fukin hungry
Selkie in action
maxandthespidersfrommars
Gollum but make it sexy
I hate every comment on this post
No reason just felt like it
For a half-second I couldn't remember the name of the antagonist of the Legend of Zelda games so my brain tried to autofill it as "Gandalf."
gandorf the dorf
Since November I've been going through a weird crisis/transformation around my art and identity. It's left me feeling ready to leave art behind as soon as I find a job that I can do that pays my bills. Tons of my answers were about melancholy and dissatisfaction and the final answer I chose "spite", but got love.
Anyway, thanks quiz maker person for making me cry unexpectedly. But not in an entirely bad way. <3
no no no!!! No!!!!! what is this? you think you can do this? You think you can just walk onto this website and post this? how dare you! How dare you invoke feelings! JAIL.
It has been long known and accepted by the culture at large that Gollum is a cat. However, if we take a careful look at Tolkien's original text, he frequently compares Gollum to a dog.
He had a famished and a savage look like a dog that has been chained and forgotten in a kennel for a week. The Hobbit
oh wait, sorry, that's Thorin. hold on
'Worm! Worm!' Saruman called; and out of a nearby hut came Wormtongue, crawling, almost like a dog Return of the King
oops, hold on. *hits computer with fist*
OK, the rest of the quotes are all from the Two Towers
[Gollum] took a few steps away and looked back inquiringly, like a dog inviting them for a walk. 'Take the rope off, Sam!' said Frodo. Reluctantly Sam obeyed. At once Gollum got up and began prancing about, like a whipped cur whose master has patted it. Presently out of the darkness Gollum came crawling on all fours, like an erring dog called to heel. Gollum welcomed him with dog-like delight. He chuckled and chattered, cracking his long fingers, and pawing at Frodo's knees.
this leads to a crucial issue when interpreting the text. We have Gollum explicitly compared to a dog, but, implicitly, dogs are not commonly known to hiss, yowl, or climb trees. There is also evidence that Gollum has (or more accurately, had) nine lives. Disregarding the times in the narrative when another character freely chooses to pass up the opportunity to kill Gollum, here are the things he's survived: - falling off a cliff - being shot at by a crossbow - being crushed under Sam's body weight with heavy force and slammed against a hard surface - being hit with a sturdy walking stick until the stick splinters from the force of the blows - starvation - thirst - hand-to-hand combat with furious, Ring-possessed Frodo while in a physically weakened state - ...twice - Angry Gandalf That makes nine. The next potentially-fatal event Gollum encounters is the volcano, when he at last dies, having expended all nine of his lives. On the other side of this debate we have the fact that cats do not like to swim- with the exception, of course, of tigers and some other large cats, but it should be plain to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the works of Tolkien that Gollum is too little to be a tiger and that explanation is out of the question.
We are left with an area of textual ambiguity: Cat or dog? Therefore I have done an analysis of the story and I have found something crucial:
'Come, Sméagol! ' said Frodo. `We are in danger. Men will kill you, if they find you here. Come quickly, if you wish to escape death. Come to Master!' 'No!' said the voice.
This may appear conclusive, but looks are deceiving. Indeed, Gollum does not come when called. But we must look at the surrounding context:
'Come, Sméagol! ' said Frodo. We are in danger. Men will kill you, if they find you here. Come quickly, if you wish to escape death. Come to Master!' 'No!' said the voice. 'Not nice Master. Leaves poor Sméagol and goes with new friends. Master can wait. Sméagol hasn't finished.' 'There's no time,' said Frodo. 'Bring fish with you. Come! ' `No! Must finish fish.' 'Sméagol! ' said Frodo desperately. 'Precious will be angry. I shall take Precious, and I shall say: make him swallow the bones and choke. Never taste fish again. Come, Precious is waiting! ' There was a sharp hiss. Presently out of the darkness Gollum came crawling on all fours, like an erring dog called to heel.
Crucial new information comes to light. Indeed, Gollum does not come when called, however, he acknowledges that he has a name and, by furnishing excuses to not follow commands, he implies a further acknowledgement that one can be expected to respond to one's name when it is called, and that he must justify his noncompliance by pointing out extraneous factors, such as his desire to satisfy his hunger, and his snit with Frodo. These are all things most cats would never consider doing.
In addition, we see that when Frodo keeps calling more insistently, Gollum does respond with the desired behavior, instead of hiding under a bed or jumping onto the refrigerator. However, he does hiss, and a little while later, we get this description:
He twisted round like lightning, all wet and slimy as he was, wriggling like an eel, biting and scratching like a cat.
(emphasis added) It's becoming clear now, when all of the evidence is collected, that we can really reach only one conclusion.
This is Gollum:
thank you and goodnight
Hey, when I was a kid a twenty-something with the cartoon-rotted mind of a rat-brained child, I used to read lots of screenshot-style Let's Plays. (for anyone unfamiliar with the format, it's like a video let's play with commentary, only instead of a video it's a bunch of images from the game and the commentary is in the form of text. Essentially it's like a very long, comprehensive, full-spoilers written review.) I had a grand time corrupting my mind with Darkseed and Harvester without having to actually play them.
Long have I considered making a screenshot let's play of my own, but did not encounter a game that was quite compelling enough. ahem. until now. thinking of doing a screenshot let's play of gollum game, because there's stuff in the game I'd love to scream into the void about but I wouldn't want to do a video commentary - one reason being because I am running the game on the minimum visual settings and it would look as bad as it can possibly look, another being that it's such an intensely dialog-heavy game that I would either be talking over things that you really should be hearing, or pausing the footage in order to talk & blowing up the video length to like 30 hours & creating an editing nightmare for myself.
if I did this it would be posted as pages on my blog like the fanfic image gallery- I would not be posting spoilery commentary on your dash, I would be posting links to where you can read the full installment, probably accompanied by spoiler-free doodles. (I know the game's been out for nearly three weeks and people who would really care about spoilers have had time to watch playthroughs, but I still don't want to post spoilers because what if people just haven't gotten around to watching it yet or something. it's not a massive game but it's also not something so short you can just catch up on it right away on a whim on your lunch break)
a screenshot let's play would be just enough of a time investment that i was sort of hoping someone would indicate a little bit of interest before I actually do anything. not a ton of interest- honestly one (1) like on this post would probably be enough to convince me. if you do not want me to do a screenshot lets play please do not interact with this post, ty
edit: I am hearing some interest so this is now an announcement post! It will be a while before I post anything though, I am going through a second playthrough first to explore dialog options, look for little things I missed & decide on:
1) which dialog choices I will want to make in my official playthrough
2) whether there's enough story divergence to be worth tentatively planning an abbreviated second run playthrough, or if I can cover the game adequately by just giving a brief aside/summary of what happens when you choose the other options if you know the answer to this pls dont tell me! i'm still enjoying exploring the game for myself
So I will probably not start posting my let's play for a few weeks, unless I get really sick of doing productive things & binge this whole game this weekend, which isn't an impossibility.
Hey I wanted to give an update/reminder (because people really were interested!) that I am working on this but it might not appear for a while because, for one thing, I'm still devoting my attention to Art Fight in July and for another thing I just have sooo much to say <w<; so if you don't hear about this for a couple of weeks it doesn't mean I dropped the idea, I am just still typing and/or getting the actual screencaps (I have to finish my current playthrough which is on chapter 8, then go in and record anything I want to talk about but don't want to put in my 'canon' savefile, like dialog choices that don't fit my main intended route and possibly collectibles, then start the game over again and start recording it again.)
Once it starts, I plan to do a post a week, and usually there will be one chapter per post (already I know chapter 7 will be two parts because that chapter is very long and covers different stages of the plot). it's going to be half-let's play, half-massive review where I talk about everything the game chose to do regarding the character writing and also, probably, briefly talk about every version of Gollum i've ever seen in any media, compare the game & the book, while... acknowledging the janky parts of the game such as visuals, etc. briefly and then moving on because i don't really care about what didn't work and also I'm presuming you've heard about those parts already.
The LP will be posted... somewhere that is not in the form of Tumblr posts. My first thought was as pages on my blog (like this: https://ach-sss-no.tumblr.com/shindex) but I might be better off using dreamwidth, feel free to make suggestions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It will be very long and meticulous. You will get tired of hearing my narrative voice. Honestly, I don't know if all of it will be all that interesting, but I'm finding this is really helpful to myself as a writing deconstruction exercise, so full speed ahead anyway.
So *claps hands* If there is anything in the game you really want to hear about let me know so I don't miss it. I'm trying to get to everything
#long post#self reblog#you will. get more opinions worry not#For anyone who noticed#Yes I am thoroughly okay with playing this game three times... I think the reputation for dreadful gameplay is coming from bugs maybe?#Game's also running pretty smooth even in trouble spots since enabling dynamic resolution#I did upgrade my ram this year#Maybe my computer is just more of a beast than I realized#blob blabs#delete later#won't need this post later#Tbh i'm not a huge fan of platformers and stealth games overall so#maybe I'm just not perceiving this game as any more unpleasant to play than any other game of its type
Writer friends, please help me out!
I have some fics I really love and want to draw some fanart for. Is it okay to do that and present it to the author, or is it better to ask them for permission before drawing something based on their work?
apparently I'm in the minority for wanting people to ask first, so- from personal experience, it's absolutely wonderful that you want to do fanart but some authors really would prefer you ask first... I would like to politely urge you not to assume that everyone's okay with you doing art without asking first, even if most people are okay with it.
Original audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA0OgL80msw I cut out the narrative descriptions, boosted volume, added a slight echo effect (because they’re in a cave!) and panned the audio left or right at points, it is otherwise unaltered.
Riddles in the Dark animatic to Tolkien’s reading of the chapter because I love it so much. I did this on a whim, knocked out all the draft sketches in one session and went ‘This is great! I’m totally going to do the whole chapter but I should finish these drafts first’ and that took so, so much longer than expected that the thing now ends at the point where Gollum remembers what eggs are. I might continue it, I might not, who knows!
Sound effects (all under a creative commons 0 license): https://freesound.org/people/alohilani/bookmarks/ Ending music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ3MMmlNE7k (If you saw this reblogged or in tags you might be wondering why Gollum looks like that. There is an explanation here)
Every so often I go through this blog and delete my text posts (especially if they’re giving post schedule updates that are now out of date, or are particularly stupid), but it looks like at some point when I was doing that I also accidentally deleted this post which is not a text post. Fortunately, I had shared it to my old, now inactive DST blog, and can reblog it from there, and bring it back here.
I would like to try to do more with animation and it would make sense to do something I've already storyboarded - not the whole thing, of course, it's too long. if any of you have a part of this you specifically like & would want to see a pencil test type thing of, I would love to hear what it is! otherwise i'll just pick something easy
Okay so I was going to do a really involved review of the Unhinged LotR Mobile Game (otherwise known as LotR: Heroes of Middle-earth) but I'm tired and don't have energy for that, so here are the quick hits:
- It's a gacha game, and it's published by EA. Draw your own conclusions.
- This review is based off of 100% free gameplay. I have paid $0 for this game.
- Lore: Good. 8/10. Game is based on the book and plot elements were clearly designed by someone familiar with the source material. Hero lineup consists of characters from the book, characters that were mentioned in passing in the book but have been a little bit fleshed out and expanded upon, and completely original characters. The latter fit in well with the lore and have convincing names that are, for the most part, based in Tolkien's actual languages or borrowed from elsewhere in the legendarium. Dialogue is lifted directly out of the book in general; when it deviates from these the language used is noticeably different. Minus one half point for that, minus one point for using a ring of power as a leveling mechanic, and minus one half point for female dwarves not having beards.
- Gameplay: Typical. It's a gacha game. 6/10. There's never enough energy to actually get anything done in one sitting, as per usual, purchase packs are WAY overpriced, and no particular effort has been expended to make plotlines coincide with the combat mechanic especially well. There has been one special event since I've been playing, where they released Arwen as a hero. There were six stages to the event and I was able to complete five. The sixth required me to have leveled Arwen to five stars in order to complete, and in order to do that I would have had to have either paid $20 for the real world money Arwen pack or got incredibly lucky with the RNG on the in-game gems Arwen pack. However, I am not torn up about this as there was no plot to the event and the rewards were gold and upgrade materials; nice to have, but easy enough to get elsewhere. I am unsure if there are any plans to repeat this event or whether Arwen and other event characters will be available after their events have ended, and this information does have a significant impact on my final opinion of the game. However I'm overall satisfied; it seems to me that the highest levels of this character are locked behind a paywall, but I got a good solid hero that I'm actively using on one of my teams. Points added back for not locking auto-battle until you've manually completed the battle already and for forwarding uncollected daily rewards to your in-game inbox, great quality of life features that other gacha games would be wise to take note of.
- Graphics. Fine. 6/10. This rating will doubtless go up over time, as the game is currently plagued by graphical glitches. No apparent impact on actual gameplay but there's quite a bit of A-posing (Frodo and Sam have a combo attack that seems to cause all goblins to A-pose), the Mordor Taskmaster/Úzhan occasionally interacts with the wrong character during one of his skill animations, sometimes when closing out a gear inspection window and going back to a hero's main page will cause them to sprout a second head, which is a bit terrifying, and a few other minor gltiches that are really weighing down the score in this department. But as I've said before, the art style is really fun and unique, I love almost all the character designs, and there are a lot of really good artistic choices (for example: the homepage link to the events page takes the form of a stained glass window, with a really pretty image of whichever character is in focus in the current event). The only probably permanent issue that drags this point down is that some of the combat backgrounds are a bit silly; the heroes are standing on water, or obviously about to run into a wall as they run from one combat stage to the next. But overall the game is really nice to look at. The music is nice too.
- Plot. I'm not gonna give the plot a number rating because I like it, but it's not for everyone. You, the player, find a random ring on the ground and put it on because you're not genre-savvy I guess. This ring gives you the power to influence characters from LotR in order to direct them as heroes on the battlefield. How this works is not expounded upon, and it doesn't matter because it's a leveling mechanic. But some other nefarious person is also influencing characters from LotR and they're trying to change the plot, and you have to stop them. Or at any rate, that's what I was told? It seems that sometimes I'm also helping them -- but as this is all just an elaborate excuse to pit completely random teams of heroes together I expect it wasn't thought out quite as thoroughly as it it should have been. Or maybe I just haven't got far enough in the plot to understand it yet. I'm always open to that. Anyhow, I've gotten invested in the subplots mainly through the mechanics of 'it's really mean to Aragorn' and 'they made Uglúk really funny.'
Overall I'm not gonna give it a number rating. Would I recommend it? If you like gacha games, yes. If you like that kind of plot, I'd recommend it just to run through the light and shadow campaigns and look at the pretty graphics.
EDIT: forgot to mention before that this game has been out for roughly one (1) month so that's why I'm so forgiving of the graphical errors.
my dudes, i try not to actually have too many emotions on behalf of other people's work. the gollum game has some genuine big flaws in it (most obviously, graphics) and i understand why even the things that work are very much not to everyone's taste but. i'm looking at some of the feedback to see if there's anything in it that i overlooked & should listen to- and it is killing me how many people are calling the game terrible not because of the real problems that exist in the game, but because it's not like the movies
i have seen:
- several people saying that sméagol didn't know his own name until frodo told him what it was*
- people pointing out bits in the game that are lifted almost word for word from the books and saying it's an insult to the source material or the character would never do this
- one person boldly claim that the lotr franchise is 22 years old (hrrrrNNNNNNNHHHHHHHHHHHH) i'm torn between 'well, Tolkien's writing can be a bit dry and i understand why people might not want to hrmm hrmm' and if you are able to write comments online you are capable of at least attempting to read a novel
(* I'm not even sure that's movie accurate! I thought he was saying 'what did you call me' to mean 'we have just met how do you know my name,' as someone might. but i only watched the movies once and it was two years ago...)
edit: also seen some things going around about the game that are factually wrong. it also bothers me extremely to see people call the voice acting bad specifically because it does not sound like the vocal styling used by andy serkis which, judging from this audio, was also not part of the character's original conception.
#stupid post#delete later#i've gone on a personal character arc from 'the pj movies didn't execute this character to my taste but i see why and it was effective'#to 'the movies butchered this character permanently and entirely'#idk maybe i'm off base but i am seeing a lot of people appear to just. flat out refuse to engage in the material at all#this is a bizarre experience for me because i'm genuinely re-evaluating how much i should care about what other people think about. anythin#On a much lesser note of annoyance#I am also seeing this game get clowned for things that are common among this type of game & don't usually get called out like this#Some of those are aspects that may not be great but they're also very common & in other games they're accepted as genre limitations#but Not here#in some reviews there's no difference between actual avoidable problems and 'it should have reinvented video gaming and given you cake'#On one hand those are legitimate things not to like but on the other hand it feels like an inconsistent standard. why was it ok before
i found a secret
I am working on a screenshot Let's play of Game, as I mentioned a while back. I am very very excited, because I just discovered you can look at the whole script of the whole game, all of the variables, and some juicy behind the scenes stuff if you just look on your hard drive.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Gollum\ToM\Content\Data\Articy\Bin
ohoho we are saaaaving these somewhere so the devs can't release an update that makes them inaccessible or takes out the art direction notes yes we aaaaare
it's hard for me to even convey through text how exciting this is
locations.xml is the juicy one
Purpose of the scene: • Introduce Sméagol's search for friends as a Problem for Gollum. First inner conflict. • Get Gollum to Barad-dur.
Oohohoohohooho I am vibrating
I don't think I've actually shared my Art Fight link here either. You are welcome to follow me!
I don't have very many characters posted because I like to pick which designs I have up there based on what team I end up on (theme reveal is next week aaa so long to wait)
My commissions are open! Prices start at $7.50 for a halfbody sketch of one character.
I can always make time for commissions so they are never truly closed, however, the time between now & when Art Fight starts up would be a particularly convenient time for me ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)
random doodle. not traitor. friend and good boy
promise
good boy
no spider
Help a poor soul out and reblog this✌️
*this is not including the animated version
not including the animated version?
Although I am offended that you are not referring to this dubious masterpiece:
yet I will reblog this
#i watched it at 28 I think#a couple of years ago#I decided I would read the books first#I don't know what might be different in my head right now if I'd done it the other way around#I know the peter jackson lotr trilogy contains some of the most well respected movies ever made#But consider how much better received it could have been#if aragorn and boromir were not wearing pants- like in the bakshi version#By the way I genuinely have no idea why I hadn't watched them sooner and how I missed them when they were a huge thing in the 2000s#and continued to be a huge thing up until present day
i heard that youtube is going to start deleting old videos from inactive accounts so I am downloading all of these old videos of J. R. R. Tolkien's Gollum impression just in case, since I see the account they're hosted on hasn't updated in 5 years
#there's a dearth of professionally produced covers of this song for some reason can't imagine why#I'd record a rock version myself for the lulz if I was a little bit better at guitar#I mean if I knew more than three chords and could produce them without buzzing or muting strings#i don't think you need to be a rock goddess to take on 'the cold hard lands they bites our hands'
Hey, when I was a kid a twenty-something with the cartoon-rotted mind of a rat-brained child, I used to read lots of screenshot-style Let's Plays. (for anyone unfamiliar with the format, it's like a video let's play with commentary, only instead of a video it's a bunch of images from the game and the commentary is in the form of text. Essentially it's like a very long, comprehensive, full-spoilers written review.) I had a grand time corrupting my mind with Darkseed and Harvester without having to actually play them.
Long have I considered making a screenshot let's play of my own, but did not encounter a game that was quite compelling enough. ahem. until now. thinking of doing a screenshot let's play of gollum game, because there's stuff in the game I'd love to scream into the void about but I wouldn't want to do a video commentary - one reason being because I am running the game on the minimum visual settings and it would look as bad as it can possibly look, another being that it's such an intensely dialog-heavy game that I would either be talking over things that you really should be hearing, or pausing the footage in order to talk & blowing up the video length to like 30 hours & creating an editing nightmare for myself.
if I did this it would be posted as pages on my blog like the fanfic image gallery- I would not be posting spoilery commentary on your dash, I would be posting links to where you can read the full installment, probably accompanied by spoiler-free doodles. (I know the game's been out for nearly three weeks and people who would really care about spoilers have had time to watch playthroughs, but I still don't want to post spoilers because what if people just haven't gotten around to watching it yet or something. it's not a massive game but it's also not something so short you can just catch up on it right away on a whim on your lunch break)
a screenshot let's play would be just enough of a time investment that i was sort of hoping someone would indicate a little bit of interest before I actually do anything. not a ton of interest- honestly one (1) like on this post would probably be enough to convince me. if you do not want me to do a screenshot lets play please do not interact with this post, ty
edit: I am hearing some interest so this is now an announcement post! It will be a while before I post anything though, I am going through a second playthrough first to explore dialog options, look for little things I missed & decide on:
1) which dialog choices I will want to make in my official playthrough
2) whether there's enough story divergence to be worth tentatively planning an abbreviated second run playthrough, or if I can cover the game adequately by just giving a brief aside/summary of what happens when you choose the other options if you know the answer to this pls dont tell me! i'm still enjoying exploring the game for myself
So I will probably not start posting my let's play for a few weeks, unless I get really sick of doing productive things & binge this whole game this weekend, which isn't an impossibility.
I usually post these pages as sets and not as one-offs, and I might take down this post later when the set is finished. but for this one I was also experimenting with making a process video, because that’s something I’ve been thinking of doing for a while and I thought I might as well try it while I was working on this page since it’s supposed to be a page for trying things out on: https://youtu.be/a2FtpkyGe2A
Consists of me babbling away as if I were streaming but without the (visible) tech issues and with the vocal filler & dead air edited out, mostly.
I wanted to try one on this very specific little niche fanart subject before I try doing anything that too many people would want to watch <w<; I recorded a second part where I do the digital portion of the page (I don’t have a way to film the traditional portion), but it didn’t turn out so great and before spending a lot of time editing it I wanted to gauge interest. (I have also thought about buying a document camera so I can film sketches and inks, but I want to know I’d have the discipline to follow through with video content first. Also, if doing show-and-tell with the scanned page in different stages is enough for people maybe I don’t need to film it at all)
I've been working on a completely unrelated project on my other blog @cassiesart and, by sheer, pure coincidence, because the plot is incredibly different, there is an oddly similar moment to this where a totally benign character is saying things on one side of a door, and on the other side of the door a weird small creature is freaking out, and this is conveyed by using almost the same dramatic angles on the very innocent closed door
just my personal 'I would have two nickels which is not a lot but it's weird that it happened twice' moment, carry on
Oh, uh, I wrote this too, like a year ago, and I don't think I ever shared it here. Also have to give you a ffnet link because, while this exists somewhere on AO3, I orphaned it out of shyness & don't know where to find it now. (title search?.... effort)
It wouldn't have occurred to me to share this here ever, but I found the document on my hard drive, couldn't tell what it was because it was thrown in with a bunch of random things from other fandoms and I name files like a madwoman
...so I opened it to see what it was and read the whole thing and I thought it was acceptable, and something the people who enjoy the content on this blog may potentially be interested in. It's short.
'cool cool, what is story actually about?' Oh it's about... the first time Gollum kills an orc and eats it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯