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sasaranurude · 5 days

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I'm a loser who both spends too much time playing gacha games and loves to hear myself talk, so here's another game review style post, this time covering my first day playing Break My Case. This time I'm not even being a little hater! I'm a lover! I'm cringe! I'm free! I love you Coly! I love you ikemen gacha games!!!!!!!

Break My Case is a new puzzle-music-adventure mobile game from Coly, the developers behind Mahoutsukai no Yakusoku and On Air. More relevant to BMC/BreMai is their game Stand My Heroes, with which it shares a writer, some gameplay elements, and of course a naming convention. Coly has developed a bit of a cult following for their unique status in the Japanese mobile gaming world: they're a company that was founded by women and hires women to make games for women. They put a lot of soul into their games. From the start, BMC is no different!

"Could you have pulled a clean version of this image from the internet so it didn't have all the game junk" no. it's my tumblr and you get my screenshots.

I (with help from friends) overviewed the initial Break My Case announcement back when it dropped. You can read that here! I said in that post that I thought a "dark rhythm game" would be a really cool direction for the game… and that's more or less what we got! GO ME!!!!!

First: the game's presentation is fantastic. Super slick graphical design and just amazing atmosphere. The sound design of this game is incredible. Genuinely. Really, really, good. All the music is amazing—I'm not knowledgeable enough to say anything other than "IT SLAPS!", but it totally does slap. The illustrations for the cards are all wonderfully atmospheric in and of themselves, and are just a delight to look at on the homescreen with its chill background music. Even just navigating menus is a sleek, seamless experience. The live2d is well-done, although it clashes a tad with the art style for a bit of an uncanny look at times.

The atmosphere! The atmospheeeeeeere!!!

Of course, the draw to this game is the characters and story, so let's jump into that. I'll admit right now that I read the story through a machine translation—I have aaaalmost enough Japanese knowledge to fill in the gaps, especially since the story is fully voiced, but I'm definitely not getting the full nuance of the story that someone fluent in Japanese is going to get. THAT SAID, after completing the prologue, I was definitely intrigued enough that I want to continue slogging through the MTL just to read more! There's a great setup, centered around the bar Aporia and its three modes—a daytime cafe, a nighttime members-only bar, and, secretly, a "fixer" service who'll help anyone with any problem. Our main character, a woman who was just forced to quit her job at a corrupt company, gets hired to replace Aporia's eccentric owner while he goes on a who-knows-how-long vacation. The owner also has the role of "tail"—as in, the tail a lizard sheds to avoid being eaten. If anything in the fixer service goes wrong, it's the owner who takes the fall and the blame. This hasn't come to mean much in practice yet in the (quite short) prologue, but it's a fascinating setup. The story promises to touch on themes of the threads that weave our lives together, how small meetings can lead to massive life changes, and whether any human being is truly replaceable, even in our modern corporate world where people are treated like cogs in a machine. According to a staff interview, there are a handful of references to Stand My Heroes in BreMai, but the games' settings aren't otherwise closely linked.

Rough translation in alt text. The Aporia manager Ai may be the most mysterious, intimidating character, but he also beefs with a parrot the first time you meet him, so...

All the characters are staff at Aporia with various unique roles and background. The prologue just gives you a little bit of each of them, but everyone does show up, and they all have interesting dynamics with each other already. Ai, the stern manager, has some history with the MC that he refuses to divulge, and goes so far as to force psychologist Riku to agree to not look into it. The range of relationships among the staff run the gamut from the calm and mature friendship between fortune teller Kiho and art teacher Kyoya, to the unfaltering dedication of Yu to his ex-mafioso savior Tomose, to the ridiculous Takeru and Soyogu who spend their first appearance waking up after having gotten black-out drunk together the night before. My favorite dynamic of all so far is that of Kou and Mao—Kou is a playboy who insists he's not a playboy, and is introduced evading a woman by… asking the icy Mao to pretend to be his boyfriend so that she thinks he's taken and gay and leaves him alone. Which Mao exasperatedly agrees to, telling Kou that he's used up his allotment for this month which ohmygod how often does Kou do this. Kou if you're asking this guy to pretend to be your gay lover so often he gives you a monthly limit I think you might just have to admit you want him to actually be your gay lover, Kou, oh my god—

Rough TL in alt text. Kou is letting the implication do all the heavy lifting here. He technically never said he was dating Mao. Technically.

youtube

On to the gameplay. There's gameplay! Unique gameplay! Good unique gameplay! Oh my god, uncharted joseimuke territory! The main gameplay mode is a match-3 puzzle game with rhythm elements. As in other rhythm games, each song in the game is its own level, more or less. (Each character has two unique songs, and three songs shared with the other members of their unit.) You set up a team with cards you've collected from the gacha, which determine your power level and special skills. The "leader" of the team has to be the character whose level you've selected. The puzzle gameplay is a tile-swapping match 3—think bejeweled or candy crush—but the tiles you've matched are only cleared once a bar sliding across the screen hits them, clearing them in tune with the song. Everything cleared in a single swipe of the bar ups the combo counter. There's also a life system, where if the bar slides across the screen without clearing a single match, you lose a life… But the bar moves pretty slow. You're not likely to game over or even lose a single life any time soon. There are more difficult versions of the levels I've yet to unlock, so I'm sure the life meter becomes relevant then. There's also "auto" and "loop" features if you want to grind a level over and over for exp and items, but, of course, the computer can't score as high as you playing it yourself.

And, really, it's fun to play, so why would you want to!? The sound of matches clearing with the music is so satisfying and really makes you want to combo as high as possible. Once you've matched some tiles, you can't move them again, nor use them in a second match (eg, in a cross shape), so if you want to maximize your combo and make as many matches as possible with what's on the board, you have to think ahead about which matches you're going to make. The bar slowly crossing the screen adds a visual timed element that gives some urgency to putting all the matches together. It definitely feels like a game you can pick up an instinct for over time, which is super fun.

All in all, a really solid, enjoyable little puzzle game. It would be fun to play even without the promise of anime boys. Stand My Heroes is also a match-3, for the record, which is what really cements the two games as being part of the same series.

Admittedly, the anime boy staring at you while you play musical candy crush is a little disconcerting.

The second gameplay mode is "Snap'n Spin", a… gameplay-lite mode that just puts chibi characters in random strange situations and lets you take pictures of them. The mode is explained to be a video game within the world of BreMai, so it's not even trying to be realistic or relevant to anything else in the game. Once you take your pokemon snaps of the boys, they get a fun little caption. You can save up to 40 pictures in your album. Other than being cute, the main way this mode interfaces with the rest of the game is that it's the primary way to unlock card stories for the cards you pulled in gacha.

This gameplay mode is... cute? I guess? It being so disconnected from the style and aesthetics of the entire rest of the game felt weird. The chibis are adorable, so it has that going for it. And I do like some of the captions you get on the photos afterwards. My favorite were the scenes you catch of a character drinking, and then the caption reveals their current favorite drink. That's a delightful detail for a game set in a bar. Mostly, though, this mode left me wondering "why?" ...And I imagine the answer is something like "because merchandisable chibi characters are a requirement for joseimuke games." This mode could've been anything so long as these cute, starry little dudes were in it.

Urara here hated the drink and the caption revealed that, lately, his favorite thing is sparkling water. He's the youngest character in the cast, so I guess he hasn't grown into booze yet...

One last feature I want to mention is the jukebox. Like many games, BreMai has a music player that lets you listen to tracks from the game… But its music player is, genuinely, a fully-featured music player app with shuffle, repeat, lyric displays, and even background play that works when you're in another app or your phone is off. What! Wild! When I first learned a few days ago that BreMai had a built-in player for its BGM tracks, my first thought was "Well, what's stopping someone from downloading the game just to use the music player and never spending a cent on it? Wouldn't you rather have the songs on spotify so you at least get a pittance of ad revenue, in that case? It's more than nothing."

But having played the game now, I see what they did to prevent that, lol. You don't unlock the songs in the jukebox until you get an SS score on the song's level. Which, I mean, that's normal rhythm game stuff, of course. Can't fault that decision. But, as in other gacha rhythm games, your score in a level depends on the power of your team of cards, and the cards you get from the initial handful of pulls aren't gonna get you anywhere near an SS score without significant investment. So you're either buying in-game currency to buy upgrade items, more gacha pulls, or both. Of course, you can also put a bunch of time into grinding for upgrade items—they drop from levels. Gacha currency is harder to come by. So you're not getting songs in the player without actually playing the game lmfao. The character solo songs in particular (the ones with vocals rather than just instrumentals) also require you to build up rapport with that character—the game calls it "Nice". You build up Nice with them by playing their other songs and using their cards in levels. It takes 1000 Nice on a character to unlock their song. In my first day of playing, I was able to get one character to about 250 Nice, another to 200, and a handful more with a few points, so it builds at an okay pace. There's ways to pay to speed up the grinding for Nice and for upgrade items with things like level skip tickets. So, basically: you're not getting that music player to a useful state without investing either money or time, lmao. Is paying-or-grinding to get cool music you can listen to while not playing the game more "worth it" than the usual freemium game goals of better units, new in-game outfits, or prettier card illustrations? ...Honestly, maybe it is? It's novel, at least.

All gacha rhythm games have the same card select screen, don't they. These were my cards' levels after my first day of play, and you can see they didn't quite reach a suggested score of "A", much less the maximum "SS".

But I do want to stress, the monetization is, for the most part, pretty easy to ignore. Nothing in-your-face. The button to go to the shop screen is a different color, but it's not flashing with an eternal indicator, it's not popping up at every second, it's just sitting there alongside all the other menu buttons. The game isn't shoving timers in your face at all times—there's a stamina meter, which is mildly annoying, but you get ten plays when it's full, and if you're just playing casually you're probably not going to want to play the puzzle game over and over enough to fully deplete that. I know the bar is on the damn floor here but Tokyo Debunker seriously made me realize how bad it can be with mobile game monetization. BreMai is freemium, yeah, but as far as dark patterns go, it's not egregiously bad.

So, the verdict: if you're a joseimuke game fan and aren't afraid to play a game that probably won't get an English port and doesn't even have a fan translation yet (which I realize is already counting out 99.99% of people), definitely give this one a try. See if you like the gameplay—it really is worth trying—and do check out the story if you've got the ability. Or just look at the pretty anime boys.

#suchobabbles #break my case #do you know how self-conscious i feel posting this. its actually so bad #so many feelings like 'did you seriously just write 2k words about a gacha game you played for a single day'#'why are you trying to pretend to be a game reviewer you have no qualifications and nobody cares about your opinions'#'stop roleplaying like youre a columnist blogger in the 2010s youre literally a tumblr nobody'#but im fighting the demons and im posting this anyways

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eeblouissant · 2 months

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goth (vampire ?!) Dorothy thoughts

She’s tradgoth all the way, in music and fashion. Although her makeup is toned down just a bit because I don’t believe she would be a huge fan of large graphic eyeliner & all that (it also just wouldn’t suit her facial features, she goes for more of a sharp but softened “corpse-esque” vibe. Her cheekbones kind of make the look, + highlighting already dark under eyes. Also her eye shape, oh boy she has such a perfect face for this style it’s actually insane. HER BROWS !!! & natural resting face, the shape of her lips, I could go on. This silly au was mostly inspired by her canon fashion, before I realized how she’d actually eat up an alternative style in like every single way possible. Bea Arthur truly had it all, she might have been the most beautiful woman on the planet)

I’m projecting just a tad here, but music-wise I think she would LOVE Bauhaus, voodoo church & type o negative. Specifically: the passion of lovers / brand new death, lullaby curses, live with the dead / Christian woman, I don’t wanna be me, love you to death, anesthesia, black no. 1. I’d need to dive back into my playlists but goth rock is definitely her fav (that stereotypical “goth sound”, Bauhaus, is her favourite. She’s like as tradgoth as you can get. Early 80s goth vampire zombie just the absolute blueprint)

now reactions … I was thinking about how she’d even get into the style in the first place, and I think it came about after settling down so young and never really having a moment to be her own person outside of school and then -> Stanley (& more importantly motherhood, also time & era). She’d discover alternative style & different subcultures through students and become secretly interested in the music (and perhaps a little envious of their self expression, where when she was their age Lots was going on), and then eventually the fashion, but her fashion wouldn’t really change much since she kind of already has an early 80s goth silhouette. “Goth” is also mainly music and less about the fashion but I digress. I think she’d find feelings & maybe some “angst” she never would have otherwise had an outlet for through the music & culture.

Roses reaction was my personal favourite to think about because I just KNOW she’d be immediately interested in the *style* (maybe less the music, I think she could also enjoy a version of that stereotypical goth sound that’s a little softer, & also the dancing I think she’d really love that bit actually) but for the most part she enjoys telling people that she’s living with a vampire, for funsies. (A lovely mutual, you know who you are, brought up the idea of a pastel goth inspired rose & it hasn’t left my brain since. I’ve gotta draw it, you are SO right)

Blanche would also *maybe* be interested in a more glamorous version of the makeup & hair, definitely the art as well, but the music is not for her. She’s interested with a more materialistic point of view, but I think Dorothy getting into something alternative & bringing that kind of a vibe into their house would spark ideas for Blanche creatively, & she’d really be able to appreciate the style & expression from an artistic stance! She understands self & artistic expression in a way much different from the others. Initially she’d poke a little fun, when she finds Dorothy listening to music her students (& the few she regularly complains about at that) would listen to for the first time, but she genuinely thinks the style really compliments Dorothy’s features & can never bring herself to actually insult it.

Sophia has also taken to referring to Dorothy as “the vampire”, with Rose. She once asked why she chose to hold off on the teenage angst phase until she was in her late 50s, and Dorothy said she should have seen it coming after 38 years & the turn her fashion had already taken in that time. Dorothy blames it on Stanley to try and make any sense to her mother & Sophia understands after that. Stan never hears the end of “making my daughter angsty”, and what an experience it is to walk down the street with her. It’s one thing to have your teenage daughter go through a phase, but this is something else entirely. Stanley definitely got an earful. (Stan is slightly afraid of Dorothy now, he almost questions if she was serious when she told Sophia it was his fault. Dorothy is ready to tell him yes for her own personal gain)

#the golden girls #dorothy zbornak #god I love silly aus like these #this started out as a joke and also an excuse to draw Dorothy in a style I love and now it’s an actual au #I have got to draw interactions between Dorothy & Sophia in this au #glam goth Blanche just won’t leave my head she’s WAY too gorgeous for her own good #pastel goth rose was already talked about but oh my god I love her already #it’s Sophia & her three vampires for roommates at this point

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mauesartetc · 3 months

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hello maue! ive seen you talking about helluva boss and hazbins character design and the like, so i was wondering if you could critique the character designs from the game doll eye? specifically the main three characters: alfred, mystery and kao. i have my own opinions about the subject matter, but im curious to see what yours are.

Interesting!

So right off the bat, I'd like to highlight a major issue all three designs have. Fun game for those at home: Without looking it up, guess the species of each of these characters.

(Answers below the cut)

Left to right: Alfred- Shiba Inu. Dr. Mystery- Oriental Longhair cat. Kao- Ram.

If you answered all three correctly, congrats! That's three more than I did. Alfred much more closely resembles a fox or coyote than a Shiba Inu (and his nose is so tiny I actually thought he was human at first glance). Dr. Mystery looks... somewhat feline, but the thick, striped tail reminded me more of a raccoon. And my gut reaction to Kao was "mouse", judging by what I thought were his gray cheeks, pink nose, and whiskers. And that's the thing: A character's species should be so clear that your gut reaction will be correct. If viewers can't see the resemblance, the design isn't communicating the information it should.

Another thing is that their poses are a bit boring since they're too symmetrical; like tell me you used symmetry mode without telling me you used symmetry mode. A symmetrical pose for a character is fine for orthographic/turnaround sheets so you know how they look from a perfect front view, but for a main pose it's kinda stiff and doesn't show much personality. It gels okay with the art style, which appears to be very flat and graphic. But there's no harm in giving even heavily-abstracted characters a little dimension.

Lastly, these designs are extremely bottom-heavy, with the feet taking up a disproportionate amount of space. Because of this huge disparity of visual "weight" between the feet and faces, our eyes keep moving to the feet, which isn't ideal. Generally (not always, but the vast majority of the time), you'll want to direct the most attention to the character's face, as the face expresses the most emotion. "The eyes are the windows to the soul" and all that. What are feet the window to? Blisters?

Anyway, here are my notes on how the designs are working on an individual level.

See, the thing about making a symmetrical drawing is, you better make sure one side doesn't have any awkward tangents, or they'll reflect on the other side as well.

And now, here's how I would redesign Alfred:

I mainly just made the face and ears look more Shiba-like, made the tail more prominent in the silhouette, and shrunk down his legs and feet a tad so the proportion gap between them and the face isn't so huge. I experimented with keeping the shaggy hair on the sides of the face, but it made him look more like a wolf or a Husky, and Shibas have pretty short fur. Also, I realized his shoes looked a lot like work boots, which wouldn't make much sense for a teacher to wear in a school setting. So I replaced them with dress shoes, which would be more appropriate for the environment.

Now let's look at Kao:

Not much of a change on this one. I lengthened his face, enlarged his horns so they're more visible, puffed up his collar to make room for his pointy chin and mouth, and did away with the ear. At first I thought just making it smaller would suffice, as its huge size was part of why I thought this guy was a mouse at first. But there's a lot going on up there already, so in the end I figured it would make things simpler if his ears weren't visible. I also incorporated eyelids that imply where his pupil-less eyes are looking.

Finally, Dr. Mystery.

The first order of business was determining the facial structure. Oriental Longhair cats have long faces and defined cheekbones, so I wanted that to come through in the drawing. The ears and bangs are now simplified, and the layering of the lab coat, pants, and tail makes much more sense. I also added a streamlined version of the tail fringe I drew in the initial redline, and separated the boots from the pants. The Meowth whiskers are gone; while they did provide a strong hint that Mystery is a cat, the face already has enough going on with the eyelashes, the bangs crossing over it, and the mouth jutting out at the side. I do think this version reads as "cat" without whiskers, but if they prove necessary, a simple line for each should do the trick.

In all three I tried to stay faithful to the angular, abstracted art style while making their species more clear and making certain features more logical and/or readable. This was a fun challenge! Thanks for asking!

#character design #doll eye #anthros #animals #redline #redesign #ask #animevillainscourge

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 1 year

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Hi Ms Raven! I just wanted to ask what're your thoughts on the new twst manga chapter?? Personally, I'm not the biggest fan, but give credit where credit is due; the art is gorgeous and I love the Leona's characterization. I still have gripe with the MC change and I still feel it was unnecessary, I feel Yuuken would've been the same in the role if he wasn't replaced by Yuuka. I can't help but think that the MC change was for self insert purposes than anything else 💀

I believe I went over my initial impression of the Episode of Savanaclaw’s first chapter in this post. To summarize: pretty art (especially the eyelashes) and nice visual storytelling that expands on what the visual novel format of the game laid out as groundwork. (However, if I had one minor qualm with the artwork, it’s that I don’t believe the mangaka’s style necessarily suits TWST in all scenarios; for example, sometimes the characters make expressions that, while beautiful, make them appear like completely different characters for like a single panel.) Overall, I thought the chapter was pretty good, if not a tad bit long due to all of the exposition and recap we had to go through again.

One element that I didn’t really discuss in that reaction post was our new Yuu, Yuuka Hirasaka. This is largely because I personally don’t have an vested interest in the Yuus 💦 and quite honestly, the introduction of another one (which replaces a previous one) made me equal parts excited and disappointed. I don’t have anything against a new character, but I’m disappointed that no manga!Yuu will ever receive a fully realized character arc; each one will (assumedly) be cut short to make way for a new Yuu, which means I can never see myself getting invested in one of them (since I know they’ll just go away at the end of the episode). It just doesn’t feel satisfying to me, and I’m moderately concerned about how reintroducing the Yuu and the episodes leading up to the current point in the plot will work for future episodes which get continuously lengthier, more complex, and build on the relationships established in previous episodes.

Yuuka is also just at a point where it’s too early for me to judge whether I like her or not (though I know many are excited at the prospect of a Yuu that is a “strong independent woman that takes no one’s shit”; this seems to be the popular fandom interpretation of her). I’ll reserve my judgment for now; I want to see more of how she interacts with the characters and the world first.

I understand that everyone may have their own reservations about Yuuka (and it’s totally fine if you find yourself not enjoying her), but let’s be careful not to point fingers about it 😅 For all we know, the changing of Yuus per episode could be a very deliberate and story-driven move (a la the popular “time loop” theory). We can’t make assumptions about the intent behind it, especially when we don’t yet have the context of the entire main story being completed.

Additionally, while it may be validating for the (largely) female fanbase that self inserts to have its representation in a female Yuu in official TWST media, I don’t think the change was just to appease a demographic. It may be such that it opens up interesting avenues for engagement with Leona (who, canonically, “respects women”). As I’ve stated in a previous post though, I don’t think the change will be that big, but it could expand more on Leona’s character by demonstrating how exactly he interacts with women whom he supposedly “respects”. We’ve only really had vague information and fandom speculation on this point, and I, for one, welcome any and all new lore 😌

Yuuka offers a slightly different perspective than Yuuken because of little details like this, and that is one advantage of changing the lenses through which we view the story every episode. Again, not everyone will be happy with the direction of the manga, but let’s try to look at the positives ^^ Lots of Yuus also means lots of possibilities, yeah?

#Leona Kingscholar #twst #twisted wonderland #twst manga #twisted wonderland manga #Yuuka Hirasaka #Hirasaka Yuuka #disney twisted wonderland #question #notes from the writing raven #spoilers #advice #Yuuken Enma #Enma Yuuken

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cerastes · 2 years

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This isn’t Yet Another Twitter Is Cringe post, I want to talk about it a little bit. Being a bit more active there as of late (’active’ being very much a stretch, I only retweet fanart and cosplay, and occasionally post “I love Specter/I love Dusk/I love Platinum”) the Atmosphere Of Posting there is a bit bizarre to me, the Kinds Of Posts you see.

Mind you, I am fully aware that I have an extremely specifically curated netspace here, where the only things I see are bizarre, absurdist posts, literary references, netlore, and crass humor (aka perfection for me), and I only follow friends or people that I have interacted with to certain degree, so I’m trying to let that not color my perspective too much, but where I am going with this is that the limited amount of characters you can put in any given tweet in addition to how visibility works in there, while you could argue fosters creativity and ability to synthetize your argument into something more concise (”if I had more time, I’d write you a shorter letter”), does also have many drawbacks, the ones I wish to focus on today being that the formatting of the website is a tad bizarre to navigate, since anything that does require a lot of words to properly convey or explain, needs to be broken into several smaller posts. This post, for instance, would be 3 and a bit of a fourth tweets long so far. It’d be Very Awkward. I think it’s very awkward.

That, and the fact that Twitter puts things on your timeline from people you don’t follow, based on how much interaction these tweets have plus how relevant they are to your posting, results in the heaviest, most popular tweets and users being people that post generic ‘prompts’: Since you have a limited wordcount and relevance is based on interaction, I see that a lot of “recommended” tweets are stuff like “Tell me what your OC feels about this following scenario/how they’d react” or “Do you enjoy playing [game]? What do you think could be improved about it?” or “Prove you watched this show by quoting it [screenshot of Courage the Cowardly Dog]”.

End of the day, Big Numbers there mostly come from things where the onus is on the retweeter, rather than the creator of the tweet. That is, the content of the original post is very lean, but it lets people talk about whatever they want, in their own terms. This isn’t bad, per se, it’s just different, and not my preference.

Most recommendations I get are art, because 95% of the posts I interact with are art, but sometimes these other posts like “What character do you ship your Doctor self-insert with?” or “What would you change about the game?” come up, which I have no interest in and would rather get another piece of fanart instead.

I think that system could improve if you could hit the meatballs menu (the three dots button) and click on an option that says “I am not interested in this post” so the algorithm remembers and starts having reference for what to place there and what not to place there. Unless I’ve not seen it, the option does not exist, with the closest option being “Mute this User altogether” which is... A bit extreme for a single post I don’t hate, but would rather not bear with the style of going forward.

This is all just musing about “what if Twitter was my main platform”, which isn’t and hopefully won’t be the case, as my preference is the “you make your own timeline” dashboard system that Tumblr has adhered to (it’s best aspect to be honest! A very good aspect, at that!). I dislike posts being recommended to me from outside of my follow list at all (another thing I like Tumblr doing is that it recommends blogs; Twitter does recommend users but also posts) but if I had to necessarily deal with it, I’d like for there to be a system to directly tell the algorithm what posts I strictly don’t want to see.

In any case, due to the prompt-like nature of these posts, I think posts there are impersonal to a fault; I don’t think we should know everything about everyone, especially on the internet, but part of what makes banger posts, bangers, is that there’s a certain pizzazz to the original poster, the way they decided to convey what is likely a funny story or concept, in their own particular way. If you ask me if I’d rather be known as the Clown Ejaculation guy or the My Wife Is A Demon (affectionate) guy or, among some more recent people, the Lucina Blowjob guy, etc, or Someone That Makes Prompts, well, I’d take all of the former. I want to get to know more of the former, even, that’s where my favorite kind of blogs to follow originate from.

Different strokes for different folks, obviously, but yeah, the Atmosphere in Twitter is a lot less personal, more sterile, “plastic friendly”, even, whereas Tumblr, with all of its numerous flaws, at least has more personality, and we can tell each other to fucking die if we want to, without it being more than a 5 minute interaction that we then just move away from.

#this isn't apropos of anything I am merely making observations #I found it interesting

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codylabs · 2 months

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Yo I saw your Bubblegum Crisis fanart a week ago and I thought they were really cool! (yes I know they are old but whatever)

I'm not sure if you still are a fan of the series but I've got a question:

Hypothetically speaking , if BGC was going to release today as say a remake/soft reboot- 12 episodes ideally what would you add or change? (Outside of some obvious things like flashing lights)

Personally I'd make Leon a tad more likeable and give each Knight Saber a bit more development.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmm

I would give the suits ankles.

Define the Sabers' weaponry and equipment a little more rigidly, so that combat sequences can follow a little more internal logic than their current "we've got newer upgraded suits that can punch harder than your lasers can lase" or whatever.

I would make the suits a little bulkier to allow space for internal machinery and enough... Oh heck I won't keep going on about the suits. You saw the fanart so you already know the attributes of my opinions on such matters.

Uhhhh get rid of the topless scenes; for Various Reasons I'm not a big fan of fanservice in general.

Make Mackie and Linna actual characters, with character traits and character arcs and characteristics and stuff. One of the only good things the 2040 reboot did was make Linna a sort of POV character as the only 'normal one.' I thought that worked really well. In the fanfic I wrote, that's how I use her. And Mackie... His big sister is a closeted psychopath with the fortune and propensity to fund a private army, frequently makes him drive through exploding factories in the dead of night, and in the morning he has to... Go to school? Do his friends just think he spends all his time on some obsessive hobby, so when they come over he has to pretend to be some kind of expert in building model trains just to keep up appearances? Do the Sabers go on a mission only to discover they can't fly, because Mackie had hockey practice and forgot to fuel the thermal rockets? Is Sylia on the PTA??? This is comedy gold.

As far as animation style goes, the original nailed it in terms of what I want and what I like. Yeah it would be cheaper today to CGI it, but that sounds worse to me for reasons. And yeah I know how much difficulty and baggage is added to art by costly development, but I want to have my cake and also to eat it. Pwease.

The show is usually fairly good about this next one, but I'll say it because a lot of modern stories fail at it: keep the plot small-scale. The show kind of lost me when they exploded all the Genome buildings around the planet, and the reboot REALLY lost the plot. Like, the protaganists are just one team, they should fight one-team sized threats. Just like Spiderman shouldn't face anyone bigger/badder than Doc Ock, the Sabers shouldn't ever deal with anything bigger than "somebody stole the codes to a military satellite." The codes to a military satellite is big stakes for them. That's a big deal. Their regular fair should be bagging/tagging/pacifying rampant androids or sabotaging corporate mischief. There's tons of ground to explore there. Maybe they can go biggish for a finale. Maybe. If they behave and are good. As a treat.

I like that the original was very episodic. Every episode can stand on its own as a little movie. I like that.

Sylia should appear to testify in court wearing full armor with a darth vader voice synthesizer. Nothing would be funnier than this. The show should be a little funny. It should be a little campy. The cast are all funny people with strong personalities. They should be allowed to be funny.

I disagree that Leon is currently unlikable, I think he's great. Obviously, he's a huge simp and a total tool, but he has tons of good aspects as well, and is an all-around swell dude if he weren't ever exposed to w o m e n. IMO, being a perfectly moral star child isn't what makes a good character, and if he has flaws that's opportunity for growth. But I concede that he does need to do more in the plot though. I'd give him an arc, some development or at least resolution to him and Priss, maybe he figures out Nene's secret ID and acts as their man on the inside, maybe he shows up with the calvary, maybe he's actual useful for once in his life, IDK.

Wild west episode.

Show boomers active in everyday life, I guess. We hear a lot about how useful they are in industry, but all we ever see are state-of-the-art combat models that look all scary, or weird one-offs like illegal vampire hookers. There are innumerable directions you could take domestic androids .

There's probably more I could say, but it's 2 in the morning and I'm pretty much just procedurally generating ideas like an LLM at this point. I still do like this show a lot, though maybe not as much as I once did.

#bubblegum crisis #what do i tag here

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pine-niidles · 4 months

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Looking Back on 2023

Heyyy folks! Long time no news from me huh.

I'm struggling to think of what to even say about my silence. I've not been doing so bad I'd call myself depressed, but I'm doing a tad worse than just a slump. It's been a rough 6 months, not because of one big thing. Instead, a bunch of medium-sized reasons all piled up on top of each other to leave me extremely drained. I've mostly been working on the two commissions I still had in my queue (thank you to my commissioners for being so patient with me, I'm so sorry to make you wait so long <3). I've done a little personal art other than that but didn't have the leftover focus to keep up with sharing it on social media or writing up any updates about my situation. I've pretty much only been active sharing things in my art discord. I'd like to say I've been doing better in the last month or so, but I hesitate to make any promises at this point! We'll just have to see how things go :)

Artfight

So you were promised a more in depth artfight review but I think I missed the right timeframe for that... instead have this look at 3 years of unfinished artfight thumbnails from my new year's wip clean-out!

Year of Art Summary

All things considered I made a lot of art this year, and I'm really happy with how most of it turned out ☺ I did a bunch of experimenting with more playful techniques and color schemes and I think they suit my style a lot. I want to try and much those limits even more next year to see what kind of fun art I can create! Something with colors specifically really clicked in my brain after that witch drawing I did in April, before then I would spend a long time figuring out the perfect color scheme and doing a bunch of adjustments but ever since that drawing things have really been coming together super quick? I'm not sure what changed but no complaints from me.

Life Drawing Summary

I rarely post my life drawing but I've been keeping at it! Actually, I put together a few pdfs showcasing all my life drawing going back to 2022, you can download them for free in my itch or ko-fi shops! :>

I also put together a yearly art improvement comparison going back to 2015 that I was planning to put here. However, seeing how long this is already getting... I'll make a separate post for it.

Commissions

I've been gearing up to open commissions again after that unintended hiatus. I don't want to open slots until I'm sure I'm back to being able to finish them in a reasonable timeframe, so I've been using that leftover energy I do have to think about revamping some things and new styles to offer. Back in November I ran a survey on what people want to see from me (it's still open if you'd like to fill it out and help me get more stats!)

here's a preview of what's to come based on that & my whims:

- stamp commissions were super well received so they'll be added to my main repertoire

- A combo of me reading too much dun meshi and wanting to offer some kind of comicky commissions led to this idea of comic pages of characters eating together, I have a couple examples in progress, when they're done I'll add this style to my main offerings!

- I'm still not 100% set on sketchpages but I like the idea of them so if this test goes well I'll add them as an option

Onward to 2024!

I already completed my new year's resolution on day 1 of 2024, it was to pet a cat. I've made a second one which is to get a library card whenever my visa is approved and I move back home. It's been something I've been wanting to do for a while but never got around to, hoping this will be the excuse I need to do it.

Art-wise it's not a new goal, but I've been trying to focus on improving my rendering! Though I've also been playing around a lot with screentone... the two don't have to be at odds 🤔

I'm dedicating this year's personal art time to making new references for as many ocs as possible with nude bases so I can easily design new outfits for them whenever I want to without fully making a new ref from scratch.

Otherwise I'm just trying to take it slow, work on things one at a time and see what happens from there.

#year in review #2023 #project updates

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mew-cake · 2 years

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Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is literally one of the best interpretations of the characters I have ever seen. It does something new with these established characters that is just a breath of fresh air.

Raph was always “the angry one”. But now he’s the tank. The big guy with a heart of gold. And more interestingly, he acts like a leader. I remember is past turtle stories there would be friction between Raph and Leo about who the leader is which always felt kinda forced because the only reason Raph acted like that was because he was the designated lancer. But taking that character and making him the hard-shelled, soft-hearted older brother who looks after his siblings?? Oh my god, it’s so good.

Donatello has always been The Smart One(tm) and while that stays the same, they play it up more. He isn’t just the tech guy when plot demands it. Right down to his fighting style he is The Tech Guy who knows what to do. I’ve also seen some stuff about how he’s good representation of low empathy, especially when it comes to people on the autistic spectrum and yeah, I def see it. He does lack empathy a lot of the time, but that doesn’t make him any less compassionate.

Mikey I’m kinda sad cuz it feels like he hasn’t gotten a lot of time to shine. As of now I just finished episode 17 out of 26 and it’s honestly sort of a let-down. Mainly because I love Mikey?? I remember early on there was a comment about him being an artist and my brain was like “!!!” because hey! I’m an art kid who loves the color orange! Like, let me see some of his art!! Even with my own personal gripes, I adore the changes made to Mikey’s character. Before he was just the designated goofy character, but now he feels more like a whole person rather than a gimmick.

Leonardo has Protagonist Syndrome and it is a tad annoying. BUT! I’m not asking for perfect and nuanced character writing here. He’s a fun dude. Analysis brain turned off. He’s pretty cool. ALSO I really like he’s a red eared slider because we have those turtles were I live and I love them.

Splinter was kinda hard to get behind at first since, ya know, he’s normally the wise old master. Now he’s just sort of a old grandpa. But!! I appreciate the change in direction, and I really like how they’re going about the whole story. Like, he’s a kung-fu movie actor. Who also is apparently actually good at fighting. At least enough to get noticed by Draxum and mutated. So that creates this really cool dynamic of someone who lived the high life of stardom and is now just sorta chilling out.

ALSO also at first I was a tad irritated because they kept failing a bunch of mission stuff and I’m like “wtf aren’t they cool trained ninjas??” but THEN I realized that by “trained ninjas” it just meant they watched their dad’s old action movies. They learned how to fight by watching movies and the practicing those moves in real life. Which explains a lot actually. And it’s also a really brilliant way to tie in every aspect of the turtles and their origin story. They are, in fact, cool ninja turtles dudes. But they’re also stupid teenagers who are in way over their heads.

This show is really good and I’m having a fun time.

#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt #netflix and cake #so anyway im a ninja turtle fan now-

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doubleddenden · 2 years

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Rather than sleep, I'm gonna talk about a Pokémon fan game I recently beat:

Realidea System

Like Opalo, it's another Spanish fan game, this one focusing more on aesthetics and mechanics with a little less under the hood in terms of new Pokémon, but still having a lot to offer story wise and game wise.

Spoiler, 8/10 for the good stuff, but a point docked off for incomplete translations and just a tad too many mini game issues.

More under the cut

So Realidea System came out around September I think, and the main you'll see right away is a gorgeous art style with bright colors and very intricate tiles. Every location looks cozy af or scary where appropriate, and it has a ton of different aesthetics that it works very well with for each.

Also, unlike most fan games, there's talk portraits for the story that help convey who is talking and the emotion conveyed- this is actually very pleasant tbh, and there's a lot of good designs you can better appreciate due to it. Tbh I have issues reading, and sometimes it's hard to tell who is talking via text alone. This actually helped me a lot more than the creator probably intended, but it's something I'm still thankful for.

The sprite work, what's made for the game anyway, also looks very good and has a unique but simplistic style with eye catching shading and colors. I'm actually pretty jealous of it and sort of taking notes from it, because there's not a lot of the same style of shading as the gen 5 or 4 sprites, but the style still works in its own way. I'd almost compare it to a 2d cell shading style, but idk if that's accurate? I like it, I'll say that. Not to mention that there's a lot of fun Overworld sprites that convey just as much if not a tad more emotion than the portraits.

The sprite work also extends to fakemon. Now I am a little bit disappointed that there were so little new Pokémon to experiment with, I'm not gonna lie. There's the starters, a legendary, and... about 5 or 6 variants. That's it. However, obviously they went with Quality over Quantity, which I can respect. Each of these are really well designed and excellently sprited, and most importantly fun to use! I chose the water starter, and it's ability and 2 signature moves are really fun in a fight and can potentially let it sweep.

Continuing off of this, to make up for the lack of new Pokémon, there's obviously a huge variety of old Pokémon to choose from, including lots of starters such as Chikorita and Rowlett. Megas also make a return, and some regional variants appear too.

Now on the technical aspect, there's a lot of cool shit under the hood, mainly the Realidea System that is the heart of the game's story. What this does is replace the HM mechanics (hallelujah), such as the Fly mechanic, which is now Teleport (although it functions exactly like Fly), and Surf, which now just happens as soon as you touch the water without any prompt needed.

The RS also comes with a couple extras that require certain points attained from using items on your pokemon or just generally bonding with them. Some of these include a repel system that repels as many steps as you use, a heal system that basically functions as a Pokémon Center, and an automatic level up feature that functions as a Rare Candy. The last two were actually very helpful for my journey and filling out the dex.

Outside of the RS there's codes you can put in at the Pokémon Center to sort of help with grinding, which can exist if you want or just completely bypass it by changing the levels of any Pokémon in your party up to the highest level in your team (be mindful that this will not trigger evolution, the Level Up feature will tho). Honestly, it feels dirty, but I actually do like this feature just so I can keep everyone around the same level. The EXP all works in conjunction with this btw, about like the Switch games function without making the game too easy. Basically all of this is to ensure you can just catch a new little guy and bam, he's already caught up, and grinding just isn't a thing anymore, so you can just be on your happy little way.

You can also remember moves on your own from the party menu, which honestly is just very helpful and makes it so you don't miss any by using the level up trick. If you're so inclined, you can also change the nature's of your pokemon via 3 heart scales from the party menu.

Basically a lot of tedious bs is completely ironed out, letting the game be fun without too many hold ups beyond a puzzle.

But speaking of puzzles... good lord there's a lot of mini games. Mind you they're doable, but a lot are kind of trial and error, especially the ones that require the ability to read and understand Spanish. You may think "oh just Google translate," and you'd be correct in assuming that does help with a good portion. But I'm not lying when I say that there's a section dedicated entirely to PUNS. It was fucking hilarious just trying to guess what's going on, but also frustrating. Even without the Spanish though, the rhythm games kill me.

The translation is also just not complete. I'd say 70% complete, because you still get bits of Spanish in normal gameplay and a good many puzzles are only instructed in Spanish. Not to mention the journals are ALL Spanish, so i had to have some friends help me read it. What is finished is about 95% decent though, with only a small handfuls of grammatical errors or odd translations, so kudos for that.

Now, characters and story. The story is about standard fair for a normal Pokémon game, but there are some interesting twists here and there. In cooperation with gorgeous visuals and art, the story is told pretty well and is really immersive. The characters too are also very entertaining and hilarious, and also have a fair bit of depth. I have to say I found myself attached to Elliot, Owen, and Alba, which is very strange since I'm usually not one for rivals or Lilly type characters. There are some groan worthy moments, cliche bits, or some not so ideal things done, but I do think it's a passion project someone put a lot of heart and soul put in.

Oh, and this game is hilarious. Check everything that looks interactive and you'll see what I mean.

Oh oh, there's also a very well managed side quest system. Tons of side Quests pop up and are easily found in the overworld, so that's a bonus if you're like me and hate having to hunt a specific NPC.

Lastly, the music: i believe the music is mostly original, which is amazing because every town and route sound magical in some way, and the original trainer themes are very, very good. When I say prepare yourself for the champion, I mean that in so many ways but ESPECIALLY the music. My one grief is yet again the reuse of the BW gym theme. I think it's okay, but I was really hoping for something original. But what is here is awesome.

Overall it's a fun time and a lot of effort went into this. There's a lot of fun poked at the series (especially towards Kanto) and the entire game feels like a fun adventure. I hope to see another project by this dev, maybe with more fakemon? Please? That's my favorite part of playing fan games.

Anyway, 8/10

#pokemon realidea system #pokemon fan game #den reviews stuff #doubled plays games

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fakeloveaskblog · 2 years

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I'm banning myself from ever interacting with any car ever now /lh

Also when I was reading the update a mixture of will wood and Heather's was playing so it matched the vibe adequately)

Hi Janus, looking fabulous as usual. Hey, fun idea, if you're not busy of course, I think you, remy and remus should do something together again. You all like each other and I think it would be nice (your choice though).

Hey remy! I'm here for moral support and advice. For the moral support, maybe mayhaps try driving a tad safer (I can help if you wish) and just try...being as much as yourself as you can whilst you're high. No judgment, I promise, just great concern for you. I think you're a good person and in no way a bad friend, please do not worry.

Hi Remus, I bring offerings in the shape of mouse skull jewellery, seeing as I haven't talked to you for a g e s. Genuine question though, are you alright? There are lots of changes and memories going on, and remember does seem a little...unstable. Do you need anything? At all? Maybe a mini too hat so we match?

((Also, I would love it if Oswalds snail problem gets worse and worse :]))

🐌🕸

(All the art described in this is based on real art pieces so I'll have a list of credits at the end)

Janus was in the middle of grocery shopping when you appeared in his cart. He put the cereal he was holding right next to you before saying.

"You're sitting on my quinoa"

He lifted you up and sat you on the store shelf between two cereal boxes before straightening your hat.

"Much better" When you spoke he nodded along with a calm smile "I think I can find time to spend time with them. I have a busy schedule right now. Between slaying the queen and generally slaying, it's a hard life to be me" He let out a chuckle at his own joke "I am actually very available and I would love to be with them"

"I found the eggs" Logan interrupted. He placed a box of eggs in the shopping cart before diligently crossing it off his shopping list. "Greetings Snail" He added.

Janus snaked their hand around his arm and Logan pressed a quick kiss to the top of their head. The notification sound for their phone went off and they quickly checked.

"It's Remy. Seems that Snail simply wanted to butter me up. They're wondering if I would enjoy an evening of karaoke clubbing" They looked up at their boyfriend "Want to come?"

"Coming is one of my favorite activities" Logan replied fully serious "I would gladly come along. I can be the resident driver"

"I'll tell them. Want me to go fetch the lettuce now?"

"Oh please do! It's half price!"

This time you appeared in the bathroom sink of Remus' apartment. You peaked over the side of the sink and saw Remy sitting on the floor. They were holding a mirror to shave, doing it while standing up took too much energy.

There was no obvious beard growth that actually needed shaving, they just had to do it the moment the thought of gross hair growing on their face entered their mind. You caught them tracing their hand along their jaw down to the adams apple and back up to their hair, trying out a few different ways to style it. All while grimacing at themself.

They squinted up at you "Girl did you just suggest that you would help me drive even tho you're like a snail....without arms!....You may have a point! Tho I think I'm like gonna try not to like drive at all"

As you continued they got the same look on their face they had gotten the day before when another watcher had talked to them about their relapse. They lowered the mirror and sat the electric shaver away to look up at you.

"...thanks....i wasn't like expecting people to like....not judge me....i didn't...i'm not used to people like being concerned about me if they don't like also yell at me about how being concerned about me is like causing them pain.......I'm a really really awful person...and a bad friend.....so it's nice to hear at least someone doesn't think that....thanks"

You had successfully delivered your message so you got down from the sink and left the bathroom. Since you're a snail you're quite slow so it's a good thing that you're also a master at roller skating. You rolled to the kitchen and knocked right into the back of Remus' leg.

He picked you up while saying hello before setting you on the counter where an array of sandwiches had been laid. It was lunch for the artpark day. He'd mixed mustard and tube caviar on his sandwiches while he'd simply given Remy cheese.

A loud gasp left his lips as the mouse skull jewelry landed right on the cheese. He picked it up and inspected it while letting out several Wows!

You asked if he was alright and he nervously twirled the jewelry around his wrist. He kept his hands busy with preparing the sandwiches while thinking of what to respond.

He sighed “I...guess I’m not....remembering has always been unstable I just managed to hide it ‘cause I’ve lived alone...So many memories are blurry I’m constantly scared I’ll remember something...I don’t wanna remember anything more....”

The coffee machine started to ring to show it was done. He went over to it and simply let the smell of newly brewed coffee wash over him. It reminded him of Remy, it kept him grounded.

"....you are kinda right though. Living with someone 24/7 is making it worse...I had to become a very strange shape to fit in what made me safest around...him...and now when I'm with Remy my brain keeps wanting to revert back to what kept me safe but I know Remy is safe! I know that! But my brain won’t shut up about it!"

He finished up the sandwiches and packed them down into a box. His hands shook ever so slightly as he did it.

"I constantly have this feeling that at any time it will happen again. it's so fucking daunting...." He managed to force on a tired smile to show he appreciated the company “A matching hat does sound nice. I wish you could pick my brain out of my skull as well. A part of my thoughts is constantly occupied with fear, it gets real fucking tiring....I don't wanna feel him no more"

Remus let out a sigh and fiddled with the mouse skull to distract himself. He moved to the cupboard where his and Remy's daily medicine were.

A few hours later the bus stopped outside the art park. Around it were vast green acres where cows roamed and wheat grew. Remus had had a hayday during the entire bus ride since he got to yell out “COW!” over and over again.

Remy lowered their sunglasses and glanced around the entrance of the park “Not seeing any a- Is that a fucking castle?!”

“I think that’s just a fancy house”

“Giiirl I think we accidentally took the bus to like the regency period. It happens more often that you think. Time traveling buses I’m telling ya”

Right next to the entrance was the gift shop and a small cafe. Behind the roof the top of the fancy house could be seen. It belonged to the rich people who technically owned the park, they had just decided to loan the land out to preserve art.

There wasn’t that many people, only a few couples, maybe a family here and there. Probably because it was a cold day. Not cold enough to stop Remy from wearing a skirt but cold enough for them to put on long fuzzy socks. Remus had wired the mouse skull jewelry around their cane for good luck and mouse strength.

Remy reached out their long arm as they passed the gift shop and snatched a map showing where all the art was located in the park. They handed it to Remus who squeeled when he looked at it.

“How many ghosts do you think lives in the fancy house?” He asked.

“Liiiike 4 at least. Tons of drama!! Probs even like a love triangle”

“Love square”

“Oooh girl. Speaking my language”

“SPOOKY BARN!!” Remus exclaimed while pointing at a dubious looking barn that stood next to the gift shop.

He shook Remy’s arm around while pulling them along towards it. There were no people in the barn aside from them and the only light was coming in from the open barn door. Heavy breathing filled the barn.

The sound enveloped them. Weak uneasy breathing. Like a wounded animal laying on the side of the road and yet so hauntingly human. Quickening heartbeats continued in the background.

Mirrors covered the floor in front of them. The reflective surface seemed to have grown up from the floor and stuck onto the wall. It reflected the wood ceiling that looked like it had stood there for hundreds of years. Like a church thrown out into the woods.

Remus grinned and waved at himself in the mirror “I think this is the first art piece!!”

Remy sincerely squinted “Bestie sorry to break it to you but I’m not seeing any like art. Where’s the painting?”

“Beanie...Sweet beanie filled with layers of skin and blood and at least 3 bones...Did you think they were going to hang paintings outside? Where it rains and the wind blows?”

They shrunk in on themself while nodding.

Remus’ smile widened even more “That’s a really nice thought” His hand reached out for their’s and their fingers intertwined “It’s a sculpture park Beanbog. Some installation and performance stuff too I’m guess. Should have figured that wouldn’t be obvious to non art freaks”

“I’m just like stupid”

“And I’m ready to get on these bitching mirrors!”

“That’s allowed??”

In response Remus simply pulled them along. He took a first step out on the mirror and squeezed their hand to make them follow. They left the cane on the ground and snaked their free hand around his upper arm to keep themself stable.

The breathing coming from the speakers all around them quickened. They started to become desperate as the heart beat faster and faster.

“Maybe there’s a sensor under the mirrors” Remus theorised “So the audio changes the more people walk on it”

They walked further and Remy looked down at the floor. At the shape of their hands tightly together being reflected back to them with the ceiling behind them. The audio made it feel like the barn was a body that had swallowed them.

Remus took a few steps back to test out if it would change anything but the breathing just kept getting more ragged. A family walked into the barn and for a moment Remy wondered if they should move away from Remus before they felt his thumb softly rub back and forth against their skin.

One last desperate breathe echoed through the room before the audio slowly cut out. For a few seconds it was quiet before ambient music started up.

“Augh it’s just a looping audio tape” Remus muttered “Still cool! Ready to continue?”

“Sure”

Their hands stayed together as they left the barn and continued down the stony walkway. Remus pointed out an Installation in the trees and got so focused on ti Remy had to pull him away from walking right into a wall.

On the other side of the wall was a garden of trees blossomed with white leaves. Beyond the trees was an open picket fence showing the true entrance to the meat of the park. The forest with the massive lake in the middle.

When they got closer to the trees they saw the leaves were small paper notes clipped to the branches. Next to the art work there was a sign saying to make a wish.

“Girl the counselor at my old school wanted my whole class to do this” Remy commented. “She like reeeaally wanted it to be deep or something secret so I wished for a guy in my class to fall face first onto the ground so all his teeth got knocked out. Apparently that was ‘violent’ and I had to like go to the principal or whatever”

Remus let out a sinister laugh “The principal was just too afraid of your huge dick energy my guy”

They quietly agreed to simply walk past the art work even though it was literally made by Yoko Ono. Probably the most famous artist in the park.

Among the trees and in them were a few statues. Even though there were little signs next to them explaining the artist’s intent Remy didn’t get any of it, but they were happy to listen to their crush’s theories on what it meant anyway.

They walked between two bushes and ended up next to the lake. They continued right in between two parts of a statue and traced the edge of the lake. Near a statue made of rust Remus suddenly sat down right on the leaves and smoshed his face into the ground.

“Is this like an art thing I’m not getting?” Remy asked while looking at him.

“SNAIL!!” He yelled back as he held up his hands. On his palm sat a tiny snail that was retreating into it’s shell “A small one! We need to bring it on an adventure! It’s gotta become cultured!!”

“Let the snail be a bimbo if it wants”

Remus made a showing of leaning his ear right next to the snail and nodding “It says it wants to go on an adventure!!”

Remy shrugged before picking up a leaf from the ground and folding it into a hat. They put it on the top of the shell and smiled at it. Remus took ahold of their hand again and grinned at them.

Every time they saw an art piece Remus would hold the snail up so it could see. All of the words on the information sheets were blurring together for him because of the noises of the people walking so Remy read every sheet aloud for him and the snail.

“And That’s the next art thingie my dear Snail!” Remus explained while pointing.

“Babe that is literally a bench”

“Oh....Well you never know?”

Remy squinted out at the lake before saying “Would be pretty cool to like set a dress on the water. Like so the skirt is all flared out but the bust is upright y’know”

“Dude!! That’s such a cool idea. And then the flies and birds would slowly eat away at it to show how fast fashion gets destroyed under capitalism !!! MuHHAHAHAHAH!!”

“I was just like thinking of how good Fka Twigs dress looked in like one of her videos” They sputtered out while fiddling with their hair.

“Still cool!!”

“Would be even cooler if the dress then got like lit on fire I guess maybe I dunno”

“Even cooler!! You’re on a roll!!

The moment he turned around to show the snail the next thing Remy’s cheeks lit up like a christmas light from blushing. Remus suddenly started to pull in their hand harder as he saw a large stack of logs. It was if a lumberjack had simply forgotten to stow them away. Until Remus got too jumpy and ran ahead with the snail to look at the other side of the logs.

“PIG!” He exclaimed.

“Shit! FUCK! IS THERE A COP?” Remy immediately yelled back.

“No! Literal pig!”

Remy rounded the log mound and saw that the different patterns of the log stumps when fitted together created a pattern that perfectly looked like a pig.

“That sure is a pig”

“Glorious”

“Is it like trying to say something bout one piece of nature being like molded into another piece of nature but like the animal kind?” Remy guessed.

“I think that sounds plausible! And it looks cool enough it may even be deserving of being the snail’s new home!” He moved his ear near the snail again “What do you say small gooey friend? Wanna reside here? Become a part of the art?”

Remy whispered a quiet “yeeees” which made their crush laugh.

He went up to the log statue and sat the snail on one of the tree trunks. One near the ground where leaves and a bit of rain water had gathered. He blew it a kiss goodbye before taking his friend’s hand again and skipping away.

A straight couple was walking not that far ahead of them. The couple had gotten there later than them but with Remy’s cane and the unstable ground they weren’t exactly going fast.

An echo of a yell bounced between the forest tops but Remus didn’t think about it as he instead whispered out to his friend “What kinda couple do you think they assume we are?”

Remy let out a snort “Fags. Def”

“I’m betting on just like really weird lesbians”

“Oh my gosh girlie!! You’re so right! Walking in a forest is like such a lesbian thing to do!-”

Another distant yell echoed. It was the voice of a young girl yelling out after her mom. Immediately afterwards a similar yell came from somewhere behind them. The couple in front of them jokingly yelled back “Mom! Mom!” before bursting into laughter.

“What if we just like stumbled into a horror movie” Remy said while twirling their hair around their finger “Wouldn’t that be hot or what”

“That would be really cool. Spooky scary little girl?”

“More like a child ghost army”

“Oh I like your thinking” Remus replied while looking up at the trees. He suddenly pointed up at a branch “There! A speaker. Waitttttt”

Soon enough a yell from a young boy echoed out calling for both of his parents right from the direction of the tree.

“Sooo like instead of walking into a horror movie we walked into art instead. I think I like like it. It’s spooky kinda”

Remus made the noise equivalent of “!!!” while shaking their arm around “I’m glad you like it!!”

The yells continued all the while they walked through a path filled with pine that had fallen from the trees. Eventually they too started to yell back at the child voices which the other couple noticed. The four of them grinned at each other before all letting up into a choir of barely contained laugh yells.

A few droplets of sweat rolled down Remy’s forehead as the hand they held the cane with was beginning to shake. They didn’t say anything of course but Remus noticed and as soon as he saw the next patch of sculptures, one of which was a large clam made out of concrete. And by large he meant Large. He pulled them along to it.

He took a big step up onto the sculpture and spun around to help his friend up as well. He did a gracious splat right onto the concrete and pressed his entire face down into it’s gravel. Remy laid down beside him on their back and stretched out their shoulders. A soft whine left their lips as their back cracked.

“I reeeeeaally needed some floor time. Thanks girlie”

“My brain feels like it’s growing” Remus said with a fully serious tone “Like an alien baby in my head!”

“You haven’t like eaten any random ass berries have you?”

“Nuhuhuhu! Dear Beanie! It’s the art!! It’s expanding my brain!! This is why I love going to art museums ‘cause like I gotta use so much brain power to understand what the art means my brain gets all muscular and once I figure it out I get this satisfying brain feeling! Like when you beat a game of chess you know?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never like won chess”

“Me neither!!”

Remy turned their head to look at him “Wanna like show of your bulging brain muscles by like explaining what the hell some concrete in the woods is supposed to mean?”

“Elementary Beanie! It’s because.....Gimme a minute”

He scrunched his eyes closed and made random noises to signal he was thinking. Remy reached out their hand and took his. They pressed a kiss to his knuckles and mumbled out that it was to make him think better.

“Maybe it’s just to mark that whoever made it was here?” Remus said.

“Hah amateur! If I wanna mark that I’m somewhere I simply walk into the room and Work bitch by Ms. Spears instantly starts playing! Easy!”

“No I mean like....So there was this forest obviously but then they had to have brought in like machines and stuff to create this concrete Thing! And now it’s a part of the forest! It has moss on it and everything! It’s like terraforming! That’s my theory at least”

Remy moved their leg back and forth to feel the concrete’s harsh texture against their bare skin “Yeah...I think I get it...Sometimes you just want reassurance that you exists even outside of like yourself” They let up into a half hearted chuckle “Most days I just want Viv to like come back and strangle me so I know I’m still real”

“Exactly. I’m scared if I don’t focus hard enough I will realize I’m already dead and I didn’t notice I died y’know? I feel much more like some floating brain entity than a living being I might as hell have died by splattering my body into thousands of pieces on rocks!!”

Remy shrugged “Living is overrated anyway. Being a zombie is like suuuuper in this season. Zombies is like the new black”

“Wisdom to live by!!”

Remus gave their hand another squeeze before sitting up and taking out a box of sandwiches from his bag. He held one out to Remy who propped their head up with the leather jacket to avoid actually having to sit up while eating. Along with the sandwiches Remus pulled out his sketchbook. He chewed on his lunch while drawing.

“That one looks like a penis” Remy said while pointing up at a cloud.

They glanced away from the sky and looked at their crush. They let up into a joking smile when they saw he was drawing. They did a playful pose while tipping their sunglasses down.

“Drawing me like one of your sexy demons ey?”

Remus put his hand directly on their forehead and pushed them back to laying down “No moving from the sexy demons please”

“Alright alright!”

Remy laid back down and went back to cloud watching. The sound of the pencil moving across the page made their chest feel warm for some reason. The only sounds aside from the pen were the rustling of the leaves and distant footsteps.

It was so quiet, so still, so peaceful. Their thoughts filled with the watcher’s reassuring words. The thoughts mixed with the warmth and they took a deep breathe.

“...I lied to you yesterday...” Remy mumbled out eventually.

Remus barely even looked up from the drawing. He already knew they’d lied but he gave them time to speak.

“...I was...I was like high yesterday...you weren’t wrong...I was like scared...I thought you would like get mad at me for being like stupid enough to do that stuff around you...I’m sorry...”

Remy managed to look over to him. Remus set aside the sketchbook and gently put his hand against their arm, their skin warmed by the sun. He leant his forehead against their shoulder for just a moment to comfort them.

“Thanks for telling me”

“I’m sorry for-”

“I didn’t tell Rowan for years. I get it Beanie. Don’t worry”

He could feel Remy’s body relax as if a weight that had been laying on their chest had finally been taken away.

“The watchers said they could help. So I like I at least take it in like a safe way” Remy continued.

“That’s good. That’s really nice of them......Do you...Do you feel ready to stop?”

Remus held their hand in his and looked into their eyes. He let them think about it for however long they needed. Eventually they weakly shook their head.

“That’s okay. That’s okay. I’ll...We’ll keep you safe okay? I’m not gonna let you hurt yourself okay?”

“I’m not gonna let you get hurt either”

“When you’re ready do you think you could stay at rehab while going through withdrawal? I know it can be traumatic as shit to get forced there but I don’t want you to like spill your guts out or anything”

“I’ll try”

“That’s all you have to do. Is it- Do you like- Are you okay with Janus knowing?”

“You think they’d be mad?”

“Janus? Our Janus?” Remus scoffed “I don’t think he’s able to get mad at you. He’s down too bad”

“I....I think you might be right....I’ll think bout it”

Remus leant forward and kissed them on their forehead before stroking their hair behind their ears. They held their arm lightly behind his waist.

“Are you high right now? You don’t have to answer”

“Only took my pain meds”

“Okay.....” Remus kissed them again, on their cheek “I think you’re my best friend”

“You’re mine too”

“I don’t think I wanna be an artist anymore”

Remy did a double take “What?”

Remus did a triple take “Sorry!! we were like sharing secrets and stuff! It just kinda fell out of my mouth!”

“I mean girl it’s fine. I like sewing don’t mean I wanna live by sewing”

He picked up his sketchbook again just to fiddle with the corner of it “I do wanna make art. I just dunno if I wanna draw”

“Oh no” Remy’s eyes turned huge, actually a bit like a sad kitten “Don’t tell me you’re gonna like hurt yourself like the lady you showed me yesterday did!? I just said I wouldn’t let you hurt yourself!!! Including for art!!”

“No. No! That’s performance art. I was thinking like installation? Maybe sculptures? I wouldn’t want to be present. I don’t want people looking at me” He saw the confused look on Remy’s face and added “Installation is like...What we saw in the barn! or the speakers in the trees yelling mom. It’s like the art becomes a tangible space the viewers can walk into y’know?”

“I think I get it....Like a haunted house?”

“YEAH!!!” Remus happy flapped “Like a haunted house!”

“Why wouldn’t you like do that” Remy gasped “GIRL. Don’t tell me installations are like illegal? Are we in an illegal installation park?”

“I was just worried...people would say I was wasting my talents...People always said Ro-Ro would be wasting hers if she didn’t make it big”

He looked down at the drawing he had done of his crush. He trailed his finger across the paper before showing them. They let out a gasp and a few soft compliments. They looked so much more beautiful than they thought they actually were.

“I can’t stop seeing his face in my drawings” It came out nearly as a whisper.

Remy looked up from the drawing “What?”

“Os...Even when I was drawing you I could only....I saw his features....I am genuinely interested in like installations but I also just....I don’t wanna see him in what I love....He drove me to all my art classes...Paid for them...I would draw him all the time....I can’t unlearn his face”

They bonked the sketchbook lightly against his head “Well after now having learnt like toooots sooo much about art I can conclude that like installations are just so much more sexy and cool anyway! Drawing? Pff! More like draw-sucks!”

It made him let up into a laugh.

“You got any like ideas for installations and stuff?” Remy tilted their head as they asked.

Remus looked just a bit flustered as he took the sketchbook and flipped through the pages. He showed off a few sketches of sculptures and a few half finished story boards for short art films.

“I haven’t developed them much and with the films I really don’t wanna be shown in them and i don’t really want my famous ass sis to act in them”

“I Have no idea what any of this means. Compels me though” Remy said while looking at the pages “I’m not against like being on screen” They jokingly posed “I’m like sooo good at being pretty and cute and arm candy I would be like super good in a film. Especially if I’m playing the like bimbo who gets killed. I can’t play the final girl though I’m sooorry. My range isn’t That large”

“It’s not that kind of film but I like your enthusiasm!! Augh” He continued to happy stim “This is exciting!! Maybe if our art turns out good we can involve Janny as well!!”

Him calling it ‘Our art’ made that same warm wave fill Remy’s entire body. A shiver went up their spine and they grinned without even noticing at first.

“Whatever you want girlie! I’m also open for like kissing sceneeesm Just fyi.....especially if Janny gets involved”

Remus pretended to twirl his nonexistent mustache while thinking “Hmmm should we continue looking through the park or should we go create art...That is the question....I can’t decide ‘cause I have rats for brains and bees in my ass. You?”

Remy shrugged. They had no idea about anything today. They were just along for the ride.

“Okay well” Remus moved his hands around while repeating swear words over and over to somehow open the void. That didn’t work so he just yelled out loud “WATCHERS!! PARK OR ART? PLEASE AND THANK YOU! I HAVE NEVER MADE A SINGLE GOOD DECISION IN MY LIFE AND I REFUSE TO START NOW!”

Credit in order of mention: Kimsooja - To breathe Yoko Ono - Wish tree Hannelie Coetzee - The old sow between the trees Marianne Lindberg De Geer - I am thinking about myself Jene Highstein - Grey clam

#🐌🕸#thanks for the ask!#mini fic #sanders sides #remus sanders #remy sanders #rem^2 #remsleep

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