malymin

So, lately I've been playing the free demo for Aethermancer.

It's a in indie roguelite - which, yes, are a dime a dozen these days. But it's also a monster trainer, or monster battler, or "-mon game", or whatever you want to use to refer to "the genre that Pokemon is the most famous example of." (Not the first - technically the Megami Tensei franchise involves recruiting monster to use in battle, and it predates Pokemon by a good bit.)

I enjoyed the developer's previous outing, Monster Sanctuary. It had some good ideas, but I also felt like I needed a guide on hand in order to enjoy the main draw of the game - triple battles where synergy between team-mates is key, and stacking passive abilities allows for powerful snowball effects.

Compared to its predecessor (and to the other indie monster game I've played, Cassette Beasts) Aethermancer makes it much more clear to a "novice" player how you're supposed to use monsters. Right at the outset, you see that your monster has three "types" - not elements, but mechanical niches it represents. These types may be debuffs (burn, poison, etc), buffs (dodge, regeneration, etc), "critical" (increasing chance and effects of crits), and "purge" (remove enemy's "aether", the elemental action-casting resource reminiscent of MtG's "mana"), but they also include support niches like "aether", "heal", "shield", and "tank." Each of a monster's three types contribute to its pool of "traits" (passive powers) and "actions" (selectable moves that cost aether to perform).

In addition, the introduction of "maverick" traits and actions - which become added to a monster's pool based on what teamates are present when it levels up - makes synergistic team-building between disimilar monsters easier than it was in Monster Sanctuary. A "tank" monster in a party with a "burn" monster will gain access to "tank+burn" abilities that synergistic link the two concepts. Meanwhile, in Monster Sanctuary, your ability to, say, add a healing monster to a Shock team was limited by monsters whose predefined skill trees supported those concepts simultaneously.

In the demo, I've found the Burn archetype (which one of the starters, Cherufe, is a member of) to be fairly strong. While there are other archetypes with available passives that trigger when Aether is spent, and passives that generate aether when they trigger, nothing seems to have as powerful a feedback loop as the following combination, which are available to all Burn monsters under all circumstances:

Burning Fire

Aura: For every 3 Fire Aether consumed by allies: Applies Burn to all enemies.

[...]

Kindle

Aura: For every 4 Burn applied to enemies: Generates Fire Aether.

And this combination only gets stronger the more burn-inflicting Traits you have, or after gaining access to party-wide burn inflicting Actions, or with the flexibility that Cosmic Fire introduces to the feedback loop by letting you generate Wild (wildcard) Aether with Kindle and spend Wild Aether to trigger Burning Fire, or by utilizing Burn Conversion and Stoke the Fire to convert Burn stacks into EVEN MORE Fire (or Wild, with Cosmic Fire) Aether to spend EVEN more to inflict EVEN MORE burn.

This is even before getting into the ways in which Cherufe's signature Trait synergizes with literally every burn inducing trait...

Downloadable here.

“Interestingly, some scholars working within Animal Theory further argue that a certain right of access is assumed on the part of the, superior, humans when they encounter animals, so that the animal body may be touched, subsumed, or killed on the basis of the human right to do so. This also occurs in several medieval literary examples of human encounters with the dragon maiden, where the knight initially does not doubt that he is allowed access to the dragon maiden’s body in killing it. Although the dragon maiden and the knight may share their space within a literary framework, this sharing is non-mimetic; they are not considered equals. The main purpose of the stories, especially in the episodes where a dragon maiden has to be kissed, is to ascertain the worth of the human knight.”

This PDF is long - 138 pages long! I've barely even skimmed it. It was brought to my attention by a blog post on Tumblr about it. Tumblr user capricorn-0mnikorn's "monsters as disability metaphor" tag is worth a browse. The PDF itself does not compare the position of the dragon maiden (or frog king/prince, etc) to the way a disabled person's body is framed and treated relative to caretakers and loved ones - but 0mnikorn does.

Here's some of their post on the Frog King story, that draws from the analysis of the Dragon Maiden in the pdf I've linked:

First, that “Access to the dragon maiden’s body” made me think of all those times when I go out in public, and random strangers just assume they have every right of access to my disabled body – to pat me on the head, or grab the handles of my wheelchair and push me where they think I should go, or ask me really personal, inappropriately intimate, questions about my medical status or how I use the toilet.

Second: how these stories are never about the dragon maiden at all, but just about that hyper-human human knight reminded me of every “human interest” story in the news that touches on disability; the reporters never interview the disabled person (usually a kid), but always the able-bodied parents, or neighbors, or teachers. Because it’s not about the disabled person at all – just whether or not the able-bodied, neurotypical, person can live up to a symbolically human ideal, and justify the “goodness” of the social status-quo for another season.

And that’s how people can say things to me like: “But I don’t see your disability – I see your humanity!” with a straight face, and expect me to take that as a compliment. To them, my disability is some sort of magical, artificial, shape that I’m trapped inside of – like someone in a rubber Godzilla suit with a broken zipper.

If they can free me from the trap, I will be fully human (and they will prove to the world that they have God’s approval as His idea of a Perfect Person).

But if I can’t be freed of my disability, then the spirit of Godzilla will seep into my very essence, and I will lose all traces of my humanity. Superstitious toad milk soup, of course, that no amount of salt will fix, but there you go.

Unrelated, 0mnikron cites some of D. L. Ashliman's website in one of their posts about monstrous/animal bodies in folklore as metaphors for disabled bodies, and I love to see Ashliman's folklore database getting some love.

I'm so sick of Discord servers, man.

On my old computer, I had the following loadout on the party at the end of Chapter 2:

Kris: this loadout gives them +2 ATK and + 6 DEF, and help with bullet grazing
- Weapon: BounceBlade (+2 ATK, +1 DEF)  
- Armor 1: TwinRibbon (+3 Def, increased graze area)
- Armor 2: TensionBow (+2 Def, grazing TP amount increase)

Susie: This loadout gives her +5 ATK, +6 DEF, and +6 Magic
- Weapon: Devilsknife (+5 ATK, +4 Magic, -10 Rude Buster TP)
- Armor 1:  Royal Pin (+3 DEF, +1 Magic)  
- Armor 2:  Royal Pin (+3 DEF, +1 Magic)  

Ralsei: this loadout gives him +2 ATK, +8 DEF, and + 8 Magic
- Weapon: Fiber Scarf (+2 ATK, +2 Magic)
- Armor 1: Dealmaker: (+5 DEF, +5 Magic, more money)
- Armor 2: Royal Pin (+3 DEF, +1 Magic)

...but I no longer have that save data on me. I tried doing Chapter 3 on a "fresh" save with no Ch1/Ch2 data, but everything kicked my ass, and a friend gave me their Ch2 data to help me... but that save is missing a few Royal Pins compared to my old one. And I don't remember how to save-edit equipment onto party members...

I've heard Chapter 3 is a lot harder than Chapters 1+2 were, too...

Here's a web app that lets you swap RGB color channels on an image!

Now, you can also do this with any half-decent image editor, from Photoshop to GIMP, of course. But if you don't habitually use such programs, you might have fun playing with this.

In my experience, red/blue swaps often look the best, like the example images given:

But you can try them all!

It's absolutely only a matter of time before the streams fully cross.

People really liked Mesmerizer by 32ki. So far, they also really like Static by Flavor Foley. These music videos tap into aesthetics and themes that are currently popular with young online horror fans.

Back in the day, there were a fair number of Vocaloid "song series" - a narrative told from different angle via the medium of a set of interconnected Vocaloid songs (and their respective music videos). Many of these (Evilicious Chronicles, Bad End Night, Dark Woods Circus) used the Vocaloid characters as "actors" as well as instruments; others, like Kagerou Project, used completely original characters. While not all song series had dark, horrific, or tragic themes, they were pretty popular and common! I don't know how to accurately sum up what "dark" themes and aesthetics were popular in general with Vocaloid producers and fans at the time, but they were very... of the era? In the same way that Mesmerizer and Static are so clearly of this era, and not something that would have been made during the intial late-aughts-to-early-teens Peak Vocaloid era.

I got the feeling that people, especially young fans, really wanted Mesmerizer to have a sequel, to follow up on the implied narrative and - but that's not what 32ki wanted to make. I feel like Static is slightly more likely to have a follow-up, but not by much - Flavor Foley's first album did not have a shared narrative between songs, and the group has stated on Twitter that their projects will follow a "flavors of [theme]" pattern:

We make songs that explore different sides of a common theme. Our debut album, "CARDIAC CONTREPOINT", examined the varying flavors of "love".

Analog Horror series and similar ARG-inspired unfiction are a popular medium for indie serialized storytelling at the moment, typically published on Youtube; a lot of them interact with artifacts of nostalgia such as analog media, old videogames, the "old web", or general kid-media aesthetics. Vocaloid song series are a historically popular medium for indie serialized storytelling, historically published primarily on NicoNico but frequently reposted onto Youtube; the "golden age of vocaloid" is, itself, now an object of nostalgia for a specific cohort of otaku and weeaboos. Two standalone vocaloid songs with analog horror or mascot/kidcore horror elements have already been extremely popular. It's only a matter of time before someone who has interest in the overlap makes a Vocaloid song series, an actual serialized piece of storytelling, with these elements. It will probably take a little while longer still for one that actually goes viral, and/or is good, to get made. But it is a matter of time.

Our current system of corporate ownership of intellectual property, and the way corporations take advantage of their ownership of patents, copyrights, etc, is damaging to the ability to not just experience art, but make art - and use many other tools, besides.

Something needs to change.

ColorHexa.com

A fun website for looking up technical information on specific RGB colors, as well as simple palettes calculated from their analogous and complimentary hues.

It can also do gradients! Like this.

Lossless Cut

Do you just need to clip a specific segment of a TV/anime episode, or other MP4 on your hard drive, but not really any other editing? This is good for that.

Custom Starter	Typeless
Dodge	Typeless
Battering Ram	Typeless
Cotton On	Plant
Jagged Edge	Typeless
Shear Luck	Typeless
Berserker	Beast
Neutralise	Water

Potentially usable with Glass, Ice, or Metal bootlegs of Bansheep and all of its remasters. More specialized versions would narrow down species or typing.

The idea is that I want to use the "unique" tools of Bansheep, which are largely focused on avoiding hits. Two of these moves (the ones with sheep pun names) are exclusive to the Bansheep line, while Cotton On is only learned by one other species line.

• Battering Ram is a 3-AP attack that lowers the opponent's accuracy on a hit.
• Shear Luck is a passive that increases the user's Evasion the less AP they have.
• Cotton On is a 4-AP move that forces all moves targeting the user to miss.

I am genuinely unsure as to whether I want Custom Starter: Dodge as a self-buff, or the attack Desperation (1-AP, becomes more powerful the less HP the user has).

Jagged Edge is a passive that automatically inflicts damage when a melee attack misses the user. Neither branch of the Bansheep line learn it in their standard typings, but Glass, Ice, and Metal bootlegs can.

Berserker + Neutralise is a funny combination that isn't exclusive to the Bansheep line, but does pair well with its passive evasion. Berserker inflicts the "berserk" debuff while raising melee attack when the monster hits 50% or less HP; Neutralise cures all debuffs when the monster hits 50% or less HP. Desperation, Battering Ram, and Jagged Edge all count as melee attacks.

Unfortunately, I feel at a loss as to how to theorycraft more "specialized" versions of the build, that take advantage of the differences between Ramtasm and Capricorpse, or the differences between Glass/Ice/Metal bootleg movepools.