah, this is She-Ra and the Princesses of Power done right. Diverse female squad, each given a quality screen time to truly shine (Beecher especially) on their which makes the episodes where they’re all together feel earned and joyous to watch. Certainly reminds me of Friendship is Magic, which is coincidental since they were created by the same woman. I’d like to think this and MLP G4 were the answers to Faust’s cancelled project Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls where multiple personalities collide to one extraordinary superhero team of girls capable great feats that are lifted from their insecurities or drawbacks. And on top of this being a fun series to kick back to all around, it’s a comforting, somewhat aspiring thought to consider.

8. JOKER

I am somebody that rarely goes to the theaters to watch a film; you have to hook my tight just for me to even think of buying a ticket, no less plan to. But honestly, Joker was worth the hype, the ticket, and the fact that it wasn’t the incel uprising that buttfuck normies tried to make it out as. It’s lower on the list because in thought, there definitely could’ve been some tweaks to the dialogue and a couple scenes that I felt didn’t work in the long run. But really, this movie to me worked because of the escalation that leads to a cathartic climax and ending that left me in actual tears. I don’t give a shit if it “doesn’t fit”, having Frank Sinatra sing the film's credits put me in shambles. Joaquin Phoenix was phenomenal as Arthur, and this movie felt authentic in its many details. This is definitely up there with my favorite comic book films of all time. Good thing, too, Spider-Man was taking up most of that shelf.

7. TUCA & BERTIE

This series being what I can’t help but say is a spin-off to Bojack Horseman, a show I respect, was enough to pull me into watching it. But it being like Bojack where it’s tight-roping between a bouncy comedy and a grounded drama was what kept me around for more. It is a damn shame this was cancelled after one season (while 13 Reasons Why gets FOUR seasons like what the fuck), because while this did feel enough like a complete series, I was certainly interested for more because I really enjoyed it all. I have my issue with a couple choices in the show, but I am sure this series would’ve addressed them later down the line. I can see why some women would find this personally endearing, it felt like the personal stories of actual people, and it deserved better. Either way, I enjoyed this series and I recommend it just as much as Bojack.

6. PRIMAL

Genndy Tartakovsky is that kind of cartoon creator where you feel he’ll go beyond if you give him the right amount of space. He’s not a perfectionist like John “Dirty Diddler” Kricfalusi, but with things like Hotel Transylvania and Samurai Jack, he certainly has proven to have the range in animation where you know how he plays. Primal showcasing his noted skill in dialogue-less storytelling and dynamic action scenes, able to convey everything clear with its ruthless yet careful protagonist and his dinosaur friend, all on top of the most luscious backgrounds. This is a series that definitely feels like Genndy’s taken what he’s used from his previous works and putting it together for a brutal yet passionate look at the prehistoric life. He truly brought us an adult series to enjoy and to look forward to more in the coming year.

5. SPINEL

Bet you didn’t expect a character to be on this list, eh? Spinel is the best thing to come out of Steven Universe in general; makes me wish she was in a better movie. The crew certainly did their darndest to make her not only an enjoyable and connectable character through and through, but a very versatile character that the fandom could take in any which way. Call it corny, but Spinel perfectly represents SU as a whole: a lovable goof that can certainly mean business but deep down is deserved of a hug because of what she’s gone through. Wish she had a more satisfying resolution in her respective debut, but really it’s the balance between those three elements mentioned that makes Spinel almost eternally wonderful.

4. MOB PSYCHO 100 II

As someone that doesn’t like reading, I’m a firm believer that the best animations or visual medias elevate the writing to a memorable degree; the visuals hook to the point where you want to think about what you saw and how it was conveyed. Mob Psycho 100, for two seasons now, does this in spades where Studio Bones throw them bones in animating one of the most dynamic animes of the modern era, providing the writing and characters a proper chance to flex its muscles. The characters are especially what makes this and MP100 as a whole work so well, the story being about a boy learning to be more sociable as well as emotionally stronger all while helping others understand maturity and empathy. For more on this, I recommend Hiding in Public’s video(s) on Mob. But with the animation, Bones was able to provide a sense of impact and immersion to the moments that matter, not making it an overstimulating mess, and putting some respect on ONE’s webcomic art style. 

3. KLAUS

Hands down, this is a great Christmas movie. Take away the animation and you have a charming, wanna say ground and authentic, story about the makings of Santa Claus. With memorable and likable characters, a nice escalation in terms of the plot, and moments that are/can be so satisfying, they can bring you to tears. A couple overdone tropes in the road that doesn’t make this the most perfected story, but those sincerely minor compared to everything else that makes this story the best. Now. Add in the animation, and you have a gold, nay a platinum animated story of the year where the visuals definitely enhance the story to a degree where they’re undoubtedly inseparable. The visuals alone is enough to check this movie out and it’s eye-opening when you learn of how it’s all done. Klaus is a film that did it’s job and then some, and I hope this will be well remembered as a classic holiday film for it deserves that status.

2. BEASTARS

I’ll be fair, I’m mostly referring to the manga and not the anime but since the anime premiered this fall, it counts. Because be it the anime or the series overall, Beastars has such well intricate world building all while offering a little something for everyone (violence, romance, slice of life). The story is well paced and even when we aren’t focusing on the main characters momentarily, Itagaki is surprisingly able to make every supporting/side character we come across memorable in their own way; like I said before, the city is much a character in this story. Oh yeah, and the mangaka is the daughter of Keisuke “Grappler Baki” Itagaki, that in itself is a treasuring bit of trivia for this. Everything about Beastars is enticing and Studio Orange certainly helped in giving this series more of a following.

1. GREEN EGGS & HAM

Well, well, well. Guess Netflix is three for three in terms of bringing its best foot forward among its few steps back each year. The best term to describe this series is surprising. Surprising that this is a Dr. Seuss story that got expanded a 13 episode series, that has fleshed out characters, fun hijinks, an easy story, lovely emotional, more quieter moments... on top of being 2D hand drawn animated. I mean, what else is there to say? Green Eggs and Ham is to Dr. Seuss what Seven was for Final Fantasy, what Friendship is Magic was for MLP, what watermelon was before a nice menthol cigarette. This definitely took the top spot because to me, it was able to bring many good elements from the previous entries and knot it all together into a well kept bow that I never knew I wanted until now. I’m genuinely glad this show got to exist the way it is and I am hoping, praying, that the second season keeps that momentum up.

That leads us to the actual number one which is

1. STEVEN UNIVERSE FUT-

Total Dramarama is now the two time World Heavyweight Champion, babey. Will 2020 give us a quality contender? Will the streak last another year?

Stay tuned, and always seek out the Good Stuff.

[thegeneralsnotebook]

November Feature: Set 11 Design Review + CiM Q & A

I have this memory of at some point writing somewhere, whether it was here on The General’s Notebook or in a TIA post, that once Leaders & Legends came out, I was going to be diving into its structure in the hope of figuring out how it was designed when compared with prior sets. I can’t find that quote now, but just in case I did say it, this is that article. As the first set designed entirely by Commentary is Magic instead of Enterplay, it bears asking if the new developers are going to be using a different philosophy with regard to their design.

Now, in addition to merely looking at the cards and running the numbers, this month I also had the privilege of literally asking the new developers about their design philosophy with regard to LL. I’ll include the full Q & A at the conclusion of the article, but first, let’s look at what my investigation uncovered.

Requirements

I’ve had a lot of exposure to Set 11 over the course of the past few weeks, not only in diving into the set to try building new Core decks, but also in creating the slides and figuring out ratings for the Meticulous Talks review stream. And over the course of that work, a couple of things leaped out to me right away. Number one, the requirement numbers in this set seemed high. I noticed a lot of 4’s, and enough 4/4’s to be relevant as well. In the past, cards with a 4/4 req were exceedingly rare, with only four of them before LL. Set 11 brings three more of them, in addition to what feels like a lot of 4’s and 3’s. But appearances and impressions can sometimes be deceiving. How does the set actually stack up against the others?

Requirement curves for every set in the modern era (post-EO). Note that multicolour cards are included in the count for their respective numbers, so 1/1 cards are in the 1-req count, 2/2’s in the 2-req count and so on. 4/4 cards are counted separately, though.

Stacked up against the others sets of the modern era, LL isn’t quite an outlier. In fact, in its construction it bears a strong resemblance to Defenders of Equestria. Yet even with that similarity, there are some noteworthy points about the new set that make it stand out. As can be seen, LL has the most 4 requirement cards of any set in the modern era (save EO, but as a huge set generally, the comparison there is a little harder to make). As discussed already, it also has the most 4/4’s. And, indeed, it has the most 3 requirement cards as well. It is in fact the only set in the modern era which has more cards at 3-req and above than it has at 2-req and below.

It seems like most of this shift to higher req’s has come at the expense of cards in the 2-req spot, and if we think about some of the changes that have come in Core after the rotation, a clear effect emerges. With the rotation of Singing Barrel and Trading Traditions, suddenly getting to 3-req in a third or fourth colour has gotten a lot harder. The primary replacements (Fire of Friendship, Infilitrating the Hive, Rainbow Generator) all work in two Power increments. Thus we should expect that getting to 3 Power in an off colour will be a lot harder in new Core, which we might expect will make running multicolour decks harder.

As CiM explained to me in our interview, this was very much intentional: 

CC: My analysis indicates that LL in general has cards with higher reqs than most sets since DE. Was there a conscious decision to design more impactful cards that needed higher reqs?

CIM: We felt that the ease of which a deck has historically been able to get into 3+ colors and get the capstone cards from those colors is a serious problem. With Trading Traditions and Singing Barrel no longer in core, our intent is that players should need to commit more resources to get the capstone cards from any color, and an increase in play requirements would be one result of this.

Instinctively, this feels correct to me. An eyeball look at what you got at the 2-req level in past sets reveals a lot of great cards there, and in the past decks absolutely have exploited this. While in LL obviously we don’t know what the great cards are yet, a look through the list leads to the idea that most of the really good stuff only unlocks at 3-req and above. Going by the CiM Individual Card Value Ratings (as announced on their stream, and they would hopefully be the authoritative source) the 2-req cards in LL have an average individual value of about 2.67, while the 3-req cards are about 2.96. Keeping in mind their rating system, this means that the average 2-req card in LL is in between minimal and moderate game impact, while the average 3-req card is squarely in moderate territory. (Note that for that calculation I ignored the three-colour cards. I don’t think they really count as having just 2-req, after all.)

It should go without saying, by the way, that shooting for higher reqs on the more impactful cards in the set isn’t necessarily a good or a bad design decision; it’s simply evidence of the philosophy that CiM is implementing, and we’ll have to see what effect it has on the metagame that develops. On the one hand it’s somewhat obvious that the higher requirement cards should be the ones with the more impactful effects. But in LL it seems this will be even more true than it was before.

Game Text & Abilities

The second thing that leaped out to me upon first inspection of the set was there seemed to be a lot of text to read. Game text, that is. It just didn’t seem like there were that many “simple” cards in the set, and it actually kind of gave me the impression of a Magic set, just a little. One of the things that I’ve always found interesting about Magic sets is that so few of the cards are simple. Almost all of them have some extra ability or piece of text attached to them, and most of these abilities are unique pieces of text which are only found on that one card.. Whereas in MLP there are usually a few cards with no text at all, and a few more with only a single keyword. So again, let’s have a look. In this chart, we’ll use War of the Spark as our comparison Magic set.

For the purposes of this analysis, a “simple” card is one with either no game text, or else just a single keyword ability. We can see that Leaders & Legends is absolutely the set with the most complex ability design out of any modern era MLP set, even being the only one to edge out WotS. That means more unique pieces of text, and more cards that do interesting things and can be built into new sorts of decks. Again, this was quite intentional:

CC: Was there a conscious decision to make the set more complex in terms of the number of distinct abilities on cards?

CiM: [...] Cards we design will tend to have richer possibilities for interaction with other cards. To put it in Magic terms, there’s going to be a bit more of a Johnny flavor: cards that reward people sitting down and thinking about the myriad of different things they can do, how they can interact with other cards, and those One Weird Tricks that they are capable of in niche situations.

This is a consequence of us innovating and exploring new bits of design space, looking for new things that we think players might be fun, of finding ways to spice things up, of trying not to print more 4/0/4 vanilla Orange Friends. The points-matter theme of the entry cycle is an example of this: entry cards being useful late game is (hopefully) new and interesting.

And again, this makes intuitive sense to me. What’s most impressive is that CiM has managed to keep up the amount of abilities on their cards without actually increasing the number of abilities in the set. That is to say, there are more cards with text on them, but if you count the number of paragraph breaks in the OCR, we actually end up with a smaller number as compared to other modern sets:

Not smaller by that much, of course, but still notable. So again, what this means that while LL has about the same number of distinct abilities spread among its cards, it gets far more of its abilities from unique bits of text, rather than from new keywords or from reusing old keywords. It even has less usage of what I call “natural” triggers, which are things like enters-play triggers on Friends. They’re natural because they’re guaranteed to fire as long as you play the Friend, as opposed to triggers that require something else to happen. So there may in fact be more reading to do with this set than with any other, but I have to applaud the designers for their creativity, and in not falling back on old keywords to fill out the structure of the set. (Not, of course, that using old keywords is bad. It’s absolutely worth it to explore the spaces that they create. But there’s also a commendable ambition in forging something so novel in their first crack at designing a whole set.)

The Rotation

As we go, I’d like to show two more pretty pictures. With some help from Hithroc, I ran some more queries about the structure of Core, both as it was before the rotation, and as it is now. Specifically, especially given the requirement structure of LL, I wanted to know how the general requirement and cost curves of the format had changed with the rotation. Given that LL is quite heavy on the requirements, I had thought that Core as a whole might now be heavier with the EO Block gone. Turns out, not so much:

Actually, the proportion of 3-requirement cards has grown smaller in New Core, as the sets remaining in general have significantly more 2’s than 3’s. But the proportionate amount of entry has shrunk, which is something that again may give pause to those wanting to run 3 or more colours. The more interesting comparison I think is the one for cost:

Here, there was proportionate growth in every category except 1-cost cards, and the drop for 1-cost cards was quite significant, down 7.4% from where it was in Old Core. So the cards in the format are in general more expensive than they were before. My instinct is to guess that this might slow down the game a bit, but of course it’s not so simple as that. It does mean that AT is likely to be more precious moving forward though, which may provide a boost to those colours capable of making more of it. It certainly means that in New Core AT efficiency is a very important concept. But every colour has its own way of making that concept work. And, this is after all just the first set that we’ve seen from CiM. Set 12 may or may not follow the same philosophy. That will all depend on how this one works out.

Q & A

As promised, I’ll close out this article with the full Q & A that I had with CiM. It wasn’t super long, only eight questions and not all particularly-related to their design philosophy. But there were still some interesting tidbits here. As for me, I’ll be back in the New Year. Happy Holidays!

CC: How satisfied are you with the final product of Leaders & Legends?

CiM: Ultimately, this will depend a lot on how satisfied players are with the set.

It’s hard to speak objectively about this. Building a set is a lot of work - design from the ground up, test it in concert with a bunch of people, pick all the flavor (names, finding art, writing flavor text), arranging all of the art and text, proofing all that art, whargarbling over how to make the rules support all the new cards, and producing all of the documents.

There are cards that we aren’t happy with, ideas that didn’t pan out, lost flavor opportunities, but all in all, it worked out fairly well. Only time and the meta will tell if it truly is good.

CC: To what extent was designing the set simply a matter of making the cards that you guys, as players, would have wanted to play with yourselves? (To each designer) What kind of cards do you like? CiM: To say that we would completely remove ourselves from the equation when designing cards wouldn’t be accurate; after all, we are still players just like everyone else, and we’ll have our own personal tastes and preferences.

That being said, there was rarely a point where a card was designed for L&L with the thought process being “Bigcheese will love this card” or “Oh man, Grand Pause is totally going to break this thing.” In fact, those sorts of thoughts are red flags for deeper consideration of the design, and it was more common for a card to be designed with other players in the community in mind, knowing what sorts of decks players have tried to make work in the past and we felt would be fun to provide additional support for. 

CC: (To each designer) What kind of cards do you like? 

GP: I enjoy cards that increase my options or allow for new or interesting lines of play. Cards that are efficient and powerful are obviously great inclusions in many decks, but often times aren’t the most exciting; they just might do something that others cards do cheaper or faster. When a card or cards help to create a more unique play experience or open up deck strategies that might not have existed or been properly supported before, that’s where I start getting excited.

Bigcheese: I enjoy cards that have interesting and useful interactions. Cards that can have a high impact, and are usable in lots of different situations or types of decks.

Ara: I want to say stuff that can be played in the moment and doesn’t require a lot of thought to execute with, but then I go and play Pink/Purple which is 100% about setup and shenanigans. So maybe I’ll answer cards that are good answers to a need - going fast, removal, etc, and are generally high impact.

Ivory: I like cards that are immediately useful and don’t require multiple turns to return value. A card that I know will make an impact on its own while also helping me get closer to winning are what, in my opinion, have the highest value.

CC: In the past, it's been understood that Block boundaries are placed on points of design change in the game. To what extent is the design of LL a departure from the DE block?

CiM: We’re designing it instead of Enter-Play! Merely because a new set of designers are behind the wheel for Leaders and Legends, there are going to be design philosophy differences despite our efforts to maintain the spirit of the game.

The next two questions, we feel, are investigating the differences in spirit in more detail so it makes sense to answer them first.

CC: My analysis indicates that LL in general has cards with higher reqs than most sets since DE. Was there a conscious decision to design more impactful cards that needed higher reqs? Or was this perhaps a rethink of how cards had been placed on the req curve before?

CiM: We felt that the ease of which a deck has historically been able to get into 3+ colors and get the capstone cards from those colors is a serious problem.

With Trading Traditions and Singing Barrel no longer in core, our intent is that players should need to commit more resources to get the capstone cards from any color, and an increase in play requirements would be one result of this.

CC: I've also noticed that compared to the sets that came before, LL has fewer "simple" card designs (cards with either no game text or just one keyword), and does it with unique bits of text rather than new keywords. Was there a conscious decision to make the set more complex in terms of the number of distinct abilities on cards?

CiM: There’s only so much room in the card pool for 2/0/2 vanilla Friends, and the expectation of players at this point is that cards do more interesting things than just be vanilla entry. Granted making entry more interesting than vanilla does cause some power creep; this isn’t great but some power creep is a necessity to keep the game interesting.

Cards we design will tend to have richer possibilities for interaction with other cards. To put it in Magic terms, there’s going to be a bit more of a Johnny flavor: cards that reward people sitting down and thinking about the myriad of different things they can do, how they can interact with other cards, and those One Weird Tricks that they are capable of in niche situations.

This is a consequence of us innovating and exploring new bits of design space, looking for new things that we think players might be fun, of finding ways to spice things up, of trying not to print more 4/0/4 vanilla Orange Friends. The points-matter theme of the entry cycle is an example of this: entry cards being useful late game is (hopefully) new and interesting. CC: We all hear the legends of cards that had an initial design which was incredibly overpowered. Is the reverse ever true? Which happens more often in testing?

CiM: We will do a stream at some point about stuff that died in L&L playtesting, and there are more than a few things that were over the top and got whacked with the nerf bat. Broken cards tend to leave a larger impression in a tester’s thoughts of playtesting than offhand comments about “this is kinda crummy, can we buff it?”, and even with the buffs, the crummy cards may not be good enough to really show up in the competitive scene and leave an impression.

But yes, just like there’s stuff that’s absolutely busted and gets nerfed, there are cards that start underwhelming and end up getting buffed later. As mentioned previously, we’re going to be biased towards thinking about the overpowered cards, but underpowered cards that get buffed are far more common.

When coming up with the card initially, we have a pretty good idea of what constitutes an acceptable maximum power level for a card, and a lot of the time the initial design for a card will intentionally fall short of that. That said, sometimes there are things that were considered underpowered during playtesting that turned out to be ringers once they got out into the wild. Salina Blue is one of the examples that comes to mind.

One of the reasons for this is cards may not be good outside of the context of a larger meta - there’s usually not enough time for one to really develop during playtesting. There’s no such thing as too much testing, but an eternal testing cycle gets in the way of releasing cards. CC: (To each designer) Which cards in LL are you most fond of?

GP: I previously mentioned that Pegasus Royal Guard is one of my favorite cards from the set; it’s a great aggressive card that becomes more difficult to deal with the longer your opponent leaves any copy of it alone, and can allow for some truly silly burst turns. Cozy Glow, Heel Turn is a card that has a lot of potential to shift momentum in the mid- to late-game, turning your earlier removal into even more added value. Crown of the Sibling Supreme is probably my favorite card flavor-wise; it was 100% a top-down design, and I think it really shines in that sense.

Bigcheese: Zecora, Curative Cach has unique and interesting wording, and was a fun card to get the wording right on. I additionally really like Pinkie Sense because of the way it's abilities work together and with other cards like Same Day Delivery.

Ara: My favorites are going to be heavily influenced by flavor and art since that was my major contribution to the set. Of them, Silverstream, Abstract Artist is probably one of my most favorite. It has Silverstream on it and is just a great early game card against confront to flip manes. It extols Silverstream’s, uh, virtue?, of just wanting to see what you’re doing and getting in the way for the next four hours.

Ivory: That’s a tough one! Grogar, Legion of Doom and Pinkie Sense are the two cards I see myself playing with a lot. Both are scary, high impact cards and there are a lot of fun shenanigans you can do with both.

[allspark]

It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like Transformers, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, My Little Pony, Spider-Man, Star Trek, and more! All coming your way for June 12th!

TRANSFORMERS #7

Brian Ruckley (A) Cachet Whitman (CVR A) Christian Ward (CVR B) Livio Ramondelli

When another body shows up, Chromia and Prowl feel the pressure to get answers. Bumblebee, meanwhile, applies for a new job-as a bodyguard. But first, he has to impress Elita-1.

•   New story begins here! •   A brand-new era of Transformers!

TRANSFORMERS #1 (2ND PTG)

Brian Ruckley (A) Angel Hernandez, Cachet Whitman (CVR) Gabriel Rodriguez

GI JOE A REAL AMERICAN HERO #263

Larry Hama (A/CVR A) Netho Diaz (CVR B) Dan Fraga

As Cobra continues its relentless onslaught on a global scale, G.I. Joe is there to meet them in kind. It’s tyranny versus freedom-heroes and villains will rise and fall, bullets will fly, blood will spill, and who and what remains when the smoke clears is anyone’s guess! Join Living Legend Larry Hama and superstar artist Netho Diaz for another explosive adventure into the action-packed world if G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero!

AMBER BLAKE #1 (2ND PTG)

Jade Lagardère (A/CVR) Butch Guice

AMBER BLAKE #4

Jade Lagardère (A/CVR) Butch Guice

Amber Blake has finally found the person responsible for all of the pain in her life-and there’s no way she’s letting him get away again. But nothing is as it seems, and when the people closest to her betray her, she’ll have to use all of her skills to get out alive-and to get the vengeance she’s longed for.

BERKELEY BREATHED’S BLOOM COUNTY ARTIST EDITION HC

Berkeley Breathed (A/CVR) Berkeley Breathed

The Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of one of the most cherished and fondly remembered comic strips of all time showcases his art in this deluxe oversized edition. You’ve read all the strips, now see the art! This Artist’s Edition features an incredible selection of daily and Sunday comic strips, as well as a selection of sketchbook pages and drawings, published here for the very first time, each and every one scanned from the original art. The dailies are presented at the ACTUAL size drawn, and the Sundays have been slightly reduced but are still bigger and more beautiful than they have ever been presented before! This is the ULTIMATE Bloom County collection by the inimitable Berkeley Breathead!

•   Advance solicited for November release! •   Bloom County returned as a successful webcomic in 2015, with collections published annually by IDW to critical acclaim.

DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES #5

Andrea Castellan, Marco Gervasio, Tito Faraci (A) Andrea Ferraris, Marco Gervasio, Alessio Coppola (CVR) Paolo Campinoti

Three stories never-before-seen in the U.S. await you in another fun-filled issue! In “Mickey Mouse and the Hydrophilic Monsters,” Mickey and Goofy encounter plant life like they-or you-have never seen before! Then, in “Pluto and the ‘Super’ Day,” what happens when Goofy dog-sits Mickey’s beloved pup? Why, nothing less than the unexpected! Finally, in “Shhh,” Peg-Leg Pete and his accomplice encounter more than they bargained for in a robbery gone very wrong!

GLOW #2

Tini Howard (A/CVR A) Hannah Templer

Faced with foes in the forms of the Star Primas-who have real muscles and matching windbreakers-the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are ready to prove they aren’t unskilled losers. They’re paid television actors! And it’s time to show those Star Primas that paid television actors mean business… Based on the hit Netflix series!

GOOSEBUMPS HORRORS OF THE WITCH HOUSE #2

Denton J. Tipton, Matthew Dow Smith (A/CVR A) Chris Fenoglio

Rosie thought it was bad enough having a witch as a neighbor, but now the witch is trying to take over the whole town! As their parents fall under the witch’s dark spell, it’s up to Rosie and her friends to try and save the day. And they thought algebra was hard…

GLOW #2

Tini Howard (A/CVR A) Hannah Templer

Faced with foes in the forms of the Star Primas-who have real muscles and matching windbreakers-the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are ready to prove they aren’t unskilled losers. They’re paid television actors! And it’s time to show those Star Primas that paid television actors mean business… Based on the hit Netflix series!

GRAVE TP

Dan Fraga (A/CVR) Dan Fraga

ADVANCE SOLICITED FOR APRIL RELEASE! For fans of coming-of-age stories similar to Stephen King’s The Body; the movie based on it, Stand By Me; IT; Stranger Things; and E.T. Drawn one panel per day over a year, follow the story of three boys who discover a shallow grave while on a weekend camping trip. But that’s just where the mystery begins. The unexpected find reveals a cigar box containing seven mysterious items: a knife, a coin, a pocket watch, a rare baseball card, a gold ring, a silver spoon, and a strange manga comic. How are these items connected? Whose body lies buried? Find out in this once in a lifetime tale of friendship, mystery, suspense, and growing up.

MARVEL ACTION SPIDER-MAN #5

Erik Burnham (A/CVR A) Christopher Jones

Now that Peter, Miles, and Gwen have joined forces, nothing can stop them! Except maybe for homework and an internship at the Daily Bugle. Not to mention being stalked by a most dangerous foe… Kraven the Hunter! All-new web-slinging action in the Mighty Marvel Manner! This exciting new story arc features the Marvel Action debut of Kraven the Hunter! Variant cover by Marvel Action: Black Panther artist Juan Samu!

MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC #78

Katie Cook, Andy Price (A/CVR A) Andy Price

The thrilling conclusion to the “Cosmos” story arc is here! With the most powerful ponies in Equestria under Cosmos’ control, do the remaining ponies stand a chance? And whose side will Discord take? Don’t miss the end of what might be Katie Cook and Andy Price’s finest MLP story yet!

MY LITTLE PONY TO WHERE AND BACK AGAIN GN

Justin Eisinger (A/CVR) Various

Adapting the most beloved My Little Pony animated cartoon episodes to graphic novels! My Little Pony comes to bookshelves! Revisit the inhabitants of Equestria and learn about the magic that friendship brings in this adaptation of the television series’ sixth season finale! This volume adapts the two-part “To Where and Back Again” in an original graphic novel.

ROAD OF THE DEAD HIGHWAY TO HELL TP

Jonathan Maberry (A) Drew Moss (CVR) Santiperez

Advance solicited for June release! The five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author introduces the world to the latest chapter of the zombie epic in this over-the-top wild-ride prequel to ROAD OF THE DEAD! The dead rose and are feasting on the living and a young scientist may hold the secret to a cure. Meanwhile, zombies and biker gangs want her dead, so it’s up to a bunch of losers in muscle cars and a hijacked tank to risk everything to save her.

STAR TREK Q CONFLICT #5

Scott Tipton, David Tipton (A/CVR A&B) David Messina

The contest for the ages continues as the Captains race to capture the one exotic creature that Trelane is missing from his intergalactic menagerie-a Borg Queen! But as the Godlike beings revel in the games, the crews are hatching a plan of their own. Don’t miss the penultimate issue of the biggest Star Trek crossover of all time! The crews of The Next Generation, The Original Series, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine come together to face their biggest challenge yet! Written by Star Trek: TNG: Mirror Broken scribes Scott & David Tipton!

STAR TREK VS TRANSFORMERS TP

John Barber, Mike Johnson (A) Jack Lawrence (A/CVR) Philip Murphy

When Kirk, Spock, and the entire crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise investigate problems at a remote mine, they’re met with a explosive battle between powerful warriors who change into vehicles from the 20th century! As the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons rages, it’s up to Kirk to decide-does he violate the Prime Directive and interfere in a war that’s raged for millenia? And how will the Klingons complicate the issue? It’s cartoony fun between two of the most popular science fiction franchises in the world!

•   Advance solicited for May release! •   Four decades in the making, it’s the crossover that fans have demanded! Kirk, Spock, and Autobots! •   Decepticons and Klingons! Optimus Prime and the Prime Directive!

SWAMP MONSTERS

(CVR) Iger Shop

Something’s out there in the mad, murky depths of the fear-filled, sinister swamp… some… swamp… THING is coming for you! And it’s out for mud! The terror team that brought you Zombies, Return of the Zombies, and the petrifyingly popular hit series, Haunted Horror, takes you on an excursion of evil into the dankest, lagooniest corners of your nightmares, and dredge up over 240 pages of icky, drippy, slimy, grimy beasts from the grungy bottom of the Pre-Code comics’ bog. Swamp Monsters includes a fascinating introduction by comics legend, acclaimed artist of Swamp Thing, “Swampy” Stephen Bissette!

V-WARS GOD OF DEATH ONE-SHOT

Jonathan Maberry (A) Alex Milne (CVR A) Ryan Brown

Michael Fayne was patient zero of the plague that exploded into the Vampire Wars. A cult of militant vampires wants to resurrect him. Luther Swann leads a strike team to prevent the rise of a vampire god. New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry returns with an all-new V-Wars tale.

Five-time Bram Stoker award-winning author Jonathan Maberry returns to his signature comic book creation in time for the new TV series starring Ian Somerhalder!

Cover and interior art features the return of Transformers: Unicron superstar artist Alex Milne! Watch for V-Wars on Netflix starring Ian Somerhalder in 2019!

  Join the IDW Hasbro Shared Universe related conversation here in our Comics Discussion and Reviews section and here for all other franchises, superheroes, or general comic book discussions! Not a member? Join our community by creating your own free account here! Or jump right into the live chat on our Discord server or our Facebook Group!

IDW Comics Shipping List for June 12th! It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like…

[vivareverie]

"So, what now?"

That's a question I've had stuck on my mind for at least the past month or so now, regarding the state of my content production and my life as a YouTuber. It's a question that I've somewhat avoided asking myself for the past year, because I somewhat naively thought "Hey, everything'll just work out". Needless to say, that isn't the case, so here I am asking myself this question now.

Before I go any further I'd like to quickly clarify something: This isn't a depression thing. It might sound like a depression thing by the way I'm writing or the overall tone of this post, but I currently have zero mental health issues and require no sympathy in that area. All this is is an introspective look at my state of affairs, looking at what I did wrong attempting to grow my channel, and where to go next.

So, let's start from the start: My channel's success was lightning in a bottle. "Surprise! Your video has gone viral!" Starting with super short meme-y pony toy videos. Well... Admittedly that was at least a few years into my "career" at that point, but all my content before then just silly "Early-teen goofing around"-type videos, once I suddenly actually had an audience to make videos for, I obviously wanted to keep going. What's important about this "Era" is that I had a theme going on. I was the "Pony toy video guy", that was where my initial audience came from, watching my ~10 second long meme-y videos for a short giggle. These videos were very short, very easy to make, and had an audience... So, why did I stop?

Three big reasons: One, money. To make videos making fun of silly pony merch, I had to buy the merch, and, to put things into perspective, that Celestia toy alone was $50. Imagine that but for every single toy in every single video and it adds up quick. The good news is that I liked collecting them, and I had the money, but that was quickly running dry. You might ask "Well, couldn't you reuse toys?", and I did a bit, however...

Two, I hated reusing jokes, and still do to this day. Even back then I'd felt I used the "Celestia toy hits thing" joke 2-3 too many times. I suppose I'd somewhat considered it a running joke- but without putting a twist on it, it was just the same thing happening over and over again. Although "toy abuse" wasn't the entirety of my content back then- I did still try to be creative about it- but nonetheless I kinda felt that well drying up. Plus, finally, there's reason three, and this one is probably a bit obvious...

Three, I wanted to try out animation. It's history time: The reason why even my earlier pony animations looked at least half-decent was because I already knew ahead of time how to use Flash, the program used to animate MLP. This was because I used Flash to learn how to make terrible bodged-together video games, some of which are still online over on Newgrounds and Kongregate (And no, I won't be linking them (Maybe at a later date)), those games, although they were pretty terrible, did inadvertently teach me how to use an animation program, meaning that, when my YouTube channel kinda blew up, I suddenly had an entire genre of media to create with at my disposal.

Thus started "Phase two" of viv, the "Short goofy animation" phase. At the time I didn't think I was gonna ditch the toy video stuff, but after a short while I felt... More satisfied with my animation work. It took me a while to nail down why, but in the end I felt like I was "Undeserving" of the amount of attention I got from my toy content, and felt as if I had to "Earn" the amount of followers I was getting. My toy videos were recorded with terrible audio, a bad camera, very little care for lighting (One video in particular's punchline was ruined because I didn't think about lighting, "Applejack Wins" I believe was the name of that one), however my animations, with the exception of a couple of my early ones having framerate issues, were very "Clean" and felt polished, something I definitely couldn't say about the majority of my toy videos.

Likewise, my standards went up, and they went up fast. I did start off making more silly goofy short stuff, but I kept setting borders for myself making content more difficult to pump out. I wanted to make music videos, but I eventually said I didn't want to make them using pre-established "stuff you could buy on itunes" tracks, worried about potential copyright ramifications. A lot of my short videos were based on clips of songs, and I stopped doing those for the same reason. This was also a very similar (Albeit technically very different) reason why I stopped using show-style puppets, and although I technically could've continued animating show-style if I wanted, my standards had gotten higher still, and I wanted to start making animations using my own "Design" of puppets. Those are the horses you see in the banner of my Patreon page, the doofy ones with the fat noses. This starts what I'd call "Phase three" of viv.

...However, where I went, the majority of fans did not follow.

My earlier content was easy to digest, easy to share around, and easy to click on. Short doofy meme videos. Phase three of viv however- Although the content I was making was finally meeting my stupid standards, it ran into two problems. One, content production got slooooow. The entirety of the first couple of "phase three" years feels like I'd gotten nothing done, despite the, well, "Objectively better" quality videos coming out. I can count how many vivshorts I have on three hands, which is... Not a lot. It's good, and all of them are great, don't get me wrong, but throughout this entire "essay" I've been leaving out one giant big huge factor regarding my content: YouTube itself.

I'm sure you've heard this a million times before, but in case you haven't: YouTube does not promote channels that don't post often. The system likes channels that make long videos, and they like them posted every day.  This is... The complete opposite of the state of my channel, however. Especially these days, where my projects get larger, and the gaps between videos get longer. Unfortunately, the amount of production put into videos does not necessarily translate to views- Or at least not anywhere near the amount it does compared to my older videos.

I did make an attempt to make my channel more active with my Vivcast series, but, although that series has its fans (And I love you all much and you know who you are), I feel like all that did is hurt me during phase three viv. It littered my channel with videos that only a very niche audience would appreciate, and meant that newcomers would have difficulties finding the videos my channel was centered around when visiting my channel, which is, you know... A bad thing. All my Vivcast videos are now unlisted on my channel, but the playlist is still publicly available for those who still want to see them.

The second big reason why I got a huge dropoff of viewers from phase three viv was the change in style, or, more specifically, the lack of using MLP characters at all. I stopped being part of the trend, and went and did my own thing. It gave me more creative freedom, but it was less "Immediately appealing". It's far easier to click on "Rainbow Dash is Excited" than it is "The Second Day of Chrasmas". I've created a bubble of content that only those inside the bubble can enjoy, and this bubble is already inside the bubble of MLP itself, which, as much as I wish it wasn't so, has a huge huge huge stigma around it that to this day has never dwindled. Despite my content being less about the ponies themselves and more about the comedy or the writing or the animation, just the vague connection to MLP is a huge turnoff for potential new viewers who although might not care for MLP might still enjoy the content I may put out.

So, due to this, I have a dwindling viewerbase both because I'm not directly using MLP characters (Meaning the general MLP fans are turned off from my content) and also because I'm using pony characters in the first place (Meaning the non-brony side of the internet won't be looking at my content in the first place). I've inadvertently created a niche inside of a niche because I became complacent. I thought "Hey, if I make videos, the viewers will come, as they always have been", and that was true a few years ago, but I've diverted the train far far off course and not many people still want to stay on the ride.

...Okay, I should mention, no, 10k views per video is not bad in any way. That's really really good and many many many youtubers wish they got a fraction of the viewerbase I got, but it's all relative. In my case, I'd steered my life towards "Hey, I got a good following going, if I grow my following enough I'll be able to make YouTube videos for a living! That'll be super cool!" And that was okay for a long while, while I was "Doing the motions", while I was at college, while I was at university, while I was looking for a job and not finding any for... The entirety of 2017. That's a long time, that's, like, 4+ years at least. But, that whole time, it was fine. I was in no rush, I was in no hurry, no real problems, I'd gotten a little lazy and my content slowed down for it, but I didn't necessarily need the money so I wasn't churning out garbage 24/7 just to make sure I hit a threshold. I thought to myself "Hey, I'll think of something, eventually. 10k views per video isn't enough to make a living off of, but I'll make something that'll go viral again, eventually. It'll be fine."

However, that changed this January.

My new years resolution was to go back to making monthly videos. The Second Day of Chrasmas I made relatively quickly and I'd totally be up for keeping that going, I thought. But my free time was suddenly whisked away, and I was suddenly told I'd be "Working for the dole" for half the week, every week, for at least the next 6 months, or until somebody finally decides to hire me. If that's French to you, essentially that means that, in order to get the money I'm literally living off of, I'm now forced to spend ~15 hours every week doing tiring sweaty exhausting labour work, getting pricked, scratched, sunburned, and bitten, on top of the obligation I already had regarding finding work with the job employment agency I'm hooked up with, oh, and that's not even mentioning that I'm not earning any more doing this work than I was earning the entirety of 2017. essentially meaning that all the free time I'd grown complacent with the past year is now gone in the blink of an eye, and I'm getting nothing out of it.

...So I thought "Okay, 2018 will be the year I finally set my channel back on the right track." Suddenly that's something I can't do. I can't make videos that bring the views back when I literally don't have the time nor energy to make those videos in the first place. The past January shows it, I forgot to make the post-January update Patreon post because of how quickly the month passed by for me. My complacency led me down this track and now I'm paying the price for it.

Okay... So... What now?

This was the question I asked at the start of this post, and what you just read is my story leading up to this question. I don't know if I have the right answer to that question, but I have a few proposals.

One: Cut my ties with pony content entirely. This is a route I'd been intentionally avoiding because I didn't want to be one of "Those guys". You know, the "I'm grown up and more mature now, and therefore I cannot like or associate with pony anymore". That... In itself, I'd personally say is an extremely immature sentiment, cutting ties with who you once were is like denying part of your life existed. Likewise, if this were the route I'd take, I would never deny my association with MLP... However, I would be changing all my branding and future content to not be MLP related, and move into, say, video games stuff instead. That way I can tap into a very large audience of people that didn't exist within my bubble within my bubble. I may be able to grab that "Lightning in a bottle" once more... I wouldn't stop doing Bronies Reacts, though.

Two: ...Keep going. This is the significantly more risky route, but I still have unfinished business in pony content. The two big ones are Trigger Happy Horses and Brony Polka Animated, Trigger Happy Horses being very very well loved and a project I would be very happy to continue if I had the money and time, and Brony Polka Animated being a project I teased... Ah jeez, two years ago. Both projects would require at least several months straight of work to finish/continue, meaning no other content on my channel (Outside of stuff that maybe I could hire other people to edit (Which would imply I had the money to do so, which, I don't)), meaning it'd be super unlikely my channel would grow in any way from it. I'd still be inside my niche of a niche, that double-layered bubble. But... Maybe people would come back if they saw these projects as finished projects? I don't know, and I have no way of knowing- But I expect that may unfortunately not be the case.

Three: Do both... Kinda. Perhaps I could begin by doing new stuff that appeals to a larger audience and completely ignoring those huge projects on my backlog until I've reached a point of equilibrium- And then return to them once I've maintained a stability on my channel. Albeit, that implies I get to that point in the first place, I may be trying to throw darts at this invisible dart board for the rest of my life, meaning those projects go entirely unfinished forever...

...At the end of the day, if I want to keep doing YouTube, I'll want to be earning enough off of it to make it viable. This means consistent revenue, every month, every year. I'm getting a very nice fraction of that off of Patreon right now, and I thank all my patrons wholeheartedly for it, but... I need at the very least quadruple the amount I'm currently earning to get back to even attempting YouTube full time. Single time pledges won't really help either, I either need four times the amount of patrons I have or at least ten times the amount of views on my future videos, and consistently.

This revamp needs to happen. With it I'll be revamping the structure of my Patreon page before the end of the month, including probably removing the $10 and $30 pledge options... Which I feel like is kind of a terrible move because it's the last foothold I really have, I'll be cutting my revenue in half with that move alone, but I don't feel comfortable being pledged those amounts when the content I'm putting out is minimal at best, and entirely against what you were asking for at worst. Although I believe there is an option to pledge a higher amount than the given pledge amount, no rewards come with that, and nobody is obligated to do that for me.

Will this post do anything about my situation? Deep down I kinda hope it will, but really... I don't expect it to, and I've accepted that. You gotta deal with what life gives you, and when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. That term is thrown around so much it sounds like white noise so I'll turn it into a metaphor that actually means something: If you're given shit, make something out of it. Well, I've been given shit, so here I am figuring out what to sculpt it into.

It's midnight where I live now, so I'll be going to sleep. When I wake up I hope to have the answer to my question.

Good night.

- Viva

[radramblog]

Album...blind listen? TLT- zero_one

Here’s how this happened.

Well, mama didn’t raise no coward. That’s a lie, she totally did, but that’s not the point.

I am not super familiar with TLT’s work outside of the songs that went super viral (the MLP/FNAF stuff was hard to escape for a bit), so while I know the general style they used to run by but that might not be relevant this many years later. Also its been long enough that I’ve forgotten what half of those songs sounded like and I’m sure not going back and defiling my pure ears for this livereact.

What’s the worst that could happen?

Ok not gonna lie the first few bars of the first song (What I Want) kinda brought everything back at once, so that’s probably a good sign. TLT learned how to use drums that aren’t just kick/snare, good for them. I’m liking where this main synth line is going, not huge on the vocals but I suspect that’s not really what we’re here for. I didn’t really see this bridge coming, but it feels a bit underwhelming from what I recall of their previous works- but of course it’s not fair to ask for them to stick to the same style for a whole decade. I’m feeling like, 7 or so for this- I think it’s good but not great.

Drunk, huh. I’m surprised a song like this didn’t come out a decade ago when LMFAO was big. That is not a compliment, by the way. Okay I wasn’t on board with this until about a minute and a half in- the whole thing falling apart a little as this fucker gets obscenely wasted is fun and it snapping back to business worked well imo. The bridge of this is just Feel Good Hit of the Summer by Queens of the Stone Age but drinks instead of illicit drugs. I kinda wish this song did more interesting things with the instrumental, but it’s fine. Maybe im just extra harsh because it’s relatable…..

Can’t Wait seems to be written about a particular character archetype in media that I just hate- oh and there comes the chorus, what the fuck is going on here? TLT you doing OK mate? I think they’re trying to write the Gen Z anthem here, and it doesn’t really do it for me personally…I’m not a big fan of the vocal style. The vocalist(s, though I wouldn’t doubt the chorus being the same person with modulation) are doing well, but it aint for me. I dunno.

Lazy feels like a more electronic version of a pop-punk anthem from the late 90s/early 00s. Like a Green Day or Blink 182 or something. Actually I think this might be a tribute to that era. If it is, then it’s doing a great job of it? I guarantee it’s not trying to be The Lazy Song by Bruno Mars, but that’s for the best, so. It definitely has that punky rock edge to it which I’m kind of a sucker for. A lot of these lyrics are distressingly relatable, and I’m wondering if asking me to look into this was a lowkey callout.

I feel like I’ve heard some variant of Sunburn a hundred times before. The kinda shit you hear on the radio all the time, where it’s just some pain-based metaphor for how this bloke feels about his relationship (or lack thereof), and the early-10s EDM inspiration (not old TLT specifically, more your poppy stuff) doesn’t help there. This song is the most frustrating thing on this album so far, because I feel like there’s nothing here for me. I might have been massively biased at the time, but I came out of the EDM apocalypse with one song I liked, and this isn’t it.

I just noticed the cover art for this album uses the same font as System Shock 2.

My immediate thought with Long Time Friends was that it kinda sounds like an angrier Neil Cicierega/Lemon Demon track, and that is the nicest thing I’ve said about anything on here so far. It’s got that jaunty energy he loves putting in his music, the particular kind of which you don’t get in enough tracks these days. …yeah listening to the latter half of this, TFT has 100% listened to Spirit Phone before. (I should talk about that album sometime, huh). I think this is my favourite track on here so far, it’s a lot of fun. Also, the lyrics are pretty good. Honestly the lyrics on this album have been like, a hair away from cringy, but they’re doing a pretty decent job of toeing that line.

The title track is up next, and the song called zero one sounding like this is extremely not a surprise. Man, I don’t think rapping is this bloke’s strong suit? I’ve heard worse, I guess. I do really like how this one’s developing with the instrumental so far- and the bit at 2:00 just happened. Eeeeeghgggh can we take this vocaloid back to the shop please. I feel like I’ve heard this voice effect on other songs before, and I’ve never really been a fan of it. Yo okay so the latter half of this has some polyrhythmic vocals, that’s sick, and doesn’t last as long as I’d like, dangit. Much as I’m a sucker for long songs, this feels like you could have shaved a full minute off of it and substantially improved it.

Holy shit I cannot stand what Animal is doing at the start there. Is that going to continue through the whole thing? Please stop, it’s so distracting. I feel like that’s this song’s “thing”, which is not a good sign. Because the rest of the track doesn’t seem especially interesting as I’m listening to it. I will say, this song (and a fair few of the other ones) do a thing I really like where there’s just no break between verses whatever, mans just keeps going with a half-step there to let you know what’s going on. I’m sure there’s a better way to phrase that, but I sure don’t know it.  Oh right, Animal. Ehhhhhhh that background thing completely ruined it for me, sorry.

Penultimately, it’s Fly Home. This is lower key than a lot of the rest of the album, I think, which is fine? Unfortunately this just feels like a filler track to me. You listen to enough albums, you can kinda tell which ones are filler-ier than others- SOAD’s Toxicity has like 3 or 4, and that’s easily one of the best metal albums of all time. I really, genuinely have very little to say about this song, fam. The tone of the lyrics feels almost completely different to the rest of it- this would make sense at the end, as the light at the end of the tunnel, but it wasn’t really built up to (surely Animal wasn’t trying to do that) and there’s another song here.

Speaking of, Chosen. The final track. This wasn’t doing it for me until like a minute in, where all the instrumentation kicks in- that sort of cut back style works better imo closer to the end of the track, not the start. The instrumentation here is just kinda sick, though? Like it keeps on surprising me in little ways I can appreciate. Combined with the vocals it kinda sounds like a 80s prog-adjacent rock opera kinda thing. I’m thinking of Styx, I think, but I’m not super familiar with other things from that style. It does remind a lot of throwback acts like the Protomen. …shit the tracks over. I mean that was a good note to end on!

Uhhh so overall huh. I think this album is pretty solid, some ups and downs, I wouldn’t call it a standout. But at the same time, I guess the album isn’t really for me, so that I’m not as high on it as others might be isn’t a huge surprise. I’m unlikely to come back to it for another full listen, but there’s stuff I did really enjoy- Long Time Friends and Chosen are both really solid, and I think I’d need to get another go at Drunk tbh. On the other hand, there’s some dregs- fuck Animals, didn’t like Sunburn. I dunno. Probably like a 6.5-7 out of 10? But I don’t usually rate things on scales, so take that with a grain of salt.

I hope you enjoyed the bonus music update. Next album review is probably gonna be on Tuesday, don’t know what yet.

[happypastelponies]

A curious case of crystal ponies and coverups

For a while now, I have been curious as to why the MLP g4 animated series didn't shine much of a spotlight on the crystal ponies. Aside from just being background characters in the episodes that take place in the Crystal Empire, we don't really learn or know much about them. Even in episodes where Spike is the focus, and they all glorify and practically worship him, we don't get to see Spike hanging out with any of the crystal ponies and we as fans, don't know their names.

But I have a theory that could give these crystal ponies the respect they deserve. Given the nature of the crystal heart- an artifact that the My Little Pony The Movie Artbook hinted at having been excavated out of dragon remains where a city had been built on top of, and its ability to act as a container, of sorts, for an entire empire's feelngs of light and hope...could it be possible that like the crystal artifact that protects the Empire, that these crystal ponies are also able to be vessels of powerful magic themselves?

Think about it. We have seen many instances where gems and jewels have been able to be embued or naturally store magic, from the elements of harmony, to the Alicorn Amulet which bears a jewel that resembles a ruby in its center. Maud even told Starlight Glimmer that there may actually exist a rock with a jewel within in it,  that would allow someone to rule the world, likely, if enough magic was stored within it.

So back to the crystal ponies. As their name states, they are clearly made of crystal, and could possibly act as any other mineral formed jewel that would allow them to store magic that is not their own.  I find it rather intriguing that back in "Twilight's kingdom", Celestia spoke of "not being able to just cause their magic to disappear" before she, Cadance, and Luna funneled their power into Twilight. This leads me to believe that at some point, this spell would've been practiced before being performed on Twilight without concern of error or flaw. Even Starswirl himself needed to practice spells to ensure he got them just right, as referenced in comcs. No spell, no matter how skilled or powerful the caster, is able to execute a spell flawlessly on the first attempt.

And since crystal ponies act as living magical storage facilities, this could've been the case....perhaps not with Celestia or the other Princesses, but maybe, just maybe, the long mysterious alicorns of pre-Equestrian era (Journal of the Two Sisters) could've first channeled their magic, for safety purposes, into the Crystal Empire ponies, before mysteriously disappearing and never being heard from again. If they had foreknowledge of the future, they would've seen that Sombra's rule and ultimately cursing the Empire and its crystal inhabitants would've benefited them, ensuring that their alicorn magic in the crystal ponies disappeared also, protecting it further. This would explain why Celestia and Luna would also know such a spell to allow their own magic to be transferred to another vessel.

However, I'm sure the question would arise of "wouldn't the crystal ponies have knowledge of this, if they had been used to store an entire long lost race's alicorn magic?" Well, to that I say, it all depends. Both in chapter book and tv series canon, memory altering spells exist, and cover-ups ARE done to keep the populace from becoming aware of certain situations. In 'Slice of Life', Sweetie Drops admits to a secret agency under Celestia demanding complete deniability with regards to certain events, even to the point the organization disbands and leaves no evidence to their existence. And an agent from said organization was ready to erase Lyra's own memories, in 'Lyra, Bon Bon, and the agents of S.M.I.L.E'  We've also seen memory alteration spells in Starswirl's unfinished masterpiece, in 'Magical Mystery Cure'.

But since memories, like magic, can't just be erased like writing on a chalkboard, they would need to go somewhere. Perhaps, after transferring their powers into the crystal ponies, the alicorns of Pre-Equestria wiped the empire's memory of the event, and waited for Sombra to do the rest. As for where an entire memories went, what if, like the alicorn magic, they were stored....but rather in a crystal pony,  they were stashed safely in a vessel that functioned as a crystal pony but didn't outwardly appear as one, while also having sentience and able to travel, for safety purposes? A living pony.....created from an alicorn and has a will of its own....sound familiar? Almost like Luna's sentient TANTABUS????

It could be that Star Dreams, a toyline exclusive pony, that had interesting releases around the mane 6 and CMC, was meant to be such a vessel to contain the crystal ponies memories, but also having been created by the ancient alicorns, much like Luna's Tantabus- self aware and sentient.  For protection, she would've either been cloaked in a glamour, hiding her crystal form to appear as a regular filly, or far removed from the empire's inhabitants and the crystal heart before it had been cursed and vanished. Say, for instance, in Ponyville, where the mane  and CMC, if need be, could ensure the vessel's protection, if something comes looking for those memories of the alicorn's magic. Of course, this is purely headcanon, but provides depth to the crystal ponies nonetheless.

[cbilluminati]

The Dub has a ton of great titles on sale this week, and we have your early looks at them all. Here’s the IDW Publishing Previews for 4-12-2017.

American Barbarian: The Complete Series

Writer: Tom Scioli Artist: Tom Scioli Cover Artist: Tom Scioli

Revenge is a dish best served BOLD! Follow Meric, the red-white-and-blue-haired American Barbarian on his quest to defeat the post-post-apocalyptic zombie cyborg mummy overlord Two-Tank Omen. This is the complete Saturday Morning Epic from the artist and co-writer of Transformers vs G.I. JOE and the Eisner Award-nominated Godland. Also includes an introduction by Rob Liefeld.

TPB • FC • $19.99 • 268 pages • 6” x 9” • ISBN: 978-1-63140-850-2

Bullet points: 

Advance solicited for April release!

“This comic never lets you go once you start, and that’s part of why I enjoy Scioli’s comics in general and this one in particular.” –Comic Book Resources

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Atomic Robo, Vol. 11: Atomic Robo and the Temple of Od

Writer: Brian Clevinger Artist: Scott Wegener Cover Artist: Scott Wegener

Occupied Manchuria, 1938. Atomic Robo is volunteered for a new secret mission to track down China’s top quantum physicist, who has been captured by the Imperial Japanese Army to develop a super weapon powered by the theoretically unlimited “zero-point” energy source. Robo can’t catch a break with these would-be conquerors and their bizarre energy sources, can he? Luckily, he’s got some help from an unexpected but familiar face.

TPB • FC • $19.99 • 136 pages • ISBN: 978-1-63140-863-2

Bullet points: 

Advance solicited for April release!

“Brian Clevenger keeps his script humming along, avoiding dwelling overly long on setup and book-ending the issue with action-heavy flash-forwards. Scott Wegener’s clean, elegant art style also does its part to generate an enjoyable tale of WWII-era action and intrigue. Wegener even throws in some welcome Temple of Doom homages for good measure. Atomic Robo is a very consistent franchise, but it’s always good to see that a new volume keeps the momentum going.” –IGN

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Duck Avenger #4

Writers: Alessandro Sisti, Jonathan Gray Artists: Corrado Mastantuono, Paolo Mottura Cover Artist: Claudio Sciarrone

“Two!” A mystery hacker is taking down computers all over Duckburg—and One, Donald’s supersmart electronic brain, is slowly turning malevolent!

FC • 72 pages • $6.99 

Bullet points: 

More of the new-to-USA Disney adventure that fans want most—the famous “Duck Avenger New Adventures” (known in Europe as “PKNA”)!

Adapted for our readers by fan favorite Jonathan Gray (Sonic the Hedgehog)!

72 pages of action for just $5.99!

Variant cover by Claudio Sciarrone!

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Dungeons & Dragons: Frost Giant’s Fury #2

Writer: Jim Zub Artist: Netho Diaz Cover Artist: Max Dunbar

The town of Fireshear is a safe haven for our adventurers, or, it would be if it wasn’t under attack by a frost giant raiding party! Get your hamsters ready, it’s time for battle!

FC • 32 pages • $3.99

Bullet points:

Dungeons & Dragons is seeing a renaissance with the release of the fifth edition rules in late 2014. Hundreds of thousands of players are returning to D&D or embarking on their first adventures and they’re hungry for extra content.

This new D&D story ties into the Storm King’s Thunder event that runs across multiple RPG products, novels, and video games.

This series continues with the cast from the hit Legends of Baldur’s Gate and Shadows of the Vampire stories, but is also built as a perfect jumping on point for new readers, bringing them into D&D’s classic blend of sword & sorcery adventure.

HASBRO ART variant cover!

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G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero, Vol. 17

Writer: Larry Hama Artist: S L Gallant Cover Artist: John Royle

The classic A Real American Hero continues from writer Larry Hama! Duke reckons with the most difficult choice of his life… while COBRA scrambles to contain the dangerous new agent in their midst! Collects issues #231-235.

TPB • FC • $19.99 • 120 pages • ISBN: 978-1-63140-852-6

Bullet points: 

Advance solicited for April release!

“IDW handles this franchise well, there is never a dull moment from the first panel of this title to the last.” –Outright Geekery (on GI Joe: RAH #224)

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Helena Crash #2

Writer: Fabian Rangel, Jr. Artist: Warwick Johnson-Cadwell Cover Artist: Warwick Johnson-Cadwell

Helena Crash receives a message from the notorious crime lord known as WHITE DEMON. White Demon wants Helena to track down a rare, hard to find movie for her, on VHS no less. Helena begins her hunt, only to find herself in hot water for her association with White Demon’s chief rival, EL ROJO.

FC • 32 pages • $3.99 

Bullet points: 

Pour yourself a cup of coffee and get ready for HELENA CRASH!

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Jem and the Holograms, Vol. 4: Enter The Stingers

Writer: Kelly Thompson Artists: Jen Bartel, Meredith McClaren Cover Artist: Meredith McClaren

Still reeling from the shattering conclusion to “Dark Jem,” Jem and the Holograms regroup–desperate to find a path forward. Meanwhile, THE MISFITS find themselves with a unique problem… one lead singer too many! Plus, a European super group takes the U.S. by storm… The Stingers! Meet Riot, Rapture, Minx, and Raya! Collects issues #17-23.

TPB • FC • $19.99 • 152 pages • ISBN: 978-1-63140-837-3

Bullet points: 

Advance solicited for April release!

“The Stingers present some welcome variety. I’m continually entertained by Thompson’s ability to take a lifestyle most can’t relate to and make it feel accessible.” –Comic Bastards

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Mickey Mouse: Dark Mines of the Phantom Metal

Writers: Andrea “Casty” Castellan, Romano Scarpa, Jonathan Gray, Joe Torcivia, Thad Komorowski Artists: Andrea “Casty” Castellan, Romano Scarpa, Jonathan Gray, Joe Torcivia, Thad Komorowski Cover Artist: Andrea “Casty” Castellan

Mickey, Goofy, and Eurasia Toft are out to find Atlantis or die trying… and their path leads to the British seacoast, where–yaarrr!–there be pirates, pitfalls, creepy Count Zoox, and a new threat from the hideous Horde of the Violet Hare! Dive into a new thriller by fan favorite Andrea “Casty” Castellan–then stick around for two wild Pegleg Pete adventures from legendary Disney writer/artist Romano Scarpa! Collects IDW’s Mickey Mouse #13-15.

TPB • FC • $12.99 • 124 pages • 6” x 9” • ISBN: 978-1-63140-857-1

Bullet points: 

Advance solicited for April release!

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Micronauts #11

Writer: Cullen Bunn Artist: Max Dunbar Cover Artist: Max Dunbar

Stranded on a world of giants, hounded by enemies from both Earth and Microspace, the Micronauts have one last chance to return to their universe. A doorway is opening, and Oz and company think this is their passage home. But something from the other side is coming through–something that will bring this chapter of the Micronauts’ story to a destructive END.

FC • 32 pages • $3.99

Bullet points: 

Variant cover by Ryan Brown!

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My Little Pony: Legends of Magic #1

Writer: Jeremy Whitley Artist: Brenda Hickey Cover Artist: Brenda Hickey

The origins of cutie marks, friendships, magic and more are available in this new ongoing series devoted to revealing the secret history of Equestria! In this opening story arc, we travel back in time to uncover the secrets of Starswirl the Bearded and his magical friends!

FC • 32 pages • $3.99

Bullet points: 

Ties into new season of My Little Pony!

The magic of My Little Pony continues with a brand-new ongoing series!

From seasoned MLP writer Jeremy Whitley, creator of Princeless, and writer on Marvel’s The Unstoppable Wasp!

Variant cover by Derek Charm!

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Popeye Classics #57

Writer: Bud Sagendorf Artist: Bud Sagendorf Cover Artist: Bud Sagendorf

In the first story, Popeye fights a titanic sea battle to bring orchids to hungry jeeps–watch out for the Sea Hag! Plus, an adventure-filled Old West story, “Pot of Gold,” including Wimpy and Swee’pea. Read a delightful Uncle Elmo story and a hilarious O.G. Wotasnozzle comic!

FC • 32 pages • $4.99

Bullet points: 

Variant cover by Aeron Alfrey!

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Ragnarök #12

Writer: Walter Simonson Artist: Walter Simonson Cover Artist: Walter Simonson

Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, will decide the fates of the Black Elf Assassin, Regn, his daughter Drifa, and Angantyr, the Lord of the Dead, in the depths of Angantyr’s fortress at the edge of Hel. Its decision is written with lightning and thunder, and it is always final. Plus a gallery section of pages from this issue—Artist’s Edition style!

FC • 40 pages • $4.99

Bullet points: 

Continuing Walter Simonson’s masterpiece!

Featuring a variant cover from Lee Weeks!

The second story arc of Walter Simonson’s masterpiece concludes!

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ROM #9

Writers: Chris Ryall & Christos Gage Artist: Paolo Villanelli Cover Artist: Tony Shasteen

“Reinforcements,” part 5! Rom is caught between rogue G.I. JOE members, rogue Space Knights, and a renewed Dire Wraith threat with the fate of the planet in the balance!

FC • 32 pages • $3.99

Bullet points: 

Ask your retailer how to get the incentive cover by legendary artist/inker Joe Sinnott!

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Star Trek: Boldly Go #7

Writer: Mike Johnson Artist: Megan Levens Cover Artist: George Caltsoudas

Part 1 (of 3) of “Murder at Babel“! As the Federation and Romulans convene in the wake of the Borg attack, the precarious peace is threatened by the murder of a key diplomat… and a Starfleet cadet is the prime suspect! Don’t miss this all-new adventure, guest-starring Jaylah from STAR TREK BEYOND, and the cast from the hit STARFLEET ACADEMY series!

FC • 32 pages • $3.99

Bullet points: 

A new arc featuring new artist Megan Levens!

Following the events of Star Trek Beyond!

Variant cover by Cryssy Cheung!

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Vol. 16: Chasing Phantoms

Writers: Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz Artists: Dave Wachter, Mateus Santolouco Cover Artist: Dave Wachter

While the Turtles and Splinter are reeling from a surprise attack by Kitsune, exposing weaknesses in their defense, the Street Phantoms use the opportunity to pounce. Collects issues #61–65.

TPB • FC • $19.99 • 120 pages • ISBN: 978-1-63140-859-5

Bullet points: 

Advance solicited for April release!

“This book does not get nearly enough praise as it should for being so great for so long. With fantastic storytelling and a murderers row of great artists there is not much else you can ask for in a comic book!” –Word of the Nerd

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via IDW Publishing

A New ROM and Micronauts in the IDW Publishing Previews for 4-12-2017

The Dub has a ton of great titles on sale this week, and we have your early looks at them all.

A New ROM and Micronauts in the IDW Publishing Previews for 4-12-2017 The Dub has a ton of great titles on sale this week, and we have your early looks at them all.