absolutely whizzer

The Emblem Crew #6: Challenger Awakening (0/4)

On 2016-02-27

This is my favourite episode so far. It’s in a slightly different format than usual; instead of one very tall and 2-wide image, it’s a series focussing on each character, with each part on its own line. If this is too difficult to read please tell me and I should be able to sort out a more normal version.

Click the image to see it at a resolution you can actually read!

Previous (#5: Foresight)Next (#7: Challenger Approaching (1/4))

While I was editing this episode, another alternate format occurred to me; it could’ve been a bit like a timeline, where you’d have multiple things going on on different lines which would all be taking place at the same time, and then they’d all slowly merge into one. I didn’t want to do it for this one because I’d have to modify the script and then redo the conversation images, but I think I might use it in a future episode if it seems appropriate.

This is also actually the longest episode to date, with 68 (conversation) panels, compared to #4’s 54.

Anyway, this is the first in a new multi-parter which, as the name implies, will introduce a new character. And the script is currently a horrible mess that I need to rewrite for Tuesday, but oh well…

Oh, and after a couple of brief mentions, Chrom makes his proper debut in this episode with the unexpected opening line of “IF I KILL YOU DO I CEASE TO EXIST?”. He’ll be a semi-regular from now on, a bit like Shulk (although I can’t really say that because he’s been in every episode so far since his introduction). I’ve also updated the Characters page with him and Cloud.

Update 2016-02-28: I’ve rewritten the next episodes for the third time and I’m finally happy with it, but as a result of this, the Challenger story is now 4 parts instead of 6. I’ve updated #6 and all references to the number of parts to reflect this. It’ll now end at #10 rather than #12.

Credits

Original Shulk portrait by jisonshin.

Blue Robin portrait adapted by xgracigloo. I do actually have a bookmark folder full of this stuff just in case I find a use for it here.

The Path of Radiance poster in Ike’s room was made by Audralg a very long time ago.

Official Fero portrait and male Robin’s hair (it’s complicated) extracted by deko.

I haven’t before but I probably should credit the excellent FEITS by SciresM, considering it’s essential to making these. Thank you, SciresM!

Also thank you to all the wonderful people who datamine stuff and put it on the Spriters’ Resource, of which there are far too many to list here!

All other non-text assets belong to Nintendo, Intelligent Systems, Monolith Soft, Square Enix, Sora, and/or Platinum Games or are just public domain (Robin’s scales). It’s impressive how many random things can be adapted and put to good use.

The Emblem Crew #5: Foresight

By Coral

On 2016-02-23

In The Emblem Crew

The fighters settle back in after the battle last time, and discuss what’s coming next…

The Emblem Crew #4: Intruder Subvert (2/2)

By Coral

On 2016-02-20

In The Emblem Crew

The mystery attacker is revealed in this comparatively very long conclusion to the first multi-part story!

The Emblem Crew #3: Intruder Alert (1/2)

By Coral

On 2016-02-16

In The Emblem Crew

And we’re back! Picking up where last week’s cliffhanger left off:

The Emblem Crew #2: ロイ’s Our Boy

By Coral

On 2016-02-10

In The Emblem Crew

The Emblem Crew #1: Role-Call

By Coral

On 2016-02-09

In The Emblem Crew

Hello and welcome to a new series! The idea is that it’s a series of Fire Emblem conversations set in the Smash universe, but vaguely in the style of a sitcom.

Next (#2: ロイ’s Our Boy)

I’m concerned that this first one isn’t funny enough, which is why I’m publishing the first two in quick succession.

(Oh, and I’ve set alt-text, but it doesn’t seem to be showing up. Anyone know how to fix this?)

Migrating posts from the old blog

By Coral

On 2016-02-03

In announcements

While the blog technically begins here with the previous post, I’m going to be adding posts from the previous aliensandthings.tk blog, which will appear as old posts. I’ll try to preserve their original form, so I’ll keep notes on them here:

Welcome: Short welcome post from the old blog.
New portal: Obviously, the site no longer exists. I have no idea if archives or even just screenshots of it still exists, since I barely remember what it looked like. Nothing significant was there, just links to various accounts I had at the time. I thought I’d put it here for “completeness” (read: a laugh, barely any posts from the old blog have been kept). In an incredible coincidence, this was reposted on the exact time the original was, two years minus six days later.
Starbound: Chase! gamemode: Starbound is a game that’s a bit like Terraria in space. Back then, the game didn’t have a hardcore mode (it does now, but it’s not the same as my idea), so I made one up and did a couple of videos on it before it fell to the Curse of Episode 2*.
Untitled Doctor Who story: This one I do actually vaguely recall. I made it up for my younger brother to pass the time in the car. As such, it will not be very good quality.
A joke: Self-explanatory. The joke isn’t.
Untitled Doctor Who Story 2: The sequel to the above (not sure how much it continues the plot) that I wrote later. I completely forgot what this was and have very little recollection of what it’s about and how I wrote it. It’s probably awful, but I can just about bear keeping it on here.
free animal: Writers’ Bloc is the school writing club. Free writing is where you write utter rubbish to clear your mind, then throw it away. It doesn’t work for me. For some reason I typed this up and published it on my blog. Very strange. “animal” refers to the alphabetical naming system I used.
Four Notes From the Fields of War: A poem for my school’s annual National Poetry Day poetry contest. Not much else to it. I think I still have the earlier drafts it mentions. Somewhere. Does anyone even care?
The Rain Remembers: And another one! This likely came about from me wanting to use what else the theme “remember” could mean, since it was intended to mostly be WWI related (2014 was 100 years since the war’s beginning).
Stuff is happening: And just for a laugh, here’s the final ever post on Blog #2. I was experimenting with Polymer to make a new blog. Aww. As you can see, it didn’t work out.

Note that not everything has been migrated as some stuff I don’t really want to keep. Oh, and there are a few stories I’ve written for /r/writingprompts that I’ll have to try to track down and put on here.

*The Curse of Episode 2 is the peculiar effect that most series I start on my channel don’t make it past episode 2. This is still true. I should be recording and uploading another episode of Fire Emblem: Midnight Sun, but instead I’m writing this. It’s probably because I record two episodes in quick succession, get them uploaded, and then the third episode might get recorded but will fall to some editing problem, procrastination, or otherwise giving up.

Wilkommen, bienvenue, und/et/and welcome!

By Coral

On 2016-02-03

In announcements

Hey, I’m whizzer and welcome to the new new new blog! But to you, this is just the new blog! Or probably just “the blog”!

Yes, I’m onto my fourth blog. This one, though. This is the one. This’ll have all the content.

Let’s break down how the others died:

“whizzer0’s blog”: I only just discovered this one’s existence today whilst looking through my old old blog. I’m guessing this was hosted on Blogger, but I don’t think it still exists, and according to my past self “I had nothing to put in it”. So yeah, it sounds like this was dead on arrival.
“absolutely whizzer” v1: Hosted on Blogger and ran for a bit of time with some posts. I will migrate the posts from there that I’m not too embarrassed about onto this new blog. This one died because Blogger was far too limiting and I wanted to move to a platform I could actually control the whole of. It was a public blog, but can no longer be accessed due to its domain (aliensandthings.tk) expiring into the void and its backup URL (whizzer0.blogspot.co.uk) no longer working for some reason.
Untitled WordPress.com blog: http://whizzer0.wordpress.com exists but is empty and I vaguely recall signing up for it. I wouldn’t count this since, well, it was never used.
Codename “Artificial Multiplex”: This was supposed to be for a specific project with a general blog on the side, but it got too messy and I decided to just start over with this one. Besides, the domain expired and I’m not sure how to recover it since gwiddle doesn’t let me change the domain. While technically public, I’m pretty sure I never linked anything on there.

So that’s it. We’re here now. And we’re here to stay.

I’ll be posting all sorts – writing, design, guides, maybe comics, and other stuff.

Enjoy!

whizzer

[From the archives] /r/writingprompts: You meet yourself online. Their life is your life.

By Coral

On 2014-12-17

In from the archives, Stories

THEN

It’s uncanny. Terrifying. But I have to be surer than 99%.

So I send a private message to the account. “Are your initials BD? Because I’m sure I know you.”

And in a few minutes, I get the reply. “Yes. My name is Benjamin Davidson. And you are..?”

I think what to put. I decide to lie. Put one of my friends. Because he’ll know them.

“I’m your friend Tim.”

“Oh! Hi, Tim. How are you?”

“Good, thanks.”

“You’re not really Tim, are you?”

“What? How do you know? Oh… he’d never talk to me like that.”

No! No no no! But it’s too late. I’ve already sent it.

“You? Who are you really?”

“I’m… I’m you.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes we are.”

“I know who you really are.”

Well I don’t. Do enlighten… me.

“You’re Thomas. Remember? Actually, you won’t.”

“What?”

“You were in a crash. Your brain was damaged. I was there.”

You’d think it would trigger a load of memories. But it didn’t.

“Okay, I’m going to go now, okay..?”

I close the lid of the laptop.

NOW

I never knew what really happened there. As far as I was concerned, I had never been in an accident.

But now I know.

I sit in front of the website. Freshly invented.

“TimeTravelWeb – send messages to yourself back in time!”

SOON

Oddly enough, I’m the only person ever to get to use it. The servers must have blown up or something. Oh well. They’re working on sending back actual people and things now.

[From the archives] /r/writingprompts: The Mars Rover randomly discovers something shocking on Mars. It’s your identity card and other various items that are evidently yours.

By Coral

On 2014-12-16

In from the archives, Stories

I lock myself in my room. I shut off social media. I’m not dealing with anyone’s questions until I’m ready.

I stare at the pictures released, again and again. I look at them on every screen, print them on paper, just stare at them because I can’t believe that this is real.

I sigh and look away from the pictures, down at the ground. I try to remember anything, anything at all that could give me a clue as to why my ID card, my keys, the photo I keep of my mum… Why they’re on the planet Mars.

I rule out alien abduction. I’m sure something would seem odd in my memory. When did I last see these items? When could they have been taken?

It occurs to me that I should still have these items. I go over to the door and unlock it. I sneak around the house, and in a quarter of an hour I’m sure that my card, keys, photo and wallet are gone.

I lock myself in my room again. My brother managed to shout some questions at me, but I ignored him. But I saw his face. And he’s very, very concerned.

I can’t decide which is worse. The fact that my face is being broadcast around the world or the fact that my things are gone. I pick up the photo again.

And that’s when I see it. I couldn’t see it before because I was in too much shock. But now it’s there, staring at me.

There’s a mark on my face in the photo on the ID card. It was never there before. And then I see the photo and realise that the mark is on my mum as well.

It’s kind of like a scratch, a little zigzag. And I can honestly say that I’ve never seen it before in my life, and it certainly wasn’t on the photos before.

I rub my face absentmindedly. My fingers catch something.

No.

It can’t be.

I look for a mirror, something reflective, anything. And when I do, I see it and it becomes real.

The mark is on my actual face.

I throw the mirror across the room and tear up the photos, screaming, crying, finally losing it completely. And something that rushes through my mind is that I never found out what happened to my mum.

Why she died.

They can hear my terror. They’re bashing on the door. They’re breaking it down, getting me out of here. But I run to the window instead and smash myself out through it. There’s nothing to break my fall.

I awake, I don’t know how many days or hours later, in hospital. I’m being tended to. The nurse sees my eyes open.

“You’ll be okay,” they reassure, “You’ve got some pretty bad injuries, but we’re fixing them up. You’re also being assessed for brain damage.”

They beckon someone over. I recognise this person. Who is she?

“Don’t worry. It’s okay. They’re censoring the images. Nobody knows about you now.”

The voice. I’m sure I know it, but my mind is still dazed and muddled and my head hurts from what must be the fall.

I stare at her face. But I don’t recognise her. Instead, I recognise the mark on her face.

On everyone’s faces.

I get up, through back the covers and run out of bed to the window. I pull back the curtain.

And behind the curtain is a vast, red world.