Sleepy Plushie Amalgamation

Amalgamate

[b0tster]

🚨 THE BUNLITH ANIME IS REAL 🚨

🎉Introducing IT'S BUNLITH: THE WITCH UP STAIRS 🐇🐇

📅 EPISODE 1 is premiering on November 3rd (thats in 5 days!!)

📈 KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN FOR SEASON 1 launching at the same time!!!

SUBSCRIBE SO YOU DON'T MISS THE LAUNCH

[smaland47]

Floor not found

[This area feels safe]

[And since you've been traveling for quite some time already...]

[Would you like to rest for now?]

[smaland47]

Render Distance

[smaland47]

Pokemon Liminal Dungeon

[smaland47]

when you spawn next to the stairs

[laikascomet]

Question for Lakia, when and how did she first figure out she’s a girl? I imagine it’s a cute story.

[sunshiinebeetle]

Plural Mars Analysis

This is just chapter 1 cause it's kind of late- let me know if you want more!! I have many thoughts on chapter 2 and 3 so far :]

I'll be posting pages of the comic for readability, but PLEASEEEE read it HERE!! I leave several pages out and it'd be really sad not to support the original.

It’s important to note here how the bunny plush very quickly switches from aggressive to hurt and scared. The aggression is a defense mechanism, but not one that Mars wants to use. It comes from fear of breaking their “normal”. Once it’s shown that Laika won’t be easily scared off, it stops and runs away. Akin to an opossum (which have a very weak bite strength) flashing its teeth. I believe that the bunny was never going to hit Laika, at least not very hard (especially when later it’s shown that Mars has extreme reactions to the idea of hurting people).

Ok very important 2 pages, cause SYMBOLISM!! Willow has mentioned before that they packed a lot of symbolism and hidden clues into Laika’s, especially involving Mars’ backstory in chapter 1. The motif of bunny, kitty, teddy is shown on these two pages, the second is the “intro” page for Mars. It’s not lost on me that these three plushies are in the debut shot. They’re a deep representation of them! This will be elaborated on later, but for now I’m going to break Mars down into 3 alters. Bunny (timid, flight response), Kitty (neutral/happy, protected from those emotions), and Teddy (serious, fight/fawn response). I’ll be referring to them by these names to keep the confusion to a minimum.

Here we see Teddy Mars holding the bunny plush (representing Bunny Mars) and once again trying to intimidate Laika into going away. This is a weaker attempt, and shows Teddy’s fawn response as well- they don’t want to offend Laika so they use polite language, but still ask a question that will help them understand how best to protect the system. They don’t drop their stars until Laika displays that she’s not a threat. Notice what Laika is saying and how Mars’ reaction shifts entirely…

This is because Bunny switches in! Teddy is still co-fronting (as they’re prone to do) to keep an eye on things, but generally lets Bunny lead the conversation. Right away you’ll notice that Mars’ claws go away. Teddy’s claws are often extended because they’re on edge and protective, but Bunny has softer paws (and a complex about hurting things). Teddy’s claws are out when they cast the magic because Bunny doesn’t use magic intentionally. Bunny seeks comfort from Laika as soon as they know she’s safe.

Arguably there’s a hint of Kitty Mars in here too, especially on the second page. Bunny’s body language is often very closed off and small, but when Mars offers to show Laika their room and toys, their posture opens up and their tone shifts!

During the first page Mars is very blended between Bunny and Kitty. This is to emotionally protect Mars as they walk past all the portraits of their past. I’ll explain more later, but Kitty Mars is walled off emotionally from (at least some of) their trauma, while Bunny bears the guilt for it. You can see them both emote during the conversation- up until Kitty blends in, Mars doesn’t really use any enthusiasm in their dialogue. Literally zero exclamation points. But between the two “oh!”s, Kitty peeks through in the conversation :]

Then there’s a bit of wind as Bunny talks more, subconsciously using their powers due to their melancholy. The mood gets more tense as they breach a painful topic.

Mars avoids the question, shutting down emotionally… Kitty is likely booted from the front due to the traumatic nature of the topic. This coincides with their arrival at Mars’ room, which is perhaps also a trigger for Kitty to leave. The lightheartedness from their headmate disappears and leaves Bunny feeling hurt.

This is the first time we see Bunny properly shut down. They try to confide in Laika about their guilt and seek comfort, but she doesn’t quite get it… Good effort though!! Bunny’s routine and mental state at this point is a form of self punishment. They can’t leave because they haven’t hurt enough to pay for it. But at the same time they desperately don’t want to be alone. They’d had fun meeting Laika, but since she can’t stay (that would be “selfish”) and Mars can’t leave (that would be “disobedient” and “too good for them”), they just get even more hurt when Laika gives them a non-solution that just reminds them of their loneliness. The reality dawning on them feels crushing.

Bunny’s subconscious magic spikes again. This provides a solution to their conundrum- it’s not their choice, but authority’s. They won’t have to tell Laika to leave, which would break their heart, playtime is simply over. Teddy comes back to help Bunny cope and not break down- their speech becomes more clipped and formal, and their expression neutralizes (except for when it cracks, showing Bunny’s feelings). Teddy’s fawn response also shows, asking Laika politely to do the same as them. BIG ol trauma response. Clearly this was the way that Mars survived every scary encounter before. It’s trained, and likely why Teddy split in the first place.

Teddy is polite again, and using their magic intentionally to make the encounter run smoothly. They keep giving Laika instructions so that nothing goes wrong. This behavior implies that they were punished over very small things, even hesitation.

More trauma responses!! Mars looks almost bored here, but it’s actually Teddy’s trained neutral expression. You can’t get yelled at for feeling things if you’re feeling nothing! Teddy is maintaining this to mask Bunny’s fear of being around their parents, but it’s a hard thing to do. As tension gets higher, Bunny’s expressions show through and they start shaking.

Bunny is resigned to riding out this encounter, but Laika can’t stand for it. She interrupts, which terrifies Teddy. She’s way out of line in their mind, and they don’t want anyone to get punished when they can simply take the hurt. Teddy snaps at Laika, using their powers on accident for once. When Laika gets hurt by this, Bunny gets scared for two reasons. 1. They hurt someone, a severe trigger for Bunny. 2. It wasn’t Bunny controlling the body in a situation where they were otherwise the main pilot. This is an objectively terrifying thing to happen, and there’s often a lot of emotional conflict about this in systems who don’t know what’s going on.

Bunny is triggered and shuts down once again. Teddy directs the magic to get Laika out of there and away from Bunny to help them calm down. The earrings doll tries to grab Laika, while the tie doll swipes at her; this implies that they were the more violent and impulsive of the two. Additionally, the tie doll hurting the earrings doll was likely an allusion to domestic abuse between Mars’ parents. However, both were abusive to Mars in their own ways.

Laika unintentionally invokes the royalty/fairy tale symbolism, which speaks to Bunny and cuts through their shutdown. Since their reality hurts so much for them, they find everything much easier to process in stories.

You could see this as Bunny breaking down, but I think it’s Teddy too. Throughout this chapter, Teddy has been nearby suppressing everyone’s emotional reactions to protect them. But now they give into the hurt and the guilt and the loneliness and finally let themself AND Bunny express how they feel. It’s only now that they accept that vulnerability that they can drop their intentional disguise of everything in town. They hid everything to keep Kitty and Bunny happy, to keep them safe. But now that there’s someone else to protect them, they let themself be a scared kid and all of their hard work crumbles under the stress of keeping everything together. (At the beginning of this chapter when Mars is introduced, Teddy was playing with Bunny to keep them happy and distracted. Bunny feels lonely despite their headmates company and is prone to spiraling when they feel bad, so part of Teddy’s job is to entertain them to keep the illusion of stability.) Anyways that's all for now :3 I'll probably do the rest of the comic later. Keep in mind that everything I say here is just my interpretation and I could definitely be wrong! Though it'd be fun to see how accurate I am hehe

obligatory @laikascomet tag <3 yes i'm the same guy who mentioned it on stream :]

[laikascomet]

does laika... uhm... girls?

asking for a friend of course

no idea... we might never know

(from the 2023 june update)

[sleepynuigurumi]

Sunfluffs on Steam

exist in the world as a queer little animal. Toss berries at grumpy critters to cheer them up, and try your best to help out the mysterious

Its been announced today to releasing on July 14th!!!!!!

This is my most anticipated title for a while, i want to share it more since its obscure!

[sleepynuigurumi]

Released yesterday!!! Was slow to post about it here..

Its one of my best experiences in gaming ever!

[sleepynuigurumi]

Sunfluffs on Steam

exist in the world as a queer little animal. Toss berries at grumpy critters to cheer them up, and try your best to help out the mysterious

Its been announced today to releasing on July 14th!!!!!!

This is my most anticipated title for a while, i want to share it more since its obscure!

[patricia-taxxon]

I'm thinking about my definition of a game now. My definition of art is just to say that it's the part of the medium which exclusively holds aesthetic value. A beautiful doorknob is art when perceived for its beauty & not art when you don't care and just use it to open a door. A game could be "interactive art" but that's too broad, I think a game might be the part of an activity that is arbitrarily determined to be intrinsically motivating, not even necessarily because you can win or lose. So traffic isn't a game, because it has a non-aesthetic function, until you start driving in a manner that fulfills an arbitrary self-motivating function in lieu of the practical one. It follows that a video game is a game with video components.

Gone Home is a video game because you're aesthetically motivated to explore the house, even if you can't really win or lose. At the far edges, an online quiz is a video game. I'm not sure if Tumblr is a video game, because it feels like it has primarily non-aesthetic uses, but is a game not a game just because you use it to get something like personal connection and socialization? idk.

[beastieballgame]

BEASTIEBALL

🏐Volleyball RPG

🏐Coach a team of creatures you recruit

🏐The creatures form relationships through the power of Sports!

OUT NOW ON EARLY ACCESS!!

The game is 10% off on Steam for a limited time to celebrate the launch! 🎉

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1864950/Beastieball/

Website: http://beastieballgame.com

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/h3V73gAC

[buginacup]

BEASTIEBALL IS OUT GO PLAY IT!!!!!!!! :D

[buginacup]

What was the hardest Beastie for you to design in general! There's so many fantastic designs I'm curious which one had you stumped if any at all. Also how on earth did you come up with so many funny little expressions! I feel like I see a new one everytime I play, they're fantastic! Thank you for your wonderful touch to this game, such lovely little guys!

What was the hardest Beastie for you to design in general?

One in particular comes to mind but it's still sort of a secret. I'll try to return to this when more people know about it so I can talk about it in particular!

There were plenty of other snags, though. In particular Crabaret was so so hard to pose. They don't have finished sprites yet, but Crabaret is unique in that their final sprites will not flip (always crab walking), instead they have two sets of poses for w/e direction they're facing.

Have you ever tried to imagine a crab pivoting on a "waist"? A crab doesn't have a waist! And I gave its torso such a naturalistic shape from every angle other than front why on god's GREEN EARTH DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF!

Around the time I was doing poses for this beastie I started experiencing some (still quite present!) nerve pain/numbness in my hands. For other designs (like Yueffowl) I've done vector art with my mouse to give my hands a break, but try as I did I couldn't do low-res art in a way that communicated the stupid ridiculously nuanced shape I gave this crab, so it was a slow process of sketching out the color-coded body part position in little bursts, using supplemental 3D modeling for stuff I had no means to draw;

Don't get me wrong I'm quite proud of Crabaret but good lord this one was months of on and off work.

How on earth did you come up with so many funny little expressions?

I can't take all the credits on the expressions! Nearly all of them were originally drawn by Greg, but at a resolution that looked really blurry at the size the faces wound up being. I get real fussy about pixel resolution in a way that Greg doesn't, so I asked if I could redraw them at the size they're currently used. Here's a side by side of some of the old/new faces.

As you can see a lot of their soul was already there! I mostly just pushed the shape language of them and sharpened them. Greg wanted them to still feel like his drawings and they definitely do!

[snickering-doodles]

Task Complete

[patricia-taxxon]

@twistcmyk

[daily-kichik]

We Love Beastieball!

Art collab between @daily-kichik, @daily-axolati, @sometimes-sprecko, & @bildit.

[vadapega]

I watched the entire thing and I love how stupid it is, have a followup

[sleepynuigurumi]

I still think about this a lot. Thankyou.

[vadapega]

//10th of the Month, Cat Dragon time// (late, I know)

Ocean Hygene…

(list in alt)

I'm not 100% happy with how this one turned out, mainly because despite having 38 characters, it still feels too empty, so I'm extending it till the 20th.

~Please send me a ref and location~