#this game.... isnt .....great but i had a lot of fun anyways

[jorvikzelda]

adding this to the list of Severely fucking stupid absrad deaths

BUT!! (under cut so as to not Clog)

we fucking got there in the end baby

(did a couple tries for radiant, then was Swept Away by the Migraine. We’ll get there.)

[toytulini]

i made an oc thats at least nicknamed "Stupid" and im constantly thinking about what a power move that is tbh

[caruliaa]

i hope the celling fan fall on yall 😒

[insertdisc5]

I'm a big writer and I love how each character in ISAT is so distinctly characterized by their ways of talking and their voice!! They all have different habits and tics and such, and trying to replicate it in my own writing is fun, but also Challenging!!! Is there anything you had to keep in mind while writing out their different voices?

ex: As a very nervous type of person, I write a lot of "sorry"s into Loop's dialogue, and then realize, no, wait, Loop would not apologize for this. And Siffrin would definitely not answer this question so directly. etc etc.

ok so this is my current Writing Hell for project TS. writing voices. i have completely forgotten how i figured it out for ISAT

but uuuh it's really like. just write all the dialogue you can. until you hear their voices in your head! and remember the Rules for each character. like off the top of my head, i wrote siffrin being somewhat easy going, but with a tendency to just go in circles in their own mind. any reason to have them spiral is fair game, and since they're seen as easy going, their silence when they spiral isnt immediately picked up upon. and most importantly, the Rule for siffrin is. siffrin will NEVER say sorry. iirc it's because i read that old thing about how, instead of saying "sorry", you should say "thank you"? which is a great piece of advice for everyday life, but i'd like to imagine siffrin just would internalize that to be "normal", and it kinda mixed with "if you say sorry then people would know you have feelings and feel bad!!!!!!", so. never say sorry even if you probably should (they do say sorry a lot in act 6 lol)

this was really the One Rule i had in mind when writing characters, along with always remembering "odile is NOT that emotionally smart. give that line to isabeau instead" lol

anyway just write a bunch and remember the Rules. it won't come right away. but be strong (<- TELLING MYSELF THAT BECAUSE AGAIN IM IN WRITING HELL RN)

[starshipdecay]

Toon Zelda redesigns! I've never been fond of the Toon Zelda design, and these girls deserve some individuality. Design notes and rambles below the cut :D

(time to turn the proper grammar off i aint capitalizing all this. warning: i am verbose)

first up, tmc zelda!

shes the one most like toon zelda, since i felt like the vibes fit the *most* (though not a lot). also, with her place on the timeline, i could justify a lot of bits, like the wings and the cape

the cape! obvs it comes from the toon zelda base design, but also it involves skyloftian fashion! i take the timeline as a challenge, and i once saw a take somewhere that the skyloftians all wear their family crests (most often birds lol) on their person. zelda here (and link too) do just that, wearing their family crests on little caplets. on the back is, of course the royal crest

i went very cutesy princess for her. tmc has such a *whimsical* vibe that i feel is very. muted? by the fact its stuck with the toon style. so i wanted to put in that vibe here. also her sprites make it look like her skirt is super poofy, so how could i not?

curly hair: i wanted something interesting, and most zeldas have straight hair. so! adds to the cuteness

i didnt draw it so well but she (and link) both have very sleepy expressions. zelda especially just has a sleepy expression in her sprite, its quite adorable.

shes not as decked out as other princesses, cuz i see tmc taking place before the royal family really starts to get *royal* as we see it. shes still of course got a tiara and some embroidery tho.

Tetra! her base design isnt all that changed from the original. her name is a fun hc of mine tho. i think "von Hyrule" sounds better as a surname than just "hyrule". shes not zelda, but shes still a descendant.

(WW) princess z (as i call her)

I went more oot zelda vibes for her, since she would be closer, temporally, to oot. i also went very warm, since ive never seen the flood as a *warm* endeavor.

shes got the shoulder danglies, as most zeldas have shoulder armor of some kind. the danglies instead of actual armor are supposed to kind of evoke a royal sea captain kind of vibe.

shes ghostly, with a fish-eyed stare. shes been dead and gone for a long time. shes also a bit taller and a few years older than tetra (as of ww). shes just some spectre the king saw in tetra, not at all a close match

tetra, being smaller than princess z, doesnt fit into the clothes. the dress is too big for her (as is in canon gd that skirt is WAY too long for her), the coat is baggy. the role of a princess *literally* does not fit her.

the ribbons! theyre my replacement for the wings, and they represent the wind in the game! since its represented by white lines, the ribbons are a perfect symbolic match. (also, a note, tetras hair is shorter and coarser than princess z's)

i mostly bullshitted the blue panel but the vague idea i gave it was 'a hope for the triforce to give good fortunes to the people' (pictured as dots, mostly behind her arms)

Pirate Queen Tetra

ph! about a year has passed, and tetra has really grown into her own! as well as literally grown!

shes still tetra, pirate and captain, but shes incorporated that royal heritage into her identity: quite literally! she made piecemeal of the original outfit (what was left of it anyway after the fight), and added bits and pieces to her new life.

she also takes full advantage of said heritage to call herself pirate queen. its great for branding. whos gonna say she CANT go by pirate queen?

the seagull feather is from Aryll. only crew member tetra wears a trinket from (who can say no to that ball of sunshine! certainly not tetra)

not many notes. yall can see whats there. (also she still wears her hair in a bun, its just in a low bun (you can almost see it) when she wears her hat)

st zelda!

first note is: shes not a princess! shes an heiress of the company tetra had made and left behind. hence her title of Lady zelda. ("new hyrule" rly just like-- the ending of ww was *literally* that hyrule is dead and thats okay. how did they miss that :sob emoji:) also calling her Lady Zelda fits with the train vibes

shes in a 1880s style bustle dress because 1) i am OBSESSED with bustle dresses. i love them. so much. 2) the more historical vibe works really well with trains! also a lot of the other outfits in the game have late victorian vibes, so shes certainly not out of place.

her hat (and gloves): any proper lady has a hat on when going about town, however, when she gets body snatched, she pulled out her hatpin to use (ineffectively) as a weapon (she IS tetras great-great-granddaughter), causing her to lose her hat *and* hairdo.

shes still got the hatpin in her ghost form, too. she uses it to threaten people for funsies

Ribbons! on the topic of hairdo, her ribbons! visually tying her to tetras design, the ribbons here instead take on the image of train tracks, with her pin (on the left side) evoking a train engine. the pin also makes her look rich and girly. when her hair comes undone, this makes the ribbons all loose, like how the train tracks disappear in game. (the hat also kinda connects her to tetra)

thanks for reading :D i hope you liked reading this as much as i liked typing it

[strawglicks]

u dont get how crazy i am about the new trailer for the firesetter plushies .

the animation is so cool it makes me so giddy and happy i absolutely adore the animations in this game tbh they look so great and expressive and theyve gotten so good in recent times, esp with that new update a couple months back

ANYWAY i like a lot of the little details . like how graham perks up seeing flint and then turning around to let his BF have the spotlight .. FLINT SLIDING INTO FRAME HAS REARRANGED MY WHOLE BRAIN i assure you ive forgotten important life facts bc flint sliding into frame is taking up that space in my mind . i adore it sm they actually look bold and confident for once . i am so used to their nervous and timid characterization that it makes me so happy to see them genuinely confident. and graham being confident the whole time and enjoying himself in the spotlight but then moving aside to make room for flint . AUGHH.

ALSO. this is the first time we're really seeing flint with his bass in ACTION, in ANIMATION. the only thing we had before this was that one image Mailman (a crew member) made and now we really get to see it in action .

i assume the trailer isnt like. a canon event. but its still all cool and i like the details :] its fun to look way deeper than what it actually is. which is. just a trailer LMAO

[kit-williams]

I'm finally playing a Black Crusade Game

SO yesterday we finally started a Black Crusade game from our forever DM! Whom hates Black Crusade... but he was feeling 40k.

So the game is Me, my husband, and our other mutual friend who in the game is named Mec. Mec isn't a fan of 40k rpgs we (me, my husband, and our friend) all got introduced to warhammer via Warhammer Fantasy 2e (so we're all biased)

But this is the game i was going to be a space marine but no this isnt the Dog Centaur night lord this is Khornite Blood Angel! Angelos! errr Angela.

See Mec wanted a few concessions since we're going to be dealing with a lot of space marines that why can't there be female space marines so I was given the option to swap Angelos to Angela which I did (Hubby has filled my DMs with Mommy Angela) (also cuz he is a DM who will genderlock stuff but he will also allow you to do very interesting stuff with gender like allowing my one Fantasy character to be genderfluid but it also made sense due to how Fantasy Norsca works and because of how actual viking society worked) [reeling in the tangent!]

SO I'm a Khornite Berserker [Tome of Blood Starting Class] Fallen Blood Angel named Angela

I made a great first impression in the chaos city we landed in and thus scaring away the "welcoming committee" by watching one man get shot and then going over to the dying man and ripping out his throat and drinking his blood.

I got bullied by an Ancient Night Lord (which I failed the test to id him as being either a Night Lord or Alpha Legion ((Which to be fair is a safe guess))) who basically outed me as a Blood Angel and told everyone to be aware of me (aka I have the Betrayer Talent) did the whole "You keep my father's name out of your dirty mouth" but otherwise was hissy at him I'm around 200 years old I am a baby to that man I wasn't going to fight an established Night Lord.

But after getting bullied everyone in the Eye of Terror(?) got a vision that on this planet was the keys to the next crusade which will happen in the next century. So everything exploded into violence!

So at the moment we are gathering troops right now we've got some gangers and mutants but I am the Warband's only Space Marine which we will have to fix as well as getting us a ship too

We're going to play again tonight because we had a lot of fun and our DM wants to get us off planet.

ALSO

We've been playing Warhammer Fantasy 4e which has this cool Advantage mechanic which for normal Cubical 7 games if you do a successful parry no matter the degrees of success you just avoid it completely... this leads to Black Crusade and Dark Heresy and I think also Rogue Trader combat to fucking DRAG ON. We introduced the advantage system which means that if you attack me with only 1 degree of success but I parry with 1 or more degrees higher THEN I avoid the attack. But if your attack has more degrees of success than my parry then in fantasy I'm allowed to reduce the damage. But we're just using advantage to speed up the combat and it worked.

Anyway I'll give you an update on the Harbingers of the Apocalypse on our quest to be amazing.

As long as there are no Iron Warriors thrown my way I should be fine

[ganondoodle]

feeling much better now having gotten some sleep (the dont trust how you feel about yourself past 9pm is good advice no joke)

of course all my criticism of totk still applies but im feeling less depressed about it, tho i will say its honestly kinda baffling how many times the game actually got me interested and excited about stuff and then just kinda drops it in a dead end, of course they were those kind of things in botw as well but it seems much less .. balanced in totk

(not even just the big things like making me want to actively do something to help zelda turn back when it just gets solved on its own in the end, but also some lil things like the fact that so many NPCs tell you about that newly discovered animal species and when you find the dongos they are just gem vending maschines)

in the end i can say, no, i dont like totk, tho i still love the graphics and the way the world is made ( botw showed me jsut how immersive and alive a world can feel i love it to death), i liked the gameplay and that it kept the freedom botw had established, the bossfights are mostly fun (tho i wish you could refight more of them), i LOVE the yiga and im glad they got more of a spotlight, the music is FANTASTIC i keep catching myself humming along, alot of the sidequests are much bigger and feel like you are actually doing something, i like how the sages are a bit more integrated into the story, the majority of the new designs are great, both the japanese and german voice acting is great, and the end fight has some of the best build up i have ever experienced, my heart starts to race when that music build up starts even tho i have beaten it 3 times already-

however, the story is both simple and incredible flat with lots of stuff that doesnt make sense especially when it was said to be a sequel, the zonau should have stayed a mystery imo, they failed to make me care about them even a little bit and often felt forcefully crammed into the world and its history, i think you could have told an incredible story taking place in the present and leave the past be the past, you easily could have connected botw and totk in a much better way than they did, i dont like how it changes aspects about botw all the while nigh ignoring it ever happened, it still feels like it was trying to be a replacement and not a sequel and all the referencing and callbacks to the old titles may have been done in good faith but that and including time travel yet again ultimately lead to people ripping each other to shreds over trying to prove its placed in the old timeline despite it making no sense at all and confusing people even more; often when the game made me care or be excited about something it was dropped in a dead end, there was a ton of missed opportunities and lost potential to tell a much more nuanced and interesting story/lore, and thinking about it only makes me sad for the things that could have been

overall i think my disappointment is outweighing my fun and the only way i can keep playing it while having fun is ignoring everything that isnt, which works quite well most of the time since im pretty much done with all story stuff but i keep slipping into my little rants nonetheless; i will say its making me a little worried about the future of the franchise, but i know im in the minority and maybe i will just have to accept that the new stuff wont be for me anymore and i should not hope for anything that interests me xD

except for some meme material or specific characters i love i dont think i will make much use of anything totk tried to establish, and i hope thats fine with the lot of you (<3) hopefully that also means my ranting days are over xD

anyway, back to making niche art i go! (sorry for making you endure these long ass rambling posts :,) )

[ad-hawkeye]

got hit by the artem truck out of nowhere and now that he’s jumped to my favorite rn i was wondering if you had any card stories you would recommend(recent or old is fine if you answer this)

Come On In To The Artem Truck

oh gosh! oh uh, okay okay okay! i got this! i got YOU! pulling out the tot app for this. my recommendations are below. bolded cards are my absolute favorites, but the rest are cards that while not my favorites, are very good and do have important relevance to artem or his future cards. also worth noting, these are only cards on global. i plan on making a list of future card recommendations soon! i think i talk about a few on this blog as well!

any cards not on this list aren't awful per say, just not as good or important - in my opinion, anyways!

BASE GAME CARDS (RECOMMENDATIONS)

loving memories (SSR): showcases pre development artem well. good neil lore. the haunted house also gets mentioned again in future cards.

focus fire (SR): good neil and artem lore. not exactly groundbreaking or anything, but i think it's worth a watch.

sparks (SR): you'll be seeing a lot of bold early on. sparks is a classic and favorite of many people. recommended.

in sickness or in health (SR): the og. this made me an artem stan.

autumn dreams (SR): while not a "must watch" imo, it is very cute and worth it if you have the time. also the final card art is artem's background on his tablet (you can see it on artem's tablet skill item)

thin veil (SR): paywalled but up on youtube. this is a MUST watch. introduces mockingbird and artem's whole deal with movies. also artem sucks at hand crafts and its a treat to watch him panic

unusual love (SSR): paywalled but up on youtube. this one is just rly fun to watch. it's fake dating AND angst! fun fun.

-

EVENTS (RECOMMENDATIONS)

lost gold: just. lost gold. love artem's route so much. also if rosa tries to use her little gun, it references artem teaching her how to shoot in focus fire.

artem's first birthday event: this one is so cute! recommend.

-

EVENT BANNER CARDS (RECOMMENDATIONS)

entwined fate (SSR): yeah you saw this one coming. it sets up a lot of stuff for the artemrosa dynamic. also it's just very cute AND you get amazing neil and artem angst! for what is probably the last time ever!

dreamful melodies (SSR): artem is so deeply pathetic and incompetent in this. please watch it <3

fixated on you (SR): very cute and one of my personal favs! marks a shift in their dynamic towards them being good friends AND has artem sucking at art

wandering heart (SSR): one of the classics. artem tricks rosa into eating some shitty chocolate to make her laugh and feel better.

two hearts as one (SSR): artem cries in this one and it's great!

sunshine after the rain (SSR): i just wrote a whole block of text about this one and it's one of my favorites. trust in meeee

winning ball (SR): not groundbreaking but watching artem talk about his absentee father is always a win in my book

eternal yearning (1st anniversary SSR): well yeah this one is a requirement for reasons. it's very good! i wouldn't say it was life changing but they do get together here and it's very nice imo.

new skies (SSR): i like this one a lot. playful artem makes a reappearance and the ending is super cute

masquerade passion (SR): love this one a lot!! this is also a classic artemrosa card, imo. its very in character and also includes theater boy artem again. cant go wrong with that!

paired blessings (SSR): this one is honestly a little boring, but they go back to the temple from entwined fate and talk about life and stuff. also worth a watch!

heart listener (SR): this one references loving memories! artem also heavily relates to the kid they have to babysit who is struggling with busy borderline absentee parents.

the weeds (SSR): probably one of artem's better au cards, which is why it's making it on this list. this is the one to watch if ur in an au mode.

day and night (SSR): this one isnt my favorite but it's his second bday card and does have some interesting stuff in it, me thinks. worth a watch.

[chromaji]

after finishing replaying the main story of SoV, which started pretty suddenly for the sake of doing research for a game i've been in the early stages of making...

i can safely say act 2 still ended up being my favorite all these years later🫡

There's something I really enjoy about the more personal stakes of helping others in their pirate (and necrodragon) related troubles while being on a pilgrimage to a temple. I mean you know how FE tends to be, continent spanning struggles and wars between royalty of nations, with the smaller-scale bandit stuff just being for a few chapters, if that.

I dont mind the big royal stories of course but Celica Act 2 really is some fresh air, especially since it happens after the more typical FE plot had already started on Alm's side.

...To be fair once the plot started, the smaller scale troubles are also pushed aside here. But there were at least sidequests to help people throughout.

Onto more general stuff, yeah sidequests like this were a nice thing to see in an FE game. I liked the earlier ones where you went back to a shrine to fight a miniboss, and the ones where you had to trade between armies to complete early.

And i've talked about how much I love the fact that there's dungeons to crawl in this game, since it was one of the main reasons I decided to replay for research. One thing I will say is that the dungeon battles got monotonous after a point, especially when enemies were just too far away for my team to one-round, but they weren't quite weak enough for me to auto battle without worrying if someone would die. There's a lot i've taken note of in the dungeon aspect so far for my project, but I haven't even tried the postgame dungeon yet so i'll have to see if anything gets added there.

Also not related to my research but why's the turning like that when running in dungeons 😭

Onto non-dungeon battles, the map design was overall... yeah not great, kinda ass. However, I cant say this too confidently rn considering i'll need to make strategy maps for my own game idea, which i've never done before, so my stuff may also end up kinda ass!!! We'll be ass together!!

Anyway I liked the early "mostly barren fields" for Alm because it put into perspective a literal army's cavarly units vs your ragtag footlocked crew with like 1-2 cav and fliers that probably couldn't be sent off on their own. But after a bit it was like okay thats enough empty fields with cavalry approaching. Also i'm not forgiving this goofy ass setup

Celica's desert+swamp maps weren't fun at all but man these maps always gotta show up in some FE game so this isnt a Celica exclusive.

Overall there's definitely things done in SoV that I wanna consider for my own project, so this was def worth replaying & experiencing the good & bad myself instead of just watching a playthrough or smth. There's probably a lot more i could say but i've been typing for a while agh

[cyberdragoninfinity]

I would love to hear your Indigo Disk thoughts

YES!!!!!!! 💎🐢💥 full disclosure I only just finished Indigo Disk's main storyline like....less than 24 hours ago so I am still RIDING HIGH FROM THE RUSH OF IT ALL. will probably be spoilers ahead, as a head's up:

first off I love that like. right off the bat youre getting hit with cyrano and cavell old man yaoi. busting out the cute little nicknames like HELLO!!! AND then you have geeta showing up and rika is there for no reason whatsoever and it's like. well ok i think they were having lesbian activities on the plane over you love to see it!

anyway setting wise, the Big Ol Blueberry is pretty fun! I love running around and the Synchro Machine is SUCH a ridiculously fun feature (FINALLY, TRUE GAMING: Dana can run around as a Ninetales and smack a big ball around.) I love all the Unova callbacks and I LOVE THE DIFFERENT CLUB ROOM LAYOUTS!! The monochrome one made me tear up and SEEING THE FUCKIGN. POKESTAR STUDIOS ENEMIES. IN THE FUTURISTIC ONE. MADE ME FEEL SOMETHING. pokestar studios my beloved i miss it sooo much 😭 My buddy Snap was talkin about how the Terarium really kind of lacks... yknow, landmarks and points of interest, though, and god I agree so hard. I love that Kitakami had its own little set of interesting features and places to go and use as landmarks and the Terariuam kind of. Doesn't really have those. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to navigate and easy to get lost but not in a fun way.... even though you have these little neat natural features like The Pride Rock and Chargestone Caves, I wish we coulda had a little bit more :( For such a widely used part of the school it doesn't feel very 'lived' in by the students there. It would've been fun to see more gathering places aside from the Very Sterile Outside Classrooms.....

The Area Zero Underdepths, though...hooouughhHHHhhh. I just. I really have to admire the fact that Indigo Disk said "ohhh you want answers?? you wanna know what's going on in this place? fuck you, youre gonna have MORE questions after this, and theyre gonna be even CRAZIER ones." YOU GO IN THAT HOLE AND LEARN NOTHING AND IM NOT EVEN MAD ABOUT IT. GO LOOK AT THE CRYSTAL TREE DOWN THIS RANDOM PATHWAY. i neeeed to make a terapagos post sometime and talk more about it i cannot stop thinking about this little freak. POKEMON THAT SCARE ME A LITTLE I MUST SAY. POKEMON I DO NOT FEEL IN CONTROL OF. i Know they didnt make its charged terastal form look like a dream catcher for no reason. I Know its Stellar Form Looking Like That isnt for no reason. I know its borderline dangerous power and THAT LITTLE STUNT IT PULLS. AT THE CRYSTAL POOL. THAT'S INDICATIVE OF SOMETHING I THINK. >when Terapagos's cry was the sound Terastalizing has been making all fucking game. SCREAMS.

also again oh my god if you beat the main indigo disk storyline go to the crystal pool right now GO. GO FEEL SOMETHING. GO!!!!

ok well that's. less about setting and more about story though huh. well!! story wise, absolutely loved it! I know there was a lot of apprehension when the DLCs got more properly announced and we found out they didnt really center on Our Dear Paldea Friends as scarvio proper did, and yeah I definitely can see why that's a frustration and a deterrent for some (and I'm soo so excited to hang out with Nemona and Arven and Penny in the epilogue next month....peach time (: ) but for me in the end I'm really just so enamored and delighted with all the new friends you get to make in the DLC and they more than carry that little narrative's arc on its own. The Elite 4 of the BB League are all GREAT, they got nonstop autistic girls out here in gen 9 (nemona, amarys, briar ?!??!) and it ROCKS. and i LOVE Carmine so much, everyone always wants mean rivals and mean women and folks cant even handle Carmine 🙄 you can tell she genuinely has such a big heart and cares about her friends and her brother!!! and Kieran wahhh wahh kieran my newest Little Guy ;____;.... he is SO fourteen and I did not expect to go into the DLC getting really invested in a new character's arc but it's just GOOD. He REALLY feels like a loose yugioh character in Indigo Disk, he's so angry and obsessed with victory and ultimately under it all still capable of so much kindness and regret and he's just GOOD. And his champion battle was terrifying and a BLAST!! THE MUSIC RULES. HE EVEN HAD INCINEROAR.

god and all the music in Indigo Disk was a banger. gen 9 music save me. gen 9 music. save me gen 9 music.

i'm SUPER hyped to do more BBQs with my bestie and do more postgame stuff with the "hanging out with Gym Leaders" thing and the Legendary hunting and such... lots more to roll around in and have a good time with. All in all had just a great time with it, I genuinely might put Violet as my favorite Pokemon game of all time at this point! I do grow very sad thinking about just how even more fantastic this game couldve been if it had 1-3 more years to cook properly though, like..god damn. I was getting some LAG on those cutscenes, and I know I made out pretty alright in the bugs department!!

but for now i'll just be thinking about the shit that happens at the crystal pool for the rest of my life. also Indigo Disk gave me the best possible trainer ID photo i never need to change it again

[pixlostinatos]

heyyyyyy do you like worldbuilding headcanons? i do! and ive spent some time writing up some of mine about how wandering traders, pixandria, and chromia connect!

ill start this off by again saying this is just headcanons, not theories. i am fully not expecting ANY of this to be made canon.

anyway, this is going to be a bit of a long read, so strap in for a fun time and head under the read more!

when it was first revealed by scott that his character like traveled a lot as a kid, i know a lot of people were like "oh what if he was a wandering trader? what if his family were wandering traders?" and i feel like thats tapered off a lot ever since he revealed the skull thing, but i still think it was a neat headcanon

and then in season 1, when pix was talking to fwhip about wandering traders, he said, "i see my kind isnt welcome around here" and like i know he was just doing a bit but like?? assuming copper king pix was human, it would make sense for him to have been a wandering trader before he was king

and i know not all wandering traders come from pixandria but. consider it. also i do feel like most wandering traders do have some pixandrian lineage somewhere down the line simply because in s1 im pretty sure pixandria was one of the places that wasnt actively hostile to wandering traders?

if i remember correctly, pix killed one for some leads once and that was it

anyway into the worldbuilding aspect.

all the written history of pixandria remained in the empire

so when it disappeared, all that was left was the oral histories of the traders who happened to be away at the time and whatever writings they had (mainly receipts and other transaction records). this is why the history books say its hard to tell if pixandria ever really existed, bc A) its been a thousand years and B) bc just like many real historians a lot of academics just didnt take the wandering traders oral histories seriously

many traders still use the pixandrian numbering system for their own personal records, too! they use the mangrovian base-16 numerical system for interactions with others, but their own notes are in pixandrian base-12 bc its easier to tally quickly

also basically every family claims theirs is the one that the fabled Copper King was born(/adopted) into.

but whos to say? they may all be wrong, and that bloodline died out a long time ago (or they may all be right, and every family of pixandrian wandering traders can in some way trace their lineage back to them), but whos to say? certainly not scott

obviously theres a lot that has been lost because its been a thousand years of them basically living in a permanent diaspora

one of the reasons that scott was so put out about losing his fedora is bc he embroidered a personal tally in pixandrian numerals of all the artifacts hed stolen on the brim, and so when he had to get a new one he had to start from scratch

bc of the way pixandrian numerals are written it just looks like a funky little stylized floral pattern to other people, but a wandering trader would instantly know that its a count of something, just not necessarily of what

i also choose to believe that the reason villagers/wandering traders use emeralds as currency is bc they can find them really easily and so its not so much that its valuable bc of its rarity as much as being valuable because they use them to make a lot of jewelry and to embellish pocketwatches and such (bc like. as a game mechanic villagers produce infinite emeralds. not great to base an economy on)

so scott wears a lot of emeralds and copper (in addition to the gold that appears to be cc!scotts go-to accent for his characters)!!

and as with about half of the s2 "rulers", i headcanon scott as having founded chromia himself

so i personally headcanon him as having built it with the intent for half the houses to be uninhabited but upkept so they can be halfway homes for wandering traders and other travellers who are between trips

anyway yeah i think about things a perfectly normal amount

[waywardsalt]

on my knees gripping my head hnngggg i thought abt bellumbeck too hard

tag ramblings are fun and on brand but i have too many disorganized thoughts and tags are limiting.

anyways thinking too hard abt him is an extremely good and fun thing but i cannot draw the way i wish and can't really put my thoughts into fic form so this is very much going to be a fun ramble.

bellumbeck drives me insane we all know this. he showed up in my dream last night as of writing this sentence so he is on my mind, which is surprising bc fictional stuff doesn't usually show up coherently in my dreams but there it was.

it's so incredibly fun to think about bellumbeck. he's such a black sheep of a loz final boss, there really isnt another loz final boss like him in concept or even in 1:1 tone imo. it's so fun to take bellumbeck incredibly darkly seriously.

to be fair bellumbeck is kind of objectively a fairly dark and disturbing final boss on a conceptual level, and it's not really out of nowhere since phantom hourglass has at least a little darkness running through it even if the general tone of the game doesn't really acknowledge or take advantage of it. but if you think about it hard enough even without getting into post-game speculation in regards to what happens with linebeck, bellumbeck is kind of a dark boss and it's great. full on screen demonic possession of a major character with most of the cast incapacitated and link isolated with no escape on the ruins of the ghost ship that started everything and facing a boss that is constantly facing him and both someone he's been with the whole adventure and also the creature that's captured his friends and killed who knows how many people.

it's so oooouuuugghhhh it's so much fun to think about bellumbeck even though it's such a short encounter. it's so... the mystery around bellum, the way linebeck is built up throughout the game and saves link directly before getting possessed, the fucking on-screen vaguely violent possession (i am forever obsessed with the way bellum grabs and tugs on his arms), the way ciela is captured early into the fight, too, the first companion character you meet and, if you had her equipped, it leaves you without a fairy that follows your cursor around for the first time all game, it's very... congrats you and your friends are at rock bottom! good luck getting everyone out of there alive!!!!

of course it's not quite that because this game is geared a bit more towards younger players, but still keeps those streaks of darkness and complexity just simply because they're inevitable parts of this story and it's characters. bellumbeck. i'm talking about bellumbeck. what a soulsborne-ass final boss, huh?

there's only so much a ds game can do in terms of boss animations, but i think a lot about more complicated movements and animations for bellumbeck, so, so much character can be communicated through a boss's animations. in my mind, i enjoy bellumbeck movements with an emphasis on puppet-like flourishes and mannerisms, and an emphasis on weight with how he fights. these two go very well together, and its something i love imagining.

with the latter, an emphasis on weight, would ideally focus on the sword (and im a fan of it being this huge greatsword, reading berserk got me around to liking it because you can do that really well) and how it has to be used one-handed, with bellumbeck leveraging his own weight against it and taking advantage of momentum to use it especially effectively to turn link into a little green and red smear on the wood. attacks blending into each other as he builds up momentum, and using that weight primarily against link, who is a small opponent who relies on rolling around and can’t really stack up at all in terms of brute force.

i imagine this kind of physicality and movement would lend itself very well to bellumbeck also having more puppet-like movements, being a little too tugged-along by his attacks but still retaining his footing, his free arm being just a little too limp a little too often, and his leaning away from his sword side, likely with the intention to properly balance himself out, looks off with how his head lolls unnaturally to that side. the puppetry effect lessens as the fight wears on and bellum gets the hang of the body he’s using, but never actually goes away since he’s not looking to act properly human anyways.

just like... movement flourishes and details that could add a whole lot to the overall experience of bellumbeck that i think about often.

[galaxy-lilies]

I saw that you completely moved to a different Minecraft fandom. Is it ok if I ask you if it's better over there? Like do you find it less toxic? Is it like completely no toxic shit or just a lot less or about the same but less insane?

I'm just curious. It's a little bit like you moved to a different city or school and I'm asking how are you doing over there

it's definitely calmer here compared to dsmp fr fr, less drama to occur, no one is going all "ooo are you team X, team Y, team Z and if youre on one of these teams and not my team then youre BAD youre HORRIBLE youre a PIECE OF SHIT-" like none of that is going on.

The only difference I have noticed is that there's a general / more prevalent "please tag shipping posts" since some folk are uncomfortable with rpf while in the dsmp fandom it was a free for all/a general understanding of its fun to mess around with both cubitos and ccs like "ooo i wonder what karl, sap, and q were doing when they were doing their meetups back in 2022" and "the fiances cuddling in kinoko" were both fair game ideas under the RPF umbrella and that's how i understood it but now i realized that RPF is in reference to the first example LMAO/specifically their irl, cc personas

another nice thing is that there isnt the rush or panic of "oh CRAP i missed this stream!" because, well, the series is mostly on youtube with the occasional stream here and there and there are many POVs to watch and see in bite size 30-40 minute episodes. it's how im getting through cub's season 5 POV, just pulling up the playlist on his channel and letting the videos go

However that isnt to say that hermitblr hasnt had their fair share of shit, running off some hermit ccs off of tumblr before in 2018, 2019 or so, there were some staunch shipping wars, but i think?? i showed up after the aftermath so you don't see much of it / its easier to avoid

and since i was burned already on twitter, im not even going to touch hermittwt :D back to my tumblr roots here i come

Overall, if you dont dig too deep into the fandom its pretty good, its when you back log to years pre-pandemic where some things were. not great. (at least from what i understand thanks to moots who were / are in the hermitcraft fandom) but i don't plan on digging deep anyways, im content with where I am now. It's nice not to stress about drawing or posting ccs that will get you mass unfollowed or blocked

[livecharliereaction]

gonna be a long ahh post

ill try to see if theres anything strange for all of them but i dont remember all alibis n circumstances etc im using the red truths + question arc tip screen oki thats all i have Well i have my liveblogs too but that doesnt seem useful. first ep didnt have red truths yet but im quite sure it had to have been natsuhi or maria so

this was natsuhi + krauss + eva + hideyoshi + rudolf + kyrie

rosas definitely weird in ep2 i very vividly recall her BEING in that chapel too but i could be misremembering that part. though beatrice was there

this whole ordeal was a little strange i wish i remembered who exactly witnessed her bcs i feel like it wasnt just natsuhi n servants... Kyrie definitely saw her yes? I dont know what to make of it. What a cute outfit though shes so cute

also these mentions on shannon n kanon ep2 descs Awh

kanons key or servant involvement seeing as none of the others were first 6

kanon n jessica couldve killed each other Why? Who knows But someone carried kanons body out

"no one is hiding (regarding jessicas room)" STop i wouldve said that too im just like him i cant diss his abilities anymore.

Oh but also "kanon was killed in this room" =/= "kanon was killed in this room at that time" Im thinking about the scene where he "reappears" again i think its been said theres no disguise stuff so maybe

am i confusing the scenes because "theres no corpse" What happened in the doctors room???? when they saw him come back and bury his fingers to that wound i wouldve said he mightve died at that moment but then whats with the corpse. Girl

i miss her so much shes so funny "You are incompetent" in red is crazy

Beato:(.......

rosa had the keys yeahhhhhh i dont exactly remember Why i thought she was weird at the time but it was probably her. She was running around w the rifle too Well thats all for ep2 anyway

wtf even was charumi3 that was evas time to shine yes

Its definitely dead

None of the six committed suicide! hmm the weird linked one i remember it Though. Isnt "The six died instantly" incorrect in kinzos case if he was already dead... Since its a separate statement it doesnt have to refer to those six yes?? So maybe one of them besides kinzo didnt die instantly... Like battler suggested w a chain murder or one person going around to make up the chained rooms

Then theyd have a key too... girl i dont remember what eva was doing at this time also

at that point eva was supposedly in her room w a headache while witch eva was killing them so yeah doesnt look great for eva That servant things still possible too + rosa might as well have killed maria though idk who killed rosa in that case

eva did not kill hideyoshi... servant thing still strong and also wtf was kyrie thinking here anyway might as well blame her n then say eva killed kyrie but i forgor where eva was here again oopsie

"No life forms other than humans have any connection to this game" seems like a witch denying phrase but ok i guess its not a life form then

Lol. Once again kinzo thing makes this not matter... Though there go all my servants dawg maybe that was only for first twilight then

that is worrying. Do you think kanon n shannons names being pseudonyms affects the red truth. "shannon is dead" What if shannon is the idea of her servitude to the family and she threw it away for some reason and that way theres a Sayo who is killing people and doesnt really break the truths "shannon is dead" OR "there are no more than 18 humans on this island" All that goes for kanon too im just pretending that i didnt spoil myself his real name haha. Well kanon even more so since they made him appear and all but that couldve been jessicas delusion too...

she used to have so much fun that beato...

also even if eva was confirmed to not be involved in nanjos death that doesnt negate she couldve done well.everything else heart

thought about "Because of your sin, people die." a lot yesterday... The part about it not being about or with beatrice is of course very confusing and weird But yeah i cant even guess except apparently hes the reason the game exists? Or at least the reason it goes on or more specifically "cause of the eternal torture between us"

I dont understand how it could be about anything else BUT beatrice but ok. Maybe he was mean to maria like ange. But maria was literally 3 years old at that point... I guess he left the family 6 years ago but im having a terrible time trying to understand whats wrong with that really I guess asumu isnt blood related to him afterall but it cant be this great big sin beefing with rudolf u know. Id think his comebacks the reason the cerenomy was seen fit to be carried out (thinking about the amount of people) but angie wouldve normally been there instead of him anyway so the amount of people is the same and its over 14 anyway (13 sacrifices + whoevers imitating the epitaph) so i dont really understand blinks

i like when he goes Ah ngagh nnnghhh aaghh...!!! this vn loves to make people roar also They do it all the time. battler n beato do it the most but eva and many others always roaring too

also??? according to the wiki they didnt use red truth at all in ep3 until this point thats crazy i guess beato really WAS more careful about it

oh ange i miss u

i cant even tell what the first ones about theres no game record in ep4 tips how annoying <- doesnt remember at all what happened. Well ange was there uhh.

nvm its definitely about this one. I seriously remember nothing there was so much ange ange ange it was all eyes on ange.... I might reread my liveblogs

OH YEAH it was ppl supposedly witnessing kinzo killing everyone. Although uh "all ... acknowledged the presence of kinzo" Thats very different from "kinzo was there n killed everyone"... It couldve been in spirit or even if his corpse was there. Also last ones crazy u can just change that well i guess they were counting a corpse then

thats crazy confusing combined with knoxs rule about no accidents... what is left...

STOP. THERE GO BOTH OF MY SUSPECTS STOP IT

none of these negate kanon n rosa culprit yeah?

omfg wtf theres an image limit let me do the rest in another post

[freezethunder]

Top 5 dra/sdra2 characters

I'll do both because it seems like fun and I want to differentiate them

Top 5 DRA Characters

1. Akane

As far as supporting characters go, Akane Taira is certianly up there. She’s positive and very trusting of those she hold dear to, which is very heartbreaking seeing how she dull and empty she became at the start of chapter 3. And of course we have to talk about her mastermind personality. I think it is very shocking how someone so close to the cast, especially the protagonist could be the mastermind behind their killing game. It’s like Tsumugi done right! Not much has changed about her from her time with the cast, she’s just very unhinged and incredibly acrobatic to make all those leaps. Look at her go. I like Akane a lot out of the main cast and dare say she even beats some of the canon characters in most aspects.

2. Rei

Female and Better Byakuya. I’m kinda cheating here honestly this list is of DRA characters but I’m also taking into account her time from SDRA2 sooooooooo…..Rei. Like I said previously, obviously a female Byakuya, I mean she even shares some of the same sprites as him as well as the notes. A tall, smart, and stuck-up jerk who constantly berates the crew and doesn’t want to put up with them for a majority of the run time. Golly, where have I seen this before?~ The reason why she is so much better than her predecessor comes down to two factors. One, her growth comes from not finding the game boring or not wanting to participate like long legged lemon boy, but rather; “…..well fuck. These sentiments got to me. Now I have to help” And two, how she behaves when we next see her in other material, primarily SDRA2. She’s a lot more emotional and compassionate, even striking Tsurugi during that shit he pulled in Chapter 6. Like, let’s go girl! Yaaas! Get hiiiim! Queen shit!

3. Utsuro

I want to go more in depth on the masterminds at a later date, so for now I’ll just say I’m very on the fence about. There are some days I like him and some days I don’t. But I will say that the twist of the protagonist being the mastermind was done really here, and in order to get to the true ending, you have to go down the darker path which is a really nice twist and one I can’t say I could have done better.

4. Teruya

Also kind of cheating with this one but uhhh…sue me :/ Anyway, Teruya was one of the comedic goofballs right behind Haruhiko and Satsuki. Single brain cell trio. I also love his growth, from fighting with Haruhiko in Chapter 4 to wearing his goggles the rest of the game, that character design I love to see! And it carries over in the sequel too. Having Teruya be the one with the killing game experience is a neat concept, even if that aspect wasn’t used all that much. A shame what happened to him though(STUPIDFUCKINGPSYCHOCOPTSURUGIIHATEYOUIHATEYOU-)

5. Kanata

Kanata is a sweet girl, nothing more too it than that. But there ain’t nothing wrong with being a simple, polite, short cinnamon bun. And it really was a shame she had to go like that, I would have liked her to stick around some more. And I’m kind of interested to see what really was LINUJ’s intended purpose for her was……..y’know considering another character he made in the sequel, I don’t want to know actually, Nevermind.

Top 5 SDRA2 Characters

1. Sora

I want to go more in depth with the protagonist’s another day too, but let me just say that SORA IS AN AWESOME CHARACTER AND PROTAGONIST! HELD BACK BY THE FACT THAT SHE ISNT ENTIRELY CANON! SHE WOULD DO GREAT THERE! Ahem! …..Sorry. I love everything about Sora, her sassy attitude, her snarky comments, even hints of showing something darker within her. Sora is a top tier character in my book!

2. Mikado

Also want to talk more about him at a later date, but Mikado is my favorite mastermind! Hands down, bar none, literally beating all of the ones from the main cast! Revealing him right from the jump was genius, because then it was the cast constantly hating him and roasting him. He’s so wacky and goofy that for half of the game, you kinda forget he even is the mastermind. From his charming personality to his cool design and powers, Mikado Sannoji carries the entire game on his back along with Sora.

3. Yoruko

A pink haired love interest for the sassy amnesiac protagonist? Where have I seen this before?~ In all seriousness I think Yoruko’s cool. Her angry behavior and yelling at others can get old at times and some are even unwarranted such in Chapter 4 to Yuki, but underneath that facade lies a girl that is trying her best to protect those close to her after some many hardships in the past. Her relationship is Sora is just adorable and it’s crazy that after Chapter 4 and beyond, she’s the most sane person there. Yoruko may be a tsun-dried-tomato, but she’s the best tsun-dried-tomato Ive ever seen. (Can tomatoes be pink?)

4. Hibiki

Before playing the game: Oh wow, a bully character to the shy girl, again?! Oh geeeez! I can already tell I’m not gonna like her.

After playing the game: OH MY GOOOOD! IM SORRY HIBIKI SWEETIE! DID NOT DESERVE ANY OF THAT!

Getting right to it, I think Hibiki should have survived! Unlike Hiyoko who’s only character development relegated to a blink and you’ll miss it moment in the third chapter. Hibiki was trying from the end of Chapter 2 onwards, so why waste the actually, good, DEVELOPMENT?! I guess it is interesting to see a Chapter 3 with only one victim and two killers this time, but there was no need to drag Hibiki down with it. The general consensus is right, this was wasted potential. Go look up some Hibiki lives AU to ease the pain.

5. Iroha

Ahto-Bleh incarnate. Iroha seemed like the overly kind, ditzy sort of character made for comedic relief, and she is. But making her out to be one of the voids was pretty neat I suppose. It does set her up for some development to overthrow and turn her back Mikado to be with her friends and, …wait what? That, that didn’t happen…? ……GOD FUCKING DAMMIT LINUJ! So Iroha just stays this bratty, annoying, and fearful child the whole way through and learns nary a thing in the process. So I have to ask: why even bother?! Now you may be wondering, why is she high let alone top 5 if I have these issues with her. Well for one, I think she’s kind of funny with all her reactions and expressions, plus knowing the identity of one of the Voids in the group builds tension, and her drawing book has helped several times in trials. And it could just be me imagining a better character than what we actually received. Death to the author folks!