Figured some of you might like this :3

I've started reworking my old website a while back, made a brand new design for it, and I love it a lot! I feel some of you might as well!!

Best viewed on Desktop, but it is responsive (adapted for mobile devices). If you spot any bugs PLSSS tell me!!! My page doll was stretched on iPad for a month and none of my friends told me x.x

ANYWAYZZ Hope you like it! Feel free to leave a message in the chat box, or in the guestbook!!!

Sometimes a girl has to go a little crazy. Sometimes a girl has to make a book-accurate floorplan for 300 Fox Way. These things just happen, sometimes.

Obsessive annotations under the cut ✨ but be warned, there's a LOT

Exterior

Okay first of all, I'm no architect, and my only knowledge comes from work experience in the real estate industry + a lot of Sims. The style is sort of neo-rural French colonial. I didn't set out to adhere to that standard so much as I made an amalgamation of homes in Blue Ridge Mountains-adjacent towns in Virginia. Specifically, my headcanon Henrietta template is Orange, VA (I'll save that explanation for another post) so I took inspiration from real estate listings from there.

Alright alright I know there is supposed to be one bathroom, but I simply can't tolerate that in a house with 6+ residents. I can't. There was a possible contradiction in the descriptions of "the single shared bathroom" that I used as an excuse to add a 3/4 bath, and I threw in a powder room for free. Because technically there is still only one full bathroom! But seriously with that many women over 30 most of them probably have IBS or chronic constipation and I'm not making them all share a toilet.

Officially we only have 4 bedrooms listed in text: Blue's, Persephone's, Maura's, and Calla and Jimi's shared one. Everyone else gets rooms that don't qualify as bedrooms via Virginia residential building codes (such as the attic, obviously, which falls below the combined ceiling height and square footage requirements). That really just leaves Orla unaccounted for but I'll get to that later. Other aunts and friends seem to visit during the day and live somewhere else, because in The Raven King only Jimi and Orla were described as needing to move out of the house during the demon stuff.

I designed the entire interior floorplan before I even touched the exterior, so there's a few issues, like how I'm totally missing shutters on the windows that functionally need them most. 🫶 I didn't feel like making the windows smaller to fit them, and I could have added faux-shutters but I think those are stupid. 😘

First floor

"This house is lovely. So many walls. So, so many walls," Malory said as Blue entered the living room a little later.

- Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Chapter 30

Right off the bat, we have an insane number of doors and walls. Old colonial houses are pretty much the opposite of open concept. Functionally I believe that's because it's easier to control heat with closed off rooms, but Virginia is not particularly cold so idk. As for the number of doors, I mean....😤😤😤 I prefer archways/doorless frames in small high-traffic spaces, but every time I thought I could get away with it Maggie would specifically describe doors opening and closing (For example BL,LB Ch 41 gives the reading room double doors, and even the living room gets one in Ch 11. What kind of living room needs a door???). I'm actually missing one of the doorways described in canon, but if you know which one I'm talking about I DARE you to find a place to put that thing!! But I digress.

“Mom," she said as she jumped down the crooked stairs.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

I'm liberally using "crooked" to establish the corner turn stairs. Blue steadies herself on the stair railing when she identifies Gansey for the first time (TRB Ch 15), so I wanted the stairs to have good visual access to visitors. It also sort of has a feng shui-ish effect of separating the public and private energy zones in the house. If that statement made zero sense, I think one of us doesn't know enough about feng shui 👀 and it might be me.

I'm also using that quote to establish Maura's room downstairs, if Blue generally expects to find her mother there, but mostly because everything else was upstairs and it was getting hard to fit. Granted, at one point Blue leads the boys "up the stairs to Maura's bedroom" (TDT Epilogue) but since they were just arriving at 300 Fox Way those stairs could easily be the outdoor ones. There's a handful of little things to support me here, such as Adam grabbing a scrying bowl from Maura's room to use in the reading room (BL,LB Ch 41) implying that her room was the closest place to find one. And speaking of Maura's room-

Calla was overwhelmed by how much shit Maura had in her room at 300 Fox Way, and she told Blue this.

... The mess was taking years from her life. ... Maura liked chaos.

... The psychic hotline rang in the room next door. Calla's concentration fluttered away.

- Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Prologue

Maura is my favorite hypocrite. She claims to detest clutter (TRB Ch 34) and yet her room is literally described as chaos. She probably treats her room like a college student and moves the furniture every time she gets bored/stressed. Thus, I gave her the most insane furniture configuration I could think of while still matching all the contents described.

The phone ringing next door might imply that she neighbors the phone/sewing/cat room, but that area is pretty well described and Maura's room is never mentioned there in any other instance. That leaves us with the kitchen phone (TRB Ch 27) which I put in the hallway with kitchen access as a compromise so it would technically still be in a room next to Maura's.

In the reading room, the man looked around with clinical interest. His gaze passed over the candles, the potted plants, the incense burners, the elaborate dining room chandelier, the rustic table that dominated the room, the lace curtains, and finally landed on a framed photograph of Steve Martin.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 13

There are so many quotes about the reading room that I just don't feel like citing them, but other details include the mismatched chairs, the shelves, doors etc. It's also described specifically as Maura's "front room" (TRB Prologue) so it's one of the cornerstones that I designed the rest of the layout around. Because of the plants, it makes sense that this room would be south-facing too. (Although idk how much light they get with the wraparound porch awning in the way. Oops lol!)

The outside suddenly seemed vivid in comparison to the dim kitchen. The April-bright trees pressed against the windows of the breakfast area, ...

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

Blue Stormed into 300 Fox Way's kitchen and began a one-sided interrogation with Artemus, who was still hidden behind the closed storage closet door.

- The Raven King, Chapter 9

Likewise, I'm using the particularly dim kitchen to place it on the north side, where we also know there's trees in the backyard.

I'll say the kitchen layout is weirder than it strictly needed to be because in the Virginia homes I referenced I adored all the strange kitchens, especially with old timey 'servants area' vibes where laundry kitchen and pantry are all connected. Instead of a kitchen island, they get one of those rolling kitchen carts which I doubled as a bar cart for the drinks they have in the living room.

The kitchen has a doorway to the hall (TRB Ch 13) and the living room is within view when Blue's on the kitchen phone (Ch 27).

Speaking of chapter 27, that's when we get the description "The morning light through the windows turned the drinks a brilliant, translucent yellow." So I put the living room on the east side of the house, where the rising sun would cast really strong light like that.

Second Floor

When she woke up, her normally morning-bright room had the breath-held dimness of afternoon. In the next room over, Orla was talking to either her boyfriend or to one of the psychic hotline callers.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

Blue headed toward the red-painted door at the end of the hall. On her way, she had to pass the frenzy of activity in the Phone/Sewing/Cat Room and the furious battle for the bathroom. The room behind the red door belonged to Persephone, ...

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 11

Blue's room and the Phone/Sewing/Cat room are our cornerstones for this floor. In several examples we know that the Phone/Sewing/Cat room faces the street and has a window (TRB Ch 15, BL,LB Ch 4). While Blue's room is "morning-bright," we also get descriptions of guests at the front door "backlit by the evening sun," (TRB Ch 15) so once again we're probably talking about south windows if it's sunlit at both times of day.

Adam sat awkwardly on the edge of Blue's bed. It felt strange to have so easily gained access to a girl's bed- room. If you knew Blue at all, the room was unsurprising - canvas silhouettes of trees stuck to the walls, leaves hanging in chains from the ceiling fan, a bird with a talk bubble reading WORMS FOR ALL painted above a shelf cluttered with buttons and about nine different pairs of scissors. Against the wall, Blue self-consciously taped up the drooping branch on one of the trees.

- The Dream Thieves, Chapter 49

We get some great descriptions of Blue's room (especially TRB Ch 43), although the above one is my favorite (#wormsforall). Every piece of furniture is accounted for exactly as described except the desk which I added because it seemed practical, and Blue is nothing if not practical™.

Persephone's room is also very well-described, all the way down to the furniture and lighting placement (BL,LB Ch 4 and TRB Ch 11) and it's surprisingly similar to Blue's room, if not a bit smaller. Her room gets strong afternoon sunlight, so I put it on the south too (BL,LB Ch 43).

Calla and Jimi share a room that's also upstairs (TRK Ch 16). Because they are the only two who have to share a room, I have justified that it must be the "master bedroom" (sorry for using that term) and is far bigger than the other bedrooms. I managed to fit two queen beds in there, but some scholars [me] would argue that Jimi and Calla might also share a bed because they are in love. Can you prove me wrong? No, you can't.

As for the bathroom, remember when I mentioned a possible contradiction? Famously, Maura draws the ley line symbol in the steamed up shower door (TRB Ch 1). However, much later we get Maura, Orla, Calla and Jimi all sitting in the bathtub for some kind of ritual (TRK Ch 9). No matter how I picture it, I can't put 4 full grown women in a bathtub together without someone partially sitting on/spilling over the side. But that would be impossible in a combo bath/shower enclosed by glass doors!! Thus, I gave The Bathroom a nice tub and put a small shower in the en suite of Jimi and Calla's room. I know this is a stretch but I don't really care.

Attic

Blue had never been a big fan of the attic, even before Neeve moved in. Numerous slanting roof lines provided dozens of opportunities to hit your head on a sloping ceiling. Unfinished wood floorboards and areas patched with prickly plywood were unfriendly to bare feet. Summer turned the attic into an inferno.

... In one of the narrow dormers, two full-length, footed mirrors faced each other, reflecting mirrored images back and forth at each other in perpetuum.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 34

Trying to fit the attic access in after everything in the second floor was my biggest challenge, because stairs normally take up a lot of space and you have to be careful about head room. I'm the end, I decided it was one of those fold out attic doors that you have to reach from the ceiling of the hallway. We might get a lot of instances of the attic door being opened (😤 seriously, Maggie... 😤) but technically a trap door in the ceiling is still a door!

Dormers pretty much cemented the French colonial style for me. And you know the drill by now: a hot room probably means a lot of sun, which means I give it a south facing window!

Mud Room/Cellar/Basement

This cellar has absolutely zero mention in the text, but my justification is based in the architecture. So far we've got a funky old colonial house, built without a garage, lots of walls etc. Especially in a low-income/semi-rural area, it's not crazy to assume that 300 Fox Way was built before most residents had refrigerators (1930s-40s). Besides iceboxes, a major way to keep food fresh was root cellars. Modern renovations for old homes convert these to concrete basements, but that's why the basement is so small and connects to the kitchen.

My headcanon is that Orla originally shared a room. Pick whoever you want: Maura, Blue or Persephone, any of them would easily be such a chaotic roommate that Orla snapped and in a fit of teen girl rage moved herself down to the crummy dark basement. Over time, she made efforts to glamorize it, such as a vintage dressing screen to hide the flood drainage pump. The privacy also allows her to bring boyfriends over, even sneaking them through the mud room.

This is really just my artistic license, but I swear it makes a surprising amount of sense in context. There's cases of Orla sneaking into the kitchen (easier if she has a back entrance) and she's almost always using the phone upstairs or in the kitchen (because a basement would get bad reception) even though her calls get kinda ~intimate.

Aaaaaand I think that's everything. Sorry it doesn't look like the photo from the wiki at all, but I couldn't find a source for it and Victorian style wasn't super common in the areas I researched. Let me know if I missed anything major! I'll probably cry myself to sleep if so.

Work The Case

Request from @doctorsteeb: This may be too sensitive a topic but just an idea— Hotch!daughter taking out a school shooter?

Aaron Hotchner x daughter!reader

Summary: A normal Tuesday takes a turn when you come face to face with your father's work.

A/N: Not going to lie I wasn't going to write this because I felt like the idea was too sensitive but then I remembered that I'm the queen of writing too sensitive things in real life so I may as well do that here too (within limits of course. I still have ethics). So here it is!

CW: school shooting, fatal gun shot, talks of foyet, talks of dead mothers, talks of car crashes, talks of drunk driving, talks of divorce, Jackson Pollok slander

---

The morning started out like any other Tuesday: you got up and ready for the day before having breakfast with your dad and brother- oatmeal and orange juice- then your dad drove you and Jack to school. Jack always got dropped off first at the elementary school, and you at the high school. The ride between the two was short, but it was always long enough for a small, private conversation between you and your father.

“You okay?” he asked you. 

Ugh. Profilers.

“I’m…” You thought about saying ‘fine,’ but you knew he wouldn’t take that as an answer. You sighed. “The teacher let the class vote on what chapter we would cover in class next, so we started on abnormal criminal psychology yesterday.”

“Oh.” You’d never heard your dad sound so uncertain.

“It’s an extra chapter. Since it’s not listed in the curriculum we aren’t being tested on the material. The teacher told me I could spend that period in the library if it was… too much,” you finished.

You dad pulled in front of the school, leaning over to kiss you on the forehead goodbye. “Whatever you need, sweetheart.”

“Thanks,” you told him. 

“Try to have a good day,” he said before you shut the car door.

You nodded. “I’ll try.”

---

You took your teacher’s offer and went to the library instead of their classroom. The space was large, but mostly empty of people- there was just the librarian behind her desk and a few students scattered amongst the tables. You took a seat and pulled out your homework, trying not to think about what they were learning back in the classroom. You’d honestly overheard enough phone calls that whatever they were learning about you already knew. There was a buzz in your pocket, which automatically made you freeze. You kept your phone on do not disturb through the school day. The only reason your phone would buzz would be if your dad was texting you… and if your dad was texting you it was an emergency.

You pulled your phone out and you were right- it was a text from your dad. Three words: Work the case.

Shit. That was code for you and Jack to hide- to hide somewhere that you wouldn’t be found unless you wanted to be. You looked around the library, but the area was like an open plain. You shoved your work in your backpack and hurried towards the doors-

BOOM!

A gunshot.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

People began to scream. Through the glass windows of the library you could see students running, but it wasn’t because they were late to class. The lockdown alarm sounded and you scrambled under one of the tables, hoping it would be enough cover.

There was a stillness and a silence for a minute and you hoped that it was over, but gunshots rang out again- this time they were louder than they had been before. Someone was getting closer.

Your heart was pounding in your chest, making it feel as though your entire body was thumping to its too-fast rhythm. You wanted to cry, but you didn’t shed any tears. You wondered if this was what it had been like for Jack when Foyet had killed your mother and then tried to kill your father. As part of WISTEC, you had been sent away to a private boarding school with an alias while Jack and your mom were sent elsewhere. In the end, sending you away had saved your life, but now you were wondering if you were going to die soon anyway.

That was, until the library doors burst open. From your view under the table you could only see old shoes and baggy jeans but you heard the shots that were fired into the air.

“Get up! All of you!” It was a male voice.

You, along with the six other students in the library that had all dropped to the floor, looked around at one another- who would make the decision to stand up or stay down? Who would make that call?

More shots were fired. “I said get up!”

You thought about your dad- what would he do? And so you were the one to make the call, the first student to crawl out slowly from under the table and rise, your hands held up to show that you were no threat. The rest of the students followed your lead. This was your team now- if one of them died, it was on you.

You looked at the shooter and you knew who he was- Timmy Rogers. He’d been in some of your classes in middle school and high school. He had always been quiet- the kind of kid who did well in class but never answered any questions. The person who put their share into a group project and didn’t complain about having to pick up the slack if someone else bailed. He was nice enough of a person that you wouldn’t have expected him to be holding a firearm in the middle of your school, but then again most unsubs could keep themselves hidden for years- that much you knew.

“Line up against the wall. Now!” he shouted.

You walked calmly to the wall while some of the other students scampered. One girl was crying. Another boy’s fists were twisted with fear. The librarian was on her knees, pleading with Timmy. “You’re a good boy. You always have been. Your mother-”

“Don’t talk about my mother! Don’t talk about me! You don’t know me!”

“Yes I do,” the librarian was crying. “I do know you and your mom wouldn’t have wanted-”

Timmy pulled the trigger and she was gone. He marched over and grabbed the girl who was crying, dragging her out in front for the rest of you to see. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” She fell to her knees. “Please, I’m sorry-”

You thought quickly about everything you knew about Timmy. He wasn’t an athlete by any means but he joined the wrestling team anyway, he liked art and his project last year was based on his parent’s divorce, his father was a marine, and his mom…

Oh. His mom had died in a car crash last week. She was hit by a drunk driver.

“You never cared about me!” he yelled. “Nobody cares about me. Nobody cared about her-”

“I did.” You didn’t know where the words came from- they were solid and bold and half a lie, but they made Timmy let go of the girl.

“And who are you?” He pointed the gun in your direction. You wanted to scream, but you didn’t.

“I’m (Y/N) Hotchner. W-we had art class together last year.” You hoped your stumble wasn’t too obvious.

“Yeah, and why does that matter? Why should I let you live? Why should I let any of you live?” He waved the gun around in the air, making some of the students shriek, but somehow you stayed calm even though you wanted to explode. 

“Y-your mom died in a car crash last week. But it wasn’t her fault. It was the other person who was driving drunk and it wasn’t fair that they got to live and she had to die,” you said.

“Why do you care?” He spat.

You reached deep down… really deep. “My mom died too. She was murdered by a serial killer. She deserved so much better, just like your mom did.”

Timmy paused, the gun in his hand was shaking but still pointed at you. From your view, you could see that through the glass there were officers moving into the school. No. Not just officers- they were wearing FBI vests. Help was almost there, you just had to stall.

“My parents got divorced too,” you said. “Your final project last year really spoke to me- your dad was away all the time and your mom got tired of it, even though they still loved each other.” That was a total lie- the guy was about as talented as Pollok, but you had to find something. “My parents were the same way.”

Now Timmy was crying. You could see behind him that agents were moving towards the library, but you were too focused on stalling Timmy that you weren’t focused on their faces.

“And I was at a boarding school when she died so I was alone- all alone, just like you, Timmy. My mom died and nobody was there to comfort me. My dad wasn’t with me, just like your dad isn’t here right now.”

He was so distracted by your words that he didn’t even notice that the library doors had opened behind him allowing Agent Morgan, Dr. Reid, and your dad to come in unnoticed.

“He- he didn’t even come for her funeral-” Timmy’s hand was getting weaker. He was crying harder. “I-I can’t reach him-”

“I know. I couldn’t reach my dad either since I was still in WISTEC. They couldn’t tell me anything about him until I got home. It’s not fair. I know it’s not fair. I care that it’s not fair.”

Timmy dropped the gun, crumbling to the ground in a fit of tears. Agent Morgan tackled him, pulling his hands behind his back while Dr. Reid disabled the firearm. Your dad ran straight to you, gripping you in a bone crushing hug and you sobbed into his chest.

He pulled you in tighter, stroking a hand down your hair. “It’s over, sweetheart,” he whispered. “I’ve got you. It’s over.”

“I worked the case, dad,” you managed to get out between your sobs. “I worked the case.”

The Saga of Hermitcraft on r/Place (1 April 2022 - 4 April 2022)

On the 1st of April 2022, Reddit unveiled a white blank canvas where every user had the ability to place one colored pixel in every 5 minutes. At its height, about 4 million people participated in one of the biggest internet collaborations ever made. The ripple effects reverberated into news reports as far away as Turkey, and the final canvas represents a snapshot of the multiple communities, events, memes, and what was popular around the world at that time.

This is a documentation of the Hermitcraft mural on r/place 2022.

aka.

Remember what I said about my latest ficbind being a distraction? This is what I wanted to be distracted from.

After Reddit's API fiasco of this year and the subsequent controversial event that was r/place 2023, I decided to save as much documentation about the 2022 event as I could. Luckily, I remember how there are already a series of posts by @riacte who documented the progress of the Hermitcraft mural throughout the whole event, from beginning to end. Her blogposts form the bulk of this book (like, 95%!) and I cannot thank her enough for preserving the happenings of the block men mural.

With that said, I quickly realized that someone who's not a Hermitcraft fan - or me if I'm older - might not get the gist of who's who on the mural. The solution? Make several pages dedicated to just listing who's who on the murals! Because of the sheer number of heads, the mural was divided into several pieces for easier labeling. As a bonus, I also threw in another mural nearby which was connected enough to the Hermitcraft community.

For consistency's sake and preserving focus, I decided to not label the peeps from Dream SMP or the MCC secondary mural. Wrangling Microsoft Word to create an infographic was hard enough, let alone 3! If I inadvertently left out a few bits of extra context from this decision, mea culpa.

When it came to typesetting the entire text block, I decided to make some consistent rules. Titles denoting each day or stage of the mural are on their own pages. New sections are titled using the Bahnschrift font and colored blue, while the first paragraph has their beginning lines look Minecraft-coded and topped with a drop cap (aka. those super-large alphabets).

The names of Hermitcraft and Minecraft players in general are bolded when they first appear in the text. Afterwards, they are bolded if they are contextually important to what's being said.

Extra context would be placed in the footnotes section at the bottom of the page. This is also where I dump some background information that would be invaluable for any readers who aren't Minecraft fans, which is why the SpaceX page looked like... uh, that.

My image policy is to go with the flow; I used as many images from riacte's posts as possible, but I also added-in some of my own if more context is needed. Placing them to look smooth with the text was harder - some are small enough to not cause any problems, others are large enough to fill entire pages without any problems, but a few like the Dream SMP mural (hey there! I managed to put you in!) are too wonky to fit perfectly without leaving no empty spaces.

So in that mural's case, I placed them to the side and let the contextual text flow around it. This principle was also used for the Dota2 / Love Live images and in a few other places throughout the book. The biggest case of this are the few images that are just too wide.

Like this one.

Making double-page spreads is not the easiest thing to do in Microsoft Word, and there are a few r/place images that are too wide to fit perfectly in a single page. Confining them to one page would also mean losing all their details, so making them a double-page spread was necessary.

Didn't make it easy though, especially when there are paragraphs of text and other images that needed to be shuffled around. Mess up the double-page images, and they won't meet in the middle. Mess up the text and other pics? There goes the layout and overall flow!

In the end, making this book took a lot longer than I expected, but I am still grateful to have made this as I have now read through many posts from Tumblr, Reddit, and even Youtube - people expressing joy that they have collectively made something together. I can only hope I have made some justice to them by compiling their work and (even if a small sliver) preserving their testaments.

May this r/place be remembered.

Even the framing of that shot fucking kills me: the nogitsune confidently staring at Chris, almost amused, and then Derek comes into frame and he's visibly frightened

And he's not looking at Stiles. He's scared of what Chris is going to do TO Stiles. This is really his biggest fear, what he's been worried about this entire time. And what can he do??

the whole thing is just a masterful stroke on the nogitstune's part. it's torturing everyone in that scene including stiles.

like, of course it's obvious how these events hurt the sheriff. that's his child being tortured by an ancient creature and forced to do terrible, terrible things and also who is clearly becoming more like a walking corpse every minute. it used claudia's illness against both him and stiles to make them lose hope. how he maintained any composure i don't know. i'd be a fucking wreck of a human seeing my loved one worn like an ill fitting suit to prom.

for chris? this is a guy who we've seen intimidate teenagers for no real reason other than because he can. he's held scott at gunpoint for daring to be with allison and nothing else but he hesitates here. he hesitates despite hedging with derek earlier about what he would do.

this moment such an inverse to season 1 going all the way back to that confrontation in code breaker between chris and stiles.

i can guarantee chris was recalling it.

argent: let me ask you a question, stiles... have you ever seen a rabid dog? stiles: no. i could put it on my to-do list, if you just let me go. argent: well, i have. and the only thing i've ever been able to compare it to is seeing a friend of mine turn on a full moon. do you wanna know what happened? stiles: not really... no offense to your storytelling skills... argent: he tried to kill me, and i was forced to put a bullet in his head. the whole while that he lay there dying, he was still trying to claw his way toward me, still trying to kill me, like it was the most important thing he could do with his last breath. can you imagine that?

and allison? allison's already made the horrible decision of harming boyd and erica that started the dominos that led to erica and boyd being taken by the alphas and erica being killed.

now she's confronted with this monster wearing her friend's face toying with their emotions. she tries to subdue it but all that does is piss the nogitsune off and annoy him.

she's been manipulated by both kate and gerard to see her friends as being enemies when they weren't only to be faced with the reality of it here.

allison wants to save her friends so badly to make up for her mistakes but with this she might not be able to.

derek's position is just heartbreaking. this is really his greatest fear and failures playing out again.

we don't often see derek express fear. he usually expresses anger rather than let anyone know he's afraid but here? here derek is afraid.

3A set up that derek and stiles had become friends, that stiles had been working with him over the summer to look for eric and boyd, that derek trusted stiles so much it broke jennifer's magic over him ---

and the nogitsune brings itself to derek's loft for protection because it knows derek will do anything to protect stiles.

he's already lost so many people. he's had to mercy kill people he cared about before. again stiles is one of the few who know about paige, stiles witnessed what happened with boyd and peter and jackson. he knows all of this about derek which means the nogitsune does too.

i'm not really sure what kind of derek we would've seen if stiles had died due to the nogitsune.

of course the person often lost in the psychological warfare of the nogitune is stiles.

stiles had to watch all this. had to see his knowledge used against the people he cared about over and over. his hands and body used for terrible things. the nogitsune fed off that more than anything. stiles's fear and confusion and pain. stiles was dying.

it's why the nogitsune was the best villain lol

Regarding the WIP names you posted, "Can I Have ONE Normal Idea" sounds very intriguing to me ;)

@gellavonhamster, you picked the most wild of all wips from the list:

“Nice work, lad.” The way ‘lad’ was drawn out made Duke uncomfortable. There’s a radio crackle, and then a long sigh of relief.

“But it’s time to end this little masquerade,” continued the voice. No longer it sounds like the friendly, concern, baritone man from before. It sounds like nothing, as well a bit tired. It’s like the man on the radio had forgotten how his real voice sounded like. “And masquerade is a word which Lemony Snicket —the real Lemony Snicket that is— would probably define as, ‘A lie someone can fall for with either little or no amount of force.’”

“I say using a code phrase is contradictory to that.”

The man ‘tsks’ several times. “Was that phrase ever spoken when you volunteer your assistance for justice regarding the death of a sweet young child?”

Duke didn’t answer. All he does was grip the radio tighter in his hands. The entire room began to shake violently.

“A human being, even one that is genetically modified in a laboratory, is like any other animal,” continued the man. “If it wants something enough, it will do anything at all. You, young man, wanted to do good in this watery-hellhole. You volunteered yourself in a task of self-righteous justice. All I did was gave you a push in the right direction.”

Another violent shake. Duke stood firm where he stands.

“Considering everything, I owe you a little honesty. The name is Hangfire.”

so. context: this wip is from an asoue/atwq and bioshock fusion-crossover fic i was working on awhile back. in it, most of the snicket-verse characters take the place of bioshock characters; only two bioshock characters are in the au.

bioshock is a first person shooter with horror/sci-fi survival elements video game series. in the first two installments, it's about an underwater city known as rapture that gets torn due to a civil war that started on new years. by the time of the games, rapture is well on its way to being ruined and dead for good.

in the first game, you play as jack, a young man whose plane crash into the ocean and ends up entering rapture, where he must survive the horrors with the help of the man name atlas, the leader of one side of the civil war mention before, over the radio. atlas has a wife and child and he asks jack to help save them, but they get kill, and long story short atlas gets jack to go kill one andrew ryan, the ruler of rapture, and the leader of the other side.

at a very pivotal moment, which this fragment wip is inspired by, jack learns a few things. the most important things related to the snippet:

a. atlas isn't real. atlas is instead the disguise of frank fontaine, a rival to andrew ryan who faked his death in order to take control of rapture.

b. jack is a hidden agent for frank fontaine, with the phrase 'would you kindly' getting jack to do as told without question.

the fusion-crossover snippet here has:

armstrong feint/hangfire in the role of frank fontaine/the fake lemony snicket. the real lemony snicket is alive and around in rapture in his own story that is loosely inspired by the second game.

duke, an original character, is in the role of jack. duke is a bit more talkative (a hell lot more actually; jack is your typical silent protag), and well, let's say duke has beef with hangfire after this.

i'm sorry for the delay respond; i had trouble trying to figure out WHICH part of the wip to select because only fragments of the fic is actually written; most of it is just summaries of events and lore/world building to blend the snicket-verse elements with the world of bioshock. so i put it off and did other stuff (re: the widdershins and olivia friendship post on my side blog). picked this because while major spoilers, it's the best of the snippets i do have written.

Monthly Update: January 2024

Hello everyone, it's Chattercap! Happy 2024! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

Sorry for the belated update, but...I was a little worn out after the New Year, I won't lie!

Gosh, where do I even begin when starting to talk about what I did in December...it was pretty hectic, to say the least. Luckily, I managed to complete the demo of The Deepwater Witch, and it's available now on itch! I also plan on releasing it on Steam in the future.

Now, as for what I needed to do to release that demo...

HURDLE ONE: FINISHING THE SCRIPT

The first thing that I had to do to release The Deepwater Witch was...finish the script? I had completed the first draft, but after receiving beta reader feedback, I found that there were additions that needed to be made. In the first few days of December, I wrote 4500 words, bringing the total of the script to 52k. After receiving additional edits, the script was finalized by December 15th.

HURDLE TWO: DOING THE ART

Heading into the second week of December, I only had a bit of art done. After completing the script, I had revisited the storyboards and basically made entirely new drafts of what art needed to be completed. At that point, I only had sprites and a couple of CG sketches.

From the beginning of December until the 20th, I worked almost exclusively on art, doing 24 backgrounds, 5 CGs, and an additional sprite during that timeframe. It was BUSY, but it was well worth it! I'm happy with how all of the assets turned out.

HURDLE THREE: ...EVERYTHING ELSE???

Heading into the last week of December, I was faced with the daunting task of...doing everything else. Up until this point, I was cool as a cucumber, but I started to panic a LITTLE here.

If you've been following my development up until this point, you'll know that I made the switch from Unity to Godot a couple of months ago. I had done...about 50% of the work that was needed on the engine before pausing to finish TDW's script. So not only did I have to implement core features (things as simple as saving and loading), but I also had to make sure I added polish - a nice looking GUI, animations, and the general polish that I want people to be able to expect from my games.

Here is a non-existent list of what I did from the 22nd of December onward:

BGM/SFX/VA functionality

Mute function

Flexible 2D animation controls

CG management (+ idles, animations)

Sprite management (+ idles, animations, positioning)

Dynamic dialogue layouts

Expression popups.

Credits screen.

Screen shake.

Story flags.

GUI functionality (page toggles, buttons, etc.)

Designed and implemented all GUI.

Save/Load.

Save screenshot function.

Chose and implemented BGM and SFX.

Annotated the script with BGM, SFX, story flag, sprite, CG, expression, and background tags.

Playtesting.

WHAT'S NEXT?

The next thing that you can expect from me is an updated version of MacOS version of The Deepwater Witch. I understand that there are some security issues with the current build (as Apple is very strict when it comes to unauthorized applications), and so I've decided to pay for an Apple Developer License. My application was already processed and approved, so I should be releasing that version in the next few days. You will still receive a pop-up notification alerting you that TDW is not from the App Store, but hopefully it lets you open it without any further hassle.

After that, I plan to release the full version of The Deepwater Witch. Almost everything is done besides some coding and art, and I expect to release it around late January/early February. Following that, I have two projects that I have planned for early spring!

For additional details, see the 2024 Project Roadmap.

I wish you all a good 2024!

Until next time,

Chattercap

stray thoughts after finishing 13 sentinels

back to the mystery files. Why is the game seperating chihiro morimura from chihuro morimura (1 loop ago) and chihiro morimura (2 loops ago). Wait. Unless. I think i figure out what confused me, remember how i couldn't tell if nurse morimura was morimura -2 who died shifting ida -1 to the current loop because she has all her memories, or if she was morimura -1 who 426 izumi killed but who is the right age to reunite with ida on sumire bridge? Well if they both died and she had data saved to sector 0 maybe she was recreated... Which means there were SIX MORIMURAS: 2188, -2, -1, Iori, child who then got 2188's memories, and the morimura recreated from -2. But thats the only explanation that explains the inconsistencies and why the game files events in 3 separate categories when other characters like izumi -2 gets all of 426, fluffy, and shiba's scenes listed under one character. I'm going to look this up. Ok yeah nurse morimura was the ai of -2 morimura but why did she look 16 in the sumire bridge reunion? And not only that she acts like she's 16 thats what threw me off i wonder if when they wrote this scene they didnt know yet which morimura she was. Yeah and in that scene she doesn't recognize ida or know what a sentinel is and is just confused to be 16 years in the past. I still dont get this scene.

Grandma tamal got deleted!! That's why she didn't show up. Hmm so the 1944 tamao is considered the true one and the 1985 one was an AI which means if the compatible shifted before the kaiju attacks they would have also deleted the older ai selves (ex: natsuno in 2064 would have deleted older natsuno). 20 million years since humanity's extinction 2188 ryoko wrote the d-code. Ida spread dd-426 because he wanted the sentinels to fail and the world to be reset faster. "The nurturing of the 15 members started once the terraforming of the new planet was completed" 300+ loops have passed huh so they were stuck in the pods not killed and reborn each time that answers that question. I was wondering about the probes, so each probe can do this, rhen theoretically this entire story is playing out thousands of times across the universe.

There might have been 6 morimuras but -2 izumi juro was the one going by 426, eirika aiba/tamaobot, tomibot, shippo/fluffy, shiba kyuta, 6 names/identities. I went and looked it up and for the scene "Reunion" that was -2 Morimura's data that -2 Okino saved which was her 16 year old self. That still doesn't explain how current Morimura got -2 Morimura's memories though because she definitely acts like she has -2 Morimura's memories and sees them as her own memories instead of events that happened to someone else.

!3 Sentinels has good writing, it was consistently strong with no real low points. The strongest part of the game was probably the beginning right after the prologues as things start clicking together. A few places in the story clunked, but overall it was really well done, just a well made well written game.

I found the combat to be surprisingly fun. I've only dabbled in RTS games before so I came in pretty new to this style of game and ended up liking the combat. The game does a good job of easing new players in while gradually building up the difficulty and it has challenge maps for players that want to get deep into the combat.

My main complaint would be that there's too much romance, but that isn't the game's fault, I just generally don't like romance and am very picky. So sometimes I just wanted to skip past the romance and get back to the stuff I was interested in like the story. I felt some of the couples lacked chemistry, like they failed to sell me on the romance. Juro and Megumi happened so last minute after for the entire game Juro's feelings are ambiguous like him feeling the love Izumi Juro felt is only ever brought up in Megumi's last scene, and Megumi the entire game is in love with the erased Izumi Juro, so the romantic development between the two of them felt sudden. My biggest problem was probably with Yuki and Shu, it really just felt like he was harassing her the entire game, she showed like no interest. Like I get she has a tough personality but it came off as that old trope that as long as he's persistent enough the guy can get the girl. Which is such a shame because girlboss and her boytoy is such a fun dynamic but I don't like how it was done in this game. I found Iori's love at first sight plot rather cringe but it was funny having her entire story be about chasing him around the city while having no clue about the events happening.

Romance is central to the game however and I don't think it could ever be taken out. Romance is used by the game to create character foils between the characters and especially the various characters that are genetically identical. Both the Hijiyamas and Okinos both in 2188 and in the current loop fall in love with each other. The Morimura and Izumi of 2188 were a couple as were the Morimura and Izumi of 2 loops ago. Juro with both his new and old personality of the current loop however both come to love Yakushiji. While Iori falls for Ei. 2188 Ida manipulated Shinonome's infatuation for him just like how Ida of one loop ago uses current loop Ryoko's crush on him so that she's an obedient and convenient pawn. Ida himself meanwhile is primarily driven by his obsessive love towards the Kisaragi of the previous loop. The current loop Shu and Tomi both fall in love with other people however. The different romantic choices highlight how those characters are different from their other versions.

I probably would have disliked it just as much, but I do want to talk about how things could have turned out differently however as it is in line with the game's theme of alternate but equally viable possibilities. For example Juro could have fallen in love with neither Megumi nor Iori thus highlighting how he is different from every other previous version of Juro. Especially since both 2188 Izumi and the one from 2 loops ago view Megumi more as a daughter figure. Ei and Ryoko could have been written as a romantic instead of platonic and familial, which would have been interesting given how Ryoko spends a good chunk of the story convinced he is 426 because she has forgotten that she was the one that infected the sentinels with DD-426. Or otherwise it could have been Ryoko and Shu to highlight how different a person Shu is to Ida given how Ryoko expresses attraction to him. Or Iori could have fallen in love with Yuki which would have been very different from any of the Morimuras, or Renya who had a crush on Morimura. Really if the devs hadn't decided to make Yuki and Natsume genetically family, it could have been a childhood friends romance. Or there could have been something between Juro and Shu, they're friends despite juro being really weird between the memory manipulation and the Shiba but Shu sticks with him throughout, they're part of the weird dream club, and Juro's whole deal could have been the thing to break the tedium and boredom of Shu's life.

Tamao as a character really got the short end of the stick story wise. She had so much going on from being a compatible who is childhood friends with Keitaro and Takatoshi, to Tamao from one loop ago being turned into a Sentinel AI and then an android who was active in Sector 4 during the events of the game before getting body jacked by 426, and then there's Juro's grandma. Tamao of 1 loop ago is also responsible for creating Juro's new personality. There was so much going on with her but her role in the story ended up being very small so while she's referenced by the characters I think she only actually shows up for like 4 scenes.

One thing I really liked was how morally ambiguous the Morimuras were. Professor Morimura from 2188 was partly responsible for the nanomachine plague that wiped out humanity she also planned for her own resurrection where she would become the leader of the new humanity, and after her memories awaken in child Chihiro she plots to destroy the current loop to have a more advantageous start where she can control things better and to this end she kills the other Morimura for having an opposing agenda. Nurse Morimura herself does a number of dubious things like wiping the current loop's Izumi Juro, attempting to recreate the Izumi of 2 loops ago with him. She also attempts to take over Iori to gain compatibility. For the longest time it remains ambiguous what she is doing to Ryoko, whether she is actually trying to help her or to turn her into a puppet. Then there's Operation Aegis itself which would by cutting off Universal Control wipe out the 1.2 million AI residents of the city as well as dooming all the compatible to living the rest of their lives in the ruins of the city.

I liked a lot of the moral ambiguity in general, that for much of the game I was doubting the intentions of many of the characters from Renya, to Morimura, Ida, 426 as well as all the 2188 people involved in Project Arc. Izumi of 2 loops ago really is the definition of well intentioned extremist, I like how the audience is able to see him trial and erroring different solutions. First he tries bombing Shikishima to try and stop the technology being Deimos, then he tries killing all the compatible to stop D-code from sending the invasion signal, then he tries to sever D-code from the compatible which causes brain damage. Eventually he decides to modify the system and bring back the gamification in the simulation's code (exploiting 2188 Okino's sloppy coding the same way 2188 Shinonome did) allowing both Sentinels and Deimos to upgrade, and he does this by manipulating Megumi into shooting the compatible with a patch update to their nanomachine code.

The aesthetics of this game are superb the visuals and art direction are amazing and so is the soundtrack, it all just works so well together.

On a personal level I found Shinonome Ryoko to be annoying, like girl stop chasing the man who clearly cares nothing about you and is just using you. But I did find her story to be very interesting between the mental breakdowns, loss of identity, and how large a role she plays. Ryoko spends the entire story trying so hard and she usually just ends up making things worse, it's great! It's also interesting how most of the plot stuff she does happens in other character's routes, while in her own she's already largely forgotten everything already. I did enjoy watching her snap and shoot Ida dead.

I really liked Yuki which is probably part of why I was disappointed with her romance, she also just seems to attract girls which amuses me. She deserves to send more dudes to the hospital. She spend her entire story with so much pressure first with Ida threatening her only family, and then her dear friend Natsuno goes missing and she's being stalked by an imposter.

Megumi's story was my least favorite. The only part I really liked were the Fluffy/426 reveals at the end. gave her a magical girl story and then made it boring.

Miura's my favorite character, in all his iterations he's just trying so hard for others. He's earnest, curious, contemplative, and determined. I liked the parallels of how 2188 Miura liked history while 1944 Keitaro liked science fiction.

Nenji is surprisingly smart, it's funny when he and Hijiyama are in the same scene because between the two of them Nenji ends up being the smart one. his route gets the distinction of being the only actual time loop, kinda. it was trippy, i liked it although the timed events meant i messed up a lot.

Iori's most interesting for her contrasts and connections to the other 5 morimuras her own story is just her chasing a boy she has a crush on while having no idea what is going on, disappointing but also amusing fom a conceptual standpoint.

Tomi and Natsuno are both characters I like with stories I liked, charming. The reveals for both were well paced and exciting.

Juro does better than Iori because i found how many different parties are all trying to influence his mind interesting, everyone wants something from him from megumi who wants her boyfriend back, to morimura trying to turn him into 426 izumi, to 426 izumi himself who was the one that salvaged his mind. The one part I didn't like was the sudden romance with megumi where all of a sudden in the last scene of megumi's story.

Takatoshi was one of my favorite routes mostly because watching okino interact with him is one of the most entertaining parts of this game. Props to the game for 2188 hijiyama and okino being very explicitly lovers like there's no ambiguity there that the homophobes can latch on to and say they were just friends.

gouto's story was just 2188 morimura chihiro's story, it was good but it wasn't about him at all so he's the least developed character of the bunch.

I really like shu, his story was alright but i think it could have been better. part of this is that his route on its own isn't a complete story you only find out the deal with the mysteries like the 30km limit and inaba miyuki in other routes and the ending. while his kindness and generosity shows through on other stories, i think his own could have shown his ennui better. that he and ida are clones was a good aspect to his character i liked that twist.

while ei as a person is meh for me i did like both his story and his role in other character's stories, partly because of how different they are. His own story is a mystery as he tries to figure out what he was doing before which isn't helped by him having changed his mind mid way, lot of plotting and scheming by multiple parties which I love. Ei in other character stories plays a completely different role however as this is before he loses his memories and thus is a very active agent in the plots of sector 4. His romance with iori was boring but i can't say it was the worst or even in the bottom half. those two would have been more interesting not becoming a couple but i say that about most couples in this game.

For combat I liked the difficulty progression in that it starts off very forgiving for new players and then steadily ups the difficulty. I started out scared because i didn't have a lot of experience with real time strategy on casual but it was really easy so i went to normal but that was still easy so i went to intense and that was still pretty easy. and then the game got much harder, i could have beat the game on intense but by the final level combat was taking up so much time and i wasn't first time s-rank and getting side objectives about half the time and i wanted to focus on story so i went back to normal and breezed through. it took me so long to figure out 1st and 2nd gen sentinels so my main tactics involved the 3rd gen and some 4th gen, they got to level 25 first. i tried to balance exp gain and finished the game around 27-31. i good chunk of my tactics was railgun + missile rain as they were the best at crowd control and wow it got crowded on intense. only unlocked the super missile at the end and wow that thing is powerful. I had yuki span aoes to spot the areas the 3rd gens hadn't killed, amiguchi was a mix of offense and support, and gouto and yakishiji were interceptor bots. hijiyama was useless for so long because i didn't know how to use him but then i found his passives and had him emp spam the entire map to keep heat off the 3rd gen. i mostly had sekigahara anti air flare for half the game because i didn't know how to use him either. it took me a while to figure out how to deal with gladiators and that's how 2nd gen found their niche. then shinonome unlocked cyberattack.

Top 25 Formative Games/Series For Lily Cutesmith, Dipshit Game DevTM here's a long ass post about these and my thoughts if that's something you're interested in

anyways I made a long ass thread about my choices here so I'm formatting it better here under a readmore (games are done in no particular order really)

7th Dragon Code VFD is a fun game that's probably the weakest in the series but it is the only one that came out over here and while the others have fan-translations i havent gotten too far in any of them. They're good games imo! VFD just sorta came out and was there when I needed it. It's not good once you play the other games and find out the developmental history of VFD is "the company making it went under and SEGA basically finished it for them and its a fucking miracle it even came out this side of the pond." The 2020 games (there's two) for the PSP have Hatsune Miku in them and you can unlock the Miku version of the OSTs by saving her in a side mission in those games and they have some REALLY cool environmental art direction/design so I think they're worth checking out. The series was started/directed by the director of the first EO game and you can very easily see the shared DNA in the series, despite the different design direction it took. VFD is VERY easy to break once you reach a certain point in the game so its by far the easiest, and in all of the games the random encounters are only really threatening for the first few levels, but the real meat of the combat is in the Dragon and Boss encounters. The party size is a more standard 4-members in 1, with a row system too and it plays largely like what one may consider a standard rpg combat system with the React Turns being kinda there. 2020 takes the React Turns and turns it into a genuine part of the game's action economy once you get access to the buffs that grant them upon fulfilling the conditions. This is vital due to the game's 3 Member party size! Its cool. I like it a lot and would love to explore the design space of that further, because i think its a much more interesting system then SMT's Press Turn System. It's something that's really got my brain juicing.

It was a bloody battle between Link to the Past and Link's Awakening but I think the randomizer specifically pushes LTTP to the finish line for me. I really like both and other zelda games though so tough choice. I like a lot of zelda games to be fair and am a known Zelda 2 enjoyer (ill beat it one day…) but like, Link's Awakening sticks to me because a) played it a lot as a kid, and b) man it's story is pretty good and I read someone's take on it as being a farewell to the like, more simple stories of a hero vs the dark lord that most adventure stories had at the time as they shifted to being much more in-depth and grown-up in a sense? And I think that's neat. However, Link to the Past won over it for me here because like, man, I did 100% the GBA version including the four swords content/bonus dungeon, and also like, I spend a lot of time with the randomizer and I've really come to appreciate the like, toolset and layout of the game. It's cool as hell. I don't really have strong opinions on the 3D games frankly. I like the setting of the series though, its a p huge influence on me, and I would be loathe to not include a representive on this list.

I'd probably put Pokemon Scarlet here instead but i didnt see it in the fucking thing and apparently Pokemon Ruby wasn't there either (was not into the remake) so Red version it is (i played yellow but lol) realistically this just represents the entire series for me tho. So you might go "lily why the fuck Scarlet?" and like, man, its probably the most fun I've had in a mainline game and the story was a lot of fun to go through. I havent played the DLC and tbh I'm probably not going to but I like what I've heard of it. The ost also fucks but that's pretty much the standard for pokemon, there's always bangers in there. ANYWAYS, the point here is that pokemon is hugely influential on me and that's why it's on the list baby!!!!!!! I have a million thoughts on the design of pokemon games but that's something for an Ask and another time.

Kirby Super Star is also here bc I played it a SHITTON as a kid and the cart we had was faulty so we often had to do the entire game in one go typically but the nature of the game made that mostly fine and it was fun so like!! Like, I would probably rank Planet Robobot or Forgotten Lands or even Star Allies higher then KSS, but I think in terms of like, once again, influencing my Entire Identity And Existence, KSS takes the cake!! I don't think I have much more to add to this point tbh, I just really like Kirby games!

Fairune Collection is here partially bc I did really like it and it kinda made me think about what a game IS. Also i really like the games by the dev and the worlds they've built so it goes here. This point also includes Kamiko and Transiruby by the same dev as well. I really like how their pixel art looks and the overall visual direction of their works. Also cute girls. That's vital here. I think if you like, puzzle adventure games, the Fairune Collection is a good pick up. They're funny lil games.

you dont play Fall Guys to win, you play it to be the Biggest Clown in the show, and sometimes that gets you the win. I play with a friend only though so the clowning IS twofold. But also like, honestly, the game controls in a very specific way that sucks but Purposefully So? It feels good to play. It's a very interesting game design-wise in that way, and the level creator really lets you explore that and that's cool. The like, """kaizo""" level potential is honestly really high and we've seen some cool stuff in that regard too. Obviously I am obligated to say that it is a F2P game with microtransactions for funny outfits and animations, so obviously if that's bad for you then don't play it. I DID drop money on it for the miku outfit and concert emote myself bc like, miku. We also discovered that you can grab-cancel emotes and if they make a sound at the start you can beep very aggressively and its VERY funny. It fucking rules to beep around someone and then they figure out how to do it and join us and like, the game really stands out when you do the classic "jump and emote at someone to communicate in an mmorpg" activity.

"Why no souls games?" I enjoy souls games but they weren't ever particularly like, influences to me? Code Vein however is where I got my current sona/vtuber design idea from and its a fucking unhinged 6-7/10 game ever it rules. Like where do I even start with this game really? It's a mid to bad story with pretty fun combat and systems and a very funny character creator and its impossible to take seriously with most of the level design being Whatever with the exception of the Cathedrel of Sacred Blood which is a huge fucking part of the game that actually tests your observational skills outside of the enemy encounters, and the game is fucking FUN as hell! incredible game changed me as a person, made me feel like I was starting to really understand video games as a medium when i finished it.

Shadowbringers is specifically the expansion and not like the entire FFXIV game; its an incredibly strong story about fighting for a future you may not even see and that's extremely resonate to me. makes me want to make an rpg. I'm not gonna lie, I kinda soured on FFXIV after Endwalker for a variety of reasons (shoutouts to the raid series though, Scream is a banger song), so I dont really play it anymore. Shadowbringers is still in my heart though, and like, man, its hard to describe. Ardbert is fantastic, the conclusion with Elidibus is incredible, going through whats left of the First really drives home the despair of the situation while showing the resilience of the people still remaining, emet squelch is there. And like, really, I think the story as a whole just very much resonates with me especially with gestures at the world as a whole going on so like, idk maybe I'm saying the wrong words then what I mean too. I'm into it. Shoutouts to Eden 8's pre-final phase with Gaia being Gay As Hell. That part in conjunction with the song live rent-free in my head, esp as inspiration for one of my pairs of OCs.

Zero 2 is here bc its a fucking good game that greatly influenced my tastes in gameplay and aesthetic. why arent people making MMZ-style games where are you people. Anyways I don't know how much I could add or explain this because really the "MMZ-Style Games" bit doesnt make sense unless you're familiar with how the games feel to play lmao. There's a niche for incredibly tight movement + combat in a 2d Platformer with levels that you can play for Rank to test yourself and i am just not seeing them tbh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Iji is the first game to make me cry as a teen. one of the strongest standouts from the early western indie game scene by far. I dont think I particularly cared for the gameplay thinking on it, but I also think that's like fine because its a very unique game and it plays well enough for exactly the kind of game it needs to be. The fact this is one of the first games to go "hey, you don't actually need to kill anyone, and in fact, you probably really don't want to anymore once you get the fuller picture of what's going on because god DAMN the situation is bad" is really important to me and like, man, maaaaaaan, the game's good. Shoutouts to Asha, worst funniest cockiest dipshit ever 10/10.

An Untitled Story is just a solid game from celeste dev who is responsible for the game maker platformer engine I eventually adapted into my own form. I think the game itself is like fine and I really like that one of the MAIN upgrades you get for progression is straight up hatching from an egg. Ultimately, the game is on here because it greatly affected my game dev trajectory. "Why not Celeste tho?" i havent played it and really just havent felt like playing it, its not the time yet.

I picked Double Dealing Character as the touhou representative because while Ten Desires is the first touhou game I truly got into and beat repeatedly, DDC is like, the one that REALLY got me into the series and made friends during. I think if you're looking to try playing any of the mainline touhou shmups this is a good starting point; there aren't any like, game specific mechanics you need to worry about and there's some really fun/funny spellcards that'll trip you up, the challenge is just in the right spot I think. Touhou as a SERIES is a huge inspiration for me (I literally made several fangames at this point) so it resides in a special place in my heart.

tetris attack is a game that i wish i could play against other people like i straight up plan on implementing online into touhou panel date pon for this explicit reason i crave violence that only swapping panels can sate. i really dont need to add more to this, but I also enjoy Dr Mario and Tetris. I don't think I'm MASTERFUL at them but I fall into a weird spot of "Not Pro but Super Not Casual" for them so its hard to play Versus in these games (not that there's easy ways to play falling block match 3 versus games that aren't Tetris or Puyo but i mean…)

the probably big ???? here for most people who are familiar with it is Mystic Quest and a) dude that game's soundtrack FUCKS b) I played it a lot as a kid whenever my family stayed at my aunt's house and it was so much fun. S/o to Shining in the Darkness for the same reason (and is probably why i latched onto EO in the first place tbh). Listen, FFMQ is the most baby shit rpg ever but it is a vital piece of my soul as a game designer/developer/person. You have to respect it, if nothing else for the OST.

La-Mulana, Baba is You, and Ittle Dew get the same entry on here as they are more or less on here for the same reasons. They're all puzzle games on wildly different axis and really made me think about what challenge means for a video game. La-Mulana (this includes 2 for the record) because the game asks you "ok dipshit, how good are you at taking and using notes and remembering what verbs you have? Also here's some slapstick jokes for your enrichment lol". Its great. You have to respect the game because it WILL throw a banana peel in front of you and you WILL slip if you aren't paying attention. Baba Is You is just a phenomal take on sokoban. Rules are fake actually as it turns out. Ittle Dew I struggle to remember any actual puzzles from (granted its been a Hot Minute since I played it) but I DISTINCTLY remember that both 1 and 2 do the funny joke of "hey if you know how to do weird shit with your tools you can get into Places You Shouldn't Be In" and that owns. It's similar to Baba Is You in that regard but it feels like a very different angle, imo. These games helped me sort of like, come to terms with and grasp the idea of games challenging you from different angles? Its not ALL about execution, after all!

shoutouts to crocomire jumpscare, got me good when i was like, 8-9. Super Metroid really sticks in my mind as a result of playing it a lot as a kid, but especially because of that part. I picked Super Metroid specifically bc its the game I probably played the most of when I was younger, though realistically that title might actually belong to Zero Mission bc I did nearly everything in that game except for the Low% Runs bc jesus christ those are hard as hell. Anyways I really like Metroid Primes 1 and 2 (didnt particularly care for 3? wii-mote aiming doesnt do it for me either) and most of the games and like, I've talked about how the gamefeel of the 2D ones is very unique and I dislike the term metroidvania bc there's usually way more emphesis on the -vania part then anything like Metroid lmao. But yeah, samus cool and gay. Would love to see people make metroid-style games with a slower n more methodical gameplay style tbh. I should also make that at some point.

Etrian Odyssey V is my pick for EO because imo its probably the most solid one in terms of the team figuring out how to design the games and just has REALLY fun class and encounter design. I get why ppl might shy from it bc its different aesthetic from the others but its good. Each class has a Base Set of Skills that sort of gives you an idea of how they'll play but then you unlock the Master Sets and you have to pick one for each class (each class gets two) and that allows you to really focus your characters and the teambuilding aspect really pops off at this point. The FOE puzzles and dungeon layouts are fun and the random encounters will explode you for fucking up, its great. Just a really strong and focused entry to the series, and I feel like the one that really delivers on the EO experience. I don't really wanna talk about the other games otherwise we'd be here all night but I do want to make a note that if you're looking to play the first 3 games, the HD Remasters are probably your best bet as the QoL shit (+ slight balance changes to how some skills work/they behave properly now; Beast notably still works the same but is better now due to the Provoke changes; "but Loyalty still sucks?" welllllllll there's quirks to how you can use that to your advantage actually; remember these are team building games!) really helps make them easier to play and get through. Anyways big fan of EOV, its decidedly my favorite after getting thru most of my second replay (i need to get back to it lol). Recommend if you're itching for an RPG with teeth that's not overwhelming you with a bajillion numbers and has a lot of depth to how you can build your team.

Order of Ecclesia is here bc gender. also bc its my second castlevania game (i started with Dawn of Sorrow) and i managed to 100% somehow. idk its a fun game and i think it might've been one of the first games where I REALLY started to understand the concept of game mechanics, because idiot baby me finally realized that "oh enemies have RESISTANCES and WEAKNESSES and my weapons can HIT those weaknesses for MASSIVE DAMAGE" after trying to genuinely master the game for the hitless medal rewards (unhinged btw, but i mean you also got the Death Ring bc well if you're using that you HAVE to do hitless lol). Anyways I dont care much for Castlevania as a series tbh, but OoE (and by extension DoS) were formative games for me so they go on here. Shanoa is also Gender so like, lol lmao

I dont actually have much to say for Knytt Stories. I cant remember as much as I would like but I feel fondness recalling it and I think it definitely influenced how I think about games. This goes for Knytt too, the first one. I think if nothing else, these games were probably the first games I played where the primary focus was simply area atmosphere and VibesTM and they were cute and fun to play.

dragon's dogma is on here bc i think its one of the first games where I actually thought about my character's gender and tried out the name Robin for a bit there. also its a fun fucking game and I liked how wild it gets past a point. Really just, primarily hoping that 2 has a much larger enemy variety pool. Clambering around on shit and stabbing it was hella fun. But yeah this is really just on here for the gender reasons lmao.

Wonder Girl 3 The Dragon's Trap (the remaster/make/whatever) is the game to bring up whenever "does animation affect game feel" as a topic comes up because its THE shining example of it doing that imo. its also just a good fucking game I think about a lot. good ost to boot. Like, I think about the game itself and its like just a really solid fun action platformer with exploratory elements and minor ""rpg"" elements? but it really vibes with me aesthetically. It's an inspiration for me, because frankly I love making these sorta games? I wish there were more like it.

ok last game. Potato Flowers in Full Bloom is such a good fucking game. its cute. its good. I would kill for Chief, love her. she just wants to feed the world dude. 10/10. its kind of like a puzzle rpg in a sense? I really like it. DRPGs are a niche genre, and I think PFiFB is a very unique take on it, and like, I really recommend it if you're juicing for something that's a bit different. Last I checked you can cheese a lot of it by building an evasion character turbo hard but like I think that's fine, there's plenty of variety in terms of how you can build characters and its fun. It's cute. It made me rethink how I approach game design? I think? Idk. It's just a game i really enjoyed and I think you should try out if you like RPGs.

I forgot to talk about the X Series since the thing didnt have X1 on there for some reason so the Collection is there (for the PS2). The series quality is all over the place but damn if it aint a formative series for me, in much of the same vein as the Zero series.

In conclusion you need to have played at least 75% of this list if you want to stand even a chance of dating/fighting me.

EDIT: actually I have a couple of notes I want to talk further about to.

a. "Why no Mario games? Sonic games?" So While I Do Enjoy Mario Games, none of them are what I would call necessarily formative for me? They're all more like, games I take inspiration from rather then affecting my brain on the level the other games did. As for Sonic, I just have not play the games LOL.

b. "Undertale?" Man, I like Undertale a lot, its just not on the list for a similar reason to the above.

c. I did try to stick to one game per series/developer but that sorta fell apart as I racked my brain for games lmao. shit's hard when you have a lot of thoughts and poorly processed words.

Ok I lied and am back

So I will post one more time here this year as I was asked about it on my coding blog and just direct them to here.  I was asked what I ACTUALLY DID back then and here is that list.

I DID go to a theme hunter blog and picked one of the themes they had reblogged to use as a template for Sequence’s original theme. I then proceeded to completely and utterly redo the entire theme. See, it was the first time I made an RP on tumblr and I figured I could do what you do on jcink. Take a theme (they call them skins there) and completely remake it basically just using the original as the ‘skeleton’ or framework as it were. I then transferred coding from the original Sequence RP which again was on jcink YEARS before any of these other RPs were even a twinkle in their creators’ eyes. Had to rewrite a lot of it as it wasn’t friendly with tumblr. I show the original theme for tumblr Sequence and the Jcink Sequence are almost a 1 for 1 recreation just changed a few things to fit a tumblr heavy aesthetic but with the flair of jcink coding design. Raven tried to claim I had stolen her theme and just put my graphics or something over it. But then later says I took a theme, removed the credit, and  then.... put it back later? Then later said I never did that, I did just in fact take her them. In truth, I hadn’t removed the credit. I had accidently merged it with the [pagination] coding. Once I noticed it and separated the two their credit which was in the top of the code for the theme itself all fancy and huge had again begun showing up on the main as well. The theme maker had been asked if It was their theme and they replied by saying it had their credit, the coding of one of their themes but looked completely and utterly different and they weren’t claiming it as their own theme. When I later spoke to the theme maker I explained what happened and they told me it was best I remove their credit anyway as it was no longer the theme they made and added a rule to not alter their themes to that extent for the future.

I DID create/transfer Sequence to tumblr out of spite. I HATED that such places like ALR and WOTNA could pull the crap they pulled on me and just get away scott free. So, I took my old RP which was a big hit on Jcink and brought it over. Took nearly a year to edit the theme and modernize the lore. I wanted to sprinkle in bits and pieces from not only the inFAMOUS series, but Mega Man, Deus Ex, and Mirror’s Edge. All to add flavor to my already established but admittedly old (and thus I was kind of tired of it) world. I also took the tried old troupe of ‘mega evil company vs rebels against it’ that ALL original abilities RPs were using back then and made it morally grey. There was no clear ‘bad’ or ‘good guys’ All factions save the ‘neutral everyday people’ one took actions and had motivations that were good and bad. It was a mix of ‘good and evil is how you choose to see it’ and ‘does the ends justify the means?’ Although I can no longer remember the exact quote. One from Xenosaga that basically says there is no good or evil just shades of grey and it is humans that made up the very concepts of good or evil. Also inspired that choice. Apparently, this troupe no matter how I altered it was a ‘stolen unique and essential part’ of a couple of those other RPs.

I DID use the word ‘jihad’ when explaining Raven’s assault against my, my RP and my members. As they attacked me with the furiousness of a person that was as crazed and fanatical as a religious zealot. As I understood the word, it was used as a word for religious wars in the middle east. If I was wrong back then I apologize for using it. However, I don’t know how that instantly branded me a racist by Raven. Or how, that then got twisted into apparently having a run in with a muslim RP I denied instead then, made a racist rant about on the main, then harassed for days. Although, there was ZERO evidence of this anywhere, no person turned up claiming this, it wasn’t anywhere in the main EVER, and the only screen shot of anything which was quickly buried was when I said ‘raven needs to stop her jihad against me’ so..... yeah..... crazy people going to crazy and make shit up I guess.

I DID employ someone named Sam as my co-admin. In my defense, Sam was only ever nice to me, I only had great threads and some chats with Sam during the brief time our paths crossed on WOTNA. I had absolutely no idea the drama this person had made while there, what they were spreading after leaving, or that they would use their position as my co-admin to taunt and attack WOTNA. This person used mads mikkelsen exculsively and had drama with what appeared as half the WOTNA member base. As well as storylines of SA, and other dark topics. She also heavily trolled that RP after she left it, during her time on mine, and when they let her return as the admin said something that pissed her off and she was going to ‘burn that place to the fucking ground.’ After learning of this, I cut ties with her completely.

I DID have a past with Raven. After leaving WOTNA and recovering. I found Elswood and attempted to join it. Long story short. I was denied multiple times because and I quote ‘you used a comma where you should have used a semicolon.’ Checking with my advanced LIT teacher and her confirming the comma was the write choice, I could tell where that was going. Raven ultimately denied my app a couple of more times for similar ‘incorrect’ minor grammar uses (they were correct though). However, she then permitted a friend to make a character with  my same face claim, same power, same back story, same personality, and even the same app. The only differences were if I had a line like ‘Having grown up in New York City’ their EXACT SAME LINE IN THE APP would read ‘New York City had been where he was born and raised.’ I got pissed and little kid me blasted her as a grammar nazi and letting a friend steal my character. Thought it went unheard... clearly it had not.

I DID have an affiliations page at one point. I know this was a ‘rumor’ as raven reported it like two days after I made it but it got quickly deleted and spun I only made it to get any kind of ‘any publicity is good publicity’ way. Truth is, I had one, and I had reached out to five or six RPs at the time. Three of them had confirmed they would be adding my button and I was on like 4 or 5 of those RPs. However, I received messages from them stating that multiple people had begun to harass them. The messages at first ‘warned them’ of me but when they didn’t reply, they turned ugly. Feeling bad that I had made Raven and her minions attack these groups. I told them to remove my button or link from their affiliations and make a statement that they weren’t affiliated with me. I’d leave the groups if they wanted me to as well as I know they’ll harass them even harder if they found out I was on them. All but two groups decided to do that #yourockgrimstonelake I can’t really remember the other group.

I DID attempt self deletion because of all this. First when I left WOTNA because the stuff they were doing and saying hit a spot that my own father always beat on since I was a kid. The whole ‘you’re a failure, no one likes you, you’ll always fail without me.’ type spot. I couldn’t handle it, I stopped taking my medication, I stopped eating, drinking, and it got bad. It again happened a couple of weeks after Raven’s assault of Sequence. This was an RP that I spent a near year rebuilding for tumblr with plans to release pages, themes, and other codes for people to use signify them as a member. Plans to open a coding help blog where I would both produce my own themes and pages as well as help with those that the makers long abandoned that people still wanted to use but needed fixes or modern updates for. Ultimately, it got to me and I more actively and now have scars from the attempt, tried to self delete. I had to make my friend Jake who I had convinced to move from jcink to tumblr cover as me for a while. All the time these sick psychopaths spread their lies and made up more about me, laughed at me, and were actually sending messages to self delete. Of course, apparently, that was fine and is a part of this story people to this day ignore and some, even feel justified in pushing me to that point.

- “man or woman we’re not sure” followed immediately by “him”. bethesda’s male-as-default mindset strikes again :/

- on a more relevant note, this sounds... kinda sketchy. i had been wondering how the RAILROAD got synths out of there if they didn’t know how to get into the place (didn’t really speculate which was an oversight, should’ve put together a list of possibilities), but the fact that they don’t even know how to contact their “ally” is a big surprise.

    - how did the RAILROAD even get started then? did this mysterious benefactor just start throwing rescued synths out into the COMMONWEALTH with nobody to catch them?

        - i feel like the obvious answer here is that the RAILROAD must have been founded by escaped synths, or at least one escaped synth and their organic friends. how PATRIOT’s identity is still unknown is a mystery, although the RAILROAD do regularly use mind wipe technology so they might have intentionally covered those tracks to protect the one truly indispensible link in the chain.

            - the RAILROAD really must be a relatively new kid on the block, then. if one (1) person is the cornerstone of their entire operation, and they have no way of replacing or reinforcing them, that’d limit the age of the organisation to however long that person’s been working for the INSTITUTE. even if PATRIOT is a synth, advanced synths have only existed for a few decades.

                - although- ALTHOUGH- what if PATRIOT is an older model of SYNTH? or a robot, even?

                    - IS PATRIOT SECRETLY FINAL P.A.M.??????????

                        - IT ALL MAKES SENSE! i’ve noticed that P.A.M. has this little radio antenna thing on her, which immediately made me think “oh, her ungodly amount of processing power could never fit into a vaguely person-sized shell, her brain is obviously in a warehouse under the SWITCHBOARD and she’s basically astral projecting into this ASSAULTRON body via wifi”. but the thing is, she is EXACTLY the kind of miracle of technology that the INSTITUTE would want to get their hands on the second they even heard of her, especially since they were outright messing with artificial intelligence! what if P.A.M.’s brain is in the INSTITUTE, maybe bound by fucked up laws of robotics to not mess with her “masters” directly, but loopholing her way around that by constructing a puppet organisation to do the work on a technically independant level! of course she can’t just say she’s PATRIOT, she’s probably been instructed to never compromise the INSTITUTE’s security, but setting up an organisation to work entirely on the outside with no knowledge of how the place works gets around that! even the name PATRIOT makes a little more sense - she was created by and for the american military for the purpose of preventing global thermonuclear war, patriotism to the united states was outright coded into her life purpose! she failed to save america, so now she’s trying to save whoever she can!

- now that i’ve typed all of that out, i need another nother post. maybe i’ll even spend more time playing than typing on pause today lol.

February 8-28

I can hardly even remember where I left off with these, I feel like so much has happened over the last few weeks!

I think I was finishing up my rubber band website, which I am considering finished for now, though there are a few things I think would be good to go back and add. I think I got some good suggestions at the midterm presentation, one being to maybe switch it so you can place a band around two points and then just drag that around, rather than having it be a shape-drawing thing as it is now. I think changing the code to do that would have to be an entire overhaul of the structure I have made and I'm not sure I have the time to do it, but it's something to add to the post-semester GradEx list.

Also on the list is beautifying my self portrait and magnet writing websites, since I don't love their designs. Though I guess I'm not showing the seld portrait one at GradEx... or am I? Not sure yet. But back to the rubber band feedback, nobody said this but it bugs me (get it? "bug"? like computer bug? at least I make myself laugh) how slow the program is running, so might have to go in and make it more efficient. I also wanted to add a feature to save sections of the canvas as images to show off the artwork made, but... again, added to the GradEx list.

I got some great feedback in the midterm presentation about ways to exhibit so much digital work in something like GradEx and also to incorporate alternate presentation styles for my final presentation and just generally to show my work and make it more interactive. I have all the feedback saved in my notes but the highlights were to add easter eggs and web morbidity to the community garden and to potentially make it mobile-accessible somehow for face to face interaction like GradEx, so people can use it right there. I liked all those ideas, though it has me thinking, maybe the community garden should just be mobile? Like a mobile webpage, not an app because I wouldn't know where to start with that, but making it built for mobile might have some issues but would be great to get people more involved with it and not have to whip out their computers.

I also did get a note that I should consider not biting off more than I can chew with this community garden thing. I hear that, and I am scared that's what I'm doing, but with so little time left my options feel limited. I could change directions and go back to brainstorming to find more small projects, or I can run with the groundwork I've done and just hope I can make something great with it, even though it's a massive undertaking. I think the community garden makes the most sense to finish at this point in my thesis. I'm passionate about it and I have faith that I can make something cool, though I am going to have to likely adapt and shrink it down where the fat can be cut, though I still need it to be impressive and not just a sad little garden.

Did not plan on writing that much but a lot has happened! I'll add the current rubber band link here as well and the latest process images.

I did also work on my process book but I don't have much to say on it, so I'll just leave those images here too.

https://rubber-band-art.glitch.me/

Updated user garden flow (yay)

Shadow of the Fox

This book has been on my to-read list for about a century and a half and I finally got around to reading it. BOY, AM I GLAD I DID!!!! I'm going to try to make this review as spoiler free as possible, but seeing as I have specific opinions on the ending, that may be a bit difficult. I'm just going to issue a spoiler warning for the entire review.

One of the things I absolutely loved about Shadow of the Fox was Kagawa's writing. Her descriptions, particularly the descriptions of the settings were so fucking fantastic that if I closed my eyes, I probably would've been able to trick myself into thinking I was in Iwagoto. Her descriptions of people were also brilliant, I just had a hard time imagining the clothes. I don't know much about what kimonos and other traditional Japanese clothing look like so I just kept imagining Yumeko in a hanbok (which is Korean and therefore from the wrong culture entirely).

The pacing of the book was also pretty nice. It started out with a bang, like, first chapter and there's already an army of demons. That was pretty nice because it really hooked me in and kept my attention through the next few chapters of exposition (you know, the part where the author sets up the plot and introduces the characters which is kinda necessary but also not terribly exciting). Then when the whole adventure started, it was pretty much one thing after another. It was a good mix of epic action scenes and scenes centered around dialogue.

Characters

Yumeko: I FUCKING LOVED Yumeko. Some of my favorite quotes in the entire book (I prefer funny quotes to profound ones) were made possible because Yumeko did not understand sarcasm. One of the things that I loved the most about Yumeko is that she didn't fall into the damsel in distress category (which would've been easy considering her lack of experience of life outside the temple) but she also didn't fall into the inexplicably a warrior category (you know, put the girl with absolutely no training against an enemy and suddenly she's got a black belt in Capoeira). She was able to hold her own and even save Kage Tatsumi (the infamous demonslayer) on occasion and she did that through things she had already mastered (her illusion magic, for example).

Kage Tatsumi: Ok, so, I must admit, I wasn't as fond of Tatsumi as literally everyone else who read this book but that's not because he's badly written or anything, it's because I rarely love the dark-past emotionally-constipated mysterious-badboy type characters. I did love his levels of badassery though. I guess I just wish we could've seen more personality although I suppose the whole point of his character is that he's not SUPPOSED to have a personality.

Okame: He was definitely the character I had the most fun reading about by far. Okame was hands down the funniest and I think he added a lightheartedness to the squad that was severely needed. I also always appreciate an archer. Personally, I think archery is cooler than swordplay. I also think his character as compared to Tatsumi brings up some interesting points. He's constantly talking about being an honorless Ronin as opposed to Tatsumi who is a Samurai and abides by the code of bushido but that begs the question of what honor really is.

Taiyo Daisuke: My favorite character!!! I swear, Kagawa created this man specifically to make me fall in love. I mean, a young nobleman (who's actually noble and not an asshole) with pretty features and long silver hair. Yes, please. Aside from the fact that he's totally my newest book boyfriend, I also think that Daisuke is the purest character in a way. He's the only character who's not either keeping secrets/decieving/misleading the other characters (Yumeko and Tatsumi) or in possession of questionable morals (Okame). Of course, that also makes me a bit anxious because he seems to0 good to be true

Reika: She may have come in a little close to the end, but I still consider her to be pretty important. Reika is another one of my favorite characters. She's a shrine maiden, not a warrior, so she's probably not embarking on many dangerous missions. Still, she does not hesitate to do extremely dangerous things to protect the shrine. Reika is the character I respect the most.

Lady Satomi: The big bad. I didn't have any huge opinions on Satomi and interestingly enough, I hated her more for abusing her waitstaff than for, you know, sending an army of demons to steal a magic scroll and attempting to kill the main characters multiple times. She was a worthy villain but there was nothing about her that really stood out to me

I said at the beginning of this review that I have opinions on the ending. I really loved that Tatsumi gets possessed by Hakaimono at the end because I was dreading the moment Tatsumi uncovered Yumeko's lies and carries through his orders to kill her but with Hakaimono possessing Tatsumi, that heartbreaking moment never actually happened. Yeah, I know that also means that one of the most dangerous demons Jigoku has to offer is now running around the mortal realm in the body of an elite warrior, but at least Yumeko and Tatsumi don't hate each other.

I do have a bone to pick with the epilogue, though. I feel like Lady Satomi's death should have been more dramatic. She does all this crazy evil badass magicy stuff but in the end, she's just stabbed in her bed chambers?! It's just a bit underwhelming. At the same time, though, I understand why Kagawa had her killed that way. She was too powerful to fight head on, so having a character sneak in and assassinate her was probably the best way to ensure that she died.

Sims 3 world building conclusions pt.2

(4)The world is so big that I have to go on a vampire hunt to find other townies. Just…why??? 😭 What is that? I did get bored from playing in my world after a few months, but this made me yearn for that medium world life again. And now, I find myself loading up the test save I shelved. I guess that's a good thing. I also started working on large map for the same world. (5)Fifth is that a large world should be comfortable to play in. What I mean is that I find moving around large chunks of pointless land to be tedious. Moving to five points of a map may sound cool, but it may not be practical. I have seen this done right, but I've come to the conclusion that this is not the way for me. I don't want to people to feel like they are running a marathon with their mouse. And if they do, make it worth it. It isn't always worth it. (6)Six is a little off the beaten path from the rest of list. It's also what prompted this post. CC in world builds. I'm not a builder. I try to stick to Maxis stuff as much as possible but somes cc can add a little extra touch where my abilities can't reach. I try to be as respectful as possible to cc creators because I love what they do. It's hard work and you can end up creating more than you play the game. I know this because I've been self learning cc creation for the last two weeks(at a steady pace, of course). It's doable but nothing to sneeze at. As I have started building, I have noticed some of these rules are ridiculous. I ended up removing an entire folder from my game because I felt the rules were too ridiculous. A few of them basically meant "You can only use my cc for playing your game." Fine. Sounds alright if you say it that way. But if you feel that way, just say so. Stop listing out 10 bullet points to say one thing. I feel like it's become a thing in the Sims community to beat around the bush. It doesn't make you more official. And I specifically have an issue with no cc for builds. Hear me out, because I know people will be ready to disagree immediately without understanding what I mean. If the cc is not in your mod folder, it will not show up in the game. The Sims will substitute the item to the best of its scrambled code abilities. If someone puts your cc in their builds, links your website for the items, and credits you, what's the problem? They didn't steal if they didn't repost it without credit and it never shows up in any users game. Credit doesn't seem to be enough to them and it makes me wonder why they even started creating custom content in the first place. It takes steam out of building. It reminds me of people complaining about Lilsimie using the same items in her builds. There are only so many items you can use silly. (7)Seven is that you also shouldn't go wild with cc. No one wants to download a million items to use your world. The biggest gripe I have about CAW usage is creating world that can't run smoothly. What's the point of a world you can only look at? Take pictures? Go on vacation? Sure, but ultimately, it collects dust in InstalledWorlds until the user decides to remove it. I don't want that. I want people to enjoy my world. At least until the adults decide to have a family and move to a family world. (Last words) D7 Large will be a little more family friendly. The young adult life will still be there. A large section of the map is going to supernaturals. There are basically two income brackets in this town. Poor and rich. No middle class. I'm pushing a narrative. I couldn't really push this narrative the way I wanted on the medium map without taking away certain aspects. On a large map, I can. All and all, building D7 made me understand what kind of world I was aiming for. Poor,rich, supernatural, human, college, and a relaxed night life.

Deep breath*

Also, I'm working on a fantasy world. D7 has caused me to become more inspired. Browsing through Temu did as well 😋. I'm still playing with terrain.

@alienembers THIS MAY ALSO HELP WITH PLAYING SUBNAUTICA. mainly because in the second video one of the reapers glitched out and was stuck facing away from the player swimming into a wall. that shit's always funny, even in the poopy water. also its. it kinda hits you in the feels if you're not prepared, so props to the guy that made this, im impressed, it hits harder than the game on its own, and that's counting every time i lost a sub or saw (endgame and actual plot spoiler) also- idk if it'll help but i know for me part of what initially made subnautica terrifying was the thought of walking in blind, so i researched EVERYTHING not knowing what was/could be out there was absolutely terrifying, and yeah. i will admit that, in some cases, learning what actually was out there was worse. but there's another solution for that! aside from knowing your do's and don'ts and what they will/won't respond to and the behavior quirks coded in (you can check out the trivia section on each creature page), there's no shame in having your first save file be one in creative so you can explore and get used to the environment, and get used to telling the fish to SHUT THE FUCK UP IM TRYING TO GROW A GODDAMN TREE YOU SON OF A BITCH, that way slipping into a survival/freedom (or even hardcore, if you really wanna test your skills) is easier. there's also console commands, where you can make yourself invisible to the creatures, make it so you can ohko them, what have you. i can get you the full list if you like- plus they just made an update (which shows real dedication considering the game is 9 YEARS OLD NOW THIS THING IS ALMOST AS OLD AS MY LITTLE SISTER) that fixed a fuckton of frustrating bugs and retroactively added a few things that were in below zero, like the large room and the glass domes for the multipurpose room and large room. idk if this was part of the (i think it was called living large?) patch or a smaller one they did before, but they fixed a behavior glitch for a fauna that had been bugged out this entire time. the shuttlebug is called the jumper in the files because they were supposed to walk around on land for a little bit when they got tired of swimming and do a little jump to go back to swimming when they didn't want to walk anymore. iirc it was one line of code that fixed other issues as well, so! that's a thing too. there's also a mod that lets you just have leviathans pop into your pocket when they run into you- The Last Bacon has done a series of videos on subnautica mods, so check those out too. if you want ANY info on subnautica you need clarification on, cant find, or just dont wanna look up- don't hesitate to ask. im MORE than willing to brainrot over it, i love this game and definitely haven't been wanting to make a crossover au between it and lmk, nosiree

NEL IS MY BABY I LOVE HIM - scratch / block code is actually like the only “coding language” i know because im too lazy to learn anything else LOL (im gonna try to learn renpy someday for part 2 of nels game though … anything for my silly little alien boi) tbh , scratch isnt too difficult but its TEDIOUS AS HELL 😭 it takes forever for me to make the dumb textbox transitions because i have to keep scrolling up n down , even with copy paste i still have to edit and make sure the timings are correct its such hell lmao

the little emote is basically just a glorified version of me lol (because the laws of physics wouldnt permit me to have a cool hair style)

i own the jacket irl its absolutely sick

LMAO i honestly kinda wish i could relate to the issue that people find me scary , i feel like my life would be a lot easier if i was intimidating to people , because i actually most of the time do have murder / violence on my mind - but noooo im small and squishy LOL

damn ive heard of those kinds of windows , yk those memes where people go onto their balcony / look out their window with their phones and just see like a brick wall LOL . my balcony gets a really nice view of the city sunrise i think , even though ive only been up to see it once or twice

BOOM >:D

i think the silliest thing i own is a ziplock bag from 6th grade that is full of cutouts from my friends mathbook , for example:

for the question … top 5 favorite genshin characters ? and if you want you can explain why but its not required (also if you play on genshin NA servers , wanna add eachother ? i guess this counts as two questions so feel free to shoot two back at me if ya want lol)

wishing you the best on asphodelus !!

- jellyfish

i can absolutely agree that scratch is such a pain in the ass LMAO, it always takes up my time whenever i did it in computing class a few years back

the blonde highlights are an absolute hit for me bro... and that's the xiao jacket, right? (hope i'm not mistaken because i feel like i've seen those around twitter)

AND YES THOSE MEMES IS EXACTLY MY WINDOW VIEW OMG whenever i'm feeling like looking out the window all i see is a brick wall with my neighbour's unit greeting me, and suddenly my day gets so much worse /hj

and those sunrise pics are bomb!!! i feel like if i had a sunrise view i'd be up early every single day to watch it and take cute pictures (i'm literally up before 6 every day, unwillingly)

a ziplock bag full of cutouts...? from 6th grade...? damn looking at it made me realize that 6th grade was so long ago and that we'd do a lot of silly stuff at that age 😭 makes me remind of those times when i was so energetic lmao now i can't even go up a flight of stairs without complaining

i think i'd have to make a separate top 5 list for the genshin characters because i don't think i could combine both genders into one list 😔 i'm too indecisive for that

top 5 genshin men; kuni, kazuha, cyno, dainsleif and alhaitham!! kuni is pretty self-explanatory, but as for kazuha and cyno.... i've been in love ever since they first came out (for cyno i've been waiting since like late 2020 LMAO and for kazuha i first saw him in the beta leaks and vowed to save up for him ever since then) i've also pretty much been in love with dainsleif ever since his first appearance in the archon quest (was it in 1.5??? i'm not entirely sure) and for alhaitham,, well his very blunt personality (and also appearance) have intrigued me 😞 i am apart of the alhaitham fanclub now

top 5 genshin women; yelan, shenhe, yoimiya, yae miko and ei!!! i love yelan and shenhe the most tho, they're my loves and i'm just really in love with their designs 🫶🫶

it's also cool how i have most of them (except for alhaitham, dainsleif and... kuni, unfortunately). i'll most definitely pull for alhaitham soon and hopefully luck is with me hahaha,, i quite literally only have less than 10 pulls right now

and yes i do play on na!!! i'm not really online much because there's not much to do right now but yes we could add eachother!!

as for a question for you... how many 5* do you currently have in genshin? and who do you plan on pulling for next?

thank you!!! asphodelus is going pretty well for me i am really looking forward to this new series

and thank you once again for talking with me jellyfish hehe hope you're having a great day today!! :D