#but basically the point is that they Leave. theyre traveling and exploring (which also helps to get Birdie out of that depression funk)

[miscellaneous--bones]

shows everyone this oc i made n folks love her and then 2 minutes later come out with new ocs that im even more obsessed with like haha sike sorry. i was gonna wait until i had more drawings of howl but ive already been sittin on em a couple days so yk

anyway these are what came from that doodle page mess from a minute ago, goose was the first but i needed an oc who would work to be shipped w snatcher so then i made howl and decided there were 5 of them. they're supposed to be mostly borzoi/italian greyhound mixes? idk. either way they run on ahit rules but i might use em in other places too idk yet. Summary of their characters are below the cut

so they're a litter of 5 and no one is keeping track of whose oldest or youngest or whatever

unusual i know but i also cant figure out where i want them to be anyway so shut ur face

we'll just go left to right from the top

somewhere on her travels goose ran into hk and bow and was worried about these strange children being alone in space so she decided to come with them and like they arent gonna complain about their new dog

shes not the best with other people but she takes good care of them both and keeps them protected and fed and whatnot.

it works its cute

shes the only one who has a collar because shes the only one who has a person out of her siblings

nk n then howl! howls got a lot going on

they got a fairly dinky ship when they left it was sturdy enough but like not Good good yk

and at some point way before hattie and bow and goose end up there, they pass over harbor because theyre tryna figure out if they wanna stop for a supply run or not and the mafia shows up n makes trouble ofc

she gets the mafia to leave her alone but in the process ends up crash landing somewhere near subcon (not sure if its like in the woods or just off the borders but close enough either way)

in the crash tho, a bunch of time pieces shatter n get fucked up and end up scattered across time

she has to go through and try to clean all THAT up because plain n simple those things are hard to get and just leaving a jumbled mess like that it Very Not Safe

in this whole debacle her family dont know whats happened and the ship is kind of undocumented because the crash basically happened forever ago but also it hasnt yet but also it never did?? so like. shes missing for a good decade before shes finally back to her present (by this time hat n bow have come n gone so she missed goose anyway)

while she was going through time collecting time peices, she got in whole heeps of trouble and while its only been 10 years in her present it feels like its been at least 50

shes gotten acused of witchcraft, cursed about 5 times over, there was that one time she was thrown in a dungeon for 7 years for disrespecting a king or something

point is they came back fucked up

they're half undead and their soul is a little bit missing because someone stole it at some point and they only barely got it back a little bit. also cursed to be tied to shadows so being in the sun too long isnt very good for them.

ive also been playing with the idea they were cursed to live either other people's spirits and energies OR their flesh. not sure which yet

i do feel like it'd be nice if they and snatcher could end out with a deal where he eats the souls and she eats the bodies. or something

this whole change of theirs is supposed to be shown by them loosing their white on their face. theyre the one laying down in the last drawings which is supposed to be them while their in college years and shes got her white face. she looses it when she gets all tied up in the darkness thing. she also gets taller than her siblings they were the shortest originally

neway im till daydreaming abt the whole thing so yk

the other siblings are less important but still cute

duke is also an astronaut but his explorations tend to go better apparently. he comes home with a cute alien boyfriend later

paris owns a boutique that brandy helps her out with- they stayed on their home planet together with their parents when the others went to space.

speaking of, brandy is rlly nice

aside from her different markings which always set her apart real nice shes also trans. so grew up a little bit othered but still very very loved and also her and paris are besties obvi

brandy is good i like her a lot. i think shes be like second eldest if not eldest eldest if i had a real order there

her and howl bond over having different markings from the otherwise when howl finally gets home :)

#art #oc #Goose #Howl #Duke #Paris #Brandy #goose n duke also used to be bffs as kids and goose grew up calling him duck #soz if its hard to figure out whos who when its not colored theyre supposed to be pretty simliar #hope its not TOO hard at least #neway im gon lay down n chill out

[chisatowo]

Just some quick concept redesigns for a few stalien historical figures

#oc posting #eternal gales #and now to use this oppertunity to infodump abt worldbuilding lets gooo #so! Ive talked a bit abt beetle and bugs before but I doubt many of yall have read that so Ill re summarise #the two of them are twins and are basically traveling doctors. theyve done a LOT of medical research and did a lot of work to try to help #improve pretty much all services related to health care since this specific stalien culture is lacking in the public healthcare department #oh just fyi there are like plenty of stalien civilisations and such but pretty much all of them are very seperated from the one all the #main characters live in so just generally assume when Im talking abt their society Im talking abt this specific one #anyways beetle and bugs have their own side prequel sort of story thats mostly just abt them traveling around and doing medical research #also important to note that while theyre identical twins bugs is MUCH taller than beetle #this is because they both spent a lot of their young childhood not having access to food and their bodies fought starvation differently #with beetle its easy to explain and understand yknow typical body doesnt use as much energy so they dont grow as much #but bugs is a bit more complicated and also smth I should explain at some point since it applies to helmet too #but I dont wanna leave myself with no room to talk abt my bestie glory so moving on #glory is basically my excuse to explore stalien social norms and what rebellion meant throughout history #like for example glory has her mane grown out which is typically a trait accosiated with being dirty and lazy #and also that paired with the primary pronoun she uses is also an act of rebellion but that one would take way longer to explain fully #but uh long story short stalien pronouns arent gendered and in the past they were mostly used to represent your status and relationship #with someone. glory is using the primary pronouns thats used by like respected higher ups and bosses and stuff. #shes basically demanding respect and such #theres 4 main sets of pronouns that see common use but they have plenty of lil variations depending on your relationships or status #that being said by the time eternal gales takes place the status meanings of them is far less prelevant outside of like elder circles #if sprinkes talked to an older elder shed probably get excecuted or smth for using one of the highes status signifying ones for herself #that being said theres still like some of that accosiation left over its just not like a strict rule anymore #sprinkles sort of just stuck with what most people called her as a kid and since shes a rich kid most sorta defaulted to that #busy chose a similar set for herself since she likes being seen as mature and professional like someone worth respecting #shed get like double murdered by an old person but that wouldnt be the only reason #dancer used to use similar but nowadays he uses more casual ones for himself #its generally considered a weird set to have as your main though since its usually mainly used in rly close friendships #keese draws

[abombihoney]

PART TWO of its free kids au

spoilers long post etc

Kabbu's story is basically the same. except he's just like 9 years old. He does make it to defiant root, a nice beetle couple take him in.

Tragically, because i need a reason for Vi to be outside the hive, they are Aethina tumida. A kind of beetle that likes to eat young larvae and eggs of honeybees.

They are of course, perfectly capable of not doing that. They are basically just cannibals with a preference for bees lol. occasionally they pay a bee in the hive to smuggle out a larva and some eggs that won't be missed. Kabbu catches wind of this and is obv Not Down with Baby Murder, he manages to grab the larva and fucking Run For It.

He barely manages to make it across the lost sands. lucky for him, Elizant's ladybug ban just happened a few years ago, and the bandit problem isnt nearly as bad as it is in canon. He still doesnt get out unscathed tho.

He takes very good care of the larva, so good that she cocoons and pupates into a tiny but healthy young bee. Kabbu of course is estatic, in the north there's always a chance that larvae will pupate into lesser bugs. Because of this, in the north you don't name children until they've pupated. He names her Violet. The people that live in the outskirts know there's some kids rumaging through their stuff and they leave food out. but none of them can get the kids to come anywhere near them. So they put a posting out on the quest board. Of course, eventually Tannin and Muse get sent to investigate reported sightings of young beetle and bee in the outskirts. And they do eventually find Kabbu and Vi. They're both dirty and Kabbu's on the thin side. :(

Kabbu is fiercely protective of Vi. He won't let Tannin or Muse come near, even when they tell him they're explorers and they just want to help. He's terrified they'll take Vi to the hive and he'll never see her again. and he's taken good care of her! She's his little sister, he named her!

(Leif is already looking for a bigger house, Muse has told him all about them.)

Eventually, with lots of patience and lots of re-finding kabbu and vi, Tannin and Muse get the story out of Kabbu. And theyre like, appalled of course jesus christ.

So muse convinces Kabbu to let him and Vi come stay with her and her family while Tannin goes to the Hive to let them know they got cannibals in the city and also there's a little bee girl who was taken from the hive as a larva but she is Very Attached to a beetle who's probably being adopted Right Now. So they will also have to talk custody.

So the bees arrest the cannibals and send some ppl back with Tannin to evaluate Vi.

And at first Vi is fascinated. they're bees! Just like her! But the second she figures out that they want to separate her from Kabbu she FLIPS her SHIT.

She won't leave Kabbu's side. She'll scream and scream and scream.

The bees assert that she in fact, perfectly healthy, if small for her age. Great lungs. they can probably hear her in the hive. she's already lived with this family for a month at this point, and frankly, they dont have the facilities to raise her with the beetle. they'd have to break centuries of tradition and let the beetle inside the hive, or let her live in defiant root/the outer rings of the hive. Neither of which anyone is comfortable with considering someone(s?) have been smuggling children and eggs out of the hive.

so they make they work out a custody agreement with muse and leif. Vi stays with them for most of the year. During the moon of the harvest festival, Vi (and whichever family members escort her) will travel to the golden hills, where there is a decent bee population. She will stay there for one moon, and she will spend her days with the bees there, learning about their culture, how to fly, etc.

So Muse and Leif buy a bigger house. And they get Kabbu fed and comfortable enough that he starts molting and that repairs all the scuffs and cuts on his carapace. and he's a happy chubby little boy again

so NOW we have A HAPPY FAMILY

:DDDDDD

#bug fables #it's free kids au #bug fables spoilers #my art #team snakemouth #au #hoaxe #muse

[oc-and-art-review-reblog]

name: wildheart specise: fire element draco-morphiad (explained below) pronouns: she/her

specise info: draco-morphiads are, basically, a specise of sexless magic cat furries. each one of them controls one of twelve elements (although two of them are special); fire (fire elements are also able to control one type of igneous rock, differing depending on the individual), water, earth, air, plant, plague, void (this void being concentrated everythingness and named for its pitch black color, there may only be one void element at a time and only two have ever been recorded), quantum strings (this has been proven to be possible, but never recorded), gemstone, metal, sound and light. draco-morphiads have a unique internal anatomy, their body cavity is filled entirely with liquid magic. this magic contains their consiousness and, when needed, forms organs to keep the draco-morphiad alive. draco-morphiads also have whats known as elemental bits, an extra part of their body made from their element or regular body part modified by it. draco eye color is also generally dictated by their element. just a draco-morphiad generation (they live tens of thousands of years) ago, they had an expansive interdimensional (this takes place in a multiverse) empire. but for reasons now lost to time, it fell. the specise took heavy casualties, although it was nowhere close to extinction. theyre rarer now, and... scattered, to say the least. their natural ability to create interdimensional portals doesnt help that. given that draco-morphiads are sexless, their native language's pronouns were dependant on element, but wildheart was raised by a sexed specise tens of thousands of years after the near extinction of the language (plus draco-morphiads were invented to explain her so i think she should get to keep her pronouns).

apperance: wildheart has brown fur, which turns abruptly black (like, theres a straight, non-gradiant divide between the back and brown) at the waist, so approximately half of her is black and half is brown . she has blood red eyes. fire element eyes are usually orange, but this is explained. she has a pair of half-crescent obsidian wings coming out of her shoulderblades, each one flanked by three floating obsidian triangles. embedded in her chest is a peice of obsidian shaped like a broken heart, and her claws are obsidian as well. she has a couple notches in each ear and a scar over her eye.

story: wildheart is born on a remote planet in a remote universe. save for her and her littermate, their parents and their older sibling squirreltail. soon after the two's birth, their parents die of reasons. unprepared to take care of them, squirreltail opens two portals to random inhabited parts of the multiverse and sends them through, hoping each will be picked up by someone responsible and more able than him.wildheart ends up being adopted by a family of goatlike skeleton monsters, where she stays for the first 13 years of her life (draco-mophiads age like humans up until about their 20th birthday). during this time she becomes incredibly close with her adopted brother, [edit with name later, i forgot it]. shortly after her 13th birthday, wildheart discovered her ability to make portals. with their parents permission, she and her brother went out to explore the multiverse a little.on their little jaunt, the two encountered a creature totally alien to them, and wildheart dared her brother to go poke it with a stick. unfortunately, the creature turned out to be a bear-esque superpreadator and ripped wildheart's brother to shreds while she watched.wildheart opened a portal to nowhere in particular, landing her at a market in the interdimensional void (my imagining of the multiverse is, like space, mostly empty. universes take the shape of enormous white orbs with the texture of frosted lightbulbs. their glow is soft, yet can be seen from light centuries away). scared to go back home, she wandered.and wildheart never stopped wandering. she quickly exanded her scope to universe hopping, trying her best to repress the memories and emotions from her brother's death.during the next eleven years, wildheart developed a routine. explore and universe hop, break gear, plunder something ancient for rare stuff, sell it at the interdimensional market, get new gear, repeat. in ancient tombs and temples, wildheart saw one thing over and over again. carvings of things that looked like her, had the same powers as her. naturally, she assumed she was the last.on the eve of her 24th birthday, wildheart was traveling through the market, looking for something special to get herself. wherever she went, the vendors all talked about one thing. the nearby combat arena had a new champion, a catlike (cats are p much a multiversal constant) calling herself reaper. knowing wildheart, many suggested she challenge her.wildheart was confident in her abilities, both physical and magical, so she decided that a championship would be the perfect gift to herself.

she actually proved a pretty even match for reaper, but in the end the champion won. though wildheart's energy seemed boundless, reapers patience and tactical skill were ultimately able to exhaust her.

after the fight, the two met by chance somewhere in/around the market. they got to talking, reaper asking what wildheart does for a living. finding the prospect of universe-hopping more interesting than beating the shit out of people, reaper asked to join wildheart.

reaper was a tall (for a draco) draco-morphiad with black fur, white patterns outlining the shape of her skeleton (or what it would be if draco-morphiads had those). she wore a grey hoodie. her wings, skeletal things composed entirely of ice, marked her as a water element, though her eyes seemed to contradict that (although wildheart didnt really know that). instead of the slightly desaturated off-teal you would expect from a water element, reapers eyes were pich black with pupils colored a deep, beautiful blue.

anyway, after a few weeks of traveling the multiverse together, the two encountered something strange. a universe with no glow, just a dull grey orb.

portaling inside (and quickly leaving), the two found that the universe was empty. it had experienced a heat death, something totally unnatural in this setting.

wildheart and reaper agreed that they had to find and kill whoever did this.

idk how, exactly, they found him, but that person turned out to be a being calling himself entropy, the incarnation of the void, the nothingness that came before the multiverse. while he was monolouging about a pair of beings called 'chaos' and 'order',  wildheart and reaper tried to jump entropy. entropy did not like this. he used some sort of attack that sent the pair into a strange voidspace.

sat in this voidspace was a pair of beings. a scribbled dragon, with eyes of wildheart's blood red, and a hyperrealistic marble statue of a woman with a buzzcut in a dress, with gemstone eyes of reapers deep, beautiful blue. the two were enormous, the tip of the dragons talon bigger than wildheart's entire body. they were playing chess on a table of equal proportions.

"you're back early." remarked the dragon "did something happen?"

after a bit of confusion, it became understood that wildheart and reaper had no idea who these people were or where they were.

the two giants explained that they were chaos (the scribbled dragon) and order, demiurges of the multiverse.

many googols (a number with a hundred zeroes) of googols of eons ago, there was nothing. out of that nothing arose chaos, pure unbridled creation. but without filter, chaos could not create or take any definite form. and so, it (chaos is they/it) sat as a sort of existance soup for not even they know how long. until, at some point, order arose from the void. order was filter, what chaos needed to truly create. she (order is she/it) could not create by itself either, each dependant on the other to do something they instinctually longed for. order's form was also much different from her current day form, either a ball of quantum strings or a colorless cube of indeterminate material (i havent decided). so, the two came together and created. one of the first things the two created was a pair of souls, one blood red and the other a deep, beautiful blue. each one carved their true name into the corresponding soul in the first language, marking them as the incarnations of chaos and order.t hey were to be sent out into the multiverse together every once in a while, when the multiverse needed saving or just spicing up. of course the current incarnations were wildheart, incarnation of chaos and reaper, incarnation of order. they had been sent out this time for the purpose of killing entropy, whose trail of destruction included countless universes. but for reasons i dont know yet but were probably a mistake on chaos and orders part, they couldnt do it by themselves. they needed two more of their kind (chaos was vague about what 'their kind' was because i want it to be revealed in the narrative later). idk if its the two specific dracos they meet later or just any.

theyre currently in the place behind existance, chaos and order's personal voidspace.

chaos also reveals when talking to order that wildheart and reaper are siblings, before promptly sending them back out into the multiverse. entropy has long moved on, assuming he killed the two siblings.

the story isnt too well planned from here but

after some freaking out/contemplating/whatever over the fact that theyre siblings, wildheart and reaper continue on.

eventually, they encounter Six Of Spades, child of the last draco-morphiad monarch. saen (six of spades uses saen/trah pronouns, the traditional draco neutral/no-element pronouns) is a no-element, a semi-rare mutant with, you guessed it, no element. six of spades percives this as a fault of some sort, and overcompensates for it by playing up the ‘last heir to the draco-morphiad throne’ thing. Technically, saens cousin would have inherited the throne, but saen has no cousins saens aware of. six of spades would actually make a good monarch, if not for saens general neurosis and feeling of being (mostly) superior to those around trah.

six of spades watched saens parent die in front of saen to poachers, who wanted monarch eris (six of spades's parent)'s teeth. the teeth are the only part of a draco-morphiads pure magic core that doesnt simply dissipate after death. theyre an extremely potent source of magic, thus why draco-morphiads were killed for them shortly after the fall of the empire.

apperance wise, six of spades is an average sized (about 4 feet tall) grey draco-morphiad. saen has medium-grey fur down to saens waist, where its abruptly replaced by light grey scales. saen has ear fins like a dragon, and spikes going down saens back that may or may not start with the scales. six of spades has a lizard like tail and long, angular talons. save for color scheme (monarch eris was green), the spitting image of saens parent. six of spades also wears a worn gold crown and carries a worn gold staff with a magic gemstone orb, both posessions of monarch eris

wldheart and reaper convince six of spades to come with them.

eventually, they encounter a young (about 13 year old)

[musicallygt]

IDEA FOR A STORY THIEVES “OWEN AND THE BEANSTALK” AU

Probably gonna be more modernish just cuz but a creepy man gives Owen magic beans and Owen kinda doesnt believe theyre magic but a part of him hopes that they are, so he plants them in his backyard (and is probably made fun of)

Lo and behold, there’s a beanstalk there the next morning reaching the heavens. Owen is excited; he’s read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, so he’s sure there’s going to be treasure up in the clouds, so he climbs it.

Turns out it’s a lot higher than he thought. Owen is getting nervous™️ because wow this is high

He eventually makes it to the top and finds that there’s an entire world in the clouds where everything is basically the same as his own home but huge!

His life below is very boring so he decides to explore. When is he going to have an adventure like this again? So he goes into the first house he finds, where he ends up meeting a giant redhead girl

For some reason, she thinks that he’s her father. He soon finds himself scooped in her hands and squeezed tightly in what’s probably supposed to be a hug

After the hug and Owen asking what the heck is going on, she realizes that no, he’s not her father

So she introduces herself: her name is Bethany Sanderson, and she’s the daughter of a human and a Brobdingnagian (the giant people in the clouds). Her father was a human who met her mother, and together they had her (“How?” “Don’t. Ask.”)

On her fourth birthday, he had to go down to the world below for something, but he never returned. Her mother believed that he left them, but Bethany is pretty sure that isn’t the case. He couldn’t have just left them like that.

Unfortunately, she can’t go down to see him; the beanstalk that her father had used to travel between the worlds had been destroyed, and she hasn’t been able to find any magic beans. She also cant get help because her mom has told her not to even try looking for him while other people just think shes being crazy when she says her father was basically the size of her hand

Owen tells her that he’ll keep an eye out for her father (Christian Sanderson, she tells him) in the world down below, before going back down and just sleeping after that crazy day

He learns the next day that it wasn’t a dream when the beanstalk is still there and finds himself climbing it again to see Bethany. Seeing her everyday is hard though, because Owen could not come up with the best excuse as to why theres a giant beanstalk in their backyard or where he was all day the day before (“Uhh…. just a project for biology?”). They’re happy to see each other though.

Idk theres also other adventures they have together, where Owen meets other giant friends: Kiel, Charm, and Gwen. (He really seems to have a liking for Charm)

It’s harder to hide his leaving though; he’s got a lot of absences at school now, and his mom is threatening to ground him if he doesn’t go back to school. (He’s been sneaking off in the middle of the day after attendances instead.) Also is it him or is the man who gave him the magic beans constantly following him?

At some point, his classmate Orion confronts him because he thinks Owen is doing something illegal and he’ll probably have to turn him into the principal or something

He doesnt believe any of Owen’s lies though, and Owen ends up telling him everything. Orion still doesnt believe him, especially at the mention of Christian Sanderson (“My godfather? He’s been missing for over eight years now”)

Owen decides to take Orion up the beanstalk, since itll be killing two birds with one stone: prove that hes not lying and since he knows about Bethany’s father, maybe he could give information about him to her

While Orion and Bethany are talking, Owen is suddenly taken from them, and they dont notice until a lot later

Maybe he went back down below when they werent looking? All right, time for a plan to go down to the human world below to find Owen (and maybe Bethany’s father)

Meanwhile, Owen is gagged and blind at the moment, unable to see his captor

Hes finally unblindfolded and ungagged, to find himself staring at the face of the man who gave him the magic beans, though it looks like theyre still in Brobdingnag

He doesnt give Owen his name (“Call me Nobody”) but he explains that Owen was never meant to befriend the giants of the world. He was meant to fear them instead.

It turns out that Nobody is a self proclaimed giant slayer, and has made it his job to destroy all Brobdingnagians. Of course, everyone thought he was crazy when he said there were giants up above. However, he could never prove it, as he couldnt find any way up to the clouds, until about 15 years ago…

a man named Christian Sanderson had somehow gotten his hands on some magic beans that grew into a giant beanstalk, and he had been visiting the giant world up above for about a year now (turns out hes found himself attracted to a giant woman up there, which is why he keeps going up the beanstalk)

Nobody had confronted Christian about this, saying that the giants must be destroyed, but Christian disagreed: they hadnt done anything wrong, they were peaceful, and with work, maybe they could one day coexist in harmony

For years, Christian didnt budge in his stance, even going as far as having a child with the Brobdingnagian woman (at which Nobody is revolted at the very idea of)

So he decided to take some extreme measures: he decided that if Christian wouldnt listen, he would just have to make him listen. He somehow got Christian to leave his daughter’s birthday party for some sort of “urgent matter” in the world below, then knocked him out, before leaving him to suffer the giant world with nothing for hours (e.g. almost being crushed, almost eaten, etc.) then taking him back down

As an extra precaution, he chopped down the beanstalk, and as he did, it quickly retreated back into the beans they had started out as, which he collected

Now he has a way back up along with proof, but how could he destroy the giants from above?

Keeping Christian prisoner in his home, Nobody takes years to come up with a plan: somehow start a war between humans and giants. He’d find some poor unsuspecting soul (Owen) to plant the beans, and when they found that there were giants in the sky, they would have the proof and create panic among the people, who would feel that they have to attack the monsters before they destroy them

Of course, Owen did exactly what Nobody didnt want him to do: befriend the Brobdingnagians like Christian had, so he tries to convince Owen to be on his side

Owen however is completely disgusted at what Nobody had done and refuses. Theyre innocent, why would he agree to start a war?

Of course, Nobody informs him that it’s too late: Bethany and her friends have already planned to go down to the world below.

Owen is aware that this would cause panic down below, so he tries to go stop them, but Nobody keeps him from going anywhere, disappointed in him (“Youre just as pathetic as Christian is”)

Meanwhile, Bethany and the others (with Orion) go down the beanstalk, and they get pretty overly excited over how the world is below; Gwen and Kiel find the humans particularly adorable

Of course, there ends up being a panic at the sight of these giant children (they dont realize that theyre kids tho) and with Orion in Bethanys hand, they make the assumption that theyre kidnapping him

idk exactly what happens but its chaos. Also eventually they find Christian who at first is v untrusting to the giants and also terrified, but when he realizes that one of the is his daughter, he starts crying of joy. Hes still nervous around the others, but hes so happy to see Bethany after eight years

back up above, Nobody knocks Owen out and leaves him unconscious on the giant road to be crushed to “learn his lesson”

he expects Owen to die, but what he doesnt know is that he had been watched. After he leaves, a tiny pink haired girl runs to the street, suddenly growing to the size of one of the Brobdingnagians and scooping up Owen in her hands

He wakes up eventually, in what looks like a bed his size, except hes also in a giant bedroom

a giant pink haired girl comes in, thankful that hes okay. He freaks out because he thinks he was kidnapped. He freaks out even more when the girl shrinks down to about his size, which she did as an act to try to calm him down

She explains what she saw Nobody do to him, how she brought him home, and who she is

her name is Kara, and shes a sizeshifter (the only one of her kind). Her mother hadnt been able to bear a child, so she used some magic thing that would allow her to have one, and she soon did. Of course, since she used magic to have a baby, there ended up being magic in her daughter: she can change her size at will

The government doesnt trust this, claiming that what Kara’s mom did was witchcraft, and dont believe that Kara deserves to exist and continually try to hunt her down. She’s never managed to get caught, but shes constantly running

Owen explains what happened with him, and Kara agrees to help him

idk how anything else would work but in the end humans and Brobdingnagians live peacefully together, theres no war and Bethany, her mother, and her father live happily together

#i shared this on the discord but i figured it makes sense to share here too lol #aaaaaaaaaaaaa #IDK IF ILL EVER DO ANYTHING WITH THIS BUT I REALLY LOVE THIS IDEA #@ my friends: please dont ever find this djdjdjjdjdjdjdjd #alex says stuff #g/t #gt #giant/tiny #gianttiny #owen and the beanstalk #jack and the beanstalk #beanstalk au #story thieves

[kurainburdened]

POKEMON AU pls.... bc i know ur passionate abt pokemon and honestly Me Too

III LOVE YOU!!! I WAS PLANNING ON MAKING THIS A THING WHERE I ADD IN THE SENDERS MUSE INTO THE HCS BUT MAYA AND YOUR MUSE NEVER INTERACTED WHICH IS A CRIME!!! Dont tell edgeworth or she might get arrested lol. But anway!! I want to do stuff with you!!

ALSO THANK YOU FOR SENIDNG THIS BECAUSE THATS REALLY SWEET OF YOU AND IM REALLY TOUCHED YOU REMEMERED I LOVE POKEMON

Number 1

Mayas first pokemon, funny enough isnt a ghost type, but a normal type. See, in the pokemon verse Mayas background is basically the same. The Fey village is basically unchanged in this worly except for one thing. On a certain part of the mountainside is a forest that travellers tend to get lost in for ages. Many report hallucinations as being the main cause for this so it’s kind of cut off. Maya, being the rebel she is, of course wanders it in hopes of conquering it. Her sister is usually the voice of reason and really it would only take her being like. what if youre lost forever or something to scare her into staying but shes not ther so into the forest she goes! It’s there that she finds a waterfall and goes there to train constantly. She tries and tries to channel spirits and one day, she succeeds! Or so she thinks. The first time she thinks she’s channeled another spirit, she sees herself as the spirit she’s been trying to channel, sees her now-possessed body moving and acting on it’s own. When she runs back to the village to tell her story, she’s told that she couldn’t have channeled a spirit because if she did she would’ve been unconscious. 

Confused Maya goes back and tries again only to get the same result. After a bit of investigating Maya realizes the source of travelers getting lost and the hallucinations is due to a stantler. This Stantler saw Maya, this little girl training so hard that it took pity on her, and wanting to help in the only way it could let her see herself channeling a spirit. At first Maya is crushed and upset at the pokemon for giving her false hope but quickly forgives it and thanks it for wanting to help. The pokemon soon takes on this kind of caring role for Maya, along with also being her only playmate seeing as the other girls in the village are kind of distant with her. Her being the heir to the Master title and Morgan instructing them to listen to her and listen to all her selfish desires, leading to them being resentful of her. Anyway, also to build off of that. Once Mayas sister dies, she asks the Stantler to let her see her Sister again. And thats like a thing she did for awhile before telling it to stop because it became this painful reminder of something she could never do which is channel her sister. Actually fun fact she asked the stantler to show her her mother but was heartbroken when it basically gave her the answer that it couldnt because Maya didn’t have the memory of her mothers face anymore. Anyway. One time when shes particularly heartbroken and hopeless she laments in the forest to herself how shes so useless and cant do anything right. How she hates herself for being this way. Hates herself for not being able to compare to Mia or her mother. At this point she sees the image of her sister saying shes proud of her. Maya is angry at Stantler for showing her such a horrible lie and runs away. Only to later be told by the pokemon that it wasn;t trying to make her see her sister say that, rather it was the only way of communicating that even if no one else appreciated her, it was proud of her. 

ANYWAY ENOUGH OF STANTLER ON TO NUMBER 2

That’s right another in depth backstory for another pokemon hopefully not as long lol

The next on the list is a primeape that lives in the forest, training with sawk and throh. It kind of ended up getting abandonned by it’s trainer in a place where this breed of pokemon aren’t really found but it’s found it’s place with the sawk and throh so it doesn’t mind too much. It ended up earning it’s respect with good old fashioned fighting and is kind of in a ‘king of the forest’ position. Scary and intimidating and bent on establishing its dominance to all that challenge it! Anyway, while Maya is exploring the mountainside of her village she finds out about it and it’s plain to see that Primeape has a certain amount of respect among the other fighting types. After having seen a cool tv episode where the hero challenges the strongest of the strong a really young Maya decides to do the same, announcing loudly when the pokemon is alone that she’s here to challenge the pokemon to a duel to the death! She runs up throws her small fist at the might and strong pokemon!

To which, not wanting to hurt this strange small child, primeape falls over dramatically, clutching the side which she hit and lets its tongue flop out all goofy in the hopes of appeasing her. Maya, not really sure what to do, honestly not even having thought this far ahead starts getting worried for the pokemon and starts crying to which it quickly gets up in a panic to reassure her its ok. From there it kind of takes on this older brother position with her. Also playing with her, letting her grab onto it as she swings throughout the trees. 

Goodness this Maya is turning out to be much more of a wild child than her aa counterpart. She’s not exactly strong, but she’s more athletic I’d imagine in this version. More nimble but can definitely have her clumsy moments on occasion. 

putting last three under cut cause THIS IS LONG. IF YOURE ON MOBILE IM SO SORRY

Number three!

Goodness I stuffed way too much into those other HCs but onto Phoenix! Anyway this also remains for the most part unchanged. What you think the pokemon world doesn’t need lawyers? Anyway, quick tanget but trainers arent really…it’s not a sustainable lifestyle, most people do it as a way of coming of age before moving into the respective field they took interest in during their travels. So no, if you have a pokemon au you don’t have to be some professional trainer. Professional battles are like a sport and trainers are athletes. Sure people enjoy it on the side but it’s NOT the norm to make it a living off of it. You have to be smart and strategic in a very complicatedf sport that takes a LOT  of training and it’s not like in the game where if you spam tackle after walking around for 5 seconds you gain XP. its more like you’re a coach training 6 athletes in how to train their bodies in the best way possible while coming up with tons of game plans. 

anyway tangent over. Phoenix is a lawyer and this taking place in the pokemon world only lends itself towards there being much more factors to consider when thinking of how murders occured. Her life with Phoenix for the most part remains unchanged but as a side note Maya encounters a lot of pokemon along the way during her travels with phoenix. She thinks strong heroic looking pokemon are cool so she tends towards pokemon like sawk and throh or conkeldurr. OH AND IVE BEEN SETTING THIS IN SPECIFICALLY UNOVA AND ONLY RESEARCHING THE UNOVA DEX FOR MAYA ND THE POKEMON THAT SURROUND HER. 

I feel like.. Audino might enter theyre little group at one point? Like Stantler comes with her when she leaves the mountain cause Stantler is a worrywart and Maya is a mess and has never been down to the big city, but Primeape is more trusting in Maya and her abilities and knows shes much stronger than a lot of people give her credit for. He doesn’t come down the mountain to be with her until much later just cause he has a pack to guide. Actually the pokemon it leaves in charge is like another pokemon Maya is close with since it was primeapes apprentice and maya and this pokemon were kids together and kind of were the babies of the pack ANYWAY SORRY TANGENT. 

aNYWAY AUDINO. A while back Audino were attempted to be integrated into crime fighting in some way since the way theyre psychic powers work they’d be able to sense overwhelming…i guess malevolence or evil or bad intentions but like. It’s just REALLY unhealthy for them and it really signifigantly lessens their lifespans just cuase all the negativity eats away at them emotionally and one of the pokemon, it’s really old honestly like it was one of the pokemon that originally was part of this attempt to integrate these pokemon with the police force and was luckily enough like it survived long enough for them to end the program and it just…can’t endure being around negativity anymore like it’s really stressful so it enjoys being around Maya just cause she is really kindhearted and senstive and good and the Wright office is filled with kind hearted people so it just takes comfort being there. It doesn’t really leave the office though and while it’s there for everyone it really does belong to Maya for the most part. 

THATS JUST AN IDEA I HAVE THOUGH IDK IF ILL MAKE THAT PART OF HER CANON

Im kind of just going off on differen points in this one huh. Like the other wre a story here im just like SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS. 

Number 4 (where diana tries to stop being ADHD and hopefully doesnt fail miserably)

Honestly you’d think being part of a back of fighting types would make her more suited towards groups and make her less selfish. Spoiler alert. It didn’t  If you think Maya is good at making people do what she wants now you shouldve seen her when she was a kid. Though it also means shes got a entire pack of fighting types who will die for her and if you make her cry you better be sorry. and if youre not you’re going to be.  

Oh and also dont think that just cause Maya is a forest girl that oh shes strong and knows how to fight cause like. She really doesn’t. Honestly the pokemon around her kind of coddled her and outside of her gaining enough stamina to hold up against running around with her pokemon friends she’s not really….all that much stronger. She doesn’t know how to fight either. She can jsut run really fast and is more likely to attempt more dangerous things that she’s seen other pokemon do cause WHY NOT. She basically just has more dangerous influences lol

Number 5 cause i want to wrap this up a bit

Oh boy now what can i do for a fifth one lets see… see the thing is Maya is basically the same between the two versions of her except for certain like physical differents that I just listed. 

I guess here’s one but she doesn’t….she’s not a good trainer. Like her team, right now, is an old man of an Audino. A Stantler that can only do hallucinations and is kind of bad at fighting and then this powerhouse of a Primeape. 

The Primeape is a GREAT fgighter but tends to keep to the mountains unless it starts missing her and comes downt o visit real quick. Her other two are just…weak. Maya though is really good at thinking on her feet so she can use what her pokemon do have to come up with some great strategies. Thought his doesnt reall come out unless shes backed up against the wall. See the reason why everyone percieves Maya as stupid and useless is because that’s how she percieves herself. Maya for the most part does what she can in what she think she can do but doesn’t really let her true intellect show because shes convinced shes an idiot. She kind of jokes around with bad ideas but she really is quick on her feet and good in a clutch.

So the only time you see her good skills with her pokemon and coming up with inventive ways for these basically powerless pokemon to get her out of tight situations is when literally shes by herself, there’s no one else to rely on and lives are on the line.

#karumakissed #[ NEVER ASK ME ABOUT POKEMON AGAIN BECAUSE IM JUS TLIKE THIS THIS(TM) ] #HEADCANON「 waxing philisophical power hour 」

[nux-morbid-art]

fallout oc questionnaire

in case anyone wanted a metric assload of info abt max mostly doing this for my benefit

Which Fallout game are they from? fallout 4

Which faction(s) did they join and which did they destroy? Why? Max initially joins the brotherhood and becomes a dedicated railroad heavy post blind betrayal. He cant stomach the thought of destroying the brotherhood, bc of the squires on board and a fair amount of allies within their ranks. Instead he enlists the help of the minutemen to maintain peace btw the 3 factions, eventually the brotherhood leave as the minutemen grow stronger

What is their S.P.E.C.I.A.L.? S: 4 P:5 C:8 I:10 A:7 L: 1

Give us a summary of their backstory.  a rowdy teenager always in trouble, comes from a large extended family, low-middle class, pulled into the high school-to-military pipe. Spent his military career just trying to survive, trained field medic. Eldest of 3 siblings, has one younger brother and sister. 

What’s their full name and does it have a meaning? Do they have any nicknames and how did they get em? Maxwell Ortiz, named after his grandfather who he was very close to. Called Vulture in high school for his looks and morbid sense of humor, earns “Mad Dog Max” in the military

What’s their sexual, romantic, and gender orientation? Do they feel comfortable telling other people? Bisexual, Biromantic, Transgender male He doesnt try to hide who he is, but he doesn’t volunteer the information either. 

Do they have any mental illnesses? How do they cope? Max has bipolar depression and PTSD pre-war, and it doesnt exaclty get better after he thaws out Moslty he tries to keep busy. He deals w sensory overload by finding a small, quiet place to curl up and rest, favorite sensory stims for staying calm and focused are soft textures. he carries a small keychain stuffed animal he found in his pocket, and collects scraps of nice fabric and teddy bears. he’ll also run his hands thru his hair. he has an oral fixation and if he’s not occupied w a cigarrette he finds something to chew on, bites his nails, chews his fingers, picks at his skin too. 

Do they have any medical conditions? Is medicine/ treatment available for them? Max loathes doctors, his only regular visit is to refill testosterone. 

How much do they care about their outer appearance? What’s their “beauty routine”? How often do they shower/ bathe? Max neglects his appearance and hygiene and needs to be reminded to take care of himself. He loses weight and muscle mass quickly, noticing it can trigger dysphoria. 

What do they fear the most? He will tell you hes already lived through his worst fear, losing Maria and his entire family, but ultimately, he fears being alone and becoming a bad person. 

Their biggest flaw? Do they recognize it as a flaw? --ill get back to this one

What are they most insecure about? relationships w other people. he feels like trouble follows him and hurts the people he cares about, like hes the source of their misery and he cant figure out why they let him stay. 

What Wasteland threat do they fear the most? (ex. Deathclaws, super mutants, raiders) Max fears nothing. Bring it on

What’s their zodiac sign or which one do you think they relate to the most? What are their placements (if you know them)? (ex. Aries sun, Taurus moon, Aquarius Venus) Scorpio

What’s their Myers–Briggs Type? (ex. ENTP, ISFJ) ---ill get back to this one

What Harry Potter house would they be in? (ex. Gryffindor, Ravenclaw) probably slytherin

Which Pokemon Go team would they choose? (ex. Instinct, Valor, Mystic) instinct, he would love taking care of eggs and raising baby pokemon

Out of the nine forms of intelligence (rhythmic, spatial, linguistic, mathematical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and existential) which one(s) are they really good at and which one(s) is(are) their weakest? best: rhythmic, spatial, naturalistic worst: intrapersonal, linguistic

What natural alignment are they? (ex. Lawful Good, Chaotic Evil) chaotic good

Do they have any hobbies? What are they? Max likes to play music, he’s decent w quitar, keyboard, and drums other than that he enjoys taking things apart and tinkering. 

Do they have a favorite holiday? How do they celebrate it? He used to be rather fond of Easter, for family traditions. Food, family, kids running around and playing. 

What’s their favorite season? Spring for sure, it brings relief from the worst of his depression

Do they have a temper or are they level headed? Hairpin temper, ready to fight at any trespass 

Do they express their emotions freely or hide their true feelings? express freely but it takes him a while to figure out what they are.

Are they a leader or a follower? He will say hes no leader but takes the role naturally when he has to work in a group. 

How do they come off to others? What first impression do they usually make? comes off as rather cold and aloof. 

Do they prefer to travel alone or with company? Who have they traveled with if any? Current companion if any? prefers company by alot. he’s usually w danse, the two are joined at the hip. he also enjoys being w deacon, preston, and maccready. he gets along well w piper and curie. i’m not sure if he’d ever find cait, but he’d fall ass over teakettle for her. i’m not sure if he’d ever travel w most of the other companions. 

Would you describe them as selfless or selfish? Does it depend on the situation? He’s pretty selfless, he cant stand suffering and will do his best to correct it. High empathy. 

What do they find most attractive in others? Name at least one psychological and physical trait. (doesn’t have to be romantic attraction) Kindness, honesty, and humor.  Physically, he has a weakness for full, round asses and nice thighs, hands that reveal secrets about their owners

Do they flirt often? How easily do they fall in love? its rare for him to be comfortable enough to be flirty, but when he is he’s damn good at it. he does fall quickly but takes a long time to understand the feelings for what they are. 

What’s their love life like? Are they interested in anyone or in a relationship? Mostly monogamous relationship w Danse

Do they prefer to solve things diplomatically or using violence? He gives diplomacy a chance, but he’s not good at it. breaking noses is easier. 

What is their combat style? What range do they prefer? Do they sneak? medium-close range, horrible at stealth. uses explosives and fire to confuse enemies and funnel them to his longer range combat partner, good at making a lane for snipers

What weapon(s) do they always carry with them? laser rifle, small pistol and a sidearm, and several combat knives kept razor sharp

Their most prized possession? a small collection of photos and holotapes codsworth preserved. he has a family photo of him, maria, his parents, and siblings w their children all together the tapes are mixes of pre-war rock n roll made by maria. 

Their thoughts on power armor? ugh, if i really have to. 

Favorite armor/ outfit? light, armored jackets, t-shirt, and jeans

How’s their aim? Do their hands shake while pointing a gun? he’s a pretty decent shot, but not spectacular. steady hands. 

What are their thoughts on having to kill on a daily bases in order to survive? Does it take a toll on them? Or do they shake it off rather easily? He becomes numb to it. it comes creeping up on him on Bad nights, and thats where the fear of becoming an evil person comes in. 

Thoughts on death if any? (ex. Fear it, accept it) “I am not allowed to die. I have people that need help.” He is very tired, lots of thoughts wishing for death, to rest. Tries to survive, but. He doesn’t really want to. 

Do they move around a lot or prefer to have a place to call home? Both, eventually calls Railroad HQ and Diamond City home, but never stays in one place for long. 

What’s their favorite location? gonna be cheesy: in Danse’s arms

Their opinions on ghouls, feral and not feral? Not feral: theyre just people. they didnt choose this. they’ve survived unknowable pain, and deserve respect and understanding.  feral: killing them is mercy. he feels that they must have suffered greatly in becoming feral, and their bodies are probably still incredibly painful to live in, resulting in their aggression. 

Do they scavenge for their supplies or simply buy them? both, also a big fan of trading.  “whos fuckin idea was it to use bottlecaps of all the goddam-”

Are they the type to get distracted and go off to an unknown nearby location or do they stay on track? Stay on track, but very curious and enjoys exploring. will note locations to scavenge later if he cant get to them right away

How do they sleep? Are they picky about where and how or can they sleep basically anywhere? Max likes a tight, secure place to sleep. he’s usually between and wall and danse. if he feels like he’s in a fairly safe location, getting to sleep is easy, tho he startles awake rather easily and has night terrors. if someone tries to wake him suddenly, like with a loud noise or grabbing and shaking him, they are very likely to get hurt. 

What’s their favorite radio station and song? (post-apocalypse) Atom bomb baby, uranium fever, and rocket 69

What’s their favorite post-apocalyptic food? Are they a picky eater? Do they know how to cook? favorite: sweets, candy, and mutfruit Not a picky eater, but he usually doesnt have much of an appetite either. He eats what hes given, usually without thinking about it or really tasting it He has a fair amount of knowledge and skill in the kitchen, being always at his mothers’ heels in everything domestic. he loves his parents and was always eager to help.

What’s their favorite beverage? Do they drink alcohol? he’s rather fond of quantum for the nastalgia and energy-drink buzz,  enjoys alcohol, likes beer, will drink whatever hes handed, if given a choice he likes whisky and nuka cola. 

Do they have any tag skills? --ill come back to this

Anything they like to collect? (ex. Unique weapons, Bobbleheads) comic books, magazines, any printed media toys and stuffed animals, fabric that feels nice. 

Are they good at disarming traps or do they constantly miss them? always walking into them. if he does notice one before hand he’s pretty bad at disarming them, he usually just tries to set them off from a safe distance.

#max #massive text wall ahoy #fallout oc #fallout oc questionnaire

[elcisa-blog]

hello hello yall, it’s your gal ronnie with a second muse!! this is my honey eloisa and i have so many ideas for her and i’m so excited to bring her to life since i’ve been dying to play her properly for so long, so PLease feel free to come plot w/ us ok ? OK ! anyway, her full bio can be found here if you feel so inclined, but it’s a bit long, so i’ll have a couple points under the cut summarizing it. also under the cut are some wanted connections ! that’s pretty much it for now, k byE

that’s not EMILY RATAJKOWSKI walking around?? nah, but ELOISA GOMOLKA gets that all the time. SHE’S actually from TORQUAY, ENGLAND, though they live in LA JOLLA now.  you’ve probably heard that 23 year old SERVER of CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHEN being referred to as the ZEALOT of this place. you know, i always see them EXPLORING AND TRAVELING or blasting A LITTLE DEATH BY THE NEIGHBOURHOOD on their lunch break..whatever.

alright so my baby was born and raised in torquay, england to a pretty religious, polish family. her father is polish and her mother is english, but their lifestyle and culture at home was very much polish based

also her actual birth name is katarzyna eloisa gomolka, but growing up in england, many people had a hard time pronouncing her first name so her friends & classmates and all that often called her by her middle name instead -- eloisa. so it eventually stuck and she legally changed around her first & middle names. ..  . 

this girl loves loves loves learning languages and studying other cultures and lifestyles , like in school , she was always that girl that took as many foreign language classes as she could. she knows the basics to a bunch of different languages but she’s fluent in english, polish, french, and spanish. 

also shes WILD ok . . . like her own weird brand of wild. she’s so Unexpected .. . its strange. but i love her sm. she’s loud, opinionated, stubborn, unpredictable, SUPER adventurous, you name it. she’s either laughing her ass off with childish excitement or spewing fire From her mouth, knowing NO boundaries . . there’s no in between like . . . shes so random, all over the place and all in your face most of the time im sorry . . . & when she loves u she clingy

anyway she also used to play the violin and horseback ride a lot growing up. her grandpa from her moms side taught her how to ride horses and she loved going to his farm in the english countryside to ride & hear his wise stories and all that. he was like her hero.

however, one day, right before eloisa was about to start her last year of high school  . . . long story short . . . there was an accident and grandpa passed away *cries* .  . . el took his death super hard since they were so close . . which caused her to get less enthusiastic about going to college and she just lost all interest at caring at all tbh, becoming more of a troublemaker at school, so her grades dropped her last year and so did all her aspirations for her future

after high school, instead of enrolling in postsecondary, she just wanted to get away from it all so she decided to trust in her adventurous side and partake in a work abroad program where she would be backpacking across south america, teaching english and helping build up communities. she did that until she was twenty-one. it was a Wild ride

in the midst of the program, while in colombia, she got involved w/ some sketchy dude who was in the drugs and car stealing business  . . . she loved the thrill & she thought she was so in love BUt he was super gross and toxic and ended up betraying her, stealing her money, and leaving her on the side of the road one night on one of his heists. aNYWAY it sucked

she finished the program and then decided to work for the work abroad program’s headquarters, which are situated in california. . . so thats how she got to san diego

eventually her position there terminated but she decided to stay in cali bc its very much her type of vibe SO now shes working at fashion valley & thats where yall come in 

SOME WANTED CONNECTIONS 

OPPOSITES ATTRACT -- cheesy name but i think it’d be cool for her to have a pal who’s kind of the complete or near opposite of her but they kind of work ? ? like honestly this girl can TALK and ramble on for so long about random shit, so i think it’d be an interesting dynamic for her to have someone who just lets her Go Off and they just like to listen to her talk and she just likes having someone to listen to her . . . inspo is from this pic right HERE

EAT THIS --  while in south america, el kind of developed a huge respect and love for cuisine and cooking so now shes kind of obsessed with searching up random, exotic recipes and trying them out. sometimes her cooking backfires and is not the greatest but shes so determined to get things right and just loves Doing it so much that she doesnt care. . . so maybe she can have like a taste testing buddy or someone who likes to cook w her or something idk ? ? shfskd omg HC: she works as a server at ca pizza kitchen but i s2g she prob always tries to sneak in the kitchen and help cook But since shes so all over the place, theyre always like “ EL GTFO OF HeRE !!!!!” 

MOTHER HEN / PAPA BEAR -- this girl needs someone to keep her in line some of the time okay. she doesnt have any family here in cali so she’d love to have someone who takes care of her and makes sure she doesnt go too far ..  like someone she looks up to in a sister/brother/guardian figure type of way ? ? 

ZOOLOGY -- eloisa doesnt have any pets .. .  she can hardly take care of herself like what u think imma let this girl have a dog ? ? NO she can have a pet ROCK ( she does ) . . . but she loves animals so she’d love hAving a pal where she can just come by and play w their pets or smthg like she’ll be the best play mate ever  .. . i just wouldnt trust her to take care of ur animal for a week or smthg lmao

ADVENTURE TIME -- if u ever just want to do something crazy or try something new. . . literally just hit up eloisa . . . so i’d love for her to have friends who just text her up like i’m Not feeling good take me somewhere. . . and SHE WILL . . .or even if they’re not sad and just want to do something exciting . .. hit her up

OOPS :( -- ok So el can be a bit clumsy and random so i think a cool connection with someone would be like maybe one day eloisa broke something of theirs or fucked up their car or dyed their hair wrong or something stupid like that . . . basically eloisa fucked up . . . and ever since then, that person doesnt really trust her anymore and is kind of annoyed with her presence in general . . . BUT eloisa feels so BAD and guilty about it so now she basically tries to do everything in her power to make it up to the other person but they just keep not having it yknow ? ? 

ORANGE CRUSH -- ok ur typical crush plot bc theyre so fluffy and cute. . . but i think maybe a plot where the crush doesnt even have to be super romantic or sexual yknow ? ? like i can definitely see eloisa just being so interested in everything the other person does and just loving being around them and loving everything they do . . . so obsessed w their comportments . . . but it can be in such a fluffy, platonic way like That feeling when u see a rly cute puppy or baby penguin . . . eloisa just wants to hug ur muse and love them But not even sexually yknow ? ? 

TAKE ME WITH YOU -- ok i love this plot sm . . . maybe like a friendship where they both want to see the world together ? ? eloisa is really big on travelling so id love for her to have a friend where they’ve been slowly putting together their dream trip where they see the world together. and their friendship is so heavily based on them sending each other places around the world where they want to go and putting together bucketlists and itineraries for if they ever end up saving money and travelling together ? ? so fun

SCIENCE PROJECT -- there’s not much that scares el and she doesnt get pushed away so easily  . ..  but i think an interesting dynamic could be if there actually was someone who kind of freaks her out yknow?? a relationship where the person actually kind of intimidates her and theres just something about the person that makes eloisa question everything .. . kind of like a science project. shes always studying them carefully, unsure of how to react to what they say . . . they’re just bizarre to her and she wants to know more

POKE ! -- basically someone she loves to annoy and pick on , but not in a hateful way

TEACH ME -- maybe someone who is teaching eloisa a new skill or language or how to do something that they’re good at because eloisa would love that so much .. . she loves trying new things.. . .like honestly anything  ..  . even if she keeps failing

TINDER DATE -- ok so in my head, i feel like eloisa would be that type of person to troll people on tinder and play around with them ..  so maybe your muse got caught up in her trap once and she trolled them on tinder lmao ? ? ? i think thatd be so funny and she just loves laughing about it all the time . .

I DO . . . WAIT, NO, I DON’T ! -- ok So this is inspired by that one episode in friends where rachel and ross get married drunk in vegas once . . . so Like literally that lmao. like that is SO something that would happen to el. like maybe one time, they found themselves in vegas together, they got super drunk, and legit got married that same night super quick ? ? ? and obviously theyre divorced now but i think that’d be a funny dynamic and lil treasure of the past to have in a friendship/relationship

SOME TYPICAL ONES THAT I CANT GET ENOUGH OF -- exes, flings, hook ups, went on a few dates in the past, best friends ( someone to braid her hair and take bubble baths w her <3 ), enemies ( maybe someone who doesnt agree w how she lives her life or her whole vibe bc she can be a bit much sometimes lmao ), etc.

or literally anything else lol

#fvhqooc #wow im sorry its LOng #dont hate me #but its good i promise #° ⟡ ⁝ ─ crumpled notes › OOC. #i just had SO MANY connection ideas bye #i think everything makes sense .. . . . ..

[dahniwitchoflight]

so bout that samurai jack episode

so I really like samurai jack, always have always will

which makes me feel the need to make a bit of a post on my perspective on what happened in the recent episode with Jack and Ashi becoming a couple

I really didnt expect peoples reactions to be as extreme as they were, but I also entirely understand all the arguments that would make people want to reject this ship so harshly

but given that, I don’t think the creators of the show handled things as undelicately as everyone seems to think, and this coming from a person who has a pretty similar life and “origin story” if you will as Ashi AND Jack (minus the obvious impossibilities like time travel :P but growing up in abusive isolated cult home? check. constant hyper vigilance and feeling disconnected altogether from a sense of time? check. nightmares and ptsd symptoms in general all around? check. I’m just saying, I connect to both characters here lol)

first issue people have is major and that’s the physical age gap between the two, with some people even going so far as to say its basically pedophilia, which I really don’t agree with

but given cues in the show, we know Ashi is at least an adult. Her mother lets her and her sisters go after they are fully trained adult members of the cult. Jack never sees her as anything except a murderous fully trained adult assassin out for his blood and the reveal that shes been entirely naked throughout this whole show because that black suit was actually her scarred and charred black skin?

the only other option is then the difference in experience between the two making people uncomfy, which I can understand, but the thing is, by the time that they actually become a couple, theyve gotten on equal footing.

ashi grew up isolated in a death cult that gave her no other option except to kill or be killed by the samurai. Even when she already showed inclinations of being a good and caring character to her mother’s irritation.

throughout the show, contrary to what you might think, Ashi got all of her character development on her own, while Jack was not around

Jack didn’t train her or teach her anything, Jack merely told her about the possibility of aku being evil, and then when Jack disappeared, sure her motivation to move around the world was to seek out Jack and get him to prove it to her, but unintentionally along the way she met new people, new perspectives, new ideas, saw the beauty of the world all on her own and gained those experiences and came to her own conclusions, without Jack.

the only problem with any of this was the pacing for the whole show feels too quick, so the idea that ashi gained all that experience once freed from her mother and traveled around for a bit feels too quick to really happen, but this is more a fault of the shows pacing then the shows story

its not that the plot points themselves are wrong, its just how fast they knocking them off can make it seem rushed or not real

the basic story of Ashi is:

A child with a pure heart grows up in an assassin cult and given a narrow worldview. As an adult, she fulfills her training and is then sent off to kill her target the samurai under the guidance of her god figure Aku. She fails to kill the samurai, and the samurai instead explains his absurd position that he is good and aku is evil. She at first mocks him, but as she has always been as a child, is curious, and truly wants good, so she wants confirmation of his views, wants solid proof. Jack doesnt give it to her and then leaves, forcing her to explore the world on her own and judge it with her own eyes (even though in her head she is seeking out the samurai for his answers and proof). She does this, experioences the world on her own and understands Aku’s evilness and believes in Jack’s goodness, so that by the time she actually finds the Samurai to get his answers, she already has her own. They’ve become on equal footing.

and that feels quick sure, but the important part is that its not impossible. It can be hard for abused children to accept outside narratives than the one they grew up in, the struggle is real believe me, so seeing it happen this way to Ashi can feel unrealistic to those that it hasn’t happened to. But its not impossible for it to happen this way, at all. It’s very similar to what happened with me, i also just happened to find a certain special person, just a friend from highschool, who by happenstance was the one to first help me shatter my illusions about my family, and that quickstarted my “character arc” if you will and I went from being in full brainwashed state to moving out and living my own life in a matter of couple months (not to say ive been fully healed in that time though, and neither has Ashi shown this either, as she still experiences the horror of that situation when she thinks of it as well)

and then theres how how all this looks from Jack’s point of view

Which is Jack has never seen her as some inexperienced child that needed guidance or a father, nor has he really ever held a position higher than hers mentally/psychologically from the start

he has only seen her as an assassin out for his blood who is wrongfully thinking that aku is good when he is evil

that is not “Ashi is ignorant I Must Teach her” thats “This person misunderstands greatly, they were taught wrong”

If Ashi was the sweet little know nothing ingenue that Jack had to raise/train, then Ashi would be all “Who’s Aku? What’s Evil? What’s Good?” she would literally Know Nothing at all except what Jack taught her, instead she consistently has her own ideas of the world, and changes those ideas on her own, she doesn’t just adopt samurai Jack’s worldview because he told her too. She gets her own worldview, which is subtly different than Jack’s even if they are aligned together

So we can agree Ashi is traumatized, and is mentally affected by this, despite showing realistic yet rushed growth that puts her more on par with Samurai Jack yes?

now the other side of the coin

Jack is ALSO traumatized by the life he’s lived in very similar ways to Ashi

both have been constantly forced by circumstance to survive under the threat of death, Angry Jack is literally Trauma Induced Hypervigilance personified. Ashi constantly hounded with “Are You Weak? Do You Deserve To Die?” with no person to offer either of them comfort or care. Both have been forced to fight against evil constantly, with the idea that they MUST win over evil or they will not only die, but deserve to die. Jack is a Samurai who has sworn to his family that he will fix everything and get Aku, and his guilt over feeling like he’s not able to haunts him with the faces of the dead he feels responsible for to the point where he was driven to honor bound suicide. Ashi was given one option in life, kill the samurai or die trying, and if you die you die in failure in shame, her life had no value except in if she could kill Jack. 

so its like, yes Ashi has been through some stuff, which compared to a normal psychologically healthy person, could put her at a disadvantage or set her up to be used and abused/continue the cycle etc

but Jack is nowhere near a psychologically healthy person either, he’s in the same position as her from the start

and both of them get “out of” their trauma in seemingly unrealistic ways, in fact I’d say Jack literally just sitting down and meditating Angry Jack out of his soul for a day is more unrealistic than Ashi going out and living the life she never could and experiencing full blast all of the world’s goodness on her own for the what, 2 or 3 weeks that she did before finding Jack

basically my point is by the time they kiss on the show, they are both adults, and have no reason to believe the other is not just a normal adult, they’ve been through the same trauma’s, been on the same unstable mental footing, continue to deal with the feelings of terror while aligning themselves to the same goal of “get aku” theyve traveled together, understood their differences and now understood perhaps theyre similarities, felt a connection and kissed

and really, Ashi deserves the love that Jack could bring her as much as Jack deserves the love Ashi can bring him

nothing about their situation feels unequal in any regard to me, except for the literal fact that Ashi is 20 to Jack’s unnatural 70

we see the difference as the audience, but Jack sees a normal 20 year old woman his equal, who can sympathize with his life experiences, and Ashi sees a normal 20 year old man her equal, who needed a shave, who can sympathize with her life experiences

all in all, it doesn’t feel like a disservice to either of their character’s, it feels like two traumatized people happened to find themselves on the same boat for once, and discovered that hey, maybe another living human does and can understand what I’ve been through, maybe I can make a connection to another person

#Samurai Jack #Jashi #just my incoherent two cents I guess

[developmenthole]

The Price of Aetherium: Outline

The Price of Aetherium was a retconed story arc for Pythia, until I overhauled her. I’m too proud of it to delete it, so i’m posting it here. This is the outline of the story, which gets wordy at points. 

Part 1 Nightmares

Done

Part 2 Reunions

Done

Part 3 Ozymandias

team leaves early in the morning 5am ish all on horseback. pyth, saulian and andoryan have cyrodiilic horses, do’kikhtar and motabe ended up buying  draft horses once reaching skyrim bc she knew it would be easier going back that way. brief description of traveling, mostly uneventful and nonstop.

once outside the ruins, the horses start getting nervous bc of the tremors. they dismount and tie the horses to a tree nearby or to some of the dwemer hitches. theyre all achy and hella sore, and andoryan bitches the most obvi, pyth and saul deal with it and do kinda agrees that shes stiff as fuck. a tremor shakes the ground and they all get a bit nervous, wondering if its safe or not. they got all the way here theres no way they're turning back now after coming all this way,

they head inside explore a bit and find katrias body but her ghost dosent show up bc saul radiates holy but they dont know that. they make their way along blah blah its fuckin boring pyth explains kinetic resonators, notes how they're not usually found in skyrims dwarven clans. basically she kinda takes the role of katria in explaining shit. do gets cut by a falmer in the area between shoulder and neck but saul heals her some so they keep going, pyth gets hurt by chaurus hunter.

they reach the summit (where the resonators are n you gotta shoot them) and pyth studies katrias journal before getting it in one go however comma andoryan knocks on one of the centurions and wakes it up. the team gets fucked up by it bad, but everyone is alive so far. they go and get the crest and its tired celebration and they start to leave. and because god hates pyth especially, a swarm of falmer shows. team is weak from the centurion fight so they get murdered. saul gets pulled over the edge by one jumping on him, Motabe runs out of magic and gets fucked and do flies into a rage, kills 5-7 and then gets overwhelmed and succumbs to poison. at the last second andoryan fucking tanks the shit and wipes the rest out right as pyth is about to get offed. she is hurt super bad and he pins her down reveals he is a Cunt. takes the aetherium for himself, decides to take all of it, including the aetherium in her eye. takes one of the falmer axes and uses it to cut out her eye. he then drags her to the edge and throws her over.

Part 4 Myth

pyth wakes up. saul is there looking fucked. she tries to move but saul stills her. she's missing an eye and her arm is broken. saul got a concussion and pyth asks if he healed her, he did not. she is confused. saulian nods towards a towering figure with its back to them. theyre cooking something on a fire within the ruin. pyth looks at saul and he shrugs. the figure finally stands and kneels by them, its ncz. checks on pyth, checks on saul, reminds saul not to sleep bc concussion. pyth falls back asleep

At this point add ncz (Nczek was Nchand’s early name) to the expedition roster.

Part 5 Pyre

ncz and continues to take care of pyth and saul until theyre well enough to leave. ncz helps bury what remains of her friends and katriah. pyth is very quiet and ncz and saul do most of the talking. ncz leads them to the entrance and sees them off. they make for falkreath

Launch ncz’s (Nchand) blog

it kinda switches to sauls pov because pyth is like. shell. he notes that hes moved her to his horse because she keeps falling asleep and hes worried she'll fall off the horse literally. he states that aside from the 4 days spent with ncz, they stayed in falkreath for 3. he notes that they really should have stayed with ncz longer because concussion and broken arm and missing eye but he wanted to get her to a town just incase they needed something food/potion ect. he states that he keeps an eye on her at night because of his own insomnia and that every night since first waking up at nczs shes had night terrors and he knows shes not taking this well. think oitnb piper post branding! eventually pyth picks up enough to ride on her own horse and talk some but shes still very distant. they go to her house only to find it in shambles like someone trashed the place. pyth steps into the back room/workshop and saul yanks her back just as a fire rune explodes. as a result the house catches fire bc wood.

saul tries to put it out but between trying to keep pyth from rushing in and trying to save stuff, he cant do much. he drags her out and holds her still as they watch her fuckin house burn down. as the moons rise they start on the road to whiterun.

Part 6 Untitled

Arrive in whiterun to somekind of bruhaha but saulian avoids it and goes straight to the temple of kynareth so pyth can get properly looked at. Scene ends with saulian leaving the priestess to do her work while he goes to figure out what was going on.

Scene picks up when pyth wakes up and she asks saulian what happened. She passed out on the horse on the way there and saulian brought her to the temple and a pristess set her arm in a splint and it wasn’t actually that bad and that regarding the situation, she should be okay but she cant use it. “Oh. thank you.” saulian asks if her brother works in whiterun she says yes, in the drunken huntsman. He asks if he also left valenwood under the same circumstances as she did she says yes. Saulian sighs and takes her hands. He’s dead. Pythia stares at him, clearly not believing him. He elaborates. Apparently he was seen walking with a hooded stranger last night and they found him along the wall. Murdered right in the city. Pythia breaks down sobbing and the scene ends.

A few days pass (2-3) and pythia has lost everything, essentially. Her eye, the use of her right arm, her friends, her brother, her home and now her life’s work. All she has left is the gold she had on her (roughly 200 septims) and saulian. At this point in time the vigilants are still around and saulian hasn’t found or refurbished the temple. Saulian says that he needs to go back to the hall of the vigilants, he’s been gone way longer than he should have and hes sorry. He says that if she needs him or needs help to go there. Pythia nods and says okay. Saulian leaves and now shes alone.

Jump cut to pythia burying aralas under the ashes of her home. Cue more crying.

Jump cut again to pyth making camp in the hills of the reach outside of rorikstead. 

Part 7 Atlas

This is the chapter about regret! I.e. pythia bearing the weight of the situation. Its mostly inner monologue

Actually it’s more of a sped up version of the stages of grief. She gets angry at herself for bringing them, at saulian for leaving her alone, and finally at fuckin andoryan. That cunt. She sits in silence by the fire brooding before realizing that the Dark Brotherhood is a thing that exists. Sure, she’s got a little less than 200 septims to her name and andoryan could be literally anywhere by this point but she’s going to have to try. That is, after her arm heals and she sees about getting a faux eye. Can’t wear gauze forever. She gets up to set some traps and heads to bed.

Here would be where the plotline would be opened up to interactions within the current timeframe. Would be open to muses that travel/hunt, or live in rorikstead/the reach.

Part 8 Two Graves

After 2-4 in timeline interaction have a call for someone in the brotherhood and plot with them

Points to remember, pythia is poor like. less than 200 gold. Pythia’s arm has healed and she no longer has a splint (recovery time is lower bc healing potions and magic) this dude could be ANYWHERE and is affiliated with the thalmor.

Fuck this im tired

#pythia #stories

[viralhottopics]

Why developers struggle to make video game cameras that don’t annoy you

Image: vicky leta/mashable

Final Fantasy XV was in development for 10 years. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people across six different game development studios helped created it. Yet its camera a fundamental part of the way players interact with the games world is severely flawed.

The weight on the games metaphorical shoulders was enormous not just for the future of Final Fantasy as a game series, but possibly for the entire future of game consoles in Japan, according to game director Hajime Tabata. And it delivered on its enormous promise in many ways. How is it possible that a game into which so much was invested can have such a seemingly simplistic flaw?

SEE ALSO: The painstaking process behind making strategy guides, from the guy whos spent his life doing it

The camera is the interactive window through which we experience video games; the term describes not just our perspective and view of a digital space, but the freedom of or restrictions on how we as players control that viewpoint.

The camera is the interactive window through which we experience video games.

You can see and feel camera problems in games whenever the view is obstructed by a tree during a crucial moment, or when the perspective flips around the wrong way to show you the opposite of what youre trying to look at, or when the camera just wont do what you want no matter how you poke and prod at your controller.

These are the problems that have plagued third-person action games games in which the camera hovers outside the characters body rather than peering through the characters own perspective since Super Mario 64 popularized 3D games 20 years ago. How is it these issues havent been ironed out over the last two decades? Whats really going on in games that have camera problems? Why is it apparently so difficult to make video game cameras just work?

We reached out to the developers behind third-person games with their own unique camera challenges including Final Fantasy XV, Gravity Rush 2, Abzu, Hitman, and A Hat in Time to find out.

The common answer: its harder than youd think to make a great video game camera.

The underwater problem

Many developers run into problems making their cameras work in games that involve simply running around on the ground a 2D plane within a 3D space. Developer Giant Squids underwater exploration game Abzu adds another axis to that equation and a totally different set of control challenges problems that few developers of games with underwater controls have ever been able to solve.

Its an interesting problem doing a camera in an underwater game because you have this unique environment where the character can swim in all three dimensions of the space, said Matt Nava, Giant Squids founder and Abzus director.

The developers looked at every other underwater game they could get their hands on, and Nava said the most common solution in the past has been for developers to restrict player movement by not letting the characters vertical pitch extend too far up or down preventing them from doing a vertical flip, basically.

One of the first things we did in Abzu was decide, you know what, were going to try and solve this problem. Were going to let the player do full loops, because thats super fun and graceful, Nava said. We had to solve: what happens when youre upside-down?

We had to solve: what happens when youre upside-down? – Matt Nava, Giant Squid

What indeed? If the camera followed the character like it normally would, the camera would turn upside-down with the character, which would be nauseatingly disorienting. Instead, the game tracks multiple factors to detect when the player is attempting to do a loop or turn-around and automatically zooms the camera out to show the full arc. It tracks the characters movement speed and the speed at which the characters pitch is changing to determine how big the loop will be, and how far out the camera should move

Meanwhile, if the player steers the character in a half loop, leaving the character facing the opposite direction and upside-down, the camera automatically sets itself back behind the character while the character flips over on its own. During this animation the game also briefly wrests camera control away from the player often a cardinal sin in action games, but a necessary one here.

We got it just right, so people didnt really notice that there are moments in the game where steering doesnt do anything, Nava said.

Balancing for two types of players

Taking camera control away momentarily isnt a perfect solution, though. More experienced players tend to move the camera manually more often than inexperienced ones who are less accustomed to steering characters through three-dimensional space. The veteran player wants full camera control, while the noob needs the camera to move automatically without them constantly adjusting it. Balancing between the two can be a massive headache.

Many games solution is to let players adjust the camera but impose a timer that automatically resets it behind the character again if the game doesnt detect any input from the player for a set amount of time.

Issues can arise when that timer is too short or too long, especially in games where you move at high speeds, like driving games. If the camera takes too long to reset, inexperienced players might struggle with the controls. But if it resets too quickly, experienced players get annoyed feeling like they dont have control over it. Thats one problem that plagued the late 2016 release The Last Guardian, a long-in-development game with lots of strengths but undeniably outdated controls and camera mechanics.

I think that probably the most common thing that [developers] do wrong with the camera is they try to auto-correct it at the wrong time they do it when you really want it to let you control it yourself, Nava said.

Its sometimes really, really hard to guess what the player actually wants to look at. – Jesper Hylling, IO Interactive

Square Enixs 2016 Hitman game does the exact opposite, to its great credit. We are fairly atypical in the way that we actually allow the player to walk toward the camera, said IO Interactives Jesper Hylling, Hitmans lead game designer. Its much easier to control the character if you just look at his back all the time, and typically the direction you want to move is the direction you want to look. Except in Hitman, thats not always the case.

Often in Hitman you need to observe a target while assassin Agent 47 faces the other direction to seem nonchalant, or flee from pursuers while keeping an eye on them. So having a camera that tries to reset itself behind the shoulders of the main character wouldnt really work for our game, Hylling said. Also you get to do these cool moments where you walk away from explosions.

That also makes it the level designers responsibility to direct players attention towards timed, scripted events in subtle ways without having to yank the camera controls away from them. For example, in the games Paris mission the main target is first spotted descending a staircase in the mansions lavish entrance hall just as players walk in. Hes hard to miss, and thats deliberate, Hylling said.

The drawback, he conceded, is that some players especially less experienced gamers struggle with the controls because theyre used to cameras that correct themselves. But its sometimes really, really hard to guess what the player actually wants to look at, he said. So we try to do that as little as possible.

Camera controls as gameplay

The developers of Gravity Rush 2 faced a similar obstacle, compounded by the games unique premise. The early 2017 PS4 games gravity-shifting gameplay lets you totally alter the main characters perspective at any time and hurtle through the air at great speeds in any direction. No rule of physics or game design is sacred even the horizon can flip this way and that, proving disorienting for many players.

With the games totally unfettered range of movement, it would have been impossible for the developers to design a system that could predict where players wanted to look to move the camera there automatically. So they didnt try. Instead, they left the camera controls entirely to the player.

There were a lot of other challenges during game development, but designing the camera controls for this game is perhaps the challenge I remember most of all, the games lead designer, Sony Computer Entertainments Junya Okura, said through a translator.

For this game, we made the decision to enable free-flowing travel and complete autonomy over camera control these two principles superseded all else, the games lead player action programmer, Toshitake Tsuchikura, explained. If we programed the camera to move automatically, the unique gameplay experience we crafted for players would suffer significantly. Although newer players might find it hard to get used to, he said, they thought this totally free system would satisfy our biggest fans and that players would feel a sense of progression from mastering the camera controls over time.

No rule of physics or game design is sacred.

Even so, Okura said their main objective in designing the camera was to prevent a feeling among action game players who usually dont have to think about controlling the camera from a feeling of being forced to do something that theyre not used to. Tsuchikura added that they wanted the camera to follow players intentions faithfully.

In other words, they wanted control over the camera to feel natural, even for people who arent used to doing so in a game that leaves it entirely up to the player. To help accomplish that they made Kat, the games lovable protagonist, the cameras focal point at all times she never leaves the center of the screen.

Motion controls are another factor. By default, players can make fine camera adjustments by rotating the PS4s DualShock controller, which Tsuchikura said provides players with a feeling of true motion and a floating sensation.

Free swirling with an unfixed horizontal line sometimes gives you strong motion sickness, he said. On the other hand, a sense of naturally swinging movements as if youre floating in the air in this game is achieved through the motion sensor detecting the hands movement. Its essential for the floating experience that Gravity Rush 2 is pursuing.

Designing the cameras behavior during Gravity Rush 2s chaotic combat was its own challenge. Because enemies can appear all around Kat at any point, which the developers call omnidirectional battles, it remained important to let players retain full camera control during combat. But that also makes it difficult to track enemy locations, and more than one player has wondered why the game doesnt provide a way to lock onto enemies.

Okura said they considered adding a lock-on mechanic during the early phases of development on the original Gravity Rush, which launched on the portable PS Vita system in 2012. There were two sides to that internal debate, he said: on one hand, adding lock-on could make battles easier to manage, which would appeal to more players; but on the other hand, it would destroy the camera controls, the freedom of which is a core part of the series design. The idea of trusting our players with autonomy matched with our design philosophy, he explained.

This idea may be old fashioned, but I believe that its one of the important elements of action games to experience the joy of overcoming some difficulty or stress and to be proud of the improvement of your skill, Tsuchikura added. Please dont be prejudiced against the right stick. Its one of the powerful weapons for action gamers!

Breaking the line of sight

Even a comparatively simpler game like the in-development A Hat in Time faces these problems. As a 3D platformer in the tradition of games like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie, AHiT wrestles with the same questions those pioneering games dealt with in the 90s.

Even though the game has an idea of the things the player thinks are interesting, it can be wrong, said Jonas Kaerlev, CEO of small Danish studio Gears for Breakfast. Thats why, if at any time in A Hat in Time the player moves the thumbstick, the game just says, OK, well chill out for a moment to let you do your thing, and then once weve figured out if youre done with your thing, well take over again.

Even though the game has an idea of the things the player thinks are interesting, it can be wrong. – Jonas Kaerlev, Gears for Breakfast

The game reacts differently to varying amounts of input on the camera controls, including trying to detect accidental inputs in order to ignore them. But thats an extremely resource-intensive process and can be taxing on the games overall systems, which Kaerlev said is why many modern platformers, like Super Mario 3D World, choose a fixed perspective rather than more traditional 3D camera controls.

Sometimes you just want to focus on the basics and always keep the camera on whats interesting, he said. Plus, that lets you avoid breaking what he said is one of the golden rules of game cameras: never break line of sight. In other words, the player always needs to be able to see the character theyre controlling, which can be difficult to accomplish when players have full movement and camera control.

Traditional solutions for this vary. In Super Mario 64 the camera moves automatically to attempt to keep Mario in view, one of the many factors that made the 1997 classics pioneering 3D controls infamously wonky. The new The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild, on the other hand, handles obstacles like tree foliage by making them transparent if they would otherwise obscure your view of the hero, Link.

But Kaerlev said that can suck a games processing resources dry, especially as game graphics have become exponentially more complex over the years which is is why newer games (Breath of the Wild being an exception) tend to find other solutions.

“I quickly found out that players dont want full control.” – Kaerlev

A Hat in Time uses a novel two-pronged approach. Whenever we know the player is definitely, unquestionably going to have the camera be blocked by this thing, we put in the extra power [to turn the object transparent], Kaerlev said. Other times, though, they simply draw the player character, Hat Kid, on top of the object as a silhouette, which accomplishes the same goal letting the player see the character at all times while using far less computing power.

Gears for Breakfast is a small studio, and Kaerlev is relatively inexperienced. But throughout development hes been struck by the fact that developers of all sizes and backgrounds have wrestled with these issues throughout the history of video games but theyve also all managed to come up with elegant solutions.

When I started development on A Hat in Time I had no idea how to make the camera, Kaerlev said. I just gave the player full control and said OK, whatever, do your thing. But I quickly found out that players dont want full control. So Ive sort of had to learn, as Ive developed the game, that these kind of rules make a lot of sense. Its kind of beautiful, in a way, that a lot of developers with very different backgrounds come to the same conclusions.

Putting the camera back in players hands

The problems with Final Fantasy XVs camera werent due to inattention. Hidemi Mizoguchi, the very engineer responsible for the games camera system, made obvious the staggering consideration that went into its development at every step.

Yet FFXVs camera is plagued by all the issues that many game developers strive to avoid from objects in the game obscuring your view of the camera to control being yanked away by the game.

Mizoguchi said (through a translator) that some of their challenges stemmed from the games wildly varying scenarios. Youre not just running around as main character Noctis. The game has to keep track of four characters plus multiple enemies of different sizes during combat. Or you could be driving the Regalia down the highway, or riding chocobos through the forest. One of the developers goals was to create a camera system that would guarantee quality in any situation, which even in a far simpler game is a tall order.

Part of that involved tweaking the environment design to better accommodate the camera. To get rid of any element that might have caused difficulty in exploration and battles, we adjusted background modeling and camera collision countless times while staff worked on the environment, he said. Even if props and background elements looked good as a part of a landscape, we adjusted and changed placements of any object without hesitation if it created stress during battle. That type of deliberate, manual attention is important, he noted.

The camera is designed upon the premise that, at its basis, it belongs to the player. – Hidemi Mizoguchi, Square Enix

FFXV straddles a weird line between an action and a role-playing game. You have full control during some battles. Other times the game moves the camera for you, often to showcase some gargantuan enemy. Mizoguchi said they knew the camera would have to be flexible, so they created basic, core camera code on top of which they could layer whatever additional functionality they needed for a given situation.

By having this common functionality, the camera could receive control input by the player and control collision determination, while also making it possible to create cinematic framing for both still and dynamic moments and even blend the two together, he said. The camera is designed upon the premise that, at its basis, it belongs to the player.

For all the games strengths, and for all this attention to detail, its camera is frequently cited as one of the games most problematic elements, by fans on places like Reddit and GameFAQs, as well as by critics on sites like IGN, Polygon, Kotaku, Glixel, and countless others. The developers even attempted to address the camera issues in a day one patch, with debatable results.

The problems in this case seem to come down to sheer scope. Its not just the size of the game, though, its any of the issues that developers face in fine-tuning the dozens of invisible factors that can affect the camera at any given point.

Getting the battle system in FFXV into its current shape required a long process of trial and error, Mizoguchi said. Even after we established a stylish battle in which the player can freely move around in the air, it still took time to adjust the camera so that it would not hinder the action as the places and situations changed. We continued to adjust right up to the time we submitted the master build.

This is all so much more complex than any casual player might guess. And thats by design. As Mizoguchi put it, With a well-adjusted camera, players are able to comfortably play a game without noticing that a camera exists. All the developers interviewed agreed that this is the number one identifier of a great video game camera.

It doesnt take much to throw the camera out of whack a fact that, if nothing else, should make us all appreciate the great video game cameras in our lives all the more.

Mike Rougeau is a freelance journalist who lives in Los Angeles with his girlfriend and two dogs.

WATCH: This charity is helping kids through video games

Read more: http://on.mash.to/2o4zSb2

from Why developers struggle to make video game cameras that don’t annoy you

#Why developers struggle to make video game cameras that don’t annoy you

[wupassman]

Reviewing SweetStoryBro’s Review of the Shenmue story

https://twitter.com/sweetstorybro/status/831177322803892225

Some first ofs:

I am writing this directly adressing Sweetstorybro because it feels more natural and less impersonal to address him but that doesn’t mean it’s not intended for anybody else. I am one of the big backers (toy capsule set pledge) so I have a lot to say about this game I fought 14 years for to get that Kickstarter.

I am sorry if this may read a lil bit like a scatterbrained person wrote this. I basically take notes as I listen and since I managed to lose my write up for the first half of the podcast I had to rewrite that from memory too.

I really like the effort and research you put into this, while in places I can add something overall this is very sastisfying for a long time fan and definately a pretty goddamn complete rundown of what the story is about and how its executed. That being said generally if there’s agreement there is not a whole lot more to add so if I don’t outright disagree you can assume I agreed.

Let get to it then:

I think you did a really good job at explaining in which way Shenmue surpasses your average gaming experience, while its clearly a game it kinda goes past playing but experiencing. As you pointed out this game can be a very different experience for each player based on how hard they are looking to find connections and generally explore the world (and progress the story at just the right pace as to not miss a single cutscenes XD It’s not too easy to make a 100% run but if you do, things like Nozomi moving isn't as much out of the blue, yes she basically leaves as abrupt as he does but it's foreshadowed during the convos with her). Yu indeed built a very lifelike world with tons of lil details and NPCs that felt real. I really like how you brought up that book explaining what Yu was trying to do with this world. That was a thing I fan haven't heard of before. Indeed it is a very key aspect to differentiate between japanese and chinese, which of course becomes a much bigger deal in part II even, when Ryo is removed from his stomping grounds but in Hongkong. It's actually p interesting how a game about chinese culture was kinda a main idea from the beginning, as he was inspired to be making Shenmue (then Akira RPG/Project Berkley) many years prior, when he travelled China in order to research martial arts for Virtua Fighter.

As this is a perfect segway I’ll be skipping ahead a little bit here and talk about the fighting system.On of the main genres I always played were fighting games so I personally appreciated the super simplified VF fighting system (try VF3TB from the same time and youll know the difference) and being such a player I wouldnt even have thought of wanting to play this with analog stick. Golden rule of fighting games: dpad = accuracy, analog = wishy washy. That being said I am not at all opposed to change it up for Shenmue III and make it feel more like Sleeping Dogs. After all back in the day it was a different controller not quite as handy for 3D games (the lack of a 2nd stick means a lot). As long as the fighting is tight and responsive it works for me either way, iof there is a change that needs to happen it’s the camera. I am not really holding it against the game cuz it’s really old but the camera screw ups during fights could leave you clueless which way youre facing at times.

I wouldnt worry too much about the thing with the chapters. The games don’t equal chapters. It’s more like arcs/themes (as you later said when talking about the PostMortem). From basically the very start Shenmue was supposed to be split into 5 games and as of yet the plan/hope is that the final game will be Shenmue V. Shenmue I was only 1 chapter but Shenmue II was 3.

At the risk of completly blowing any kind of credibility I might have and just come off as a crazed fanboy: The pacing of Shenmue I had purpose. It very much corresponds with the mental state of Ryo. Feeling of grief and feeling lost. Shenmue I basically is about running into a brickwall and trying a different path until at the end he finally finds a way to get his passage to China. Until then his plans were shattered and ruined a couple of times and it weighs on him. And it should weigh on the player too. It’s part of how you manage to get this deep connection to the character because you as a player are forced to live out the day as is (or just go for the blocking out that your dad was killed and spend all day in the You Arcade). this is further emphasiszed that in Shenmue I theres rarely ever good weather and most of the soundtrack is depressing too. The days getting long is absolutely intentional. I can see how this might not be the most fun kind of gaming for a lot of people, but this is why different games exist. Shenmue’s job is not to appeal to players who can’t enjoy a game where shit doesn’t explode every 5 seconds. It is important to tell people who are interested so they know what theyre in for but its not actually a negative for the game itself because it actually perfectly fullfills what was required for this part of the story.

There is no way to talk about this without explaining how this correlates with the 4 themes Yu brought up and why Shenmue II is such a change of tone. It’s not just the fact that Hongkong is a bustling metropolis. It is very much the fact that due to the unseen part on the ferry and much more so because of all the masters and other freaks he meets in Hongkong that he opens up more. Again the change in tone of Shenmue II is also accompanied by visual and audio cues. THe soundtrack of Shenmue II is overall more upbeat, depressing themes do play in the more run down quarters but overall the game sounds cheerier. Likewise its not just that Hongkong of course is a much more colorful place than the suburban area he grew up in. It’s also basically always sunny in SHenmue II. Granted it makes a lot of sense due to the different seasons the game takes place in but of course with a highly artistic work like this, this is not a coincidence.

Let’s move right into the next part here. Yes Ryo behaves like a jerkass towards a lot of his peers. While there is a chance that the Voice Acting has some to do with it (No dissing Corey Marshall, the man is a hero!) it is still fully intended for him to be as cold and brooding as he is. You can tell by the face animation, which is p goddamn good for a game that old. Every Shenmue player made jokes about how Ryo’s happy face looks the same as his angry face. His moments where he is at least not totally miserable are rare and special. He is consumed with grief in Shenmue I. Shenmue II is about moving forward from that. HENCE DEPARTURE. not just locally but mentally. I really need to compare the interactions he had with the 2 most important females in his personal life.

The first one is obviously Nozomi: These conversations are awkward for more reasons than just them sucking at talking about their feelings (which btw isnt just them being teens but really very much them being japanese in this era too). Keep in mind both are aware of the feelings the other one has so they have a very close relationship. You’d think close enough for him to actually tell Nozomi what hes on and about to do in order to find the killer of his father. He doesn’t He’s very sparse with the information he shares which is entirely rooted in the fact that revenge is highly egoistical (heres a theme that gets such importance placed upon in Shenmue II). That doesn’t even mean hes an egoist, cuz he is not. He is just super preoccupied with his grief and aparently nobody really knows how to help him finding a better way to deal with it (given his age that makes sense too, no complaints there). As I mentioned earlier tho it depends on your play how many scenes with Nozomi you’re going to see (the Shenmue Passport cd is a good reference). Also since it wasn’t actually out of the blue that she would be going to Canada soon it is quite understandable she has a hard time telling him about her feelings too. This is not only a well known story beat but IRL youd think whether you wanna tell someone you love them when you know for a fact you’ll be moving overseas anytime soon. Especially when you consider the circumstance that if Ryo wasn’t on his revenge trip he’d assume his role as patriarch of the Hazuki Dojo.

Now lets fast forward to disc 4 of Shenmue II (THIS GEM!) and inspect the interactions Ryo has with Shenhua. These are amazing. They’re literally the best conversations Ryo has in all of the 2 games. Shenhua’s cheery and innocent, good natured personality makes it exceedingly hard for him to be the brooding jerkass anymore. A lot of that has to do with all the people he met who became his friends/mentors in Hongkong/Kowloon. He grew because of them. But Shenhua’s personality helped a great deal too. All of the sudden there are no distractions. Just the environment and her. What else would he do but chat with her? If you havent played Shenmue II I implore you to just youtube the conversations he has with Shenhua and compare with Nozomi yourself. It’s like night and day and p much the ultimate signifier for his growth throughout the progress of the game. Now this is venturing a into fan theory territory: the fan base is p much split down the middle of what kind of romantic role Nozomi is going to play in Ryo’s future. To me shes the child hood love interest that never became more due to him being preoccupied and her frankly not actually being available either. It would seem sensible to accept this as a chance missed as a part of moving on. I am positive he is going to end up with Shenhua as she resumes transforming him from this brooding dude preoccupied with revenge to a guy who truly internalises the lessons he learnt in Hongkong and adds a big helping of humanity to it. 

Not to excuse his behavior towards Ine-san and Fukuhara-san (because you rightly identify them as cold) part of that is also rooted in japanese culture. With Iwao’s death Ryo became the patriarch of the family. Ine-san may scold him but in the end it is not her place to deny him. Likewise Fukuhara-san was Iwao’s student so that kind of transferred to Ryo now. The bigger point here is that he abandons his responsibilities for them. I don’t think it’ll have actual negative impact for him in story, but there is likely going to be a moment of awakening that it is high time he returns home and takes care of the martial arts school.

I am sorry this actually took a 2nd day to finish but I got busy watching Collisions 2017. I only listened to it once but in seghments. Since I am such a huge fan of the game I wanted to be fair and not overanalyze your review and find nitpicks where there arent any.

While the individual play style is entirely up to each player it is my recommendation for everyone playing this, it to give it time. Let it breathe. Just waste your time away doing fun stuff. You’re going to miss out on a lot if you’re playing it in the way youd play most linear games where you just resume with the next goal in the main quest like crossing of a check list. You are not supposed to leave this early. During my fast plays I still never finished before christmas. At best I managed a jan 15 arrival in Hongkong just to see if I manage to arrive on my own birthday lol. But in all seriousness the time limit for this game is so goddamn long because you arent really suppoed to rush through this too fast. Leaving by the middle of January or even by the end of it makes for an overall better experience IMO (lol I just heard the 10 hours thing and I damn near lost it haha. look as I said it’s ok to play it any way you see fit, but seriously 10 hours literally means just the main quest. no goofing off. You’re missing out on stuff and an overall more majestic experience is all I am saying) To me the harbor segment was super fun cuz it was cool figuring out how you get the most out of each day, incl at least some good toy collecting and maybe training (usually didnt need that anymore at this point). By no means I am trying to tell you to like an aspect you didn’t, but to me this very much comes down to how deep you immerse yourself in the world. If you let the time go by slowly (dont run basically😉) such things as working have a deeper impact on how you experience it - then 2h lunch break still feels like 15 minutes. It was literally the opposite for me in that the harbor is when I am p much forced to move the plot forward instead of just goofing off so much. I know people who share this kinda play style feel the same way that the harbor is - to us - where it really picks up.

Before my review of this is over I’d also like to personally recommend the japanese dub over the english dub. Yeah the english dub feels weird at times but this is also intentional. A good comparision to that would be the lines in the Spartacus TV show. Just like that one was speaking latin in english the Shenmue dub was speaking japanese in english if you get my meaning. The VAs talked about this on the SEGANerds podcast during the kickstarter. Of course due to having played it so much it works for me but it’s easy to tell the difference. At the same time I can not praise the english VAs enough for being incredible heroes who promoted the Kickstarter hard, it was amazing. I love all of you guys. Thank you for your passion. Will def play Shenmue III in both japanese and english to honor all of you!

I warned ya it’s prolly a lil bit all over the place. Anyway thanks for the review. give the man a follow: https://twitter.com/sweetstorybro