#this turned into a pretty big post

[beepborpdoodledorp]

the king and his comedically inept jester daughter

can you tell I'm very normal about them

[darkdragon768]

Various doodles of the Dorito Twins.

I just like to play with them like dolls and put them into situations.

[storyshift-sk]

PART 1/2 - Storytime!

Once Upon A Time… Things were great! Until they weren’t. dun, dun, dun

Every great fictional world starts with a history lesson!

[moth-flowers]

moth-flowers #21

[honkshoo-zzz]

carlos and jill, the goobers and my beloveds (more doodles under the cut)

sometimes u gotta put ur big macho blorbo in stripper clothes n pleasers just to feel something

[strifeworks]

day one: secrets

[aroaceleovaldez]

Your blog is the only blog where I feel safe enough asking this question. What do you think of Percy Jackson fans who feel as though they and the series have a moral superiority to Harty Potter ? Obviously, Harry Potter and its author are laden with questionable and sometimes straight-up hateful takes and views. But the way PJO fans constantly compare the two, its authors (even though RR is far from flawless), and the two MCs (ignoring how the two both share similarities in the fact that they are both traumatised, abused, angry teenage boys). I'm sorry that this ask got so long, but this has been annoying me for a while now.

This is an interesting question - for one, fandom fights over superiority is a concept that has been around for ages and has never been constructive. PJO and HP fandoms have been fighting in that exact way (and it has gone both ways!) for literal decades (remember, PJO turns 20 this year) so this isn't new, it's just taken on a moral flavor. Let's go over some things though (but please keep in mind i never got into HP and never read the books or fully watched the movies so my knowledge of HP is primarily pop culture absorption/secondhand from my family and friends):

Are either series perfect? No. HP absolutely is full of hateful sentiments and JKR is a hateful person and I do not respect her for that. Disney's marketing recently has absolutely fully leaned into trying to put Rick above her as a moral paragon and emphasizing how progressive he is and his support of diversity in middle grade series, despite some failings to reflect that in the actual text. Are Rick and JKR equally bad? Definitely not. Rick has had tangible good influence on adhd/dyslexia awareness that very directly impacted people like me as a neurodivergent kid going through school in the 2000s. JKR meanwhile has directly negatively impacted trans laws internationally very recently.

Rick absolutely isn't perfect, but he's vocally supportive, has made a lot of effort in the past to be inclusive, and still attempts to do so. Most of his issues simply stem from his own unaddressed internalized bigotry/biases and his research on varying topics not being great (plus poor management decisions such as not hiring a sensitivity reader actually fit for the story he's trying to tell). But he's not hateful. JKR is. JKR is very vocally hateful and bigoted and this is absolutely reflected in her work as well even in earlier HP. They are comparable in that they are both middle grade authors of easily two of the most popular middle grade fantasy (or specifically hidden world fantasy) series out right now. They are not equivalent in the slightest in their bigotry or tangible damage.

In terms of Percy versus Harry, I personally don't think they're very comparable. They share some similarities, but mostly just in that they're both the protagonists of their stories and thus serve protagonist purposes. Beyond that their use within the narrative is pretty different functionally. Their worlds' magic systems are not comparable. The hidden world aspect in both their universes isn't even comparable, since in PJO the "hidden world" aspect is very different from most hidden world fantasy formats because the entire point is that it's functionally not a hidden world. The characters themselves are very different as well - Percy's personality and the way he behaves and reacts to his environment is absolutely nothing like Harry's.

Most of the anti-HP-in-general sentiments stem from wanting to cut off JKR's notoriety, which I think is valid to want to do. And I do think there are a lot of issues with continuing to support JKR's work especially in ways that functionally promote her work or support her financially. Obviously, we will never be able to scrub HP from the cultural zeitgeist. It's just not feasible and I'm very anti-book burning so I do think it's important to acknowledge the role HP has had in pop-culture alongside acknowledging its harmful materials. HP is a text you absolutely can't death-of-the-author your way out of because a lot of the vitriol is baked into the text and worldbuilding in very overt ways - and there are plenty of other pop-culture staple novels like this. But fandom in general, at least true fandom and not mainstream fandom, is so obscure most of the time that I don't think, so long as people are not ignoring negative themes of the source material and are being thoughtful as they navigate engaging with it, that it is an inherently bad thing for HP fandom to just exist at all. It's never going to just stop existing no matter what people do. And HP fandom are not the only ones who should be thoughtful about how they engage with their source material - PJO fandom is not exempt from examining some of the problematic aspects in our own text and figuring out how to be respectful with those topics. It's just a lot easier for PJO fandom to tune it out without it being noticed because there's less of it and it's (at least sometimes) less overt. Honestly if HP fandom decided to go more down the path of a fandom like Warriors or Miraculous Ladybug, where the average sentiment is more along the lines of "Oh god no don't read/watch the source material it sucks/we stopped paying attention to it year ago and it's not relevant at all to what we're up to. We're over here functionally rewriting everything from the ground up/doing our own thing" I would very much support them in that endeavor. I do think there is merit in limiting promotion of the HP source material as much as possible, though.

Hopefully that all makes at least some amount of sense.

[butchlifeguard]

swimming <3

just add water, katie ledecky / tumblr / me / "how swimming helped an ocd writer quieten their mind," oprah daily / "how does swimming help shape my body?" plunge san diego / "simone manuel has already won," the ringer / pinterest / tumblr / aristotle and dante discver the secrets of the universe, benjamin alire sáenz / instagram / the swimmer, john cheever / me

[frameconfessions]

Analysis/opinions about the current state of Warframe from a 10+ year old veteran player.

Okay this isn’t a confession (or maybe it is I guess) but I’m about to give my 2 cents on an incorrect take being paraded around by salty noobs and people who barely touch the game. “No one plays steel path.”

You’ve never tuned into a Youtuber or twitch streamer’s content before, clearly. 🙄 No one you know plays steel path because you play with people at your current progression in the game who either don’t have it unlocked or refuse to get good and if truly no one played it, it wouldn’t be getting updates every time new nodes and content dropped. We also wouldn’t have at least 2 secret steel path boss fights in game with multiple trophies built into them.

The problem isn’t that “no one plays steel path,” the problem is this Valkyr rework is out of touch with the current state of the game as a whole. It amounts to the developers over exaggerating a problem that isn’t as much of a problem as they’re advertising it out to be to make an attempt at lessening justified community backlash and slapping a bandaid over the cyst that is the current state of health, armor, and survivability in this game.

Some backstory & needed context: The devs clearly saw people losing interest in the base star chart content between constant back-to-back open worlds and no higher end difficulty built into the game. Player retention was dropping, it was the late 2010s content drought & veterans were leaving the game in droves or just stopped playing. This resulted in less money being spent on the game and DE saw what an impact that had. Warframe felt too samey and was boring for dedicated and veteran players alike.

People like Mogamu suggested a battlepass with special challenges and rewards to keep players coming back to the game, to give the dedicated players something new to do. Around that same time was the constant criticism that Warframe is too easy past a certain point, there’s just no real difficulty once you become a dedicated player. DE was taking notes, they heard the community’s problems with the game and saw how it was indeed hurting the game.

Timeline is a bit blurry for me here but sometime in the late 2010s they made railjack (launching with enemies being way too tanky for a lot of people and outpouring way too high DPS), steel path, and Nightwave. These were all made to address the issues that members of the community rightfully pointed out. Then Steel Path kept getting updates to make it actually incentivizing to play!

Power creep happens over time but people are more satisfied with the state of steel path as a whole seemingly. DE cared about making higher end difficulty and we saw that also with Duviri’s circuit mode even in more recent years. They care about the game’s health but there’s been an underlying problem even before steel path existed, health and armor just don’t cut it the further you go in the game.

You can mod for strictly survivability but then your damage can go out the window. Enemies at a certain point just one shot you which leads to players picking up frames that have high energy costs & upkeep for more survivability. Shield gating is but a bandage on the larger injury of late game just not being feasible regarding survivability.

Invulnerability isn’t the fix-all to Warframe’s end game but it is with the current state of difficulty in the game. Taking it away to “test out” slapping shield gate on a frame and nerfing her is just silly and out of touch. I get they spent budget on reworking her & they’re making the excuse that they wanna see how she feels on launch, but dedicated players have already done the math and builds to test her in steel path and it’s just not looking good. Also, we already have frames like Nidus & Inaros if they’re actually going to do something about reworking health & armor.

Is Valkyr just going to have to stay nerfed until more updates are out? How long will that take? How long does she have to sit on the base star chart shelf gathering dust while you “track stats?” If the goal was to sell as many thirsty skins as possible (not getting into the discourse about how it doesn’t look like Valkyr or how it doesn’t suit her idc about that right now) and have as many people playing her as possible in turn, this just isn’t the way to do it. Once those people DE pays to try out Warframe can no longer run her juicy thick self on steel path, they’ll just play a different frame instead.

She won’t get recommendations to be played anymore beyond base star chart and maybe early steel path. People won’t buy an expensive skin for a frame they barely play. Fashion the frames you play most is just common sense and economically smart! That social media influencer you paid to get into Warframe is not gonna stay a casual base start chart player forever. You’ll get your temporary influx of thirsty skin buyers with Isleweaver & whoever DE gets to promote the game to some corner of the internet, but long term? It’s not financially wise because it’s not a solution. It’s putting a sparkly little bandaid over a gaping wound and I’m tired of people pretending it’s not.

Warframe didn’t get to be this good of a game because of reddit white knighting or blind defense of their every decision as developers, it got good and stayed live on servers this long because of the veteran and dedicated players who rightfully criticized the developers choices, gave feedback on why x thing isn’t good and/or how x thing could be improved. Warframe is only good & has only been good when they listen to their dedicated and veteran players.

Covering up a problem in a thirsty purple pink bow isn’t gonna make the wound go away, the blood of the core issues in the game is gonna leak through that fabric. Those new players won’t stay new forever and they’ll soon also see Warframe for what is is, the good and the bad.

I’m also gonna go on record and say that she was not an inactive play-style, managing the energy economy of her is a task and one you have to sink a lot of time into to build for. Her damage is fine as is too; she can hit damage cap, you just don't wanna learn how to build her. The spin melee problem wasn’t really addressed with this and neither was anything else Pablo brought up, but hey at least Warcry is recastable without an augment now; so, it must be good, right!? RIGHT!?

Not listening to dedicated players is how Digital Extremes loses money, dedicated players keep the game alive. I’ve said my piece.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS & OPINIONS

Also before any trolls try to say “who hurt you?” Digital Extremes did, by making the game boring as all Hell in the late 2010s for at least a good year or so à la content drought. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it even in the Warframe community.

The problem is power creep and that problem is far more expensive to fix than a warframe rework or two. If the devs want a warframe to be played a certain way, they’re gonna make the community play that frame that way (even if part of the game’s appeal is player choice and build variety, but I guess that’s not really being considered here). While yes I hear you bringing up my earlier point about energy econ as a counterpoint about player choice, at least current Valkyr is something more unique than a rework that doesn't really change her kit all that much and is essentially just a nerf with sheild gate being once again shoved down our throats. All frames for steel path must be built similarly, this is good game design, right?

I get they wanna make her whole kit useable & I can respect that part, but right now the Hysteria invulnerability nerf is only going to make the game slightly worse overall, not better. Also it hardly seems to set out to fix what it's trying to supposedly fix, but I'd have to get my hands on the first 3 tweaked abilities to really know for sure,

Also don’t even get me started on how disingenuous Pablo’s Hysteria talk felt. "It also had this whole section where at the end of it, you could die if you hadn't done like a certain process that was very confusing for most players. So a lot of people would just end up like once they were running out of energy, they would just hide in a closet and just wait it out, which was pretty bad." I would like to see the stats for how often this actually occurs because I've never seen a Valkyr player do that, even base star chart default colors ones. I felt like I was being PR spoken to and that just makes it feel so wrong.

In a world where health and armor are at a good spot in late game this rework is an acceptable trade off, but right now it shouldn’t be shipped.

Also another thing about you level cap buzzword haters out there... Warframe does care about endurance runs/late game or at least used to back when the Kuva fortress tileset was released. People were doing max cap survival endurance runs, going for world records, and playwarframe was present in the chat cheering them on as well as some of the devs personal twitch accounts at the time. I remember Smashley's stream in particular as an example though it may be lost to time because the internet is not forever, much in contrast to what our parents told us as kids. Also, like I stated previously, Steel Path is consistently getting updates.

Easier financially to try to make small changes and seemingly ignore the bigger issues than to tweak bigger core parts of the game, I'm sure any developer would much rather do the former than the latter. It's smart budgeting even if it hurts the game's longevity, but this Valkyr issue has truly pushed this larger problem into the lime light; hopefully so much so in that they actually do fix the bigger problem. Huge changes are needed for the game's health if the power scaling is going to keep increasing, but Valkyr getting nerfed shouldn't need to come first. Fix the core issues before you put a perfectly good frame in the shredder.

Or maybe I'm just a MR27 (going on 28) salty veteran player ranting and raving about nothing important whatsoever. 🤷‍♀️ - mod Rose

[a2zillustration]

Hey, have you heard about the new third-party option in the Visibility tab of blog settings yet?

I HAD NOT, THANK YOU FOR THE HEADS UP!!

In this house we hate AI generation tools built on content without permission, so I'd recommend everyone out there:

go into your blog tab

click on "blog settings"

scroll allllll the way to the bottom to the "prevent third-party sharing" option, and toggle that on (it looks as if you have to do this for each individual blog right now)

[amperes-dreams]

been a fan of corru.observer for a while now and never actually tried drawing any of the characters

so here's an attempt at gakvu

[strawby-fields]

Been reminded of my two beautiful babies…

Aren’t they the most swell little fellas you’ve ever seen

His charming thousand yard stare. Don’t you love him?

[princewylder]

gonna be a little greedy with this one--1, 6, 11, and 20 for riku? :3c

Hell yeah let's go.

1. What was the original thought that led to the creation of this character?

Ah yes - I think I have spoken about this before but Riku was originally called Rinku and was actually a version of Link lol. It was because my interest was transferring from Zelda to Persona so I decided to combine the two into an AU! Then as I started to really get into Persona I decided to develop Riku into his own character - as a separate Persona OC. It's kind of evolved from there then lol - overall I would say he's gone through two major changes since he became a standalone Persona OC.

6. What was the thought process behind their appearance? Did you go mostly for aesthetic or are there any other reasons they look the way they do?

Hmm. In terms of his physical design he has changed quite a bit - he started out as essentially a Sylvain clone lol (I was a big fan of his design what can I say) and he's evolved into his own character now - mostly from me just going "what if I gave him this or changed this?" and then went from there.

In terms of his outfits I've spent a LOT of time working on them - in particular his thief outfit. I researched each of the other thief outfits and then worked from there - stuff like shape language and colour palettes. He's gone through multiple iterations - most of which I've never shared but I'm pretty happy with the look now (even if I must admit. He is blue Dante 😭).

Overall I would say with every aspect of Riku's design its a mix of what I personally like and a lot of research as well. Character design is something I'm extremely passionate about and I use Riku to basically help me learn and improve that!

11. Is there any existing character from other media that your character resembles? Was the resemblance intentional or was it a coincidence?

Yes to both actually! Riku naturally draws inspiration from some of my personal favourite characters over the years (he's kind of an combination of all of them tbh) so some resemblance is definitely intentional. I would say the big ones are Zagreus (ESPECIALLY him), Dante from DMC, Spiderman and Simba (after the new changes their backstory is less similar but the plot beats are familiar shall we say). All of them have had a huge effect on me and so have affected Riku too.

There's been plenty of unintentional references too - most of which have been brought up by people on here (Karma from Assassination Classroom is one I remember - and that's also how I decided on his Japanese VA). Other times I'll get into a piece of media and realize that the character I get attached too has some resemblance to Riku lol. A very recent example of this is thanks to Arcane - Jayce and Vi both have stuff in common with Riku!

20. Share any additional thoughts, art, favourite scenes, anything you've been waiting to ramble about.

Hm there's honestly so much I want to share that I wouldn't even know where to begin lol. I guess I can say that because of your Asuka posting I've been thinking about them interacting again!

I'm kind of lazy about posting art and idk if I will post this but there's a cool study I did of the Arcane style (the blending mostly) where I drew Riku based on a screenshot of Jayce (S2 E8) and tbh it might be the best Riku I've ever drawn I don't think I'll top it.

A small thing I could share is that I have officially changed Riku's eye colour to a reddish brown and he no longer wears the blue contacts. Tbh I just enjoyed how the blue eyes looked with the red hair which is why I wanted to keep it somewhat - but now I'm way more used to the reddish brown eyes so that's his eye colour (might even change it to a deeper brown like my own eyes lol).

[caruliaa]

just bc im a lesbian doesnt mean tht i wont at times become deeply entranced with the beauty of male actor or character. it just means i wld rather be locked in a room with a man with a knife than do anything romantic or sexual with one

[cheezyharu]

Ref sheets for artfight part 3 (I think)

Also this guy… about time I reveal Citrine to the public ig (only 3 years late💀), OC/sona (?) for Houseki no Kuni from back when I was more into it

[whyoneartheven]

that one totk quote abt link being the last line of defense… but it’s just me vs the very very messy house