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auroreliis · 1 year

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i just have one of the most life changing ideas ever and its- blind, deaf, and mute baking with the batfam. you can choose who’s who and who’s filming and who has the fire extinguisher ready.

Thank you for this request! It was entertaining to write :)

Yeah Alfred said no, so you had to wait until he and Bruce left the manor

Platonic Yandere!Batfam

Summary: Chaos in the kitchen (blind, mute and deaf baking)

CW: no warnings

(not edited or proofread)

This was going to be fun, that was for sure. However, the arguing that came along with it was maddening.

Currently all four of your brothers were talking over, shouting at and fighting with each other.

Together you had all decided to bake a cake while one of you was deaf, one mute and one blind. The only problem was that there were five of you, so either one role repeated or you had to find a different solution.

The primary source of the conflict was the question of who would have which role.

Dick requested to do it randomly, but Jason insisted that he and Damian should be mute, because they talk too much.

Damian, on the other hand, was not pleased with that solution and instead told Jason to just be deaf. However, Tim stated that he also didn't want to hear Damian and Dick talk.

Exhaling, you leaned your cheek against your palm with your elbow positioned on the kitchen counter. Maybe you should just call Alfred. The idea of all four of them getting in trouble was entertaining enough for you to subconsciously snicker. Just as quickly as it appeared, your smile dropped again when you heard what role they had decided for you.

"You'll be filming, alright, Songbird?", Dick pointed at you, expecting you to comply.

"What? No! I want to bake the cake too!", you protested, but to no avail. "No way! You'd burn the kitchen down", Dick dismissed you with the wave of his hand.

"Wow. So you trust Dick in the kitchen, but not me?", you turned to the others, not really believing they had any say in this at all. You were met with silence from their end.

Unbelievable. This was another thing about your new family. Everything fun was verboten. More specifically, anything that was even insignificantly risky, was off the table. Which sucked, since you were basically living off adrenaline.

You turned away from them to sulk in silence, knowing that they wouldn't change their minds.

By the time you had come to terms with the current arrangement, they had all settled and decided the following:

-Dick was mute

-Jason was deaf

-Tim and Damian were blind

While not completely satisfied, you realised that they would at least be somewhat entertaining to watch. Boredom was staring to get to you and you could only watch so many movies and TV shows before getting sick of them.

The start was...rocky, to say the least.

Tim and Damian were bumping into each other quite often. Neither were really happy when they realised who had just walked into them and after a while, they started searching for each other to purposefully bump into each other.

Dick was stressed, but you were having the time of your life. Sometimes you even called out to them, "Tim, watch out, Damian is to your left!", only to see them trying to ram into each other.

Dick was getting more peeved every time and his face always scrunched up. Every now and then, he would glance at you, wanting you to stop telling them each other's locations, but he could never ask you to stop. You were only helping your dear brothers stay safe, at the end of the day (and also he was mute).

Dick was having troubles. He relied on words so much, that being mute was really difficult for him. It was impossible to stand around and do nothing while the others argued and hit each other, but he couldn't diffuse any fights. He did try using sign language with Jason, but he mostly turned away from him and pretended to not to have seen him.

Jason often grabbed both Tim and Damian by the shoulders to guide them past any obstacles. What they didn't know, was that he would always make sure to leave some cake batter on their clothes. He would look to you afterwards and wink, implying that this stays between you and him.

Overall, Jason was doing great. He was in his own world, doing his own thing, listening to music and sometimes even humming or dancing along to it.

Damian was very irritated, especially when he, halfway through, noticed that his clothes were covered in cake batter. During the challenge, he often tried to identify Jason and trip him. He usually failed, since Jason avoided him, however he did succeed once. Jason fell and knocked Dick over along with him, luckily Dick couldn't say anything about it. Jason later tried to trip Damian as well, but he somehow managed to avoid falling every time.

Dick and Jason were the ones who did the most, because they could actually see, but Tim and Damian often tried to be involved more, even though it was a bad idea. Like when Tim accidentally knocked over the oil which Dick carelessly placed on the edge of the counter and Damian almost slipped on the puddle.

Tim stayed on the sidelines for most of the challenge. He did try to help, but it typically ended poorly. He just couldn't get used to the lack of vision. Even so, he did fling cake batter towards the source of Damian's voice when the latter mocked him for his lack of orientation.

When they had finally placed the cake into the oven, all of you exhaled in relief. You were starting to fear that you would suffocate from laughter. You had been laughing so much, that Dick considered setting up another camera, one which only filmed you and your radiant smile.

He did follow through with this. However, you only found out when you caught him rewatching the video a month later before going to bed. His proudest accomplishment, according to him, was finally making you enjoy spending time with them. You slammed the door when you left his room.

After a quick break you continued filming them when it was time to decorate.

Dick pushed everyone away and frosted completely by himself. However, nobody stayed still.

Damian, with sprinkles in hand, was tripped by Jason and stopped himself from falling by grabbing whatever was nearest to him. It just so happens that his hand landed on the cake.

Then another argument erupted, primarily because Jason was angry about the ruined cake.

Dick decided to rip off the tape from his mouth to diffuse the situation and end the challenge.

They all agreed that it was time to stop. You stopped filming and took a look around.

You lacked the vocabulary to describe the state of the kitchen after this challenge. "Chaotic" would be an understatement. Alfred would fall to his knees upon entering, only to quickly get up because his trousers would be covered in cake batter.

"So...when will dad and Alfred be returning?", you broke the awkward silence.

"I think they said on the 14th", Dick wiped his hands clean.

"Wait, what day is today?", Jason chimed in.

You were about to check on your phone when the sound of a door unlocking echoed through the manor

All of you exchanged looks.

Uh Oh...

#dick grayson #yandere dick grayson #jason todd #yandere jason todd #tim drake #yandere tim drake #damian wayne #yandere damian wayne #dc comics #platonic yandere #batfam #platonic batfam #yandere batfam #x reader

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gumi-writes · 14 days

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a knife, bladeless

source: touchstarved

wc: ~1.4k

summary: there were two main rules when it came to dealing with monsters.

contains: vere-centric with some implied verexoc / canon-typical violence / kudos to my wife for the headcanon that if you spend enough time with vere he will at some point vibe check you by stabbing you / is it rude? absolutely. is it unfair? 100%. but that’s just monsters being monsters babey / this turned far into far more of a character study than i intended it to lol but i just love my bitch ass girlfriend so much <3 /

author’s note: if it were up to me vere would always be malding (affectionate)

It should have annoyed him. Or rather, he should have been more annoyed—enough to be spurned into action, or at the very least full of biting words as opposed to biting them back. Vere had certainly cut people off for far less, a nonzero sadistic streak enabling him to find a particular enjoyment in reminding others when they forgot their place. You could even accuse him of it being one of his hobbies and have that accusation be warranted.

So why was Tiên still slumbering peacefully in his bed?

These days, Vere finds himself watching her sleep.

Not, of course, in a manner most crass—contrary to popular opinion, Vere wasn’t as gutter-minded as many seemed to assume. Something which—while certainly a common misconception, was also one he never felt the need to correct. Why amend when he could weaponize instead?

If people were desperate enough to slip a honed blade into his deft hands, a hold so accustomed to the craft of using that it could be done with effortless ease—then why should he bother denying them?

After all, a show was a show, and Vere wasn’t in the habit of missing out on free entertainment. Not if they were offering themselves, and that was almost always what it was—fresh meat so eager for the taking that it gifted gleaming knife and bared neck alike.

The problem was though—

A steady heartbeat. Too steady, if you were to ask him. His senses were such that people could not hide from him, sharp enough to unearth the most buried of weak spots and expose the rawest of nerves—no matter how cleverly concealed it was.

—easy prey did not satiate him for very long.

So why was Tiên still slumbering peacefully in his bed?

Perhaps he’d be less vexed by it if it was a post sex occasion. If all the nights she’d decided to crash were post sex occasions. Because while Vere did not have a tendency of allowing people to stick around for that long in the aftermath, it would certainly make this all feel less… irritatingly saccharine.

But it wasn’t.

Eyes narrow. Fingers itch. It would have been a mistake to have called this allowance one of sentimentality—the vast coldness in his gaze revealed as much, completely devoid of anything fond. It would have been a mistake, but that it could have been made in the first place irked him. It was all so irksome.

The gall to not ask—to beg—for permission. The audacity of never reacting to anything normally. The absolute maddening cheek to somehow not be unbearable in spite of all the things he had to bear.

(‘Just kick them out,’ Ais had said, ever the poor sympathiser to his plight. Nothing short of absolutely shit for things like this, but he was one of the rare few that lasted long enough to hear Vere complain.)

Vere knew exactly how they’d react if he told them in no small words to beat it. The first thing was that they would indeed beat it—without any question. The second was that Tiên would not only not get embarrassed, but she’d likely never bring it up. Ever. And not just because the humiliation of retracing a misstep was one she wanted to avoid, but because it would have genuinely not mattered to her.

Which meant that without her to be the affected one, even his perfectly reasonable response would have felt an extremity—a loss of control where anything but a victory was unforgivable. Regardless of it being a matter of relativity.

He could have potentially justified it if she made for a poor bedfellow—a man of his luxuries and comforts that was exceedingly possessive of his own space, were Tiên to have been a poor sleeper, that would have been more than enough to make up for the previous, except…

Tiên does not move in her sleep. Her body temperature, the next thing that could have so easily been bothersome, also wasn’t, and in fact was something she could change on the fly, meaning that it was always infuriatingly perfect. His vanity, in one of the pettiest reasons of all, would surely have enabled him to call it quits if she was unsightly at rest—but he wasn’t granted that either.

And he’d tried to psyche her out. The last time she’d done this, Vere had taken a page out of her obnoxious novel and slept on top of her without asking. In what was a clear bid to make Tiên give him a single satisfying valid reason to get rid of her; were he to have awoken in the middle of the night that would have been it—

Instead, he’d woken up the next morning in what was evidently uninterrupted slumber.

Even now, the thought of it was a trying one. His only explanation was that it had to have been a miraculous fluke, but even that feels wanting when he was bereft of what felt a surefire win. To meet with such impossible standards, including a zero tolerance for his own discomfort even at the cost of—or especially because of—another’s… and to still surpass them…

Well, that didn’t sit right with him at all.

In the dusk of rose, barely blinking—a frigid chill grows all the more biting. What might’ve seemed a petulance ultimately boiled down to an immovably monstrous nature: an affinity towards discord and an aversion towards harmony.

Rule one was to remember that a monster was always a monster. Rule two—

Moonlight and shadow as the sole witnesses. Nimble fingers twitch in a call to action—where idle hands were synonymous with the devil’s tools; the watcher no longer content with just watching. He couldn’t be blamed, in the end. It was on her for letting her guard down. It was on him to teach her a lesson.

—was to never forget rule one.

The dagger may as well have been slipped into his hand. A sleek, pretty little thing, gleaming steel a perfect fit for the space between Tiên’s ribs. She already looked the part he would have found triumph in, flat on her back with her hands neatly clasped, locks of ashen silver to halo her form—a most picturesque corpse-in-waiting if he’d ever seen one. At least she was good for something.

No remorse. No hesitance. Night itself seemingly darkened in a wicked embrace of blood-soaked sin; its silence a clear sign of approval—why else would it have carried the heady weight of a rapt audience worth putting on a performance for?

As easy as breathing.

As quiet as fallen snow.

Of course, it struck true. Of course, it slid home.

Of course, the buried, bladed evidence was revealed in jewel-encrusted hilt, one that stuck skywards and out of Tiên’s chest.

They hadn’t even cried out.

And yet—

A steady heartbeat. Still too steady. Always too steady.

Where metal met meat, a red slit simmered in something almost ponderous. A languid, near bubbling, as if the inner was deciding what to do with the intruder and it had all the damn time in the world to do so.

It’s clear, then. In the moment that should not have existed. In the imposition that should have been imposed in its place. Vere never strikes without the complete and full recognition of what that strike can and will do, but when he’s not afforded even a single drop—no crimson tear to grace the canvas of flesh, no crescendoed swansong to precede the final curtain—somehow, he’s not surprised.

Just like when the murder weapon…

…tips…

…landing onto its side—he’s also not surprised, either.

If anyone claimed that he was secretly hoping for it not to take, they’d surely have been corrected—if not by him, then by the world itself. Because it’s not relief that fills him when he can still hear that blasted beating organ, but neither was it hatred that had driven his hand in the first place.

By the time he retrieves the dagger, a wintry cool has settled within him. A quiet resignation, perhaps. Or at least an acknowledgment—of inevitability, of futility.

Of her.

She’d not been so much stabbed as her heart had become a blade’s cradle, up until it was eaten. Steel piercing flesh? A tale as old as time. Flesh swallowing steel?

Vulpine ears had flattened. A sigh rises and falls. They hadn’t even done the courtesy of stirring, as immovable as ever—with her breast unburdened with the need of the rise-and-fall, she really did look dead. And while it was a shame that Tiên couldn’t follow through, by the time Vere comes back to bed, he’d already let her have it.

At the very least, if she complained about the pain, then perhaps it would be worth the cost of a knife.

What an utter waste, otherwise.

#touchstarved #touchstarved game #vere touchstarved #gumi writes #also dividers by @/cafekitsune #genre wise this fic is very funny to me #because from the audience's perspective it's a horror. from vere's it's dark comedy. and from tiên's it's fluff #anyway i love putting vere in the torment nexus that's really just him going up against his own vanity and pride #foxblood

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gorjee-art · 29 days

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CULT OF THE LAMB - THE MAKING OF IDOLS

Instead of faith it runs on admiration. Goal of the game is to make the gods “beautiful”. With the help of Lunule muse of vanity and Sonule muse of soul, you’ve been gifted the powers of creation. Crawl through each realm manipulating dungeons to your personal liking, no uncultured swine is safe from your magic touch. Trap god’s likenesses in Statue Gardens, Paintings, Poetry, and Song (may be freed later on). Over the progression of this tale you will meet several side characters, however Midas will be a bit of importance as he takes interest in your quest, aiding your journey in making everything beautiful.

Finding your Corpse (Story Point) -

There it stands. The Masterpiece of a lonesome, pitiful, artist. Name unknown, it stands here forgotten, devoted to it’s craft, the love for it’s muses. Your final breath was taken here. You’ve broken and ruined every bone in your body for your art and for what? You weren’t unloved, everyone warned you to stop.

Now here you rest, Left buried in the sands of time.

Was it worth it?

Rituals

Ritual of Performance - Feel like royalty as you choose which follower gets to entertain you. The performance is judged by the crowd over how well they did. It’s up to you to spare or execute them. (Even if spared they may not survive the humiliation.)

The Knowledge of the Muses - Give followers your inner ichor for them to devour and taste, locks admiration for 3 days and increases inspiration. Weakly followers have a chance to become deformed, body unable to handle the love of their leader.

Midas’ Touch - Sacrifice one of your followers to make a decorative statue. Increases admiration every time a follower passes by it, and gives warning to every dissenter. (Gifted Ritual by Midas)

Forever Yours - Your followers may asked to be sacrificed under your name. Thus the forever immortal ritual, they’ll allow you to do whatever change you desire to them, immortalized as a work of art no longer among the living. This ritual gives helpful trinkets for your crusades (they last every three crusades before disintegrating, special followers can give hardy trinkets that last longer)

- Follower Heart : Gives more starting hearts

- Follower Spine : Melee Damage

- Follower Eye : Forcefield Damage/Copies Curses

- Follower Teeth : Long Range Damage

- Follower Lungs : Increases your Speed

- Follower Head : Dissenters/Enemies will be paralyzed with fear

Muse’s Mercy - Strike your followers with maddening amounts of inspiration , they must create! Serve! Worship! With no end in sight. This ritual will increase cult productivity with no sleep, eating, or needed care for three days. (downsides is that 80% will be exhausted as soon as the ritual is over)

Follower Traits -

Critic - Like you they are very hard to please and level up, may be bribed to increase admiration.

Zealous - Fanatics, have unending fountains of admiration they want to be just like you! May be dangerously obsessive however. Be sure to stop them before they get a chance to become you and live under your skin. Oh how they love you so…

Gluttonous - Crayon Eaters…odd bunch. They like to eat art. So pretty they deem it to be tasty…

Tortured - High levels of admiration. The pursuit of perfection can lead your followers to madness… They’ll laugh, scream, and cry. If not careful, they might be driven to die or murder another follower.

#cotl au - the making of idols #i might have to draw for this soon but here’s all the story beats!!#i think a unique drink for this au would be highly caffeinated drinks instead of alcohol lol

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tame-a-messenger · 5 months

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you know what stings me the most about sword af if they are doing this audio only thing because they don't get that much revenue back? (which I and lot of other people are assuming, and that's another thing that bothers me about smosh and how they handle things: they don't tell us the reason why, they just do things and don't explain the reasoning behind and then never talk about it again but that's for another day) they may not get an equal amount of views as others games videos (and I think a lot of that came from instead of taking the excitement fans had when it started and releasing the episodes faster they went in the opposite route: making it be biweekly. that time without new content made some of the excitement died down) but they had a very passionate loyal fanbase. like how many fan works have we see about these characters? fanarts and edits and fics and cosplays. and yeah it may be a smaller amount than they are used to but the fans that enjoyed the series were so loud in their love. it's a shame that if this is the reasoning behind they are telling these fans that the love and passion doesn't matter. that at the end of the day loving what you are doing (like the cast does with these characters) or what you are watching don't make a difference If it's not going to get you enough money.

and I also totally agree with you about having the fans help and such. any time they do a charity live stream they raised so much money, which for me says that the people that watch their content would love to help them make the stuff that they love. like i'm sure some would love to have merch of their favorite characters in sword af. some would love to help get them the tools needed to make the best out of their beloved series.

with audio only we lose so much of the reaction and emotions that these talent actors can bring to the table. without even mentioning people that are hard of hearing or have auditory processing disorders. like me for once, english is not my first language and I learn all by myself meaning that sometimes I need help of the body language and expressions as well as captions to help me truly get what they are saying. you can't do that with a podcast. at least not one without visuals.

I totally agree with them making it bi-weekly killing a lot of the hype around it.

So many missteps with it and it still has such a great fan-base. (I'm seeing red again)

The money excuse is something that I don't even want to entertain. They KNOW that the fan-base is willing and able to fund most anything they want to do (if they ever decide to crowd fund that is..) so that's why I'm so confused about why they went this route?

It just feels like they don't care enough to put in that much effort, which hurts me. I can only give them so much leeway for fumbling Sword AF...

(the biggest problem is how they are going about it, if they had explained why they couldn't do it for whatever reason I could at least respect the fact they explained it, like they actually cared. But they obviously don't)

There's so many reasons why having visuals helped tell the story, it's so maddening even thinking about how disparaging it is they got rid of it.

#smoshblr #smosh #smosh games #sword af #sword af season 2 #sword af s2

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yellowelectroslime · 2 months

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lee!Zhongli and ler!Foul legacy Childe headcanons? >\\\\<

[notes: HI ANON omg sorry it took so long, smth abt this ask clicked smth inside of me and I really wanted to write a drabble/fic instead of just headcanons. I also had some motivational annoyances along the way but eventually, I finished!! Hope u enjoy!]

Pairing: Lee!Zhongli, Ler!Childe (can be seen as platonic or romantic)

Warnings: tickles, mention of stabbing but its not actually stabbing, probably a bit ooc, unedited, no beta

Word count: 930~

Stubborn Childe…

Zhongli was in the Golden House since he needed some materials from Childe, but being the stubborn and cocky harbinger he was, he didn’t want to go down without a fight. That’s how the former geo archon found himself in this troublesome situation.

“For the last time Childe, I will not be fighting you.” Zhongli states in a stern tone, crossing his arms across his chest. He is currently standing face-to-face with Childe in his Foul Legacy form. Unlike Zhongli, Childe is stood in a fierce fighting position, he is more than ready to spar the ex geo archon.

“Come on now Mr Zhongli, you used to be one of the strongest archons of the seven, surely fighting me would be no issue.” Childe’s loud, distorted voice booms across the large empty hall. “And besides, even with your current power, you would still be able to take me down within seconds! so, what's the harm, really?” Zhongli sighs and closes his eyes in fake annoyance, he really did want to entertain Childe’s excitement, it was just that Zhongli might really hurt him.

“Like I said for the past 15 minutes Childe, I will not-“ BANG! It took Zhongli a few seconds to realise what had happened. Childe had wrestled him onto the ground within seconds! Zhongli found himself on the floor with Childe sitting on top of him, his large body towering over Zhongli’s, not to mention how Childe had somehow managed to pin both of Zhongli’s arms with only one hand.

“To think that the geo archon could be taken down this quickly and easily, have you dulled your skills Mr Zhongli?” Childe teased. Had Zhongli really let his guard down this much with Childe? He was quickly taken away from his thoughts when he felt on of Childe’s clawed hands rest on his side. “N-now h-hold on, Childe…”

Childe only smiled, or… Zhongli assumes he did. “Now then Mr Zhongli, how about telling me where you’re sensitive.”

The fatui harbinger experimentally tweaked Zhongyi’s sides, earning him a high pitched squeak coming from the older man. “MhHg! C-childe… I’m w-warning you...”

“Well then, guess I’ll have to find out the harder way” Zhongli felt butterflies as Childe’s claws started to slowly brush against his sides, the sensation wasn’t intense enough to make Zhongli laughing, but enough to make his start giggling uncontrollably. Zhongli tried to hold in his laugh as much as he could, not wanting to give Childe the satisfaction of victory. “You should just let it go and start laughing, Zhongli! You’ll feel a lot better if you do, you know?”

He bit his tongue and tried to remember his most serious memories, ANYTHING to try and get his mind off of the maddening sensations. He tried thinking the fingers tickling him were instead stabbing him, and it worked… for exactly 6 seconds. That was when Childe moved from gently scribbling his sides to squeezing Zhongli’s hips.

“G-Gah! AhahaHAHA! C-Chihihile!” Zhongli bucked his hips, hoping he would be able to dislodge Childe’s hands, which was completely ineffective as Chile was currently more than double Zhongli’s size. Despite Childe’s previous teasing, he chose to remain silent, which was surprisingly much worse. “Ch-ChihihihiHIldeehe- GAHAhahaHA!” Zhongli attempted to buck his hips to dislodge the tickle hands, but with a massive armoured soldier on top of him, there really wasn’t much he could do but laugh.

Childe moved his hands to scribble at his ribs, gently digging his clawed fingers in between the grooves of each of his bones. Zhongli’s laughter grew louder as the harbinger moved his fingers higher and higher, dangerously close to his armpits. Although this is not his worse spot, it certainly was very ticklish for Zhongli.

“My, my, you certainly are very ticklish considering the centuries that you lived.” Childe chuckled, he let go of the older man’s arms, Zhongli immediately slammed him arms down, locking them in place next to his sides, however the harbinger was faster. He brought both of his hands to Zhongli’s hips, rubbing small circles on the bone.

Zhongli’s laugher increased an entire 3 octaves as his worst spot was tickled mercilessly by the larger man. His usually deep and charming chuckles turned into loud and uncontrollable laughter within a couple of seconds of tickling. The discovery of Zhongli’s worst spot seemed to have excited Childe, if you looked close enough, you could almost make out the excitement light up in his eyes.

“GAHAHAhahahAHA, Ch-CHIHIHihihLDE! STOHOHOP AH-AHAT OHAHANCE!” Tears of mirth started to build up in his eyes, he could feel his cheeks and ears turning Jueyun chili red. He tried pushing at Childe’s hands, but with the size difference and how much weaker Zhongli had gotten from the tickling, it proved ineffective.

Childe, although he could be seen as a monster at times, he wasn’t exactly evil. With the years of tickle wars he had with his siblings, he knew when it was time to stop. And thus, the torturous fingers slowed to a halt, removing themselves from Zhongli’s giggly body. The giggly man immediately curled up into a tight ball, twitching and still giddy from the ghost tickles. Whenever, he closed his eyes, he could still feel the claws mercilessly tickling his body.

At this point, Childe had returned to his original form, he took a seat next to Zhongli’s curled up body. “You know, XianSheng, I think today’s sparring match was really enjoyable! We should do it again some time.” The ginger smiled and walked away, leaving Zhongli to take a break alone. Maybe he wasn’t opposed to this idea, at least he knows that no one would get injured during this activity.

#genshin tickles #slime-drabbles #tickle fic #sfw tickles #genshin tickling #Ler!Childe #Lee!Zhongli #Ler!Foul legacy #genshin impact tickling #tickles #ticklish!Zhongli

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puzzleddonkey · 1 year

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More lore dump

As much as I love rabbids, they don't really fit well with their source material anymore, so I'd as well make it their lore that they all fled the Glade never to be seen again after the events of RRR2 (since their main population seems to be settled on Earth in the games and media after). At least until the supposed escape of The Mad Hare. Rabbids still mainly populate Earth and are formulating their plots there, but the select few (not really few, still hundreds in numbers) that remain on the Glade are in actuality inhabiting The Islands Of Unpredictability/The Mad Hare's Prison. The only reason they are there is because they were a portion of the rabbid population that wanted to return home, ie the Glade... but instead, crash-landed on the Islands. The Mad Hare would be hostile at first but was quick to warm up to them seeing them be unaffected by his maddening affliction as well as his tendency to forcibly look into their minds, and he was just overall entertained by their senseless violence. The rabbids would grow equally fond of him as well, especially his "prison" that the Mad Hare single-handedly turned from a single floating rock into massive regions teeming with life... very unpredictable life that would nearly seem like the ruthless wilds on crack. Nothing made sense, everything happened all at once, anyone that was not a rabbid or born from the hands of The Mad Hare would go m a d in these lands. There was no reason to leave these wonderfully violent islands of madness, so the rabbids remained... at least until The Mad Hare relapsed. It has never been known what his motive was ever since he was first created, but all that was known from his actions is that they turned for the worst. Sadistic, cruel, torture some may say. They thrived off of it, no matter if the victims were nightmares or not. Treating their memories like a show to rewind and watch as many times as he pleased. Manipulating their minds, twisting them and their very form for their entertainment. He would drive them mad with his cruelty until it bored him, usually until then he would return them to the glade... but sometimes he kept them, or just straight up ate them. The rabbids that kept him company found his actions thoroughly entertaining and would assist him in kidnapping more unfortunate Glade folk for the massive beast to prey upon. Most of the time, however, he would task the most skilled of rabbids to return to earth to bring him the most interesting objects they could find. He would not only gain new trinkets from their expeditions, but memories. For every time they returned, he'd look into their minds to watch what they've seen. Most of the time his new requests in earthy trinkets would come from what he caught a glimpse of in said memories. He even prefers they extend their visit to Earth for as long as they pleased, to which they always stay for months at a time, maybe even longer until they remember what their voyage was for.

-----

Additional lore, André accompanies Rayman during their mission in investigating and putting a stop to the Mad Hare's plague, mostly because his girlfriend (Monik) was kidnapped by the Mad Hare and he's too fearful to go on his own... so why not beg the thingamajig that beat his ass

+ random and rough doodles

#rayman #rayman oc #rayman plague of the mad hare #doodle #my art #sketch #original character #oc #raving rabbids #rabbids #rabbids invasion

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sage-nebula · 1 year

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I listen to The Office Ladies podcast, which is hosted by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey and goes into a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff from The Office. To use their own tagline, “each week [they] break down an episode of The Office and give exclusive, behind-the-scenes stories that only two people, who were there, can tell you.” It’s a really fun and interesting podcast and I’ve learned so much about the show (and television production) from it.

But one thing about the podcast—and the main point of this post—is that they take questions from fan letters, and the most common letter they get (from my perspective as a listener) is, “this was my favorite scene, was it improvised?” At least three or four times per episode someone writes in asking if a witty moment was improvised, and I’m sure that’s not even half of the “was this improvised” questions they receive.

And I have to say, as a writer myself, I’ve become incredibly aggravated by this question.

Don’t get me wrong, some moments on the show were improvised. Some of the actors (such as Angela Kinsey herself) come from backgrounds of being improv actors, and sometimes they add extra little flourishes that make it in the final cut. The writers also had something called “candy bag alts” where they come with alternate lines that they have the actors try out on the day. (This was most common with talking heads.) Actors improvising lines isn’t new, it’s something that happens in so many productions. The Office is no different in that regard.

But the reason it has started to aggravate me is because the frequency with which it’s asked—and how often it’s paired with “this made me laugh so much / it was my favorite”—is because it almost feels like people assume that it’s so funny, it can’t have come from a writer. And with the attitudes I see going on right now about how writers are greedy and are asking too much in the current strikes, I feel this sentiment even more strongly.

Writers are underappreciated. Point blank. Whether it’s fanfiction, whether it’s published books, whether it’s television, writers are treated like what we do is easy and effortless and it’s taken for granted. I believe it was Stephen King who once talked about how people come up to him and say “I’ve been thinking of writing a book” when of course they’d never go to a doctor and say “I’ve been thinking of doing surgery” or a lawyer and say “I’ve been thinking of holding a deposition.” People treat writing as if it isn’t a legitimate career, but is instead a no-effort hobby. Don’t get me wrong, writing can be a hobby for many. It’s a hobby for me, mostly because I haven’t been afforded the opportunity to make it my career. But that doesn’t mean it takes no effort, no skill. It doesn’t mean that the writers sit there and twiddle their thumbs while the real brilliance comes from the cast.

It’s maddening. It’s infuriating. People respect writers so little. A writer’s entire job is to craft the narrative, the dialogue, the emotional beats. Why do you assume that every moment that makes you laugh came from the actor instead of the writers? Why do you assume that every moment that tugs on your heartstrings must have been made up on the spot by the actor? Why do you think the writers don’t deserve to be paid for the hours, and hours, and hours that they pour into a single script in initial writes, rewrites, and editing? Why do you care so little for those who put so much into the entertainment you enjoy?

I don’t understand. I will never understand why people value writers so little. I’ll never understand why people think writing is something just anyone can do. Yes, writing comes more naturally to some than others. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t work. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t stress and real effort put into the craft. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t a craft. Writers deserve to be paid and they deserve to have their work appreciated. Because while improvisation does happen sometimes, nine times out of ten Jenna and Angela confirm that the lines were read exactly as scripted, meaning that it was the writers that crafted the line that made you laugh, not the actors.

Show the writers some damn respect, and demand the industry pay them what they’re worth.

#writers strike #wga strike #uspol #i'm at work so i can't source that Stephen King quote but i'm almost positive it was him #wish i could find it again

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sailtomarina · 4 months

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Tea Leaves and Pure Nonsense

It was a lovely spring day, the sort where the sun hung high in a true blue sky and the clouds drifted like dandelion seeds. Arthur would have enjoyed a lark around the lake, or perhaps an idle sort of broom flight out on the castle grounds.

Instead, he sat in a dimly lit room, nearly choking on the overwhelming incense of the Divination Classroom. No cool breeze, here. There was, however, a different sort of reprieve to be found at the table next to the one his own.

Fiery curls spilling artfully over one shoulder.

A full-bodied laugh that might have defied decorum if it came from anyone less enchanting.

A rose-cheeked smile capable of making the recipient feel at the top of the world.

His eyes lingered on the graceful curve of her neck as she flung her head back in another one of her laughs. He wished he were the one at her side. What could Malfoy have said to entertain her so?

“If you wanted to partner with Molly that badly, then you should have said so from the start.” The sharpness in Minverva’s tone pulled his attention back just in time to pretend fascination in his tea leaves as the professor sauntered past.

He couldn’t read much in the muddling at the bottom of his teacup. If he squinted, he thought they might look something like a leaning tower. Or, was it the number seven?

He waited until their professor had walked away before replying. “There’s no point. Also, I wanted to partner with you. How else am I supposed to make sense of this?” He emphasised the last point with an exasperated wave of his hand.

She gave an unladylike snort, but still leaned over to peer into the porcelain cup. “How do you know there’s no point? She’s a lovely witch, and you are not unpleasant company.”

Arthur peered doubtfully over his shoulder once more. “I don’t have much to offer. Ow!” He rubbed at his hand where Minerva had sent a mild stinging hex. “What was that for?”

“I loathe self-pity. That will not attract anyone.”

As much as Arthur wanted to list out all the ways in which he was inferior to wizards like Lucius Malfoy, there was no arguing with Minerva on the matter. Deep down, he knew she was right. It was maddening, sometimes, how she refused to let him wallow.

And she wasn’t done speaking.

“You are every bit the Quidditch player that he is, and, I dare say, even better because of your exceptional teamwork. You are not lazy in your studies, which is why I don’t mind partnering with you. You would catch more romantic attention if you sat up and took confidence in your abilities.”

As she rattled off the list of assets, Arthur felt a warmth spreading slowly from his centre, outward. He straightened his back. Relaxed his shoulders. Took a deep breath that he let out slowly.

Minerva quirked a brow at him, taking notice of the shift in his demeanour. Then, she nodded in approval. “That’s more like it. Now pour me another cup; my reading is pure nonsense.”

He chortled and did as she bid.

Arthur didn’t pick up the way a certain witch peeked his way at the sound of his amusement, nor how she nibbled at her lip as if in deep thought. Minerva did. Her smile was slight, then gone before anyone could see.

Written for the Weasleys, Witches, & Writers' Wheel of Chaos.

Your Weasley is: Arthur Your Hogwarts Class is: Divination And your trope is: Meddling Friends

576 wc

I almost never write for this era, nor for these characters, making this prompt even more of a challenge! I have no clue if Minerva went to school around the same time as Arthur, Molly, and Lucius, but I like to think so given their personalities.

Cross-posted on Facebook and Tumblr.

#harry potter fanfiction #harry potter flashfic #arthur weasley #molly prewett #minerva mcgonagall #weasleys witches & writers

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gentlemanjester · 8 months

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Game Review: Lies of P

Some of you may have heard of this game. Some of you may never have heard of this game. Most likely, the former of you will be enjoyers of FromSoftware's titles, most notably Bloodborne. Lies of P is a Soulslike game, extremely visually similar to Bloodborne in the Victorian aspect, but it also draws from the Souls games as well in gameplay. Developed by Neowiz Games and Round8 Studios, released in 2023, it serves as a dark retelling of the calssic fairy tale Pinnocchio.

You play as a puppet, created by the master craftsman Geppetto, in the once-great city of Krat. Krat was the city of the future, home to animatronic Puppets who did almost all the work in the city from hard labour to law enforcement to entertainment. These Puppets were created in the factory owned by the richest man in Krat, Lorenzini Venigni, who also instilled in them the Grand Covenant of four laws: Puppets must obey all commands of their creators; Puppets are never allowed to harm their creators; all Puppets must protect and serve humans and the city of Krat; a Puppet can never lie. Of course, the player character lies several times throughout the game, whether it be to avoid combat or to advance the story.

But of course, something went wrong: the Puppet Frenzy happened, and the Puppets went on a murderous rampage. Citizens of Krat were slaughtered and massacred, and the Stalkers were formed, humans who specialised in hunting Puppets and destroying them. This is where most of the characters from the story are portrayed, since Stalkers were known for their animal masks (The Mad Donkey, Black Cat, Red Fox, Robber Weasel, etcetera). As you explore the city of Krat, following various objectives to try and stop the Puppet Frenzy and later the Alchemists, you uncover more and more about Ergo. For example, Ergo comes from the souls of humanity, and can be harnessed to basically supercharge humans. However, it also forms Carcasses; maddened, twisted humans and animals.

In terms of gameplay, the speed is extremely similar to Bloodborne; very fast-paced and frantic at times. However, it does encourage defensive playstyles as well, similar to other Souls titles; you're encouraged to time your blocks perfectly to damage and eventually break your enemy's weapons. Additionally, some enemies will have an undodgable attack which will ignore any I-frames you get from dodging through the attack, like you're usually trained to do. The only way to avoid these attacks is to get out of range, or perform a perfect guard.

The weapon system is also similar to Bloodborne, although very different at the same time. Both games have a limited roster of weaponry, rather than having weapons that can be farmed like in other Souls titles. While BB weapons can be transformed to have two separate movesets, however, Lies divides all of the non-boss weapons into blades/heads and handles, allowing you to mix and match them for an insane amount of combinations.

This also brings us to Fable Arts. Fable Arts are special skills your weapon has, and you'll have two per weapon: one for the blade, one for the handle, which is another benefit to switching out your blade and handle combo. I'll use one of the starting weapons, the Wintry Blade, as an example. The blade's Fable Art is a quick series of high-damage thrusts, and the handle's Fable Art is a guard parry which, when timed right, will leave your enemy open to a follow-up attack.

Furthermore, the weapon scaling depends on the handle, while the weapon damage depends on the blade. And you can change the scaling on the handle. For example, you can really like the Fable Art of a handle, but it scales with Technique and you're making a Motivity build. Just use a crank and change the scaling to Motivity instead of Technique, sorted! It really lowers a lot of boundaries when it comes to making builds.

And of course, speaking of the gameplay, gotta mention the Legion Arm. This is basically a utility, similar to the Prosthetic from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which can be switched out to fulfil a bunch of functions. It can be a flamethrower, throw rope darts at enemies, shoot delayed bombs on enemies, lay landmines, act as a shield, loads of options. In a "normal" playthrough, it will play a relatively minimal role, like the gun in Bloodborne, but of course you can do a challenge run and beat the whole game with just throwable items and the Legion Arm. And people have already done so, obviously.

Regarding the story itself, it's kinda divided into two parts: first, you're hunting down the King of Puppets, assuming that it's responsible for the Puppet Frenzy. Killing the King of Puppets then changes your focus to Simon Manus, an Alchemist who's basically the big bad villain. There are also, of course, small NPC missions around the world, some of which are absoluitely similar to Bloodborne in their depressiveness. For example, Krat is beset by the Petrification Curse as well as the Puppet Frenzy, so most people in the world are stuck indoors, meaning you only see their silhouettes in the windows. One lady asks you to find her baby, since she's in quarantine and she just wants to see her baby before she dies. You find her baby, and it's... a puppet. You bring it back, Lie to her, and she doesn't see any difference; she believes the puppet is her child.

Also, Eugenie, the lass who upgrades your weaponry at the Hotel, you deserve so much more than Alidoro, girl, you are a QUEEN.

The game also has a lot of nice nods to other pieces of classical literature throughout the story. A boss who's basically a wrestling champion powered-up by Ergo is called Victor, and he's very obviously a nod to Victor Frankenstein. After defeating the Black Rabbit Brotherhood, you find a painting of a schoolboy who looks remarkabily similar to the player character and was painted by an artist called D. Gray, a reference to The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The game has three endings: you find out that your father, Gepetto, created you in the image of his dead son, and basically wanted to bring his son back to life. At the end, he asks for your heart. If you give him your heart, you're treated to a cutscene of him stepping out of Hotel Krat, with you at his side... and all your friends dead, because Ergo feeds off human life and you need Ergo to survive. The middle ending, you fight the Nameless Puppet and because of your choices up to this point, Gepetto calls you a useless puppet with his dying breath, since you haven't been lying. However, if you continue to Lie and be compassionate through the game, you get small messages each time which change as you progress (starts as "Your springs are reacting," then becomes "The Ergo is whispering," and finally "You feel warmth" as you become more human). If you've gained enough humanity, Gepetto will instead call you his son as he dies, showing that he realises that you were more than a puppet all along, and that you were in fact alive.

Also, you have a little guide puppet buddy who chats to you throughout the game called Gemini, but it's pronounced Jem-In-nee as in Jiminy Cricket and I didn't get that until far too late.

So, this game is so much fun, and one I can see myself playing just as much as I did Bloodborne. It looks awesome, I love the setting, and the gameplay is just so rewarding and satisfying. My favourite boss fight so far is the optional White Lady fight, since she uses a rapier and I also use a rapier, it was very much like a duel between two master fencers. So much fun.

I give this game an 8.5/10.

Half a point was removed for the finicky-ness of backstabs. Humanoid enemies can be backstabbed, and the game does give you a prompt when you're in the right position, but it only really works maybe 7 times out of 10. At least when bosses are stunned, it also puts a circle on the ground for you to stand in.

And one point was removed for what I think is an overuse of jump-out enemies. These are enemies who are hidden around corners or behind walls which will jump out to surprise you or knock you off ledges. Obviously, this enemy placement is a hallmark of Soulslike games, but they need to be used sparingly. Lies of P puts these enemies around every other corner, it feels like, which kinda removes the surprise of it; I end up angling the camera around every single corner rather than being surprised by it.

#Lies of P #Soulslike #Bloodborne #video games #gaming #game review #review

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pandor-pandorkful · 11 months

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The folly of being multifaceted strikes again.

I think maybe I just gotta stop trying to make art streams work for me, at least until I'm an Affiliate and/or can get some better internet...

So if you don't know, twitch has a timed achievement system that tracks your various stats from your streams. The requirements for the Affiliate achievement, which allows you to apply to get paid, are as follows:

Get 50 followers

Stream for 8 hours

Stream on 7 different days

Have an average of 3 viewers

That's it. Sounds so easy right?

Welllll... no....

Gaining followers is a very, very slow process. (I get it, I was incredibly choosy about who I follow on twitch at first, too.) It's maddening, but it's also the one statistic that doesn't "drain" over time, assuming people STAY followed.

8 hours streamed is probably the easiest requirement to hit. But you can lose it if you don't keep streaming, twitch only counts the most recent 30 days of activity.

7 days is the same deal as hours.

3 average viewers is the one that's got me worried about doing art streams, however. My game streams are the only reason I'm coasting by on an average of 3.5... every low turnout art stream I do chips away at that average.

I've had two good art streams so far in the past 30 days: one on a Wednesday afternoon/evening where I was making sticker designs and @shiftythrifting raided me with their audience (💜🧡💜🧡💜), and last Saturday/Day 2 of Frankentober, where I was doing a prompt randomization drawing challenge (of my own weird design) and had basically bribed people to watch with promises of giveaways. ^^;;;

Those streams still had lower passive view counts than my game streams, but they were over 3 at least. The rest of my art streams have been trending worse than that.

Why?

It's harder to vamp when you're actively trying to work on a drawing. That's the main reason speed draws are the norm on youtube-artists dub over the footage after they're done. Drawfee's an outlier, managing to vamp to live drawings by being a multi person team. (So 1 person draws and the other 3 vamp.)

Games are easy because even if you're failing to be entertaining at least the game itself is entertainment.

I'm not completely used to drawing for an audience yet, so generally I tend to come off as overly nervous or low energy. The more art streams I do, the better I get at them... but....

My internet connection is terrible. I can only stream crunchy, 480p video. Which doesn't do my art any favors. (A chatter said on Saturday, upon winning a sticker sheet of my Merfolk: "OH!! You're a GOOD artist!!!" Which made me laugh! ...and despair, a little bit. ^^;;;;;;; I am a trained and practiced artist, but fuck if my crunchy streams aren't doing their damnedest to obscure that.)

So. What to do.

I could switch to making speed draws on youtube, and just game on twitch. But there are several reasons why I really, REALLY wanted art streaming to work out for me:

Having a set work schedule really helps my ADHD, and having an audience helps me focus better

When I manage to get some active chatters it's REALLY fun!!

I was hoping I could use the vods to make shorter vids for youtube... but due to the low settings I'm forced to stream at, it's pointless.

I don't have much disk place on my pc for recording videos, and it's been 7 years or so since I last did any video editing and I'm not looking forward to looking uo tutorials to try reminding myself how to work a video editing suite. >_<

So idk. I wish I felt confident I could afford better internet, cuz that's the big linchpin here.

But random ideas I could try:

Try streaming art at a bunch of different times on a bunch of different days and see if that helps... (tedious, and more likely to hurt my view average even more.)

Give up on 2d art streams for awhile and embrace the mad science angle: stream trying to learn Blender instead.

Also I still haven't tried setting up the webcam to do needle felting yet. If I can find an angle where my boobs stay out of shot, that could be something? (Difficult, there's a reason I want them chopped off. They get in the way for everything. )

Set up a Discord server for my patrons and ko-fi supporters and do work streams of my 2d art there, so that in theory I can still get some of that precious audience-created focus my adhd-addled brain needs so badly

Stop streaming art on twitch and try art-focused streaming site Picarto instead

Ahhhhhh it's all just... maddening. Idk.

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breakingarrows · 1 year

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Demoscene and “Art” Games on PlayStation 3

Early in the seventh console generation, with the inclusion of storefronts allowing a user to download games on every home console, the ability to self-publish or be picked up by a publisher increased thanks to this new ease of access and lower costs of digital distribution as compared to boxed retail products. For Sony and the PlayStation 3, this would see the release of some games both Sony, games media, and players alike would sometimes deem non-games, especially those that came from a group of artists called demosceners which we’ll look at today.

Currently: Linger in Shadows .detuned

To be completed: flOw Echochrome PixelJunk Eden Flower Noby Noby Boy Journey Datura PixelJunk 4am Papo & Yo The Unfinished Swan Proteus Bound Linger in Shadows

Released: Thursday, October 9, 2008 On: PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3 Developed by: Plastic Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.

Linger in Shadows was announced at the demoparty Breakpoint 2008 in Germany. Breakpoint was a successor to the demoparty mekka & symposium which ran from 1995 - 2002. Demoparties came out of the demoscene in which software crackers would create their own audiovisual effects and playbacks to be shared via demoparties, the internet, and inserted into cracked software. Organized parties would break the competition into categories of size and platform, letting the restrictions feed creativity. As explained by the organizers of the demoparty mekka & symposium:

What is MS? The mekka & symposium is a demo-scene party that was organized annually at Easter. More than 1200 young Multimedia artists gathered here for four days in order to meet similarly-minded people, to exchange ideas and to participate in the competitions, in which individuals and groups show off their talents in a certain form of electronic art called Demos. ms2002 has been the eighth and last event in a traditional party series that started back in 1995, when 300 mostly German visitors attended the BlackBox Symposium. To our 2002 event, about 1220 visitors came from all over Europe, and beyond - "sceners" have come to celebrate with us from countries as remote as Estonia and Israel! The event was never a LAN or gaming party. People playing Qu*ke or Half-Life on our events would have been considered non-creative by our "serious" visitors, and as a matter of fact, the participation of gamers on our parties has always been exceptionally low, which made the MS one of the last big enjoyable events for real sceners.

Breakpoint would see its first iteration during Easter 2003, Friday, April 18 - Monday, April 21. The lead organizer was Scamp who detailed in an interview some of the difficulties in running the first party such as heating, internet access, attendance-to-expense, and getting permission to have the meeting during the Easter holiday in Germany. Attendance cost was reportedly €40.00 for men and no cost for women. It was during Breakpoint 2008 that the team called Plastic would reveal a video teasing the project Linger in Shadows for the PlayStation 3, with official confirmation coming later that year at E3.

Linger in Shadows was released on October 9, 2008 as an “interactive art” application for $2.99. Sony was quick to assert that this was not the typical PSN release. Rusty Buchert on the PlayStation Blog would state, “I’ll start with the easier side, and that is Linger in Shadows is NOT a game. It was never meant to be a game and it will never be a game.” In IGN’s “Impressions” piece on the game Chris Roper stated, “Linger in Shadows hit the PlayStation Network this week, but make no mistake - it is not a game. It even says so in about three different places just to make sure the point gets across. Instead, it's being dubbed as "interactive art", which is a pretty fitting description.” GameSpot’s Ricardo Torres would similarly remark, “While this isn't a game…”

“Games” are restricted to things such as Pac-Man, Madden NFL, or even LittleBigPlanet. Linger in Shadows is interactable (the player makes inputs and the game responds and reacts) though because it doesn’t fall into the traditional, high score, killing, or numbers-go-up categories so familiar to game players it becomes a non-game. Sony understood this and is why they would denote it as “not a game” themselves in its promotions. While seeking out the various titles listed at the beginning of this article the main things I was looking for were “art” games that lacked the traditional video-game framework such as a scoring system or games that had “artsy” visual styles but were really just dressing up a traditional platformer or point and click adventure game.

Due to its “non-game” status, reviews from release are fairly scarce. HonestGamers’ 1.5/5 community review by zippdementia says, “What bothers me is that this was such an obvious attempt to make an extra buck off the PS3 owner with overblown advertising. Next time, Sony, tell me what's really inside your package. Don't tell me you're going to give me cheese and then hand me Cheetos.” Eurogamer’s Dan Whitehead appeared to be the most adept at talking about the game in a “review” context, ending theirs with “Linger therefore exists in a strange new realm between the hardcore demoscene and the mainstream audience being asked to pay to play around with its peculiar concept. It's an interesting move if it opens up Sony's platform for more demos to reach a broader audience, but perhaps not if they have to pass through the gateway of establishment approval to get there. This experiment may at least tempt a few more people to Google "demoscene" and, payment aside, it's refreshing to see something so esoteric being championed in such a public way. You certainly won't see anything like this on Xbox Live or the Wii Store. That, at the very least, makes Linger in Shadows something rather special.”

Modern reviews have not been kind either, as Gamerhub’s ⅖ reviewer Steven Barry writes in 2022 that, “To be fair to developer Plastic, they do go out of their way to emphasise that this is not actually a game and is instead ‘interactive art’. So, it does feel a little strange to review this like any other game when in reality it’s a glorified tech demo. However, this was a purchasable product on release in 2008 over the Playstation Network so that is why it’s ultimately eligible for critique.”

Since most people were more preoccupied with grappling with its status as a “non-game,” there wasn’t much discussion about what it actually is and does. Linger in Shadows plays and unfurls itself as a dream. There is an unlogic to the procession of movement, space, and plot. The first signal of this is when watching the dog try and run through the air to escape the ethereal black cloud presence haunting the concrete setting. The dog's attempts to flee are vigorous, but without much effect, calling back to a shared experience nearly everyone who dreams has, of trying to run but finding you are unable to move at much more than a snail’s pace.

The game mostly finds itself following the presence of a black sentient cloud figure, as it moves about an impossible high rise grouping and its various unlogic features, such as a large flower atop a levitating rock, barrels similarly suspended in the air, and the biggest “tech-demo” flag of “how many moving objects of different shape and synchronicity can we have at the same time?” The black cloud can be interpreted as a malevolent entity even before it turns the dog to stone due to its coloring and the faint imagery moving about within it recalling the antennae of insects, both elements long associated with the impure. A cat impassively watches as the cloud turns the dog to stone, maybe something of a mirroring of the player impassively watching and even participating, without much of a feeling for what’s occurring on screen. Soon after, a giant creature bearing a mask with eyes and a body of trailing tentacles appears. In contrast to the black cloud, which effortlessly weaved in, out, and between various objects without much effect, this mask creature blunders its way toppling various objects as it seeks out the petrified dog which it also ends up breaking apart. Bearing familiar eyes and a more tangent shape than the ethereal black cloud, this mask creature is instantly interpreted as the “good guy.” Confronted by the black cloud, the mask ascends a pillar of stone atop of which is a semicircle of columns surrounding a statue of a woman. The black cloud begins petrifying the mask’s tentacles, furthering the black cloud’s villainy and the mask’s innocence as a victim. The “camera” is destroyed by a toppled column leading to the credits. As the demoscene is more about visual demonstrations than narrative, it's not surprising that the one displayed here is pretty simple and straightforward and more a way to show off different character models and what the player can manipulate.

The “game” portion of the game is that during this entire video playback you can at any point pause and manipulate the camera and objects on-screen. Since everything is a rendered object you can escape the usual limitations of regular video playback, and the UI even resembles the UI of media playback on the console or any DVD/Blu-Ray player of the time. The game itself will guide you through what types of manipulation you can do, with an additional hidden object portion tied to finding images that are shout-outs to other demogroups tucked away just out of frame. Playing Linger in Shadows is mostly a touch and go affair of moving the timecode forward and backward and moving around the controller and pressing buttons to see what sort of movement you can do in this specific frame or scene. Aside from whatever you can come up with yourself there isn’t any set of objectives beyond the tutorial teachings and then the image hunting collection.

It is this lack of purpose or list of things to do that I think most frustrates people into declaring Linger in Shadows “not a game!” Coming from arcades with high scores to home consoles with experience to accrue and levels to beat and people to shoot, we’ve been conditioned to think of games as filling a certain role and no other. Even Shadow of the Colossus in 2005 was heralded as the fulfillment of “Games as art” that would convince people like Roger Ebert of the medium’s value. That goal is self-defeating anyway, but also Shadow of the Colossus, while a phenomenal work, still falls into the traditional video game category quite easily, with the game bearing the objective to kill 18 colossi that are framed as unique boss encounters. While there is no progression in terms of level or equipment you do slowly increase our stamina and health over the course of the game. Nobody would mistake Shadow of the Colossus as an “interactive art piece” like they would Linger in Shadows, but both are video games.

Watching another of Plastic’s demos from 2008, called “Into the Pink,” many similarities come up, from more explicit bugs, more imposing crawling shadows, moving lots of objects floating through the air, and distorting text/images so that they jitter. Another project of theirs, “Catzilla,” is much more an entertainment object playing with destruction on a city-wide scale which just happened to come out the same year as Man of Steel and its similar experiments.

This art stands among the other “demoscene” game(s) on PlayStation 3 as a period when Sony was interested in courting the margins of games in order to sell its struggling console. At the time, the PlayStation 3 was in dead last place when it came to home console sales, and so Sony had to look at alternative ways to attract engagement. One of those ways was to present the PlayStation 3 as something more than just a video game console. Early advertisements for the PlayStation 3 are routinely mocked, though they really don’t stray too far from some of the advertisements for the PlayStation 2, such as those famously directed by David Lynch. These more “heady” adverts attempt to sell the console based not on gameplay footage but on an idea of what the console could do/be. It didn’t work.

Not until the Kevin Butler series of commercials did PlayStation 3 begin to majorly change its presentation to the larger gaming audience. PlayStation Plus, courting indies, and the humbled approach they took towards developers with the creation of the PlayStation 4, culminating in the disaster that was the Xbox One’s lead-up to launch, secured their continued success to this day. The cost of that success has been a lack of effort to engage the margins of gaming, something unofficially certified with the closure of its internal Japan Studio in early 2021 and further with the shuttering of PixelOpus and the announcement of ending support for MediaMolecule’s Dreams just this month. With its focus on huge titles, contemporary Sony would not throw money towards a group of students and tell them to “go wild” and release their demoware title on the PlayStation Network. The closest we have gotten in recent years was the release of Dreams, a game to create other games from MediaMolecule, itself a development team founded in part by a demoscene participant named Alex Evans known as Statix/TPOLM during the 1990s.

This is not to write off Microsoft and Nintendo’s attempts to court the indie space for success, as Xbox Live famously had its “Summer of Arcade'' titles, as well as being the console that really began today’s online network connectivity and distribution of smaller titles on the OG Xbox. Microsoft still had a restrictive storefront however, with file sizes and other limitations holding back small developers from seeking it out as the best place to try and publish their game. Nintendo also had some success with indie releases under the WiiWare brand (World of Goo and Bit.Trip Beat), but failed to do much to advertise or promote them.

One question that persists is in the intention behind the team of Plastic in creating Linger in Shadows. Dipping into demos and their productions, what strikes me is that the challenge comes from crafting advanced renders on platforms with limited and dated capabilities. As I’ll detail later, .theprodukkt was able to create a first person shooter with a file size of 96kb, and results for demoparties are broken down by platforms such as the C64, Amiga, and restricted file sizes such as 64kb. So why choose to utilize the PlayStation 3? Proudly boasted as the most powerful next-generation console in 2007, what appeal does that have to a group regularly challenging themselves to see what they can create using computers from the 1980s? Perhaps it was the challenge of working with the difficult to develop for CELL processor powered console. Perhaps they just thought it would be fun to swindle Sony out of some cash and just create whatever their whim deemed suitable for a wider audience instead of fellow demosceners. As I mentioned before, portions of Linger in Shadows definitely seem to be examples of the team simply trying to see how much they could get away with without breaking the game, though in 2023 it can be hard to look at it with the same eyes as someone in 2008, as graphics are continually chasing more and more fidelity with reality.

Shared between Linger in Shadows and the next demoscene game, .detuned, is Rusty Buchert, a producer at Sony Santa Monica who was the face of these demoscene games to the PlayStation audience at the time. Previously at Interplay Entertainment from 1990 - 2003, Buchert joined Sony Santa Monica Studio in 2003 and his major credits include flOw, Everyday Shooter, Linger in Shadows, Flower, .detuned, and despite his departure from the company in 2011 gained Special Thanks in Datura, Sorcery, The Unfinished Swan, and Sound Shapes. Speaking to Engadget in 2007, Buchert detailed his role as focusing on producing PSN titles for the PlayStation 3 and details what type of games and culture Sony was interested in cultivating.

We started searching for games like this [flOw] from the outset and we were searching through the Indie Scene right out the gate. In general the Scene thinks outside the traditional development box. All too often people get indoctrinated into one general way of thinking about games in genre, design, and execution. You are not going to get anything new thinking like that. We were betting on the fact that people wanted something new and not a rehash of a rehash of a rehash. There are a lot of games to sort through. When we find a gem we start pursuing it. Some work out, some don't. I recently heard back from one developer that wanted to finish college and then he would like to try. The game made me think he was already programming professionally. There are some other experimental projects that will also fit in this vein too. These are very much art and an extremely different take on interactivity.

In a later post on the PlayStation Blog, Buchert also discusses how he, and another producer, George Weising (who is still at Sony today) scoured the Indie Games Festival booth at GDC 2007 where they found and signed a deal with the team behind Everyday Shooter. Their seeking out of indie games led to the next project from a group called Plastic.

Linger in Shadows developer Plastic was a Polish demogroup led by Michal Staniszewski (bonzaj). Alongside Staniszewski for all three Plastic projects were Grzegorz Juraszek (fei) and Damian Bajowski (mime). Those who developed Linger in Shadows and went on to Datura in 2012 are Krzysztof Deoniziak (rork) and Wojciech Golczewski (Blz). Shared staff between Datura and Bound, released for the PlayStation 4 in 2016, are Andrzej Uszakow (uho), Kinga Staniszewska, Marek Bielawski (mare), and Michał Szymczyk (misz). Plastic joined Epic Games in 2022, and was credited in Cyberpunk 2077 under “Outsource Partners,” though Staniszewski details on his Linkedin that the work was, “Responsible for visual development and prototyping of Cyberspace in Cyberpunk 2077.”

Grzegorz Juraszek (fei) is still active in the scene as he is the main organizer of the demoparty Riverwash, the largest of its kind in Poland. Damian Bajowski (mime) continues to work as an artist, most recently contributing to an episode of Netflix’s “Love, Death and Robots” called “Manson’s Rats.” Micahl Staniszewski (bonzaj) now works at Epic Games and has many YouTube videos talking about Plastic’s last game, Bound, which was released on PlayStation 4 in 2016. He has one lone video on the making of Linger in Shadows from December 2008. Krzysztof Deoniziak (rork) is also active in the scene, being credited on several demos in 2022. Wojciech Golczewski (Blz) continues to make music, though hasn’t been a participant in the demoscene since his time with Plastic early on. Andrzej Uszakow (uho) appears to still be at CD Projekt Red as a “Senior Engine Programmer.” I couldn't find much of anything to see what Kinga Staniszewska has been up to since Bound’s release. Marek Bielawski (mare) is currently a senior audio programmer at CD Projekt Red. Michał Szymczyk (misz) has the most surprising transition, while most of the developers stuck to Poland, Szymczyk is a Senior Software Engineer at the LA-based developer Infinity Ward starting in September 2017.

Plastic’s work on Linger in Shadow would be the first, but not only, demoscene game to find its way onto the PlayStation 3, as within a year of release another title from another demogroup would appear on the PlayStation Network.

.detuned

Released: Thursday, October 15, 2009 On: PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3 Developed by: .theprodukkt GmbH Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.

Developed by .theprodukkt, .detuned™ is a personalized, interactive music experience which gives you the opportunity to create dynamic artwork in real-time to accompany your XMB™ music collection. Manipulate the given scene by interacting with and modifying its unique graphics using the DUALSHOCK®3 Wireless Controller. Plus you can change and tweak your own music to accompany the scene. .detuned™'s brilliant design and capabilities call for the state-of-the-art processing power that can only be done on the PS3™ system. Download .detuned™ today for an artistic music experience! Features: -Artistic Experiences: An abstract and surreal interactive experience to players of all levels and interests -Personalized Music: Manipulate and tweak music tracks on the XMB™ to accompany your artistic creations -Power of the PS3™ system: Stunning and crisp HD environment that brings your artistic visions to life in real-time

It started with a team of eleven people, a majority of which came from 49Games GmbH of Hamburg, Germany. 49Games GmbH’s main development was the annual winter and summer games for PC and consoles in Germany. Summer Athletics 2009 for Wii, released on July 24, 2009 was the largest collaborative effort, seeing nine of the eleven developers for .detuned credited on that game. An earlier collaborative effort is more closely related to the work of .detuned, a first person shooter game called .kkrieger. Released on April 10, 2004 for Windows PCs, .kkrieger was a product of the Breakpoint demoscene party in April 2004 in Bingen, Germany. It was the result of a challenge to create a first person shooter in the vein of Unreal Tournament and Quake but with the restriction of being 96KB in size. GameDeveloper has an interview with programmer Fabian Giesen (who was only 19 at the time!) and Nostalgia Nerd on YouTube has a great video documenting the development of .kkrieger that is worth a watch if you want to know more about how they accomplished this feat.

Sony Santa Monica Studios Producer Rusty Buchert announced .detuned on the PlayStation Blog on May 1, 2009. He said it would, “[offer] an abstract and surreal interactive experience like nothing else. It is not exactly a game or an art piece like Linger in Shadows. It allows you to create your own visual to accompany your favorite music tracks on the XMB, and using the SIXAXIS™ Wireless Controller, you will be able to manipulate the given scene by interacting with and modifying a man and his world. It even lets you tweak your music as you play with it.” Their announcement is already getting ahead of the “not a game!” crowd, though the comments on that PlayStation Blog piece are generally positive and welcoming.

.detuned would release on PSN for $2.99 on October 15, 2009. Games media reviews were limited, as most game “critics” were used to reviewing games such as Madden, Call of Duty, and Uncharted, but something like .detuned was challenging when approached from the limited scope of a consumer review with the stated goal being a buyer’s guide to “should you purchase this?” IGN gave it a 4/10, Bad, with Chris Roper saying, “Currently selling for $2.99 in the US PlayStation Store, that's about a dollar per minute of entertainment. If you have cash to blow and want to see one of the weirdest pieces of software on any system, go for it. Otherwise, just watch our videos and you'll get the point.” GamesRadar’s Shaun Curnow would rate .detuned 2.5/5 with its negatives being, “-Not really a game, -Won't amuse everyone, -Won't amuse for long.” Again we hit the same reactions and falsehoods of criticism, not being a [mainstream’s expectation of a] game, not reaching some imagined universal appeal, and not lasting long enough to be “worth” it in the mental formula of $/hour. A retrospective review in 2019 from Gaming Audio News’ Trevor Chan would say, “It didn’t take long to wonder if it was worth paying the small amount of money for this bite-sized experience. It’s a great snapshot of a bygone decade. Does that mean one would go recommending .detuned as a ‘must-play’? No, but it is worth experiencing, even if just for a few minutes.” Again we come back to reviews being centered on this one point: Monetary Price. No matter the time it costs you, don’t go questioning whether those 40 hours in the latest RPG were truly meaningful, be glad you got more bang for your buck compared to this!

As mentioned by GameSpy’s Sterlin McGarvey in their news writeup for .detuned’s announcement, Linger in Shadows, and .detuned, were positively regarded for their easy trophies, “It [Linger in Shadows] was also a handy way to clean up on some good trophies, another reason why many people picked it up.” This sentiment was echoed in PlayStation The Official Magazine Issue 22 for August 2009 whose Trophies for Cheaters by Carlos Ruiz includes entries for Linger in Shadows, Flower, and Noby Noby Boy. I admit, my purchase of Linger in Shadows and .detuned at the time was more for their easy trophies than interest in the demoscene or its history. It is only while looking back do I realize there is a richer field to examine than just a quick injection of trophy points.

What is .detuned if not a video game? The visual effects manually activated by the player suggests it is a visualizer meant to mesmerize you while enjoying your custom tracks imported onto the PlayStation 3 hard drive. Reliance on human, rather than machine, for these effects means the attention of the player is squarely on enacting movement to the rhythm of whatever track is currently being played instead of enjoying the track and visuals meshed together. Due to this, it reads as more of a toy, something to pick up and play around with, poking at its odds and ends, seeing what action you can provoke and manipulate, before setting it down and moving on. This briefness of experience and interest may be why publisher, reviewer, and player alike referred to it as, “not a game.” It failed, intentionally so, to entertain for multiple hours, tell a story, or offer a high score. Still, I find it limiting to restrict the moniker of “game” from .detuned and its ilk. The player can manipulate and control aspects programmed by the developer, engaging in a unique kind of conversation between player and program that can only happen in video games.

As a game, what does .detuned evoke? The first time through was spent poking and prodding at the game, seeing what the different button press combinations could accomplish and create in the suited man. The default track demo that you can watch to get an overall feel for what this game is capable of producing works well, though the cuts and camera movement seem way out of range of what the player is capable of producing when in control. The lack of an editable timeline means creating your own music video with this game as the base foundation would be a waste of time and effort. So, as before, it remains a toy, something you can plug a music track into in order to have some fun pulling and twisting it around in your hand, not quite as literal given the capability of the Sixaxis within the PlayStation 3 controller (though maybe for the best given the Sixaxis never achieved much in its lifetime). One of the tracks I chose to test out was probably the most apt for a repeatable batch of animations: Daft Punk’s “Around the World.” Some other experiments were on Blink 182’s “What’s My Age Again?” and M.O.O.N.’s “Hydrogen” from the Hotline Miami soundtrack. Unfortunately I did not realize I could turn off the sound effect to the “crank” noise when using the analog sticks to forward and rewind the animations. Due to this, my experience, and footage, are inseparable from the annoying click-clack of the crank.

In 2012 Q-Games released a game very similar to .detuned in intention, PixelJunk 4am, a game for the PlayStation Move motion controller that allowed players to, “Mix and create your own music with the PlayStation®Move. ‘Paint’ with sound in 3D space by pulling new tracks from the surrounding audio palette.” Though more social-minded than .detuned was, the audio effect manipulation and importing of your own custom tracks, aka your iTunes library, is very similar to the sandbox playground of .detuned, and is something I hope to try out once I obtain a PlayStation Move myself.

Some members of .theprodukkt continue to work in the demoscene today. Dierk Ohlerich (chaos) is an organizer for The Revision, a German demoparty that continues even to this year with an event in April 2023. Thomas Mahlke (fiver2) has continued working in the demoscene as well, most often with the group Farbrausch, one of the groups shouted out in Linger in Shadows. Tammo Hinrichs (kb) has also helped organize The Revision, and continues to make music for demos. Sebastian Grillmaier (wayfinder) has continued to create music for the scene and even provided the theme music for The Revision 2022. Christoph Mütze (giZMo) also appears to have remained active in the scene contributing to projects as late as 2021. Fabian Giesen (ryg) currently works at RAD Game Tools in Kirkland, Washington and maintains his blog to this day. Bleick Bleicken (mcfly) has most recently worked as an art director for Chorus developed by Deep Silver. I had trouble looking for any recent output from Oliver Waechter (joey) and Uwe Meier (moonlay). I believe Thomas Heinrich (aTom) is this same Thomas Heinrich on Twitter who links to Glare Productions as his current place of employment. Lastly Leonard Ritter (paniq) is currently a co-founder and developer at Duangle working on a crowdfunded game called Nowhere, an “alien life simulator.” The game has been in development since 2011 though sadly it appears the latest update was in March 2021.

Ever since my article on the short lived studio Endrant I’ve always wondered where these groups of people end up long after this project I’ve just played was probably last on their mind. Thankfully, in the comments of that Nostalgia Nerd video YouTube on .kkrieger there is a message from Tammo “kb” Hinrichs posted in October 2022 who gives an update on where the team is at now,

"Where are those guys now?" We exist, living our lives, all outside actual game development nowadays (because we wanted to have lives), but still quietly working away on various things that you might or might not have seen. Some of us are still active in the demoscene, and we're all fine, thank you :)

#.detuned #linger in shadows #demoscene #playstation 3 #writing #criticism

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