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archandshri · 3 months

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9th feb '24 - [arch] characters, interactions and emotion - making a mini webcomic

Gahhhh Shri this has been an absolutely crazy couple of weeks!!!! Hope you are doing well :)) First of all, WOW! You have a lot of goals, and I’m sure you’ll get them done! I’ve worked a lot on my graphic design during the process of making Winter Wellbeing. If you wanna see a blog post dedicated just to that, I can do so! It would be cool to compare notes on the approaches we take for graphic layouts. If you wanna share your knowledge of camera skills when you build that up that would be awesome 😭😭

It’s been a tough few weeks, art wise. I have been reflecting on my process, motivations to create, the ego and all the baggage that’s lumped into the creative process for me. It turns out there’s a lot. I took some space from my illustration practise (literally for a weekend!) and began to realise how dysfunctional it is. I’ve been writing a lot about that so there may be a larger piece of writing coming about that at some point (no promises!!)

But for now, let's talk about little successes!

I’ve been playing with some characters for a while but I’d hit a bit of a block with the plot. I realised the expectation of having a finished project of high quality soon is unrealistic, and an unhealthy expectation to put on myself. I rarely give myself time to play with concepts for a long time and let the characters, plot and interactions evolve naturally. Maybe this in part came from sticking to the short university module turnaround. I noticed that that short turnaround was causing a lot of block, so I have decided to bench it as a comic for now and focus on using it as a playground - falling in love with the characters, creating stories and drawing them for fun. Maybe years down the line I’ll make them into a comic - we shall see!

I *tried* to do hourly comics day this year and it didn’t quite work for me. I think I made 3 comics? And then got distracted with a bigger project that ended up taking a week or so to complete. Let’s have a look at it, shall we?

[you can find the full version here]

First of all, it’s based on an unfinished fanfiction I started a couple of months ago, which was mostly bad, but there was one nice scene that I liked and wanted to expand on. I started by having a look at the script I wrote and thumbnailing on the iPad. I’m away from home at the mo and usually would prefer to do most of my artwork traditionally, but because I don’t have access to a scanner, the whole process was digital this time. A lot of the pages got scrapped because the dialogue wasn’t necessary, and I’m not drawing pages that aren’t necessary.

some more development screenshots

I thought a lot about posing during the process, acting the scenes out in my mind and sometimes physically, really understanding the emotions of the characters, why they’re saying what they’re saying, their tone and how to convey that though their body language and expression (i find grian really annoying normally [affectionate] but I want this grian to step on me).

Pearl was hard with this because she’s quite erratic and unpredictable in this series, so I wanted her to switch from raw explodey anger to playful jabs at Grian. I’m hoping this comes across as somewhat insane, rather than tonally off and inconsistent. I did super enjoy drawing her and her explosive nature though, especially in comparison to Grian’s coldness.

I played with levels and monotone colour too - I’m not working with multiple colours much at the moment so I’m able to focus on things like values composition, characters and backgrounds. My skills limit the kind of stories I can tell currently, so I’m working to improve those foundations. Maybe when I’m back in the riso studio I can play with colours a little more.

Colours - despite the simple pallete it gets a bit nerdy here.I stuck to specific flat percentages for most of it - Pearl’s hair and Grians jumper are 60%, Grian’s hair and Pearl’s cloak are 20%. Then I added a 14% layer for shadows, using a ahrd blend eraser tool for highlights, making the images quite dark. I fill a layer with texture from Forystr’s riso brush for procreate, and turn it into a 40% opacity colour dodge layer. This gives it some much needed texture and makes the lighting feel low and nighttimecore. It also pushes the values to look really nice - I tend to be too scared to push them by myself.

I tried a few different colour layers to get a *vibe* but settled on a low percentage riso blue in a colour layer. All layers besides the riso blue are in a riso black, colour picked from a riso colour pallete. I learnt these tools - using percentages to get good values - from working with risograph. I really recommend having a look at these techniques and doing some monotone work. It's really improved by character designs, page layouts and compositions.

That's all from me today, though I have had MANY other thoughts over the past two weeks about creating, but perhaps we'll dive into them another time. If you (or anyone else) has any questions, hit me up with a reblog or an ask and I will get right to it. Lovely to hear from you! Hope your art is going great too :)) Arch :)

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wanderingcritter · 13 days

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it's so strange to me when ppl talk abt furries like they're the worst thing in the world (in a not joking way lmao) and abt how being one is somehow rotting my brain or depleting my quality of life or whatever bc its like,

without a doubt being a furry is one of the best things that's ever happened to me, idk that id trade it for anything.

like the amount of just pure, absolutely childlike joy and wonder ive experienced over my nearly 5 years in the fandom is actually insane, i can't think of anything else that has made me this happy for this long. I still remember what it felt like when I first discovered the fandom and started to fall in love with it, the only thing I can really compare it to was when I put on glasses for the first time when I was like 12 (im extremely near sighted) and was like "OMG EVERYTHING IS SO BRIGHT AND COLORFUL AND BEAUTIFUL ALL OF A SUDDEN :D"

ive met so many cool ppl and ive discovered my passions and ive learned abt so many different walks of life. it helped me realize just how creative i am and how much I love art, it gave me an outlet for my overactive imagination and ive made so many friends. I genuinely hope that everyone is able to find is able find something that makes them feel this fulfilled at some point in their lives :)

#not my usual stuff but i was feeling sentimental this morning lol #furry #furry fandom #sfw furry #furry things #fursona #furry positivity #non alterhuman post #anti rq #anti transid

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mamawasatesttube · 3 months

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18, 20, 21 for violence asks

18. it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

the fact that postcrisis kara wears kon's glasses because she put together her secret identity when he was dead and she wanted a connection to him so badly!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAA they make me insane its about the immigrant metaphors and parallels (they both had superhero identities first!) and the way she wanted to know him because he was the only family member her age she had left and. and. what if i wailed about them

20. part of canon you found tedious or boring

teen titans (2003). jesus christ. 100 issues of catty heterosexuality and forced weird romance arcs and also geoff's shoehorned lex luthor retcon and just. my god. what a slog. picked up a little towards the end once damian got there but overall just my GOD. also the art looked like more rendered wikihow illustrations so that really didn't help anything

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

hmmm... adventure comics (2009). like don't get me wrong i don't hate it, and i love francis manapul's art, but the writing is so... geoff. shakes fist. we get the good timkon moment in issue 3 and we get some good stuff here and there with like, ma and kon, or kon and lori, and SO many quality kryptos, but the plot being literally kon just comparing himself to lex and clark was... so stupid lmao. francis manapul's art carried this run.

"choose violence" ask game!

#answers #misspickman

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animehouse-moe · 4 months

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The Best of 2023 Anime

First of all, I have to say that this isn't my idea: it's @444lpblue's idea. I'm just stealing it getting to it it before they do.

Anyways, the idea was to pick the best for several categories in relation to anime from 2023, and share why they were chosen. This doesn't necessarily mean I'll be picking my favorites from the year, but what I think is the best of the best, so there'll be a few interesting choices made (but I think that makes it more fun). Enough preamble though, I should just get to sharing my list.

Best Show - Heavenly Delusion

I don't think this one is much of a surprise. Heavenly Delusion, by and large, is an outstanding show (and adaptation) in all meanings of the word.

I think the best way to explain what constitutes a "best show" is by asking the question: how much of the medium does this series make use of?

With Heavenly Delusion? The answer is effectively everything. Visual storytelling, auditory cues, leading the viewer visually, incredible foreshadowing, expressive and detailed character acting, apt humor, incredible visual effects. The list goes on and on. Frieren was a great show, Skip and Loaf was a great show, The Witch From Mercury was a great show. But the best can't fall short in nearly any category, and Heavenly Delusion successfully evades that pitfall at every twist and turn within its twelve episodes.

Personally speaking, it was a show for the ages. Sure, we have Frieren pushing the boundaries in terms of visual quality in a seasonal anime, but I think the difference in terms of experience between Frieren and Heavenly Delusion is night and day- an entirely incomparable experience.

Best Movie - The Boy and The Heron

I mean, is there really another choice? The Black Clover movie was good, the Kaguya movie was good. Suzume, The First Slam Dunk, Blue Giant. There are quite a few good movies out there, but let's be real- you just can't win if you're against Miyazaki.

Best Episode - Heavenly Delusion Episode 10

Yeah yeah, sue me, I picked something a lot of people have also picked. But just know in the deepest parts of my heart that this would always be my pick. Junichi's character arc and its expression through this episode is sublime. Ikarashi's insane Trigger style meshing with Hirotaka's more voyeuristic appeal is sublime. The panic of Kiruko as she runs with the baby, the goofy and excessive humor that opens the episode, all the various examples of symbolism. The art shifting art styles, the different approaches to animation. The list quite honestly does not end. While some might argue for Frieren's dragon episode as the entry for best of the year, I think the frame of reference for that argument is far too narrow. The perspective of animation and visuals above all else completely fails in the face of holy trinity of Masakazu Ishiguro, Mori Hirotaka, and Kai Ikarashi. You just cannot beat it, and you can't argue it in any way.

Best Opening - Magical Destroyers

It was a toss up between this and Heavenly Delusion, but I just can't get rid of this opening in my head. It's like a plague that's taken me over. Incredible visuals, incredible boards and animation work, and just an incredible testament to Jun Inagawa's art. Heavenly Delusion's OP is very good, but in a way can, oddly enough, feel too literal in comparison to the comparatively indecipherable story that the OP of Magical Destroyers tells. Really, just wonderful work all around that I desperately wish could have extended to the anime itself.

Best Ending - Magical Destroyers

This was always a one person race. Would it be Taiki Konno's Magical Destroyers ending, or would it be Taiki Konno's Undead Unluck ending?

Personally, I don't think there was much of a contest between the two purely because of the story told with the Magical Destroyers ending. I think that giving Konno a static ending also helped a great deal as they were able to explore their vision in much greater detail than having to animate directly.

But that's also the beauty of Inagawa's appeal, really. Konno and Inagawa got along like a house on fire with this ending, and adding The 13th Tailor's music overtop just brought it to a totally different level. Still a massive massive favorite of mine.

Best Animation Designs - Trigun Stampede

Now, just hear me out. 3D animation's sore spot has always been expressiveness, and bringing anime original designs to such an intensely beloved and cult classic series is an insane challenge.

Orange, of course, was totally up to the challenge and brought what I'd argue has become a modern icon of Vash the Stampede. The facial expressions, reactions, and interactions were impeccable. The larger movements were incredibly fluid and full of life and feeling. The cloth and other materials were amazing to experience.

The designs feel almost effortless in the context of 3D animation, and I really have to stress that that is a huge challenge. Look at how other characters look in 3D vs how these ones look. Really, really impressive work in my books.

Best Aesthetic - Bleach Thousand Year Blood War: The Separation

Bleach has, and always will be, a very aesthetically pleasing series. There's plenty of moments to pull from, but I think the second cour of TYBW presents the pinnacle of Bleach in anime form.

The lighting, the backgrounds and environments, the insane levels of composition: TYBW The Separation is the highest reaches of style Bleach has mustered to this date.

And really, there's not anything else to it. The iconic red and blue palette, the crazy details in highlights and shadows, the incredible color schemes and storyboards. It's simply Number 1.

And that's as far as the list goes. Pretty simple, but a pretty fun exercise in looking back on the year in terms of more specific aspects. Does highlight the gulf between good and great though, as there's many series that can qualify as "good", but very very few that can really be reasonably considered for accolades such as these.

2024 seems keen on changing that up though, so I'm really looking forward to what all we get for this year!

#heavenly delusion #tengoku daimakyou #boy and the heron #the boy and the heron #how do you live #hayao mizayaki #magical destroyers #mahou shoujo mad #mahou shoujo magical destroyers #jun inagawa #trigun stampede #studio orange #bleach tybw #bleach thousand year blood war #anime #anime and manga

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rigaudon · 5 months

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This was just gonna be another comparison but then I pulled out my binder and ended up with an illustrated essay.

So while the new cards are PRETTIER, at the same time, the quality on the new cards can't compare to the old ones. Ceruledge is super shiny, but the cardstock is VISIBLY thinner than Gengar's (and the fancy pants full art foils are even thinner), and the ink is so much DENSER on the old cards. The difference in ink saturation is most obvious when you compare the cardbacks

The old card is on the right in the first picture. Basic bitch 1999 nonfoil Dragonair feels 20× nicer to hold than 2023 glitterbomb hyperfoil. 💀💀💀

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk, but while I have you here... let me give you a glimpse into the mind of me as a child. You might be wondering why the edges of all my old cards are so fucked up, it's because 1: they've been crammed in here for 24 years (holy shit, I'm old).

Which shouldn't be a big deal except for 2: As a Real Pokemon Trainer, my binder is in pokedex order and every variant I have of the same pokemon lives IN THE SAME SLEEVE TOGETHER (top card dictated by how shiny and/or how much 10-year-old-me liked the art), none of that side by side entire sheet of 9 squirtles bullshit. I stacked the squirtles.

(Yes, you are correct in the assumption that this means I was, 3: constantly taking them out of the sleeves and keeping 10+ cards in the same card holder, especially if I had a lot of cards of the pokemon on both sides of the page. I had to replace the sheets in the whole binder at least 2-3 times because I'd stick so many cards in them that the sides would rip and drop $500 in cardboard all over the pavement). I mostly fixed that when I stopped keeping dupes of the same art in there too.

But Raie, you say. Surely, this doesn't include foils and rare cards, right? Great question! Glad you asked!!

Say hello to single-sleeve Vileplume family!

Will I continue this tradition as an adult that should know better? Yes, absolutely.

What number am i on? 4? A few of them most definitely went through the washing machine at some point. Idk when i got a new one, but I got my original Pidgeot from a friend who'd left it in the pocket of her jeans and 80% of the card was fuzzy.

(Please don't ask why this mangled common Pikachu is the one I decided to display on top. Adult me doesn't know. Maybe mangled, stained, washing machine Pikachu was my first Pikachu and thus had sentimental value over literally any of the 30 other copies I had of that same Pikachu.) Now that I think about it I probably just put the FIRST copy i got in the binder for emotional attachment reasons, idk.

Speaking of sentimental value: I keep my ticket stub from the first pokemon movie between my Mews.

And i was going to end on that note until I saw this INSANE THING LOOK AT THIS. THIS. FISH. THIS FLAT, COMMON, BASIC FISH POKEMON IS OBJECTIVELY BETTER THAN FUCKING CHARIZARD.

Something something 20 year old card game something something power creep

I CAN ONLY INCLUDE TEN PICTURES ON THE APP SO GIVE ME A MINUTE BUT I HAVE TO PREFACE THIS NEXT REVELATION WITH: MEWTWO HAS 60 HP

#pokemon tcg #i guess #where am i who am i what year is it

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solofanatic64 · 7 months

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GUYS OH MY GOD

IGNORING THE SHIT PHOTO QUALITY, THE ART I SUBMITTED FOR SHOW OF THE WEEK GOT FEATURED IN TODAYS VIDEO AAAAAJHGWEFHGKJYG!!!! THIS IS MY FIRST TIME MY ART HAS BEEN FEATURED IN A VIDEO!!! Unfortunately none of them know what Insane Clown Posse is and compared the Juggalo makeup to Squidward which is upsetting ;-; at least they liked it :D

#sun and moon show #bloodmoon and ruin eclipse show #sams bloodmoon #sams ruin #sams fanart #my art #insane clown posse

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jerrsterrr · 3 months

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guys wait let me go insane about superhorrorbro poppyplaytime chapter 3 playthrough guys, guys wait

Low quality sketch im going silly

SPOILERS??? or uf u dont care watch me just say things

THE HOUR OF JOY FOOTAGE

OHHH mY GOD EVERYONE??? EVERYTHING DYING?????? thats so SO MANY PEOPLE especially cause the facility keeps going deeper and deeeper like HELLO??? all the big guys, huggy, kissy, mommy longlegs, catnap ATTACKING all the adults CRAZYEEEE

(cant stop thinking of richie,,, ((the angry worker Ch1)) what happened to richie,,,, PLEAE)

i also cant stop thinking about like all the poor workwrs who didnt know compared to the evil scientists but what about the kids??? Every single little toy littered with blood around the game,, arent those kids who were put into toys???1&×<÷<÷&*+ WHY did they start inner fighting??? (CATNAP making a cult for the prototype BUT OMGS??? Ill come back to this)

THE WAY ITS ALSO CRAZY HOW the kids are merged with toys, THE SPINES!! BRAINS AND ORGANS BEING SCOOPED WHAF THE DHIT!!!! And/or the mental torture??1,1&÷>+> the like tests in chapter 2 being for the orphans so they can go fight/flight and form a connection to the toy they are asaigned WHATTTTT (wack a wuggy or something below)

The orphans AND the coworkers who didnt know (IM SO SAD) especially the footage found about someone wanting to adopt a kid from the inner orphanage (because that was like, a thing for the workers to do) just to get paperwork that "they are in "testing"" LIKE NOOOOAAAOOO. Theres litterally footage of the kids getting picked off with everyone celebrating "who is leaving today?" WHYYYYE (scene where the player goes into the giant sphere where they had a fake town)

and then again what about the kids/workers who DID KNOW. (Catnap,, THEO) like theo being taken away for trying to escape the orphanage, and then being turned into the cat thang (AND THEN THE CO. MAKING HIM INTO A MARKATEBLE PLUSHIE AND SHOW HAGHSHA)

its so crazy how the prototype teied to help him out when he was a kid, and in return once tunred into some giant gas tank to make the orphans sleep, he became the prototypes "worshipper" (he is standing on two legs worshipping bodies that supposed to look like the prototype)

AND THE PLAYER OMG me and my sister had theories about the player being like a worker or a kid from there and it was kinda confirmed to maybe be BOTH??? INSANE!!! hoe did they escape the happy hour?? Why did they come back?? Who wrote the letter "wer'e still here" and WHO do they think is still there LIKE CMON!!!

Theres so much more like how my sister is in love with Mrs.Delight like where did she and the teachers even come from, (I ALSO LOVE HER shes so CRAZY), the kid body left in a duffel bag left at LUDWIGS the OWNER AGHH, DOG DAY!! being left alive and then litterally being EATEN ALIVE??? and then the prototype killing catnap, catnap giving up his body??? (im gonna be so fr i thought the prototype was offering his hand not gonna STAB HIM) hugfy wuggy confirmed dead, AND WHAT HAPPENED TO KISSY MISSY!!!!?

honestly my interest in this is just amplified by SHB cause i love his playthroughs and theories,, (im gonna watch his theory vid when i get home w my sister)

hes somehow always right LMAO i have no idea how he foretold the fact the kids were kept underground from the first chapter brah ???

OKAY IM SO EXCITED about this!!! There may be art!!!!!!!!!!

#IMNSHAKIJG THEM IN MY BRAIN #CHAPTER THREEE3 #WHAT THE FUDKQIEUOQ #fanboying #So excited about thang #AND AND AND!!!!#Im gonna reblog so much art in a second wait.#SUPER HORROR BRO #superhorrorbro #poppy playtime #catnap #if anyone wants to talk about jt PLEASEEE #SHAKES YOU

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katsu-curry835 · 1 year

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I cannot stress this enough tiktok has a policy whereby it CENSORS CONVENTIONALLY UNATTRACTIVE PPL. They will demote your video if you have wrinkles, an obvious beer belly, are too fat or too thin or have dwarfism. Among other horrid policies of course. The below is a leaked document from the moderators detailing what should be demoted by the algorithm.

I’m aware that most social media apps harvest your data, are prone to pipelines and shadowbanning and don’t pay their creators enough but TikTok is genuinely the w o r s t in every category. You genuinely lose nothing by not using it. Below is another image of a glitch that showed activist hashtags such relating to BLM with 0 views (they got shadowbanned)

Another huge problem that exists on the app is the radicalisation pipelines are so strong because the three minute vid and 150 character comment format completely flattens nuance. All it takes is for someone to sound confident and talk fast enough with a vaguely coherent argument before you start thinking that overpopulation is a myth and engaging in needless drama (see: Drew Afualo and Bela Delgato, Danisha Carter and her critics etc.) This is poisoning how we interact with politics. YouTube is nowhere near perfect but it at the very least rewards longer form content this stuff like video essays is promoted on there. Tumblr has no character limit so you can read the entirety of this shitty essay without me needing to cut things for brevity. Typing a TikTok comment has driven me insane before because 150 characters is not even close to enough to have an informed discussion. Who is correct has now become who can slam dunk on someone else the best.

I do genuinely think that Drew Afualo is a net positive for the world and I’m glad she’s using the TikTok algorithm to spread good messages. But let’s be honest here, her videos aren’t well researched takes on misogyny. And I don’t think they’re trying to be either. Drew shouldn’t be expected to sit down and research a TikTok while she’s shitting on some asshole; that’s not her style. I think the problem is beyond her control. People are taking her quips and one-liners to formulate their opinions on the world around them. This is ok in this example given that Drew a positive influence. But this can and has been weaponised so easily to spread harmful rhetoric left and right and when you’re on political TikTok it’s impossible to tell which is which. Misinformation is also shockingly common and incentivised by the format.

Finally, your attention span is dying. Let’s look at YouTube. YouTube’s policies make it so that longer content is rewarded and, and this is a crucial point, you choose what you want to watch. On TikTok, because you are given content with the assumption you’ll enjoy it, you have to decide while watching if you want to scroll or not. Eventually your window of tolerance of videos before they get good shrinks and you’ll end up judging the quality of the content based on the first seven seconds. Comparatively, YouTube has you choose videos assuming you’ll like them and therefore you’ll spend more time with the art before you decide whether or not it’s for you. When your attention shrinks to seven seconds on TikTok, this bleeds into other aspects of your life and is incredibly unhealthy (speaking from experience). I had to watch two hour long video essays to compensate for how TikTok was just wrecking my focus.

Most people know TikTok sucks and use it anyway but then encourage others not to get it. Why don’t we delete it? Here’s an idea, if you have TikTok, get rid of it now. Destroy its ubiquity and only use Tumblr and YouTube /j No but seriously delete the app I’m so happy I did. My life has improved infinitely since.

#tiktok #personal essay #in this essay i will #social media #delete tiktok

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thebrisingamen · 6 months

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ESCAFLOWNE VOICE MEME; Read More for anyone who hasn't watched the series. Tons of spoilers ahead, you've been warned.

Introduce yourself! When did you first watch Escaflowne? What brought you into the fold? Hi, I'm Norse, an internet Elder. My Uncle knew I liked anime from my watching Inuyasha, and he would buy me and my cousins birthday/Christmas presents. He, however, never asked what anime I liked lol. He picked up the Fox VHS tapes and I watched them so much my father started quoting parts of them and the tapes had lines in them. Nothing else truly compared to this story before or since in anime, especially in other Isekai stories; no other story genuinely gives me a feeling that this IS another world; there's no overpowered protagonist, just a teenage girl and the worst powers to have during wartime.

Who is your favorite character and why? Was it love at first sight? Has any of their qualities or quirks swayed you on characters in other series? I like a lot of characters in the series, however, my psychotic boy Dilandau is probably my favorite. On the surface, he is just an insane, pyromaniac child soldier but there is SO MUCH to unpack with his character. Not only is he unstable and insane, when we get the reveal that Dilandau was/is a manipulation of Celena, it's very interesting. How many children were just like him in the Empire? He can't possibly have been the only "success" in the Empire. Aside from Celena, does he have any false memories implanted in him? Was his personality chosen for him or was in the influence of all the manipulation on his body and fate? With the Dragonslayers added in, are all of them also the same age as their commander? Does Zaibach regularly have child soldiers? He's just such a fascinating character to me, in these regards. I wish the transformation between Celena/Dilandau wasn't so thorough, though. Like that there were still some remnants of the Dilandau personality in her. Second favorite character is Folken, solely because of Paul Dobson voicing him, but his personality is also pretty interesting to me. As far as other characters, nah, I tend to like these psychos often, they just seem like they're fun.

Which side are you on? What do you think happens Post-Hitomi when she leaves? Who do you think will be the next opposing power? I think the show does a good job of showing us that there are no good or bad sides; even Zaibach only started conquering because their new leader gave them the knowledge and power to defend themselves at first and they lived in a barren wasteland. I am on Fanelia's side, however and I hope that they are able to restore their Capital City in full and that everyone is able to reach a tenable peace I think a lot of peace talks and treaties and marriages of political convenience end up happening between several of the allied countries and that there will be a pause in the conflict; Zaibach will more than likely pull back and maybe crumble from the loss of leadership and the split in power. Though they were wiped out militarily; I can't imagine General Adelphos spending funds on the Sorcerers anymore. I forsee similar issues that plagued Europe in our history happening to the world of Gaea, but I think that the next opposing power will likely be Basram or Zaibach, potentially Asturia if their influence reaches over to Zaibach.

Least favorite plot point? Was there something you think should have changed? What do you think would have made it better. I hate the love triangle here, as per usual. It makes sense and removing it would be bad because it is critical for our characters' growth, but I still hate the Allen/Hitomi interactions near the later half of the series solely because its there ONLY to delay Van/Hitomi. Which is the point, of course. I also really don't like the REVEAL that 'GASP' Emperor Dornkirk was...SIR ISSAC NEWTON?? All along??/ Like bitch how'd you fuckin' SURVIVE that long.

OTP? What kind of art and fiction would you like to see? What are some head canons you have for them? What is you NoTP OTP; Van/Hitomi; I think their romance is well developed and I like them. They definitely have more of an equal footing with one another and support one another, with believable roadblocks. SOMEONE PLEASE DRAW THEM KISSING WE NEVER GET IT IN THE SERIES. As for fan pairings, I actually liked Folken/Dilandau before some reveals, but honestly Folken getting TWO partners is pretty funny for me, even if it's in the afterlife. NOTP: Allen/Millerna or Allen/Hitomi; gross, he's SO MUCH older than both of them. Dilandau/Van is also a big No from me.

What would you like to see in a figurativ remake/sequel? Would you include more minor characters? Would you want a whole new story that could be a stand alone? Honestly, I'd love a stand alone or if it's a sequel series, mostly focusing on the internal politics of Gaea. Possible focus on Merle, Chid and maybe Dryden and Millerna. Or maybe just references too them, I have questions about the world but I'd like to leave the main story alone.

Movie, Series, Game, or Manga preference? What are things you did/didnt like of each? Series; The manga is awful and the movie is wildly different from the series. I'm most familiar with the series.

Do your favorite impression! Bonus points if you can do a conversation with a scene cut in! LORD VAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

What do you think about the idea of a re-dub? What are your feelings about the current cast selection for Van (and others if more are introduced)? Well since we had the Funimation re-release at the time of doing this, I think a new dub really forgot the deeper charms of the original dub; there's no depth of feeling to most of the voices and the acting feels phoned in, not to mention that several of the characters that are supposed to have a commanding presence and deeper voices don't, and it sounds the same as all current Funimation voice work...Awful and Samey. I find that Aaron Dismuke was actually a good choice for Van, same with Alexis Tipton for Merle, as while Aaron gave a slightly different flavor for Van it was still a good portrayal, and Merle seems to be an easy character for VAs to portray. However, once again Funi ruins things by casting Vic Mignonana (idc how to spell his last name) as Folken, like are you SERIOUS? He can't compare to either Paul Dobson OR Jōji Nakata in terms of rich toned voice, or a commanding sort of voice at all. And my boy, Dilandau, is ruined. My poor little meow meow isn't psychotic enough, isn't funny enough and isn't threatening enough. Joel MacDonald sounds exactly like 30-year-old man reading for a teenager and doesn't understand Dilandau's character at all, even on basic level. Bring back Andrew Francis. Basically the Ocean Dub is superior, if you're gonna watch in dubs imo. I prefer the sub just because Maaya Sakamoto as Hitomi is just BETTER than either English VA imo and both English VAs made me actively hate her for a lonnnng time. But if I watch in Dub its gonna be Ocean Dub.

Recite your top five characters by name. Dilandau, Folken, Van, Hitomi and Dryden

#escaflowne #The Vision of Escaflowne #They massacred my boy #dilandau albatou #is my favorite little psycho #and then Folken Van and Hitomi

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astrarobotica · 1 year

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People like to say the Switch is aging but...

Metroid Prime Remastered gets a surprise release and there isn't a single part of me that thinks it looks old or outdated or even "last-gen".

I'm not sure why they called it a remaster. Remasters typically just have HD resolutions, higher-res textures and a few modern lighting/shader tricks. This thing is more of a remake, because it's been entirely rebuilt from the ground up. Every 3D asset is new. Every texture is new. Even character animations in cutscenes have been tweaked. Metroid Prime Remastered looks like a brand new game, even though the original came out in 2002.

I've seen a lot of people saying over the past few months that the Switch is "aging tech", people on reddit have convinced themselves that the "Super Switch" or "Switch 2" or whatever is imminent (just like the Switch Pro!). And yeah, Nintendo is probably gonna put out another console within a few years. But I don't feel like the Switch is getting too old. I'm just as excited for games coming out on it this year as I was when the console launched. I don't see this game and Tears of the Kingdom and think about how much better they could look on newer hardware. They obviously would look better, but they still look incredible on the Switch.

I think this is why Nintendo has my favorite first-party IPs; most big games over the past twenty years have been increasingly focused on hyper-realistic graphics, while Nintendo has almost always focused on art style, which translates well regardless of hardware. And I think some games benefit from hyper-realistic visuals like Red Dead Redemption 2. It's such an insanely beautiful game, but it's also a very good game in general. A lot of recent games feel like they use realistic graphics as a crutch to support bland game design. Graphical fidelity and art style are two different concepts. Good art style can age well even on limited hardware. Fallout 3 was a pretty good-looking game when it came out, fifteen years later however...

Nintendo prioritizes art style. The art style of a particular game/franchise can be adapted to whatever hardware it's being developed for and then pushed to the level of graphical fidelity the hardware can handle. Metroid Prime Remastered is an entirely rebuilt game, but it retains the exact same art style from twenty years ago. Breath of the Wild was a launch title for the Switch, but it still looks just as impressive six years later. Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2/3, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Kirby and the Forgotten Kingdom (and many others)... they all look incredible on supposed "aging" hardware.

But why exactly is the Switch seemingly not good enough anymore? Well it came out after the PS4/XB1 and was already less powerful than those consoles. Now another generation of consoles have come out which are even more powerful, making the Switch seem more underpowered. People also tend to look at console generation trends, and most consoles are around for about seven years before the next one comes out. But that's an artificial reason; industry trends don't magically make the Switch outdated. The real reason is that people want a Nintendo to make a console with hardware on comparable level to other current consoles, or at least last-gen consoles at this point.

That's understandable, but is it because Nintendo games don't look good enough? No, it's because we want to play non-Switch games like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 on a handheld, in particular, one less bulky and with a better battery life than the Steam Deck, and one that still has Nintendo games on it. Sure, some Switch ports are quite bad, but we also have Doom Eternal, No Man's Sky, NieR: Automata, and plenty of others that were poorly optimized to begin with or seemingly "too much" for the Switch to handle, yet we have them, and they're amazing. There's also Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which uses very clever upsampling to produce an amazing image quality. The Witcher 3 may not look amazing on Switch, but people said it would never happen, yet here we are. That isn't to say the Switch is capable of running any game, even with clever ports and decent optimization. But it's much more capable than a lot of people give it credit for.

I bought a gaming PC in 2021, primarily for sim racing. So I don't need a PS5/XBS, but I wasn't planning on buying one even before that. The only big new game I've even played from the past year is Elden Ring. Those consoles have already been out for two years, and there's only a handful of games that can't also be bought for the previous generation. Yes, games will look and perform better on the newer consoles, but cross-generation releases have never lingered around for this long before.

Even though new generations of console will always be more powerful than the last, not many games use that extra power for much more than higher-fidelity graphics. The big issue with that is that it's a matter of diminishing returns; the jump in visual fidelity from one console generation to the next has become less and less impressive over the past twenty years. Visual detail in graphics will always get better as the hardware advances, but the closer you get to photorealism, the less there is to improve on. More polygons on-screen stops being impressive when you stop noticing the polygons. The jump from 480i to 1080p was far more noticeable than the jump from 1080p to 4K. A lot of games on newer consoles are starting to boast about 60fps, because in some cases, an increased framerate is the most noticable difference between the same game on two console generations.

Overall this trend is a bit concerning to me. Honestly, it began when the "pro" consoles came out during the last generation. The old business model feels like it's rapidly becoming obsolete, and Sony and Microsoft must feel the same way, considering how many of their first-party games they're releasing on PC these days. So it feels strange to me that the Switch is somehow too weak as the other consoles just over a generation ahead of it are running straight into a very real plateau. Metroid Prime Remastered looks just as visually impressive to me as any PS5/XBS game.

Yes, Nintendo will eventually release a new console. But we’ve reached a turning point with Sony and Microsoft where the reasons to buy their new consoles are less obvious and convincing than they’ve ever been. So maybe it's a smart strategy for Nintendo to take their time and make sure their next piece of hardware is substantially more impressive than the Switch

#metroid #metroid prime #metroid prime remastered #nintendo #switch #gaming #video games

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beautifulscreaminglady · 29 days

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As promised, my thoughts on Sense and Sensibility (2024)

(Looking for what REAL people of color wore in the Regency era? Check out my Pinterest board!)

The clothes weren't as bad as I was expecting. The fabrics vary from garish prints, to heavy embroidery, to plain colors.

The main problem seems to be that they are ill fitting. The men's coats seem to add extra bulk to the actors.

The production itself has scenes that appear to be copied from both the 1995 production and the 2009 production.

Elinor's hair is styled in an ancient Greek inspired arrangement that enjoyed popularity during the Regency era. I think it is a beautiful style for Black hair. Most of the women's hairstyles are quite good.

Colonel Brandon's beard and mustache are not period accurate. He should be clean shaven. Compare to this portrait of Pierre Toussaint.

The main problem seems to be that they are ill fitting. The men's coats seem to add extra bulk to the actors.

On the other hand, the ladies bonnets appear to be too small. I thought Margaret's bonnet was weird as hell but apparently it's a real design from the late regency to early romantic period.

Marianne's boots are visible after she has her famous fall. They have a prominent heel. Regency boots for women were very flat without a heel or with a very low heel.

Margaret's shoes here are also very odd. They look almost like 16th century women's shoes.

I don't know what kind of shoes Marianne is wearing here but they look a bit clunky. This is a production where $15 plain, solid colored pleather flats from Amazon would not be out of place, if budget necessitated it.

The blue gloves are period accurate!

Costume Parisien, 1798

In an article about the movie, it was mentioned that the set dressers added real historical portraits of Black people. I noticed the famous Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit and a GIANT bust portrait of Dido Belle (cropped from the original). I also spotted some 16th or 17th century portraits of Black men that seemed vaguely familiar. Other artwork was unfortunately too hidden in shadow or out of focus for me to recognize.

There are also some other things that made this production more Black, such as the scene where Wentworth and Marianne bond over their shared interest in art and find that they both admire Phillis Wheatley's poetry.

There were some changes that raised my eyebrows. The child of Colonel Brandon's ward is his!

At the ball in London I am almost positive that Seal's Kiss From A Rose was being played by the violinists.

Final thoughts:

According to the costume designer, she had to make 68 costumes in 20 days. This is absolutely an insane demand. While some of the costumes were rented, the time crunch is quite obvious on the other costumes. People who work in film and television do not deserve to be treated like this. Hallmark has a ridiculous turnaround time for their productions, but at this point I feel like the Hallmark back catalog is big enough it can afford to make fewer but more high quality productions.

Or perhaps we can sacrifice complex, unnecessarily over the top costumes in favor of simple but pretty costumes such as the ones in Mr Malcolm's List (2022), which also notably starred people of color.

I think that people of color DESERVE beautiful costume dramas, but this is not what it could have been. The first (and currently only) Black Jane Austen adaptation in existence deserved more. I love Sense and Sensibility but this adaptation broke my heart because it lacked the richness and warmth of the 1995 and even the 2006 versions.

#unfortunately I cannot find the reference for Elinor's hair again. it was from a Regency fashion plate. I promise it was EXACTLY the same.#sense and sensibility (2024)

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ot3 · 2 years

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Is there any reason why a lot of zines don't accept fanfic/any writing at all? I've been wanting to join one for a while but I have no artistic ability to speak of.

there are a ton of reasons for this! in fact there are so many reasons for this that it got long, so i'll stick it under a cut.

the most prominent reason: most of the people running these things are artists, and not writers! they just want to put together artbooks and are just less interested in the fanfiction side of things overall. it's a completely different skillset and an overlapping but not identical audience.

there's nothing from stopping any more fanfiction-oriented people from putting together their own zines that are just fic (theres actually an ace attorney writers zine happening right now i think? havent looked into it much) but i'd suspect the reason there isn't more of that is because the knowledge of production and distribution that's necessary to make these projects work is less common in fic writers. writers also tend to, in my purely anecdotal observation, have schedules and careers that make it less feasible for them to run these kinds of projects, whereas the people who run zines are very often freelance artists already and so they just sort of. slot this kind of thing in around their usual work cycles.

second big reason: logstics of formatting and printing. a single fic of any meaningful length takes up 4x the amount of space of a single drawing, minimum. some projects are pretty anal about keeping within specific page counts. upping the page count often adds very little to the manufacturing costs, but once your zine surpasses a certain weight it's much more expensive to ship. we ran into this problem with the AA4 zine, which was pretty beefy. it was very easy for the packages to hit over a pound in weight which made shipping more expensive than a lot of zines.

it is also INCREDIBLY difficult to format text nicely. It's a massive undertaking, I can't stress how annoying this is to do. It is also not a skill a lot of people have. Even if you're just doing it pretty bare-bones the amount of time it takes to drop a few pages of images into a pdf vs the amount of time it takes to format that many pages of text is not comparable.

a third stumbling block: vetting contributor portfolios is so much more involved and consuming than vetting art portfolios. i can easily go through dozens of art portfolios in one sitting. let's pick a random number and call it 30 before getting burned out and needing to take a break. it really doesn't take more than a couple of minutes to decide on most portfolios; at first glance, you can get a strong idea of a person's overall body of work. it's only the edge cases that take very long to look over. Going through 30 art portfolios would realistically take me under 2 hours, easy.

On the flipside, it is impossible to tell the quality of writing from an initial glance most of the time. You have to actually go in and read a certain amount before you can decide. I'm going to be very very conservative and say that you'll read, lets say 1000 words from a contributor's writing portfolio before you make a decision. Going through 30 portfolios now means reading at minimum 30,000 words of writing. Could I do that in two hours? Maybe. But it'd be a lot harder.

Now most zines get HUNDREDS of applicants, but bigger fandoms can easily hit over 1000. This means hundreds of thousands of words of reading before you even begin the actual work of the project. It's just an insane time commitment. Then, once the project begins, you run into similar problems for critique. It takes a way longer time to beta read 50 fics than it does to give notes for 50 drawings. It's just a super different kind of work that not many people are interested in doing on the kind of scale required for zines.

and a final reason: enjoyment of fanfiction is, I feel, a LOT more heavily dependent on how much you share the creator's opinions on the source material than fanart is. Gauging stuff like how 'in character' writing is is highly subjective but also super important, which makes it a much more difficult call to make. since it takes much less time and effort to engage with a drawing, that drawing not lining up perfectly with your interpretation of the characters is less likely to be a dealbreaker if there is enough technical competency in the execution to make up for it. At least for me, that is, because there's often a lot less context to impose these character assumptions on in a drawing. You as the audience to a piece of art have more freedom with interpreting it than you do with writing. Meanwhile, with fanfiction, you're either on board with what the writer is selling you or you aren't. There are plenty of perfectly technically competent writers out there whose stuff I will never be interested in reading because it is very easy for me to be knocked out of my enjoyment of a fic due to just one or two bits of throwaway characterization I don't agree with. And I am absolutely far pickier than most, but I don't think i'm wrong in saying that overall people are pickier about how characters are portrayed in fic than they are in fanart.

essentially, everything about the process of large-scale fanzines is much more suited towards the visual arts process than the writing process.

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skydigiblogs · 2 months

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back on my bullshit (thinking about translation theory in the context of my silly little monster cartoons <3)

(this ended up so so fucking long so i put it under a read more lmao)

specifically thinking about it in the context of like a handful of world/postcolonial lit courses we took and some anth courses

what i mean by that is like

when it comes to just literature there are already so many things that have to be taken into account for translation! let's say you're taking a poem. in its native language, that poem has a sound, a rhythm, a way of communicating that a lot of poetry in a lot of languages do. when you translate it to another language, like english, are you going to translate in a way that preserves the meaning most, or a way that attempts to approximate the meaning while preserving the synesthetic qualities of its sounds?

the homeric epics are a really fun example for comparative translation analysis imo. and i mean fun because there are so many translations of them into english, and at least one madlad decided to make a prose translation of an epic poem. only recently did the first translation of the poem by a woman get published, and that revealed that a lot of biases in the linguistic nuance were kind of getting smoothed over like a crease in clay.

(i have a copy of emily wilson's translation but am not the guy who reads classics in our system, i just write the essays lmao. but she wrote multiple times about the theory of translation she was working with and if you're at all interested in this topic, look her up.)

but even if you aren't translating a text from antiquity and are, say, working with a more contemporary example of literary translation, you still have to bridge the gap between two cultures that may be very different. just a word for word translation may not work too, because figurative language like idioms might not be understood by the language you're translating to.

the amount of cultural knowledge required to sculpt a truly effective translation that preserves the image of the original while making it comprehensible to an otherwise ignorant audience is just. so cool to me. i say this as someone who could never really do translation work myself, on account of not having that kind of complex grasp on another language than my native one, of course, but you don't have to be fluently billingual to understand what i'm talking about here, imo.

another example, and one that i actually wrote comparative analysis on, is work from charles baudelaire's les fleurs du mal ("the flowers of evil"). works of short poetry are effective case studies in what different translations can look like, because translations of baudelaire's poetry still portray the subject matter in a way that is presumably true to the original french. while something may always be lost in translation (there's a saying for a reason there), the philosophy behind one's translation can also highlight one's own reading of a text, and offer a closer insight into said text for foreign audiences (me, it's me, i'm the foreign audience reading charles baudelaire in world lit and going absolutely insane about translation theory).

for my mileage, you end up seeing a paradigm between translations that span between "strict" and "loose," if that makes any sense. a strict translation makes no changes in its translation, preserving the literature in its entirety as it is translated, to the best approximation possible where a direct translation is impossible. a loose translation meanwhile may make more artistic choices in its translation, foregoing certain details in order to better articulate the artistry in the original work.

okay, now, the reason i'm thinking about this today, right now.

in literature this is already a complex subject, but when you get into other forms of art, like animation in the case of this blogs primary topic, there become a lot more moving parts. like with literature, there's going to be the simple fact of looking into a cultural window and trying to communicate that snapshot to foreigners.

with subtitling, you can add things like translator's notes. this is a non-diegetic method of communicating information to your audience, and you can see it present in literature as well (footnotes or endnotes are a frequent addition to many translated works; hell, they're common even in non-translated works). in animated works where there are vocal tracks (like anime openings or insert songs), you can also have subtitles for those, no problem!

however, when it comes to dubbing, you automatically include more elements to juggle in your translation work. you have to take into account individual voice, background tracks, visuals, etc. etc.. the method most dubs handle translating the work often discourages non-diegetic methods of communicating information, so you're less likely to see translator's notes in dub work. sometimes this even includes changing on-screen text so that a foreign audience can read it.

the lengths to which a dubbing company is willing to censor in translation is also, obviously, a conversation worth noting (see again my losing my shit at pinnochimon packing heat). a phenomenon i'm sure we've all noticed when it comes to dubbing (as opposed to most translations of literature i've seen) is that dubs may market to a specific age range in translation. sometimes that may end up defanging a work's themes, or changing them entirely. the censorship of a dub may come out of a cultural difference or hesitance to show certain subjects to a younger audience, but regardless it is part of the theory behind some dub work.

i don't really have a conclusion to this, but it's just in my mind a lot while i'm watching some of these series for the first time subbed. by all means, i don't think dubbing is a bad thing (if anything it's complex), but having the experience of watching the sub is allowing me to do a type of comparative analysis i don't think i've ever had the chance to actively do.

i know that there are folks who have done more thorough comparative analysis work than i'll probably end up doing, of course (there are so many wonderful blogs here on tumblr alone about that meta-analysis). it's just that i'm enjoying engaging with a childhood interest in a way that i suppose i didn't know i wanted to do so badly.

#sky talks #digimon #digimon adventure 02 #i am not proof reading this so if anything is phrased weirdly my apologies baksdfbjhbdfs #digimon is just out here reminding me why we're trying to go to grad school lmfao and i gotta ramble #//lays flat on my office carpet contemplating translation theory for another 3000 years//#it's really funny because i almost slipped out of front on account of a flare up trying to kick our ass #i've been laying down for four hours watching digimon now though and it's like #“oh yeah right the digimon guy gets to be in front for when we watch digimon”#and here we are

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gwaaaaar · 1 year

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My Personal Ranking of the MazM Games

Lawd im going insane so. Making this ranking. Excluding Yellow Bricks of course. Keep in mind this will not inherently judge the quality of the games moreso my enjoyment so feel free to disagree :) i would love to hear everyones opinions

HYDE AND SEEK SWEEP!!!

Imo theres nothing wrong with HNS (a lie there probably is but shhh). The characters are solid, the plot can fall a little flat at times but MazM said they prioritized making memorable characters more as they can be taken out of the story and used in multiple re-imaginings. They were pretty successful in doing just that. If we didn't have hns we wouldn't have Alan... mai waifu...

Kate is a good protagonist! She's a smartass and an absolute hothead but a load of fun. Pollie is literally a sopping wet meow meow tumblr would love her if HNS was actually popular. I don't think you guys need to know my opinion on Alan (beautiful gorgeous all that is good in the world). Mihir is good South Asian representation:) hes witty and sympathetic. Shoutout to Crack for actually making him look South Asian... so real for that. Bishop is an amazing antagonist like holy shit it may just be my bias but idk she got me tweaking. Of course you got the OG characters like Jekyll and Hyde, although I must admit Jekyll was fucking tweaking lawd that wasn't Jekyll that was his evil brother Jackson.

Art is really good too! Crack was working solo on this project and their art is soooo good, not Maha's painted style but it definitely works for the setting. The watercolor makes sure its not visually boring. The gameplays really fun! If a bit difficult, but I managed to finish the game 3 days after release. It's refreshing after the previous interactive book style games we had before. Honestly I'd reccomend it to any new MazMians and it's very easy to get into :) It's like MazM's tribute to JNH which made them popular in the first place.

2. It's Pechka time. Pechkas all over the place.

Ok ok so. I'd actually say Pechka is a masterpiece. Like literally nothing wrong with it story/characterwise. The story isn't as weak as HNS and it takes itself a lot more seriously. It is MazMs first historical game and it is really educational! Korean rebellion in Russia is a very interesting topic to explore. I didn't even know about it till I played this game.

It was their passion project, it's clear they were very excited to share a story that dealt with their culture so personally. The love shows through the research and dedication they put into it. The characters are sos so so gooood like. Back when I was smaller, I used to scoff at Pyotr for being selfish but. Nowadays hes my poor meow meow malewife. He'd do rounds on tumblr if he was popular. Asya too theyre literally the malewife girlboss dynamic. Pyotr and Asyas relationship is so fucking complicated but lawd they compliment each other perfectly. Daejin, Lizaveta, and Kyuhan have such a sweet story together and just. Aughhhhh.

The art done by Maha and Crack is interesting. The art style uses hatching and it's more simplistic compared to the painted art styles of prior. They primarily focused on making sure the characters actually looked ethnic Korean. The colors assigned to each characters omg... I LOVE WHEN CHARACTERS HAVE A SIGNATURE COLOD THAT REPRESENTS THEM TO A T! The CG cards at the end though... THERES NO HAPPY ENDINGS!!! Some are more bittersweet/neutral. But I think the CG cards do have a wide range of emotions and effectively carry the endings well.

The only problem of this game is the coins which makes it rlly tedious. Pechka is a bit slow burn, so the fact you can only play 2 eps a day is a bit... of a drag. Theres like 10 endings and no log to keep track of what dialouge youve gone through. Like i get you cant replay it without replaying the entire story bc of the endings system unlike jnh or poto or hns but at the very least i wish there was a log to keep track. The footnotes too like, we cant even replay induvidual episodes to find more footnotes which is a bit infurating. It follows the interactive book style of the previous games but the 10 endings give it a new twist.

But yeah on a technical level i might rate it the same level if not higher than hns. Just with hns i found more enjoyment and not many faults :)

3. Thy Creature,,,

Lawd I think you all know how I feel abt Thy Creature. But I'll break it down. Early access Thy Creature had so much potential to be a modern masterpiece it's actually unreal. It was doing something new by being a midquel game rather than prequel/sequel/1 to 1 adaptation. The idea of the bosses representing concepts and characters is genius. They messed up once they realized they didn't have enough time to do all they could n its a shame. I wish it could've gotten delayed just so the writing would be baked properly. Story is a lost cause </3 With characters, the characters are good! However. In the new version, EA characters such as Noah, Justine, and Creature, have been character assasinated. Noah got away just barely because his new iteration is not all bad, Justine's character stayed relatively the same however her feelings towards the Creature have been tampered quite a bit. A lot of the Creature's moral dilemmas are stripped away and it is far more emotionless in the new version which SUCKS. Noah and the Creature had such an interesting dynamic in the early version and it had been removed in the final cut </3.

Character motivations have been completely hidden as the new memory system doesn't give them induvidual reactions to memories which SUCKS. Like. Noah lashed out at the Creature because he realized he had forgotten about his beloved orphanage. YOU DON'T GET THAT IN THE NEW VERSION </3333. They made 701 eviller rather than sympathetic in the final version too </3 The characters that were introduced in the final version are just fine though, perhaps because we didn't lose anything, only gained. Leon is a ray of sunshine, Hanna is a milf, Alex is a badass, Ben is sympathetic etc etc They're like a family :) The boss battles r so cool too... Only gripe is EL is a fascinating character and died too soon to feel attachment to.

The art is fucking gorgeous, Maha primarily worked on the art until Crack finishsd HNS and joined 6 months before release. Unfortunately this is the last MazM game the two worked on as they have left the company due to overwork. Their art is practically one of the lead contributions to why people like MazM so much. Thy Creature is beautiful. I like the earlier concepts better with the sketchy/horror aspects, but the new polished art is just as good. The bullet hell gameplay is a neat mechanic! If only it weren't so hard :(((. In demo traliers there was a concept for having text slide across the screen and scenes playing out during the bullet hell. The bullets would be words and you as a player would have to pay attention to the story thats playing out while dodging, which is a fascinating concept too! But, that sort of thing would be very difficult for certain disabilities and just in general hard to deal with, so I understand why they removed it.

This game was not meant to educate like Pechka, but rather be moving. There are no footnotes like the other game which is fine like it is its own thing. I still think it's a lot of fun. Team MazM put their heart in it just like they did with Pechka, it's worth a try if one likes bullet hells :).

4. Phantom of the Opera let's go!!! 🌊🐴 juan

Lawd you guys know how I feel abt it too. But I'll break it down. Story for the first half is book accurate but the second... The changes are uhm. A decision alright. Not a good one but they're there. I did enjoy it a lot but I will admit the quality is a bit meh. It was my first MazM game so there is my bias. Although shoutout to Daroga for going "shut up white boy" to Raoul when he was being a bitch abt SWA. MazM took an anti-racist stance and they are so real for that. The fact they added the Daroga in the first place is good but, they fucking blame him for Erik's actions when whatever Erik did was his own fault??? But also they made Eriks backstory darker and had the audacity to be like. Actually no one hates you for your face Erik lol. Like??? NO???? HE HAS CLEARLY BEEN SUBJECTED TO IMMENSE PERSECUTION FOR LOOKING LIKE THAT HIS TRAUMA ISN'T HIS FAULT??? But I unironically like the episode where they unionize against the shitty managers. First Pay and A Strike is one of the better episodes. They have two endings, one is canon compliant where Raoulstine run away together, and the other is where they go their seperate ways. I think the addition of that second ending is a cool one and brings to mind new opportunities!

For characters, I think the character added to background characters like the dancers and Remy are pretty fun though! The managers are eh tbh like they shouldn't have been that malicious + the accidental racism with Carlotta and Melek. Melek... dear sweet Melek... she is a good character on her own just not in the story she's placed in. Her existence defeats the purpose of the story. She exists as a prop to make Erik look worse which. </3 Erik and Christine are the most butchered characters here like Raoul took their character development. Erik lost all his compassion, becoming a whiny baby. This defeats the purpose in the og book where he shows mercy to Christine by letting her go because she gave him a single act of compassion. The point of POTO was showing compassion and mercy and he just has none of those???? Christine had been reduced to a naive girl that needed to be taught to be strong via Melek. And i know Melek was portrayed as the one in the right and all but they fact they made a brown woman tell a white woman to toughen up leaves a bad taste in my mouth. She shouldn't have been used as a prop like that. I think it's purely accidental how this came off. But yeah Christine in the OG book, she was strong! She told Raoul to piss off many times, her strength was by showing compassion. She threw her fear aside to give a kiss to her captor!!! Raoul here is the best like hands down. I can write an essay for him later but his character development is the best and he is oddly realistic. I think a problem with the og Raoul (reason ppl can't side with him) is the fact his character doesn't translate well through time. Someone made a wonderful post abt og Raoul here! Give it a read it's good. The way MazM translated Raoul is fitting, as he gets far pushier than OG Raoul to some degree, but his development at the end is quite cathartic. They made Raoul sympathetic in another way which could be relatable for some. The OG Raoul was "attractive" because he was willing to give his honod and status away for a lower class woman. MazM Raoul plays with that idea, by placing more pressure on Raoul and making him unhappy with his situation. He is forced by his family to be perfect for them when he is a child at heart. He loves Christine because she is freeing for him. He is a good person, he just lets obsession cloud his judgement. He is the perfect foil to Erik here and just. Yeah I'll get my essay going soon. Not here. Not here.

Art is fucking gorgeous, Maha and Crack worked on it together but IMO Maha takes more prominence with their art style as the painted looks of the cg cards perfectly match the aesthetic. The backgrounds are BEAUTIFUL. The character designs are lovely. Erik is book accurate minus for the color of his mask. He is monstrous and it's awesome. Christine is blonde, just like the book! The starry look of her hair is unusual to people but it's a game, like whatever looks cool yk? It's beautiful she's beautiful. And we can't forget Jimin Raoul. What a look. They were originally gonna make Christine and Raoul both blonde but probably changed hair colors to make sure they didn't look too alike. I think the pink hair does give Raoul the perfect sweet vibes, even if it's a bit outrageous, it's funny and iconic!!! It also puts a nice duality theme between him and Erik, pink and black my beloved. The dancers are cute, love you Jammes. Remy... lawd i want him. The managers look French.

For gameplay, you have the interactive book format, which again isn't too engaging for me, but it's a good casual game and I think good for newcomers as well because the art is appealing. Coin system is meh but tbh better than Pechka. The footnotes are a lot of fun! Interesting stuff to know like. What's in gunpowder, what the fuck is eugenics, etc etc. But it does hilight the footnote system which helps to provide social context and consume in a new light :)

5. Jekyll jekyll hyde jekyll hyde jeky

I don't hate Jekyll and Hyde, it just doesn't capture my interest like the others do. It's not bad at all and one can argue it's better than POTO but. Idk not for me. The story is pretty book accurate with the characters being canon compliant. It's not a bad thing bc POTO was kind of a shitstorm with the changes made, but I don't feel as engaged. Again it's all up to taste. It just feels like MazM didn't bring anything too new to the table which is alright. This is the game that brought MazM to relevance so ofc, it's a special lil guy :)

Art is done solely by Maha but lawd it is GORGEOUS. DILFS FOR DAYS!!! Cg cards are wonderfully composed, sells the atmosphere of the story. Chibis are so silly, it's like Don't Starve.

The gameplay is the interactive book style and uhhh, idk it's okay. Again nothing to write home about. It's a nice game to play on a rainy day :)

Honorable mention: Heartless

I found heartless on qooapp and while I can't play Yellow Bricks, I'll give my 2 cents on heartless.

I have heard the Wizard of Oz games MazM made are quite book accurate. I haven't read Wizard of Oz yet so I can't give my two cents on that. I'll give my two cents on how I felt.

Heartless/Yellow Bricks were MazMs first games. You can definitely tell the influence it has on their other games. How the story is paced etc etc. It's more child-friendly than their later games, but still has quite a bit of grimness to it. After all, it's about the tin man. Maha's art is so so so diff than it is now, YB/Heartless has a far cuter atmosphere where both the sprites and the chibi sprites are both, well, cute. Nicholas... sweet guy </3. Admittedly he does look like a child when he's an adult but they had a vibe to keep up. The witch is a milf. The gameplay is the interactive book style but it leans more into interactive imo. The minigames where you run away are reused in POTO where you run from the flaming skull. But uh in Heartless, YOU RUN AWAY FROM THE AXE THAT'S HACKING AWAY AT NICK. 😟

It's a ministory to explain what's with the tin soldier and oh boy with the short time it had, it pulled at my heart strings and never let go </3. Fun thing. Anyways. The footnotes system don't give any context metawise, just ingame stuff. Which isn't a bad thing as some people are unfamiliar with Wizard of Oz lore so it's good to fill them in on it.

#mazm #mazm hyde and seek #mazm jekyll and hyde #mazm thy creature #mazm phantom of the opera #Mazm Pechka #I will do anything besides my work

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