Intro since I keep thinking I already have one: hi, feel free to call me any variation of my username, e.g. Icy! I have a ton of interests like nature, art history, art, writing, gaming, and conservation. I'm an adult, but almost everything I post is SFW and/or educational. With fandom, I tend to go through phases, so expect me to post for one fandom and then slowly shift to another over time.
Tags: all my artwork | just photography | art history | writing | meta/analysis | memes and shitposts | bugs (note: if you're scared of them, probably don't follow)
My reaction when The Simpsons has run for so long that Homer Simpson would've been born when his daughter was originally born: Yeah, it makes sense that the timeline floats, it's a sitcom, what do you expect?
My reaction when I pick up a comic and see Scrooge McDuck texting: EEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARGHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! *head explodes*
In 2D art I like to show how darker skin tones seem to reflect more light in a scene/show the colors of lighting more than lighter skin tones do. This is pretty easy to do when blending colors. But I was wondering how this same effect can be achieved with 3D character modelling? I'm trying to learn low-poly modelling for gamedev and I've tried messing with various properties like specularity, roughness, and metallic, but the materials always just end up looking wet or something to me. I remember in an answer to an earlier ask you said you're not familiar with 3D modeling techniques but I'm super curious if any of your artist followers have tips!
There's a person on here who posts their 3D modeling of their Black fantasy character with white locs and it's killing me because I wanna direct you to them but I can NOT remember their blog name. Y'all know who I'm talking about! We gotta find em and tag em!
So the aforementioned blog is @yagamimi-string, but I think my other character Vita will be a better example of how I portray lighting on darker skin, keeping in mind that I'm going for a retro style - it's not perfect but it gets the point across. Though, this style is specific to the version of Blender I use (2.79) and I wouldn't know how to replicate it in anything else, but hopefully this helps anyway
(Had to upload it to YouTube because Tumblr is stupid about videos)
(Guy who has only read the manga of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and hasn't really watched Miyazaki's other movies) yeah I love the #ghibli aesthetic
Finally playing as a woman Belmont wielding the Vampire Killer? The (chronologically speaking) first Carmilla appearance? I can't believe Konami is actually tempting me into buying a Castlevania game in 2026. So this is how Death must feel every time Dracula is resurrected… the strategy people wanted for so many years now of big publishers having indies develop games with IPs that would otherwise rot is scarily effective.
Very Gooey and Puffy Ginger Oatmeal Cookies (No Egg or Milk/Dairy)
Ignore that there are fork holes in them... I was impatient waiting for them to cool
Seems like a good time of year to share the cookie recipe I devised that I'm obsessed with right now! There are a few strange measurements here because this was created through trial and error.
Start with adding and mixing all these dry ingredients together:
1 and 1/3 cups flour + 2 additional tablespoons
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 and 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup brown sugar
Begin preheating your oven to 375°, then gather these wet ingredients:
~3 "thumbs" of grated fresh ginger
For a cookie that tastes more like gingerbread, you could add grated mandarin peel or another spicy ingredient. I use the peel of one mandarin, zested. I highly recommend you do this because I think it's amazing, but it's technically optional. I've also used 3 kumquat peels zested when I didn't have any mandarins.
Combine 1/2 cup mild olive oil and 1/4 cup soy milk together. Stir until they look like an emulsion.
Fold these wet ingredients into your dry ones and mix until you have a slightly oily yet firm dough.
Now, mix in a little over 1/2 a cup of rolled oats. Finally, to get these cookies to be gooey and puffy, right at the end, add one egg's worth of egg replacer. With the brand I use, it's 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of the powder stirred into 2 tablespoons of scalding hot water. EDIT: the brand of egg replacer I used no longer exists so I now have to use an alternative. I now add two tablespoons of the liquid that comes in a can of garbanzo beans (aquafaba). If you use aquafaba, it can be rapidly stirred into the oil and soy milk and all of this can be poured it simultaneously.
Now it's finally time to bake! I use a tablespoon to portion the dough, not filling the whole thing with dough but using it as a scoop. This recipe makes ~20 large-ish cookies depending on how big you make each one. Bake them for 6 minutes and 40 seconds if you want them very gooey and soft the way I like them.
Alternative recipe ideas:
If you prefer crispy cookies, use half as much dough per cookie and bake for 8 minutes.
You can top the cookies with a little powdered sugar before baking if you prefer them sweeter than the brown sugar makes them.
Now updated to be less oily and with an egg replacer alternative! I also much more strongly recommend adding the zested citrus peel because I've since tried it multiple times and it's soooo good.
The Two Types of Look Outside Character Sidequests
1) What if we… played knockoff D&D… and we were both boys... aha ha, just kidding... unless..? 👉🏾👈🏾
2) What if my interest in you caused me to visualize murdering someone who looks just like you? And due to that I invited you to my apartment full of dismembered body parts, buzzing flies, and human bones, that is overgrown with plants, several of which have screaming faces, hands, or eyeballs? All so I could have you water a plant that will grow into a fruit who both looks like your nude body while also symbolically being our baby... that I can then stab to death, before gifting you the murder implement as a token of my respect?
death of the author yeah whatever but death of the fandom is so integral to enjoying legitimately anything like that is just a necessary step to take in ur head always. do not let them affect the text in any way exterminate them all with ur death ray. they r not real and cannot hurt u
I've been thinking about this a lot after my playthrough... time to compare and contrast the potential party members in Look Outside who are stalkers of the player character! (Obvious content warning, given the subject).
I'm unsure if these characters were supposed to fit a certain theme or relate to each other, but I definitely think that's how it worked out. Spoilers for everything below the cut:
Spine's intro is her trying to forcibly remake you which she says you'll "love" and will mean neither of you will ever have to be alone again. Because something similar was done to her by the Stargazer and she was never given a choice, which she can acknowledge, I think this can be connected to a cycle of abuse and sexual violence in a way. Both Spine and Lyle have unique Game Overs tied to them as well, and if you aren't able to defend yourself against Spine long enough, you'll get hers.
But if you fight her, then spare her, she'll realize that what she's doing is non-consensual and how she also didn't give consent when she was remade. In contrast, the only way to get Lyle's Game Over in which he traps your soul in a photograph is if you attack him unprovoked.
Spine can never go into the normal world because it's too bright. And even though the player character will realize she was right and he loves it if she stitches them together, it's still a Game Over condition. There wouldn't be more game after that and the player character would lose any connections to his old life (like if he has a child or something which I did in my playthrough). If you ask Lyle why he hides his body, he'll also claim he's sensitive to light... but it's more likely to be his precious photos he's shielding from it. His Game Over condition is pretty flatly horrifying but he selfishly thought of what he did as preserving you.
No matter what, Spine believes being remade is better and right and will wait for the player character to decide he's ready to take this big step. Lyle is always ashamed of his monstrous form and never wants the player to clearly see it.
Spine touches you without consent in your apartment and then you have to decide how to react to it, either inviting it or telling her to stop. With Lyle, he stole your spare key and lets himself into your apartment only after you've been affectionate with him... and after you've likely stolen his key and broken into his apartment.
You need to be alone for Spine to be recruited, in which case she will join you out of concern for your well-being, and she'll never be in your party otherwise. While you can recruit Lyle as your only other companion if you want, you can't play through his sidequest unless you have three other characters with you (a full party).
If you become friendly with Spine she has this honestly sweet IMO realization that she misses mundane things like breakfast cereal and maybe she can watch you eat it... and she can rip a bone out of herself and give it to you to use as a dagger so it's like you're always together. Lyle's sidequest in and of itself is very mundane, since it's just playing off-brand D&D (Mazes & Wizards) with him as the GM, and he has similar interests to the player character.
For Spine to improve as a person, you have to very firmly assert boundaries by actually fighting her when the two of you meet. But Lyle will realize he's been possessive and creepy on his own if you indulge his affection and interests (he will realize he's been acting like the Big Bad Evil Guy necromancer GM NPC he's portraying).
Spine is trapped in this other plane of existence with only the player character for entertainment. She developed this fixation and obsessive love to cope (unlike the other monsters who share this space with her who instead are angry or neutral). In fact, pretty much everything about Spine as she is now is related to the transformation the world and its inhabitants are undergoing. But Lyle's obsession started before the game's events when he worked with the player character beforehand, and his isolation is tied to his obvious anxiety and is rather self-inflicted. Other people in the apartment like him well enough. I think Spine's condition is more how the player character may feel, on an emotional level, as a shut-in, whereas Lyle is more like what his condition actually is.
Both of these characters are romanceable... kinda. While this game doesn't have specific romance mechanics or anything, the player character can have thoughts in which he reciprocates their affection for him if you so choose.
What are these characters contributing to the themes of this story? I think Look Outside is very concerned with how uncomfortable it is to know and be known, to perceive and be perceived. Its entire premise surrounds how anyone can be changed by these acts. On one hand, knowing too much or seeing something may be a hazard in certain instances, but on the other hand, while remaining completely alone, isolated, and ignorant may be safe in certain ways, it also takes a toll on mental health and leads to worse outcomes. While Spine is a fantastical and gory take on how uncomfortable and terrifying this process is, and Lyle is more of a grounded one, given how much the game focuses on what a lonely loser the player character is, I think they're both reflections of his insecurities and and who he could become.
As I wrote this post, it occurred to me how... not particularly frightening these characters are despite the genre. Don't get me wrong, their behavior is boundary-crossing and unacceptable, but I mean in comparison to other horror characters. They're extremely flawed but can markedly improve, they never act jealous of other people who are close to the player character, you can reject their advances with no consequences and they'll respect that (while Spine does have to be physically fought, I think it's clear the immense trauma she's been through and her mental state make this more understandable and the player can even acknowledge this). Compare them to other stalker characters in the medium and genre and I feel like they come across rather mild. I think the writers behind Look Outside put a lot of work into making sure they weren't offensive stereotypes, which easily could have been the case.
Instead, what you give to these characters is basically what you'll get from them. If you kill them, you can come up with justifications, either because Spine attacked you first or because you found Lyle's photos of you after-the-fact. But there will likely always be some doubt. Spine was in such a horrible situation and was forced to be what she is, so was she fully responsible for her actions? Are "some" photos that aren't even really described a good enough reason to murder someone, especially when you didn't even know about them beforehand? If you're kind to them instead, they can improve, and is it strange that I find these characters a little aspirational for improving? Given what Spine experienced and continues to experience, I don't think it can be easy for her to re-learn boundaries. And I don't think it would be easy for Lyle to give up photography when he's literally made out of photographic equipment.
It's cool how much the choices made by the player in Look Outside affect how they'll see the story—my first companion was Sophie (and it's purely RNG to have her join you) and she was also my favorite! Her dialogue and interactions were a delight. One of the first things she does is call the player character ugly! She tries to trick you into believing you said she can always have Chocky Bars for dinner! When Aster's trying to teach your child about the solar system, she claims giant worms live on the planet Venus! In Mazes & Wizards (off-brand D&D) she plays a rogue thief named Princess Zalara… but she says she's not really a princess, that's just what she tells people. Iconic!
It was especially fun because I decided the player character should be extremely boring and no fun and be like, "Leaving a flaming bag of dog shit outside the landlord's front door is a fire hazard," whenever she'd talk about bullying and pranking people LMAO Sophie, I think, is a great example of how taking an archetype that's often male in pop culture and making a female character using it is often so great. She really is like a girl Bart Simpson or Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.
But like you'd expect from a cosmic horror game that often focuses on how it might be better to not know about certain things, there's a more disturbing and sad side to Sophie's character that I wanted to talk about, one that makes me love her as a character even more, actually.
One of the first things Sophie says is that her mom once beat up her dad and he deserved it. This plus the awkwardly-cropped photo in her family's apartment heavily imply that she probably grew up with an abusive father her mother had to protect her from. Harriet, Sophie's mother, clearly loves her and is passionate about protecting her. But I think Sophie shows signs of chafing under this no matter how loving Harriet has been. Sophie compares the player character to her mom in an unfavorable "you're no fun" sort of way if you tell her to be responsible. Something I took note of was her breaking one of the player character's dishes as well, which I could connect to a past of living with domestic violence.
I think Sophie's rebellious, mischievous nature was just compounded by having to go through the trauma of the Visitor's arrival. And that she felt happy and enabled when she was fighting monsters with the player. She becomes so used to being independent now that she tries to continually recapture this feeling. I think it's pretty concerning how, if Sophie is returned to Harriet, you can still ask Sophie to come with you and she'll lie to her mother and claim she's just helping you clean your apartment! Sophie, I think, is so used to living in constant chaos, whether it's due to personal struggles or the seeming end of the world, and that's a big reason she decides to go out on adventures in the game's Promise ending. Which is also quite alarming since it sounds as if she's still a child... and during the events of the game, she's only around eight!
Headcanon time: I think when it comes to her, my hope is that eventually, Sophie might become closer to Audrey and maybe help out other kids who are struggling to adapt to this new world. I really liked seeing Sophie and Audrey listening to music and playing M&W together in the apartment and I think Audrey would be a really good influence on her going forward. Maybe the fact that Audrey is a monstrous vending machine built like a tank might help Sophie feel more badass hanging out with her.
