Author: optimisticduelist

pankaeks replied to your post: Surprise Homestuck Furry Meta: The Jade Harley…

The artwork is by Tsampikos for someone’s character if anyone is curious! It’s been scrubbed from his galleries but it still exists as a reupload to e621 e621.net/post/sh…

🙂

Oh hey you messaged me here, too! That makes things easier

So yeah we now have a source for the original version of that Jade Harley fursona drawing. 

https://e621.net/post/show/27811/anthro-big_breasts-blue_eyes-breasts-butt-canine-c

Careful with the link though. I’d call the drawing itself tasteful enough but there’s kind of some nudity and e621 in general is v definitely not safe for work.

Thanks to pankaeks for volunteering this! I’ll edit the original tumblr post as well and edit in a blurb about this. 

Surprise – you get a bonus Hiveswap developer interview today!

whatpumpkin:

Hello there Hiveswap and Homestuck fans, Ash here! Now, I know what you’re thinking: “What madness is this? Ash said there’d only be *one* Hiveswap development team interview per week going forward! And he said they would be on WEDNESDAYS! This isn’t a Wednesday!”

Right you are, and that’s exactly why surprises are so much fun! Now, last week I mentioned that the next interviewee would be our superstar UI designer and all-around graphics guy Tauhid. Our interview with him will still be going live this week on Thursday, so definitely look forward to that, but today we’ve got another talented team member in the hot seat: Tom Hunt, our lead programmer and the prime coding whiz in charge of things on the technical side of things! Take it away, Tom!

Introduce yourself to the fans! What is your specific role on the Hiveswap team?

Hi, I’m Tom. I make stuff in Unity, which is a cross-platform 3D game engine and editor that can make all kinds of things – including the very 2D game you’re here to read about! My company neocade and I are working freelance on Hiveswap, with me as the lead programmer. Mostly, I direct and coordinate the team of programmers and quality assurance (QA) testers that are putting this game together. Sometimes I also write code.

When and how did you get your start on the Hiveswap project?

Sometime late last year, I was looking for a gig. At the time, What Pumpkin Games was looking for an additional Unity programmer. A mutual business contact introduced us via email, and we went from there.

Tell us a little bit about your career background! How did you get your start in programming? Do you have any advice for others looking to enter this field?

I’ve been programming computers since I was a little kid. I got my first actual programming job about a month after graduating high school, and did that for a bit during breaks while I was in college. It wasn’t very exciting, had nothing to do with video games, and didn’t pay a whole lot, but it sure beat taping up boxes of hot dogs in a factory all day.

The only advice I can really give to someone looking to enter the video games field is to just start making video games. Game development tools are more readily available now than they’ve ever been.

Also make lots of friends, especially with people who can draw or write or anything. If you live near a city, there is probably at least one game dev meetup somewhere – go to those and meet people. Get over whatever shyness you have, because almost every game that ever gets made is the result of a lot of teamwork.

We’re making a video game, so of course the question must be asked: what’s your favorite game of all time?

I played the heck out of Super Metroid back in the day. There’s something about that game. I would do speedruns of it – so now, every time I go back and play it, it all just feels so fluid. There’s a fairly robust set of inputs mapped out in a way that makes sense to my fingers. The entire game itself is fairly tightly bounded – a complete playthrough can take less than 90 minutes – so in a way, this beautifully detailed, explorable world is also actually kind of respectful of my time (more so than, say, a game like Skyrim, which is almost always a multi-hour/day/week commitment).

What games are you playing currently (if any)?

To be perfectly honest, I have not been playing NEARLY enough video games lately. That being said, aside from Hiveswap, I am currently into little mobile action puzzlers that I can play on the bus. Super Hexagon and Desert Golf are great. Just tried Polyforge this morning, too; that was pretty fun.

A lot of my friends are playing Breath of the Wild. I really want to just go get a Switch and play that, but I’m afraid of that eating up my time like Skyrim did.

Are there any games that you currently use or have used as inspiration for your own programming work here on Hiveswap, or just in general?

Not really – I tend to look at each technical problem on its own merits. The creative side of things is all handled by the What Pumpkin folks. I don’t really get involved with that too much. I just work to make sure their vision is implemented, however that needs to be done.

Imagine you’ve been given an unlimited budget and time frame to make your dream game. Tell us (briefly!) about that game in terms of genre, style, platforms, etc. Is it an original game or a long-desired sequel to an existing game? Go crazy!

Given an unlimited budget and time to work on a “dream game,” I’d have to go with some kind of deeply-simulated, massively multiplayer VR thing.

What’s your workstation like?

As a programmer, I like my workstations to be fast, reliable, and quiet. I always max out the RAM on a new machine if I can, because disk thrashing is just annoying as all hell. I’ve been really digging M.2 drives lately. Also, having extra monitors is always nice.

Do you like to listen to any particular kinds of music while you work? If so, tell us about it!

Mostly instrumental electronic music. Sometimes I’ll throw on some classical. Video game soundtracks are usually a pretty good bet. I can’t listen to anything with spoken words in it, though – too distracting.

Do you have a personal message you’d like to relay to all the Homestuck and Hiveswap fans out there?

Thank you all for being so patient with this project!

—

Thank you, Tom! Well folks, I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s surprise bonus interview, and remember to check back on Thursday for yet another behind-the-scenes peek into Hiveswap’s development! As I teased last week, our very own Tauhid Bondia will be on hand to talk about his indispensable (my word, not his!) graphics and user interface design work on Hiveswap. See you then, everyone!

Surprise Homestuck Furry Meta: The Jade Harley Owns edition

[EDIT: Updated this with the source for the artist.]

I don’t have like an essay for this or anything but my furry friend is reading along the comic now and he just got to Jade.

He reached her furry exposition page, so I informed him those reader commands were from actual readers back in 2009 who wanted Jade to drop the furry stuff as soon as it was introduced, and Hussie responded to this by doubling down on it hard as hell with that Jade speech.

But anyway that’s not the point. The point is my friend laughed and mentioned he found the furriest shit in her room. I figured it’d be like the SBAHJ poster or something but I asked him to show me. He posts this

image

And um, guys, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this fursona anywhere. It’s not a notable character anywhere I can remember. But like, giving it some thought…isn’t that a green furry dog girl? 

image

And her eyes are blue, just like…Jade’s shirt. And her gills suggest amphibious qualities, linking her to Abraxas, suggesting she–

Nah i’m fucking with you. I guess I COULD link her to Gnosticism at length but I’m not sure there’s anything there and it’s not the point, I don’t really feel the need to argue in favor of this blatant truth 

image

You can pretend this isn’t Jade’s canon fursona all you want but i think we all know the truth deep in our hearts

EDIT: Thanks to cool Tumblr user pankaeks we know who the artist for this girl is! The image can be sourced to this (only BARELY SFW, so tread with caution) art piece by tsampikos, and the character depicted belongs to Furaffinity user selucilia. 

Here’s a shot of the original piece:

You’ll notice the character still has the cute cheek scruff I misidentified as gills in the green pallette, making the Jade->Abraxas link the definitive total horseshit it was the whole time. I’m heartbroken.

Of course, the picture seems to have been edited to reflect Jade’s color scheme, so it still seems pretty definitely to represent Jade in some way. I’m still willing to call it Jade’s canon fursona inside the context of Homestuck, though I’m obvs a little more reserved knowing it’s someone’s character. 

But yeah Jade’s fursona…I fucking love it…I might actually work up the will to get the old tablet out and draw her. Earth C Fursona drawparty, Jade. Make it happen. I believe in you. 

Help out Momo!

revolutionaryduelist:

what-the-fuck-is-homestuck:

An incredible friend of mine needs help.

I have known Momo ( @alotofmomos ) for years, and he has been nothing but kind, supportive, and empathetic. Last year, we met for the first time, and he pushed my wheelchair when I was too weak to walk. And as he learned, being in a wheelchair is much harder than it looks.

After witnessing first hand the struggles that disabled people go through on a daily basis, Momo, an engineering student, decided to take action. He researched his university and made one of the most important projects for his degree entirely about accessibility. After doing extensive research and asking for my input, he created a comprehensive plan to make life better for students on his campus. This was much to the dismay of staff members who defensively insisted that bare minimum ADA compliance was more than what disabled people deserved. They told Momo that his project was useless and laughed at him.

But he stood his ground anyway. He risked his grade and his entire degree on what we had experienced together and on the stories I shared of my own struggles with accessibility. He risked his freaking future to try and make life better for people like me, and to assert that not enough is being done.

But he needs your help. Due to unfortunate circumstances, it costs Momo $20 each way to get to his new internship. $40 a day. He is trying to find alternative options, but right now has to give up food to make it to work. Not only that, he does not have enough to pay for doctors to fix some painful medical issues. A paycheck would pay for the transportation at least, but his first paycheck is in a month.

In short: My good friend Momo, a disability rights advocate and all around amazing friend needs help. And honestly he deserves all the help he can get. If you can, please support him!

Even if the transportation gets figured out, he still needs help paying for food and medicine!

Ko-Fi is a platform that allows people to donate money in small increments known as “coffees”.
Each “coffee” donation is $3. You can give as little or as many coffees as you like. Ko-Fi accepts card and PayPal!

Thank you so much for reading. Please help me help Momo so he can continue help others!

https://ko-fi.com/alotofmomos

Heya guys, Momo/Blues is pretty much one of my oldest and best friends in the world. It would seriously mean the world to me if you could signal boost this, because he could really use help and this is pretty much all I can do for now. 

Reblogging this again to signal boost. Thanks peeps

Help out Momo!

Curious about your statement that Homestuck is anti-materialistic. Homestuck as a series revels in the detritus of pop-culture ephemera – from Stiller Shades to to the Con-Air Bunny. It’s a series cluttered with material to the point of almost fetishizing referencial material goods. What could be more materialistic then a game whose end-goal is to earn enough treasure with which to purchase your own personalized universe?

sam-keeper:

revolutionaryduelist:

Baaasically I don’t think Homestuck is anti-materialistic in the sense that it hates the possession and use of material goods. I think Homestuck is anti-materialistic in the Gnostic sense, ie: In the sense that suggests Material reality isn’t necessarily True Reality, and that the world of ideas and thought is the world of spiritual good.

Pop-Culture isn’t just a series of material possessions. It is, by it’s nature as culture, a collection of Ideas about reality. Some of those ideas are fun, useful, or empowering to the characters. Some of those ideas hold them back and diminish them. 

Homestuck suggests that while plenty of stuff in the Material world CAN be good and can reflect the true world of ideas in beautiful ways–filling it with Light–a lot of the Material world contains false information that should be disregarded, and that includes oppressive social constructs like Heteronormativity or the Hemospectrum. 

Material reality is best experienced when guided by insight from the world of true ideas–the world of Light–basically. 

Notably, the Hemospectrum is a physical time loop. It doesn’t occur as a byproduct of any one person thinking it’s a good idea. It’s established top-bottom by LE, in service of his quest for power and dominion over all things, including Trolls.

And LE gets the information about the Hemospectrum from Equius and Gamzee, who inherit and enforce it respectively–meaning his understanding of the Hemospectrum had a physical source. So the Hemospectrum is sourced in physical reality, and coded to some extent as Void and Rage.

Whereas true ideas, like Vriska and Terezi or Dirk and Jake or Rose and Kanaya’s feelings of romantic love for each other, are coded as Light. They aren’t taught these feelings–they discover them by thinking things through for themselves.

And the acquisition of Light involves casting aside that false information taught to the kids from their physical worlds–whether it be heteronormativity, gender essentialism, the hemospectrum, or troll ideals of violence.

Am I making any sense? Explaining this stuff as it exists in my head is really, really hard.  

Notably, the material reality of the game is often by design something the players can’t meaningfully change (or shouldn’t be able to in a non glitched to shit session). The white king loses. The homeworld gets pelted with apocalyptic meteors. Timeloops remain stable. And so on.

The key to making progress is through the revolution of the self. It’s idealistic, in that sense, as opposed to the materialism of a Marxist approach.

I think there’s definitely ambiguities to this but personal enlightenment really seems to be the core of how things get done in Homestuck.

Curious about your statement that Homestuck is anti-materialistic. Homestuck as a series revels in the detritus of pop-culture ephemera – from Stiller Shades to to the Con-Air Bunny. It’s a series cluttered with material to the point of almost fetishizing referencial material goods. What could be more materialistic then a game whose end-goal is to earn enough treasure with which to purchase your own personalized universe?

Baaasically I don’t think Homestuck is anti-materialistic in the sense that it hates the possession and use of material goods. I think Homestuck is anti-materialistic in the Gnostic sense, ie: In the sense that suggests Material reality isn’t necessarily True Reality, and that the world of ideas and thought is the world of spiritual good.

Pop-Culture isn’t just a series of material possessions. It is, by it’s nature as culture, a collection of Ideas about reality. Some of those ideas are fun, useful, or empowering to the characters. Some of those ideas hold them back and diminish them. 

Homestuck suggests that while plenty of stuff in the Material world CAN be good and can reflect the true world of ideas in beautiful ways–filling it with Light–a lot of the Material world contains false information that should be disregarded, and that includes oppressive social constructs like Heteronormativity or the Hemospectrum. 

Material reality is best experienced when guided by insight from the world of true ideas–the world of Light–basically. 

Notably, the Hemospectrum is a physical time loop. It doesn’t occur as a byproduct of any one person thinking it’s a good idea. It’s established top-bottom by LE, in service of his quest for power and dominion over all things, including Trolls.

And LE gets the information about the Hemospectrum from Equius and Gamzee, who inherit and enforce it respectively–meaning his understanding of the Hemospectrum had a physical source. So the Hemospectrum is sourced in physical reality, and coded to some extent as Void and Rage.

Whereas true ideas, like Vriska and Terezi or Dirk and Jake or Rose and Kanaya’s feelings of romantic love for each other, are coded as Light. They aren’t taught these feelings–they discover them by thinking things through for themselves.

And the acquisition of Light involves casting aside that false information taught to the kids from their physical worlds–whether it be heteronormativity, gender essentialism, the hemospectrum, or troll ideals of violence.

Am I making any sense? Explaining this stuff as it exists in my head is really, really hard.