#<- guy who doesnt have patch pants anymore>:(

[chesedelhim]

one of the most things a person has to suffer through is having JUST gotten your nails right and then having to open a bottle or jar or something

[friendlyrejection]

this is not a definitive ruleset or guidebook, this is just how i dress:

go to local shows in your community. buy their merch. i went to a few small art studios in my town, which had local bands playing, who have instagrams, who crosspost their fliers with the promoters who keep up the scene. you will find a trove of cool and fun artists that you will never hear about otherwise. this is my corny “real punks gagagoogoo goobagoo!!!”

fuck around with what you already have. want more black shirts? dye your old crap! shirt doesnt fit anymore? slice it up and patch it together til it does. sew your own patches, make your own screen prints, draw on your pants when youre bored. this is probably all you can afford, anyway.

other than that, clearance sections, discount stores, and thrift stores. it takes time and luck to dig a tiny slutty shirt from the back of the f21 rack for $2.50 or get an actually good quality flannel out of some dead guys old stuff, but when you find that one thing, you wont stop wearing it. if youre trying to flip your whole wardrobe in a week thats cringe and everyone will be able to tell.

have at least one good quality pair of shoes and pants and wear them into the ground. steel toed construction boots and painters pants look fucking cool!! and they wont disintegrate after 3 washes. you can take sandpaper to the knees, but nothing is better than actual wear.

the reason punk fashion looks like that is because punks are mostly poor, working class artists. its a series of pragmatic decisions within a system that limits your choices (financially, respectibility, etc), and still choosing to express your connection to an artistic community anyway.

i like that punk fashion is so gender neutral a guy came in today who looked exactly the way i did in college. was i dressing butch or was he dressing femme? we were dressing punk.

[beomglocks]

friendly neighborhood spiderman ; hk

warnings & other: fluff, spiderman!hyuka, normal person!reader, best friend!kai, reader doesnt know kai is spiderman, he looks so good in that gif i cant move on

"what do you mean you can't hang out today? we always binge-watch power rangers on fridays."

you should've known it would come to this point but hueningkai bailing on you on your sacred days? completely unfathomable. he chuckles nervously and you watch him stumble over his words. "well there's always tomorrow?" he says, unsure of himself.

you were used to kai skimping out on you. if anything, it became somewhat of a normal occurrence. he would often randomly announce that something had come up and before you could even question him about it, he was gone. practically vanishing into thin air, you've grown used to his sudden disappearances. he would always come back as if nothing happened but with random scratches or bruises all over him.

for this, you took up the job of providing his aftercare. during these sessions in your dingy bathroom, you both would sit in silence for a couple of minutes. after the silence became too much to bear, you would speak up and ask him what happened or why he suddenly looked beat to a pulp. he would never tell you the real reason so you came to the conclusion that he was hiding something from you.

what that something was, was still a mystery to you.

he had to be hiding something from you. kai rarely ever got into fights. even at your college, where the majority of the student body were complete dickheads, he would keep to himself. on the off chance that someone ever wanted to start something, they would simply get intimidated by kai's height.

he sighs exasperatedly, "look y/n, just- it's just that th-."

"this is super duper important and you just don't have to means to skip out on it, i know i know," you reiterate his mantra like a drone. it's the same excuse every time.

he pats your head lovingly and you shake your head to brush his hand off. "whatever dude, just don't be mad when im 50 episodes deep and won't wanna go back for you." he laughs, rolling his eyes playfully, "you always go back for me."

you stick your tongue out at him as you watch him run out of your apartment.

you sigh, walking back to your living room and throwing yourself down on the couch. the silence in your apartment is deafening and unfortunately, kai is no longer here to fill the empty space. you frown, curling into yourself on your couch while switching back to the normal tv and flipping through channels.

you've always liked hueningkai. he was someone you've cherished since freshman year of high school. back then he was just some skinny kid who could barely hold his own. you had been the one to come up to him and befriend him but as it turns out he grew up.

you never thought you'd catch feelings for him but all of a sudden he had grown taller than you and his voice was an octave deeper than the cute, screeching boy you had first encountered.

you kept your feelings hidden well so far since you didn't know how kai would react. he wasn't really the type to have girls fawn over him but once arriving to college, almost everyone wanted him. it made you feel a bit self conscious considering he was this tall, ridiculously handsome guy and you were well...you.

you sigh once again. you hoped he wasn't ditching you to hang out with some college girl or go to some college party. maybe that's why he would come back home bruised up, going to some college party and doing some crazy shit there.

you pause your flipping through channels when you catch a glimpse of a guy in a red and black suit on your tv screen.

spiderman. you smile when you see him on your screen. you're lucky to have been born in the same era as a superhero. you've only ever really read about them in comics or seen cartoons of them but to live during the same time as one was something else.

it seemed as if there were new supervillains every other day but spiderman would always swoop in and save the day.

"there goes that spider menace again. he probably set up the whole situation just to make himself look good in the eyes of the public," james jonah jameson, the tv announcer, states.

"im telling you all! how can you trust a guy who's going around the city swinging on webs, fighting bad guys, and calling himself the spiderman?! he's the real villain!" some shaky cam footage of spiderman freely swinging through the city is played on screen and you smile at how carefree he looks. he keeps swinging until he reaches the main source of the situation and the footage switches to the news camera crew's line of sight.

they seem to be pretty close to the action and your breath hitches at who the villain who decided to show himself today is. sandman, and he looks pissed. he's throwing around stray cars and shooting sand at everything in his path. "where's spiderman!" he roars.

spiderman gracefully lands on his two feet right behind sandman. "you rang?" he jokes casually. sandman spins around wildly and wastes no time hurling some sand at the hero. spiderman narrowly avoids this but steadies himself for a serious fight.

you watch in awe at how cool spiderman looks while fighting. he looks so elegant as if he's dancing. the fight goes on for about 5 minutes and in those 5 minutes, both parties get beat pretty bad. spiderman who can barely stand straight is panting heavily since he just got up from being thrown into a wall.

sandman goes in for a couple more punches, some he misses however he gets some good ones in. "getting tired spidey?" sandman taunts. "you wish," spiderman croaks out. you watch him look around and luckily there's a fire truck near them.

spiderman uses his webs to bring the fire hose to him and you watch him use his last bit of strength to pull the latch that lets all the water out. sandman doesn't get the chance to dodge this and is effectively hit with the powerful blast of water from the hose.

the camera pans to sandman who is now on the floor, slipping away through the cracks towards the sewer. they then pan back to the wall where spiderman was leaning against but he's no longer there.

"ah another day, another win for our friendly neighborhood spiderman!" the tv hostess on the scene says. you sigh as the broadcast cuts back to james jameson spewing more slander on spiderman's name. "i hope he's ok, he looked pretty beat up," you say to no one in particular.

just then you hear a thump on your window. you live on the 12th floor of your building so realistically nothing should be hitting your window unless there are birds but it's a little late for them to be out and about. you cautiously walk over to your window and you see someones back? someone's back?

you unlatch your window and let it flip open. the person jumps up on your window sill in alarm, but once he sees you he calms down and throws himself onto your floor in exhaustion. you stand there in shock at who is on your living room floor right now. "spiderman?" you gasp. he groans out a reply but you don't care. spiderman is in your house right now! "i literally just saw you on tv! you were like so cool out ther-" you cut yourself off when you hear him breathing heavily.

"oh- oh my god ok uh-" you lift him up as best as you can and wrap his arm around your shoulder. spiderman hasn't passed out just yet so he uses a bit of his strength so that it's not a chore to drag him to your bathroom.

once you manage to drag him to your bathroom he throws himself onto the sink edge and leans back on your mirror with a sigh. "i can't believe you're in my house right now," you randomly blurt. he nods but says nothing as he points to his abdomen. "help," he grunts. you immediately go to the first aid kit that's always kept on deck since you're always patching up hueningkai.

he grabs the hem of his suit and lifts it up, displaying his torso. "woah," you instinctively cover your eyes thinking he was about to undress or something. you hear him chuckle softly. "relax."

when you lower your hands you see the nastiest scar on his lower stomach and you try not to stare too hard thinking it may offend him. "help me clean it please," he mumbles in pain. "i know i have healing powers or whatever but it's not gonna kick in rapidly unless i do some of the work myself."

you stare at spiderman in disbelief. "uh- i mean of course. i'd love to help, spiderman." he chuckles again at your eagerness, finding it cute.

"how'd you get to my window sill?" you say before you can think. you immedeintly slap your hand over your mouth, not wanting to offend him somehow. he coughs somewhat awkwardly while looking around your bathroom.

"i- i mean the lights were on, the building was close...just a coincidence i guess?" he stammers through his sentence and rubs the back of his head. you bring your eyebrows together in confusion, "but i don't live that cl-" he cuts you off by grabbing his abdomen in pain.

"oh- OW! just please help," he wails.

you both sit in silence after that while you help patch him up and you get major deja vu except, instead of patching kai up you're patching up spiderman. you laugh at yourself and spiderman perks up. "what's so funny?"

"nothing it's just... i always go through this same routine with my best friend hueningkai," you say. spiderman nods off, "your best friend hueningkai?" you hum a confirmation, "yeah he's always running off and getting himself into trouble. i'm like his personal nurse."

spiderman leans back on your mirror again and you assume he's going to doze off or rest while you clean his wound but he speaks up again, "what's this hueningkai like?"

"he's really sweet. the sweetest boy i've ever met. he's a really good friend to me but i guess he's growing up, it feels like he doesn't need me anymore. he's always bailing on me to probably hang out with his cooler friends or something." you sigh and when the silence rings in your ears you realize you just rambled about your friend to a superhero.

"oh god im sorry i d-" spiderman shifts in his spot and let's out a breath. "maybe he's just busy? he's probably got a lot on his shoulders." you pout, dabbing the cotton ball onto the wound gently.

"i just- look i really like kai, like more than a friend. how am i supposed to get closer to him if he's always running off doing whatever!”

spiderman sits up straight in his spot, “you like me more than a friend?!” you look at him confused since you didn’t exactly catch what he said. “huh?”

“uh- i mean... well maybe he also sees you as more than a friend too, you never know,” he shrugs nonchalantly.

“maybe..” you trail off uncertainty.

after you finish patching spiderman up he jumps off the counter and stretches his limbs. “wow i feel better already. you’re amazing,” he compliments. you hide your face in your hands shyly but smile up at him.

“it must be difficult saving the world from bad guys huh,” you joke. he nods, groaning tiredly, “you have no idea.”

you see him look over at your tv but since he’s wearing his mask you can’t really tell what his expression is or what he might be thinking. “right, you said you saw me on tv,” he chuckles.

“well thank you y/n for helping me get better, im sure i’ll be fine by tomorrow morning but for now ive gotta head back to shield to report what happened. you know superhero stuff,” he gloats.

you nod at him, amazed by how hard working he is but you look at him bewildered for the 3rd time today. “how did you know my name?”

he looks around frantically and scratches his head, “that cup over there says it!” sure enough when you look over, there’s a cup with your name printed on it. it happened to be a cup gifted to you from hueningkai last christmas.

you hear spiderman sigh, “well, gotta run! im positive i’ll be seeing you around.” he walks up to you and pats your head, something only kai is allowed to do but you let it slide for spiderman since he’s a superhero.

you follow him to your window where he prepares to jump out and swing back to shield. once he’s outside you yell out to him, “thank you spiderman!”

around three hours after spiderman left your apartment you hear your doorbell ring. they stopped playing the news about spiderman’s fight an hour ago so you decided to watch something else.

you groan dramatically, dragging yourself to your door. when you swing it open you see kai standing there with a smile on his face.

the drowsiness you previously had disappears when you see him. “oh my god kai you’ll never believe what happened to me!” you say excitedly. “hello to you too,” he laughs.

you drag him to your couch, “spiderman was here!” you shout. he raises his eyebrows at you, smiling wider. “wow really? was he cool?” you sigh dreamily, “he’s so cool kai.”

“wait you actually believe me?” you ask. he chuckles, looking away from you. “of course i believe you, why would you lie?”

you shrug, “i mean im not lying but if i was, i could’ve been lying to have you hang out with me more just in case i ever meet him again. you could meet him too.”

kai shakes his head, “y/n are you using spiderman as an excuse to get me to hang out with you more?” he laughs, “don’t worry i’ll hang out with you as much as i can.”

he pats your head again similarly to how he did earlier and you smile sadly, remembering spiderman’s words. hueningkai must be really busy and here he is promising to spend more time with you. this just makes you like and cherish him more.

you hug him tightly as a form of appreciation and he hugs you back with the same strength. when you pull away you look over his face and you’re about to say something when something catches your eye.

you lean in closer to his face and he inches back instinctively. “wha-“

“is that sand in your hair?”

[baconpal]

so heres the long super paper mario post

strap in for why super paper mario is fucking bizarre and why that’s pretty much awesome

gonna be a good amounts of spoilers, so if you’re on desktop then hit that read more, and if your on mobile, then here’s your punishment for using this god awful app

super paper mario is a game that is incredibly difficult to put into words, but it leaves such a powerful, lasting impression on me and i can’t come to say anything first other than I love it so much, and if you havent played the game, please just go do it now, even if you have to pirate or emulate or something, just let yourself play this game. It’s one of those games that I really feel I can just recommend to anybody

it’s difficult to think of where to start with dissecting this thing so i’ll just start with the art since lookin at things is pretty easy

ART/WORLD DESIGN

every world in SPM is completely unique, not just in what type of environment, but it’s art style, and this is premised with the fact that none of these worlds are capable of existing together and are completely separate, and NOT part of a cohesive universe (LOOKIN AT YOU ODYSSEY I STILL THINK YOU LOOK STUPID)

The hub and the first 2 worlds are mostly just slight variants on the same general style of simplistic shapes and colors, with world 1 delving into more linework type aesthetics, and 2 focusing more on impressions and silhouettes, 

world 3 changes this completely with what is obviously an 8 bit kind of style, but instead of jarring over sized pixels, the world is composed of detailed tiles arranged to look like pixel art that imply a more real world, and not a gamey one, 

world 4 focuses on patterns and big patches of color to give the impression of the vast emptiness of both space and the surface of a barren planet, before giving you the “Whoa Zone”, with a striking mix of wire frame and futuristic UI style to it

world 5 takes the idea of nature being crude and simplistic and humanity being sharp, angular, and extreme and flips that on its head, with humanity and the space they occupy being these absolute memes with no sense of depth, and the plant life existing in a system of clean cut caves with futuristic technology and elegant historic values

world 6 simplifies a kind of colored Japanese painting aesthetic, down to the funny cylindrical cloud clusters and brushstroke trees

world 7 depicts what is essentially hell (yes there’s hell in this game keep your pants on) as a squarish blur of bright greens and warm reds and purples, and depicts heaven as fluffy land of clouds and Greek temples

and lastly, world 8 is inverted greyscale, where light is black and darkness is white, its simplistic and striking and i couldn’t think of a better style for the final area of a game so focused on the concept of light and dark

MUSIC

I’ll just try and keep it simple, the musics fucking cash money

The game makes great use of motifs when it needs to, where specific themes and instruments are used in other songs to suggest relationships and put battles and travels into perspective

And when it ISNT doing that, it’s just fucking funky stuff, with a weird trend of BOING and PLOP and SPLISH noises in the percussion because fuck you i guess

There’s a lot of good songs that do lots of interesting things, any of the like 5 final battle songs are great things to point to, but i’ll just go ahead and say the main theme of world 8 “Castle Bleck” is one of my favorites that isn’t super highly rated. It brings in the types of instruments that have been associated with the villain the entire game, but also throws in 2 very important things; a sudden triumphant burst of almost JRPG styled chiptune that pushes away the constantly building tension, which is then followed by the sound of a clock ticking, which is a musical motif only present in the songs “Memory” and “Promise” which is played whenever the memories of the player’s little guide thing and the main villain’s past lives together are alluded to. This one song holds a lot of weight, as well as simply being a fucking cool song.

GAMEPLAY

This is, sadly, the one place I’ll not mince any words and say the gameplay is not amazing by any standard, it’s pretty much a classic mario game if it had RPG stats, items, and random abilities granted through the character and partner systems. The 3D flipping mechanic is nothing astounding, though it is very interesting to see how worlds are constructed

One of the biggest flaws people will mark the game for in its gameplay is that it’s tedious, and while I have to agree, that’s because I’ve already played the game before, and the tedium only comes from not being completely invested in the experience anymore. I’ll get some specific examples in a bit, but there’s a few cases of “tedium” that i believe are 100% intentional and drive the story in an interesting way

STORY/WRITING/GAME DESIGN

Thats a fuckin broad section, but its pretty much everything else i have to say on the game, and where the most spoilers and random praise is gonna be

I’m not actually gonna talk about the whole story, more just the strong parts of it, under the assumption you’ve already played it or understand a story as simple as “villain wants to destroy world, hero wants that to not happen”

The writing and characters are just flawless, everyone is fun to be around, especially the bad guys, who you see more antics of than your own party. There’s goofy running plotlines about O’chunks and mimi essentially getting grounded and being forced to write essays about why they fucked up at beating mario, and big stinky brother dimentio teasting and bullying them and sneaking them out to do his bidding when The big Count Bleck is away

The game is full of referential humor to not just mario itself but all kinds of games, there’s skeletons in hell who are clearly just Marios from the mainline games who died in stupid ways, there’s an actual dragon quest turn based boss battle in hell too, and chapter 3 has an otaku villain who tried to get with peach in a simulated visual novel

but the humor exists not just in references, but in simple good scenarios, with things like “Having a game show in a bathroom when everyone's life is at stake” and “locating an ancient manuscript to use as toilet paper” or “flying through black holes to find a convenience store” and things of that nature

It also interacts with the players emotions in many interesting ways, one of the more lauded being chapter 2-3, where mario is forced into working off a massive debt of fictional money, and is required to do hard, boring labor. There isn’t anyway to avoid doing both the hitting a block 100 times and the running on a treadmill for a few minutes thing, but the constant feeling of “there has to be a faster way to do this” drives the player to prod around, find the secrets, and slowly discover how to break the system wide open and get to the end, and i love it for that

This entire game is some sort of bait and switch, to put it simply, while it’s already a bit of a departure from both mario itself and the paper series, the first 5 worlds are pretty fucking tame stuff, other than the void, which is a giant black and purple spot that sits in the sky, always, every single world has the void growing in its sky, and it does grow, every chapter it gets bigger and bigger and takes up the sky, but where this truly culminates into the “switch” part is chapter 6, which starts itself by presenting you with the most TEDIUS sounding chapter possible, fight 100 enemies in a row, and nothing else, and for 25 straight fights, that is all it is, so you’ve locked yourself into it at this point, you know whats up, but the void in the background begins to grow to the point of being the entire fucking background, and every enemy you face speaks as if they know they’re all going to die, and by the 30th fight, one of the villains comes to stall for time as the void completely swallows the world, and the party is sent back to the hub. When they decide to go back in to world 6, its empty, the entire world is a white void with a single black line making up the ground, and colorless destroyed structures occasionally peaking out of the ground.

and you walk on this white void for so long and you just feel nothing but regret and fear and no matter how fast you make yourself go you feel like you’ll never find anything, but you do eventually get your plot item and escape

then, Dimentio, one of the villains you’ve seen the least of, appears in the hub world, the safest place in the universe, and kills mario

he just fucking kills him

he puts mario in a box and fills the box with explosions and mario fucking dies and goes to hell because fuck you mario

then you go through all of chapter 7 just to escape hell (called the Underwhere cus how could we possibly be allowed to take hell seriously) and join up with your full party before confronting the final world, which i’ve already stated i just love the design off

the game just takes the comfortable ride you’re on and throws it into the fucking sun and burns you alive and i love it so much, even the very end of the game doesnt let up, where the main villain is overtaken by that absolute madman Dimentio (Whose name is a play on both Dimension and dementia), who clearly was powerful enough to have done the whole “ending of the world” himself, but did it this way for the theatrics of it

there’s a lot i could still say about the game, but this post is absolute rambling and its 2 in the morning but as usual, i just wanted to shit my thoughts onto the internet to people could maybe learn somethin about either the game or me and how i think and look at and respond to stuff, and as always, anybody who read this whole thing is cool and i love you a whole heck of a lot