HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT??? ok there’s so much to unpack here but like. HOLY SHIT. major tadc ep 9 spoilers below cut
firstly I like that jax and everyone else stayed abstracted. it is definitely a Permanent thing although I’m glad they still got to have peace. jax kinda feels like a bit of a loose end but I think it ties together well enough, especially with how much longer the episode already is.
THEIR NAMESSSSSSS. they’re so good. kinger is grant yesyesyes perfection. kind of funny that we guessed that. destiny for queenie is surprising but I think it’s fitting albeit a little cheesy. mike as scratch yay no notes (if I remember correctly). out of everything jax could’ve been Leeroy was not anywhere what I expected but it’s perfect. ragatha is such a suzie. zoey is so perfect for gangle. love Abigail for pomni, she is an Abigail. Riley was a little surprising for zooble but it fits tbh. well handled names.
jax and ribbit rndjsjjsjejsjsjsjs :’)
i love that the irl counterparts get happy endings. that’s so sweet. and the hopeful ending for the circus gang is so sweet too. i love them all so much. i have many thoughts but it’s so yes yes yes. YES. ❤️ anyways uh thanks for listening to me yap i needed to get this out
had a dance recital today and there was a song that had some really interesting vibes that I wanted to look into later. alas, I had no results. today, I offhandedly mentioned it to one of my fellow performers and had the unpleasant experience of learning that the studio AI generated it.
for context, im not much for process or analysis in artwork most of the time. however, this song had some odd choices (like 4 fakeout endings, random changes in style, specific sounds) that’d I’d been interesting in looking at in more detail. usually, when I see something i know to be AI, I know this right out the gate- so this was the first time I’d been interested. people really weren’t kidding when they say knowing something is AI kills all your interest in it. damn, that was disappointing.
and just. our recital was themed around growing up, finding your place in the world, and also Peter Pan for some reason. what place does AI have here? and specifically in a song named after a Peter Pan character (and thus a tribute to them) (no the song did not resemble them in the slightest) and now I have to wonder, how many other songs have they used that were AI? it’s just really disappointing. I hope they do better.
hi hello here are 9 of my iterators please observe them
The iterators of SKYLIGHT! my beloveds (you can definitely tell who my favorites are based on amount of lore (only a little is included here since making all the stuff for individual posts will take a while))
From first to last built:
Silence for the Dissonant (He/Him)
A very early gen 1 (probably one of the first 50, even). Some of the taboos not initially included were caused by him; his lack of sanity and generally not-safe-for-Ancient-egos personality led to him being wiped from the structure very quickly and replaced with Dissonance of the Lost. Generally, he was a bit of an asshole with a holier-than-thou attitude and a god complex.
Dissonance of the Lost (She/Her)
Silence for the Dissonant’s replacement. She has the personality of a wet paper bag. Later on, she becomes very close friends with Stillness of Spirits and not-quite-friends-but-not-acquaintances with Fallen Bliss. Southwards for Morality despises her and Dissonant for no reason. Dissonant’s wipe was imperfect because the Ancients didn’t realize you can’t fully replace an iterator’s consciousness with another iterator without leaving traces behind, so Lost is left with lingering echoes of Dissonant that can cause drastic personality shifts at random, among other errors. Also known as Dot (mainly used by Spirits).
Glimmers Through the Void (He/Him)
He’s absolutely terrified of a specific type of key and padlock, but skeleton keys bring him comfort. He claims one of his closer friends is Thirty-Nine Crashouts, an iterator that does not exist. Yes, this is a Dwelling of Locks reference. He refuses to communicate in anything other than emoticons like :) and will flip out if you shorten his name in any way. He has tried and failed to invent teleportation numerous times, an endeavor generally mocked by his peers. He has tried an absurd amount of times to create a slugcat friend, but every time it dies within a few cycles because Void is old and has garbage labs. He feels a lot of remorse for trapping so many literal babies in a nearly never-ending death loop. (He does eventually get one though! Stillness of Spirits makes the Friend (do not use pronouns) and sends the Friend over using her own messenger :). )
Unprecedented Skies Torn Asunder (He/Fir)
(how to use fi/fir: Fi went to the store. Fir bag fell on the ground. Fi bought food for firself. That coin is firs.)
Initially, fi had decent admins, but sometime during the second generation they got swapped out and the new ones were awful. He’s very attached to his puppet compared to other iterators, so they ripped off one of fir arms. He does have gems on fir cloak and flexible sort-of wings though! :) He was also used as an update testing site for a while and nobody ever bothered fixing errors caused beyond the bare minimum. (Mostly, this affects for speech and logic abilities.) Skies is a die-hard Sliverist with a savior complex. Generally, non-iterators are considered lesser (and even iterators who have differing views are considered wayward children, mainly Southwards for Morality) and fi will not hesitate to sacrifice creatures for “the greater good”. Only some of this was caused by the Ancients, though he was significantly kinder prior to Mass Ascension.
Stillness of Spirits (She/Him)
The first 2nd generation in the local group, and purpose-built as an archive. She’s quite nice and generally pleasant to work with; during the era of global communications he did a lot of collaboration with others. She’s often inclined to worry about others and is happy to share research, information, and pearls. (He has a lot of pearls.) He’s very close with Dissonance of the Lost and is often the only thing keeping her sane. Spirits also has a purposed slugcat messenger: the Seer (they/it). (Or rather, six individual slugcats with the same base and differing personalities. Spirits couldn’t handle the death of the original and every now and then would create one to cope, which definitely does not help.)
Southwards for Morality (She/Her)
A standoffish ragebaiter. Hates Sliverists with a burning passion. She’s doxxed quite a few Sliverists during the era of global communications, and once sent Unprecedented Skies Torn Asunder a virus using her own purposed messenger, the Raptor (he/him). They’re mother and son. Don’t question it. Morality works mostly in isolation and isn’t on good terms with most of the local group due to her abrasiveness. She burns through all her power and half-collapses a lot earlier than most iterators. The area’s probably got a lot of earthquakes after that happens. 🤷🏻♀️
Searching for Solace (they/them)
Officially named Unending Oneiric Elegy, but they hate that name and prefer Solace or their nickname Neiri. The eldest of the island trio, a small and unofficial subgroup of friends further away from the others. They’re a medical facility and also meant to test weird shit with gravity or lack thereof. Even their puppet is wacky and requires zero gravity to not fall into pieces on the floor. (They are connected via mechanical arm and umbilical to the rest of their can like any other iterator though. No off the string for them >:). ) Their main fields of research after Mass Ascension are karma, void fluid, and occasionally gene sequencing. Solace refuses to sugarcoat despite their inferiority complex and is generally very sharp with their words. They argue often with Whispered Memory and Southwards for Morality, and are acquainted with Calling Comets (he/they, iterator from another local group).
Whispered Memory (They/Her)
One of two generation threes in the group. They, Searching for Solace, and Fallen Bliss make up their subgroup. They strongly believe in the preached values of the Ancient society and are the only one in the group to not dislike Unprecedented Skies Torn Asunder. (She disagrees with fir methods, but not fir beliefs.) She uses as little water as possible, but she does work on the Great Problem if only for something to do. They hate outside organisms being in their can and send overseers to spy on her friends (they never look at the footage). They’re very chatty. Also, her bow may or may not be glued on.
Fallen Bliss (She/Her)
Bliss is the last fully complete iterator to be built; there are younger, but they’re missing something, whether that be a few bits here and there or an entire section of their can. She’s excessively designed both in puppet and entire can as her primary architect’s final fuck you to society. (There’s a lot to that, but suffice to say she was toned down and the designer was ascended prematurely. She never takes off the necklace made as a reminder of the designer and has one cloak with zero patterns for mourning.) She has several other cloaks with lots of patterns, but the one shown is her main one. Bliss feels kind of purposeless for a long time and often puts up a cheerful facade. She does make some of her cloaks herself though, and she really likes the sound of beads clacking together. (If you don’t, never go to her grounds. The sound is projected almost everywhere.) She swears a lot and really cares about Searching for Solace and Whispered Memory even after her collapse caused by a few adjacent legs having slight but terrible errors.
(i tried to keep yapping to a minimum sorry T-T)
(there are other iterators but I don’t feel like putting anyone else up rn)
is it just me or do rain world fans generally like slugcats waaay more than iterators
exhibit a: sheer amount of scug ocs vs iterator ocs
exhibit b: the above but with fanart/fan designs
exhibit c: I have 5 slugcat OCs on Artfight and 23 iterators. Out of 33 attacks on my Rain World characters, 21 (one of which includes 2 of my slugcats) are on slugcat characters (2 also include one (1) iterator each). They’re slorping up all the attention lol. (It should be noted A: 33 attacks is not exactly a great sample size and B: I sort my characters according to attack count with lowest attacks at the top, so my slugcats are at the very bottom). Additionally, this being my second year, one of said 5 slugcats was added before this year’s fight started. That slugcat is down at the bottom with the other slugcats.
exhibit c.a: while I haven’t gone looking for numbers, ive noticed similar for other people who have both iterators and slugcats on artfight (including one person noting that they hadn’t expected one of their iterators to be attacked after I did so). not conclusive evidence at all, but seems to support the general trend.
Conclusion: idk community likes rats I guess
to be clear this isn’t complaining or anything, just a trend I personally find surprising. that’s probably my love for robots talking though
Hey guys... Guess what... Monster Yusuke AU time >:333
ALRIGHTY SO I've had this idea for a while now... And there's not too much to it? But I really wanna make this into a fic one day! Maybe! Hopefully!
The idea is that the Phantom Thieves get involved in another palace (or jail, or whatever version you wanna use XD) and enter into this large area to confront the ruler for the first time. Buuuut, after some back and forth, bam! Smoke! Ren, being the little pretty princess he is (/silly), is unaffected and notices that everyone else is gone— and the scenery had changed completely. Enter a collection of various biomes that each of the other thieves are scattered in, each in various stages of distortion. These distortions mess with their minds as well, making them feral/insane to some degree
Of course, the only one I have a solid idea for is Yusuke— but the main theme for them is that their distorted selves are based off of their attire/Persona's! The Palace Ruler doesn't know their real selves after all, there's only one thing for them to base the forms off of XD So Yusuke is based off his fox outfit, Ryuji off a skeleton/pirate, so on so on! They all have some form of chain or shackle on them too that, once broken, will restore their minds! (For instance the shackles on Yusuke's heels :3)
Aaaaand that's mostly it I believe! Erm... Extra details time?
- The forms are meant to be painful, so when they do get themselves back to their right minds, it's not... A pleasant experience
- Yusuke's domain is a forest for this one! He's about 7-8 feet tall on all fours? Big lad/silly
- His jaw is permanently stuck open and always seems to be dripping this black stuff... Just for the fun of it XD (He can kinda close it? But in the way that he can chatter his jaw. And he speaks telepathically so he doesn't need to use his mouth!)
ALRIGHT THAT'S IT PRETTY MUCH!! I like this AU a lot, but I have little ideas for anyone else— if y'all do, tag me and let me know! (Especially if you make art teehee) Thanks for enduring this long yap, and here, take an extra drawing!
another landscape piece! this one's loosely inspired by Rain World's art style (hence the somewhat strange name and odd patch of black in the bottom left corner), though in retrospect I don't think I really had the skill to pull that off yet. it still looks kind of cool, though.
more yapping below \/
this piece was supposed to be a lot of different things, yet as it evolved it ended up not really being any of those things.
originally, mesa_48 was supposed to be set in the Thanatozoic, a hellish hyper-technological wasteland world that I've been developing for a while now. while elements of this - the ruined buildings in the background, the hazy atmosphere, etc - ended up in the final product, I, uh... forgot the 'hellish' part.
see, the Thanatozoic's visual identity is oppressively red. think the Nether from Minecraft before 1.16, except angrier. broken cityscapes bathed in blood-red light is basically the Thanatozoic's whole thing.
so: why, exactly, is this landscape set in an oppressively red world... mostly brown?
if anything, this proves that I don't really make art. art just kind of happens to me sometimes, and there's not really much I can do about it. sometimes that means I make fairly decent desktops with nothing but stock images and gumption in an hour, and other times that means I confuse red with brown.
implausible color scheme mix ups aside, mesa_48 was also supposed to be reminiscent of one of Rain World's vista points - like the one below:
this is a cool idea, and definitely something I'm going to revisit in the future! the Thanatozoic is especially well-suited for this, since its concept gives me a lot of freedom to make crazy pseudo-industrial landscapes. after all, who can really say what factories will look like in 100,000 years?
the problem is that I clearly had no idea what the fuck I was doing. things like 'appealing color schemes' and 'basic composition' were naught but twinkles in my beady little eyes, so I kind of just... did whatever seemed cool.
and it kind of worked! (emphasis on kind of.) I did some pretty cool stuff with the texture of the cliff, and my experiments with dithering are definitely good first steps in making a Rain World-inspired artstyle.
it's just... man. I'm not sure I could make a decent landscape now, much less a year and a half ago. I was in over my head, and I didn't even realize it.
