Sorry still on my Princess Pre-Twilight kick and just thinking about what a fun fic could be had from Luna & Cadance walking on egg shells around one another upon Luna's return, partially inspired by this like: "Luna found herself at a loss for words as she stared at this newcomer. Who was this mare if she was not Luna's replacement?"

So you've got Luna, still feeling guilt and out of place encountering this (Insert however old you wanna make Cadance) Alicorn who has been by her sisters side and is deemed her family but is a total stranger to Luna.

Then you have Cadance, encountering for the first time the aunt she only heard tell of in pained and shamed whispers and part of her has to be wondering if Celestia even needs her replacement goldfish anymore now that she has her sister back.

Meanwhile Celestia just wants to have a nice family dinner.

This would be a bit tricky to make work with my usual 'Cadance can feel emotions' HC, but given Celestia & Luna are at a minimum, crazy ancient super ponies I figure their emotions would be rather expansive and a good bit more complicated to parse than a regular ponies, let alone what they might do to protect themselves from untoward observation.

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I still need to see the new Dragon Ball movie, but I really appreciate it just for finally getting far enough into the timeline for Pan to start becoming a relevant character. Really hoping we get to see her start showing up as a playable character in videogames, although she's probably gonna end up playing second fiddle to Piccolo and Gohan's new forms, even if she'd be a way more original character, whereas those two could just be costume alts.

Anyway, glad you like Ditzy so much considering my mini version of her is the most direct reference to your Contest of Champions. It inspired me to take more of shield maiden approach, whereas otherwise I'd have gone with a robed pacifist cleric.

--PS-- all of those minis are based on my interpretations of the characters using D&D 4e rules, although I still need to actually finish stating them all out. For example, though that's why Trixie has a crystal ball, because in 4e it's the spell focus of choice for illusionists.

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Yeah, Luna finding out about Cadence and meeting her for the first time would probably be a very highly emotional event for her and not much less so for Cadence, since Cadence herself must have felt at least some level of insecurity over becoming an alicorn rather than being born one.

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Pan was absolutely adorable in Super Hero. It was a nice change of pace that this movie didn't really involve Goku and Vegeta as much but mainly focused on Piccolo, Gohan, and Pan. Definitely worth seeing whenever you can manage to do it.

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Mhm, heck even if one AU's it and Cadence is much older/different she's still liable to feel like a foal in comparison to her aunts and otherwise kind of implicitly separate from them ya know? There's just so much history and weight there she has no part in and as you say, Luna's gonna have tons of emotions. Honestly I keep fiddling with ideas on this front but there's so many iterations of it I wanna see yet functionally no one writes any of them XD

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Ah, a great video. There's a fine line between, "Man, I hate that guy! I can't wait to see him get beaten!" and "Man, I hate that guy! I'm not gonna spend my money to see him!" And good that you and your nephew liked the movie. :)

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Thanks. Aside from a lingering cough my symptoms are... mostly gone. And ooh, pretty miniatures!

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I'd imagine Cadence would have a mountain of things she'd want to talk over with Celestia initially about alicorns in general, but I feel like that's be part of the difference in the dynamic between her and Celestia versus her and Luna. With Celestia I think Cadence would always be viewing her like a mentor and source of information, whereas I feel the connection to Luna would become more personal as they initially are so awkward around each other but then perhaps learn to share their insecurities and gain a more emotional support dynamic.

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Mhm, yeah there'd definitely be a lot to ask and I agree, Cadence would likely always see herself as Celestia's junior so to speak which would contrast to how Luna felt or wanted to feel in the past likely even before jealousy took hold. Interesting take their with Luna & Cadence, definitely some nice potential and it works well given the total blank slate they can start with.

Been getting into watching Critical Role, mostly because the Vox Machina show made me curious about the whole thing. It's certainly an entertaining listen during commutes to and from work (or at work, given I usually have little to do over the course of my night shifts). I recommend actually starting with their second campaign, as the first one kind of starts up in the middle of the story, whereas with campaign two you get to see the characters set up their dynamic from the very beginning, and there's a lot of great moments even early on.

Thinking about it, watching Critical Role as a roleplayer myself is kind of like how someone who doesn't play a sport professionally but likes the sport as a hobby might have fun watching the game being played on a professional level?

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I've generally kept away from many on-line recordings of RPG's such as Critical role despite having roleplayed for several decades now mostly due to lack of time. The idea of them being the 'professional' league of the game is interesting, I remember having a chat with a friend about it such that things like Critical role might even reduce new player uptake despite the level of brand recognition it causes because it sets such a high bar for your average group to try and meet i.e. that the new player having seen critical roll is then disappointed at what the average group is actually like.

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I could understand that, to a degree. I mean, the average group is not going to be quite like Critical Role's, given these are professional voice actors, who also just sort of really gel together and are into the game. I also don't think people necessarily need to emulate the style seen on Critical Role, although there's no harm in using it as inspiration to just get into the mood a bit more when roleplaying. I use the professional sport analogy because I honestly have no other real way to describe why watching the show is fun for me other than it feels like the same mentality sports lovers have when watching their preferred sport on tv. it also applies to the idea that, while I play these games, I don't hold myself or my players to be like Critical Role anymore than a normal person should expect themselves or their friends to be like professional athletes if they go to the park to play football.

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I also think that the current RPG 'golden age' which has been sparked by games being streamed and the like is somewhat narrowing the role play scene. Almost everything seems to be about D&D at the moment, when we get new players at my local group it's almost always people saying they're interested in D&D rather than roleplay in general. I feel that a lot of the other systems that were out there have dropped off.

Certainly, it's not entirely a new thing, back when I first really got into roleplay in late 90s the big things were World of Darkness and the WEG Star Wars system and although most people knew of D&D I can't think of anyone who actually played it back then. However, we did also play a wide range of other games at the same point Shadowrun, GURPS, WFRPS, Toon, Rolemaster, Tales from the floating vagabond etc. Even when D&D 3rd ed came out around the turn of the millennium when that seemed to become the most popular system there were still fairly healthy communities for other games Aberant, the new World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Dark Heresy, etc but since 5th ed came out I feel some of that diversity may have dropped off. it might be just my point of view, certainly I know there are other systems out there, but things seem to have more solidified around just D&D. There's a certain vicious circle about it that D&D and popular so people hear about it and then look for D&D games which makes it more popular, etc.

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I think another major factor of DnD's status as sort of the go-to roleplaying game is that 5th edition rather went out of it's way to make it's system extremely approachable and easy to learn for players and equally easy to run for DMs. As a result, while it may be perfectly fine to start new players with more complex systems, there's a tendency to default to 5th edition DnD as the "starter" game for people new to the hobby. And then this creates a tendency that once a group gets familiar and comfortable with a system they're less likely to switch to something else. Granted you'll run into plenty of groups that are exceptions to this and like to try other systems. During my gaming group's heyday we usually went to try new systems every other month, but I can see how DnD has become the most popularly run system.

I've got a fair number of games collected now that I haven't had much opportunity to use, like Traveler, Savage Worlds: Rifts, Numenera, 4th Edition BESM, Mechwarrior: Destiny, just to name the most recent ones. I'm generally up for trying something new, but my older gaming group has sort of dwindled in size over the past four or five years, to the point where in order to play regularly I've sort of had to shift gears and start running games for my young nephews, three of them, two of which are quite young but just old enough to sort of get the rules. But as a result I did more or less figure it was best to start them with 5th edition, as to not overwhelm them with too many rules when they're just getting used to the idea of sitting at a table to focus on a roleplaying game, which more or less brings us full circle back to why 5th edition has probably ended up as this popular and dominant force in the market.

On a whim I decided to look at the original Astro Boy cartoon, of which you'll find plenty of stuff on youtube. Now that show is a bit too old school for me, but it did lead me toward finding out there'd been a reboot in 2003 of the series, and I liked the first episode enough to decide to track down a dvd collection of it. Much like with reading Lord of the Rings for the first time, I'm looking back at properties that influenced the things I enjoy today.

I have no words... I wasn't prepared for this.

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49 is such a young age, too; I wonder what caused it.

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From what I've read so far... suicide.

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Oof. That's too bad.

Im getting back into the Lunaverse. It's so amazing.

Was rather pleased by the first two episodes of Willow. The show has got a decent sense of humor to it, which I wasn't expecting, and it is nice to see Warwick Davis back in this role. Of the new cast of characters most of them are decently likable, save for Kit, whom I think is intentionally supposed to come off as a bit immature and bratty given her position in the story, so I imagine we'll see her develop as the series goes on.

I binged Inside Job, I honestly like it way more than Rick & Morty.
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Oh grats, I watched that show as a kid, I loved Atlas's design both as a human and a robot.
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Welcome back :)

I know the person who made this and its great if heavy!

Weird feeling, to finally have Contest of Champions done. Satisfaction, surely, but also some bittersweet regret that it took me so long to complete. I mean, granted the whole story's length is akin to three novel's worth, but still wish I'd reached the conclusion in somewhat swifter pace. Chalk it up to a combination of biting off a lot more than I could chew, while simultaneously working on multiple other stories over the course of the following years.

But now that it's done, I'm going to take a deep breath and relax a bit, then turn my head towards what to do next in the Lunaverse.

How's everyone here? I lost my unpaid internship of two years, my computer died and I had to built a new one, so yeah been kinda messy for the past few months XD

Sorry to hear about that, things have generally been ok with me. Works been a bit back and forth with how much time at home vs in an office but apart from that things have been normal.

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I'm glad to hear things have been going OK, if a bit tricksy!

Amazing video here:

https://twitter.com/_evelili/status/1685991196915572736

I had to share this:

Yo.

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Yo?

I made a cover art for a new story I'm working on. It's called Crisis of Infinite Trixies. What do you think? Do you think I should add the story's name to it, or does it work as is?

I think the title should be on it but given how full the image is maybe above or below the picture?

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How about this?

Good positioning, maybe a different colour or thicker outline to make it stand out a bit more?

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How about this? It wasn't easy to figure out outlining text using GIMP. It's nowhere near as sophisticated as Photoshop, I'm afraid.

I think that works, it stands out well.