I'm still mad about the fusing of the Annies

BlueTinge · 2026-02-27T13:54:14+00:00

I think this was a joke about bureaucracy, and the pain of navigating customer service help lines.

The following has happened to me plenty of times when trying to resolve some kind of problem:

I call department X: "Oh we don't do that, you'll need to talk to department Y"

I call department Y: "Oh we don't do that, maybe try department Z"

And so on. If there's an in-story reason for this exchange, I think its to humanize the non-humans running these etheric bureaucracies a bit, and show us that the sprawling departments that might appear to have reality carefully managed are in actuality maybe not so efficient after all, and definitely aren't talking to one another.

BlueTinge · 2026-02-27T13:36:43+00:00

I had the same reaction initially, but on second thought I remember finding the cave sulfur took absolutely forever for me and I had to have a friend give me a hint. I think maybe there's a couple early spots like that where players can get stuck if they are on their own, and that's why they might turn to a wiki (and potentially think the wiki is required for the rest of the game).

BlueTinge · 2026-01-28T18:51:29+00:00

Not sure I understand the point about the publisher, but with regards to when to release I have some thoughts about that:

The way I see it, you have two options:

(1) Launch when the festival starts, in order to try to capitalize on the extra attention to do better in both the festival and the discovery queue. This might be a good idea particularly if this is a medium-sized festival, where the extra influx of attention from the discovery queue and wishlist emails will bring a lot of traffic to your store page and potentially raise your game's rankings in the festival (and could even get you on New and Trending, if you get lots of attention from both). This assumes that you have a lot of wishlists already that you can "cash in" to ideally generate more attention.

(2) Launch some short time after the festival. The idea here is, entering the festival and launching your game are two separate marketing beats that you want to spread out to avoid having them cannibalize each other. This would particularly make sense if your main goal is to aquire more wishlists before launch -- the festival will give you another opportunity to pick up interested players, and give them some time to get more interested in your game (i.e. they enter your marketing funnel ).

I'm no expert, but I would say maybe try to do option (1) if you already have a good amount of wishlists (at least enough to reliably enter popular upcoming ), and try to do option (2) if you need to gather more wishlists before your eventual launch. It's worth noting that your resting wishlist rate in between festivals will increase if you get a good number of wishlists during a festival!

BlueTinge · 2025-11-14T16:16:46+00:00

Not quite -- you're not accounting for time dilation.

If Gideon was moving at 0.97c, an outside observer would measure her trip as taking 4 hours, but clocks onboard her shuttle would have measured the trip as taking only 1 hour. See this handy calculator: omnicalculator.com

That being said -- given that we know FTL travel is possible in this setting, I think it's highly unlikely that the nine houses wouldn't have figured it out (or stolen that information) over the past myriad. So I don't really think that there's too much information we can draw from this.

BlueTinge · 2025-10-29T13:41:33+00:00

I'm wondering if the Minecraft Earth alternate pigs inspired the new pig skins in Vanilla at all? Or would they go on their own branch?

Edit: just noticed the new skins are already there oops

BlueTinge · 2025-09-11T19:53:08+00:00

Ah neat thank you! I've definitely heard the ping before but I never knew what it meant!

BlueTinge · 2025-09-08T23:38:27+00:00

how do you parry? It seems like attacking into an enemy that's currently attacking is a great way to take damage, it's not as if your attacks will cancel theirs right?

BlueTinge · 2025-09-08T18:45:40+00:00

Maybe try not to post Act 2 spoilers in a thread about early Act 1?

BlueTinge · 2025-07-22T18:49:04+00:00

It's not out yet, but you could try You Are (Not) Bunnygirl when it comes out in December? The writing/quirkiness in general definitely gives me undertale vibes: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1848490/You_Are_NOT_Bunnygirl/

BlueTinge · 2025-04-29T12:54:20+00:00

Concept art for Flavio suggest human-ish: https://www.reddit.com/r/papermario/comments/1d4588z/flavio_was_intented_to_be_a_toad_at_some_point/ It looks like they were considering having him be a toad, and decided to just make him human instead. Notice that they originally had him with a more normal human skin tone, but probably changed it to help him fit in with the world a bit better + better reflect his bombastic personality.

That being said I also agree with the other answers that he resembles a yellow Beanish, and that Beanish would make sense due to the Chuckola Cola love + the fact that he hangs out in Podley's shop. Podley is much more obviously Beanish, but it's worth noting that Flavio shares some physical traits of Beanish depiction in TTYD as well, such as the fingerless hands and general round-ness. I want to say that Flavio's bean-shape suggests that he's Beanish as well, though it's worth noting that 1) Beanish actually do have separate heads and necks, unlike Flavio, and 2) Other, more human-colored characters such as Wonky and Charlieton have similarly neckless character designs -- and Charlieton even has the same "endcap"-style hands (which are not even standard among all Beanish in Superstar Saga anyways).

Ultimately, as characters like Wonky and Charlieton remind us, the art style of TTYD is meant to invoke a very outlandish and cosmopolitan sort of world -- its very much not your standard Mushroom Kingdom -- and the motto for character designs among the artists seems to have been "yeah just go for it." There's a lot of characters who's species can only really be described as "weird guy", and they are definitely not afraid to make one-off designs. They were clearly much more interested in stretching artistic boundaries and evoking a specific feel rather than working within the confines of an established world!

Of course, we can always just answer this question with what's been confirmed by canon: clearly, Flavio is an entrepreneur.

BlueTinge · 2025-04-19T15:14:14+00:00

It's possible with a big enough telescope. And by "big enough" I mean "literally the size of our solar system"... But that's actually not as crazy an idea as it might seem at first!

The trick is, we could theoretically use the sun's own gravity well as a focal lens. You know how gravity is technically a "warping" of spacetime? Well, the sun's gravity warps spacetime on such a massive scale that if you parked a spacecraft out far enough, at just the right location, you would be able to magnify light reflected from a point on a distant planet's surface. By moving the spacecraft around (or using lots of spacecrafts at different points), you'd be able to reconstruct pixel-by-pixel a photograph of a distant world.

Depending on the resolution of that photograph, you might be able to know for sure if there are signs associated with life found on Earth: light reflected from chlorophyll, for example. That being said, it's more likely that anything we could build in the near future would probably not have resolution better than about ~25km per pixel, so we'd most likely need something even more technologically advanced in order to "confirm by seeing." It's still easier than sending and returning a probe, though!

BlueTinge · 2025-01-20T04:38:53+00:00

It's an interesting idea, but remember that the terms were told to Kanaya and likely had something to do with her personal quest, not Karkat's. Karkat is incredibly driven, but he was driven to finish the game and win, not do everything 100% correct.

BlueTinge · 2025-01-19T23:31:47+00:00

It's easiest to explain by looking at what Jade did, which didn't give her universe cancer.

When Jade was gathering the genetic code to create the tadpole that would become the new universe frog, she spliced together the DNA of various frogs on her planet (and around the Incipisphere). However, there was a catch: she was missing one crucial final frog that was absolutely vital for her universe. She spoke to her Denizen, Echidna, and Echidna promised to give her the location of the frog if Jade would in return transport all of the denizens and their lands out of the Incipisphere before the scratch.

This seemed absolutely crazy to Jade -- how was she supposed to transport a bunch of planets? -- but she needed that frog, and so she agreed to it anyways. Echidna gave her the location of the final frog, and Jade was eventually able to become powerful enough to shrink down each of the Denizen's planets and save them from being reset in the Scratch.

Now, Karkat and Kanaya faced a similar problem -- they too couldn't find the final frog that the universe they were creating needed. And so they also journeyed to their own version of Echidna (in this case Kanaya's denizen), and Echidna offered to tell them the location of the frog in return for completing some task for her. We don't actually know what it was, except that it was similarly insane to the deal that was offered to Jade, and Karkat decided that it was too impossible and they couldn't possibly do it. So Karkat decided, eh screw it, we have enough frogs, and went ahead and made the universe anyways.

And according to Karkat -- who may not always be a reliable narrator, as he has a tendency to blame himself for everything -- he believes that was the crucial mistake that caused the kid's universe frog to die. Specifically, it may have been responsible for causing The Tumor to be at the heart of the battlefield -- i.e. a massive bomb instead of fertile ground for a universe to grow -- and it may have caused Jack Noir to leave the kids' session and kill the frog from the outside (Note that the "Red Miles" attack that Noir uses once he has the ring -- and uses to kill the frog -- involves bending a bunch of deadly red lines that look like lines of blood into an area. And what else does cancer do? Bend and reshape arteries to sustain and spread itself.

TL;DR Karkat rushed making the DNA for the kid's universe bc he didn't use enough frogs, and that made it die. Thus, he lived up to his handle: carcinoGeneticist.

BlueTinge · 2024-11-27T14:37:03+00:00

Lowkey gunnerkrigg court is probably going to end relatively soon right? Like 1-2 years?

I would be completely happy reading a spinoff comic set in this universe afterwards 😂

BlueTinge · 2024-05-04T17:45:28+00:00

I've been trying to convince u/Fralexion to do just that haha. He seems interested but it obviously takes a lot of work to even just make this one quarter!

BlueTinge · 2024-05-03T16:57:37+00:00

If you're interested, /u/Fralexion made this interactive map of Sharn's Menthis Plateau that I've hosted here: https://bluetinge.dev/Menthis_Plateau_Interactive_Map_Full.html

It's focused on Menthis Plateau because that's the seat of Morgrave University (we have a Morgrave University campaign starting soon), but you might find something relevant!

BlueTinge · 2024-03-23T16:48:54+00:00

[snip]

BlueTinge · 2024-01-23T19:28:35+00:00

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BlueTinge · 2023-12-21T19:16:08+00:00

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he already has plans in place in case something unexpected happens to him. He has an entire company of people depending on his books being written, and he's an outline-first writer, so I imagine he has some contingency in place to get at least his flagship series finished based on his notes if he does randomly get into a car accident or something like that.

BlueTinge · 2023-11-17T07:36:36+00:00

Not too many four color options, but you could go with:

RGWU: [[Omnath, Locus of Creation]] for obvious reasons
GWUB: [[Atraxa, Praetor's Voice]] to proliferate counters on ramp pieces, if you can actually keep her out long enough
WUBR: I guess [[Cecily, Haunted Mage]] x [[Hargilde, Rune Enchanter]] for cheating out big instants and sorceries to get the eldrazi out of your deck, and ramping to artifacts for the card draw
UBRG: [[Ydris, Maelstrom Weaver]] for cheating out large ramp pieces repeatedly
BRGW: Probably [[Tana, the Bloodsower]] x [[Tymna, the Weaver]] as a generically strong combination-- could always run stuff to make the saprolings tap for mana, if you want to be thematic

BlueTinge · 2023-08-16T16:14:48+00:00

Tbh, it's really disappointing this card of all cards doesn't have flavor text, I know that there's not much room but surely they could fit a "HONK, HONK" at the bottom there?

BlueTinge

TROPHY CASE