Flux

Vance and Lily Vance sat up slowly, surprised and caught off guard by Lily's sudden change in behavior. He wouldn't have expected that based on how strictly disciplined she had acted the previous day... But then again, he barely knew her. He supposed it was a good thing, though. It was nice to see some emotion and humor from her. Also... she had limbs now. That was definitely a good thing as well, especially since they were apparently going to do battle against other Servants. His eyes widened as she materialized glasses from thin air, but he said nothing. He sat in silence as she worked through her explanation, his face taking on an expression of surprise as she went on. Her arms could transform?! They appeared to be prosthetic, but the technology was clearly far advanced to what was available in the modern day. The only thing that had kept him from chuckling at some of those illustrations was his sheer awe at what she was doing. "That was... pretty cool." He finally spoke after such a long silence. He immediately sat up a bit straighter, trying to remember what she had actually said. His natural choice would be to wait around at home, but for some reason that didn't feel right for this situation. Perhaps it was just an eagerness to be done with the whole ordeal. "Well... Let's just get out of here for now. We'll go with the wandering around plan for the time being. And as long as we're going out, is there anything you want to see about this era?" He was kind of doubtful that anything on modern Earth could impress or interest her, as she seemed to come from a much more advanced time, but you never know. Maybe it would be like exploring history.

Are the vines for Phantom's part blocking the path, or are they just growing along the walls?

This one soooooooooooooooo much! I'm a huge fan of that series (Just look at my sig), so I'm super hyped for another Dark Souls. But what I'm excited for perhaps even more than that... Seriously though, I've been waiting for that game for almost 6 years now and they've finally given it another release date. A spiritual successor to my all-time favorite game? Needless to say, I'm hyped. In other news, I'm also looking forward to Fire Emblem Fates and Tekken 7. Just not quite as much as the above two. I'm also really hyped for Final Fantasy XV, which looks amazing (It's the first main series Final Fantasy game I've been interested in since X), but I unfortunately don't have a PS4 yet, though it's on my "to-get" list. Thankfully most of the games I need a PS4 for haven't been released yet.

"We all need someone by our side, most of all in a place like this." Phantom followed the succubus in silence for a time, thinking over what she had said. She had called his apology unnecessary, yet he had been the one to kill her. As they walk, he spoke slowly and quietly, his ethereal voice echoing through the nearby corridors. "...Why...?" There were so many meanings behind the simple phrase. Why did they need an ally inn this place? Why had she forgiven him so easily? Why hadn't he learned anything more about himself? It all was so hopelessly vague for him.

Sylva and Frog "Want us harm? Attacks? Isn't this like a tournament or something? I mean, us finding some other Servants and Masters or whatever you call them is a good thing then. We could set up a game or something, then beat them at it with your crazy magic, haha!" Sylva smiled in reply. "If it comes to that, you can be sure I'll use all my magic to protect you, Master!" She turned on a heel and continued her walk. "But for now, we don't know what they want, so let's just keep doing what we're doing! I'm sure everything will work out in the end." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vance and Lily Vance woke up with a yawn, stretching his arms as he slowly opened his eyes. "AAAGGGHHHH!!!!!!!" He cried out in surprise, flipping the couch over on its back once more. Why did she always have to watch him while he slept? And why did her face have to be that close?! He rolled off of the fallen couch, rising into a cross-legged sitting position as he faced Lily. "...'Morning." he grumbled, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. It was actually reaching the end of the morning hours now, but that didn't matter to Vance. There were lines under his eyes, as if he hadn't be sleeping for over 12 hours. As he looked at Lily, he thought back to everything she had explained the day before. The shock that had originally hit him had disappeared quickly, being replaced by his usual indifference. "So... do you have any idea how we should go about this "Grail War?" he asked her. His eyelids drooped wearily, as if he would fall back asleep at any moment. "Where do we even start?"

Now that I'm getting to your place in queue, do you want to use the avatar you had before, or your current one? I'll need an image of the previous one if that's your preference. I hadn't saved it yet. @Pyrrhon ...I tried. The perspective made things tricky and blurred the image a good bit, but it was good practice at least. This looks all right the way it is now, but I think it'll look a bit better when shrunken to avatar size.

As I said when I gave them, don't worry about it. ^^ I never spend them anyway, so I had plenty to spare. Hope they helped!

@Sinikuro Here's what I came up with. It's a bit smaller than the original image in order to fit into the background I chose, but it should work fine for an avatar. But just in case you had something else in mind, I included a full-size version below using the original background. I have a .png version with transparency as well if you happen to want that, so just let me know if that's the case. EDIT: Also, I realize I skipped over Derpy Simon, but that was done on purpose. I need some equipment that I don't have on me right now to do his, so I promise I'll do it as soon as I get access to that.

All right, I had a short break because school sucks, but I'm back with another spooked up avi! @Rose This one was already pretty creepy, so I didn't do a whole lot. Since the changes aren't as noticeable right away, I've provided the comparison in this post. I added sewn lips, upped the contrast, replaced the background, darkened some areas, and added some slight reds that would should up when the contrast was boosted. All in all, I like the result.

I'm always up for more personalization.

Oh shoot... To be honest, I kinda forgot about Vance and Lily for a while here... I think it's about time for him to wake up. I'll probably do that in my next post. Sorry if you've been waiting on me Acqui!

Sylva had stopped at exactly the same moment as her Master. "D-did you feel that?" She gave a crisp nod. "I can feel the presence of another Servant nearby... No. There's at least two other Servants." The childlike tone was gone from her voice as she said this. The magnitude of her true age and experience was present in her inflection. "I don't know if they intend us any harm, but they're likely around as powerful as me, if they've been summoned here as well." She closed her eyes, her lips moving at an imperceptible speed. Her mouth movements became a blur, yet no sound could be heard. She was casting an array of defenses, purposely complicating the verses so as to prevent them from being triggered by the ordinary populace. It would take a certain power to trigger the shields she had set up. They were invisible to the human eye, so it would not cause a ruckus. Her childlike tone and smile returned when she finished. The whole process had taken 2, maybe 3 seconds. She looked up at her Master, the smile still on her face. "I've put up some advanced wards. There's 25 different kinds, all layered together. It should hold through an attack or two if they are hostile, giving us time to react." Her Master could probably feel the power of the mana put into the various spells. If it were a normal person, those wards would be near impenetrable, but the power she felt from these Servants was different. They were strong, that much was sure. "Now then, let's go get some shorts!"

I got about two lines into this before I started to suspect some waifu stuff going on. I was expecting Tachibana from you, so I wasn't quite right though. ...Anyway, congrats on the marriage!

@Marcellus I feel like I should do something more complicated, but I honestly can't think of much more to do here. In any case, I've made two versions. The second version was darkened and given a new background to make it seem a bit less ordinary. It's your pick which you like. Yours is honestly pretty Halloween-ish already. Since I'll need to be creative for that one, I'll ask in advance: Do you have anything in particular you were thinking of doing? Otherwise, a few ideas came to my mind, and I can let you choose among them if you didn't have anything specific in mind. 1. There's the basic skull swap procedure. 2. I could go with a high-contrast blood themed face. I've honestly never tried something like that before, so no guarantees, but it'd be fun to mess with. 3. I could try a possessed sort of thing, with glowing eyes and such. 4. Or maybe a mouth sewn shut puppet sort of deal. 5. Or some mix of these? Hmmm... It would probably depend on the Pokemon. Give me an image and I'll try to see if I can do it when I get to you. EDIT: @Solarance Here's what I've got:

@Oblivion Here you are! I ran into a strange problem that involved red pixels randomly appearing everywhere when I saved the finished project, but they should be cleaned up now. I used the second image simply because I actually had an idea what to do with that one. The first image could have gotten complicated...

It's getting to be that spooky time of year, everyone. As such, this thread will serve as a workshop sort of deal much like the Hattening for those who were around for that. For those that weren't, basically I'll upgrade your avatar to be super special awesome spooktastic completely FREE OF CHARGE! Because I'm such a great guy, you know? Just leave me a post saying that you'd like an upgrade and I'll do my best to make it 2spooky4u. You can attempt to leave me instructions on what you want, though I can't promise that I'll follow through depending on how complicated it is. Otherwise, I'll surprise you with whatever seemed right to me. Bear in mind I'm only one person with college priorities as well, so queue times won't be instant. I'll do my best to ship them out quickly though. Thanks for those who participate, and remember to stay SPOOKY! Example projects:

Basically what Godot said. It would allow the person who does own it to have an advantage because they've been able to practice on the stage while the other person hasn't had the opportunity.

Basically yeah. For both the main forum page and subforums. If we could designate specific threads that will light it up, it would be easier to know if threads you're interested in have new posts at a quick glance. Like I said, following a topic is sort of the same thing, but I think this would keep things cleaner for people who want to pay attention to many specific topics.

Well dang. I didn't know that. Hopefully they'll make a return in future games as you say though. Thanks for the info!

I'm still hoping for the return of the Ice Climbers. Bring them back... I feel like nowadays, they might not be considered "obvious" though.

If it were possible to implement, a feature where we can determine what threads will toggle "new posts in this section" would be handy. As in, the Reborn Pokeball icons on the main page light up when there are new posts in threads for that section. If we had a way to limit it to "Only light up when x threads have new posts" it would be useful (For me at least). Each thread could have an "Add to new post list" sort of thing to keep track of it individually. I realize following a thread kinda accomplishes the same thing, but that ends up clogging your notifications when you have multiple threads followed. This would be much cleaner in my opinion. This would likely go in the "takes a large amount of work" section, and I don't expect it would be followed through on anyway. Still, I would find it super handy if it somehow happened.

I seem to remember a thread like this existing long, long ago, but who knows where that's buried now. Anyway, here's some stuff that's probably 2spooky4u. ...Ok, I'm done now.