#'bUt ItS a GaMe!' literally its done in an anime style | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thatdeadaquarius · 1 month

Note

Hello there, friend I'm here for fluff

OK, this has been on my mind for a while

But like

The reader is just becoming the biggest parent to the Benny's adventure team kids

And the wolfs

We are like a parent of like 27

Knitting and making food brushing razors hair(let's be for real, you would hear a crunch when you brush it)

I'm not gonna lie

Do these kids know what spices are?

Cuz when I think about it

Razor hasn't had shit so he's has the least tolerance for spice

He would probably cry if you feed him a pepper

Bennett has tried spicy food but does go well with it

And not completely sure if fischl has had a spicy food before

But what flavor does mondstadt add to their food??

These kids need the damn flavors

AHDHAKALL FERAL ANIMAL AQUARIUS- ANOTHER PLATONIC ASK AAHHHHGGGGDJJSFHSAK!!!!!

AND ITS YOU!! ITS- ITS- ONE OF THE WRITING RULERS OF SAGAU (FOR ME AT LEAST) <3 !!!!!!!!

You cooking in genshin all anime studio ghibli style looking like food from god (literally): ⬆️

Sun: Reader (you/they/them)

Orbit: Headcanons-ish

Stars: Benny’s Adventure Team! (Bennett, Fischl, Razor), Diluc, mentions of other Mond characters

Comets & Meteors: Content Warnings: mild cussing, & Trigger Warnings: none known.

Please comment if I missed any. /gen

☆

^^ The posts being referenced in ask, (OG Razor ask) (Benny + Razor) and a more direct sequel, a part 2? a part 4 atp?? of this post (Imposter/Not Dark AU + Razor + Diluc) ^^

OMFG

ALRIGHT LISTEN UP BITCHES

SINCE UR IN TEYVAT

YOU GONNA COOK LIKE TEYVAT

AS IN-

SHIT BE SUPER EASY TO COOK, AND MASS MAKE DEPENDING ON COMPLEXITY OF DISH

(So, like Zhongli's special Bamboo Shoot Soup is like getting made... once a year if you read the little desc. for that dish 💀)

AND THEYRE ALL LIKE-

ANIME GORGEOUS FOODS ✨️❤️‍🔥

OKAY SO

PROMO TIME-

U GUYS HAVE TO WATCH THE ANIME "CAMPFIRE COOKING IN ANOTHER WORLD"

Bc that's mostly where this inspo gonna come from to both be realistic cooking + best parts of video game cooking

A guy gets isekai’d and instead of hero powers he just gets the skill of "online grocery shopping" LMAO

and ofc he gets insta gifted whatever he orders and starts making dishes and adding spices and regular stuff you know. like soy sauce.

but the best part is the food in that world is like British medieval soup shit

like barely salted, no spices definitely, no sauces, its barren

so he ends up attracting all kinds of interest that want to eat his cooking ofc

And it gives buffs too!

dw i didnt spoil anything u don't learn in the first episode, but that's just to say that's exactly whats happening here

u DO have to manually collect more ingredients but its so worth it, also u can just buy in bulk or put a commission thru the adventurer guild

tbhhh now that i say that, that could be how u end up drawing in Benny’s Adventure Team even more, bc they just take all ur quests for collecting ingredients around Mond!!

(u have to actively sneak behind their back and whisper to Katheryne that you want to put in other food quests in other guilds tho, silly kids will absolutely go running around Liyue and crazy shit just to have an adventure and do smth for you + eat ur banger food lol)

omfg the first time u barbecue smth???

the wolves, Razor, and Andrius??? Go feral.

Fischl and Benny who were already on their way to u guys to hang out again start booking it thru the woods, dodging hilichurl camps (thatve since settled down and been v peaceful to the wolves + anyone in the woods of Wolvendom after u started living there)

they knowww ur cookin smth fucking amazing

(and u even have some hilichurls and mitachurl that wander close to Andrius’ edge of the woods to shyly beg for scraps,, u give them a portion)

Razor was actually lookin at u like u hung the stars just for him when u gave him a homemade barbecue sauce to put on his food

(u acc may have done that to Teyvatians according to Andrius + the stories u overheard from Springvale…)

ok but the amount of begging u get for desserts like-

No, Razor u cannot have chocolate cake/cupcakes after every meal, u need to take care of ur teeth

(u use ur collection of mora-monster-donations for comms for more ingredients and living supplies like fabric + furniture, u cant afford dental on top of that for ur boy)

Fischl dutifully declares you the “best chef in the kingdom” and writes down all ur recipes (u have them auto-stored in ur settings obv but it cant hurt to have a physical copy, and they look so happy doing it, u don't have the heart to tell them its not necessary-)

Benny insists on both giving u extra ingredients when he takes ur commissions, and giving u handmade trinkets or weapons for the meals!!

No!! He will not take “im good” for an answer!! ur sharing ur home-cave with him, taking care of his best friend Razor, and now feeding him food better than Liuli Pavilion!!! There’s no way he can just take all that and give nothing back!!!!

and theyre not the only ones getting some food tbh

when the knights begin patroling near Wolvendom and slowly all of Mondstadt to search for their “All God”, u break up the beginnings of a fight between 2 confused knights and the now peaceful hilichurl camp at the edge of Wolvendom

U offer some snacks u were going to give Benny’s Adventure Team when they got back (u made little triangle sandwiches, rice balls, etc. finger foods, and u made plenty extra bc u kno their teenage appetites lol)

the knights and hilichurls nearly cried with appreciation, which made for a hilarious sight when the teens actually showed up lmao

ur wearing ur cloak, bc u dont wanna take on that whole “creator of worlds” title just yet, and the kids helped verify u werent anyone suspicious (Benny + Fischl keep ur godly secret, theyre the best like that 🥰)

the knights just swing by for snacks occasionally (they also either pay u in trade or with mora, theyre not bullies)

another person who gets flavored food privileges is the lazy librarian witch herself

u also sometimes pick Razor up from Lisa’s tutoring and bring “the best tea and tea snacks in the world” along with to share with Lisa and him

(she is also fully aware after awhile of meeting u of what u are, and fully believes this is why the food must be enchanted to be so good, but u dont want to be treated super reverently she can tell, so she keeps ur secret too and is just extra flirty when u come by lol)

(Razor refuses to let his pare- Lupical move out of ur cozy cave to the library, so he sometimes hauls u away when Lisa flirts too much LMAO)

…and the moment you've been waiting for.

Yes, Diluc got to try ur food that night he was searching Wolvendom for signs of the god of Teyvat

tbh Diluc was half-convinced that shit was a fever dream.

a bunch of sleepy wolves, a coffee table in the stone colosseum, a giant spirit wolf licking a big plate clean, the wolf-kid glaring at him, and you.

you with gold eyes, staring right thru his soul, like you already know everything there is to know about him, (like the way Kaeya looked at him that night),

like he doesnt even have to introduce himself

and he doesnt, u just lightly smack Razor’s hands until he gets rid of his claymore w/a pout, since Diluc had long since dropped his,

and grab a plate, piling on what leftovers u could, and turn back around from the coffee table to smile at him, patting the cushion-seat beside u for him to join

The giant glowing wolf licks his lips and watches him, the wolf-kid’s creepily watches him, and you, with eyes gold in teh light of a simmering bonfire just past the table, watch him

he just sits down and begins to eat.

its the best food he’s ever had, its his dad’s favorite dish, but not realistically, but the way memory embellishes a dish so much it can never be tasted again, except its right here. in front of him. u pour some wolfhook juice for him, and offer him a napkin to wipe his mouth and eyes

Diluc visits often after that, obviously.

u give him snacks too, and when he lets the staff try some, Adeline will not stop harassing him abt gettin ur recipes/ingredeints so u get him to pay Fischl to get a copy of their recipe book :)

including blank pages for future entries, and Fischl is literally glowing with happiness, would not stop monologuing abt ur food for weeks (send help Oz wants some peace and quiet sometimes)

Oh Diluc absolutely told the Favonius knights he found you. But he’s not saying where LMAO

Jean is actually begging him, Diluc ik u hate the knights but this is an international investigation-

this is the closest Diluc has ever gotten to getting under Venti’s skin.

when he told him this at Angel’s while bartending, he just casually ofc said this, just his smug little smirk, and the anemo god cracked a glass and everything- esp when he said he tried ur cooking??

he's gotta start looking over his shoulder in the city bc not only is Venti stalking him, the entirety of Mondstadt’s citizens are glaring at him in envy everywhere he goes LMAOO

(Venti now has a bar glass or too on his tab to pay off as well)

mans is literally paying u in weapon/artifact materials/mora to make him lunch one day and Venti nearly lunges over the counter

(Diluc purposefully ate it in front of him 💀)

ur food is the ultimate, “u could make a religion out of this!” /ref

like Diluc fully gives u offerings of ingredients he can pay for shipping from other countries + along with regular materials after grinding in domains

does the rest of Mondstadt + the world find out where u are?

only if Diluc lets them tbh. LMFAO

☆

bk trashfire my beloved <3 love ur ideas and stuff, goes without even saying im so sorry i took actually forever to respond :’(

hope u have a great weekend and i did this little side story justice for you

Safe Travels BK Trashfire,

💀♒

If you wanna join a taglist, DM me what for! "Pspspsss, please tag me for [All SAGAU posts, Only SAGAU Language AUs, diff fandom, etc.]!"

(If you ever wanna drop, just DM me! "No more taglists/[specifically this AU/fandom] please!")

♡my beloveds♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist / @thedevioussmirk / @the-dumber-scaramouche / @chocogi / @fallen-starr / @areaderofbooks / @devilangel657 / @esthelily / @justinsomniachild / @nanithefuck / @questionotmystopit / @chinuneko / @silvers-tongue

@kiyomi-uchiha777

250 notes · View notes

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys · 2 months

Note

routine vibe check: what’s the best starter pokemon and why are you right (pictures and long paragraphs of evidence welcomed and appreciated)

Gonna get a good grade in vibe check, normal to want and inevitable to achieve because I have objectively correct Pokemon opinions and will block naysayers

OKAY LET'S GO

I decided to do, like, a top 5 list or something, because I'm bad at picking a single favourite of stuff. And then even that overwhelmed me, so I found one of those tier ranking list sites and produced this:

It was done in less than a minute, so if I wanted to get really picky, I don't know if I would be fully wedded to it (not sure if maybe Sceptile should be one higher) BUT it did help to highlight the important ones.

So!

5. Bulbasaur

It's. Just. So. Nice.

Like you can find cooler, more beautiful, cuter, fancier... there's a whole bunch of ways for a Pokemon to be great. But you will never ever find a nicer Pokemon than Bulbasaur. It's so lovely. Look at it. Look at its face.

I can't put it higher, because the rest of the line is fairly bland in terms of development. It's good and logical and fun, don't get me wrong, but Ivysaur and Venusaur just look like bigger versions with More Flower and Less Cute rather than creatures in their own right. To be honest, if it weren't a starter requiring a three-stage evolution, you could do away with Ivysaur. Something I don't like about a lot of lazy three-step lines is that the middle step just looks like a transitional mid phase rather than a Proper Creacher, like they were artificially inflating the Pokemon number count. Meanwhile it took us until Paldea to get a Girafarig evo that would actually make the giraffe tall. Madness.

However my first ever Pokemon was a Bulbasaur I called Daffodil, and I have traded him forward onto every single successive generation since. He is, quite literally, my First Ever Pokemon. I love him desperately. I still have him. Not many people still have their First Ever Pokemon. But I do and I love him. So, Bulbasaur gets the fifth spot.

4. Snivy

Again, a victim of the Banal Transitional Middle Evo, but both Snivy and Serperior are incredible, and as Meatloaf took such pains to tell us, two out of three ain't bad.

But Snivy! It's so snooty! I was super lucky with mine, too, because I beat the 12.8% odds and got a female, and I loved her. Normally the initial baby starters are designed to be cute but Snivy has SO MUCH PERSONALITY, she's great. And the design of Serperior is utterly gorgeous. She keeps the expression, but rather than the Animal Crossing-style snooty-cute vibe of Snivy you get this thousand yard withering stare of an empress whose servant (you) has just turned up dripping mud in her throne room and asked her for money. Her green and gold colour scheme is exquisite. Her filigree design, including her high collar, give off the air of wealth and sophistication befitting her immaculate pedigree. And all this! In a simple snake. Incredible design work, 10 out of 10, no notes.

Begone, you miserable peasant. Have him boiled.

3. Torchic

Now I'll be real with you, lads, but Pokemon design hit its stride with Hoenn and then got better.

It's partly a fashion thing, of course - you look at some of the Kanto designs and they are remarkably 90s, because that's when the franchise launched. Others are clearly a product of what the 1990's were capable of producing in pixels on an already over-stretched cartridge medium. Like we like to clown on Red and Green/Blue now, but my god, those game designers performed a miracle with Pokemon. Every single square inch of space was used to make that game, and complex designs weren't going to cut it.

(With that said, there is still no excuse for Dragonite.)

And then Johto came about and its Pokedex sucks ass. It's mostly new evolutions for existing Kanto stars, useless babies to inflate the dex number, or poorly thought out single-evos like the inexplicably short Girafarig and the unacceptably dreary Dunsparce (our greatest thanks to Paldea for fixing both of those).

BUT THEN CAME HOENN (trumpets intensify)

And we get habitats! Biomes! A different regional climate, gifting us a brand new area of Pokecology! And therefore a brand new flush of creativity in Pokemon design across the board; less dated, and more inclined to be unique rather than a rehash of Kantonian stuff.

Which brings me nicely to this lad:

Now, I mean. Just look at him. Fucking hell. Cute starter stage, check. LOOK AT HIM FACE

AND THEN he became, at the time, a brand-new unique typing: Fire/Fighting. I realise that is now the norm for like, half of the Fire starters, but that's because of Torchic, actually. He was super popular. In fact if you ever play Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and you do what my husband and I like to call a Mynci Dave run (use one Pokemon almost exclusively, meaning it gets all the experience points and therefore over-levels to a terrifying degree, allowing you to sweep the game; so named after the noble Primeape we first did this with, Mynci Dave), Torchic is the PERFECT Pokemon to choose, because almost everything is weak to either Fire or Fighting in that region.

Anyway, Combusken is, again, kind of mid (although props for the inverted colour scheme and the fact that it actually does look like a teenager.) But Blaziken, on the other hand... Blaziken is a six foot ninja chicken with wings for hair whose Pokedex entry describes it as able to leap tall peaks in a single bound, a feat it achieves after strengthening its legs by hoofing Geodudes down mountains like they're fucking footballs

Also an impressive bulge.

My first was called Gilgamesh, and he was fucking great. For a long time, this mad lad was my actual favourite Pokemon, not just starter. Brilliant. Love him. Five stars out of three. King.

2. Fuecoco

It would probably surprise you to know I've not actually used one. I chose Sprigatito, and I do really like Meowscarada, actually. But pretty anthro cat boys have been done in Pokemon quite a bit at this point; cats, dogs and rabbits are over-represented in terms of Poke-taxa. Possibly this is another reason for a toad, a snake and a chicken being 5, 4 and 3 so far (ooh, basilisk ingredients, I've just realised.) They're new and unusual! I like an Eeveelution as much as the next person, but they're a whole family of cat-dog-rabbits, like.

However.

Nintendo has tried its hand at Pokecrocodilians three times (Feraligatr, Krookodile, Skeledirge), and they have gotten so much better at design each time that the three of them are basically a scale proxy for ongoing design improvement. Look, I've made a diagram:

EXCEPT

(Strap in)

This one is that rare thing: a three step line that deserves to be a three step line. Let's talk Fuecoco first:

SO CUTE. It's charming, it's charismatic, it's adorable.

It also has hints of its evolutionary end goal, but not like an undeveloped middle evo. It likes singing. The white face hints at the eventual calavera, and it looks a bit like a lil chilli pepper - a ghost pepper, probably in reference to the eventual Fire/Ghost typing. But the colours and shape right now also look a bit reminiscent of a babygro, because this thing is a cute starter. Lookit them teefs. That tuft. Its lovely smile. Beautiful.

And then, at the point you expect it to turn into just the awkward teenage version of the adult, instead we get Crocator:

Oh boy. Oh there's so much to say. Okay okay:

The region it's from is based on Spain, but this thing is incorporating Hispanic elements from across the board. It's a mariachi in a sombrero, except the sombrero also looks kind of like a ring of Mexican marigolds and kind of like a Catalonian Easter cake called Mona de Pascua that has an egg (or egg-shaped confectionary) in the middle. Body shape and markings look kind of like a piñata. The white face is now on its way to a calavera, with the cheek and nostril markings more defined. And it sings, with its open mouth (also how crocodiles release heat, appropriate for a Fire type) and signified by the mariachi theme.

THAT IS A LOT.

And then it becomes Skeledirge. A Fire/Ghost crocodile.

Now the obvious design here is the calavera and the Día de Muertos theming, which is part of it. But there are also many examples of crocodile figures in Spanish folkloric ghost stories: the Catalonian Cocollona, the Lizard of Magdalena from Jaén, or the Drac de Na Coca, or even the Cuca - that one is Portuguese, but turns up in both Brasil and the Iberian Peninsula including in parts of Spain. It's got a Gaudi vibe (like Barcelona). It's got an alebrije vibe (like Mexico).

And the bird! Nile crocs have a cleaning symbiosis with Egyptian plovers; it also sits at the tip of the snout where male gharials have a sort of bulbous bit to help them make sounds (the singing thing).

But this is what the bird does when Skeledirge uses Torch Song:

youtube

It becomes a microphone, then grows in size and attacks the opponent in Phoenix form. Phoenix: Fire/Ghost. Resurrected from the ashes.

Quite simply, your fave could never.

5. Rowlet

My god. (My god)

gasp

Look at this lovely creacher. He is so round and so soft and so lovely. He looks like that baby Yoda meme. He looks like that cat that someone's landlord said they would make an exception for because he looks very polite. Look!!! At his lil bow tie!!! He is a smartly dressed young man and he is kind and he is... well, a bit vacant behind the eyes. A himbo, if you will. But he is all the better for that. What a lovely owl.

He looks a little like a barn owl, perhaps, and those were imported to Hawai'i, where Rowlet is from. But I think he looks a little like a Pueo owl, and given that he will eventually be a Ghost type, that seems right - pueos are one of the physical forms assumed by ʻaumākua in Hawai'ian culture, as I understand it.

And then, hang onto your tits, lads, because this is another banger - THE MIDDLE EVOLUTION IS ITS OWN DESIGN!!! (confetti cannons)

I said earlier that boring middle evos are like just awkward teenagers of the adults. Here, I present to you, a very deliberate Awkward Teenager, in Dartrix:

IT'S A DANDY

I love him I love him I love him

He plays with his fringe and if you touch it without permission he has a tantrum. God, he's so charismatic. Also, that fringe further suggests the pueo - they have pronounced outer rims around their facial disks like that. Look at his bow tie and tail coat. So smart and handsome

This one is so good that it could be the final evo. This is actually my issue with the Delphox line - Braixen is amazing, and then it becomes the bland boredom of Delphox. Braixen should have been the final stop. Here, Dartrix is much the same - good enough to be a high-quality end goal.

Where they differ is that Decidueye is better again.

IT SHOOTS ARROWS MADE OF ITS OWN QUILLS

Also, fun fact - This line is the only starter to change secondary typing. Dartrix is part Flying; but on evolving a second time into Decidueye, it switches to Grass/Ghost. In this evolution, it's definitely mostly a pueo, so the ʻaumākua reference is IN, but actually barn owls also have their associations with the dead in various cultures.

The crown of feathers around its head are also reminiscent of an ayaigasa - a hat worn by Japanese samurai archers. And yet! AND YET!

It still has its lil bow tie look. Bigger now, more of a cravat; but there it is.

A perfect Pokemon, and a perfect evolutionary line. No notes.

Anyway, thank you for this chance to waste three and a half hours writing this essay

#asks #pokemon #long post #gif

260 notes · View notes

sacchiri · 2 months

Text

I recently bought the jp volumes of Hellsing along with the guidebook, and since I'm reading the series in its native language for the first time I might as well share some random things that stood out to me in no particular order.

This isn't meant to be an analysis of translation differences, I'm too lazy for that. Also it's been 12 years since I've watched the anime and read the low quality fan scans of the manga so some of these comments are just "Lol, forgot this was a thing"

Volume 1

... I really want to know who this guy is at the beginning, yelling at Alucard in overly familiar language to "Get your shit together!" and "You're the only one we can count on!!". We know from the style of speech that it's a dude, probably just some Hellsing rando, and maybe it's not all that strange since he has probably been working with the same soldiers for years--but it's still funny.

"I know, it's just so nice out :("

..The way "HELLSING Organization" is spelled out like this reminds me that apparently the name is supposed to be an acronym. No really.

...

God they're so silly.

Now that I think about it, the only thing Seras has done this chapter since being turned into a vampire is say "I'm sorry" over and over.... girl you got shot in the lung, why are you apologizing

Not a huge difference, but what Integra actually says here is "Leaving a corpse here for 20 years... You're a terrible person too, Father" and not "What were you thinking, Father?" as the Dark Horse translation suggests (note the lack of question mark in the raw version). I thought that might be of interest to some.

Something else I thought was interesting is the first line Alucard ever says to Integra, and how uncharacteristically polite he sounds.

O-kega wa gozaimasenka- That's two honorific 御's back to back! (He even said them in kanji, even Walter isn’t that straightlaced and he’s literally the butler.) This is also the only time Alucard uses this overly flowery gentlemanly language with her, and good thing too because it would be so annoying if he spent the whole manga ending his sentences with ~gozaimasu.

What I'm trying to get at is, after seeing this sentence in the Japanese version, I'm like 100% sure he actually heard her when she was mumbling to herself about hoping to find a knight in shining armor, and he was totally going the extra mile in playing into that role for their first encounter. Which is kind of sweet.

Lol they misspelled Alucard on the top left... or rather, they incorrectly spelled it right?

One would normally expect Alucard to be written アルカード, and indeed pixiv dict lists アーカード as a misspelling (the u sound is weak in Japanese, so it's easy to mishear arukādo as ākādo). Hirano was definitely aware of the correct spelling though, since he used it in the pilot chapter and in his old character sheets. It was only when the manga officially began that he switched to the アーカード spelling. I doubt it was because of copyright issues because there is already a long precedent of vampire characters named アルカード in various old manga, OVA, and games in Japan that have coexisted without issue (like this guy Hirano mentions in volume 1's afterword).

Most likely Hirano simply thought it looked better, or was a means of differentiating his character from the others somehow. It certainly makes life easier for Japanese fans searching for fanart since アーカード is only going to bring up Hellsing and not the Castlevania character.

Jan Valentine even pokes fun at the spelling discrepancy later in volume 2, but since there wasn't a good way of expressing this in English it was left untranslated.

(Speaking of spelling inconsistencies, there's a lot of minor details I'm noticing now, like half the time the furigana for 吸血鬼 is written バンパイア and the other half it's ヴァンパイア... anyway)

Um, just noticed literally everyone's wearing glasses What should I do

Hirano's habit of jotting random comments underneath his panels is one of the underrated perks of reading the manga

The Dark Horse translation almost makes it sound like she's looking forward to seeing this battle play out, while in the Japanese she simply sounds apprehensive. Almost as if she's worried about them? And she's going out on the field personally to make sure nothing bad happens? Aww

Ok this is a weird tangent, but I just noticed the scans of the Dark Horse version I've been looking at use a slightly larger image range than the Japanese version does. It was only noticeable when I got to this part:

The second image is what the Japanese version of the scan looks like and I can confirm that this is what it looks like in my physical volume as well. You shouldn't be seeing the messy borders of the inking on the bottom like that.

Manga manuscripts are set up so that there are a few millimeters of bleed border around each page. You're supposed to color and line all the way up to (4) while keeping in mind that printing and paper cutting may result in the image being trimmed up to (3).

Either Hirano didn't color his lines all the way to (4) (this man has been drawing manga for years but this is Hirano we're talking about so it's very possible), or Dark Horse didn't honor the original bleed borders of the manuscript. I'm kind of leaning towards the former since there was a Hellsing exhibit in Japan a few years back where you could look at Hirano's original manuscripts and there's one where you can clearly see that he spilled a mug of tea or coffee across the entire page

Anyway, it's weird, and I'm curious to see if someone that owns a physical copy in English can confirm whether theirs actually looks like that. It's volume 1, page 141.

#hellsing #integra hellsing #alucard #seras victoria #i'm too lazy to do this for all the volumes #unless someone REALLY wants to see them for some reason but i doubt it

77 notes · View notes

petarabbit2 · 3 months

Text

Realistic Ace Trappola + Headcanons

Ace headcanons + realistic artwork done with Art Breeder and edited in Clip Art Studio:

Okay so getting straight into it, this is my first post about my headcanons and realistic versions of twisted wonderland characters and the first one being introduced is *drumroll* Ace Trappola! Ace fans, you eating good tonight my chickies (that sounds so weird if u dont think of chickens right away LMFAO).

Sidenote: When headcanoning Ace and all my other characters, I take both factual and some of my personal thoughts/beliefs of the character to construct my headcanons.

So for Ace, its evident that I gave him acne due to reasoning such as his diet (fav food being cherry pie and mentioning his liking towards burgers) plus he is literally a teen boy that also has no women in his life and stereotypically the mother is the one to bring up looks as an issue, so without this Ace probably would have never gotten the right treatment for his acne.

He’s already a red head so I added on that by giving him freckles. Also, it's known that redheads are more prone to acne, so another note as to why I gave him acne.

For his features for a realistic rendition, I went with a heart shaped face (because Ace’s card suit is hearts) but his widow's peak is hidden beneath his bangs. He has a snub nose shape which is quite round and slightly upturned. He has thicker eyebrows cause we all know bro don’t give a shit about his appearance.

For his hair I went wild, it's extremely fluffy, a bit curly and like shoulder length when wet. Bro has had like two haircuts his whole life and probably smells foul. I also tried to keep to the original style pretty closely without it looking really weird like bro came straight out of an anime.

I didn't draw the bodies for any of them but Ace is more lanky with long legs and a rectangular body shape, but he has pretty big feet and hands.

Yeah and he's got a light British accent gang I’m sorry 😭 – he uses slang often as well.

Without & With Face Makeup:

Personality and backstory headcanons + a bit of character analysis:

Okay so Ace is one of the very first characters we meet in the game and a good one at that, a lot of people just put him in the category of “dumb friend with one brain cell”, and yes that's kinda true but every person had a reason to be the way they are due to personal experiences. We know in canon that Ace has always lived with his father and older brother but due to the literally no backstory on his mum, I’m saying his parents are divorced which he has much more time with his dad, also by his mannerism being so straight to the point and not sugar coated, this could be due to him being raised in an only male household. Which could also hint to why he “didn't feel committed” to his former relationship in middle school, he was so new to this type of love and got scared. After all he is just a teen, cut my boy some slack. (#1 Ace defender)

Due to this relationship with his mother and seeing how his parents fell out of love, fought or similar, he’s very bad with women which is why he has only male friends. The only way he would have a girlfriend (or woman friend) is if they were not sensitive to his zero-filter way of speaking and even tell him off for it. (not me doing this since my yuusona is a girl 💀)

It's still mentioned that the whole family gets together around holidays (although this could possibly just mean his grandma and such and not the mothers side) so maybe the divorce wasn't messy and they just didn't love each other anymore, which happens all the time with quick relationships.

Ace is also pretty immature and not into deep and emotional conversations which is common with teen boys (especially around his age group). So not trying to hate, but all those scenarios made up with him comforting the reader and helping them feel better, in reality, he probably wouldn’t have gotten why you're so sad and not really know how to comfort you. Which is completely fine! He's not fully grown in body or mind and people need to accept this.

He definitely makes your mum jokes and sex jokes, bro cannot stop himself laughing when a teacher says anything sex related. He's highly competitive and will sulk if he loses a basketball game or bet with a friend.

Also despite being not very empathetic (not on purpose though), he appreciates the little things. For example, he’d appreciate you remembering his birthday or always having a spare pencil for him in class as you know he always loses his. He really appreciates those friends and even though he lacks in some areas, he will always protect them and stay by their side no matter what.

In conclusion, he's just some teen boy who's still learning about life and people. I had a lot of fun making the realistic design and giving him more depth as a character and I'll be doing this for the rest of the cast and after that maybe side characters?? Only if you guys want it though, I’ll also one day release my yuusona 😞. (she’s my queen get ready yall (hi i’m the 10/10 editor and assistant 😋)) (together, we are big brain)

My editor/assistant cause I can’t grammar or spell to save my life: @cyb3rpnnk

SIDENOTE: DO NOT REPOST MY REALISTIC RENDITION OF ACE OR ANY OTHER CHARCTER I DO AS YOUR OWN. EVEN THOUGH THE BASE WAS MADE WITH AI IT IS STILL MY CREATION!

However you are permitied to use my headcanoing as your own for art or stories or whatever, just not my realistic rendition.

Hope you enjoyed my take on realistic Ace and my headcanoning!

#twisted wonderland #ace trappola #twisted wonderland headcannons #twst headcanons #twst hcs #twisted wonderland imagines #twst imagines #realistic twisted wonderland #twst art #twst fanart #disney twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland fanart #twst wonderland #twst grim #yuusona #twst yuu #twst ace headcanons #twst ace trappola headcanons

43 notes · View notes

generic-anime-boy-bracket · 9 months

Text

Round 1, Group A: Matchup 6

Keiichi Maebara vs Hiroshi Satou

Reasons for being generic + Propaganda below

Keiichi Maebara

Reasons:

Brown (shaggy?) hair, brown eyes, is the kind of protagonist you’d expect for a slice-of-life and that’s kinda the point

Short brown hair, dark blue/gray eyes, classic protagonist. Also he looks real goofy in the original when they cry anime.

he is the everyman protag of at least the first half of the vis novel / first season of the anime. you play as him and he is just an anime high schooler who loves his friends. Other than the fact that sometimes he goes crazy with paranoia and kills all of his friends. But he LOOKS generic, especially in the later remakes/rereleases where they have. The most generic anime design known to mankind. that being said the OG visual novel style & the first anime DO have an iconic look (Ugly. They're ugly. But it's unique and charming.) but. nevertheless he is Just Some Guy

Brown hair in a hairstyle that varies SLIGHTLY between the anime and VN but still looks very generic either way, is usually seen in a white shirt and only occasionally switches it out for a somewhat less generic sleeveless red shirt. Compared to the rest of the cast, which is identified by their colourful hairstyles and 80's rural Japan attire in bright colours, he could've looked exactly the same in a modern version and nobody would've batted an eye, he's so generic. Genuinely, his most striking detail is his purple eyes and even then they're blue in many versions of the series...

As a Keichi lover, he is the most generic part of his show. It's a show about murder and intrigue and intrigue about murder and Keichi makes every anime boy folly in this moment- not telling the competent women in the cast about his actions/findings, being the center of an undeserved love triangle, and he's so generic he can't even figure out the core mysteries of the show and the show literally had to be handed over to another character so that it could continue because Keichi is so boring he couldn't carry the intrigue plot believably.

Propaganda:

1500 seconds is all he needs

he loves the power of friendship and trust

*slaps Keiichi's head* This generic guy can fit so much childhood trauma No but really, despite looking like any shitty harem VN protagonist and having some mild pervy tendencies, he's developed in a much more rounded way fitting for the horror/emotional drama story that Higurashi is. In the past he's done some terrible things while lashing out against the expectations people put on him, but the narrative doesn't try to play it down after its reveal -- he's definitely trying to grow from this. In the "present", he has the potential to either go down a paranoid spiral culminating in him murdering people, or being able to successfully talk THEM down from murder. All while regularly failing hard at board games and suffering embarrassing punishments for it. This makes for an interesting protagonist that you don't mind following even after he stops being the narrator. BUT despite all this, he still looks like any generic harem protag -- and that's why you should vote for him!

Hiroshi Satou

Reasons:

His whole thing in the series is being the most average, normal guy ever. His grades, height, weight, and bathroom time are all canonically 100% average.

The whole point of his character is that he is exactly average in everything. Looks, personality, even his friend group is exactly average.

not only does he look like that but the show is a comedy anime that uses a lot of stereotypes and his is "normal guy." he influences some plot events with the power of his average luck

quite literally the most average guy ever. every single thing about him is perfectly average

literally everything about him is average. like literally everything. his grades, his appearance. even the amount of time he uses the bathroom. its his entire character

His whole bit is that he’s Perfectly Average. Down to his weight and height. On his wiki page his only listed ability is “normalcy.” His name is derived from the Japanese equivalent of John Doe. The main character is obsessed with him/has a crush on him because he is so so normal and that’s what Saiki wants most

The main character of this show, who stands out against his will, admires Satou Hiroshi for being perfectly average in every way, and "blandness personified." "He is completely average in everything he does. His grades, height, and weight are exactly average. Down to the millisecond, Hiroshi is timed to have the exact average times for the PE evaluation. He is also noted to go to the bathroom for the average amount of time and use the average amount of toilet paper." Basically, he is written to be the most generic guy possible.

From the wiki: "He is the epitome of an ultimate normal guy... Someone who has boring name, common appearance, average in brains and body and has no single quality to stand out. He blends into the background, so the other characters tend to lose sight of him"

Propaganda:

The main character likes him because of how normal and average he is. Also he is just a nice guy

He is the most average man in existence. He even poops for the exact average amount of time. This is the most generic background character to ever exist.

it’s literally a plot point in the show that he’s completely generic guys. he’s perfect for this

Being normal is literally his bit, c’mon guys

The whole point of his character is how boringly normal he is. The main character is super jealous because he doesn't want to stand out

#generic anime boy bracket #higurashi #higurashi when they cry #higurashi no naku koro ni #keiichi maebara #the disastrous life of saiki k #saiki k #hiroshi satou #satou hiroshi

89 notes · View notes

toffeelights · 3 months

Text

falling into sonic again..

no i grew up watching those epic sprite animations and sonic final fantasies, sonic paradox even. The games I played were heroes and a few more like unleashed and mega collection and i adored black knights transformation sequence i would play it in the car repeatedly ( i never owned a wii). I watched all the sonic gameplay I could. My favourite characters being sonic and shadow. I, however grew up and believed sonic was not "famous" and was niche, jealous of the only sonic merch being the boys underwear in the superstore :(,

i didnt like boom or even lost world. it wasn't "sonic" to me, so i fell out, come forces and im burned, never touching this franchise again in my mid teens. I looked at how it was doing, would watch dubs and enjoy animations but eh that was it for me.

then.. comes 2023 and the thing that drags me back into this franchise, the thing that fucking pulls me in and keeps me buried... is those same two fucking hedgehogs but this time... their fucking ship. I suppose i can blame the art that took me here in the first place but holy shit. if you told me when i was 5 years old that i would come to adore sonadow and that would be the sole reason for my staying to the sonic franchise and all i would draw would be fucking sonadow, i would think you were fucking stupid and then go on word and make sonic comics of him running and pissing on eggman. no its the fucking fact, that now its come to a point where the dynamic of sonic and shadow genuinely have shifted my entire brain chemistry, they are everything, romantic subtext or not, they have literally shaped my interest for the past half year.

the fucking SYMBOLISM sega hints around them??!! them being stars, fated, destined to meet, mirror images, understanding eachother the most yet causing the most frustration. Sonic, is the one character that can get so, so personal to shadow, challenge him in a way and intrigue him in the most bizzarest of ways he never understands yet finds equal annoyance as much as admiration, sonic is a shift to his core. Shadow also does care quite a bit, just as much as he gets irritated at his presence, i find it funny how in sonic 06, the two characters saving sonic are amy and Fucking SHADOW the hedgehog. (albeit you dont see this alot erm due to segas insistence of making characters.. boring? but anyways)

their TRUST.. in eachother, the sonic x shadow generations descriptions do it so well (esp in jp).

in sa2 when they.. worked together for the first time in space and.. he called him the ultimate life form.. and sonic and shadow.. just in that moment.. were together as one. and oh man..

I could talk about prime but uh my favourite interactions in there are mostly when one of the other was uncouncious or in a state of unawareness (youd be suprised how much this happened). like sonic holding shadow and saving him, he seems to get really, REALLY emotional when it comes to shadow than anybody else.. for some reason... and shadow' reaction when sonic almost died. OWee that was done so well. the way.. he held him.. tight.. when sonic was dying.. oh my gosh. bride style. oahy.. im not too fond on talking about prime since in terms of the "sonic and shadow" dynamic it sort of slaps you in the face but hey I appreciate some sonadow anytime, if that was their actual only canon dyamic i dont think I'd care for it as much but its more of an add on to one of the most insane PASSIONATE.. crazy mutually charged dynamics ive seen in my life... like why are they like that.. can they STOP.. those two.. my brain will explode if we actually like actually like ACTUALLY see them togteher and if its anything like "them" with their subtetly and bizzare unique tensions, i think i will lose my sanity and just not function anymore. good fucking bye if i see a mention towards emerl or the ending of sa2 i will lose my absolute shit and you random person seeing this will see me go through it. my sketchbook would probably be overwhelmed by the amount of incoherent sonadow mess dear lord why..

ignore this i have an exam tomorrow and ended up going on a crazy rant about tbese two hedgehogs that have carried me through senior year, shout out to sonadow.. gotta be the only thing dragging me towards a degree.

#sonadow #sonic #shadow #sonic x shadow generations #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog

37 notes · View notes

lastoneout · 2 years

Text

Got asked if I had any tips for new artists during my stream today and I figured I'd put them here too:

Draw, seriously, just do it. This is the hardest part and also the most crucial. Just run at it screaming and refuse to back down. You just gotta do it.

Always do your wrist/arm/shoulder stretches before drawing and make sure to take breaks to stretch/re-center yourself if you've been going for a few hours or more! (Here's the stretches I do, and they help with gaming and writing and desk work too, they're just a good idea all around!)

Try to draw less from the wrist and more from the shoulder(move your arm more and your wrist less basically). That and stretches will help you avoid carpal tunnel which is never fun.

Consistency is only something you need to worry about if you're like, working in the industry/doing some types of commissions(like an twitch emote bundle or a comic book). If you're just starting out or only drawing for yourself it literally doesn't matter. Like, I don't think I've ever drawn a character exactly the same way twice, it's fine.

Don't do warm up drawings, do warm up scribbles. Doodles circles and squares and lines and swirls until you feel nice and lose, then start actually drawing.

If you're between 50-90% done with something and you REALLLY start to hate it, keep going. You just gotta power through, cuz chances are it's perfectly fine(or even really good) and your monkey brain is being a jackass coward chugging that impostor syndrome juice.

If you finish and you still hate it put it away until tomorrow or the day after and then look again. Never EVER trust your negative opinions about your art(or anything) if it's after like 8pm.

Re: the above points, as an exampke last night I HATED my new pngtuber model that I'd spent literally all day on. Went to bed and in the morning was like "oh this is good actually". Trust me, tired burnt out you is not a good judge of quality, especially the quality of something you've been staring at for like 4-5 hours.

If, after all that, you still hate it, that's okay too. It's a bummer, but don't try to force yourself to like something just cuz you spent a lot of time on it. Chalk it up to experience and move on to the next thing!

Do everything in your power to not compare yourself to others. It won't get you anywhere. Instead learn to look at other people's art and find what you like about it and try to break it down or do it that way yourself. Dont fully copy/trace ofc, but really think about how something looks and see if you can figure out why you like it and/or how it's done.

OH MY GOD USE REFERENCES. Anyone who says not to use references is talking out of their ass. You think figure drawing classes are bad?? That artists draw from life just for shits and giggles?? No, its because you need to know what shit looks like to draw it!!! USE REFERENCES!!!

Same with youtube tutorials, especially for learning to use digital art programs. Do take everything with a grain of salt ofc(we've all seen the "masculine vs feminine eyes" shit or the trash trend of "I fix my viewer's bad art uwu" ignore that crap) but you can learn all kinds of shit for free on youtube.

If you can feel yourself burning out fucking stop drawing a take a break. Even if you're in the middle of something, or part of you wants to keep drawing. Burn outs suck and it's gonna take a lot longer to get over it if you push yourself until you crash instead of just acknowledging that you're hitting your limit and stopping for a few days. The art will be there when you get back, your health should always come first!

If someone tells you thick line art or anime style or whatever is bad, ignore them. All art is subjective. Draw what you want how you want. Even if it's all thick line art or you stick to sketches or only do anime stuff or chibis or humans or furries or goddamn stick figures just draw literally whatever. If this is just a hobby for you there's no reason to push yourself. Draw what makes you happy, fuck everyone else.

Anyway that's all I've got for now, might add more tomorrow when I'm less tired(and I encourage additions for other artists as I'm self taught and had to learn most of this the hard way and thus I'm sure I've missed stuff) but yeah, just draw my dudes, this is supposed to be fun. You deserve to have fun.

#art

1K notes · View notes

sirduke · 2 years

Text

(image descriptions in alt text)

sorry for the delay! 48 animals. 5 rounds. 3 brackets. 1 tournament to settle it all. here in Creacher Contest 2022, the greatest minds in the history of this website (and you!) will gather to decide once and for all who is tumblr’s favorite little scrimblo bimblo. you all voted in the first round. now begins round 2 to decide the creacher among creachers!

THE RESULTS AND THE ROUND 2 LINK (under the cut!)

CARD 1: Pikachu (winner!) vs. Stuart Little: with 286 votes against Stuart's 39, Pikachu has claimed the most overwhelming Round 1 victory with a whopping 88 percent! Does he have enough Z-Power to maintain this momentum in the coming matches? Stay tuned!

CARD 2: Tom & Jerry vs. Perry the Platypus (winner!): in a heinous act one can only describe as homophobic, Tom and his husband Jerry have been taken out of the game in Round 1 after accruing only 110 votes (33.8%) against Perry's 215 (66.2%). Reporters are calling this tragedy the worst thing to happen to gay people since my straight sister learned how to say 'yass'.

CARD 3: Kirby (winner!) vs. The Lorax: Our orange friend (56 votes, 17.2%) may have powerful connections here on Tumblr via the Onceler, but even those could not save him from the super tough pink puff. His current location is unknown and Kirby (269 votes, 82.8%) has been spotted with a yellow mustache. Call the police.

CARD 4: The Minions (winner!) vs. Talking Tom This match was a bit closer, but thanks to everyone's efforts, Talking Tom (133 votes, 40.9%) has been fucking sent to hell. Anyone else remember the schoolyard rumor that Talking Tom takes pictures of people through his eyes? Like sure the whole thing is probably some datamining thing but that's literally not how anything works??? How was this a rumor????? Ok anyways Minions win (192 votes, 59.1%)

CARD 5: Dog (Columbo) (winner!) vs. Dog (Good Omens): War is hell... but today in this dog-eat-dog world, one sleepy fucking hound (186 votes, 57.2%) rose to the occasion and proved himself to be a certified sloppy floppy. (note: do NOT confuse with 'sloppy toppy'. the resemblance is coincidental. all basset hounds are sloppy AND floppy. think Mr. J's signature 'sloppy style' and we will understand each other and then kiss.) I know nothing about Good Omens and have nothing to add for the other Dog, who admittedly did well in his own right with 139 votes, 42.8%.

CARD 6: Bond Forger vs. Gunter (winner!): I honestly thought this race would be closer, but that probably says more about me than them lol. Taking 67.1% of the card with 218 votes, Gunter has defeated Bond (107 votes, 32.9) in a victory for secret aliens everywhere.

CARD 7: Silkie vs. Waddles (winner!): As a Gen Z elder (lol) who watched Teen Titans reruns on Boomerang, Silkie (79 votes, 24.3%) had my vote. Did this poll reach a younger crowd than me, or is Waddles (246 votes, 75.7%) simply that powerful?

CARD 8: Temmie (winner!) vs. Puppycat: This matchup was super close! Temmie (176 votes, 54.2%) managed to beat Puppycat (149 votes, 45.8%), but there really was no clear winner until the end. This battle of what are basically two tbhs with animal features was certainly the most exciting!

CARD 9: Yoshi (winner!) vs. Chocobo: The only knowledge of Chocobos (98 votes, 30.2%) I have is from this stupid fucking Chocobo anthro art my friend used to spam my DMs with. I basically just needed a thematically similar animal to job to Yoshi (227 votes, 69.8%). Yoshi's Island DS was actually the first video game I physically owned as a kid, so he's kinda special to me lol

CARD 10: Little Buddy vs. Crab (winner!): I had personally predicted Crab's victory (231 votes, 71.1%), but not to such an extent! In only seven weeks. the release of Splatoon 3 (Splathreen) revitalized and expanded its title's fandom. However, it proved to be ineffective against the might of the humble crab, aka the only good thing Tumblr's done for April Fool's since the lizard election. RIP Wretched Tooth I miss you every day #wretchedtoothstandsfortruth

CARD 11: Mr. J (winner!) vs. Salem: L to Salem (114 votes, 35.1%), but you'll always hold a special place in my heart. Unfortunately, it won't be as special as the one reserved for Mr. J, Tumblr's favorite small cat and one of the few Tumblr famous bloggers I don't want to set adrift in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Now that that's out of the way: MR. J SWEEP COME ON EVERYONE VOTE FOR MR. J WE CAN DO IT

CARD 12: The Four Dark Devas of Destruction vs. Hamtaro (winner!): Once again, I haven't consumed either media here and have nothing to say on the matter. However, my friend was happy to hear that "the Danganronpa one lost". Part of me has to agree.

CARD 13: Toothless (winner!) vs. Stitch: Not only was this the closest match with Toothless at 167 votes (51.4%) and Stitch at 158 votes (48.6%), it was also the most controversial, yielding multiple complaints and one (1) death threat. While I sympathize and realize that putting two contenders as strong as Toothless and Stitch together in the first round may not have been the best move, I need everyone to understand that they have similar faces and must be grouped together for that. Thank you. Peace and love

CARD 14: Appa (winner!) vs. Lion: Did the ATLA fandom coordinate a move on this tournament? Because Appa (266 votes, 81.8%) beat Lion (59 votes, 18.2%) by a landslide! The representative of one of Tumblr's historically biggest fandoms losing like this surprised me, but if some sort of fandom participation really did occur, that makes me happy :)

CARD 15: Garfield (winner!) vs. Scooby-Doo: Report: After consuming no less than seven entire large pizzas, Scooby-Doo (149 votes, 45.8%) the dog was immediately rushed to the fucking vet. His owner, Shaggy was found similarly unresponsive. Sorry, Scooby: it was a close race, but nobody can beat Garfield (176 votes, 54.2%) in the art of eating Italian food and doing fuck all. Better luck next time!

CARD 16: Dimple vs. Moomin (winner!): Even after the coming and going of the Moomin (262 votes, 80.6%) fandom directly on my dashboard, all I can fucking think of is that gif of a blob of white mochi getting fucking pummeled in an automatic mochi maker that someone tagged '#moomin...' no matter what I do. That aside, he wiped the floor with Dimple (63 votes, 19.4%), who admittedly should have lost by disqualification anyways.

CARD 17: K-9 vs. Gary (winner!): Most important poll of the day, serving it up, Gary's (229 votes, 70.5%) way! Gary did great up against K-9 (96 votes, 29.5%), who is in fact this poll's only representative of SuperWhoLock. SuperWho would've thought he'd only rack up that many votes? Truly, no fandom can transcend one's early childhood.

CARD 18: Midna (winner!) vs. Morgana: In this battle of scrunkly little cat people, Midna (193 votes, 59.4%) was the definite winner, beating out Morgana (132 votes, 40.6%) by a decent amount. Whoever wins this tournament should be playable in Smash Bros 6

CARD 19: Puffles (winner!) vs. Chao: I feel like the Puffles (191 votes, 58.8%) won for the same reason Gary won: sheer power of childhood memory. As a kid, I always wanted the black one... was it locked behind the paid membership? It's been several years, so naturally I forgor. As for Chaos (134 votes, 41.2%): I am so fucking sorry to the person who said #CHAOSWEEP in the comments lol

CARD 20: Cousin Itt (winner!) vs. Tony Tony Chopper: the one piece wasnt real :(

CARD 21: Rigby vs. Mushu (winner!): Personally, I was really gunning for Rigby (125 votes, 38.5%). With Dimple so immediately out of the race, I was hoping for at least one representative of pathetic men everywhere. That being said, congrats to Mushu (200 votes, 61.5%)! Vote for him in Round 2 if you want him to job to Mr. J!

CARD 22: Luna vs. Hobbes (winner!): I read Calvin and Hobbes as a kid and only recently watched Sailor Moon as a feature for my anime club, but I can honestly say I like both. I still think a crossover would be gold! Show me Luna (117 votes, 36.0%) offering Calvin and Hobbes (208 votes, 64.0%) magical girl powers, Calvin rejecting the offer performatively and whining about lack of powers. That's 12 full strips of Calvin and Hobbes! Make it happen.

CARD 23: Ein (winner!) vs. Iggy: Ok quick tangent. I just looked up 'ein cowboy bebop' to find out what he does, clicked into the wiki and found a tiny, useless article only to then realize I was not on Cowboy Bebop Wiki but in fact the dreaded Heroes Wiki. This and Villains Wiki are the bane of my existence and I'd raise a glass if all parties involved were stranded on a snowy mountain. The Heroes Wiki entry for Spike Spiegel is 1980 words. The Bebop Wiki entry is 8000 words! Why the fuck would I ever want to read the latter? Why does it exist? Are there seriously people who browse Heroes Wiki, just clicking from unrelated protagonist to unrelated protagonist? It has absolutely no functional use in any fandom whatsoever! Any time I look up a fictional character, there's a 90% chance that the Heroes or Villains entry will be the one Google puts on top as if to say 'yeah, this is what you want. trust me.' And without fail, I click it every time! Since the Nazis who own Fandom made the mobile version of all their wikis the same fuck-ugly yellow, I can never tell until it's too late and I've wasted nearly forty seconds of precious time. If I was Elon Musk, not only would I not buy Twitter, I would instead buy Fandom, blow both of these wretched wikis off the face of the fucking earth and ban the IP adresses of anyone to ever type a single word into one of their useless, obtrusive entries. I cannot possibly overstate how much vitriol I bear towards these websites. Please vindicate me in the replies. Anyways, Ein got 265 votes (81.5%) and the other one got 60 votes (18.5%).

CARD 24: Snoopy (winner!) vs. Sakamoto: Snoopy got 195 votes (60.0%) and Sakamoto got 130 votes (40.0%). To quote my cousin's reaction when they found out:

"thank you snoppy"

here's the link to vote in the second round! i'll probably keep it open until 11:59pm est on november 3rd, that way i can get round 3 out in time for destiel day :)

finally, to conclude the post, here is a selection of my favorite comments from round 1 (view on mobile for optimal experience!)

thanks for playing! ~♥♛

215 notes · View notes

autumnbrambleagain · 2 months

Text

edit: rant edited to reflect how Snoot Game treats gender identity b/c i hadn't really done more than look at a few convos about it

I'm GBH, Goodbye Volcano High got like, the worst fucking shake

Disclaimer, I haven't played it (there is a very special irony in this that i'll get into in a bit), but I've watched people on youtube play it, and I think it's. Fine? It's fine. But everything surrounding this game, everything that happened to and around it, it's fucking wild. I've never seen a game get such a poor serve-up on the tennis court before.

It gets put up on the big console premier along huge AAA budget games. That's rough. A small intimate-scale VN about the end of the world as a metaphor for growing up and leaving highschool and changing and also a non-metaphor for the world ending as itself a metaphor for the new generation entering into what feels like an absolutely hopeless, pointless future (spoilers: the future is pretty fucking dire (the present is already fucking bad))?

Those are some rough themes! That isn't doomchief and master slayer punching guys! And not to denigrate doomchief! These are some ROUGH themes and the trust that those themes will be handled WELL isn't something you want to give out so readily! Those are themes that are easy to fuck up! Fair! But still. Oof!

To have your relatively small scale game put up as a launch title alongside mass-consumption AAA games. Ouch.

I'll admit: the art style was pretty rough, it's really rough on first look. I made fun of it too.

Then it comes out the MC is enby, that it deals with queer themes, and 4chan-esque folk go nuts over it. Snoot Game comes out which, apparently, seemingly, actually not bad! A lot more ironic but with serious themes handled, apparently earnestly, and it's overall... good!? Even some critical accounts suggest it isn't, at least, bad? Whichever: it comes out faster than GVH does, so it now has a parody-competitor dealing with the same themes, but not just as a JOKE but actually putting effort into it too. Like. That's the thing. Snoot Game DEALS with strong themes of growing up, of becoming a person, it DEALS with the themes GVH is saying it will deal with... and it uses the characters to do it too.

And it does it, by some accounts, WELL.

Ouch!

Granted Snoot Game is from 4chan and apparently I'm now reading one of the themes is Fang accepting they're a woman and they were just being enby to try and be different, and while it seems like it DOES handle it very seriously, and like, the game seems to penalize you for being shitty about their gender, and like, detransitioning IS a thing! I don't want to give TOO much trust to a 4chan-derived game either. I'm literally enby, but I also wasn't always enby, but like. Having a game where the message of "you were only trans because you were pressured into being different", it's, ehhhhhhhh not great no!

TBH without going through Snoot Game I can't really speak about it but Snoot Game overall isn't the main point, the main point is:

Some people are already now primed with associations and expectations, you already have a doppleganger as your competitor. OUCH.

So like.

Pretty rough.

And while Snoot Game, from the compressed summaries of it I've seen, seems to actually have honest heart and love in it in its final form, a lot of people just seem to be along for the hate-ride against GVH at this point because "eww the alphabet rainbow furries."

And then the writer has to step down because they found out she's into child por--wait, it was just 3d animations? That someone else made? That she was watching and criticizing as part of an article on how dumb video game porn is?

Oh. See, there's a difference between "the author is an active pedophile" and "the author watched a Harry Potter porn animation to write an article on the concept of video game porn," but in our modern era there's really never a distinction. Drawing something bad is the same as doing it in real life. Looking at it at all is the same as doing it in real life. If you see a woman's ankle on the street, make sure to head immediately to confession or God will judge you for the rape you have committed in your heart.

We live in such a media-literacy dead-end zone that people are calling the original Lolita book child porn. We live in such a media-literacy dead-end timeline that people are saying the only media that should be permitted to exist is happy comfort fluff where nothing bad ever happens because if you make bad things happen in fiction it means you're an evil villain :3 i'm not an evil villain, though, i don't watch bad media!

So of course it's fine to ruin careers because that's not EVIL. I didn't look at the BAD media so I CAN'T be evil. So you know, we have this modern purity pandemic of people thinking they're heroes for getting people to kill themselves because they drew or wrote "the wrong kind of thing" and are therefore EVIL and we're in a post-DnD world the cultural well got poisoned by DnD's secular take on evangelical protestantism's absolute morality of saved-vs-nonsaved. You're Lawful Good, you know you're Lawful Good. Whatever you to do Chaotic Evil people? That's fine. You can do whatever you want to them. You're Good.

Anyway, then it gets delayed to remove all her influence from the game, because at this point, even admitting you know what sex is online seems to be enough to ruin anything you touch tbh. Humanity's doing great, btw.

Like I can find twitter posts of her apologizing for "hurting people" by having seen harry potter porn. Your species is insane, just btb.

GVH finally comes out quietly and everyone's so fucking. MAD at this game. Hardcore 4chan whateverfolk hate it because there's queers and highschoolers. Other people dislike it because Snoot Game already came out and now GVH feels like fanfiction of THAT to them. They already met these characters, enjoyed them written like they were in Snoot Game, so how they come off in GVH feels worse. And you know, sure! That's a rough fucking shake when a fanfiction comes out before your actual release and it's good! For others it's tainted because a ""sex perver"" had worked on it. For others the art style and that it premiered alongside big name AAA games as a launch title was enough to slot it firmly in the derision zone. For some, because the queer community cannot NOT devour its own tail, it's doing queerness wRONG (Fang's parents MISGENDER and DEADNAME them!!! you can't put that in a game that deals with gender as a theme!!!!)

And then you have people who don't care about ANY of that, who are upset that everyone dies in the end and "your choices didn't matter", despite your choices affecting your relationships with the other characters. Granted? Sure! More actual endings beyond the end-of-the-world concert would be great! But comparing it to Mass Effect 3 where NOTHING mattered because the Reapers destroy everything and you pick one option at the end and their implied consequences before like 4 different changes to the ending came out to retcon "oh yeah everyone in the galaxy is stranded, everyone probably dies anyway, you accomplished nothing everyone's still dead" ? ?

The world's ending. That's the point. It's what you do with the time left that seems to be the point? Yeah? No? I'm not saying it HIT that theme well, and I'm not saying it actually failed at it either. I honestly think it did FINE. The criticism i keep seeing is "everyone died so nothing mattered." Buddy. Buddy. YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. Please do not let that convince you that nothing you ever did mattered.

Among all that it came out buggy, apparently, and the music minigame isn't like. Super. Good. Doesn't matter too much if you do well or not. Not greatly designed? So you know. The game also has just general internal problems too mechanically, so people without a dog in the race just don't enjoy playing it? Like, the art style was all on the creators, like, it's... it's not GREAT I'll be real! It's really weird. It's humans in those latex dolphin masks the memes weren't off base even i was laughing at it and groaning at yet another piece of media whose theme was "leaving highschool is like the world ending"

but like.

GVH isn't like. I dont' think this is some great amazing the best game ever. The art style's grown on me but in the way where you learn to ignore how it looks. But like, I see people complaining it's too whiny--wait, the characters aren't depressed ENOUGH about the world ending--honestly, honestly,

I think I like it? I haven't played it but I've watched it and I think I like it. I'm not like, this is probably the last day in a while I'll ever even think about the game, it isn't going to stick with me for years and years, it didnt' make a big impact on me--but I liked it well enough???

At this point, my default assumption at this point is if someone strongly openly firmly dislikes this game it's not at all for any good reasons--or rather, that it's not on the value of the game in-and-of-itself. This poor game was saddled with all this WEIGHT on top of it. Can you even dig it clear of this external context and examine the game itself for what it is anymore?

I'm writing all these words and like. I haven't PLAYED it i've just watched other people play it. I'm not even BIG into the game it's like... it's okay!

But oh my god I cannot get over what a fucking. BAD serve-up the game had leading to its release and just beyond. Oof. Ouch. God. That's real rough, buddy. I have never seen something get this POOR a serve. What an absolute rough, ravage, unfair birth for a thing into the world!

I think if the game congealed out of the aether (and maybe with a more... better art direction?) it'd be fondly remembered in small quantities?

Instead it's just... the actual game itself is just BURIED under all this mess.

It's fucking fascinating to me, honestly. It's far more fascinating what happened to this game than the game itself at this point, and that, too, isn't very fair to the poor game. I, too, am here not to talk about the game, to care about the game, to have anything to say about the game. I am PART of this problem I'm talking about. Instead of addressing the game I'm talking about the context that was built around it.

I'm here because I remembered the drama, looked into all the drama, then went to watch the game and, after seeing ALL of that, EVERYthing I read through to get to the game itself, actually seeing the game was just... like... for this? All of that, for this?

Huh.

#long #autumn says things #autumn rambles

12 notes · View notes

hidingoutbackstage · 2 months

Text

Okay I’m STILL procrastinating watching s15 bc I’m SCARED so here’s my extremely biased ratings/opinions on the episodes of s14 to help me procrastinate (episodes which are multiple parts of a single story will be condensed into one slot)

Room Zero: SO cute and good, I LOVED the animation style, it was simple and short but really well done with great colors, fun alien designs, and fluid animation, and I just like seeing the guys go on missions like that. It's a shame that the animated show never got picked up bc I would've adored seeing more of it. 10/10

From Stumbled Beginnings: Very cute and funny origin story for Simmons and Grif, and I love that they were p much always together since they enlisted lmao makes their dynamic rlly good and the humor actually got a couple laughs out of me. 8/10

Fifty Shades of Red: Sarge's humor never quite landed with me like is has for some people (my boyfriend lmao I literally have to pause episodes sometimes so he can stop laughing. Anyway) but it was a very humorous and in character origin for him as well. 5/10

Why They’re Here: Less interesting than the previous two, obviously just meant to fill in plot "holes" and to also show us the origins of the other characters. Also I am completely ignoring that one line from Tucker in the interview, just gonna chalk it up to the "edgy" humor it does not exist to me. 4/10

The Brick Gulch Chronicles: WONDERFUL stop motion, very fun and cute and entertaining, very wholesome and still in the vibe with what the show itself is. I appreciate the willingness to do stop motion for most of it. 10/10

Red Army Unit FH57’s Adventure: It was kinda interesting and kinda funny but I found myself kinda tuning it out cuz it just felt kinda whatever. The combo of the different animation styles was cool though and I thought the ship misunderstanding them was funny. 5/10

Locus and Felix: Okay I'm gonna be a black sheep for a second and say that I rlly don't care that much about Locus and Felix. I don't think Felix is a secretly deep sadboi whom I'm gonna spend an unnecessary amount of time thinking about, I don't think Locus as secretly good all along, and I don't care that much about their partnership and what they were like before Chorus. That being said, the animation here is absolutely gorgeous, this is probably my favorite animated story in the whole season, it looks awesome. The plot is nothing special but who cares like I said it's beautiful, 6/10

Fight the Good Fight!: VERY funny and well-executed propaganda video, short and sweet and nothing more to it. It does its job. 5/10

Meta vs. Carolina: Dawn of Awesome: Another one I really don't care for because literally everything leading UP to the fight between Meta and Carolina is a waste of time. Maybe some people really care about their weapons and stats, but I don't. And even then, you kinda know Carolina is gonna win the fight, the question is just how. 4/10

Grey vs. Gray: I don't know or care about the Game Grumps and the entire thing felt like a short gag that went on for way too long with a predictable ending. 2/10

Caboose's Guide to Making Friends: Again, ADORABLE art style and very cute having a story be told from Caboose's perspective. 7/10

Head Cannon: Kinda funny I guess. I wish we'd gotten it spread out more equally among the heads Omega jumped into. Ik he didn't spend equal time in there but who cares. Whatever, still funny. 5/10

Get Bent: I LAUGHED PROBABLY THE HARDEST AT THIS ONE AND THAT'S MOSTLY BC OF LESBIAN DONUT IT CAUGHT ME OFF GUARD AND IT WAS HILARIOUS (also hello, bisexual church?) 9/10

Red vs. Blue: The Musical: it was fine. it was creative. The dancing was well animated. Enjoyable. 5/10

Mr. Red vs. Mr. Blue: I haven't seen Reservoir Dogs but Kaikaina was in this which automatically boosts it to a 8/10 (I also like that they have movie nights it's cute)

RvB Throwdown: Fine but mostly forgettable. 3/10

The Triplets Story: REALLY interesting concept (y'all know I love the freelancers) that felt like it dragged on too long and only gave Ohio something to do. 4/10

Immersion: The Warthog Flip: I loved the costumes and the actual Warthog and it got a couple laughs out of me. 5/10

Red vs. Blue vs. Rooster Teeth: This was made for the fans/themselves. As someone who is neither, none of it was funny and I just kinda waited for it to be over. At least the animation of the armor irl looked rlly good

#sid rants #sid watches #rvb

11 notes · View notes

solarpunkani · 11 months

Text

Solarpunk Ideals and Aesthetics in Sonic Colors

--according to one Solarpunk Sonic fan specifically but dude trust me on this.

This post is the sequel/follow up to my previous post on Sonic the Hedgehog (the character) and Solarpunk Ideals, feel free to give that a read for some context! But for a basic run-down--Sonic the Hedgehog (the Dude) embodies several core Solarpunk tenants in his personality, Dr. Eggman is the antithesis to Solarpunk both in personality and in resulting actions, and I'm such a big nerd I had to split this post into 2 parts and they're still long as hell.

Special reminder: I am a Sonic nerd, have been for 10+ years now. I also have Write Too Much disease. I am going to talk. A lot. Prepare yourselves.

Special reminder part 2: Sonic the Hedgehog is not a perfect franchise, and it's owned by a corporation in the capitalistic hellscape we call life and I promise you I am aware of that. I'm not saying SEGA is Solarpunk, I am saying that parts of their franchise have Solarpunk elements. If I post this and someone skips this paragraph to instead rant at me about some unrelated shit that SEGA the Corporation Guys did That One Time Months/Years Ago I may snap. You have been warned.

Shout out to @modern-solarpunk for being a beta reader for this! Thank you for making sure I was actually being legible and coherent with this.

Let's dive right in.

Sonic Colors Let's Go Let's Go

Sonic Colors came out on the Nintendo Wii in 2010, with an alternate version made for the Nintendo DS. I’ve only played the Wii version, so we’re going to talk about the Wii version. We later got an 11 minute 2D animated short about the game, to celebrate the release of Sonic Colors: Ultimate (which was basically a remake for the Switch). Basic plot synopsis below.

Dr. Eggman claims that he’s turned over a new leaf and has created the Egg Planet Park to make up for his past deeds. Sonic is inherently suspicious, so he and Tails sneak in and start busting up Eggman’s latest evil plot--tying down planets and kidnapping alien creatures called Wisps and harnessing their powers to charge up a mind control ray and make Earth the star attraction of his space theme park. Sonic and Tails promptly set about stopping him, destroying the Eggman robots on each planet and freeing as many wisps as they can while they do so. Feel free to check out this video to see all the cutscenes.

“Ani, what’s Solarpunk about that? A space theme park made by chaining down planets is already pretty unrealistic--” let me get there.

First off, the storyline has resistance and anti-industrialization baked into it. In a sense, we’ve got anti-colonialism too (though by all means DO NOT take this as me comparing the immeasurable harms done to colonized peoples by their oppressors to little fictional alien dudes getting their juices sucked out. But Eggman literally is colonizing several planets). Since Sonic is fighting a villain who’s trying to turn all of space into his robotic wonderland, we are too--and we see this guy as the villain, since he is, which can make people think about how these themes play into other aspects of life. Or at least I did in the fifth grade. Bear with me here.

If you don’t wanna watch 50+ minutes of cutscenes originating from 2010s-era script writing, let’s look at a quote that I feel boils the solarpunk-adjacent parts of the storyline to its bare essentials.

In the 11 minute animated short, Rise of the Wisps, there’s a bit more. First off, we see the aliens resisting a bit more--in fact, there’s a group of little Wisp freedom fighters working to save other wisps before they’re… harvested, I guess is the word for it.

Do they have names? No. But in Sonic Colors we don’t even really see any Wisps with characterizing traits aside from Yacker, so I think having the next few be a band of freedom fighters is pretty cool.

Asides from admiring the visual style of this short (because man Sonic in 2D animation just feels right to me), there’s a quote that I feel fits the Solarpunk outlook on community and problem solving.

“When the problem seems too big to solve on your own, you do what you can. And maybe ask for a little help from your friends. Right?”

Like if I put that in the middle of any other Solarpunk post no one would bat an eye but I’m literally quoting Sonic the Hedgehog here.

The series as a whole, especially Sonic Colors in my eyes, is imbued with hope and standing strong in the face of difficult challenges--leaning on your friends for help when you need to accomplish bigger and better things than you can do on your own. In Sonic, that means defeating giant mech bots or mutated lizards trying to crash land on Earth or purify the world of an out of control zombot virus. For us? That can be restoring a native landscape, vouching for clean energy, starting a community garden, and fighting for what we believe in.

Now let’s talk aesthetics

The Aesthetics of Sonic Color

So we’ve got 5 planets (Sweet Mountain, Starlight Carnival, Planet Wisp, Aquarium Park, and Asteroid Coaster) and two parts of the main park (Tropical Resort and Terminal Velocity) that are playable zones in Sonic Colors. But what’s the most Solarpunky area to me?

Planet Wisp

Planet Wisp is described in the fandom wiki as “a beautiful natural planet full of vegetation and tall trees. The Area takes place during daytime, though stars can also be seen in the sky.” Another page on Planet Wisp says “when seen from space, it heavily resembles Earth,” but its not very big--described as “tiny” in the game. However, it has a wealth of “untouched, unspoiled and unmatched natural beauty”, full of blue-gray rocky canyons and mountains with valleys and fields, rock pillars, etc. covered by plants. The trees are extremely tall, with platform-tops and no other main branches. There’s also lakes and creeks. There’s a minimal level of urbanized civilization--mostly tree slides made from branches and roots and platforms and such. Overall, simplistic stuff--”its untouched nature being largely preserved by the Wisps’ harmonious way of living in nature.” which sounds great! Except this is before interference by Doctor Eggman. Afterwards, “Planet Wisp has large amounts of factories under construction, tearing apart the original plant life and rock and replacing it with red metal.” Eggman Empire-style structures like towers, half-pipes, and roads are clustered around the landscape, and there’s an unknown purple liquid polluting several bodies of water. So! Not all that great!

‘Ani why do you find that Solarpunk?’ two reasons

A: We the player are literally here to defy the people building the factories so the planet can continue to be full of vegetation and home to its native creatures.

B: it’s pretty, okay? It’s fukin cool.

This map is so cool it was also featured in Sonic Generations (2011) and Team Sonic Racing (2019), so let’s find some pics!

But most of all, the music, you guys.

And here are some other versions of these tracks from subsequent games (Sonic Generations, Sonic Colors Ultimate) and tracks inspired by the Planet Wisp location (Team Sonic Racing)

These tracks. Especially the original ones, but oh my god these tracks. I cannot emphasize enough I feel like. These tracks feel like you uncorked a bottle labeled ‘hope, positivity, relief’ and put it to your ear. And what is Solarpunk about if not hope.

Speaking of Solarpunk and being about hope, let’s talk about the main theme for the Sonic Colors game--Reach for the Stars. If you couldn’t tell by the title alone, this song is also the embodiment of hope--in more of an upbeat, ‘we’ve got this together!’ kind of vibe, but it’s still important to me and also feels Solarpunky (at least Solarpunk-adjacent) so let’s talk about it!

(I ran out of audios I can add so we're getting Youtube Videos instead)

youtube

“I’m gonna reach for the stars, although they look pretty far! I’m gonna find my own way, and take a chance on today!” - as Solarpunks, we are reaching for the stars (the sun in particular I suppose) to find hope in a brighter future and share it with others. We’ve all got our own way of doing it, with solutions varying based on individual situations as well as what community efforts can yield, but even still we are daring to dream of a brighter future than the one most often visualized in popular culture. No matter what, we’re gonna keep striving to make changes and create a brighter world for ourselves and those who come after us.

“Just take a chance, we’ll do it right again (we’re gonna reach for the stars!) Just take my hand, we’ll take a chance tonight, reach for the stars, tonight!”

You know what else Solarpunks go crazy about? Community building! You know what else Sonic Colors covers musically? Community building! Or, more so, being open to other people’s viewpoints and communicating to resolve problems, but still!

youtube

Now keep in mind, this song is literally based around Sonic and Tails trying to communicate with an alien via a translator, but my point still stands let’s look at some lyrics.

“I’ve been here before, and I know that we must stand up tall! I’m not scared to ask when I’m not sure; we can overcome it all!” - what is community if not being able to lean on other people? Community support, mutual aid, working together to solve problems big and small, Solarpunks have got it!

“If you could tell me how to lend a hand, I would try to understand! No words could say how much I care! Together we can take a stand!”

And let us not forget the refrain! “Speaking from nowhere else except your heart, you’ll never know if you don’t try! Listen and see the voice I carry with me: ‘Speak with your heart! Speak with your heart!’” In my humble Solarpunk opinion, this feels pretty solarpunk. One of the main things about being Solarpunk--at least, in my experience--is unabashed enthusiasm about our ideas and the colorful sustainable future we’re envisioning! Encouragement from others is what brought me to this space and what draws others to join and stay in Solarpunk spaces! From our art to our writings to our technological concepts and even our arguments all come from sincerity and passion about what we’re doing and the future we want!

And keep in mind, these are the opening and ending themes of the game! These are the songs where the writers are trying to bottle up the essential vibes of the game into a few minutes of funky tunes! You open up the game for the first time, you hear Reach for the Stars! And after a wonderful story and the satisfaction of finishing a game, you hear Speak With Your Heart! Even the titles alone wouldn’t feel out of place in a discussion about Solarpunk ideals!

Final Words

The Sonic franchise has its flaws, but it sure does speak on hope and resistance. Is Sonic Solarpunk? Maybe not entirely, but I feel it’s got some core elements that are Solarpunk-aligned, even when it’s not always front and center like it is here. I’m not going to pretend that Sonic the hedgehog as a franchise is the pinnacle of a Solarpunk story/game--but it’s got some nice elements that could inspire other stories, and uses those elements in a way that makes people feel like they can and should take action against darker industrializing forces in their life.

Or at least it did for me, as a fifth grader. Maybe that’s not a lot. But if it can help open the eyes of a handful of kids and teens and make them feel hope? Make them feel like they could maybe find the courage to do something? Maybe that’s all we need from it.

#solarpunk #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #sonic colors #solarpunk aesthetic week #out of queue #ani rambles #ill accept critique i'll accept disagreements but if you call me cringe or dumb or stupid glick glock you're getting the block #thank you for coming to my tedtalk I hope this was a fraction as good as everyone excited about this was hoping for #and if this gets you into Sonic the hedgehog let it be known you are ENCOURAGED to talk to me about it #Spotify #Youtube #update: I added gifs because I like gifs #update 2: added a link to the first post because i have no clue why that wasn't there before.

34 notes · View notes

sobeesknees · 1 year

Text

Story of Seasons Needs to go Back to its Roots with its Art Style: A War Against 3D

My first Harvest Moon game was Harvest Moon DS Cute, and ever since I’ve been smitten. I adored the gameplay. Farming, mining, taking care of animals, cooking, getting cute ass romance scenes and getting married?? Love it. Can’t get enough of it.

However, ever since the series started embracing/incorporating 3D into their art direction and art style, the games just haven’t been appealing for me to pick up. To put it bluntly, they can’t create a 3D art style that isn’t ugly. Every single fucking time they release a game, they shoot for the heavens with 3D and it’s just not done well. So to me, all the new games that insist on this art direction are just

u g l y.

Usually, the concept art looks fantastic. The character drawings and the box art are charming and stylized beautifully, as seen below:

from SoS: Friends of Mineral Town

But the game itself? The world/environment you’re supposed to stare at? They’re consistently literally ugly to me now. Take SoS: Friends of Mineral Town, I can understand the previous games that were like released in the 2010s as being janky ugly 3D models but this FoMT was released in 2019, and it still has the same issues with the art style that I just can’t get behind.

The characters’s 3d models. Making them look like chibis was a choice alright. The character drawings are cute but they just don’t translate well into the 3d models they chose for them. They look like toys.

The proportions are ridiculous. I don’t think its appealing, I don’t think its a good look design wise. The animals look like sentient plushies. The crops are as big as your character model.

It’s 3D but everything is just so FLAT. If you look at the grass its like one solid color, if you look at your dirt plot its one color. There’s not enough detail so it ends up looking flat and bland. If you see a vast of green land that’s all you’re getting. Might as well been a green carpet. What minuscule detailing they do have it’s just not enough to break and beautify the monotony of the landscape.

Now compare that with their old style: Pixel art/Sprites. Admittedly, after Harvest Moon DS Cute, the only other game from the series I found appealing enough to play was Tale of Two Towns.

I much prefer the art direction they went with in those games. It was so incredibly detailed. The trees look dense. You can see the detail in the grass, you can see an abundance of weeds, flowers, whatever. The houses were pretty and the colors were charming. ToTT’s art style was an amazing elevation of pixel art. It was even more detailed and even more charming. Say what you will about these games, but the art style was definitely not bland and flat.

Comparisons

Harvest Moon DS/Cute: look at the grass, look at the pathways, look at the dense trees, look at that house and the brick!

SoS Tale of Two Towns: Look at the water!!! Look at the grass, look at the random plants, the flowers dotted everywhere, the patchiness and the irregular pathways, look at how even denser the trees look

Sos Friends of Mineral Town: You cannot tell me this is prettier than the others. Grass looks like it was spray painted on. The water is ‘okay'.

I just wish, with my entire being, that the developers of story of seasons would just give up on the 3D. They can’t do it well. They’re not charming, they’re not pleasing to look at, and you kinda want games to be nice to look at considering you’re gonna be staring at that thing for hours to play the game??

And before you fucking try to come at me about FoMT not being their most recent release:

This is SoS: Pioneers of Olive Town (release: 2021)

yeah fuck that

I don’t think I’m old school for preferring the art styles and art direction of the older games, I just think they’re objectively prettier and the 3D whatever the developers are consistently clinging to is just plain ugly.

Please. Let. Go.

This message doesn’t just go out to the creators of story of seasons. Every time I see a ‘cozy’ game with an interesting concept and gameplay but with that same shitty 3d bland-ass flat-ass art style I get so disappointed. And there are so many of them.

I think I can bet money on if Stardew Valley didn’t go the pixel art route it wouldn’t be as acclaimed as it is. Stardew Valley’s art style is charming and is actually appealing. I think it’s a big factor as to why so many people love it.

This is literally just a rant/tantrum because I see so many interesting games but with shit art styles and it’s such a turn off. Like. Please. Expand your horizons. 3d models can’t be the end all be all.

#Story of Seasons #Harvest Moon #Stardew Valley

38 notes · View notes

narzissenkreuz-ordo · 3 months

Note

1, 9, 12, 16, 17, 21?

1. the character everyone gets wrong

i've answered this one already but gonna double down on dan heng/dan feng (their relation cannot be defined as black and white as fandom wants it to be) & neuvillette (he's not a uwu cry baby who doesn't know what sex is)

9. worst part of canon

[puts on my clown shoes] the high cloud quintet......... and also the fact that jing yuan literally has no reason to be in the story as is. they did not utilize his character at ALL when they could have easier done some cool things with him, but it all fell flat in the end and it sucks since he was the character i got into hsr for (im a big fan of his eng VA and only started playing bc of him)

and for genshin. they nerfed dottore with sexy anime ass plague doctor aesthetic. its just so boring and predictable. RIP webttore you should have survived the dottore segment hunger games not omega :/

12. the unpopular character(s) that you actually like and why more people should like them

the entire narzissenkreuz cast.... like genuinely one of the coolest and most tragic group of characters from more recent in game history that is fully expanded on in world quests. it a great self contained story told over 3 patches and offers neat context to the events of the fontaine archon quests but more specifically.... rene de petrichor i love you and youre unhinged culty academic shenanigans

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

im sorry but fanon haikaveh (its annoying & reduces their characters down to just a tropey ship) and jingheng (its boring) and i understand why people like neuvifuri and its neat they can be read as so many different relationship dynamics but i very much dislike it in a romantic sense.

i hate the weird sexualization of wriothesley being a prison warden x prisoner! reader, canon character, oc etc

but as for general tropes i think friends to lovers is boring and a snooze fest on its own. wheres the drama....the conflict.... the compelling plot. and i think high school aus are cringe in general. especially from either adult writers or characters who are already adults in canon

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

like in general? im sick of seeing so much rendered/soft shaded 'anime-esque' fanart being the most appreciated in fandom spaces. not to say these folks aren't talented they ARE but it feels like their type of work is the only stuff being praised and lifted in communities i personally would REALLY love to see more graphic and exaggerated cartoon work because i feel like there can so much personality put into pieces like than rather than just pure skill and technique in more rendered/painted styles of work

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

i really don't have any interested in the traveler as a character. i understand Why they exist but id have just as much if not more fun if they didn't have a story arc of their own........ the abyss twin being connected to khaehnri'ah and the abyss order is more interesting than the traveler's entire journey

#ask a fool #ty for sending these maur!!#i forgot to answer this until now

7 notes · View notes

abimee · 4 months

Note

so tbh i was hard on nier:a while playing it cos i don't really like a lot of the anime tropes BUT i really like tragedies and i was promised some twists, and got some. but i wanted to ask you how you felt about the pacing. basically, did it feel like there was a solid line connecting plot points, or do you feel like certain things happened at random? barring the fact that yoko taro said he literally wrote the story out of order, is that how it felt to you? imo it felt really rushed through super cool parts and like things that were annoying or setpieces ran on for too long. ig i'm still fked up over how much it fell short of my expectations bc even after playing nier:a completely thru and h8ing how absurdly film-student its tone and ideology are, i was hyperfixated enough to read some of the side literature and learn drakengard lore. tl;dr, nier:a is cool and has some fun parts but i wish the android were more mature (or artificial) in physicalilty to avoid weird anime loli baiting in the fans and also they'd asked a writer to help revise and implement the og author's ideas okay bye thx for reading my rant ♡ i'm glad u had fun and ur fanart abt a2 and the indoor grill made me cough

ill gladly listen to people bitch about yoko taro ive had PROBLEMS with this man since a young age ☝️☝️☝️☝️

I was actually thinking about the pacing and insertion of certain scenes/plot points today because admittedly like. okay this might be all over the place but

The start of the game (Route A + B) was like pretty solid pacing I think due to being low risk, and I thought it was cool that the game let you see 9S' side of things --- but it really started to fumble when it got into it's moe complex storylines in C-D-E and went on to deposit a lot of information on it to the point where it felt like we were forgetting entire plots and characters because something new and shiny showed up

Like okay first off. Adam and Eve and the aliens. We never once got any sort of explanation WHY adam + eve killed the aliens, or why the aliens made the machines, but within that general thought we did learn that humans died before going to the moon (and possibly even before the aliens came?), and that YoRHa's only goal was to fight the machines until a specified amount of data was gotten and then they were to explode. Never did we get more elaboration on the aliens or adam/eve, and while we got some YoRHA spotlight stuff it also entirely just decided that explaining the true mission behind making YoRHa and why the androids had to die is beyond it. Which frustrated me because it Brings Up Ideas but doesn't specify if thats the true reason, like we learned that the machines fight purely because that was there sole reason, and so they made an enemy for themselves purely to enact that goal that the aliens gave --- but then it even goes ''haha okay but hear me out'' and introduces Red Girl and this vague idea of the Machine Ego and wanting to defy their masters of the aliens, but then DOESN'T ELABORATE WHY. Like we don't know WHY adam and eve and the machine ego wanted to develop enough to defy their machine logic and purpose because it wraps back around to ''theyre human just like us because they want to defy their masters because.... they're human like us?"

Like it often felt like some concepts or plots brought up walked itself in a circle, dog-chasing-tail style, where it's entirely contained within itself and refuses to expand upon it's existence, which then causes it to get sort of left behind when the plot finds a new fancy idea to latch onto. Like how quickly the story introduced, focused on, then discarded Adam & Eve is almost criminal because of the things it could've done with them literally as the closest approximation to what the Machine Ego/Red Girls wanted, since they defied their creator's orders to be their own selves. Eve especially feels wasted in this regard --- like if the plot spent a little more time focusing on Eve & Adam in a B-plot scenario showing Eve and Adam learning more from humans and even leaning into Eve's wants that we saw in his mind when 9S hacked him (the human home built around him and his brother, and his brother wanting to go somewhere peaceful with him). Like they even could've tied that to when they get on the Ark and leave and Adam is holding Eve, that's literally Adam bringing Eve somewhere peaceful, but because those two instances are so seperated from each other and their own sort of throw-away concepts it becomes hard to Remember the tether between those two thoughts

This is also my biggest problem with A2's writing, I can only assume she's meant to be a Kaine-type character (and boy did my eyes momentarily widen seeing Emil say ''it must be fate that we've met!" to her) where her reserved nature and somewhat limited character blends in with her personality, but they really could've just given us like at least 2 more hours-game to learn about her past rather than just infodump us with her lore in some logs at the Resistance Camp. This is another problem Red Girl had where I feel like the fact you get unit data on them that basically explains away the confusing parts of their involvement in the lore felt cheap because this game has over 40+ hours under it's belt but couldn't be damned to give us information on our main antagonist directly in the game instead of in a post-credit LOG?

Like okay. I love my baby boy emil. He is the most special boy in the world to me and I am so happy seeing him get a pretty decent character arc for himself in the sequel to his original iteration. But why do we learn information about Emil more easily than the Red Girls? No unit data paragraph, no document information to read, no external book needing to be sourced. You learn whats up with him, why his big event out in the desert happens, and how it ends. You even get TWO special areas involving him. Red Girl gets to speak for a little bit and then vanish. It just astonishes me a bit

And it's not like the game doesn't try to expand characters last-minute either, that entire cutscene where Pascal reads Nietszche and then gets surrounded by the baby machines before the events of the Factory/suicide felt so forced in suddenly that it felt rather obvious something was going to happen. And I say this as someone who was in tears seeing Pascal get called ''uncle Pascal'' and see him defend the children in the factory --- it was super obvious that they possibly didn't originally plan that scene but needed something to really show that Village acted just like a human community with children and babysitters and family. Like not to be like ''this couldve been something beautiful'' but i think giving us a little time between A2 and the Village more could've done something beautiful. A2 getting the necessities to build the slide definitely made me drop to my knees but I noticed even the LPer was confused why A2 had a crying child inside of her as her enemy at the end of the hacking (like how 9S had 2B at the end of his destroying his memories), but the game didn't do anything with that besides lightly imply A2 lets down her mean bit for children sometimes (and again. why is this Kaine behavior). And then the fucking laughing children sound at the end of the route where she hacks 9S and she looks to the sky like ? This is all very interesting but it doesnt mean anything.

NOT TO MENTION 2B BEING AN EXECUTIONER TYPE. COOL CONCEPT BUT IT DOESNT MEAN ANYTHING IN THE END. It's just another thing to tack onto 9S's migraine of learning everything is a lie but nothing gets DONE with that incredibly interesting though afterwards because we never see 2B after that because she's been dead for a while now. We had a brief hint at it when we heard that transmission of 2B being her new name but the payoff just doesn't work if you just state it and then not do anything with it.

There's many cases of this and I notice it with how much questions I have that simply have no answer in this game despite the fact we have nearly 5 routes worth of time that could've gone into either sticking to like 3 ideas to the end or bridging the gaps, Which the story Does Do Sometimes! Red Girl talking about fucking up its own network to make pacifistic machines that want nothing to do with the war, the lie of YoRHA

OH MY GOD ALSO. SPEAKING OF RANDOMLY PUSHING STUFF IN. OPERATOR 210. The fact that they wanted to pull the whole ''she was curt and distant with 9S but secretly saw him as like a son because she wanted a family :(" could've gone INSANE if they didn't decide they wanted to bring that idea in at the last possible second and make 210 randomly baby 9S (and then make him point out how strange she's acting), and then ignore that until we get to the cutscene that they wanted to make for it. Like they could've had 210 start out as curt and distant, but as 9S operations with 2B got more dangerous she could've started laying on the doting mother thing, but it just came so abruptly in Route.....C? That it felt forced and rather last-minute, like they finished writing A and B and someone walked in and went ''wait I want 210 to see 9S as her son :(" and this is how they crammed it in

oh this post isnt even about the pacing i'm just talking about dead end plot concepts. But I can definitely see where you're coming from there because we spent an awfully long time with the Resistance only to know so little about them, but it defos felt more ''a lot of stuff is getting brought up but we dont have enough time to give it developing room because we want to bring in the next concept asap". A2, the forest king, Red Girl, hell even Pascal and Adam & Eve all suffer this. the only person who really got a steady character Was 2B and 9S but 2B felt like she got cut short and just became a puppet for 9S' plot which is so tiring how often we get dual man/woman protags and the woman's story just becomes part of the man's story and she becomes a nebulous concept. that yoko taro brand Misogyny

I SPENT AN HOUR TYPING THIS? I haven't even gotten to how I feel like 9S' plot feels like it was destined for something more but got bottlenecked for time and cut off at the like 80% mark

I can definitely feel that though of feeling like Nier:a didn't meet expectations, when I finished all the routes and the playlist i was watching just Ended I genuinely sat up and bed and just felt a deep sense of ''THAT'S IT? THATS ALL?"

it's crazy too because I really, REALLY loved what it had going and im going to be thinking about this game forever but it also just left me feeling like i'm missing something so badly that when I try to think about it sometimes my mind just draws blanks like im left speechless at it.

Like that was nier: automata? that was just 40 hours of being asked what it means to be alive

#im not even gonna talk about what it tries to say philosophically because i can see its trying to say some stuff #but it sometimes get drowned out with the incessant need to do what mr taro games do and just make shit feel bad #and i love tragedies. but it can be heavyhanded when done by his devs sometimes #AGAIN THIS ISNT ME SAYING THE GAMES BAD. I LOVED IT A LOT BUT MAN. WHAT THE HELL

8 notes · View notes

howtofightwrite · 2 years

Note

How feasible would it be for a character to have a hair whip, as in a long braid with something like a morningstar at the end? There's def some leeway on my end where I could go "their spine is magically augmented to keep this from Literally Killing Them and causing brain damage" but I'd love a more informed opinion on it

I'm going to go with, “no.” “How feasible?” “No.”

The strain on the spine is something I'd worry about, though that's a relatively minor concern. The first three things that come to mind are:

How do you sit down? This is a situation where if your character is knocked on their back, there's a real chance their weapon would end up between them and their spine. Landing on a morning star does not sound like a good time, even if they're wearing armor. Especially if this happens after they're knocked off a horse, a roof, a table, or basically anything else above floor level.

Second, if their weapon gets stuck, or an enemy catches their hair, their foe now has (limited) control over their head. This is a very bad thing.

Third, they need to break eye contact to attack, and because they're whipping their head around, it's going to leave them vulnerable for an extended period where they cannot watch what their foe is doing.

The more I think about this, the more problems I start to see.

If their hair-flail is ever cut, that's it, they'd need to grow out their hair before they could use it again. This is a limitation for a lot of biological weapons.

Of course, actually hanging and swinging heavy objects from your hair would be somewhat unpleasant. It's likely to not be as bad as having your hair pulled, since the flail would probably be mounted on a tight braid or ponytail, but it would still be jerking your scalp around.

It's also worth remembering that, in order to do this, your character would need to have very long hair. Probably, at least, waist length, if not longer.

I'm honestly not sure how great the risk of a self-inflicted concussion would be from using this. Because hair doesn't really transmit the shock of impact back to the scalp.

Since you brought up magic, there are characters who use their enchanted hair as a weapon (I'm failing to remember any specific examples off-hand, but the motif does exist.) In that case, the hair is often semi-autonomous, striking and reacting under its own power. It's a peculiar bit of fantasy, but it's an option, and it can bypass some of the issues I mentioned above. Critically that the hair will be much harder to capture, as it remains active, and may even restrain someone dumb enough to try to grab it. It won't force the character to look away from their foe as they whip their head around to generate momentum, and, ironically, it would be easier to avoid sitting or falling on their hair if they have fine control over it.

Generally speaking, weaving weapons into your hair is a pretty bad idea, with the specific exception of using your hair to conceal weapons. That's a slightly weird concept, but, things like a stiletto disguised as a hairpin, is a legitimate, potential, assassination tool. (Somewhat awkwardly, stiletto hairpins are a real hairpin style, and not a weapon, so it's a little harder to assess the the history, but any sturdy hairpin can be used as a weapon if needed, so I'm fairly confident in saying a character could credibly have a hairpin intended as a disposable assassination tool.)

As for something larger, you'd be playing for unrealistic absurdity, which may align with your goals. For example: A character who casually whips a katana out of her hair, would be pretty goofy, but it would solidly establish the kind of story you'd be trying to tell.

Also, it's probably important for me to point out, if you're going toward the fantastic end of the spectrum, this is a fantasy that works better in visual media, so comics, games, animation, and film. It can be done in prose, but it will be considerably more difficult.

So, like I said at the beginning: “How feasible?” “No.” This is a specific kind of fantasy that really only works if you commit to the extreme. Trying to make it, “grounded,” or dial back the insanity, is very likely to be underwhelming. I guess an alternate answer would be, “How feasible?” “Only if you go big.”

-Starke

This blog is supported through Patreon. Patrons get early access to new posts, and direct access to us through Discord. If you'd like to support us, please consider becoming a Patron.

#Starke Answers #writing advice #writing reference #writing tips #hair whip

116 notes · View notes