4, 9, 19, and 21 for the weirdly specific artist ask game? (if you're still doing it, otherwise feel free to ignore this)

4. (Fave character/subject but hard to draw)

I usually stick to things I know how to draw (probably not the best idea but whatever fhsgd), but probably either King Dedede, Nightmare, dragons, and fish. Oh and Subnautica creatures. I've only attempted that once for a D&D monster and it was the Gargantuan Leviathan... maybe just a little bit out of my comfort zone there.

9. (File naming conventions)

I usually either type random letters, keyboard smash, or name them after random thoughts or quotes that will make zero sense later. For example, I have a flipaclip file named Takingtherabbitstomcdonalds.mp4 and I will never know what this means.

(19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw)

Cherries, pie, pumpkins, paws, mushrooms, clouds, and flowers. I'm not great at drawing flowers but they're fun and daisies are easy.

(21. Artstyle I really like that's nothing like my own)

I really love the art style in Hilda, the Sam & Max cartoon, Moomins on the Riviera, that one Cinnamoroll anime movie, Studio Ghibli, Cuphead/The Cuphead Show, and Hollow Knight. I also really like Terenry RM's (i hope i spelled that right), Gotogull's, Audie Animates', and Ren LNii's. (I'm not tagging them all but I'm really inspired by some of them, and others I just think are cool.)

Thank you for asking! It's super cool to answer questions like this (i hope you have a nice day too)

tripped into the ocean and now im back in the subnautica fandom someone help me

so every once in awhile i get a notification that someone liked one of my old subnautica pieces, very specifically my old ryley and bart designs and every single time i get that notif i just, cringe, because i know how bad they are.

 so here *slams this on the table* they’re new! i, i got better at art - i promise- they’re hot now! :D and unfortunately even more in love with each other because im still not over them killing the best character in the game- he’s still alive to me i do not care

ryley’s design?? obsessed with, had a lot of fun with making and thinking about, drawing him was fun and nice. bart on the other fucking hand???? almost didn’t draw him, his design went through so many different versions to get here, all of which i sent to my very asleep brother to ask for comments, none of which came. if you can see in his sketch, originally he had spiked ears and the green mutation covered nearly his entire body, but the longer i looked at it the more and more i just hated it lmao. i might post the old version too just because i still have it idk, but like, he caused me so much trouble. even now, im not completely satisfied with how he came out?? compared to ryley, im much more proud of him than bart, so i’ll probably tackle his design again at some point, but for now-

im pretty happy with how both of them came out!! maybe one day i’ll get around to drawing the other characters lol i’d love to draw robin and al-an at some point, same with my subnautica sona but here, the boys, the survivors themselves, these fucking idiots. love them dearly.

Hello! Your super secret santa here! Was looking through some of your tags to decide what to draw for you and wanted to ask some questions if that's okay ❤️

1.) For galaxies, do you have a ref of their full bodies and what the base might look like for Y/N? And perhaps what Y/N in the story might look like? I'm very interested in it as a subnautica fan myself haha!

2.) For eventide, are there any particular outfits you have for them that you prefer them in? And what kind of jobs they might handle? I don't know much about them but I would love to hear what info you do have to offer!

(Gosh I really hope this goes through as anon)

These are excellent questions! (I'm practically BUZZING with excitement already, omg)

Galaxies: Okay, so I do have a full-body one for Sun, and I'm going to post it here because at this point I don't know when the coloring book is getting released to everyone? Or if it already did? Anyway, so here's that, I've been a bit of a mess since May so I haven't even gotten around to finishing coloring this piece (it's my own coloring page, I recognize the irony). So, Fish-Sun in flats (with Sea Monkey babies):

(I absolutely love Subnautica and Below Zero!!!!)

Now, Moon didn't get finished because a lot of really awful things happened all at once at the end of May and beginning of June, I got repeatedly sick, and so I didn't get around to finishing Moon's coloring page yet. It'll be done eventually, but for now, I'll show you what I did do.

(it actually breaks my heart a little, because I had so many plans for this one, aaaahhhhhhh) So Moon's form in general is pretty similar to Sun's design (long, almost eel-like). He was supposed to have more spines that you can kinda see in the original sketch of Moon in the ref pic, and his design was going to be very inspired by a lionfish, spines down the back and at the "hips".

The end of his tail was actually inspired by an axolotl, I just really liked drawing the little fin on my original sketch (which is long gone) and was like "Yeah, don't care that it looks odd, he's an alien". I do have plans to add more sub-sections of the story later (piratespiratespiratespirates) and I'll probably have to design baby Sun and Moon eventually, but I imagine both will be similar to axolotls, since they're supposed to be related species.

Eventide: Actually yes, I did draw up a buncha outfits! I couldn't tell what was too many refs and what would be wanted, so I cut a bunch of doodles of Eventide that I've got.

So, Eventide is a child unit built by my YN with Sun and Moon's help. She starts as a small child (5-6 years old) and "grows up" (through physical upgrades and hardware updates as her AI learns and grows) with her mum, two dads, and two human sisters. Story-wise, I have the plot for her to get up to about 15-16 (not because she dies, just because I haven't planned beyond that), and she wants to do all sorts of things. Legally, she is the property of YN and not Fazzbear Entertainment, and I'm not sure how to address the whole "can she legally have a job?" thing because I also don't know how to address the whole "Robots are people too, but how do I give them rights", so mostly it's the typical teenage/child level of "I want to be a ballerina and a doctor and a scientist and also I want to do what Mom does (officially, a handler for Sun and Moon and considered an expert in certain kinds of AI and human interactions that go into having a complicated family situation (two robot partners, two human children, one robot child)) and also she wants to do what Sun and Moon do (they will eventually be "retired", this is an agreement YN has with Fazzbear after a disastrous situation at another location, and they will be released permanently into YN's care at that point, but again, that's further down the line). At this time, her "job", as YN states (eventually, when I get there in the story), is to "be a kid and find out what all that means". (As for what she will probably do, I'm leaning towards a baker/barista, a marine biologist, or an artist of some sort.)

🌟 get to know people game 🌟

tagged by @anotherdapta what a treat to be tagged :> ty!

Current time: 19:40 (now it's 20:25)

Anything you've been doing lately: i've been getting back into drawabox recently. i'm currently on box 138 / 250 and i won't lie, it's getting pretty tedious. i just aim to get 6 boxes done every day / other day and i sometimes get some free time in the day (when i am "working") so it's a nice timewaster. as boring as drawing boxes is, i can see the results it's having when i'm drawing digitally. my lines are so much more confident and fluid. speaking of digital art, i've been playing around with glitching. i've already had a play with the PNG glitch ruby library, and i want to have a go with pixel sorting at some point. i should draw some more pylons...

Anything you intend to do later: i'm in low power mode now so just chilling for the evening. currently listening to some friends (hello friends!) playing D&D -- just looming ominously in the back of the call on mute. later, i might watch some youtube videos (i've been bingeing this channel that covers strange and unusual deaths) or finish off reading solaris.

Anything you recently watched or played: i'm not normally a TV binge watcher but i watched 3 episodes of severance yesterday and 3 episodes today. really really enjoying it. the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and i love the set designs. i'm a big fan of anachronistic tech a la fallout and control so severance ticks the same boxes for me. and that's not even to mention the compelling story and fantastic characters (i am PRAYING nothing bad happens to irving and burt. they are too precious).

current i am playing DREDGE which brings some of my favourite video game elements together: inventory tetrix, fishing minigames, and lovecraftian horror.

Anything you want to watch or play: my to watch and to play lists are ridiculously long. top of the "to watch" list is probably the latest stranger things series. i've also been meaning to rewatch serial experiments lain (in fact there's a few anime series i'd like to revisit).

top of the "to play" list...is a tricky one. i guess i really should get round to playing subnautica: below zero since subnautica is one of my favourite games. i also want to have another go with the talos principle because i love the visuals and soundtrack but i gave up with the puzzles around 10(?) years ago. lastly, looking forward to the baldur's gate 3 full release in august and control 2 whenever.

i shan't tag anyone since anotherdapta and godblessyoublackemporer have pretty much hoovered everyone up but if you follow me and this looks cool (or if you don't follow me!) then just pretend i have tagged you :)

long dream but i realized my alarms didn't go off & jumped out of bed really fast, so all i have is like the last scene, which is mostly about getting our truck that can drive on water crushed to death in a machine & then talking the guy that controlled the machine out of it. i'm really hungry for pizza.

- in some kind of small museum area with 4 ir 5 disply boxes. the museum is either run by or just featuring some relatively young for that position guy i think early 30s. anyway he kind of seemed like a dick.

- people "in my party" included me, my friend (real), & my other friend (not real, but a somewhat timetraveller). anyway the museum curator/owner guy was secretly kind of a dick. he'd hired us to investigate something - when we looked too closely at some of the artifacts it pulled us to the bay where it was a 2d minigame of a guy driving a truck around on top of & below the water, mostly interacting with a couple different nodes that had color coded icons (i think 7 of them?), & a central cruise or storange ship.

- brief interlude in this scene that was like i was doing a creepy dungeon level of a puzzle where you'd need to control 2 people & my ex was like the character they'd placed in the dungeon for me to also have to use & it was unpleasant & uncomfortable & he was doing this whole thing where he was being like really sanctimonius about the fact i told him to go to hell on an instagram post in 2020 & like "well i never told you to kill yourself" & i was like jesus christ if i didn't need you to stand on that button to free this crate i'd fucking eradicate you. you dumped me because you wanted to fuck my roommate man & were, in fact, doing that a week later, and refused to admit your behavior was wrong. like just admit it to yourself you're delusional if you think i'm not justified. anyway at the end of the level he like went into his house or whatever & i thougght about blwoing it up but i also remembered i wanted to get a perfect score on this level & killing him would detract points.

- anyway! my friend (not time traveller) was controlling the truck. there was supposed to be a more robust series of choices & doing them in a certain order would unlock a more personal ending since hte other ones were just allying with one of the 7 shpes. they each required the ocean to be terraformed in some way - one was like a barren ocean with a lot of bubbles, one had a dark blue icon tht implied a super lush ocean, i think the mental image was fontaine ocean at sunset so everything was kind of greenish. like subnautica kelp forest but less scary/more visibility. there were a lot of icons. they were done in a bold vector style with a slight gradient in like..jewel tones lol.

- as previously said! the choices weren't working out so well so my friend was just locked into supporting one of the icons & he was complaining about it because none of the icon endings were hte "true" ending. Because the millinoaire museum man was actuallly evil and would try to crush us to death with his cruise ship mecha - it'd surround us with its limbs & then start pushing inwards. i assume there was a puzzle to be freed before the boat got too cramped since there was a magnet block that we could hide under and around to prevent the worst of the damage, but in the end the final area was a weird shape and the block wouldnt save us. my friend was getting pissed off at the bugginess of the choice system. i could feel physical pain whenever the truck was crushed in the cutesy 2D interface.

- the time traveller ended up having the right idea - he took us back to the museum's opening, where we saw the museum curator guy doing his first exhibition. he had the power to draw anything & within this room grant the audience aspects of that power. his art wasn't super great, but with some encouragement, maybe he could flourish! the power also might have been from the most central display case in that room. i'm not otally sure i know it was related somehow.

- in the timetraveler's vision he could see the flow of what normally happened sort of vaguely, like if he grabbed a rope and unspooled it, all the details were in the fibers. and he saw that the curator was pushed into displying osmething that granted the audience like a magic wand with projectile powers & they all had soo much fun with that blasting things and breaking shit rather than looking at his other pieces. this led him down the path to evil.

- instead of having him display that, the time traveller secretly swapped out the magic wand one in favor of showing his other (medicore but with spirit!) drawings. curator recognized him as a time traveller & asked eagerly if he was famous & well known for his art in the future. the time traveller told him that people aren't allowed to ask about that kind of stuff (which is a true rule of time traveller society though they don't tell their rules to outsiders much) & instead asked him questions about the art pieces. curator took the bait t& eagerly started talking about llike...his weird alien oc. the fact that someone encouraged him now not for his power or ability but just out of curiosity seemed to eradicate hte bad timeline where it felt like my fingers were getting crushed to death. yay!

woke up then

5/10/23

I was woken up again. At 9AM again. It's been like 4 consecutive weeks in a row now, I'm afraid it's becoming a ritual for these people. I did the whole go downstairs, get a bowl of cereal and then pass out in the chair thing again. It just really puts a damper on the whole day when I do that. I never feel fully rested, I never get right to sleep... so I end up finally starting my day way later. It's very frustrating.

I finished the ink drawing. Here, I'll post it.

I like it. I've been kinda... letting these improvised pieces inspire the next one, so it becomes... almost like a flip book. Each one taking the last one and iterating on it. This one brought in a lot more of these blobby shapes that have dominated a lot of my abstract work over the past 20+ years.

There was a big gamechanger that came into the day today. A YouTuber that I've been following since... probably 2015? The one who introduced me to RimWorld. The one who really inspired me to get into streaming at a serious level. Whose VoDs I have used to help me sleep for several years because of his thoughtful and comprehensive narration. He released a video today that... I have never seen any work of his at nearly this level. It was over 3.5 hours long. It was a deep-dive video essay on the incorporation of story in survival games, done through the lens of the game The Forest. It was... spectacular. I couldn't walk away, I couldn't even pause it. It pained me to pause it to even go pee, I was sitting squirming in my chair trying to watch and draw for at least 20 minutes before I caved. It's a really good video essay. Well researched, extremely well edited, fair and generous to the developers, yet... he stands his ground on his point and his perspective.

What kinda shook my foundation with it? He took the end of the essay as an opportunity to do a face reveal. And... it was a strange experience. He... looked like he could be a relative of mine. Like... he looked like a version my dad's younger brother... but my age. (I look more like my mom.) It... was a strange experience. To finally have a face to match the voice that has been setting the background when I went to sleep for years, that I've had on in the background while gaming since... at least 2017. Whose Project Zomboid streams I watched on the last night I spent with my terminally ill dog, and watched in bed while grieving her passing when I couldn't sleep. I have his Banished playthrough that I've been listening to fall asleep to this week, last week it was Planet Zoo. I can't even do the math on how many of these streams I have absorbed. Every Stellaris playthrough he's done, every Space Engineers stream I could find, X3, Kerbal Space Program, Rimworld (of course), good lord his playthrough of Subnautica was one of the most compelling playthroughs I've ever watched. Years and years of material to drift off to sleep to. It had been my routine for pretty much the whole pandemic... to play his streams when going to sleep, and somewhere along the way I started putting music on too so that once the stream ended, there was some sound on so it wasn't just silence.

Needless to say, it's very odd to finally get a face to match the voice. Like finally seeing the person who voices a cartoon character for the first time. It's just... my brain didn't really want to process it. But like... the most unsettling and weird part... is how... familiar he looked. And he, of course, is the one I gravitated towards because we have a ton in common. Though, over the past few years, we have split ways on stuff - lifestyle, entertainment preference, etc. It's just... odd. And it's still sitting with me.

What scares me a bit... I'm afraid it might be a sign he's getting ready to step away from YouTube. He might not, I might be reading into it. I mean, it's been his entire life for a decade. I dunno. Maybe he's just... transitioning? It felt like a big moment. He was always very against the premise of doing face reveals, always felt they were tacky. It validated me a lot, because I never really saw the point of taking up what we called in video and graphic design class "screen real estate" with a static box that just has your blank stare at a computer screen. I feel like it doesn't... contribute anything, it always felt really... vain. And he always echoed the same sentiment, and it gave me a lot of validation in an ocean of carbon copy streamers. And yet... here he is. So, idk. I've gotta get back into his livestreams soon. He's just... he's in UK, so... it's hard to get my schedule to overlap well.

I was so enthralled by the video that I skipped a shower. I ordered a pizza. I ate a bunch of it and then started working on the skull. The skull is in pretty rough shape. A lot of the bone is... nature got to it. It's not bad, it's just... porous and discolored in places. I did my best to get the debris out of the cavities, got most of it. I started to sand it, and it actually helps the look a lot. I might leave it on the windowsill to sun bleach it a bit, in addition to the sanding and polishing I'm doing. I have no clue what to do with it. There aren't really a lot of flat spaces. So... I'm probably going to treat the design work like... like face tattoos or something. I honestly don't know. But I think sanding and polishing it first is a good idea, it'll be an easier surface to work on. Then I can choose whether I even want to carve it, or if I want to just go ahead and ink/paint right on it. Now that it's out and sitting in my workspace, it freaks me out a lot less.

I tried polishing some stones too, some of the ones from the National Park. I just... wasn't really feeling it. That used to be go-to work for me in the past, and now? Now it just felt forced. So... I kinda took it easy today. I guess. I mean, if you want to call working on 3 separate projects "taking it easy".

I'm a bit depressed tonight. Probably the sleep deprivation affecting me. And the whole... not having a big super inspiring "super excited to work on it" project. Despite my anxiety about design elements and the permanence, I was always really excited about working on the hoodie. And the desire path project, I loved it. This skull? I'm just not there yet. I'm sure once I get the surface prepped and start sketching it will get much more comfortable and enticing. I guess it's just the sanding and polishing that I'm just... not really into right now, just in general.

I think I'm going to take this opportunity to head to bed a bit earlier than I usually do. Fingers crossed I don't hear another vacuum or whatever at 9AM, because if I go to bed right this second? I'm only getting 6 hours of sleep.

oh dear I’m sorry about that! Got so distracted rambling i forgot to give you any information, my bad broseph 😅 (the dress sounds amazing tho we love a steal and I cordially invite you to my tea party in spirit)

I’m a Scorpio and I use It/It’s pronouns. Also asexual but panromantic. I enjoy writing, drawing, and currently I’m learning embroidery. and failing. horribly.

I wouldn’t say I’m shy or easily embarrassed and consider myself to be a pretty confident person! I love dressing up for fancy events or even just going on a walk. If I don’t feel like the main character of a fantasy book then I’m not doing it right. This also means I will be stealing the clothes of whomever I’m paired with.

Also I’m a video game lover, specifically single player and RPG. Recently got into the more survival based ones like Prey and Subnautica though! 10/10 I recommend. Still love yellow and purple.

also also, HORSE < 3 we have a horse named Whiskey on our farm she’s an absolute diva but we love her.

Have a Slay Time Broski!

I match you with Kalim Al-Asim!

You're so talented! Kalim admires how much you can do and on top of being an artist, you're so much fun to have around!

Both of you are positive thinkers and get along so well. People like the two of you are happiest with people you can always trust and tell truth to.

You're a person who can't stand being lied to. Straightforward people like oblivious Kalim are more your type because he may be brutally honest but he never has anything bad to say.

Kalim insists that you both try to learn embroidery together, but you both end up with messy yarn and one too many pokes to your fingers by the needles. It takes Jamil to learn how to do them so he can teach the two of you.

When he learns how you enjoy tea parties, the people in Heartslabyul pop into his mind, but he isn't going to lose to them! He will throw the biggest party there is for you! You're going to be dressed in the finest silk and golden pieces of jewelry that chime with each move you make.

There will be gold, elephant, camels and so much food and drinks you can eat yourself to the point of bursting! Not literally though. You will be the star of the day and everyone will do as you tell them to.

Video games? Oh, like the ones Idia plays? Kalim is pretty new to them but if you want one he will just use some of his gold to buy you the latest gaming consoles you might want.

He is your biggest fan, I mean, he will watch you play and cheer you on. It feels like watching a movie with you, but you're the director, actor, and stuntman.

He is a little helpless but you may feel better when you know that he relies on you almost as much as he relies on Jamil. Will keep spoiling you rotten because you make him so happy.

I Don't Want To Go Home (2/15?)

We're kicking off into the actual plot now! The dialogue still comes from the pdas in the outpost base, but rewritten to fit the characters and the new story. Again, no need to have played Subnautica Below Zero to understand this fic, although it does help.

No warnings for this chapter, but please be aware that the reader character discusses an intergalactic pandemic and lockdown, written before the current one. It's not ongoing as far as the plot of the fic is concerned.

As soon as it hits the end of your shift, you put your samples on top of your workstation and practically run all the way back to the habitat to get there before anyone else.

“Oh, hey,” Mundy greets you, “you’re here early,” he attempts to wink seductively and succeeds in looking like he’s having a stroke.

“I know, I ran here to make sure I got here first,” you hang up your coat. “I need to borrow your pyro-what are you doing?” you ask when you realize Mundy’s holding something behind his back

“I’m just slacking off,” Mundy’s voice is shrill in the way it gets when he panics. “Don’t tell the boss lady!” he gives you a terrible, fake chuckle as he tries to hide his drawings behind his back.

You feint to the left, before grabbing the sheets with your right hand. “Ha!” you cheer as you examine his art of some strange green thing that makes you smile to remember. “It’s beautiful! Why would you try to hide these? Also, what are they?” You’ve definitely seen them around the island.

Mundy scratches the back of his neck, and his voice is at least an octave higher than normal. “I'm doing a series inspired by bacteria. Mutant beauty, life, death, risk. You know, that kind of thing?”

Ah, bacteria, now you know what he means. “What do you mean, bacteria?” you hold one up that you really hope isn’t what you think it is. “It looks like Kharaa, but,” you look more closely at it even though you already know why. “Gordon, is this a mutation?”

Mundy’s nervous again. “It’s just a personal art project,” he insists. Somehow, his voice is still rising in pitch.

You don’t dare look down at your skin for fear of seeing glowing green pustules. “You know you’re doing that thing with your voice,” you say as calmly as you can, “like when you're trying to bluff in Alien Intruder?”

Mundy sighs, before confessing, “Alright fine, I’m bad at lying.” He gives you a weakly hopeful smile.

You can hardly believe what you’re hearing. “Are you mutating Kharaa bacteria, from the frozen Leviathan, here, in this lab? If this bacteria gets out, then-”

“Why would it get out? We have professional containment, we’re protected from contact at every step of the process, and we know how to neutralize it in an emergency.”

You feel ice settle in your stomach. “Not when it’s mutated, we don’t. And you responded way too fast.”

“It was my area of research before Jensen made you take over!”

“Hey, uh, am I interrupting something?” Monk asks from the doorway.

“Uh, no,” you say hastily, walking toward the fireplace to start one with more force than is really necessary, or helpful. “You want some roast Chinese potato?” you ask, pulling a few out of the growbed as you wait for the flames to reach a decent height.

“I could take one, I took the salt deposits out of the water filter,” Monk says carefully. “Mundy, you want to shred some marblemelons?”

Mundy starts, like he only just realized Monk was there. “Uh, yeah,” he reaches out to grab the melon from your hand, and his face falls when you don’t let your fingers touch.

There’s a timid knock at the door, followed by an even more timid, “Hello? It’s Ernst.” Suddenly, your heart soars, and you wipe your tears as you open the door.

“Hey, Schmidt.”

He stares at you before asking, “Are you alright?”

Jesus, you must look really miserable, if even Schmidt is concerned about you. “I’m fine, go help Monk and Mundy shred the marblemelons.”

Schmidt puts down a bottle of, holy shit, “Is that lantern fruit wine?”

Schmidt blushes. “I discovered that lantern fruit has a chemical composition similar to-”

“Yeah, no one cares,” Mundy says, pouring at least half the bottle into his glass, making Schmidt wince, before handing it to Monk.

“I don’t drink,” Monk refuses it, so Mundy puts it down. Schmidt picks it up again and hands it to you.

“You’re not drinking?” you ask.

“I can always make some for myself later,” Schmidt demures, but you leave a quarter of the bottle out for him. He looks up at you, just for a second, before looking back down at his feet. “So, how do we play alien intruder?” Schmidt asks in a voice so quiet, it’s almost nonexistent. With his head bowed, it’s even harder to hear him.

“Well, we guess who the alien intruder is,” Mundy stares at Schmidt like he’s an imbecile, something you doubt the robotics technician has any experience with.

He shrinks ever further into himself at the accusation. He doesn’t get any better when the game starts, constantly looking at you before doing anything, which gets him accused of being the alien, more out of Mundy’s jealousy than anything else. You know this, so you keep shooting down Mundy’s accusations.

Monk innocently kicks off the argument. “If you ask me, Schmidt’s been blinking a lot,” he says casually. “I think it's a tell.”

“He does have a point there!” Mundy looks at you.

“It's allergies!” Schmidt says stiffly.

“Allergies?! Oh no!” Mundy says mockingly. “Is something in bloom in our little frozen habitat?”

“There are thermal lilies,” Schmidt scowls at him. “And if you gang up on me, I swear, you're all fired.”

“You're not our real boss,” Monk reminds him.

“Let's just take this to a vote,” Mundy downs his glass and slams it on the floor. All those who think Schmidt’s allergies are a bad case of alienitis, say, ‘Intruder.’ Intruder!”

“Intruder,” Monk cheers.

The two turn to you, but you stay nothing except, “I’m going to use my pass.”

“There’s no such thing as a pass!” Mundy argues.

Schmidt slides himself between you and Mundy. “Are you two cheating?” he asks with smoothness he hadn’t displayed all night. “You two are suddenly very aligned.”

“You know what, I’m starting to wish I had cheated,” Mundy looks directly at you, leaving no way for you to miss his meaning.

Neither did Schmidt, because he’s on his feet, screaming for Mundy to apologize. Mundy jumps up to his feet as well, and your heart thumps in your chest. You press your hand against Schmidt at the same time Monk does the same for Mundy, but Monk actually manages to force Mundy to sit down again. All you can do is stand between the two of them and hope.

“No, wait, don’t,” you press a hand ineffectually on Schmidt’s chest at the same time Monk does the same for Mundy. But Monk manages to force Mundy to sit down. All you can do is stand between Schmidt and Mundy, and hope neither of them speak again.

Schmidt searches your face, and whatever he finds has him take a step back. “I made a mistake, coming here,” he says, his voice stiff and formal. “Thank you for inviting me, and I’m sorry I caused so much tension. I’ll go now,” and he turns and exits the room.

“It wasn’t your fault!” you won’t let him take all the blame, and you follow him out of the room. The moment the door closes behind you, he turns around and takes your hands in his. You hadn’t realized how cold your hands had become until you felt his soft, warm skin around yours.

“I’m the new person, the outlier. Monk and Mundy will be more than happy to blame any existing tension from today on me,” his voice is oddly desperate. “Go back in, let them construct their narrative, and have fun like you normally would.”

You shake your head. “The tension between me and Mundy isn’t going to go away until I resolve this-” you freeze. Schmidt is in the cave with the leviathan all day, so there’s no way he has no idea what Mundy’s been doing.

Schmidt lets go of you and holds his hands up. “What do you need help with?”

Well, you can’t trust Mundy, so you might as well see how deep this conspiracy goes. “The Kharaa samples from the frozen leviathan-”

“Is nothing to worry about in and of itself,” his tone is reassuring, almost. The way the light reflects off his glasses obscures his eyes.

“I have it on good authority that mutation experiments are being performed on this bacterium. I don’t need to tell you that the bacteria, as it was, killed billions, and we’ve only just discovered a cure. If it mutates-”

“Are you feeling unsafe?” Schmidt interrupts.

“Yes!”

He takes his glasses off to look at you eye to eye. “If I escalate the issue for you, will you feel comfortable enough to concentrate again? I have deadlines for the Snowfox and the mining bots coming up. I really need you not to fight with our coworkers.”

“Oh,” you let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding, “yeah.” A giggle bubbles out of your chest. “That’s a relief, actually.”

Schmidt puts his glasses back on, but his gaze is no less severe, or sincere. “Nothing is more important than your safety, and the safety of all of my crew. I will take care of it, do you trust me?”

You nod enthusiastically. “Thank you, I won’t let you down, sir,” you add a cheeky wink to the end.

The corners of his mouth twitch. “No, thank you, and thank you for inviting me. Go back in and,” he hesitates as the corners of his lips droop, “go have fun with Monk and your boyfriend.”

Novel Prep

Thanks to @dimawriting and @maple-writes for tagging me!!

WIP: The Inbetween

Tagging: @drist-n-dither @theforgottencoolkid @minny-santa and uhh anyone else who sees this!

This gets pretty long so I’ll put it under a read more.

First Look

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

The crew members abroad the Perseus Space Station were tasked with investigating the first signs of early human-like civilization on an exoplanet. The truth behind the ruins scattered across the dying planet, however, is stranger, darker, older than anything they ever expected. 

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

As of right now, The Inbetween is a single book divided into 5ish parts. The POV will be third person. Still not sure if I want to switch between characters for each chapter or if I want each of the 5 parts told through the perspective of one of the main characters. I am playing with the idea of a sequel. I also want to write about the before and after the events of The Inbetween. There are also at least two AUs running around my mind so I might explore those too.

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

Dark skies full of stars, floating weightlessly, lonely planets, geometry, singularity, the smallness of existence, amorphous shadows on the wall, empty corridors, static, flickering lights, hearts racing from adrenaline, the taste of blood in your mouth as you run for your life

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

The Inbetween originated from me wanting to take some of my unused characters beyond them just being characters. The earliest drafts of The Inbetween were short stories inspired by Wolfgun’s music. The story eventually grew into what it is now thanks to a few episodes of Star Trek and Welcome to Nightvale. Lots of the scenes I currently have written were born from daydreaming to Carbon Based Lifeforms’s music. I would say CBL has had the biggest influence on the story.

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

This one is for the last part of the book.

Main Character

6. Who is your protagonist?

There are five protagonists:

Emmett Reyes: Mexican-American, 19 (at the beginning of the story), aro/ace, trans, biologist

Johann Herschel: British-German, 20 (at the beginning of the story), bi, nonbinary, pilot and navigator

Neveen Jalal: Egyptian-American, 19 (at the beginning of the story), lesbian, chemist, starship medic, lowkey inspired by my high school chem teacher

Oliver West: Korean-Canadian, 20 (at the beginning of the story), gay, mechanic

Alternis: A.I., years active unknown, primarily used for security and scouting 

7. Who is their closest ally?

Their closest allies would be each other. Here’s some specific friendships:

Overall: they grow as close as family. Nothing like a near death experience out in the middle of the cold, indifferent void to make five kids bond for life. 

Neveen + Emmett: Nerd friends! With him being a biologist and her becoming a medic, they share a love for the subject. They bond over their love for their cultures. They teach each other words in their native tongues. 

 Johann + Emmett + Oliver: Partners in crime!! These three are as ride or die as you can get with a group of friends. While Johann isn’t always keen on the chaos, he still goes along with it because “who’s going to serve as your guys’s impulse control???” Secretly, he loves it. 

Oliver + Johann: Oliver becomes pretty supportive of all his friends and his relationship with Johann is no different. Oliver makes for a pretty good listener and he doesn’t mind hearing about his friend’s worries. He’ll offer some pretty good advice as well. 

Neveen + Oliver: Oliver is, without a doubt, the most social of all the crew members. Unlike him, however, Neveen is the exact opposite. He will respect her space if she needs it, but he is also there to make sure she doesn’t lose herself in it. In a lot of ways, he reminds Neveen of her own sister.

Emmett + Alternis: These two form a pretty close bond. Both share feelings of becoming static in life. Both struggle with insecurity and general feelings of anxiety that they are not good enough. However, they both also share a deep curiosity for the world around them. She likes to ask him questions knowing he won’t brush them off and he feels comfortable enough to ramble on about whatever subject is most interesting to him knowing that she is willing to listen with interest herself.

Bonus: 

Commander Mitch Connor + his crew: At first, Mitch was pretty hesitant to be this mission’s commander. They’re all kids, two of them fresh out of high school almost. However, he quickly learns that this crew is more than capable. They’re adaptable and fiercely resilient. They know how to use their strengths to their advantage and do so creatively. Most importantly, though, they genuinely care about each other.

8. Who is their enemy?

The story’s main antagonist is a weird hivemind entity that is partially made from various alien life forms and part alien tech. It’s main purpose is to find creatures its programming deems perfect specimens and then merge with (eat???) them to take on their abilities. The creature was once a technologically advanced alien race from a different dimension who sought to create the “perfect being”. No one’s really sure what “perfect being” meant for them, but eventually they, and most of their old universe, were all consumed by their creation. The entity then traveled across many other dimensions still seeking specimens to consume. While it has no definite shape or can even be considered a single animal, it’s still very much sapient. It’s hard to tell the age or if it was supposed to be machine or animal or even what species it originally was. However, the minds and voices of its creators live on with it. 

If you want an idea as to how it sounds, it’s a little like the Warpers from Subnautica but with multiple voices. Here’s a clip. 

9. What do they want more than anything?

They all have different dreams that they are pursuing, but they basically all want a life where they can be happy and have closure.

Emmett wants to be at peace with himself.

Johann wants to find a place that he can call home.

Oliver wants to protect the little he already has.

Neveen wants to achieve her dreams.

Alternis wants to belong.

10. Why can’t they have it?

Emmett is, first of all, much too doubting in himself. He worries so much that he can’t appreciate the things he has done right or the things he can do. He isn’t very kind to himself.

Johann misses the life he had on Earth. He and his family moved to a new planet because they don’t really like Earth and want to experience something new. But Johann never feels the same sense of “home” as he did on Earth. 

Oliver’s job is helping out his mother with their repair shop. So, when the shop is threatened with closure, he is desperate to find another job, but since he dropped out and never finished school, he’s having a really hard time coming up with something that will provide enough. This is why he ends up joining the space program. 

Neveen is in a somewhat similar boat. She has dreams of working as a doctor and all of her time and effort goes into studying for that. She, however, ends up getting rejected from three different schools in her area. She starts to feel like time is somehow running out for her.

Alternis has had a hard time. When she didn’t fit the expectations her creators set, she quickly discovered that her differences were seen as something flawed. She spent a lot of her early days either alone and she grew to be resentful towards people. But she wants to be accepted, so when they told her she was to be assigned to the Perseus Station, she had a lot of mixed feelings about the situation. 

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

Emmett: not smart/good enough, not allowed to make mistakes

Neveen: her success determines her worth, has to do things just right or Else

Oliver: dumb for dropping out of college, is not much other than the comic relief in his friend group

Johann: thinks he can run from facing what’s really bothering him

Alternis: needs to have a purpose to be worth something to others, needs to change to be accepted

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

Emmett: 5′2, curly brown hair, brown eyes, tan skin, a scar running from jaw to cheek, there’s a picture @auroradrawing made here!

Neveen: 5′5, long black hair, brown eyes, dark skin, red hijab

Johann: 6′2. dark blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin

Oliver West: 5′10, black hair, brown eyes, pale skin

Alternis:  i made a post on her appearance here

Plot Points

13. What is the internal conflict?

I would say that the overall internal conflict for all the characters is them struggling to understand that they are human which means that they are allowed to be wrong, make bad decisions, have emotions, and fail and none of this undermines their value in any way.

14. What is the external conflict?

The main external conflict is survival. They come into contact with a powerful interdimensional creature who is possibly hundred of thousands of years old or more and they have no idea how to stop it. After their station and only way home gets destroyed and they find themselves stranded with no way to let anyone know what’s happening, they realize that they have to find a way to at least repel the creature as it’s not just their survival at stake, but also that of their friends and family back on Earth.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

Death, probably. There’s a lot of things that would be left undone and unsaid and also literally no one else knows what is going on, so it could be a while before anyone back home realizes they’re never coming back. And that thought is one of the scariest things they can imagine.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

Basically the purpose of the entity and them figuring out what it is and what it wants changes everything they were led to believe at first about the planet and the origin of the ruins.

17. Do you know how it ends?

Yes. They all get a happy ending because I’m done with the sad shit. Also happy endings are good?? Like give me more happy endings dammit! They go through so much shit and get tested so much, like, they deserve their happy ending. 

Bits and Bobs

18. What is the theme? 

You are stronger than you think. Let yourself be flawed. Things might not be okay, but they will work out. You have a place in the universe, no matter how small. Tomorrow is a new day.

19. What is a reoccurring symbol?

Darkness, geometry/symmetry, fire (?),static, lots of the names of things have meaning behind them

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!)

There are two made up planets on which this story takes place. The first planet is Thesan-4. This planet is a desert-like planet. It’s in the Milky Way for sure, but I haven’t exactly figured out where yet. This planet is primarily used for military/astronaut training. At least 40% of the story will take place here. The other planet is an icy, Earth-like planet. I call this planet the Mirror World in my head but the actual name is pending. Here is where the remains of early civilization are found and this is where the Perseus crew is assign for their mission. At least 60% of the story will take place here.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

Hell yeah! Scenes and a general outline are all I have right now. A lot of the little details are still pretty vague though.

22. What excited you about this story?

Oh man, is “everything” an answer? I always wanted to write a story set in space, but my biggest issue was finding a good plot. Like, I had the characters and I had some vague idea of a setting, but no actual plot or conflict. This story spent a lot of time on the back burner and I honestly thought about abandoning it a few times. However, it has come to grow so much and I’m really happy I didn’t abandon it. I love the lore behind the antagonist and the character interactions and uhhh well damn. Everything!

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!

I think the very first thing I come up with is either the setting or the characters. Then, I make the characters that I feel would go best with the setting or vice versa. Other details like names and stuff come way later. 99% of my writing process is music. If I need a certain mood for a scene, I’ll put on some music that fits and I’ll listen to it a few times before actually writing. I find that this helps me come up with scenes so I don’t really struggle at that. Putting them down on paper is harder lol, especially when I can see at least three different ways to write the opening. But once I start writing, everything flows much easier.

( park jimin - demimale, he/they ) — did you see noeul han walking down the street? the twenty-three year old has lived here for three weeks. i heard they’re an aspiring painter & a part-time barista now, time sure flies. gooey by glass animals always did remind of them, maybe it’s because they’re so audacious & charitable. though i did hear they can also be commanding & capricious if you catch them on a bad day.

hey babes drum-roll it’s admin fany here to welcome yall~ with some random info about me I guess uh so I’m 26, living in northern europe, most of the time dying bc I’m not made for these hot ass summers, other times just being distracted twelve times outta ten jsyk I’m not ignoring anyone my attention span is just in the negatives. or I’m playing overwatch. or subnautica when I’m feeling particularly masochistic.  would drop dead without tea. ye. that’s all for today folks

anyway here’s Noeul’s profile if you wanna peep also a very messy plot page aaaand I’m gonna ramble about him now uwu

tw: emotional abuse, tw: assault ( kinda brief mentions, esp the assault, I tried keeping it safe )

born in Seoul but his family moved to USA when he was barely 6. they moved around a l o t since then but stayed within the borders. save for one weird year in France back in 2010

he haTED it. all the constant moving around and starting at new schools with new people trying to get new friends and find new hobbies and leaving pretty much everything behind so often just stressed the hell out of his young self and he was in a perpetual state of over-emotional about the whole ordeal and angry and bitter and yeah. not having a good time

over the years he managed to find ways to cope with it, drawing and painting being a major thing as it was one of very few things he could just continue without any special arrangements made or it feeling different. putting all that bent up negativity on paper was helpful in itself so he stuck with it without much thought then, clinging into a lifeline of one constant in a sea of variables

later on it morphed from being less of a therapeutic activity and more one of him being able just flow with creativity, paint with a less personal agenda and enjoy it way more too ( not to say he doesn't still use it as a form of escapism too )

reading was another thing he found enjoyment in, especially during his early teenage years. that is something he doesn't engage that often in anymore however

his parents didn’t really care about what hobbies he took on ( even with painting carrying throughout the years he ended up trying a whole slew of other things too ) until it became apparent he was actually considering art as a legit career path. neither agreed it being a good idea but they didn’t flat out deny him either.. just were very patronising about it for months and by that time he had come to actual decision of going through with it out of pettiness alone lmao. which of course served nothing but to legit piss them off and led to a number of arguments they still have to this day yikes

his parents entire view on life seemed to be there was no point getting attached to anything, sentimentality was a flaw and you could just buy everything you needed again without much care for what was left behind. especially his mom had a lot of emotionally abusive ways to steer his life in the direction she wanted, but giving just enough freedom for him to think he had a say in anything. not to say she wasn’t supportive and encouraging too but he honest to god can’t tell now how much of it was genuine. she was especially fond of using subtle blackmail in form of referring to her own feelings and how his actions will upset her, occasionally bursting into a loud tirade which was then quickly pushed to the side without any apologies for making him in turn upset so boy was always just on edge. this still happens but he pretty much only communicates with her through calls anymore so, Noeul just hangs up when she starts acting up. his dad was more the type to not involve himself into his hobbies and likes or anything at all he only cared about academic plans.

that all messed him up big time in his younger years bc he was inherently just very attached to everything and everyone but now.. it’s almost the complete opposite, enough repetition and shit will stick I guess cause he has next to no sentimental feelings towards anything, in turn actually loves travelling and meeting new people now. partially also cause he doesn’t feel obligated to uphold anything or allow himself being chained down, he treats everything like it’s fleeting, but not without care– don’t assume he doesn’t care when that’s something he does in abundance actually. he just.. accepts nothing lasts forever. ironic enough he’s adopted far too many of his parent’s habits to count now but has grown more tender with the experiences rather than cold. probably a miracle in itself. hella guarded about his feelings tho

so yeah he moved to LA ( parents were at the time both living in NYC ) for art school and got that bachelor of fine arts degree, graduating just spring last year and has no desire to further those studies cause screw school he’s done with institutions for a decade

also his parents filed for divorce while he was at it. before he was even done with freshman year. wasn’t all too surprising nor did he have anything to really say about it, except the times mom called him whilst drunk and essentially blamed it on him being a bad son :/// his dad’s fucked off somewhere he hasn’t heard whole lot from him in last three years beside birthday texts and money transfers to his bank account. and subtle messages through mom about how he expects him to clean up one of these days. meanwhile mom mostly contacts just to check he’s alive & doing well financially while slipping in vague ‘if you would have just listened to me‘s and ‘when will you come to your senses’s >_>

forgot to mention his dad’s a CEO of a small airline company. don’t ask me what his mom does idk prob some manager of a huge ass successful online shop?? something along those lines

will not speak about them if asked tbh don't expect anything other than "they're alive."

does not like announcing his ( their ) wealth to the world either and tries not to make decisions that could reflect that but something always has to give in the end. like he’s just way too happy to blow money on other people no matter how subtle he tries to be about it and often like his parents buys new stuff instead of finding ways to bring his old along, some of his clothes are also a dead giveaway it’s not so much that he specifically purchases anything cause it’s designer but if it looks nice he doesn’t see it as any different buying from any other store around. smells awfully lot like privilege but he’s unapologetic in getting exactly what he wants, it’s not his problem if someone takes offence to that

kind of also hates that he’s so dependant on parent’s money still but has made peace with it by giving away and works twice as hard for his own stuff, regardless if it yields anything cause he’s not doing this whole painting thing as a means to gain money ( would like to, but alas, it’s a tricky career path ) more from pure passion for the art

and noeul def is not gonna tell them to stop sending him cash he'll just have fun spending it in all the shit they'd hate-- even if they've basically set conditions but weird enough haven't cut him off yet.  guess that really is the only thing they can give him and they know it too :)) 

so. doesn’t actually like sitting idle even tho he all but could, yet cannot happily place himself in an establishment with very strict 9 to 5 shifts and such, so if and when he takes on extra work occasionally it’s always part-time, and for own personal gratification

in the case of him recently taking on a spot as a part-time barista here in acarike ( started like, two days ago or something ) was also bc of keeping up appearances ( surely he would run out of money eventually? no, but no one needs to know that ) and getting to know some of the people around since his group of road-tripping friends have seriously decided to settle in

if anyone was wondering yes he has experience working in cafes, among other places. his parents abhorred him taking on such jobs at all cause “what was the point? are we not providing enough?” first of all did he ask?

I guess he is currently residing in the stardust motel?? but is looking for a place

for him travelling in the past few years has been sorta cathartic, inspiring if I dare say both in personal growth and in his work since he can decide on everything by himself, where he wants to go, for how long, for why etc

sometimes likes when he has company for that, other times he just needs to make a trip in solitary. altogether prefers meeting random people along the way

is a kind of odd friend, loyal, compassionate and all that but puts himself before anyone else. or rather puts his emotional and other needs before everything else. if he feels you’re the one getting more out of it than he is it’s not worth it sorry. very generous tho and sees it as his duty to help others in any way if it doesn’t inconvenience him. not unreliable but available only when it suits him. so unless it’s life threatening or emotional distress he will not drop everything for even a friend’s sake you can wait an hour or two. can make friends as quick as he drops them

might get a little inappropriately affectionate with friends. especially so when intoxicated

is an even weirder lover. he loves the idea and feeling of being in love and the emotional thrill of it. relationships are fun yeah but commitment?? not in his. vocabulary. to elaborate he lives for the push and pull and the suspense of it all and needs things to stay stimulating on all levels across the board when deepening relationships further while also being able to maintain a sense of own freedom. he craves the sort of emotional security and gratification it all brings but refuses to become dependant on it ( he knows how that will go ), furthermore does not like all the limitations it brings nor everything being perfect to the point of feeling fake??

tries to make it clear that he’s NOT looking for anything long term but even then people haven’t taken it well when he out of the blue announces they should stop whatever it is they’re doing. he always feels bad about it and tries to part in good terms but yeah :// many hearts have been broken. it’s probably even worse for the other person cause Noeul himself seems to have absolutely no problem continuing his life like nothing happened. all this has made him into a bit of a serial dater??

in whole he takes everything as they are, nothing is everlasting and he doesn’t try to make it so, doesn’t necessarily want to. values experiences but doesn’t get too hung up on letting go of them. including relationships. this is something a lot of people in his life wont understand and it’s frustrating for everyone involved sometimes but you gotta do what you gotta do. might be scared of opening up to people. of that attachment. maybe he’s actually just picky and is waiting for something out of the world magical who knows

repels all negativity as if his life depended on it like. add begone thot meme here

but can also be very confrontational so???

is actually in constant war with himself over positive and negative emotions but filters that out pretty handily. most of the time. cause uh absolutely will turn vicious and loud when angry. sensitive to criticism and personal attacks but gets over it quick enough. does hold grudges but mainly towards people whose opinion he cares about. strangers rarely phase him. has random emotion™ bursts but tbh only cries when being shouted at and/or being target of someone’s wrath-- OR when noeul's angry himself?? also lowkey dramatic but most of the time he’s just sorta chill and cheery, occasionally sarcastic but in a good-natured way he doesn’t mean ill with it. has very strong opinions on some things but doesn’t care if someone else sees it differently. as long as they’re not saying their way is the only right way. or if their reasoning is utter bullshit which he will call out then :))

negative people just make him laugh. will not take your ass seriously at all if you’re being a douche. used to take offence to these kinds of people all the time but he’s grown out of it and learned to simply ignore people who don’t deserve the time of his day. at least outwardly.

similarly used to be very.. well. lets say prone to letting people control and push him around cause that’s what he had learned to accept but whoo boy when he finally figured it out and took the reigns into own hands no one could stop him try it bitch

likes doing things in own terms in general, need for control has kinda taken off so will not take kindly to being ordered around in any manner. tries not to impose on other people or be pushy himself but cannot stand indecisiveness so. it happens. for better or for worse

in tune with his surroundings and current community of people if something’s off he can sense it and it will bug him to no end before it’s fixed. this could be anything from his room being in disarray to something going on in the city in whole

I ain’t saying he’s a psychic but actually stupid intuitive most cases WILL see through your bullshit don’t even try

…ok but lowkey into supernatural stuff and spirituality all that jazz he’s gone through it all while trying to find himself– which is a whole another can of worms we ain’t opening here

did I forget to mention noeul and co ( minho & jae ) rolled into town in this shiny big rv. he's def looking to buy a smaller car to drive around

not too keen on giving rides to strangers since this one time two summers ago that went south real fast when a guy pulled a knife on him. has a pretty big scar to show for it on his right side? tummy?? there’s a pic in the profile page if you’re curious. he jokes about it now "it adds character" but is actually terrified of that happening again so perpetually jumpy minho blames himself for it cause he's dumb

you can prob hear him coming 5 miles away with the amount of jewellery he adorns

don’t get me started on his wardrobe it’s a mixed bag and then some. gender norms belong into the fiery pits of a volcano

is equal parts a tea & coffee enthusiast basically lives off that stuff. i'm probably not even exaggerating here boy forgets to eat when he gets focused on something and just wolfs down a pot of coffee.

obsessed with watermelon flavoured lollipops probably has one on him at all times somehow magically pulls them outta thin air??

you can prob find him painting outside in the randomest places when the weather's nice

likes painting on people probably as much as painting them

it’s not an intimacy thing I swear. but. can be?? probably accidentally turns that way that’s just how he is

prefers either to focus on faces ( eyes specifically ) or nude models in general fcking @ him

this. is so long already I’m sorry omg

and that’s all I got my brains’ fried over this all but yo come plot with me pls also check my plots maybe orrr if you want me to check your plots ( I’d love to!! ) come poke me ay ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Low budget VR Gaming

The development of VR is something that I have been paying a lot of attention in the last couple of years. One of the things that I find interesting is the potential it has for redefining what “low end” means due to how extremely computationally intensive it is. Take this GPU for example, this a GTX 750, a mid-end graphics card from 2014. I bought this one for about 70 euros and after asking you guys it seems it can be found 60 to 90 euros or dollars in most places, or around of 100 if you are unlucky. Compared to the GPUs I have featured on this channel in the past this card is an overpowered beast that crushes games on the lowest settings. However, throw this thing on VR benchmark and you realize that supposedly this is pretty insufficient for virtual reality. So the question becomes: can you play in VR with a “budget” GPU like this one? Lowest settings? Maybe, Tweaked games? Answering this question is hard because of another problem, the cost of a VR headset. At the time of writing this script the full HTC Vive kit is about $800 and from what I could gather you can not buy just the headset alone, at least new. You can buy an oculus headset but… it is about $500 dollars which is like twice my entire PC budget which prompted me to search for some creative solutions and I was surprised of what I found. I will be using a service called Vridge by RiftCat, which basically allows you to connect your cellphone to your PC in a way that tricks the computer into believing you have an HTC vive headset, so you can then play any seated VR experiences by putting your phone into some headset, like this literal piece of cardboard I got in amazon. So now, not only my computers are shitty, now my VR headset is also crap. Awesome! And after contacting RiftCat they have agreed to sponsor this video, so double awesome. They have a free trial version of their software so you can try it, link in the description. Setting it up was fairly easy. You can run a program in your PC and a companion app on your phone and you can stream the view of the game over wifi, if you are brave, or better yet, a USB cable. After setting it up you can launch steamvr from the program and then start a game. There are plenty of guides on their website if you want to give it a try. So now we test My first experiment was Subnautica, I already dedicated a video to this early access submarine survival game. As I commented on that video there is a secret menu accessible with f3 and in there, you can use the numbers in the keyboard to disable a lot of the effects. Furthermore if you disable mouse pointing using your view in vr and press escape you can reduce the draw distance of most objects, as I explained on that video. Welcome to the very dangerous sea. Man, it’s a little bit too close. I can pick up things by just staring at them, that’s interesting. I can’t remember what’s the- does that thing hurts me? Can I grab them? Huh, what are-? Wait, those are bad right? Yep, yep, that doesn’t look good. The great low-resolution expands! With low draw distance and things popping out in front of me and this time… in full virtual reality. Now you can live the low draw distance, not just see it, you live it! Like, you’re there! Another game I wanted to try is Project Cars, a game I have not shown in the channel before but that also includes a VR option and seems to be fairly well optimized on the lowest settings. You can also add some launch options to the game to try and squeeze even a bit more out of it, like dx11mt for multi-threaded mode, skip crowds to disable models of bystanders and pthreads to match the number of cores in your CPU. Oh wow! Well, this is something else. Wo-wow shit! This sure aint Mario Kart. I don’t know if I’m in awe or scared! Another game I was curious about is minecraft. Java based Minecraft does not support VR out of the box, but thanks to a mod called Vivecraft you can add some rather robust VR options to the game. And the mod installs optifine which adds all sorts of graphical options which I am going to take advance of to disable all weather, animations and sky effects for the best VR performance. The link the vivecraft mod is in the description if you are interested. If I do this, and I stare, my fps is right here, it’s 57 fps… that is neat, this is the best one that I have tried so far, wow, I was joking draw distance before but check this out. This is literally the world that’s in front of me, huh? Is the world not gonna load? I’m staring down into the abyss of the unloaded world, this is really scary. Oh, there he goes. Ok, the other examples were cool but this was by far the coolest. I seriously never want to try minecraft any other way again, this is really something else. So, in conclusion. How did it go? Is this an Vive and Oculus killer? No, I mean come on. VR are nothing short of of technological marvels and thinking that a phone will be just as good might be a bit naive, but it you want to get your feet wet in VR, and get your first experience without breaking bank, this might actually be a really interesting first option. Performance wise, the results were interesting. There is an option on Vridge to limit a stream to 30 fps but definitively the closer you can get to 60 fps the easier it becomes to handle the movement. Minecraft which is by far the most twekeable of the games I tried and therefore the closest I got to 60 fps was quite the experience. My current VR library is… rather insufficient but I wonder if I keep digging, would I get a couple of other VR games to be low enough to work really well on this setup? Well, you tell me. Let me know if more budget VR experiments are something you would like to see in the future in comment or in the discussion thread of the LowSpecGamer subreddit. Thank you to the Patreons and this video sponsor for making my crazy experimentation possible. See you in the next video.

https://youtu.be/S4TBPL7-iRk

Cogs’ TS2 Apocalypse Run (XI)

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Out of intense nostalgia, I started revisiting The Sims 2 early this year. I got the online Ultimate Edition with all DLC via Origin -- after making my case to support -- and had a lot of fun with it! After stumbling across a variety of old challenge runs, I decided that I would try out an apocalypse challenge (specifically Phaenoh’s tiered, mod-enforced version on Mod The Sims, check it out, it’s great). On my first attempt, I failed quite badly. But this time, things are going much better. 

I’ve resolved to see this attempt all the way through, and document it in post form. If you like any games from the Sims series, nostalgic videogame reflections and/or challenge run blogging, feel free to read on!

THE SMITHS’ FREE STATE, PART 11 -- SIMS FALLING OVER

Teenage romcoms are back, baby -- boot camp: fun? -- grow old, stop wearing smart clothes to work -- another tragic fashion victim of the apocalypse.

Welcome! It’s my first one of these in about a month, ‘cos I’ve been on uni holidays and with the advent of the dreaded Steam summer sale this year I’ve been romping my way through a bunch of delicious indie titles (including Frostpunk, A Hat In Time, Subnautica, and now Darkest Dungeon - all great). It occurs to me that I have a bit of an image backlog, so I’ll use this post as an opportunity to refresh my memory as I’ll get back into the Apocalypse once I’ve finished the last little bit of Darkest. 

So, quick recap: Aaron & Forseti, the aspiring law and order twins, have made it to teenhood. Juan, spouse to Panoptica (heir of the household’s second generation), made it to the top of the Architecture career track, which means I’m finally allowed to extend the house beyond its initial 8x8 square and put down John’s military obstacle course. This thing builds Body skill wayyy faster than Yoga, so it’ll be great for Aaron, who needs to work out to top Law Enforcement. 

Oh, and Amanda Carlson -- Forseti’s intended future spouse -- came over to build up the relationship meter, only to get scared by Sake’s ghost and wet herself.

Sake doesn’t seem to ever spook members of the household... perhaps ghost pets don’t harass Sims they were friends with in life? If this is the case, then I’ll have to be very careful with future generations...

Aaron’s hitting it off with Tosha Go, a teen townie who walked down the street at some point. They’ve been flirting for a while, so it’s about time for the first ever teen romance of the apocalypse!

N’awww. 

(Odd observation: Whenever another Sim uses the bathroom, everyone always seems to get a thought bubble over their head with a cross superimposed on that person’s portrait. I mean, it’s not like you need those facilities right now?)

The adults are getting themselves some handy extra aspiration points by grinding Body skill points on the obstacle course (thank you, Knowledge), and I’ve definitely taken way too many pictures of people using it, because it just gives so many good photo opps:

But while they were doing this, I noticed something unexpected. According to the career rewards panel I accessed this object from, the course doesn’t raise Fun. Which I guess would make sense to me; fallin’ on yer arse trying to climb a wall made of wood doesn’t seem like my idea of a good time. Then... why is Juan’s maxed-out fun meter not going down while he spends hours crawling around in the dirt...?

You know what this means? The obstacle course, for whatever reason, is Fun. This means I can start training Aaron up while he’s still a teen. (Showbiz Pet rules - which I can’t lift for a while - prevent children and teens from skilling with any object that doesn’t increase the Fun need at the same time.) And that means more adorable pictures of People Falling Over.

John’s getting on in his old age, and wants to max out all of his skills. I figure I might as well oblige; he can’t sleep in anymore now that he’s an Elder, and he needs something to pass his remaining time.

The two brothers have slightly different attitudes to all the exercise they’re now doing:

Panoptica and Juan are drawing ever closer to Elderhood, so I took a few romantic pictures of the two of them in their top-rank work uniforms. (There’ll be more romantic diversity, definitely, once adoption becomes a valid method for lifting restrictions - I think Law is the thing for that? So -- next generation, basically.)

I love this goddamn power couple, just look at them

Here’s hoping they get decent clothes to die in when their hair turns grey!

Forseti is the first of the two twins to max out the Body skill, no doubt due to his ultra-Active personality...

He’s not even gonna be using those Body skill points for anything, yet look how triumphant he is. (He mastered the skill almost immediately after I took that image.)

Well, Panoptica and Juan’re gonna grey up, so let’s get Juan to go first. 

Whatever clothes he gets as an elder, I don’t really think they’ll be better than what he’s currently got. (If he’s lucky, he’ll get something John-tier. But there are many, many outfits in this game.)

Swoon all you want, girl; this is the last time his thought bubble’s gonna look like that good.

The whole family are here to celebrate. And Jessica Picaso is here, because she followed John home from work

And now: will Juan’s clothes age gracefully?

No! They won’t! :)

Looks like boxer shorts and a polo shirt, more or less. I think this is better than poor Kent’s obnoxious orange suspenders, though? (The suspenders which, coupled with those old world blues, drove the poor man to red aspiration levels?)

Now, much as I love Juan, I took way more pictures of Panoptica’s ghost-clothes presentation aging-up ceremony, for the simple reason that Panoptica is all-round awesome.

(The best picture from this scene is hands-down the one I used as a preview above the cut. She did the little ‘pretend boxing’ animation, and it was just a great last bit of magic.)

I’m thinking, will she at least get better death clothes than her spouse? 

She does.

Not bad, not bad!! Certainly more apropos than what Shelmerdine got stuck with.

Juan’s happy with it too, it seems.

just make your wife’s sixtieth birthday awkward by making raunchy remarks in front of yer two kids, just do it

Buuuut those two are both good now. In fact, since they had their kids pretty early on, we’re actually one day off Aaron & Forseti reaching adulthood. I’m thinking I’ll invite Tosha over, so I can use that ‘select NPCs to age up’ feature. Give them some adulthood sweetheart time while I wait for Forseti to unlock the ability to move Sims out. (That way, I can actually marry off both twins, and have their children count as able to lift restrictions.)

The twins’ll be aging up within the same 24 hours, so I invited Amanda Carlson as well. 

Amanda will (ideally) lift Business restrictions, since she starts off as a President (rank 8). Tosha, meanwhile, I’m thinking Journalism (doesn’t lift much, but I can get it out of the way with a married-in character, yeah?)

Hm! Ok, he was in his athletic outfit when he blew out the candles - I don’t know what his everyday apparel looks like yet.

Everyone’s celebrati-- wait

What. The hell is that. 

I’m terrified. But intrigued at the same time. I’ll get him to have a shower and thus change into his daywear so I can see the full extent of the damage shortly, but first, we need to age up his girlf...

Cute!

Ubercute!

(I mean-- since Townies tend to be at green aspiration by default, I did get a notification in the top right-hand corner of her going wow that part of my life was shit to go along with this dashing smile. But I suppose being a Townie means only half-existing, and becoming playable is like being selected to receive a soul, so, comparatively, her adulthood will be infinity times better.)

While I’m getting Forseti set up to blow out his birthday candles, Aaron goes to take a shower. Let us now take a moment to lament how the apocalyse has claimed another helpless fashion victim. 

A suit made out of what might be fake snakeskin, and a wreath made out of what the remaining restrictions dictate must be some scavenged AstroTurf. Law and order will be returned to the Free State, perhaps, but taste will remain a site of anarchy for some time.

Now for Forseti to make the transition. I have so many awesome shots of everyone posing for this birthday:

A staple of this Apoc Run is getting excited for new outfits! 

Or, in this case, an alternate palette of the exact same outfit. 

Still -- here we are! Both twins have made it to adulthood, and are ready to start bringing Law and Enforcement back to society. 

I’ll need to do one more post to get through my current batch of snapshots, but after that, I’m officially back to doing this. If you’ve been reading these updates, thanks for reading this one; hope it was enjoyable!