#that later iterations tone down

[chynandri]

Cuz I’ve been drawing engage for donations/comm I watched some supports out of curiosity. Diamant really feels like Chrom in some ways, cuz even the cadence of how they talk is similar. However I realized the difference is that Chrom has snark and… is kind of a brat (?) sometimes LMAO… and Diamant just seems like an all around standup guy from the supports

[camilieroart]

LEO'S GENDER REVEAL

Price comic for winning the first round of @tmntaucompetition !

COLORCODED TMNT ITERATION

WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT ? CHECK IT OUT BELOW :D

When April returned from the bathroom, battle outfit off, and the dreaded fake breasts that started this mess back on, Leo was nowhere to be seen.

It wasn’t really surprising. But it was worrying. The common room was empty of any presence, including the pets. But, there was a trail. From the front door to the corridor that led to the boys’ rooms, discarded battle gear littered the ground.

And April was stressed. When April is stressed, she cleans things. She picked them up and gently put them on a table, folded neatly, separated by colors.

“Leo, come on man ! This is ridiculous, just open the door !”

Anyone who wasn’t used to Raph would think he was angry. The tone was sharp and calm, and the constant pounding of his fist against Leo’s door probably wouldn’t help. But Raph wasn’t mad. No, he was frustrated, and worried.

Leo and Raph always sought each other for comfort, and even when they didn’t, the other would come comfort them.

To Raph, not being able to get into the room and give his twin a hug or distract him from what was bothering him, not being able to make sure he was okay… It was torture.

April wasn’t surprised when she stepped in the corridor, to see Raph’s scrunched up face in worry, constantly fidgeting, scratch marks all over his forearm. He paced in front of Leo’s room, shaking his hands with energy, suddenly stopping to pound on the door some more, and resuming when he doesn’t get an answer.

Casey, Donnie and Mikey were sitting next to the door, while Meets leaned against the opposite wall. Splinter was with them, quietly catching up on what happened and why they had to cancel patrol for the night.

Donnie was tapping away on his phone, clearly opening and closing the same app over and over again. Mikey was leaning against him, struggling to keep his eyes open, but doing his best to jolt awake whenever his eyelids dropped too low. Casey leaned on the wall on the other side, occasionally whispering something to him that Donnie would answer just as low.

April went to Raph.

“I’m surprised you haven’t kicked the door down yet. I’d thought you would all be inside.”

“We would,” Answered Donnie, effectively jolting Mikey awake for the 5th time, “but when we tried to get in, he threw pillows at us until we were far enough for him to lock the door.”

‘Plus, we don’t want Donnie to be the one that has to fix the door later’ Supplied Meets.

“But why isn’t he answering ? He should at least be answering, right ? What if he hurt himself ? We should go in-”

April slowly crept even closer to Raph, who couldn’t get his eyes off the door. She reached out to his fidgeting hands but stopped an inch or two before touching. Without sparing a glance, Raph breached the gap and held her hands tight.

“He should have answered. Why isn’t he answering, Pril ?”

His hands were a bit awkward to hold onto, as he had now started to bounce on his heels, unable to keep still until he was able to check on his twin.

Raph finally looked at her and she sighed.

She gently rubbed his hands in a slow circle motion.

“Let me try, okay ?”

Still holding one of his hand to anchor him -despite the bouncing-, April knocked on Leo’s door.

“Hey, Leo ? It’s April, can I come in ?”

“...”

“Just me, Lee. Just me.”

A beat passed, and the faintest of click resonated in the quiet corridor. Raph instinctively rushed forward, but Splinter put a soft hand on his shoulder to hold him back.

“If Leonardo wants to see just April, my son, let him see just her for now.”

“But… Dad, he’s-”

“He’s confused and hurting and needs someone, and that someone is April. Once he feels better, we’ll all be able to see him, is that okay ?”

Raph looked over to the slightly open door, then to April that had still yet to let go of his hand. He reached over with his free hand to his forearm but Splinter gently took it before he could scratch himself. His dad offered a soft smile, gently patting his hand.

Raph let the tension leave his body, sagging like a rag doll.

“Fine, yeah...”

April gave a smile of her own and after one last squeeze, entered Leo’s room, closing the door behind her.

The room was a mess. It was already a wonder she was able to see it’s mess, considering how dark it was. The only light was coming from under the door, and some blue fairy lights she didn’t think Leo knew how to turn off.

The room was filled with destroyed wigs that she had never seen before, but that were probably gorgeous before they were ripped apart, dresses that came straight from a designer closet, with some intricate patterns and embroideries that must have taken hours to make now gone to rags thanks to some randomly placed scissors cut.

Makeup stained the floors, a lipstick that was crushed by someone’s heel, a powder that spilled all over the carpet…

April cautiously stepped around the mess, sitting on the bed next to a curled up Leonardo relatively unscathed.

He hadn’t even looked up, didn’t bother twitching as she sat beside him.

“What’s all this ?”

April worried for a moment, that she shouldn’t have spoken. Maybe all he wanted was some company, not to talk about it. As the seconds passed and no answer came, but Leo didn’t kick her out, she relaxed, gently leaning onto him. If he just wanted company, then she’d give him that.

“I don’t know. My inner girl that was trying to come out before I knew it I guess.”

Leo had looked up to the mess, his snout still buried in his arms, the slightest hint of eyes shiny from tears peeking out. April didn’t know what to say to that. She never really saw Leo wearing any of these, none of his usual dresses were in the mix. He seemed mad at something he did, but that was something she didn’t know about.

But she did come here to help, and if Leo was engaging, maybe he wanted an answer ? What answer could she give ?

“Ooooookay ?”

“I’m not a girl.”

Well, that seemed to work.

“No, you’re not.”

Finally, he looked at her, and April couldn’t help thinking about how his twin acted exactly the same only moments prior.

She smiled, gently pulling him closer to her until his cheek was almost squashed against her knees. Her big brother had always loved tight physical affection, and this time was no different as he instantly relaxed against her.

“You’re a boy, always been a boy. You’re Leo, you use he/him pronouns, and you say you’re a boy. So you are. You just… happened to be a boy without the dangly bits.”

The turtle let out a dry snicker, amused by her synonym. She couldn’t see the bottom of his face yet, as his eyes that had a spark of amusement dulled again, but she hoped he smiled, at least a little.

“I-it’s not the same.”

“Okay. Do you think I’m less of a girl because I do have dangly bits ?”

“What ? No ! Of course not !”

“Then why do you think you’re less of a boy than you were yesterday ?”

Leonardo grows quiet at that. His defensive position was gone, and he was playing with one of her sleeves, his eyes drifting somewhere else as he thought of the answer. April was rubbing slow circles on his shell, chin resting on top of his head, patiently waiting.

He already seemed less distressed than before. Talking about it, putting it into words, and more importantly, having his gender reaffirmed were some important steps to take. She knew he picked her specifically to take these steps because her experience was probably the closest to his, even if it wasn’t exactly the same.

“I thought… I thought I was… normal. I guess.”

April froze, and pushed him away just enough to look at him dead in the eyes.

“Leo. I love you, you’re my brother. But there’s nothing normal about you.”

He blinked a few times, and then realization and frustration fell on his face. He threw his hands in the air in such a childish way April couldn’t contain the giggles that bubbled up.

“I know, it’s not that ! It’s- UGH ! I don’t know how to explain it.”

He crossed his arms and pouted and April pulled him back into the side hug. Quickly, his tension left and he melted like he always did when presented with physical affection.

Leo was quiet for a bit longer than before, thinking, trying to put words into his feelings, and April was happy to let him do so. The silence was familiar, comfortable, and more at ease. Not still quite relaxed, but close to it. They weren’t far to breaking down the last point Leo felt uncomfortable with.

Although it’d be better if done quickly, as she could see that Raph pacing had resumed, and were getting more frantic the longer they were in there without any information given to the outside.

Oh Leo was not getting out of Raph’s hug.

“I’m not- I’m not trans.”

It was quiet, almost muttered, and if the room was completely silent, April would have missed it. Like he was embarrassed, or ashamed to say it. Or he was scared of the answer.

“Of course you aren’t.”

He glanced up at her, eyes big and wide and confused. Like it wasn’t a possibility. Like he was doomed with a label that felt bad and uncomfortable.

“I’m not…?”

“If you don’t want to be trans, Leo, then you’re not. It’s not as complicated as everyone makes it out to be. They’re just words. If you don’t want that label, then it’s not yours. Cis Leonardo who happens to not have dangly bits, why not !”

The turtle contemplated that for a minute, letting the words sink in.

“So… I’m not trans.”

“Do you want to be ?”

“No ! I-I mean… no. No. I don’t want to.”

“It all comes down to this you know. Everything. What do you want to do, or be ? As long as it doesn’t hurt you or others, you can do anything. You can be a vigilante. You can make art on walls, you can dress funny in public, carry a plushie… Does it hurt you or someone else ? No ? Then who cares.”

They sat in silence a little bit longer, enjoying each other presence.

The last of the tension had left, and April could already feel Leo preparing to face the rest of the family, whether it’d be from the quick glance at the door, or the occasional twitch, like he was about to move but decided against it at the last second.

The turtle was fully pressed against her, soaking in the physical affection, taking it in and changing it into bravery to answer the questions of his siblings and explain how he felt about it.

April was happy to provide.

[felassan]

Some snippets from a couple older articles I don't remember seeing or catching[?] before:

"at its core is a beautifully told story of revenge, regret, and the complexities of good and evil" [source]

Varric's familiar wit and charm is very much present [source]

Excerpt on the opening:

"the story just sort of jumps right into things under the assumption you've got some understanding of where things left off in Inquisition. Solas, the Dreadwolf, is already conducting a menacing ritual to dismantle the Veil in the heart of the Tevinter Imperium's capital city, and Varric has assembled a crew to try to stop him. The demonstration began with a player choice, wherein Rook - our extremely customizable hero (more on that later) - gets to choose between fighting an entire bar or attempting to negotiate his way into more peaceful circumstances. Naturally, the demoist chose to beat everyone up in a bit of Dungeons & Dragons-esque tavern fun, complete with Varric pinning the shady bartender to her own station with a well placed crossbow bolt for some interrogation. As Rook and Varric scrounge the city for clues and meet up with a few more teammates en route to stopping Solas' big scary plan, they engage in some back and forth that feels like a mix of cheesy RPG dialogue and the characterization that makes Dragon Age such a great iteration of its genre." [...] "During the demo, Rook and crew engaged several enemies on their way to stop Solas. Battle sometimes began through a cinematic and sometimes by simply approaching an enemy on the map." [source]

"As the environment gets destroyed or decayed and action spills out into the streets, the rendering of each brick and light source helps add to a high fantasy feel." [source]

On the slider for body type selection: "It looked incredibly easy to maneuver around and create a body that is either close to that player's real personage or their ideal fantasy self" [source]

Party members closest to Rook are the most useful and lethal in battle [source]

On combat: it "has an improved version of [the DA2] battle system that combines the tactical pauses of Dragon Age's deep strategy with a more fluid, eye-catching approach to action that can create gorgeous visuals at times" [source]

"the string of attacks possible while playing Rook made the combat seem quite dynamic on a base level" [source]

"Our presenter said that each specialization was pretty much as deep as a job" ((job - class)) [source]

"Thedas is more beautiful than ever in the hour I spent with Veilguard" [source]

"I can assure you that the weird, hero-shooter tone of that companion reveal trailer doesn't carry into the game itself. No sir, Dragon Age: The Veilguard (née Dreadwolf) doesn't have much time for japes at all. Things are grim. Dark. Fraught, even" [source]

"sliding a cursor across a triangle that can make your character stocky and chubby or tall and muscular or anything in between" [source]

"BioWare seems to have resisted the Mass Effect: Andromeda proclivity for gratingly quippy dialogue in this one, at least. Varric makes some jokes, sure, but people spoke mostly like (dramatic, fantasy) people in my time in Minrathous" [source]

Minrathous: "the dark heart of a dystopian magical empire, its skyline dominated by a magically suspended palace in the shape of a saw-toothed crescent" [source]

Enemy barriers and armors can be whittled down more quickly by "nailing a shot to a vital part with your bow, if you've got one" [source]

[feathernotes]

Hello! My name is Krispy, and I’m the co-creator of the webcomic Ghost Junk Sickness (along with @spacerocketbunny​) It's story time!

GJS is a webcomic published by Hiveworks and features two bounty hunters with an unstable dynamic who are pushed to pursue the deadly bounty dubbed the Ghost The current iteration of GJS is about 9 years old (and wrapping up next year!) It’s been an incredible journey full of ups and downs. We’ve learned SO MUCH creating this comic, and I wanted to share some of it’s origins with you all in hopes of inspiring more folks to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy- and make that comic!

The origin of Ghost Junk Sickness came from our love for Magic Knight Rayearth and Final Fantasy 7. Vahn, the protagonist of GJS, was basically a mash up of Hikaru and Cloud from those two series. The very first version of this story has unfortunately been destroyed, and this map is the only piece I have left of that world. Character art still exists though, and it was pretty funny to see how obvious we were with our inspirations at the time.

The original attempt at the story was called Crew, and my sister Space and I worked on it in 2002-2004. We sort of got lost in our own ideas after that, and weren’t as focus on making the comic (now lost). A few years later, I decided to try my hand at it and it looked like this:

This was all done on low quality paper, whichever I could find at the time and some pencil crayons. This attempt was over 600 pages long and had a pretty random story plot, much like the first version. I could not tell you what it was about haha 😅

My second attempt (then called Divine Ace) I wanted to look more 'traditional manga' and kept with just inks and tried my darndest to tone on the computer (it never worked out). This one lasted over 400 pages, and was more allinged with my liking to edgy action anime and games at the time. It was also Trigger's first appearance!

After experimenting and eventually wanting to change- I started to work with Space again, and we collaborated in full on our first fancomic for TF2 called "Be Efficient, Be Polite." It was a good lesson on how we could coordinate our shared skill sets and plan out who did what as far as the whole process of comics go.

All of these comics (save for the very first lost version) were hosted on DA the day we got our hands on a scanner. It was our first taste on being 'webcomic creators' back in the day, and it was very fun! We didn't much care for readers, only the process of completion at the time, so a page done was always a victory worthy to be celebrated (and back then, we had more time to make pages!)

And so, as the years went by and we decided to move on from our fandom roots, Space and I went back to the Crew/Divine Ace project and redesigned and overhauled the entirety of it. (You can see the full evolution here) We wanted to re-asses what the story, comic, and characters meant to us, and how we could convey some pretty important ideas and concepts to our potential readers. From that, Ghost Junk Sickness was born, and began pre-production in 2013.

Years after, we find ourselves reflecting on how much we've learned from the process of going ahead and diving in head first. There were certainly many iterations and years it took to get where we are today, but realising that it all began that day Space and I decided to scribble some pretty mediocire comics in our homework books and papers. Because that is the beauty of comics- The many skill sets, the hats, and challenges that come along with creating them. And how much we've become better at so many things along the way. So if you read this and feel nervous about diving head first into your first comic, I'm here to re-assure you that things will feel tough, but exciting. Things will feel really hard but amazing when you're getting your story out in front of you with such an incredible medium. Webcomics will always be my favourite because of how accessible it is to any skill set. And know in your heart of hearts that there ARE people out that that LOVE to see growth, they love to see the progression of your journey. So get out there and start creating that comic that's occupied your brain for so long, and start breathing that life into your OCs and your world. The only way is up with webcomics, and the only way to start is just by creating now.

[stemmmm]

Stem's Thoughts on Harvest Moon 64

(that other title's too long so i'm cutting it down now)

Harvest Moon 64 opens on a scene of your character walking around the street, speaking to everyone in the village who’s come to the event. You quickly piece together that this event in question is actually your grandfather’s funeral, the same grandfather who’s farm you’re about to take over. This little scene beautifully sets up both the tone of the game, and immediately shows the player that this iteration is far more focused on the story and characters. HM64 tells a story about the lives of many people in a small, dying town. It is a story about life, and it is a story about death.

A short disclaimer before we dig in: I played this game before the idea to write these essays cropped up, and have not replayed it since then, so this will be mostly vibes. I will try to do my research to make sure I’m not straight up lying though. (Also all of the images in this one are from google because I don't have a means of getting images from my N64 other than photographing the tv screen and I'm not doing that.)

What’s new!

HM64, also called Harvest Moon 2 by HMGB2 and nothing else I’ve ever seen, is the direct sequel to HM SNES. It’s not a sequel in the usual way sequels are, where you’re continuing where you left off with the same character, but in that every main character is the descendant of their equivalent in the previous game. It’s not important to the story, in fact if you don’t already know this, you probably wouldn’t notice anything past some similarities. I played this game before I tried out SNES and it still took me a minute, plus having it directly pointed out to me to get it. Maybe I’m oblivious, who knows. 

Gameplay-wise, this iteration is home of a few series firsts: For one, your house can be upgraded to have a kitchen! You can't cook though, only collect recipes. You can also get a greenhouse where you can grow crops year-round. Sheep are introduced as barn animals that produce wool. You receive a fishing rod you can use whenever you want, but as far as I understand, the timing is nigh impossible unless you’re playing on a CRT (I am not, and never managed to catch a single fish). There’s a mine you can access in winter for something to do while you can’t grow crops (there are fall crops, but not winter) where you can find about two key items and garbage otherwise. Tool upgrades are no longer done by magic, but by leveling them up through use! Which I think is very neat and feels very natural, like you’ve just become more proficient with them as a farmer through practice. Characters can now come to visit you on the farm at random times, for either special story events or just to say hi! Your farmer can get sick from working too hard in bad weather, just like your animals, and there’s now medicine for that, just like your animals. And there’s inventory menus that I'll discuss at better length later.

What’s the same is… Most things in a basic sense. You’re on a farm with a dog, planting crops, raising livestock. You can make friends with folks in town by talking to them and giving them gifts. The livestock mechanics, as far as I could see and as far as I’ve been able to understand from online forums, are exactly the same as they were in SNES, the exception being there’s no wild beasts that can kill your animals but they’ll still get sick if they aren’t fenced overnight– and they’re not going to eat any grass unless they’re out overnight anyways.

As for your farm, you’re set up with the usual: a small house, a barn, coop, and fodder silo, a wood bin to store debris cleared off your farm, and a big messy field that you have to clean up before you can properly use it. It starts with three new additions though; a doghouse, a bowl that you can feed your dog with by putting edible items in there, and a mailbox that you’ll occasionally receive letters and notices in! They’re small additions, but very, very charming. The one thing that’s been removed is the toolshed, now replaced by a tiny toolbox by your house.

The world outside your farm is like an enhanced version of the SNES map. Imagine the town and forest now have one or two extra sections tacked onto them, one in the town for some extra housing, and a couple in the forest to let you explore the mountain more and get you deeper into the woods. The mountain still has a cave in it (this time with Harvest Sprites, who have been removed from your farm) and a summit you can climb to for certain events, but it has been upgraded with little wild animals that wander around and can be picked up and shown to people for a few friendship points, if they like the animal. (This applies to your dog too, there’s a well known exploit to max out Karen’s friendship in one day by repeatedly showing it to her in the bar where time is stopped.) The crossroads zone is also expanded by having three new areas you can travel to– the ranch that you buy animals at, a vineyard that’s more of a story-area, and a beach that mostly comes into play for a couple of summer festivals! 

On the visual side, this game is the series’ first venture into the new frontier of 3d graphics… kind of. The artstyle is made of isometric 3D models that are rendered into flat sprites and then projected onto the TV as if that’s not what’s happening. The game even lets you turn your farm around in 3D to face different directions, but it’s locked to only let you play in specific angles. Changing the direction made me forget where everything was and get lost on my own tiny farm, so I never touched that mechanic.

Due to the dramatic artstyle shift– not only being in 3D but also presented at a 45 degree angle, the game becomes a fair bit harder to play than either of its 2D predecessors. The controls are just a little clunky, and the bizarre shape of the N64 controller really doesn’t help. This makes the tedium of farming a little irritating to do, since it requires pretty precise inputs done over and over for every extra thing you’re trying to grow. Fortunately, you're not on the hook to ship everything before 5PM comes around like in SNES, so you get to move a little bit slower. The fickle farming experience also gets a little help from the new inventory menu that can be accessed anywhere and any time. It has multiple inventory slots for both tools and items, each type having a dedicated section so there’s no need to prioritize carrying tools versus turnips. Unfortunately, this actually ends up being a little more cumbersome than useful, as the menu takes a little longer than is comfortable to open and is pretty clunky to use. I mostly avoided it unless I was bringing gifts to people. But the addition of an inventory opens up the opportunity for something else which defines this entire game...

Key items– a set of unique, unsellable items –are most frequently found in random, secret places around the farm and town, and they give you a reason to scour every inch of the place. They can also be given to you by NPCs when you gain relationships with them, which is convenient because their entire purpose is to help you get even better relationships with each of them, and maybe even unlock little stories with characters. For example, there’s a music box you can dig up in your field that can be given to any of the girls for a decently sized relationship bump. There’s also an old weathervane in the shape of a chicken that you can find in the little mine. If you give it to Rick, he’ll tell you that it was a precious thing that belonged to his grandmother as a cute scene to deepen the town’s lore and connect it to the first game. Key items quickly become the most important and sought after things in the game because they act as a vessel to deliver that which the game is all about: stories.

Lots of people in a little town

The narrative premise is exceedingly simple: you need to fix up your grandfather’s ruined farm and make a new life for yourself in this town within a certain amount of time, just like its predecessors. Except, this game is a lot bigger than either of them, and it didn’t fill all the extra space with new things to grow on your farm. In my entry on the SNES game, I mentioned that the introspective style of writing turned the repetitive farming gameplay into something more like meditation on things going on in the town. This game takes that idea and runs with it! The town in this game may only be slightly bigger than it was before, but it has a lot more people in it, and every single one of them has a lot more to say, more to do, more festivals to go to, and more story events to take part in. There's even a new photo album that fills in with images for reaching special events or succeeding at certain festivals! Your given goal may be to successfully revitalize your farm, but that rapidly stops being the reason why you want to play. Farming is only a means to further the narrative of the town.

Story events are no longer a reward for reaching the highest heart level with a girl, but instead something that happens naturally in the world as you make better friends with people, or if you just happen to be in the right place at the right time. The world doesn’t only consist of you living it and things happening to you. Instead, you end up being a fly on the wall to other people’s conversations and life events, and you get to see how those events change the people around you. People will begin to say different things, go different places, live different lives without your input at all– often much better lives, as everyone in the town is pretty deeply troubled, whether they seem like it or not.

There’s an added depth, too. While the characters in this series have always been defined by their conflicts (in the first game, every big cutscene with each girl was exclusively about their major life conflicts), this game takes it further in multiple ways. Characters have conflicts with their families: you as the player have a conflict with your parents who can take you home if you fail to farm well, Lillia and Basil have conflict over their marriage and the fact that Basil leaves for half the year, and Karen’s family situation is…. A lot. Then, there are characters at conflict with things much more nebulous, like the Mayor who tells you that the town is going to die out but he can’t find any way to save it, or like the young boy Kent who wants to be a farmer just like you, but through a series of events is forced to learn that life isn’t so simple, people can’t just do whatever they would like, and it takes very hard work to get to do the things you dream of. And then there are conflicts that aren’t even necessarily conflicts unless they run into your long-term plans.

Instead of only having a bunch of girls in town who exist only as your prospective marriage candidates, there are also five boys in the town who will marry those girls instead of you, if given the chance. Like in SNES, there are 5 levels of hearts that the girls can have for you. Unlike SNES, each one of these hearts has a corresponding event you can have with the girl where there’s a chance of her liking you more afterwards, if you say the right things. In addition to that though, there are just as many events coming from the other side of the story, rival events that trigger if you happen to be good friends with the boys.

My favorite story by far is that of Harris the mailman who falls in love with the librarian, Maria, from just seeing her handwriting on the outside of all the letters that she would write. I frequently saw him in the bar at the end of the day and he would tell me the woes of his love, saying that he just needed to work up the courage to finally speak to her. Then one day, I happened to be outside of the library when he and Maria met face to face and she handed over a letter addressed to him. No longer did he sit in the bar forlorn every night, instead all he would do was excitedly tell me about Maria, and then when I visited the library, Maria would tell me about Harris!

While I’m on the subject of these characters, I think it’s worth going in a little more depth on who these people are past the grandchildren of the characters from the last game. See, you may be familiar with names like Karen and Kai and Gray, etc., etc. from a little recently remade game called Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, which is a modern version of Friends of Mineral Town on the GameBoy Advance, which is a port of Back to Nature on the PlayStation. These are not those characters. At all. While the basic elements of these characters are intact– Popuri is cute and childish, Ann is a workaholic, Maria is shy and a little oblivious –nothing else is the same. They all work different jobs and marry different people than they are paired with in later entries, and in my humble opinion, it all works WAY better in this game, probably because of the fact that these characters were designed for this specific context!

As an example, Popuri’s exasperated mother, Lillia, runs the flower shop and Popuri was named by her father, Basil, who loves plants. She’s childish and sweet and loves flowers, but can also be a complete brat. She eventually marries Gray, Ann’s brother, who lives on the ranch run by his father, Doug, who struggles to understand his children. Gray is an angry young man who seems to have a particular dislike for you, but you don’t learn why until you discover he was a promising young jockey until he got a bad injury and had to give up the sport.

Am I gushing a bit and letting the game design part fall to the wayside? Sure probably, but I can only gush because the game does a brilliant job of making a cast of characters who, while simple on their own, have interconnected lives that come together to give every one of them so much more depth than they would have otherwise. It all builds a narrative, and while narrative design is definitely something different than game design on its own, this game is far more about the narrative so it’s impossible to not focus on.

The problems

The trouble with these events is that I nearly missed the chance to see that letter be exchanged. You have some control over the progression of the events, because you have to be decent friends with the boys in order for them to trigger at all, but unlike the girls who have a handy visual signal of how much they like you, the boys have no such thing, so you can’t really know if a new event is ready to fire off. There’s no way of knowing where or when they’ll happen either unless you look it up, and even then you have to get lucky because sometimes they just don’t trigger when you want them to. I had a lovely moment in my game where I managed to accidentally catch a cold from working too hard in the snow and lost a day to being bedridden, followed by the New Years celebration which takes a day away from you, then followed by Kai and Karen’s wedding– something that I had missed multiple events for and therefore had no idea was coming, which also took a day from me. After that three day chain of no work, I think I was extremely lucky my animals didn’t get sick and die. 

This chain of events led directly to me never speaking to Gray again, even though he was the boy I was most interested in, because I wanted to marry Popuri and there was too much risk of him getting to her before I could. The reason why I didn’t go into more detail about the relationship between those two when I was talking about them earlier is because I straight up don’t know it, I couldn’t risk giving them a chance to get together.

The thing is, even if I hadn’t forced Gray and Popuri’s cutscenes to stop, I still wouldn’t actually know what their relationship is like, because I have not beaten this game. I know what the ending entails and I can reasonably expect I probably would not have gotten an excellent one, but I’m sure it still would have been fine. I stopped playing the game entirely before I even managed to get married. Why? Because I couldn’t get any of Popuri’s heart events to trigger. I had her hearts maxed out and had a blue feather ready to go in my pocket, so I could turn on the game and marry her right away anytime I wanted to. But I wanted to trigger the little events, even if they’re just a couple seconds of some pixels talking to me on a screen. They’re cute. And it made me sad that I couldn’t see them for some imperceptible reason. So I stopped playing and didn’t pick the game back up.

I don’t remember how close I was to the end of the game, I know I was at least in year 2, but I don’t even remember how much longer the game is after that. Probably a good amount. I had definitely gotten most of the events you could get at this point, since multiple other characters had gotten married, and the farming wasn’t something I really enjoyed so I can’t say I wasn’t at least a little bored by this point, but I wasn’t frustrated with the general mechanics of the game. The days were long enough, but not too long, that I had just enough time to go anywhere I wanted and do what I needed before night came. I could still talk to characters and go to festivals and play minigames. But I didn’t want to, because the game wasn’t doing what it seemed like it was supposed to for some arbitrary reason and that frustrated me enough to make me stop. When the fun of a game is found more in experiencing special events rather than anything else, the player feels cheated out of their good time when those events are too hard to find or can be missed outright, and that’s exactly what I experienced.

Parting Thoughts

The ending, according to what I've read, is very similar to the SNES endings, in that you’ll get different results based on all of the different things you’ve done. Whether you’re married, how many crops you shipped, how many animals you have, how well liked you are by the town… I imagine it’s not quite the victory lap that SNES’s ending was with its little cutscenes, since apparently all you get are comments on how well you performed by various people in the town, but it still seems nice and rewarding! At least like more of a reward than whatever the hell GB1 was trying to do. It seems like a perfectly good ending that it would be nice to see myself someday.

Despite all my troubles with this game, I believe HM64 is still the best one out there– at least that I’ve played yet. The events are plentiful and the content is meaty. The repetitive day to day dialogue still has the simple breath of life that SNES did, that manages to make the most out of a small amount. Don’t get me wrong, this game came out in 1999, I’m giving it a lot of praise but the characters still repeat the same line to you every day, and they still freeze in place until you leave the room. It’s revolutionary, but this is comparing it to a game on the literal Super Nintendo. Absolutely pick up this game to try it out, but keep those expectations tempered. That said, I never picked up this game nor knew a thing about it until I was well into my 20’s, but the moment I started playing, it hit me with a wave of nostalgia as if I’d known this game my whole life. At least to me, the look and feel of the game were like coming home to a childhood I never had.

 Will I pick up this game again with the intent to beat it? Maybe! Hard to say for sure when I’m trying to play decades worth of games and write about them at a comprehensive level. What I do know is that this is exactly what I want more farming games to be. It’s a game that has thoughts about life, and about death, both good and bad. And I think this is the perfect context to share those thoughts.

[monstersdownthepath]

Herald of Nethys: The Arcanotheign

CR 15

Neutral Medium Outsider

Inner Sea Gods, pg. 298

As we get closer and closer to the end of Misfits and Monitors Month, here we have the penultimate Neutral Herald, and possibly the most powerful of the Heralds... when she first came out. Like many of the Heralds of the main gods, the Arcanotheign first appeared in an Adventure Path, specifically Serpent's Skull: The Thousand Fangs Below, pg. 82-83, but her case is a special one. You see, whereas most of the Heralds became more consistent or stronger with the clarified vision of their powersets and the consolidation of their abilities into keywords or magic items on their person, the initial release version of the Arcanotheign was incomparably powerful, to the point she could have easily hovered around CR 18 or even CR 20.

She had not one but four at-will abilities tied to her ranged attack that would remove their initial target from the fight instantly (including one that was outright full death by disintegration on a failed save), the ability to ignore any spell or ability that relied on alignment, the ability to heal from both positive or negative energy damage, and an aura which dealt constant damage to everything around her (while healing her as it did so). Capping it all off? Alter Objects, an ability I'm a little sad she didn't get to keep in her reprint; Alter Objects allowed her to freely reshape anything she got ahold of, changing either its shape or the material it was made out of, OR animate it via Animate Object, with basically no limitations as to how dramatically she could reshape it or what material she could turn it into besides A) she can't do both transformations at once; no turning a teddy bear into a sword and no turning a stick into adamantine and then animating it, and B) the transformation always reverted 1 minute later unless she actively concentrated to maintain the effect. It was still a bonkers ability that gave her almost godlike control over her surroundings, especially since she only had to be within 100ft of whatever she was altering. Not even touching it!

Her final iteration in Inner Sea Gods is toned down considerably, to put it mildly. I wish she kept Alter Objects in some fashion, but with the severely compressed space in ISG, I can understand why it was trimmed. She's also lost more than a few of her bells and whistles, including a handful of her spell-likes, which must be especially painful for the servant of the God of Magic! But despite all of these nerfs, ALL of them, she remains one of the most powerful Heralds in the setting. Her might is all the more startling for any fiend or foul element which catches her in her mortal form as a gray-skinned beauty that seems to have a Disney Princess-esque magnetic effect on small animals and children (she's even got +35 to Perform (Sing) checks!) and thinks she'll be easy prey, her energy form exploding from its shell and raining terrible, eldritch energy upon the attacker until they're dead or gone. And then she folds back into her human(ish) form and goes back to playing with the kids, transforming their toys into new shapes to amuse them.

Most of the children visited by the Arcanotheign are blessed with magical genius or even magical power, blooming into casters (especially sorcerers) as they age, but whether the Arcanotheign unlocks these talents or is drawn to people destined to have them is left ambiguous. Planting the seeds for future generations of casters is but one of her duties in service to Nethys, though, the others being "encourage people to use magic" and "destroy anything that tries to stop people from using magic." While most parties would thus not have a reason to get on her bad side (even the most grumbling barbarian can appreciate a magic axe and a healing potion), she unfortunately DOES serve a guy who has the unenviable title of "Mad God," and as such she may be the party's ally--or at least a neutral force--for one session, only to turn on them the next for reasons only her god understands.

She's noted to ask "personal, direct questions" to anyone she's sent to interact with, whether it's to share a vision, heal them, destroy them, or teach them, and though her target will likely never know the reason for her barrage of questions, in truth it's because she wants to know why she was sent there. Why does this particular mortal deserve this blessing or punishment? She wants to know just as much as they likely do! Despite being directly formed from Nethys' will, not even she appears to fully understand it, and most of her free time is spent contemplating the purpose of her existence and her place in creation.

But we're not here for existentialism, are we? I mentioned she may be an ally one day and an enemy the next, so let's see what happens when that happens...

Let's begin with the biggest part of her kit: You're not hurting her with magic. She serves the God of Magic, so casters have to be very clever about how they use their spells against her, because most straightforward tricks simply will not work.

Blindsight out to 60ft and Arcane Sight out to 120ft besides, illusions, invisibility, and other such trickery won't work against her unless they're solidified from shadow magic. She has 31 Spell Resistance, the highest of any Herald besides the Grand Defender (who cheats by having "SR: Infinity"), which typically means a lvl 11~13 caster needs to roll an 18 or higher to affect her with most spells... which then have to contend with her saving throws, which are also higher than most Heralds at +18/+13/+17, which is increased by an additional +2 if the source is any alignment except true Neutral, because she's got ALL FOUR Protection From [alignment] spells on herself constantly. In addition to that, she has 30 Resistance to every element except Force, including a heretofore unseen 30 Resistance against typeless divine damage from effects such as Flame Strike and Hellfire Ray, and other, more esoteric spells and abilities, all but assuring those otherwise fairly reliable damage sources cannot harm her even if she fails her saving throw.

Able to resist every element, the Arcanotheign can also throw out consistent elemental damage in return. She's surrounded on all sides by a 30ft Energy Channel Aura, which... which in ISG is a little ambiguous in its function; in the original Adventure Path printing, the aura was always active unless the Herald shut it off and dealt automatic damage constantly to any target she desired like a proper aura, but in ISG the aura's wording has been changed considerably and seems to require the magical avatar's standard action to use, like a proper Channel Energy from a Cleric. This is supported by the fact she has the Command Undead feat but no normal ability to channel energy, but in my mind, a meager 2d6 damage (of Fire, Cold, Acid, OR Electricity, mind) is too pathetic to justify the use of her standard action, so I personally choose to believe the aura is constantly pinging every enemy inside (Will DC 26 halves) and she can switch which element is flaring out at will. If you want to add some extra spice, you can give her back her ability to also deal positive or negative energy damage with her aura.

It depends on how you want to run it, I suppose. I know I like automatic damage!

There IS an important bit here: this damage is tacked on to her two incorporeal touch attacks without offering a save to resist them. These attacks deal 4d6 untyped damage and 2d6 extra energy damage depending on what her aura is tuned to, but unlike many Heralds, she really, really doesn't want to get into melee to do that. Despite her considerable defenses against magic of any sort, she's actually got the least AC of any Herald at 27, and lacks ANY form of DR or protection from weapon attacks besides the fact she's incorporeal. Side note: This also means spells which deal physical damage affect her, provided they can pierce or ignore her monstrous SR.

Her full suite of Protection From [alignment] spells means she can't be touched by any summoned creature with an alignment and her 60ft of perfect flight gives her some evasion, but that does little to dissuade the Rogue and Fighter getting Fly and speeding up to her. She doesn't even have Dispel Magic to end such effects, which is a little weird and surprising to me. What she DOES have, however, is her Eldritch Blast, a pair of ranged touch attacks she can unleash at will which deal 1d10+her Chari-- whoops hold on, wrong game, 4d6 untyped damage as ranged touch attacks, and her blasts have one of three additional effects she can tack on which can be resisted with a DC 26 save (what kind of save depends on the effect). These effects are already bad, but a character who fails two saves against the Eldritch Blast effects in the same round suffers a debilitating status ailment instead.

The effects are:

Fortitude: Every round for 10 rounds, the affected creature teleports 5ft in a random direction at the end of their turn, potentially ruining any positioning they were trying to get going. If a creature is struck by this blast twice and fails both saves, they're shunted into a Maze automatically.

Reflex: The blast deals an extra 2d6 Fire damage. Failing two saves instead causes the victim to catch fire, taking 1d6 Fire damage a round every round from there on out until they use a full-round action to put it out.

Will: The blast confuses the creature for 1 minute. Failing two saves causes permanent insanity.

Functionally, targeting Will is typically her best bet and Reflex is barely worth considering; confusion has a 75% chance to neuter or entirely remove someone's turn, though one shouldn't sleep on what she does to people with low Fortitude saves. She's got Cloudkill at 3/day and is immune to poison, allowing her to cast it directly on her own position to gradually wear away at the party's Constitution and thus lowering their ability to resist being booped around or shunted into Mazes, removing them from the battle and leaving the rest of the party open to her shenanigans.

This is actually one of the most heavily nerfed parts of her kit, because her original incarnation in The Thousand Fangs Below, where her Eldritch Blasts could also choose to tack on 10 bleed damage (failing two saves instantly killed the target), paralyze the victim for a round (failing two saves inflicts a minutes-long Slow effect), and the Fire damage was doubled in every respect. She's also lost both Cone of Cold and Fireball, but she's managed to hold onto the reliable Lightning Bolt and Telekinesis (both 3/day) at least!

And you know what else she has? Both Heal and Harm at 1/day... and Limited Wish 1/day, with all the toolbox potential that comes with it. Though neither lore blocks presented offer it as a possibility, Limited Wish can mimic any Wizard spell of 6th level or lower, and Contingency falls into that bracket. Imagine finally catching the Arcanotheign off-guard, grounding her and beating her down to 10 HP... only to have a Contingency she prepared a week ago go off, instantly casting Cure Critical Wounds on her and restoring enough of her health bar to let her get a Heal off next turn (or, if the DM wants to be generous and round up, letting her just prepare a contingent Heal). The other options aren't much better, as she has both Greater Teleport/Teleport and Plane Shift available as emergency escape buttons, and those are just what she's got on her own sheet! With access to the minds of some of the greatest mages in the universe in Nethys' home realm in the Maelstrom, she can get a scroll of a wand of almost any spell in existence (which her +28 to UMD means she can easily use) to either prepare ahead of time with Contingency, or simply use as required.

It's almost a relief that she serves one of the more unstable gods, and is thus just as likely to be sent on some meaningless nothing task as she is an important and destructive one. Most of the time, she doesn't really need her magic because of how debilitating her Eldritch Blasts can be; knowing that she has a blank check in the form of Limited Wish almost feels like unnecessary overkill... which makes the actual Theme Finale of this month all the funnier.

You can read more about her here.

[contritecactite]

Radio Omens time!! Strap in for my subjective personal opinions made by one person about the full-cast radio adaptation of Good Omens.

We're gonna begin with: I am blowing kisses to the scripting/editing/production team. This thing is an impeccable adaptation. Im-pecc-a-ble. The voice talent is fantastic, the energy is stellar, the pacing is excellent, and the sheer amount of atmospheric info they managed to translate into radio-friendly format? Mwah mwah mwah. I think it's the kind of listening format that's not for everyone, but it is SO for me.

Time for some specific highlights! It was a long day so we're a little extra silly this time. It's also long and not in a reasonable order.

(Ok good my page cut is working this time.)

- Good GOD I forgot the primary voices were Like That. I shrieked (happily) as soon as Aziraphale's mouth opened. This is why I travel alone /hj

-- (Incidentally, I said "oh fuck holy shit I can't do this" when Crowley started talking, but I did it anyway *sighs in bisexual*)

- Hheeeennghsh the opening scene in Eden is. The way it's written successfully sets up who Aziraphale and Crowley are, who they're supposed to be to each other, and a hint at who they're going to be to each other later because they are SO delightfully snippy at one another in this scene. Aziraphale's "oh, it's you" and Crowley's "mmhm, yeah, well done on keeping demons away. Bravo" (heavily paraphrased) will be living rent-free in my head until I have time to write a fic about it.

- So, having Aziraphale do the early narration is an excellent way of setting the tone. What I need you to do, if you've only done tv omens (which is so so valid and I think really is another excellent adaptation), is remember Aziraphale's magician persona. And then imagine him being that for the entire story. The pitch, the rate of speech, the slightly frantic energy, the drama: it's all just part of his overarching character in radio omens, and it's SO good for storytelling.

- Radio Crowley knows what's in all of Aziraphale's infamous Bibles so well that he can quote them. I love this detail, I love it as a means of establishing their relationship during their "let's be godfathers" scene, and I love how hard he's ribbing poor Aziraphale about the extra verses in Genesis.

- Radio Crowley is SO like... tender? I mean, all Crowleys are to some extent Soft but something about this one has just a little extra something. I love the way he talks about his temptations and shenanigans. He's so proud. It eases what could feel like needless exposition because he really seems to like explaining his process.

- That's a bit of the same of what I mean about Aziraphale's personality. Since he's very obviously inclined to dramatize a story, exposition just fades neatly into his character rather than grating on the nerves.

- They reference The Arrangement a lot and usually with a great deal of affection. There's one particular time when they even acknowledge something about wanting to protect each other.

- I adore the way Anathema and her ties to Agnes are introduced. It's so concise but meaningful, and it's just the right amount of setup for her character appearing later.

- The baby swap scene in other iterations relies so much on descriptive narrative or visual language, but you know what? The heavily trimmed down version also works surprisingly well.

- Crowley knows about the hellhound way beforehand (and, of course, he tells Aziraphale. They plan their roles for the party years in advance, which is an extremely efficient way of communicating about that scene to the listener).

- At Warlock's party in the book, Crowley gets all suspicious about a gerbil being gifted to him. In the radio drama, Aziraphale wonders aloud if the gerbil might be suspicious and Crowley tells him not to be stupid. Just struck me as a funny thing to shuffle around.

- Adult radio Anathema is everything to me actually.

- Poor Newt's childhood gets skipped over (unless I missed it, which is possible), but I liked his adult introduction as well; it brings in the whole Witchfinder-adjacent cast at once and makes it super clear how they all know each other without lingering.

- Shadwell. Just. The actor's voicework is so evocative of someone who is very gesturally expressive. There's no way he wasn't swinging his hands around in the recording space.

- The Them are all 100% perfect. Shout-out to Adam for that mind-rending scream that I was not expecting to go on for so long. Interestingly, in chapter credits, the Them are not grouped with the humans! This makes sense, but it also made my brain go !!!

- The horsepeople (both original and extra) were also so good, and that chunk of the cast gave the impression of good chemistry, so the scenes were really fun.

- Crowley says Aziraphale's name a lot. A lot a lot. Actually, most people do; probably for simplicity's sake, there's no "Mr. Fell," or "Nanny Ashtoreth," just "Mr. Aziraphale" and "Mr. Crowley."

- Well, Shadwell does say "Mr. A," and there is a Brother Francis.

- One of Nanny's rules for Warlock is "don't talk to the creepy gardener" rkahjdjs Crowley what is wrong with you

- I did in fact let out another sound when the Nanny voice happened. We're not talking about it.

- When applying for the jobs, Aziraphale just straight up calls dibs on gardener and Crowley complains and says something like "can you see me in a skirt?" and Aziraphale just pulls a date at random on which he'd seen Crowley in a skirt. This was probably also in the book, but I noticed it here and didn't there.

- Crowley's idea of something calming to listen to was a radio gardening talk show ;~; and he likes listening to televangelists for the lulz (I have never used that phrase before in my life but I'm keeping it)

- Having him hear Aziraphale possessing the televangelist was absolute genius for keeping the plot cohesive.

- Seance scene continues to be painful ahahaha...

- Hell's emissaries know that Aziraphale was discorporated and they're mean to Crowley about it in a way that implies Hell has long been aware that they're working together. Intriguing...

- There's mention at some point about how no homes in Tadfield have PlayStations or Xboxes, and I think that's a cool bit of writing to establish the time period (along with Newt bricking smartphones, which I think was said at least in breadcrumbs).

- Almost forgot, but Mr. Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett being the policemen trying to book Crowley for speeding in the beginning is so cute.

- When Satan is about to show up, Aziraphale worrying about everyone else and Crowley going "and me!" like hello, I am also in danger, that's my boss?? if u even care?? was SO funny in this version to me.

- Look, there were a lot more things, but it's already been several hours since it ended, so I'm sure I'm forgetting many.

- Oh! Pepper's backstory being transformed into her speech to Adam was SO good on so many levels. It really drove home that Adam does love his friends, it deepened their lore gradually, it made Adam's role and decisions very clear, and it also struck me as "Pepper says trans rights" even if that wasn't the intention, so hell yeah.

- The gag reel leads me to believe that Peter Serafinowicz is A) probably the funniest person alive to work with and B) extremely relatable due to the amount of time spent on the struggle bus. Also whoever put the breaking glass sound over all the accidental swears, I love you forever.

[hairupintheair]

Trolls Band Together Commentary Notes Part 3/4

- Zosia Mamet's performance of 9 to 5 was longer than what made it into the movie, but the rest of it made it onto the soundtrack. - The Hustle moment originally came later, after the group found Clay. They wanted a way to move the plot to Mount Rageous quickly. It was decided to push it to earlier because the later scene was a more serious tone so it didn't fit there. - The idea for the Hustle-verse was that they were sliding through different dimensions to travel faster, and each one would be a different art style, especially 60's and 70's animated art styles. - Viva's design is supposed to be like a superhero, with a chest emblem and a cape. She was originally a more stoic, warrior-like character and then somewhere down the line they decided they wanted her to be more energetic and eventually defined her as being "more Poppy than Poppy." - The Bergen mini golf course idea was originally thought up during the first movie, as one of Gristle and Bridget's dates, before they finally settled on the roller skating rink. They decided to bring back the idea for the third movie. - Commentary quote: "Those are the best looking french fries in CGI history. They should have loaded Rhonda up with those fries and taken them with them." - Producer Gina Shay REALLY wanted the joke about Clay's room being the little shack/admin building and she had to fight the studio hard to keep it in the movie, because they didn't think it was funny. - There was constant pushback from many of the crew against Poppy having a sister too, thinking it would feel too contrived with Branch and his brothers already being the core plot of the movie. Many, many notes were sent around, all suggesting they drop Viva from the movie. But they were firm and adamant about Viva staying and they ignored all the suggestions to take her out. Her involvement in the plot allows Poppy to see from Branch's point of view, about family being complicated, and also allowed them to have a moment when Branch supports Poppy like she supports him (outside the golf course gates). - Poppy leaving her scrapbook at the gate was supposed to tell the audience that Poppy is not abandoning the new sister she just found. She planned to come back afterwards, once Floyd was safe. - Everyone working on the movie worked very hard on finding a balance for V&V, making them antagonists but still likeable. It wasn't easy and the two characters went through many iterations before they finally found what worked. - V&V are purposely a dark mirror to the protagonists, showing what happens when siblings don't work through their problems and respect their differences, as the Trolls learned to do.

[but-a-humble-goon]

As someone looking to finally try the DMC franchise, figured you were the person to ask. Where do you recommend starting? It is cool to just jump in at 5 or get the HD collection and start with 1?

Depending on your tolerance level for older, sometimes archaic games I say start with 1, that's what I did. DMC iterates on itself with every game so playing them in order is the best way to acclimate yourself. The first game is kinda different and weird, the template for what DMC would become is there but it hasn't really been fleshed out yet. The combat is certainly crunchy and satisfying but it lacks the depth of the later games and the story is firmly on the 'Jill Sandwich' so bad it's good level of cringe. All the same it's a beloved charming classic for a reason and it's worth giving it a shot. Though do not be afraid to just look shit up. DMC2 is one of the worst sequels ever made, do not even play it as a joke. DMC3 is the shit. It's the game that defined Devil May Cry (and basically the entire spectacle fighter genre). It takes all the things that worked about DMC1 and builds on it. The combat's much tighter and has a whole bunch more variety and mechanical depth and they decided to take the unintentional goofiness of the first game and go "hey, what if we sorta leaned into it and made it DELLIBERATELY cheesy and stupid?" which is perhaps the best creative decision the franchise ever made. DMC4 is... very good but also very flawed. It took the combat even further, refining it to an absolute bleeding edge but it also pretty much totally runs out of budget halfway through which leads to a lot of copypasted content and frustrating gimmicky level design. It also added a whole new protagonist who is a somewhat lame angsty emo edgelord who didn't really do it for people the way loveable goofball Dante did, but it's still at least got plenty of the all important cheese factor. If you really feel like playing the DMC reboot, as a game it's perfectly fun and functional and I certainly enjoyed my time with it but the characters and tone are just completely repellant to me. DMC5 is the best one. By far. In every regard. It's... genuinely kind of hard to put into words just how good DMC5 is actually. It's so good it legit left the fanbase asking how there could possibly be a DMC6 when this game cannot be improved on. It perfects everything that came before and then it somehow keeps drilling in new notches to kick it up and finding whole new dials to crank to eleven. Even the story basically feels like someone sat down and went "okay, how can we satisfyingly pay off the entire ongoing story of this whole franchise and even retroactively make everything that came before better all in one go?" and then nobody was allowed to leave that room alive until they succeeded.

[crying-over-cartoons]

INTRODUCING:

The Elemental Serpentine AU!

In this AU, each Serpentine species is getting reworked! They're all getting new, more varied designs, and I'll be making a lot of new species to align with each elemental power in the show!

I'm also reworking much of the lore surrounding Serpentine, since what we are given is inconsistent, and quite vague.

As of now, I have new designs for each of the Serpentine species that appear in the show! Designs for new species to go with the missing elements will come later.

Please note that this AU is a work in progress; the designs I have here are subject to change!

Details about each species are included under the cut~~~

GENERAL AU STUFF

I decided that I want all of my Serpentine to have tails, instead of just the generals. If they have legs, they end up looking more like anthro lizards than anthro snakes. I'll let them keep the arms, though.

In the show, the Serpentine are covered in intricate details. As nice as these details are, they make it difficult to draw Serpentine in 2D. So, more for my own sanity than anything else, the patterns are getting toned down.

CONSTRICTAI - EARTH

I genuinely hate a lot of aspects of the canon design for the Constrictai. Their non-existent necks and random spikes make them look more like horrible little dinosaur gnomes than snakes. For my design, I let them keep the spikes, but moved them so they weren't sticking straight up out of their head. Most important of all, I gave them necks.

Inspiration: Boa constrictor

HYPNOBRAI - MIND

In spite of how it may seem, I did not remove this species' hood! Real snakes with hoods only 'hood up' as a threat display. I decided to incorporate this into my AU. It's not visible here, but my design has false eyes on the back of the hood. I noticed that the original design has snakes in the patterns, so I've incorporated that in a few places. I think I may have gone too far with simplifying their design, so we'll see how it changes as I continue to iterate.

Inspiration: Spectacled cobra

VENOMARI - POISON

This one has received some of the biggest changes in the AU. I felt the Venomari's extra eyes looked quite out of place in my new lineup, since it would be the only one out of a now larger number of species to have four eyes, so I lowered the number to two. I don't like the original colour scheme all that much, so I decided to take a page out of the poison dart frog book and make them bright and varied in colour. They can have a variety of colours and patterns. Like the Hypnobrai, the Venomari have a hood that can't be seen in this image.

Inspiration: African bush viper

FANGPYRE - FORM

I changed the shape of the head pretty drastically, but the colours are the same, even if the pattern is different.

Inspiration: Coral snake

ANACONDRAI - LIGHT

The colour-changing ability of the Anacondrai is so underutilized that I literally forgot about it until I started rewatching the show with my brother, so I've decided to make it more prominent. In this AU, Anacondrai change colour as a method of communication and expression. They can also change their colour to disappear, just like in the show.

Inspiration: Green anaconda, RainWings from the book series Wings of Fire

VERMILLION - FUSION

Each of the Serpentine are born or hatched without visible limbs, appearing as ordinary snakes to the untrained eye. While most species undergo a metamorphosis at a young age, emerging with two limbs, Vermillion do not, and remain in a larval state for their entire lives.

Inspiration: Garter snake, axolotl

MAARAY - WATER

According to the fan wiki for Ninjago, these guys are supposed to be eels, but I thought they were Serpentine when watching the show, and they have the same head model as some of Aspheera's lackeys, so I've made the executive decision to make them Serpentine in this AU.

Inspiration: Yellow-lipped sea krait

[randomlywanderingmoth]

Tam Lin Bedivere: Appearance and Behavior

Second Ascension first, as that is who you will see the most:

THE FAERIE KNIGHT OF AUTUMN

Her armor is the first thing you'll see. White, like polished bone, or ashen wood, polished angles- reminiscent of the armor of a certain Lion King of Camelot.

That usually includes the helmet- except that, after certain events in A Different Faerie Britain, that helmet was irreversibly destroyed in a clash at Londinium.

Lacking her helmet, the second thing you'll note then is her face. Said face is... distinctly familiar. With her gleaming hazel eyes, she looks so much like the female iteration of the Last Master of Humanity. Her autumn hair is brushed roughly out of her face and otherwise left quite wild, and if the aura she gives off does not give away her fae nature the pointed tips of her ears will.

The third thing to note is the armor of her right arm- jarringly rounded in comparison to the angular nature of the rest of her armor, ribbon-like gold coils up from the tips of her fingers, up to her shoulder, looking not unlike a prosthetic.

Those coils can unfurl at her will- usually to form a sword in her hand, but she can also command them about like homing darts, skewering threats at range. She can also command them to flatten out and weave patterns, such as to form a near-unbreakable shield, or ride them like a surfboard across the sky.

Behaviorally, the Autumn Knight is cold and stern... unless she knows you well. To those with whom she is not on a direct name basis, Tam Lin Bedivere is professional. Polite as the situation calls, and even courteous, but her expression is near-unchanging. A joke among the knights of Morgan's Camelot was that it took a fortress-breaking strike to get her to open up, given that outside of the Tam Lin and Her Majesty she only turned casual in the presence of Woodwose. The joke was later galvanized and taken more seriously after she was seen commiserating at the Ball at Gloucester with the knight that was responsible for shattering her helmet. That is not to say she is of boundless patience- challenge her loyalty, or threaten the wellbeing of those she would protect, and she could snap to violence in a heartbeat.

Casually, the Autumn Knight has an inexplicable charisma to her. Her tones soften and brighten, and she has this perpetually amicable presence. And yet, this gentleness seems dulled, somewhat- like it had been blunted over the course of two thousand years. She also becomes far more impulsive, her words turning more casual, her demeanor far more fae-like. She will gently chide misbehavior, and playfully chuckle at jokes, and... it becomes far more understandable that she might be mistaken for the Last Master of Humanity, when her guard is down.

Of course, it is important to remember her loyalty. If Her Majesty gave her an order, she would follow it almost without fail or reservation, and seemingly without consideration for self-preservation. Likewise, as a Servant, her loyalty is near-absolute to her Master.

First Ascension comes second.

THE FAERIE SQUIRE OF THE SAVIOR AESC

A vastly different individual from the cold and stern Autumn Knight. Her armor is softer too- as though forged of polished silver, it looks as though she'd appropriated the armor of a certain loyal knight of Camelot. Indeed, her armor is highly reminiscent of the knight Bedivere, of Pan-Human history. Her hair is also reminiscent of the Last Master of Humanity, shorter, neater, and tied up in a side-ponytail with the stems of a few yellow flowers.

Her demeanor is clumsier, brighter. She gets names wrong by accident, and apologizes for it. This Tam Lin is far more likely to be found cracking corny jokes, or laughing freely at a prank- as long as the pranks do not go horribly wrong. Honestly, if you dressed her up, hid her pointed ears, and instructed her behavior for only a few days, she could easily pass for Fujimaru Ritsuka.

Her handling of her gold-coil sword is similarly clumsier. Unlike her later iterations, she struggles to command it freely- and is far more likely to settle it as a sword. She certainly does not have the elegance to freely draw the coils from her arm and send them dancing like arrows through the sky. There are times when she clumps it messily together, and swings it recklessly like the world's most ostentatious club, but those moments are rare and not to be spoken of in good company (she gets embarrassed of her lack of grace in combat.)

Third Ascension.

...

"This is what you wanted, isn't it?"

"That's why you kept making me stronger."

"You wanted me to remember, is that it?"

Her expression is cold to most. To the Last Master of Humanity, her demeanor is somewhere between bitterness and pity. Her hair is managed now, brushed down and neat, and she is clearly dressed in Fujimaru Ritsuka's old Mystic Code, the Chaldea standard uniform. White shirt with belts, black skirt. The gold coils circle around her now, no longer bound to her arm. Like this, her True Name is rather obvious, even to her.

The girl who forgot.

The faerie who remembered.

The Master No Longer.

She'd forgotten the home she could no longer return to, the world that was no longer hers.

And now she's remembered it all.

"... what, do you really want me to shed this title? There are two names. One I held once, for something like twenty years. The other I've carried proudly for two thousand, four hundred. As far as I care to declare it, Tam Lin Bedivere is my True Name. You can keep your name, I already have my own."

"Are you happy with yourself, then?"

[luxmoogle]

for the swanlake!au why do you think Riku would fit better as Odette? I woud love to know you’re thought process because both Riku and Sora could work for different reasons. If you feel like it, could you also talk about why sora would work as Odette too or why he fits the role of prince better? Keep up the good work!!

For me it comes down to the vibes, it feels right to me to have Sora as the prince and Riku as the swan and not the other way around. BUT. If we dig deeper into why I feel so, it comes down to the canon characterization of the characters.

Sora has a lot of royalty symbolism in his character, the crown, being depicted sitting on thrones, sporting more gold tones (versus Riku who as far as I remember has only ever had cool metals on him) even the shoulder pauldrons he has in KH2 have a royal knight type of air about them. Sora also being the more dominant personality, a headstrong extrovert, leading man and hero type, make him more fitting to be the brash prince imo. Sora's overall moveset is more "macho", especially in KH1 where he hangs low and very heavily swings the keyblade around almost like a claymore instead of a sword.

Rikus foundations have instead always been more elegant, many of his initial fighting moves being inspired by ballet, the long hair and half skirt, the more reserved and evasive character. Especially early on in the series Riku has a tendency to hide and run from his problems and feelings instead of confronting them head on, and I think that's more in line with the more cautious swan being approached by the prince.

Admittedly by KH3 their roles have somewhat switched between them and a lot has shifted in their characters, so their later iterations would possibly fit the other way around, but that's a whole other essay and I'll leave it at that.

...and as a more superficial reason, Riku's silver hair with the aesthetic of the swan fits so nicely (♡-_-♡)

[cherryrogers]

What about for cmb the group taking a weekend trip to the beach or something? Bucky sees her in her swimsuit and he’s shirtless and she’s 👀👀👀 and they’re very cute.

this ask is literally from over a year ago but here we are. cmb drabble time let’s go!!! (i wrote this literally months ago and forgot to post it but we ball 🫡)

x

Truthfully, you would’ve never guessed that the gang found enjoyment in a trip to the beach during summer. If the fact they were constantly in leather jackets and complaining when the temperature raised even slightly above 80 degrees told you anything, it’s that they’d much prefer to spend a warm summer’s day under the shade in the clubhouse garden, sipping on cold beers and actively trying not to catch any rays.

But one morning, you woke up in Bucky’s bed, as usual, except you also had Peggy standing over you like a sleep paralysis demon (a pretty one, obviously), and you forced yourself to squint open your eyes.

“Up and at ‘em, _____, come on!” She chirped, tossing a black bikini at your face. “We’re going to the beach.”

Groaning, you reached an arm out of the duvet, picking up the top garment and holding it up to inspect. “This could literally fit a build-a-bear.”

“Well it’s your size, and I told you you might need a swimsuit for the summer. Of course, I knew you wouldn’t bother buying one, so I got you one. You’re welcome,” Peggy said. She had a duffel bag over her shoulder, likely filled with enough sun cream to protect a whole group of bikers from the Friday heatwave. “Plus, I thought Bucky would appreciate it.”

You scoffed, flinging the top at your friend. “You’re so weird. Please focus on what your own boyfriend would appreciate, thanks.”

Peggy just chuckled, giving you a wink. “You’ll thank me later.”

***

After setting down your beach towel and quickly rubbing some sun cream down your arms and legs, you plonked down on the towel and tugged off your tank top, about to apply some more to the rest of your skin.

The beach wasn’t so busy, since people were at work and kids were in school, so the gang set themselves up on a nice spot in the middle of long expanse of sand. Natasha was quick to put up a parasol and make sure she was completely in the shade. Sam and Clint had put down their towels and already started on the snacks that were meant to last them a good few hours. Steve was rubbing sun cream on Peggy’s shoulders while she leaned over a book, thick black sunglasses sitting on the bridge of her nose.

Next to you, Bucky already had his shirt off, laying idly under the sun with his eyes shut. Well, you thought they were shut, until your heard a wolf whistle from behind you.

You turned your head, and sure enough, Bucky was eyeing you. You snorted. “You literally see me naked, like, every day.”

“So? I can appreciate your divine beauty, with or without clothes.”

“Divine beauty. Thanks, Shakespeare, ” You snorted, passing him the bottle of sun cream. “Do my back?”

The biker took the bottle, popping it open and squeezing a fair amount into his hand. He sat up behind you, starting to rub the cream between your shoulder blades. Then down your spine, and lastly just above the waistband of your shorts. He finished with a pinch to your waist, to which you reacted by dodging the kiss he tried to plant on your neck after.

***

To iterate, you’re not the jealous type. Being jealous implies some insecurity on the jealous person’s part, and you weren’t insecure when it came to Bucky, because you knew you had him wrapped around your finger.

But there’s a group of girls a few feet away, lounging under a parasol and giggling while looking directly at him, and frankly, you wanted to climb on top of him and show them who he belonged to.

He’s blissfully unaware, almost asleep under the sun. And it’s obvious why he has some ogling eyes; his tattoos are all on show, and the sun is casting light on his large arms and toned abdomen.

It’s Natasha who says what you’re thinking: “Looks like you have some admirers, Barnes.”

“And a guard dog.” Clint adds with a snort, looking directly at you.

You grab an empty plastic cup and chuck it at Clint’s head. “Call me a dog again, Barton. It’ll be a beer bottle next time.”

“The fuck are you guys talking about?” Bucky asks, still lying down with his eyes shut. The sun seems to make him tired; it’s rather endearing.

“Gaggle of giggling girls at three o’clock.” Peggy grins, pointing to the right of Bucky. He follows the woman’s hand, while you just want the ground to swallow you up. If Bucky even suspects you’re having a jealous moment, he won’t let you hear the end of it.

The girls don’t make an effort to be subtle, even when Bucky catches them looking. He turns his head to look at you, and the smirk that grows on his lips is telling enough of what he’s thinking.

“I don’t wanna hear it, Bucky.”

“You know, I really never thought I’d see the day—”

“No—”

“You’re jealous aren’t you, sweets?”

“I’m not jealous.” You insist, but Bucky only stares at you patiently, and you can’t help but crack under his gaze. You huff.

“They’re ogling you, Bucky. as if… as if you’re a piece of meat! It’s inappropriate.”

Bucky scoffs, though he sits up and moves to snake an arm around your waist, making goosebumps appear on your skin even under the hot sun.

“Then they can ogle at this instead.” He says quietly, before pulling you close and landing his lips on yours, and who are you to even think about pushing him away?

Your hand instinctively lifts to his jaw, caressing it with your thumb while he digs his fingers into the skin above the waist and of your shorts. You’ve never been one for PDA, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and making sure everyone on the beach knows that Bucky is all yours (for now, anyway) certainly calls for desperate measures.

“Jesus. There’s kids on this beach, you know.” You hear Natasha tease behind you, and you chuckle as you pull back, lips swollen and heart beating a bit faster than it was only seconds ago.

[iamheretemporarly]

Alright yall are getting my good ol tmnt iteration and my new obsession rn

Ok so

Teenage mutant ninja turtles: Land over water"

(first of all i wanna thank @lieutenantbiscute cause she was such a help in making this)

The reason behind the name of the au originated from the species of the turtles

These guys are tortoises in this, bot turtles, so by nature they'd prefer land over water.

Here's the species of each turtle

LEONARDO:

A pancake tortoise

He is the shortest and smallest but he's also the eldest, he's chill most of the time, but worries too when in mother hen mode, he's the medic and leader but donnie is also secondary medic when leo is out of commission, he's got sass and a cain instinct

DONATELLO :

He's an elongated tortoise

he's the second eldest, he's the genius and secondary medic of the fam, he makes the medicine that leo uses, he's a worry worm, anxious, but also calm and collected when needed to be

MICHAELANGELO:

He's a Russian tortoise

He's the middle child, very funny and laid back, doesn't take stuff seriously but mostly to hide the fact that he's worried or scared, optimistic and a jokester

RAPHAEL:

He's a galapagos tortoise

Yes he is the youngest, yet he's still a hot head, but a bit toned down because he's so damn huge based on his specie

He likes to make fun if leo for his height a lot and calls him "fearless pancake", he's snarky, sassy and sarcastic but also affectionate and caring

---

As for splinter, i kind of swapped the whole thing

In this au the backstory of the hamato family goes like this:

Gamato yoshi the heaf of the hamato clan and Tang shen get together and have a beautiful baby girl named Miwa and years later adopt a little boy named saki

Saki and miwa are pretty close siblings, however jealousy sparked in between

You see, when it came to the art of ninjitsu, miwa aways proved to be better than saki in evry single way

And saki was jealous, however that jealousy burned into hatred when on the night their father was to choose a new head of the hamato clan, he chose miwa

And on the same night, the dark truth of his origins belonging to the foot clan that got wiped by the clan that raised him

He was angry, jealous and vengeful

He manipulated the hamto clan into his favour, and those who refused got killed

Tang shen didn't survive

Hamato yoshi did barely

And karai managed to escape to new york

But

Before she did she had to pay a cost

The hamato family had a chemical business on the side, and in her fight against her brother he used the ooz against her, little did he know that she had her four pet tortoise tots on her, who also got splashed by the ooze

She got mutated into a snake while her tortoises mutated into more humanoid looks

In new york she took shelter in the sewers and changed her name into karai

She raised her boys and taught them the art of ninjitsu, and down the road she'd teach them the spiritual arts

Bits that's a story for another day :)

---

Yeah, splinter in this is karai instead of yoshi, yoshi is the turtles grandpa that they don't know is alive and assumed him dead he's also blind btw

Saki or the shredder is karai's brother instead of father

[pricechecktranslations]

the heavenly yard blog infomine, part 3: Re_Birthday, making Servant of Evil, more karaoke, surprise Luka

Yada yada, these are not translations, yada yada

Blog link for anyone who missed it the first time

14 December 2008 ~ 30 January 2009

---December 2008---

14th

-mothy is making a Len song for the Kagamine's anniversary but he doesn't think he'll have it done on time.

24th

-he has the song done, but he doesn't think he'll get the video done in time. he's been quite busy

27th

-appropriately, the Len song he uploaded for the Kagamine birthday is Re_Birthday.

-He didn't have time to recruit illustrators for this one so he just made the art and video himself.

29th

-mothy provides a bit more commentary on Re_Birthday, how it's sort of a compilation of the songs he's made until now. The "Re" in the title sort of references Regret Message, making it an answer song to it, in a way (in addition to just plain old "Rebirth").

-He wishes he'd been more prepared, there was a lot more he wanted to do with the song (like add in other VOCALOIDS, something he does do in later editions of the song might I add). It's taking him longer and longer to make songs now, before it used to only take him like 3-4 days.

-He replies to comments. Someone asks if he's going to collaborate with Shimoda from Piapro (Asami Shimoda, I think?), which he isn't sure will happen. Another person brings up how Rin is singing alongside Len at points in Re_Birthday.

-2008's been a good year for him

31st

-mothy does a roundup of all the songs he's uploaded this year, sharing his thoughts on listening to them now.

-10ML he thinks sounds pretty bad, but it's also his first song so he still likes it. Wordplay feels like a "trial and error" type work to him. Clockwork Lullaby is something he was really proud of making so it struck him that it didn't get popular--it was around this point he really wanted to make something that got big on NicoNico. He's made a remake of it that, to him, sounds totally different.

-Daughter of Evil is naturally his big hit, and it sounds very unique among the songs he's made. Servant of Evil he says feels like it's "walking on its own"--he admits he was trying to replicate the success of Daughter of Evil, to an extent, though he had fun making it and he's proud of it with all its ups and downs. He wants to surpass it someday. Regret Message on the other hand he feels he's improved a bit on his VOCALOID voice mixing (or at least he did it better accidentally). It seems to be an audience favorite.

-For Girl of the Miniature Garden he basically says that the Clockwork Lullaby series is to stretch his skills with song types he's not good at, and he doesn't think the instrumentals are as good. Still, he found Miku easy to use and he'd like to use her again. He did remasters of Daughter and Servant of Evil with RinLen act 2, which he didn't hugely care for, but he does think he learned something useful doing it.

-He was originally going to call Tale of Abandonment on a Moonlit Night "Inokori Doubutzuen(Zoo Detention)", and the lyrics were apparently much darker? Then he changed the subject matter to be about Hansel and Gretel (he writes Gretel as GLAY☆TERU, not sure what that means). Someday he'd like to do "Zoo Detention", but milder. As for South North Story, he learned a lot during the collaboration and surprised himself by making something so upbeat and positive.

-Re_Birthday borrows motifs from previous songs, of course. Originally it was going to have the melody for Servant and Daughter of Evil in its interlude. And he thinks he made the low tones in the mix too weak. And, in generally, he'd like to try making something new next year.

-Also replies to some comments, only relevant one is that he does allow iterative works of his songs.

---January 2009---

1st

-mothy wishes his readers a happy new year and expresses his intentions to talk about the making of Servant of Evil in commemoration of his karaoke success.

-he replies to comments, which--again, because I'm not seeing what he's replying to, I can't really summarize them properly. He does, however, discuss his name a bit.

-So, apparently the correct pronounciation of "mothy" is "mocchii" (mo-chee). However, I'm assuming that's because "thi" isn't a syllable in Japanese, so I'm going to continue pronouncing it the American way I do (moth-ee). Apparently a lot of people tend to pronounce it "masshii" or "maashii". He also says that it should probably actually be spelled "motty" (and that it used to be in the past), but for arbitrary reasons he's going by "mothy" instead. Not 100% sure of what to make of this but perhaps his "arbitrary reason" is that it stands for "master of the heavenly yard", which I believe is the reason given at present day.

2nd

-mothy finally begins discussing the making of Servant of Evil, which he essentially was motivated to do to capitalize on the positive reception for Daughter of Evil. There were a lot of people asking to see the perspective of the "blue", "green", and "red" characters, as well as those curious about the servant (or rather, lambasting him for being a "HetaLen", a pun which means "useless Len").

-He wound up focusing on Len for the song because he didn't have any other VOCALOIDS at the time.

-Looking back, he sort of wishes he'd used the word "princess" rather than "daughter" for Rin's song so it would match the title of "Servant" better.

4th Page 1

-mothy uploads a remaster of Clockwork Lullaby onto Piapro, and responds to comments.

-Apparently mothy didn't share Servant's vsq because he had to mess with it so many times that if he did, it would not sound like the finished song at all.

-He addresses how people thought poorly of Len in his songs before Servant of Evil came out because, naturally, it looked like he just abandoned the princess to her fate.

Page 2

-more on Servant of Evil. He made it into a four-part composition (I think? I'm not familiar with this word but basically it's four distinct narrative pieces to the song) to contrast it with Daughter of Evil, saying it's a convenient model for story songs. He also wanted it to be understandable even if you haven't listened to Daughter of Evil. He also wanted to put the chorus in the opening of the song because that's what hit songs do? (again, sliiiightly confused with the musical terminology he's using). Girl of the Minature Garden is the only other song where he's done this.

-He also wanted to put in lines from Len everywhere.

-He went back and forth a little on the tone of the song. Originally, he conceived of the twin switch as having been Rin's idea, but eventually he went with it being Len's, to make it more of a tragic story than a dark one to better fit the melody he'd made.

7th Page 1

-reply to comments. People are finding his posts on his songmaking interesting.

Page 2

-more on Servant of Evil. He began work on the song as soon as he had an idea of what he wanted to do (he also prefaces this by saying that he's by no means on expert on making lyrics and that he may have made mistakes in explaining it).

-So, basic lyric construction--opened with the chorus, introduced Len's relationship to the Princess. There's two meanings in Len saying he'll "even become evil", which we'll get to later. Len gets more explanation in this first section of the song, with his character background in the next stanza (with the "A" melody) and his mindset in the one after (the "B" melody, which was apparently half the length that it is now at first but this made it too hard to work lyrics in). Then back to the chorus.

-He was trying to make sure that everything was explained while using the bare minimum amount of detail.

9th Page 1

-Luka's release has been anounced. He's interested, but he also owns several VOCALOIDs at this point that he hasn't used yet, so he might hold off.

-Mothy replies to comments. Largely inconsequential, but he does laugh with someone over the fact that he wound up buying all the Japanese VOCALOIDs after only having the Kagamines for a while.

Page 2

-Back to Servant of Evil, getting on the second part of the song. He figures that since he said Len would "even become evil", he needed him to do something evil. It's at this point that he started trying to work in the parts he cut from Daughter of Evil, though he couldn't work in the bit with the glass bottle (where Allen kills Leonhart) due to syllable space. (note, this section follows the "A melody equals plot, B melody equals character mindset" pattern from the previous section).

-The "today's snack is brioche" line is to contrast Riliane's "Oh, it's teatime" line, and also reference what he'd learned about Marie Antoinette. And, it shows the main character, who is a servant, doing servant things.

-As a tangent, he brings up how little we know about the Miku character just going off those two songs--we don't know who she loved, whether she actually died or not, or if she was even human to begin with (basically teasing the Michaela reveals in Daughter of White, I think).

-He does state that like the princess and swordswoman, she is modeled after a character in a story, she is not a princess or high status, and she's not the miniature garden girl.

13th Page 1

-More news on when Servant be released on Karaoke, and sharing his remastered Servant of Evil and Wordplay.

-Replies to comments. Again I don't have context but I think he clarifies that some of his concepts on the Miku character that he just shared came about after the fact, but he was picturing a character from a different work when making her during the song's production.

Page 2

-Onto the third section for Servant of Evil, which he says was the most important and so took a lot of trial and error (the twin switch, of course). Eventually what he ended up doing was having the "A melody" section contain both the plot events AND Len's character psychology, and have the "B melody" section consist solely of dialogue. That way he could leave the characters' feelings during the switch up to the imagination of the listener.

-As a small note, Len is using honorifics when he tells the princess to run away wearing his clothes. mothy claims this was inspired by a nursery rhyme (in English it's often called, "The Other Day I Met A Bear"), where in the Japanese version at least the bear tells the girl to run with the same honorifics (despite that being uncharacteristic of a bear), which he liked, so he put it in here. I am not 100% sure I believe him.

16th Page 1

-mothy shares a remastered Regret Message

-he replies to comments. He's not sure what decides the release schedule for JOYSOUND's karaoke, he thinks it's due to song vote ranking. Apparently there are also people saying the "of evil" songs are their first VOCALOID songs, so that makes him happy.

-Again I don't have the original comment but I guess someone asked what the gender is (without specifying whose), so he confusedly replies that the princess is female, the servant is male, and he, mothy, is male.

-mothy makes clear that though he is incorporating a lot of fairytale knowledge into his work, it's not a result of research but rather his own childhood memories, as he read a lot of books when he was young.

Page 2

-Onto the fourth part of Servant of Evil. Here he repeats the lines from the ending of Daughter of Evil, but with an entirely new context behind them and some minor tweaks to match the new subject of the song.

-The first iteration of the chorus shows Len's determination, and this final one shows that he has accomplished his goal. The lines about how the princess ignores the crowd is the people talking in Daughter of Evil, and in Servant of Evil it's Rin talking. And, in general, when Len says "I will even become evil", that includes becoming the "Daughter of Evil" himself, in a sense.

-Basically just lots of repetitions but with the meaning changed.

-Mothy added on the bit with the music box after the song was done, as a final tearjerker.

20th Page 1

-Responding to comments. A lot of it is fans expressing their admiration which is sweet, but not really worth summarizing. Here's some tidbits though.

-Mothy used to use 私 a lot as his personal pronoun, but since he keeps getting mistaken for a woman he's started using 僕.

-The last line in Servant of Evil was meant to kind of bring out the servant's inner childishness.

-Mothy's first encounter with VOCALOID was before Miku was even released, and he was inspired to buy one after hearing a certain song on NicoNico (he may, or may not, explain this later).

-Though he tells a commenter to leave it up to their imagination, he does hint as to having plot reasons why Len's character was made a servant rather than a prince.

Page 2

-He goes in very briefly on the process of making Len sing the lyrics of Servant of Evil after he'd had them written. Apparently it was really hard. The Kagamines are apparently harder to work with than Miku, and Len moreso than Rin. There was a lot of trial and error involved--eventually he just settled on something and went to the tuning stage.

25th Page 1

-Mothy's other songs are now up for voting on JOYSOUND. He encourages people to give South North Story priority in the voting. He's also remastered Tale of Abandonment on a Moonlit Night, though it's not very different.

-Comment replies. Mothy is not very fast at making songs.

-He shares the website he got the stock sound effects for Servant of Evil, and tells someone that he's considering releasing CDs of his work.

Page 2

-(again discussing the production of Servant of Evil) MEANWHILE on Piapro, mothy got carried away chatting about the setting and backstory behind Daughter of Evil in the comments for it, apparently, because it was still getting attention. He finds that funny because then someone correctly guessed the twin switch, so he wound up having to be very noticeably vague and mysterious about it (in a complete 180 from his other comments) to avoid spoiling anything.

29th

-Luka is taking the community by storm, but mothy is making a song with MEIKO instead.

-he's been getting some questions about a collaboration with Asami(I think) Shimoda, but he refuses to comment.

-Other comment replies that I won't summarize because I don't have full context (nothing terribly important, mostly just being humble or asking for patience with his slow speed). Apparently one of the commenters spoke to him in English, though, which is interesting.

30th

-mothy finally finished Servant of Evil (he recounts having dubious impressions of it at the time, such as not being able to understand what's being said, worrying that it's too different from the tune of Daughter of Evil, and being a little moved by it himself.

-He uploaded it onto Piapro and recruited illustrators to make the PV.

[bubblybloob]

Breathing Once Again

Description: Suns being a god and spearmaster being their weird cat who is going to die soon doesn’t mix well.

——

“You still working on that creature to send to Moon?” Seven Red Suns was fiddling around with their files, looking through their most recents as they spoke to their fellow iterator, No Significant Harassment.

“Yep.” Sig responded, his voice staticky over the comms. “Just trying to make it less of a genetic mess like your’s. Seriously, that thing is aging fast due to your changes.”

Suns gave him a shrug as they looked at the screen displaying Sig’s face, who was busy messing with a number of data charts. “I’ll think of something that’ll keep them around longer.”

For a moment, Sig was silent, and the sounds that his fingers made against his electronic screens came to a halt as he stayed motionless. “You really are attached to it, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am, I can’t quite deny that. What, are you not planning to befriend your’s?” Suns almost startled as they felt the organic material in their structure brush up against something that felt like it had a mild film of slimy skin. It was their messenger.

“For it to just die of old age, rejoin the cycle, and turn into something that won’t remember me? Yeah, I’ll pass on that emotional turmoil, thanks.” Sig giggled over the communication line, his smooth voice an airy thing in Suns’ antenna.

“How will you motivate them to complete their task then?” As they spoke, Suns focused on feeling around their structure. Their messenger seemed to be lost near the bottom of their memory conflux.

This confused Suns, by now their creature knew the hallways up and down, why were they exploring their conflux? Even more interestingly, they hadn’t used the hatch Suns had built for them on their roof, a spot where they could enter and exit without fear of running into the vultures that populated their city, and close enough to the edge where they could run off and prey upon the creatures that crawled along Suns’ outer walls.

They called their overseers to them, knowing that the little worms liked to follow the small purple being. Two overseers stuck out of the wall beside them; the two showed somewhat blurry footage of their messenger squeezing themself inside their structure where they used to enter. It was a small hole in one of the dens along Suns’ structure that the ancients had made, which hadn’t been built secure enough to protect their wall.

Why would they choose that entrance? It was located quite far from Suns’ puppet chamber, and it required the creature to go through the maze that was Suns’ interior, instead of the clear cut hallway made for the ancients that the hatch led to.

While Suns was pondering this, the other iterator they were conversing with was speaking. “I dunno, I’ll come up with something later. Hey, wait a minute. You didn’t speak so kindly of them originally. If I remember correctly, you sounded near disgusted by their mere existence.”

Suns flicked through a few data tables, trying to locate exactly where their little creature was. “I made sure to be nice when speaking to them. My words are a lot more genuine now.”

“Speaking? Don’t you mean dancing your silly dances?” If Sig had a mouth, he would probably be wearing the most shit-eating grin, given his tone.

“Yes, yes.” Suns sighed, exasperatedly. “I was nice to them when doing our ‘silly dances’.”

Sig let out a hearty laugh, wiping away a fake tear on the screen beside Suns. Once Sig pulled himself together, his voice took an ever so slightly serious undertone. “But seriously, that thing isn’t going to last much longer. Even if you are able to find a way for it to obtain more cycles that it can spend with you, it won’t be nearly as long as you will live. You’re going to have to say goodbye eventually.”

Those words echoed in Suns’ head. It… it was a truth they couldn’t yet comprehend. Suns didn’t think they’d ever get this attached to their little friend. However, watching them trudge through the snow between iterator cans, painstakingly climb up Pebbles’ can, and overcome the wildlife despite their low status on the food chain… it was simply an impossibility to not cheer for them.

They remember when Chasing Wind and No Significant Harassment made the public announcement of Moon’s message, which had just barely reached their cans from what was apparently pearl data. Suns in particular was in panicked joy: part of it being because the injured iterator (who’s struggle they had become more invested in through their friendship with Sig) had managed contact, and the other because the only one who could have possibly delivered the message was their messenger.

It was the first sign that they were still alive.

They sent out overseers to patrol outside of Moon and Pebbles’ walls. They couldn’t go inside, but around was just as fine. They remembered that wonderful moment where another iterator near their can (as many iterators were trying to find a way to sneak their overseers around Pebbles’ security) had sent in their local group chat barely visible photos of a strange variation of slugcat, pushing through the snow to reach the next warm confines of an iterator territory.

Suns was ecstatic to find that they were that familiar shade of purple.

Once they finally reached their can and fell into their arms, Suns immediately got to work repairing the damage made by Pebbles. The messily healed wound was sealed, and the space inside was filled back in with organic material. Never again would their messenger deliver a message, they were to live out the rest of their days peacefully, with them.

“Where is the little freak anyway? I don’t see it doing its usual arts and crafts in your puppet chamber.” Sig hummed, taking his eyes off of his charts to look around Suns’ chamber.

“Don’t call them that. They went out to hunt. I felt them enter my structure during our conversation, however they seem to be taking an odd route.”

“Did you send an overseer to check on them?” Sig questioned, tapping his finger against his knee in an inquisitive manner.

“That doesn’t seem necessary, they’ve almost reached my chamber, and even then it would be hard to gather good footage with how quickly they’re able to traverse the low gravity.”

“Weird they’d be going through there instead of an ancient hallway. Didn’t you say that they had told you they disliked the low gravity?”

“Yes, they said that it was their least favorite part of going through Five Pebbles’ structure. To be fair though, a large part of that had to do with him being infected with the rot. It didn’t look fun to navigate: I had to watch them die and repeat whole sectors for many cycles, I was worried they would give up on their directive.”

Sig chuckled, “Please tell me you recorded that! I’d kill to see that footage.”

Suns spared their gaze to give the iterator a sharp glare. Sig held his hands up in defense. “Sorry sorry! Not funny, I get it.”

Suns huffed and focused again on their little friend. They brushed up against the swaying whiskers against their walls. They felt almost… shaky, less coordinated, despite navigating the rooms in Suns’ structure just fine.

The messenger approached Suns’ puppet chamber, and they prepared to give a warm welcome to the small creature. “My messenger, it’s good to see-“

They slipped through the ceiling pipe, and Suns froze at what they saw.

Sig took notice of their sudden silence, and he shifted to press himself closer to the screen. “What? Slugcat catch your tongue- …oh.”

—

So, am I going to continue this? Maybe, depends on how people will respond to it. I’d really like to explore how a god-like entity, with an infinite wellspring of power, like Suns, would react when the only mortal being they are heavily attached to and reliant on suddenly…

It’s something gods simply cannot comprehend.