#Devils Circuit

[orbiorbster]

establishing a connection

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[silvadour]

[cruelangel94]

Download: Devil's Circuit (1992)

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Sophie's 2024 In Review

I had a weird 2024. Really, the past couple of years have been weird, but my memory is unwilling to contribute very meaningfully to that particular reminiscence, so I’ll focus on 2024, which was, again, weird! Lots of my life in recent time has been spent doing Not Video Game Things, whether it be due to chemo, school, or burnout. I would have liked to play more, write more, do more within the gaming space, but as it stood for most of last year, I was simply not able to. I’m able to get back into the swing of things more now (for the time being), but as a result of my relative lack of Video Game Things done last year, my list of games played was small. And while I do wish I could have played more, this is sort of a blessing in disguise for me, because when I spoke of what I wanted to do, “play more” was not the only thing I had on my bucket list. I wanted to write more, and now I have a neat little list of games I played over a twelve-month period that I can feasibly cover the entirety of (not really accounting for more continuous things like Street Fighter or Overwatch). So, without further ado, here is me talking about most of the stuff I had the pleasure of experiencing in 2024. I wrote reviews for several of these titles (despite the slowness, 2024 is actually the year I started seriously getting into games writing), but this will try to be more casual, and my thoughts are ever-growing. There’s going to be some good, some not-so-good, some… I don’t want to say bad, but… It’s complicated. Let’s begin, shall we?

Hollow Knight

And what a place to begin! In February of 2024 (ironically the time I picked up the controller again this year, I guess January just isn’t my month), I started my year’s list of completions with a game I had heard no shortage of praise for, Hollow Knight. It actually wasn’t my first foray into Hallownest, but my initial attempt at the game (which happened years ago now) saw me wander around for an hour, die to the first challenging enemy I encountered, respawn at the beginning, and promptly quit. 

I wouldn’t be so easily filtered the second time around, though. As I am an Inexperienced Game Player, Hollow Knight was actually my first Metroidvania, and I almost instantly saw the appeal. If there is one phrase I could use to describe my time with Hollow Knight, it would be “comfortably lost and enjoyably distracted.” In such a deeply connected and interwoven world as Hallownest, it was easy to find myself straying from the path I had laid out, but I rarely felt as if I was losing track of myself. The game presented so many strong areas for me to explore and was so adept at drawing my attention to different spots on the screen and within the world that any progression I had intended for myself melted away almost instantly. Whatever plans I had within Hollow Knight gave way to winding side roads and impromptu challenges, making for a truly unpredictable experience.

The game certainly has its frictions, with the exploration of a new area always gated by a hunt for the cartographer (at least for me, the uninitiated), the sparseness of the bench-shaped save points, and the countless enemies I could level any number of complaints against. But, for me, this atmosphere of harshness makes each step forward more important. I grew to love the cartographer (whose name I regrettably forget, but I love you, bug guy), I quickly adapted to hunt for benches as one would hunt for water in the desert, and I developed strategies to avoid or dispatch the enemies that posed a challenge towards me. Hollow Knight is a game of growth and understanding as the player becomes part of Hallownest, learning its ins and outs, its nooks and crannies, growing to manage its prickly environment and smooth out the edges. As the Knight gains more tools to navigate the crevices of the dangerous world they inhabit, the player gains those tools and then some. Each hour spent in Hallownest is time spent growing accustomed to its rules, taking them in and bending them where you can. I can’t hate Hollow Knight’s pain points. I grew to love them too much.

Beyond all my communication with the world of Hallownest, beyond each new tunnel I dug for myself, Hollow Knight was simply fun. The lonely atmosphere, the harsh but welcoming environment, and the interconnectivity of Hallownest all kept me playing. But what got me to see all that in the first place is a game that, at face value, is just satisfying to control. Hitting enemies is appropriately chunky, but just as appropriately weak (you are swinging a nail, after all). Jumps are believable without sacrificing their feel, and the abilities are each powerful and satisfying, at appropriate costs. Boss fights are enjoyable to master, and really, the game is just fun to pilot and explore. At the end of the day, I could give any amount of compliments to Hollow Knight’s systems and mechanics for their satisfaction, but I’ll leave it at this: I completed the game (112%!) by accident, and went on to complete four of the game’s five final boss rush pantheons. The fifth was unfortunately Very Bad and Not Fun, but 80% is a proficient grade! Ultimately, Hollow Knight was a very strong start to my year. There are pieces I can nitpick, fights I can whine about, but they’ve faded in my mind. What I remember of my time in Hallownest is a feeling of lostness, not dissimilar to being lost in a forest of opportunity as a small child. I remember a world I grew to love, even if it didn’t love me back. And I remember a game that I would love to play again for the first time. If the goal was to ingratiate me to Metroidvanias, then Team Cherry succeeded. A very strong start to my 2024!

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona

  For a decent chunk of the year (and a good bit of time before that), I did not really decide what games I would play next. You see, I have a backlog of games numbering well into the triple digits, and I feared bias and indecision would taint my play order. As such, I let a wheel pick what I would delve into next, and following my very pleasant experience with Hollow Knight, I was ready to keep that ball rolling with another hit. Unfortunately, the wheel had other plans, and as such, I was stuck with Persona. Now, I would like to preface this section with two key pieces of context. Firstly, I not only struggle quite heavily with more aged RPGs, but I don’t even really enjoy them. More power to those that do, but contending with random encounters, incredibly standard turn-based encounters, and very plodding pacing is not my cup of tea (though I can be convinced). Secondly, I was not really interested in the first Persona game whatsoever. Every one of its sequels had hooked me in some way, but the first game was really only part of my backlog due to a friend’s recommendation and a sense of series completion (which is ironic, considering how my experiences with the series have panned out thus far). These factors stacked the deck against Persona before I could even start it, and unfortunately for the game, it couldn’t beat the odds. 

That being said, it did do some things I was genuinely pleased with. Dungeon and area traversal is shockingly well-executed, with a neat area map that denotes prior engagement with a tile and labels the rooms relatively clearly. I never felt lost in a Persona dungeon, and while it may be ironic coming off of the praise I gave Hollow Knight for its winding and unkempt area design, this is most certainly a good thing. The first-person perspective was also welcome, allowing me to more easily keep mental track of where I had and hadn’t been. In all, I found Persona quite a refreshing departure from other older RPGs when it came to simply moving around and exploring the game’s spaces, with it being quite easy to retrace my steps or avoid said reprisal. Additionally, those spaces were not wholly toothless! Though the game’s setting generally left me whelmed or worse, it’s not without its atmosphere and the soundtrack combined with a general eeriness did leave me in a strong mood, if nothing else. 

Alas, that is where my praise mostly ends. That’s not to say that I hated everything else I encountered in Persona, but my feelings towards the setting can mostly be extended to the entirety of my experience with the game itself. It left me whelmed, or worse. This can be most crucially seen within the story, the aspect that I personally find myself most attached to whenever I play an RPG. Now, to be clear, Persona’s story is not… Awful. But I can only really describe it as a very cardboard experience, one which didn’t hold my interest for long whatsoever. It’s not without its intrigue, but its characters are very flat (hence the term ‘cardboard’), its plot, while it has some genuinely interesting mystery, is bogged down by a great deal of meandering (which on its own is not horrible, but when you are meandering with a group of wholly uninteresting high schoolers, it’s a struggle to care about), and its setting, though it may be the strongest part of the game’s narrative, just could not do enough to keep me invested. None of these on their own are dealbreakers, but in conjunction with one another, they led to my experience with Persona being one of complete disinterest.

And the gameplay is even worse! While I’ve given the dungeon traversal its dues, the rest of my experience playing Persona was boring at best and actively frustrating at worst, due to a mix of classic tropes of older RPGs and a variety of new problems. I will say, Persona utilizes a grid system within battle that leads to weapon choices and party placement on the game board being genuinely interesting, but when there are no interesting encounters to be had within this system, the novelty wears thin quite quickly. Furthermore, these encounters with uninteresting enemies happen too frequently and inconveniently to just ignore, as a result of the game’s liberal use of random encounters. Battles took up a great deal of my time with Persona, and I never really had any fun or memorable experiences within them. 

What’s worse, or rather more disappointing, is the system you obtain fusion cards with. Fusion cards are what allow you to summon new Personas, and they’re collected by negotiating with the monsters you battle. The negotiation options are fairly robust, but where the problems arise is in applying those options to the monsters you negotiate with. There is no real rhyme or reason to which negotiation options provide positive results or negative ones, and there is no secret to divining them from the enemies’ designs or names. Persona is a game you have to play alongside a wiki, and while there are games that make this work, in this one, it dragged me out of the experience and made me feel much less in control of each situation. The overworld layout is frustrating to navigate among a sea of random encounters and confusing orientation, the combat is uninteresting to engage with due to a lack of interesting enemies, and the negotiation system, while interesting, is obtuse to extrapolate the details of and ultimately requires outside help to utilize to its fullest potential. Persona certainly has the bones of a captivating experience, but it does little enough with them that I couldn’t find myself getting excited for any of it.

And maybe the game ends up, by its conclusion, growing to surpass the sum of its parts. But after 16 hours, it had failed to pull me in in any meaningful way, and I decided to simply stop. I felt bad, as I really do try my best to give games the benefit of the doubt and finish what I start, but not a single neuron in my brain was firing while I played Persona. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a game that I will not remember for its notable strengths, but rather its notable weaknesses. I really tried with Persona, but I had to let my time with it lapse. It just didn’t do enough, and left me hungry for a game with some real meat to its narrative, its systems, and its vibes.

Pyre

Luckily for me, the next game on the docket was Pyre, and spoiler alert: This is within my top 3 games of all time. I’m not much for ranking the things I play, but Pyre blew me away, and each time I think about it, I get a sorrowful, nostalgic, and churning feeling deep within. It’s a feeling I rarely get, and one I do my best to cherish. Pyre has this indescribable pull on my emotions, and each of those attributes I found lacking within Persona could be found in abundance within Pyre. It is a game I find to be truly special, a success on each and every level I can look at it from. Forgive the possible hyperbole, but I think it is a masterpiece, and I find little flaw in its approaches to attachment, choice, and meaningful responses to player action. Pyre is a game that, at its core, understands the power of its medium and uses it in simultaneously gut-wrenching and heartwarming ways. I can’t express in words how much it truly means to me, so I will do all I can to instead express why it means so much to me. Pyre blew me away, and made me feel more involved than most other games have been able to, with the effects of such an immersion reverberating throughout my playthrough, and at times, my life.

While Pyre certainly succeeds at many things, two stand out to me in particular: The game’s ability to connect you with the characters and events within the game, and to use those connections to slam your emotions to the pavement as the game progresses. I won’t lie and say I was hooked on the game or its characters immediately, but I was certainly intrigued enough by its premise (exiles of a broken Commonwealth being united by a Reader and forced to participate in oddly handball-shaped Rites in order to earn their freedom) to see it through, and I am so, so glad I did. Pyre is a truly character-driven story, building upon a trio of lovable but imperfect (except for Hedwyn, he is divine) wagonmates until you have amassed an entire league of people, each with their own histories that have meaningful impacts upon gameplay. For example, Jodariel, a hardened veteran, is at first unwilling to trust Pamitha, a harp who Jodariel would have faced in combat long before either of them were exiled. As a result, the two cannot be paired together within the Rites until their conflict has been resolved, and when said resolution does take place, it feels all the more powerful as the feud’s impact has stretched beyond the boundaries of a text box. Little details like this, alongside each character’s charming quirks, gameplay impact, and personal backstories, all lend a sense of true dimension to the party you find yourself leading through the Downside, the realm of exile that the party finds themselves within.

But as I said, these bonds are not confined to a simple rectangle at the bottom of your screen (though I do love those rectangles). Within each of the Rites your party, the Nightwings, must participate in in order to facilitate their liberation from captivity, three team members must work together in order to extinguish their opponents’ Pyre by scoring baskets. Each character has a role within the layout of the Rites, and as is the case with any diverse roster, you will naturally start to gravitate to certain characters and playstyles. However, at certain points, the game will force you to let go of those you love and exert more diversity within your selections. This can be through relatively minor means, such as your most frequently used team members experiencing Downside Sickness which prevents them from participating in a select number of Rites, but the most prominent example of this separation can be seen within the game’s emotional highlights, the Liberation Rites. 

You see, every Rite you make your way through is in preparation for a Liberation Rite, an event that takes place at the peak of the Downside, the winning team of which gets to select one member to free from exile and send back to the Commonwealth. Naturally, this is a moving moment on its own, but you are only given three characters to choose from when selecting your freed captive, and these three are those with the highest Enlightenment, the score that active participants in the Rites receive following a match. As such, you will most typically be choosing between three of your most beloved, beneficial team members, and when all of your history with these characters both within and out of the Rites compounds into one final, affecting moment, Pyre reaches its ludonarrative peak. I can’t remember every detail of the game’s plot, nor every character motivation (though I remember quite a bit! I don’t mean to downplay the admittedly very good narrative), but when I think about Pyre, I remember how much these moments made me feel. They were not all good feelings; nor were they all bad. But there was an overabundance of them, so great in their power that my chest would physically ache upon watching my comrades, and more importantly my friends, leave me for the lives they’ve wanted for years. Pyre makes every choice you made while selecting teams, every character you chose to speak to or ignore, every Rite you failed or succeeded within, matter. There is no going back to fix your mistakes, or bringing back a Nightwing you miss. You have to live with the consequences of your actions, and when these consequences culminate, all you are left with is your guilt, sorrow, and ultimately your pride in those you love taking back the lives they’ve spent years away from.

There is infinitely more I could talk about within Pyre. God only knows how deserving of praise every iota of the game is. The gameplay comprises a point-and-click visual novel interspersed with exhilarating ‘combat,’ and the sense of balance between the two is never impeded. The dioramic visuals makes it clear that the Nightwings occupy a story that is still being written by you and your choices. The soundtrack, masterfully composed by Darren Korb, plays your team along as they fight tooth and nail for lives they’ve left behind. The narrative uses ideas of freedom, equity, and peace to make each heartbreaking goodbye worth it in the end. I can only bring one thing I could call an issue to mind, and that would be a generally repetitive campaign, but I could hardly complain about that myself. All it meant was more time with characters I loved, playing a game I loved. Pyre takes a strong foundation and builds upon it with some of the most emotionally resonant gameplay I’ve ever experienced within the medium, constantly filling me with hope, guilt, and pride. I generally don’t replay games at all, as I find myself mostly satisfied with their concepts by the time I’ve finished them once. This is not true for Pyre. Upon finishing it, I learned the truth about a character I mostly neglected within my initial playthrough, and I was so wracked with guilt over my ignorance that I started an entirely new save file just to rectify my mistakes. And you know what? When all was said and done, the guilt remained. My first playthrough of Pyre is locked within my brain, canon to my memories and solidified as fact. I could go on for pages more about each and every inch of the game that brought me to my proverbial knees and tore my heart to bits, but I’ve said my piece. Pyre is a masterpiece, and it immerses me like no other game can, granting cause for regret or celebration at any given step. If it’s not clear, I go beyond merely recommending it. Play Pyre. Please. You won’t regret it. It’s an experience that, given any luck, will stick within your heart long after it leaves your hands.

Dead Cells

Dead Cells is fun. Coming off the heels of Pyre, nothing was going to reach the emotional peaks and valleys (but what good valleys they were) of Supergiant’s sportsball spectacular. But Dead Cells wasn’t trying to. It’s just fun. And it was really refreshing for the time I spent with it, though my enjoyment did begin to sour by the end. It’s an incredibly easy game to pick up and start tearing things up within, and I have to admire its attempt to commit to a vision, though that attempt does fail at times due to some questionable design decisions that I picked up on fairly quickly. Regardless, though, the exhilarating fun of Dead Cells was what I needed after Pyre, and I was able to enjoy myself for a decent amount of time before packing up shop and moving towards the next piece on the horizon.

What’s immediately perceptible upon a run of Dead Cells is the feeling of speed the game creates, and the flow state you enter upon playing it. Almost as soon as you spawn, you can begin your run, picking up your tools of destruction along the way and tearing through the enemies ahead of you. When you reach a certain amount of kills (I want to say three? But I don’t quite remember) in a brief period of time, your movement speed is heavily increased for a spell, and it is at this precise moment that the appeal of Dead Cells clicks. You move fast, and the potential for enemy chains spanning massive chunks of any given area increases massively. You become an almost unstoppable force, mowing down every enemy in your path and hardly pausing to pick up the goodies you spot along the way. It’s intoxicating, and the game’s commitment to speed is what got its hooks into me in the first place. With the perks and weapon combinations you can concoct from whatever you end up finding in an area, you can create monstrous builds that clear rooms in seconds. A personal favourite weapon of mine was the baseball bat (a loving nod to Hotline Miami) that grants critical hits and massively increased swing speed on any rooted, frozen, or stunned enemy. There’s a vast array of choices to pair with the bat, and lining up enemies to knock them out of the park was endlessly satisfying. Dead Cells, at its best, is a shot of adrenaline straight to the bloodstream that can sustain itself for incredibly long sessions given the right circumstances, almost trapping you within its addictive speed and violence.

At its worst, though, the game is sluggish and generally dull. I won’t claim that this happens often, but it absolutely makes itself more and more evident as your playtime grows. There are two key reasons for this general feeling of inner dissent: Boss fights and shields. To touch on boss fights, I wouldn’t say their very existence is a problem. However, the bosses in Dead Cells are generally rather uninspired and are either trivial or deeply frustrating, filling the screen with nonsense at a rate that, while not unfeasible to react to, leaves little room for action beyond simply dodging or blocking boss’ attacks. While this may certainly be an issue with the operator, I found boss fights killed the pace and provided a challenge that was generally incongruous with the rest of the game’s snappy design philosophy. However, these fights are relatively sparse. If they were the only design flaw I had to contend with, I would have likely played Dead Cells even more than I already did. 

Unfortunately, though, there is a much greater issue at play within the game, permeating throughout each and every stage. This issue comes in the form of shields. You see, enemies in Dead Cells have very reactable attacks. In fact, an exclamation mark flashes above your opponents’ heads whenever they are about to strike, with little variance in timing. On its own, this is not necessarily a problem. But the game’s shields, one of the three core item types (the other two being melee and ranged weapons), are not just for blocking. They can parry enemy attacks, and it is this single design decision that grinds the game’s strong momentum to a halt for me. Dead Cells at its best is a snappy, speedy thrill ride, where enemies are pads that launch you forward, hurtling you towards the next area at a blistering pace. Dead Cells at its most optimal is a game where you wait for your enemies’ heads to light up, and press the parry button. Shields can quite easily deny all danger and risk to the well-being of the player, and as such are incredibly overcentralizing. 

On its own, a clear best option is not a problem. But within the context of Dead Cells, a game with such a strong core focus upon speed and movement, that ‘best option’ being one that so thoroughly kills the pace and decision-making involved in routing and target priority neuters the game’s true potential. There are shields that freeze the enemy upon successful parry, damage the enemy upon successful parry, stun the enemy upon successful parry, and so on. These are incredibly powerful effects, and as a result, shields very frequently find themselves as part of the most useful weapon synergies, such as with the baseball bat I mentioned above. While there is always the option to simply ignore the item class, it never feels like the best option, and the opportunity cost of restricting yourself never quite feels worth it. Once I realized how heavily I relied upon shields, I quickly also realized how stale my runs were getting, and how the novelty of Dead Cells had worn off. They weaken the game with their presence alone, and conflict with its design heavily enough that I grew tired rather early on in my playtime.

All that being said, I like Dead Cells. It has good bones, and if I can convince myself to bear a suboptimal loadout, I’ll usually have fun. I don’t want to come across as if the game is a failure, even if the word count of my praises versus that of my problems may reflect that idea. It is not a failure. But it makes missteps, and these days, I don’t find myself turning to it all that often. However, I like the formula enough that, with iteration, I can see myself getting addicted to a game much like it. And it’s for that reason that I am so excited for The Rogue Prince of Persia, a game with similar bones to Dead Cells but seemingly one that focuses on its strengths in speed, fluidity, and movement while cutting back on its slow and clunky weaknesses. Dead Cells is fun. I enjoy playing it. But it stumbles, and so after I defeated its final boss for the first time, I quickly moved onto the next game on my docket, and simultaneously began waiting patiently for The Rogue Prince of Persia to exit early access, so I could play Dead Cells broken down to its core, exciting essence.

Final Fantasy VII Remake

Going from a game so enamoured with speed to one so deeply opposed to it is sobering, but I was not unwilling. I was excited for Final Fantasy VII Remake. I had bounced off of the original game, loving its concept and setting but ultimately unable to contend with its age (largely since I played it when I was relatively young). As such, an opportunity to experience that concept and setting in a more modern shell (though not 1:1, a fact I did know going in) was greatly appreciated. And for a time, I was enraptured. If nothing else, Final Fantasy VII Remake knows how to hook you. Its fully realized world, assortment of mostly enjoyable characters, and fluid, powerful combat drew me in. But as the game progressed, my relationship to it became more… Complicated. Final Fantasy VII Remake is a game that slowly but surely loses respect for the player’s time and intelligence, filling the space once occupied by meaningful character work and narrative intrigue with padding and jarring shifts in theme, tone, and tension. While it never loses its undeniable charm and spectacle, a corporate cynicism sort of envelops the game by its conclusion, and ultimately leaves me conflicted. In fact, I felt so strongly jerked around by Final Fantasy VII Remake that it got me to write on games in the first place, and though that review has certainly aged as I was finding my formatting and style, I can’t deny that the feelings that led to its creation churn around within me as strongly as they ever did, if not stronger. Final Fantasy VII Remake is not necessarily bad, but I struggle to call it good. It’s a decent meal with an awful aftertaste, and baited me into loving it enough that I can’t hate it, no matter how much I may want to at times.

As mentioned above, I loved Final Fantasy VII Remake. It locked me within its world as soon as it started, with such strongly realized environments that I would often walk around just to hear the chatter and see the landscape of Midgar. NPCs will comment on the story’s current events, various side quests will allow you to get to know the people of the slums better, and all the while, Cloud and his party members will chat along. Final Fantasy VII Remake, on the surface, feels like what Final Fantasy VII would have been if it was made in the modern era. And while this sentiment does not necessarily extend to the game’s combat, the approximation made for a more action-focused title is, in my opinion, a success. It stumbles, certainly. Upgrading weapons is cumbersome, boss fights are generally tests of patience rather than tests of skill, and there are certainly moments of disorientation within fights facilitated by the UI. But those upgrades can lead to great creativity, those boss fights can lead to high-tension moments and immense relief, and the moments of disorientation are generally brief. The combat is fluid, hard-hitting, and the active member switching and resource management take it beyond mere button mashing. The characters have well-defined and powerful archetypes, the encounters provide a clear objective in the form of staggering, and the member switching alongside these attributes leads to a strong focus on teamwork, even within a singleplayer space. 

What ultimately hooked me the most, though, were the characters. Though I lament the game’s strange commitment to creating a romantic power fantasy with its focus on Cloud’s many potential suitors (Tifa and Jessie most notably; they feel flanderized at times, Jessie specifically), it’s hard to mess up the character framework of Final Fantasy VII that has withstood 23 years of age. You don’t need me to tell you that the party is lovable. However, Final Fantasy VII Remake does utilize its advantage in modernity to grant a great deal of further connection to this party, and I found myself most consistently enraptured by simple interactions. In fact, my favourite chapter was one with little combat, where Cloud and Aerith (not-so-coincidentally my favourite character) bantered and wandered throughout the slums. Even at the game’s lowest, its characters never fail to provide at least some semblance of cohesion and thoughtfulness.

But the aforementioned ‘lowest’ is low enough that those strengths are drops of oil in a bucket of water. They rise to the visible surface, but are ultimately swept away when the bucket’s contents are laid bare. As I’ve alluded to, Final Fantasy VII Remake, especially its narrative, starts out strong and maintains that momentum just long enough to invest the player, then begins a rapid and unimpeded downturn as it draws to a conclusion. It’s what’s led to such a conflict within me regarding the game, and ultimately what spurred me to write about it in the first place. There is a lot that I like about Final Fantasy VII Remake. It certainly has a wide selection of successes within its design and its aesthetic space. But these successes ultimately compose what ends up feeling like a hollow attempt on the part of Square Enix to have their cake and eat it too; a story that both addresses the original game’s basic narrative threads and sews a new tapestry of its own. Unfortunately, due to a combination of horrible pacing and a back-loaded approach to storytelling, Final Fantasy VII Remake finds itself unable to commit to either direction strongly enough for either one to guide its narrative in a meaningful direction. Now, this is easy to ignore for some. Vibes, nice characters, and fun combat can distract from a vapid story. But in an RPG, especially an RPG aping the aesthetics and energy of one so acclaimed, struggles to be successful if what it is saying is so dramatically less than what it is doing. And this is the trap Final Fantasy VII Remake falls into, where it spends so long establishing the ‘normalcy’ of Midgar, and the faithfulness of the setting to the original game, only for it to feel wasted on a story that would never come to be. 

It chronicles Cloud’s journey through the slums, meeting the characters we all know and love along the way. For a great deal of time, it works. There is intrigue surrounding the narrative incongruencies, fun and meaningful interactions, and a general sense of progression. But once the curtains are peeled away, Final Fantasy VII Remake’s true intentions become clear. At the most tense of moments, you’re overloaded with distracting side content and glacial pacing, pacing which remains sluggish until things kick into high gear near the climax. But this climax is not earned. You are not facing a foe you understand, one which you deeply oppose. You’re fighting Sephiroth, a man who is the equivalent to a fly buzzing around Cloud’s head throughout the campaign. And of course, you likely know who Sephiroth is. You have reason to hate him. But Final Fantasy VII Remake did not give you that reason, Final Fantasy VII did. 

The remake pivots entirely from the original’s environmentalist story to one about combating destiny, a theme which certainly works when a story is built from the ground up to discuss it. However, this story is not. It is one built from the ground up to bring about nostalgia, and ideas, but it has nothing to say for itself. It springs these new themes upon you in the final chapters of the game, morphing from a story to the promise of one. After your confrontation with Sephiroth, you wander into a different timeline and chase him down, ending the game on a cliffhanger with no suspense. Any drama Final Fantasy VII Remake attempts to create organically within its own narrative ideas is still shackled to the original, because it is unable to find the minutes within its 30-hour runtime to build those ideas. So, in the end, they are tacked onto a fun and meaningful experience, dragging you out of a well-paced, well-told story and into an advertisement for the sequel. Final Fantasy VII Remake does not care about respecting the original, which is fine, but the game feels no need to break away from it either, and as a result, its identity is muddied and dependent on the aesthetics of the classic it can’t escape and the follow-up that two unreleased, fully-priced games have to offer. 

I no longer love Final Fantasy VII Remake. It has good combat. It has good characters. I can’t call these points into question. But the game is uninterested in using its strengths as a foundation for the unique story it apparently wants to tell so badly. Despite this desperate desire, it’s uninterested in liberating itself from the shackles of the original. It depends upon them to create any tension or thematic weight within its narrative. All the best moments of the remake are those it lifts from the original, and all the worst moments are those it develops on its own. And while I think this is no coincidence, I don’t want to come across as a remake purist. I would hate to be chained to the game I was remaking beat-for-beat as well, creatively speaking. But where Final Fantasy VII Remake fails is in the execution of these ideas, because that execution simply does not exist until the end. There are no stakes except the promise of a new game, and while I have heard excellent things about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I cannot say that promise excites me anymore. I wanted a Final Fantasy VII remake, but the Final Fantasy VII Remake I got has done nothing but compel me to play the original.

Persona 3 FES

After a brief pit stop with Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intermission (which was quite good! Even more satisfying combat, I loved Yuffie a lot, it was a cute little expansion), it was time to spin the wheel once again, and I suppose it was in an RPG mood, as Persona 3 FES was dropped into my lap. After my experience with the first game in the series, I wasn’t totally thrilled, but given the time difference between the two releases and all the good I had heard about this one, I was willing and mostly excited to give it a fair shake. And I did, and it was a very nice experience… About half of the time. I couldn’t go all the way with Persona 3 FES, and at about the 70 hour mark, I had to call it quits. I didn’t want to. Saying goodbye to it was like saying goodbye to a new friend. But it is a poisoned game, and I couldn’t come to terms with its inner tensions. It’s not quite like Final Fantasy VII Remake, where a weak ending called into question the game’s holistic intentions, but it’s nonetheless an experience I cannot wholly endorse, even if I would love the world where I could. That being said, I still don’t hate it, or even wish it was different. In terms of time spent, there is much more bad than good in Persona 3 FES. But what’s strong is uniquely and enjoyably so, and what’s weak takes its toll on you slowly and painfully. So it’s not the worst game I played this year, nor is it my least favourite. It’s just one that got away, no matter how hard I tried to pull it back.

Of course, to get away, Persona 3 FES would have to be near to me in the first place. But it managed this rather effortlessly, and one of the most notable ways it did so was by focusing heavily on time, in a way that brought me into the game almost immediately upon starting it. Persona 3 FES uses time to make almost every moment count, and convince you that the world you’re existing within is one that could feasibly exist without you. You are constantly making choices about what to do with your day, building schedules, fighting the clock in order to improve the protagonist, Makoto. To quote the review I made for Persona 3 FES, “Time is the antagonist, a resource to be managed, and an indication of progress.” It forces you to keep moving forward, make sacrifices, and mold your gameplay around it. You only have so much time in one day, and choosing how to spend it is a meaningful part of the Persona 3 FES experience. It allowed me to make the game my own, and when it came time for the story to progress, it did so at a rate that felt real. Moments of grief and joy did not last long, but their effects reverberated throughout the following days. The game takes a very slow and methodical approach to its storytelling in the service of maintaining its rigorous daily schedule, and I find that to be a success. More time spent within Persona 3 FES’ world, getting attached to its characters, and familiarizing myself with its processes was welcome, even if it came at the cost of a more accelerated storyline. The game commits itself to time in an impressive way, and the results of that commitment improve every facet of its daily workings.

The facet most directly improved by Persona 3 FES’ usage of time, and the one most directly involved in my enjoyment of the game, is its immersion. If not for the fact that I had played Pyre just a few months earlier, Persona 3 FES would be the game I was the most personally invested in throughout 2024, an investment built upon a foundation of meaningful but restricted choices. Every day is spent making personal decisions, be they small or large. You can only participate in one activity per day, so deciding what you want to spend your time on is a major part of Persona 3 FES’ daytime gameplay. You can focus on self-improvement, fostering stronger connections with your acquaintances, or explore Iwatodai, the game’s city. Each of these have their costs and benefits, and while I found myself drawn to the more written and meaningful experiences social links provided, others may take a more committed approach to strengthening Makoto’s various social attributes. Despite the fact that the options presented are not vast in quantity, they are relatively balanced in quality, and often bleed into each other in ways that encourage creating a more varied schedule. I loved social links, but in order to access more, I would have to work on my personal stats. In the end, I was attached to the Makoto I created, and to the world he inhabited. I got to know its quirks and, when those quirks morphed and changed in response to the events of the narrative, I noticed. Persona 3 FES does an excellent job at crafting a convincing, consistent world, and it’s a world that I deeply enjoyed inhabiting, not in spite of but perhaps even because of its mundanity and simplicity. Even the smallest of decisions involve the player, and whether those decisions have an impact upon the game is unimportant. Persona 3 FES wants you to play as yourself, not as Makoto Yuki, and it does a great job at facilitating that roleplay within a relatively limited space.

All of this is excellent. Social links are involved, provide a sense of community within Iwatodai, and provide additional gameplay benefits. There’s a great deal of depth involved in planning out your afternoons, utilizing your free time to the fullest without forsaking the things that you as a player value. Daytime in Persona 3 FES is a game of resource management and roleplay that works like a well-oiled machine. In my limited experience, I had not played anything truly like it before, and as such, I was too wrapped up in my enjoyment for the cracks to show at first. But, as you may have noticed, I singled out ‘daytime’ above as the home of the game’s successes, and that is because, unfortunately, they only compose half (and that’s being generous) of the game. The other half is spent in Tartarus, the game’s only dungeon with a mostly random layout, and it is spent in combat. Now, these nighttime excursions are not where my praise ends. At times, they were even extensions of the immersion and enjoyment I felt throughout the game’s days. But Tartarus’ influence is vast, and suffocating. It does enough wrong, and does it wrong enough, that I was forced to give up.

Combat in Persona 3 FES is… good! As I’ve mentioned, I’m not a fan of turn-based combat, but the game adds enough spice and friction to make it more than tolerable. But this is one of a select few strengths Tartarus has, alongside strong atmosphere and a general feeling of progress that it creates as you climb the tower’s floors. Of course, this progress ends up feeling mostly vapid as the facade that is Tartarus peels away, but in slow periods of the story, it’s certainly helpful. Unfortunately, these strengths are each accompanied by weaknesses in turn, weaknesses which end up greatly outweighing any good will Tartarus may have built with me at the beginning of my playthrough. Atmosphere can only take an area so far, and when such a large amount of time is spent within Tartarus, a lack of considered level design leads to little desire to explore such an atmospheric space. The brutal, crushing vibes of Tartarus are never taken away, but their impact is deeply diminished by an increasingly large amount of time spent within the tower’s walls. The combat is certainly enjoyable, and heightens the immersion by sprinkling in AI-controlled party members with their own behaviours and patterns. It lends a good deal of strategy to encounters, but only if the stars align. The enemies you’ll find within Tartarus are of two classes: Jobbers and sponges. Neither of these enemy types facilitate much thought behind combat, and the latter will generally only be weak to the game’s insta-kill elements, leading to combat essentially becoming a roulette wheel, the victor of which is only decided by who lands their decisive blow first. Tartarus has memorable encounters, no doubt. But none of them are memorably good. 

What’s most devastating to me, though, is how utterly disrespectful Tartarus is to Persona 3 FES’ central theme of time, and mechanics of decision-making. The ‘progress’ I mentioned earlier is the result of countless hours of incessant climbing, none of which feel dense in either enjoyable combat or meaningful rewards. The only limit placed upon your time in the dungeon is the possibility for you and your allies to get fatigued, a factor which becomes less and less noticeable as the game progresses. Thus, you can spend hours within its sporadic walls, and an imbalance in time spent between day and night soon becomes apparent. On one hand, I can certainly respect this inherent flaw in the game’s carefully scheduled structure. It paints Tartarus as deservedly otherworldly and dangerous, a land beyond time. On the other hand, I find that the hours you spend there are empty, and when any of your deaths lead to a complete restart of the night (a complete restart of the night at best, as it simply returns you to your most recent save), they are mostly spent avoiding the game. Too many times have I gotten the items I needed for a quest (items which you cannot tell an enemy has until you’ve already engaged in combat with it, which leads to a great deal of wild swinging and groaning when the blob turns out to be a useless goon) and suddenly stopped engaging with Tartarus altogether. When meaningful progress is only made by clearing a certain amount of floors, usually in the double digits, the prospect of all that time being wasted becomes one that invalidates the rest of the experience. 

The focal point of the game’s conflict, one of the few places where the game's titular Personas becomes valuable, becomes a point of anxiety. There is no enjoyment to be found within Tartarus, only obligation and fear. Every force within the narrative, every piece of dialogue your fellow party members speak into existence, points you toward it. The game itself encourages a mindless grind of its floors, until you have utterly cleaned it out. After all, you need XP, you need the various treasures found within the tower. But it is without substance, without pacing, and without an intrinsic reason to explore. Tartarus made me dread playing a game I loved, as it thoroughly dominated the runtime and made each moment within it paradoxically worth both less and more as time went on. None of it felt meaningful, but when it was lost, it was devastating. Perhaps it existed to give me a new respect for my time, and to force me to be careful with how I spent it, lest it was all wasted. But it did too good a job. I respected my time, and quit Persona 3 FES.

When the time came, I had contemplated giving up for maybe 15 hours, give or take a few unhappy sessions. But I tried desperately to hold onto the love I had for Persona 3 FES. It had given me a world to be part of, in big and small ways. It had given me relationships to invest in, and to reap meaning from. I took no joy in pulling the plug, but it became too draining. Each uneventful day that passed meant less time between visits to Tartarus, and when I made this connection, I realized that the dungeon had ripped away the love I had for Iwatodai. I needed content, excitement, something to keep me from Tartarus. The game had become a vessel for a tower, a tower that promised little but misery, fear, and weariness. All the promise Persona 3 FES had was obscured by Tartarus’ shadow, and its poison had finally infected enough of my experience that I had enough. Persona 3 FES is not a game I hate. I struggle to even say I dislike it. But I lament it.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

Kunitsu-Gami was a turning point in my year for several reasons. Firstly, it marked the point when I realized that my little experiment with the wheel had ended up mostly a failure, and as such, it was the first singleplayer game in a while that I had played entirely of my own accord. Secondly, it was the first game I’d played since Pyre that I unequivocally liked. Really, I loved it. I’d followed the release. I’d seen a great deal of the behind-the-scenes work put in for authenticity’s sake. I’d seen the developments being made within the tower defense genre, and whether they were wholly unique to the scene (I say this not out of dismissal to prior works, but out of ignorance; I simply do not know of any tower defense games that make use of similar mechanics to Kunitsu-Gami) or not, they excited me. I’d played the demo, and it was just as fun as I could’ve hoped. I was hooked. And when it finally came time for the game to come out, it was everything I could have hoped for. There is something indescribably genuine about Kunitsu-Gami. So much went into this game’s minutiae, as if it was pored over with a fine-toothed comb in order to maximize every centimetre of space that the developers had. It’s like a painting came to life, and that beauty does not merely exist within the game’s aesthetics (though those are certainly deserving of praise). Every bit of this game is contemplative, thoughtful, and careful. Kunitsu-Gami lets its presence and artistry speak for itself, and I couldn’t have enjoyed it any more for what it was.

From the outset, it is clear that Kunitsu-Gami is about rebuilding and collaboration. You take control of Soh, the bodyguard of a goddess named Yoshiro, and the two of you are descending a mountain plagued by evil known as the Seethe. Not only has it corrupted the mountain, but the wildlife alongside it, and each village you pass through has been left desolate and trapped underneath a layer of grime and disease. With each step the two of you take, though, you get closer to cleansing the mountain and removing the Seethe entirely. As you walk through a village, you’ll spot villagers wrapped in cocoons, and as you break them free, you can recruit them to help you protect Yoshiro when night falls. These are people with lives, occupations, and families, willing to join an unknown masked swordfighter and a goddess in order to bring back their home. There’s something heartwarmingly human about that. Really, Kunitsu-Gami is a deeply human game. It cares about our ability to cooperate, to place a common good above our personal success. The villagers will help repair broken pathways within the village, run headlong into battle with the Seethe, and give their all to restoring the world that was stolen from them by malice. And when Yoshiro finally reaches the exit of a village, she puts a piece of herself into this microcosm of the mountain, and purges the darkness from the area with a beautiful ceremonial dance. What’s perhaps most touching about the whole ritual, though, is that when the darkness is finally cleared, Soh and all of the villagers join her. Kunitsu-Gami, at its core, is about coming together to meet a common purpose. It is not loud about it, but it is consistently vocal at the very least, and this cooperation makes way for a beautiful sense of camaraderie between you and the villagers you move through the levels with.

Those levels are beautiful in their own right, as well. Most of them take place in relatively similar-looking villages, but the vastly different layouts within each one provides a great deal of variety in where you place your villagers. A great deal of the game is spent innovating on the core gameplay structure, that being Yoshiro walking from the start of a village to the end during the day, and standing still at night, protected from Seethe enemies by Soh and the now-equipped villagers. It’s a very active tower defense game, where your days are packed with preparations such as purging defilement from the village, finding villagers and assigning them roles for combat, or repairing barriers to protect Yoshiro. These preparations are further enhanced by various level concepts, such as a level where you need to light lanterns in order to light the way for Yoshiro and your villagers, or one taking place atop a fleet of moving boats, where you must direct your villagers to avoid lightning strikes and sea monsters. 

Your nights, on the other hand, are where the core ‘defense’ takes place, where Seethe enemies pour out from Torii gates spread across the level, where you active move the villagers and take part in combat yourself. It is not incredibly deep combat, but it is full of beautiful, dance-like animations and fulfills its core purpose without overwhelming you. I love Kunitsu-Gami’s gameplay loop. It perfectly blends tension and relaxation, providing you with just enough time to take in the tragic desolation of the village you find yourself within, work tirelessly to repair it, and formulate the basic idea of a plan for the nightly attacks, where all of it will fall apart. Improvisation is key, understanding the situations your villagers find themselves in is crucial, and the game facilitates all of it. It’s easy to adapt, mechanically speaking. Where the friction lies is the mind behind the controller.

Kunitsu-Gami no doubt blew me away with its core optimism, its basic gameplay, and its willingness to constantly innovate and grow as an experience. But I found the most solace in its quiet moments, the spaces between the anxious preparation and the gruelling execution. Every village you purge the defilement from becomes a base for you to slowly repair and return to its former glory, and within these bases is where I found the true wonder of Kunitsu-Gami to be hidden. They host all the villagers found within the associated level, and it’s here that you can view short biographies about each one, learning their histories, flaws, and aspirations. Among them are animals, many of which are calmer versions of afflicted creatures that can be spotted within various active levels. You can wander around, play with or pet the animals, direct the villagers to a new reparation project, or view various oddities and charms. They’re peaceful environments, only bolstered by their soothing background piano tracks. All the fruits of your and the villagers’ labours come to bear as the villages move closer to pristineness. 

What’s most charming, though, are the smaller iotas of the base-wandering experience. Outside of Yoshiro’s tent, you’ll find a collection of plaques, depicting all the creatures you come across on the mountain, both good and bad. Each one has a beautiful hand-drawn piece of associated art, a written biography, and a 3D model posed in various active ways. It’s as if Soh themself was recording the peaks and valleys of their time on the mountain and maintaining them for posterity, but if you enter the aforementioned tent, you’ll find this is not the only novelty to gaze at. Gorgeous, fully rendered models of Japanese desserts can be found within, alongside scrolls depicting Soh’s fierce battles with the Seethe or moments of fear within Yoshiro, drawn in a traditional style. Of course, none of these details affect your gameplay. You can go through the entire game without even entering a base, but if you do, you’ll miss what, to me, is the most enriching part of the experience. Each detail was tended to, every possible ounce of care was spent within these confined areas. They’re works of art, ones that provide a much-needed reprieve from the constant action and allow you to introspect, taking in the future that you are helping to build and the past that was stolen from the mountain.

On their own, these are all undoubtedly striking fragments of the puzzle that is Kunitsu-Gami, but they’re tied together neatly by the game’s aesthetic, one inspired by kagura ceremonies, fearsome yokai, and the natural beauty of the Earth. Many times have I called this game gorgeous, and it is not a habit I am looking to break. At the risk of sounding redundant, the art of this game was painstakingly crafted down to the finest facets, and that effort shines through in the final piece. Enemies are grotesquely stunning, with mouths unable to contain their tongues and teeth, flesh bursting from beneath their gooey exteriors, and heads trapped within their own mouths. They are as detailed as they are creepy, and lend the Seethe credence as a disgusting, supernatural force, one which will stop at nothing to defile and desecrate anything in their path. In contrast, villagers are plain, but their togetherness grants them beauty they would struggle to attain on their own. Their defenses light up the night, with flaming arrows, fireworks, dancing Sages, and praying Summoners each playing a part in the evening’s battles. In turn, Soh’s attacks are fluid and dance-like in nature. Behind their sword trails a brilliant orange glow, a light to cut through the darkness of the Seethe. There is a practiced and measured quality to their strikes, and it makes each one feel earnest and forceful. 

But ultimately, these battles would be worth nothing if they were fought on land beyond saving. That is why it is so core to Kunitsu-Gami’s structure that it takes place within a world untouched by uncaring hands before the Seethe arrived. As you travel down the mountain, you’ll pass through ceremonial grounds, intricate caves, and lush forests. Each of these areas tells a tragic, wordless story of a civilization under siege, and upon their cleansing, they are fully realized as the landmarks they deserve to exist as. Rarely, if ever, will you encounter a landscape that humans have not influenced, but this influence is one exerted with respect. Not only do the villagers cooperate with each other, but they cooperate with the world they inhabit, with houses resting amongst the trees and altars nestled into rocky coves. This collaborative life has very clearly been prosperous, and each leaf rustles as if it is protecting the ground below from the ugliness of a society less kind. It’s a world worth fighting for, and watching it be so thoroughly laid to waste only motivates you further to purge the Seethe once and for all. Every aspect of Kunitsu-Gami’s visuals was considered, and they all come together to form a painting of a world deserving of protection, guarded by people who understand the nature of their duties, shielded from the grief brought about by the Seethe. 

Kunitsu-Gami reminds me that some love is wordless. I’ve tried my best (and gone on much longer than I expected, honestly) to articulate my feelings on it and the reasons behind them, but ultimately, it just has this hypnotic effect on me. It gives me hopes, dreams, and warm feelings of safety inside. It can make my heart race, and bring the tension right back down to tranquility. It is a Video Game in every sense of the phrase. A piece of art that can, without so much as a sentence, bring about fear, joy, and tranquility. It makes me wonder, it makes me long. Kunitsu-Gami oozes passion, and the very mention of its name excites me. Mechanically, it’s sound. Artistically, it’s delicate. Holistically, it is beautiful.

Interlude

Before I get to my next major pit stop on this winding road, I’d like to take a moment to appreciate two titles that, while I enjoyed, I don’t have much to say about. First, after finishing Kunitsu-Gami, I (a huge Ace Attorney fan) decided one evening to boot up The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, a game in the same ilk as my beloved LSAT simulator. And it was good! Charming characters, of course, but the puzzles did fall generally flat. Fun enough, but very simple. That wasn’t my main takeaway, though. I merely enjoyed being along for the ride, listening to vaguely familiar faces banter with one another as time whiled itself away. It did enough to fill the Ace Attorney-shaped hole in my heart (for now). The next pit stop on the agenda was Baba is You, another puzzle game, though much different in its approach. I appreciated how vast the problem-solving space was for Baba is You, but I am not a puzzler. I struggled, and I fought. But I did finish the main campaign! And that was enough for me. I tried my hand at later puzzles, but those are for minds more conditioned than my own. Nonetheless, it was a good time. After so many enrapturing experiences (for better or for worse), it was nice to relax with a couple of low-stakes, low-commitment romps.

Devil May Cry

But, inevitably, I began to yearn for something meatier. And I had had my eyes on the Devil May Cry series for a very long time. With my wheel mostly behind me, I figured it was time to get cracking on a series I thought I would love. And I did get cracking, and it was… moderately successful. I could still end up loving Capcom’s character action classics. But I can’t deny Devil May Cry is a hard sell, and that my feelings on it are jumbled and confused (much like the game itself!). In fact, it left me so conflicted that, upon attempting to review it, I burnt out almost instantly and didn’t play a game for several months. So, in a sense, this retrospective gives me the chance to finally get some of this mess out of my head and onto a page. Devil May Cry is certainly a first attempt, but it’s a first attempt that works, despite its best efforts.

I think what immediately stuck out to me in Devil May Cry was its emptiness. It’s a very lonely game, and the only characters you’ll rub up against are undead enemies or the three main bosses. It’s silent. Dante doesn’t quip often, the music is largely ambient. In this, it makes the game feel faster, in a sense. If there’s no goofing around to be done, then all that’s left is your mission objective. And as you move towards this objective, framed by a static camera a la Resident Evil, it’s as if you’re moving between paintings. The atmosphere of a gothic island, abandoned by humanity and time itself, inhabited by only those between life and death, is unmatched. Ambient noise begins to fill your ears, and as you press towards your singular goal, those undead tenants spring out, shifting the tone in a heartbeat. What was once introspective quiet becomes roaring combat. The halls that were once pristine are soon littered with bits of your enemies. And, once the music dims, and the stillness returns, you press forward once again. Dante’s bombast within battle is stripped away from him, and he moves without a word, solely focused on defeating Mundus and avenging his fallen family for good. Devil May Cry did not know what it would become. It knew only what it could have been, a brooding tale of a man who has been left alone by time. Its story tries (and mostly fails) to convey this, but what truly succeeded was its world, a world of vast empty space, a world undisturbed until Dante enters its atmosphere. And when he leaves each room, all you can hear are his footsteps as he plods on, unsatisfied with his conquest until his mission is complete.

At least, that is some of Devil May Cry’s best. At its worst, it’s… Messy. It’s never a total failure, but it feels utterly incomplete in so many areas. Level design is spotty, with rooms that are labyrinthian, not necessarily in the shape of their walls, but in the shape of their direction. I often found myself utterly lost, even in rooms with relatively simple layouts, because they were simply too vast and directionless to funnel me towards my desired exit. Of course, this is not strictly bad, but it interferes with the rather purposeful tone that Devil May Cry seems to encourage, and when time spent is a part of what determines your final grade, I find that the level design being directly in opposition to Dante’s efficiency weakens the desired mood. But just as much as I found myself fighting the environments, I found myself fighting the controls. Camera angles shift with the wind, and in a game where direction is so important, it seriously impedes the flow of exploration and of combat. Even in static rooms, I felt as if I had little control over Dante, as two identical sequences of buttons could lead to vastly different results. Controls in Devil May Cry depend heavily upon context and directional input, and this allows several aspects of the game to shine! But when combined with the camera, it leads to far more jarring misinputs than one would hope. Devil May Cry is not unplayable at any moment, and it has a decent amount of variety in its mission objectives, but often enough, those mission objectives are awkward enough to complete that it’s hard to dole out too much praise in that respect. The best word I can use to describe the feeling of playing the game is ‘stilted,’ and though it manages to find its footing, the road to success is rocky and hard to contend with.

Ultimately, though, these are learnable issues. One could argue they’re hardly issues at all, and though I would push back on some of these aspects, I can see the thought process behind it. After all, in modern day, the character action genre is one of replayability and mastery. I can’t be sure how much Devil May Cry wanted to fit into this mold, but given that the game’s hard mode is only available after finishing a playthrough on normal mode, it has to be at least a little. And I think it works. I personally only went for one playthrough; I’d had my fill, especially after the ignorant final boss. But even within that singular playthrough, there is a point where Devil May Cry just clicks. You understand how to improve your combo structure, you get familiar with the enemies and their idiosyncrasies, you learn the basic layouts of the castle and how the game likes to talk to you. None of it is especially clean, but it is messily engaging in a way that only the first entry in not only a new series, but a new genre, could be. Combos aren’t long, but they’re beefy and satisfying. Enemies are a generally strong balance between cannon fodder and formidable threats. Missions throw in enough encounters that the skills you’ve slowly accumulated have a chance to be displayed. The game not only learns how to converse with you, but it learns how to converse with itself, and best utilize its core successes in gamefeel and combat, successes that would go on to define the genre. I didn’t start to love Devil May Cry, but I started to get along with it, and contend with its quirks and shortcomings.

When I started Devil May Cry, I fundamentally could not grasp why it was so lauded upon release. Of course, games were different back then, and it was doing intriguing new things, but I couldn’t see that it was doing any of those new things particularly well. When I finished, I still couldn’t laud it like so many did when it came out. There was too much friction in areas that did not demand them for me to feel like it was a complete success. But it is a partial one, and I have to respect it for the strides it took in developing ideas that would go on to define an entire subsection of the ‘action game.’ Its tone did not necessarily gel with what these ideas would become, and it’s certainly easy to see why they would shift towards a more bombastic presentation with Devil May Cry 3, but I think the first in the series still stands as a very strong experiment, and a satisfactory game on its own. Time has absolutely warmed me on Devil May Cry; I was so stuck when writing my review on it because I couldn’t really reconcile the game’s flaws with its merits, but looking at the big picture, I can understand what it was trying to tell me. I struggle with mastery-focused experiences that don’t do amazing jobs at incentivizing replays for further growth, but upon reflection, the job Devil May Cry does is good enough. I can see why it went where it did, and I can say that for the character action genre as a whole. Devil May Cry is a product of its time and relative newness in the world of games, and robbing it of that context like I did directly after finishing does it a disservice. The boss fights are bad, the controls are hard to wrangle, the narrative is silly, but the game works, and has visions. It’s worthy of respect, even if it falls short in modern eyes.

Gravity Circuit

As I mentioned, after Devil May Cry, I found myself burning out on games. I took an honest swing at Fez, but I am but one girl with a struggling brain; I couldn’t get past the game’s ‘intro,’ as it were. The puzzles were just too confounding for me beyond that, but I enjoyed it! It couldn’t drag me back into games fully, though. No, something a bit more my speed would help with that, and that thing ended up being Gravity Circuit. Now, I have never played Mega Man X (though I would certainly like to), but even my surface-level knowledge is enough to call a spade a spade, and to call Gravity Circuit a heartful spiritual successor. There is no shortage of charm in this fast-paced action platformer, and the love is not just skin-deep. There’s plenty of meat in Gravity Circuit, and rushing through it brought me right back to a simple, childlike love for hitting buttons to make pixels move on my screen. It’s pure, but not overly simple. Inspired, but not derivative. Gravity Circuit hits every note it needs to, and does so with a reverence for its predecessors laid bare both mechanically and artistically.

On the mechanical end, the game is fast, but never blindingly so. It keeps a strong pace without overwhelming the player, and the levels facilitate both tight platforming and high-speed action with a strong balance between the two. Kai, the player character, controls like a dream, responsive and easily able to flow between actions with little pause. I loved finding the sweet spot between defeating enemies and breezing right past them, and that variance in approach lends Gravity Circuit tons of personalization, especially compounded upon the game’s robust upgrade system. Combat is punchy, with brutal super moves available to you on top of short but powerful combos. It’s a game that feels good to simply move around in, and when each of the levels is designed so carefully, each based around the core theme of the final Circuit you face, there’s no shortage of fun places to move around in. And those Circuits themselves are classic in their approach, but with the arsenal you yourself have to play around with, they become not only tests of reflexes and pattern recognition, but execution and resource management as well. There’s no end of praise to give Gravity Circuit for how it feels. Its focus on melee combat gives it a strong identity, but the most interesting thing it does is introduce a hookshot. This serves both combat and movement utility, allowing you to grapple to walls, swing off of ceilings, and batter enemies from a range. Its combat purposes are generally weak, but they are necessary, and help make the hookshot feel like a more complete part of your kit. It’s a really neat addition that helps cement the game’s focus on high motion, and round out its identity in doing so. Gravity Circuit is lots of fun. I could go on at length about its secrets, its upgrades, its supers, but I’ve gone on at length enough in this retrospective. To put it bluntly, the game feels good in my hands, and it always had me ready to run through one more level.

As much of an identity as the game creates through its mechanics, though, it has just as strong of one within its aesthetics. The spritework is beautiful, of course, and the character designs are cute and striking. What got me the most excited, though, was the game’s use of colour. Most levels and environments have fairly normal colouring, but the characters are all monochromatic, and it helps each of them stick out that much more. The hacking-based trickster Circuit is a sinister purple, while the sympathetic friendly Circuit is a warm orange. Little touches like this make Gravity Circuit’s characters stand out amongst their environment, and the game knew this was one of the strongest attributes of its aesthetic design, as they allowed you to seek out palette chips within each level and recolour Kai to your liking. These recolours are not only visually reminiscent of the bosses from each stage, but they grant Kai abilities related to said bosses. This only helps add to the feeling that you build your own Kai as the game goes on, and hammer home its striking use of colour. Add on top of that gorgeous environments, a wicked soundtrack, and the aforementioned beautifully cartoonish spritework and character designs and you have a wonderfully consistent, standout aesthetic that Gravity Circuit takes advantage of whenever it can.

Gravity Circuit wears its heart on its sleeve, and that authentic devotion to such a focused experience really helped me get back in the mood for games. Every moment of this game was a highlight, and it has such a varied experience within its purchasable upgrades, super moves, and palette swaps that even I found myself going in for a replay after I finished. As I’ve mentioned before in this retrospective, I don’t tend to replay games often. But Gravity Circuit was so smooth, so modular, and so easy to pick up and move around in that I felt almost compelled to spin it up after my first playthrough. I really enjoyed it, and I’m happy to have ended the year on a high note.

In Summary

Well, strictly speaking, Gravity Circuit was not the last game I played last year. I did start The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but there are two reasons I didn’t write about it. Firstly, I finished the game in February of this year, and secondly, I plan to go much more in depth about Ocarina of Time in a later piece. I did love it, though, and I can’t imagine a better first Zelda game. It was, absolutely, a very quintessential experience.

There were other games I played in 2024, too. Some live service games, mostly. Lots of Street Fighter 6. But I struggle to talk about those. I almost wrote a little retrospective on Marvel Rivals. as my feelings on that game are… Muddy (I think it succeeds at being fun, but it wants to be competitive, and I don’t know if it has the legs), but I opted against it. Not to say those games have any less worth than singleplayer experiences, but I have a lot less to say about them, generally speaking. And regardless, most of the things I played in 2024, I wrote about here, if even for a short amount of time. And it was a valuable year for learning more about design, how to speak to games, and how to let them speak to me. I played a few titles that reached my very core (Pyre, Kunitsu-Gami), a few titles I ended up very mixed on (Final Fantasy VII Remake, Persona 3), and a few titles I liked, with some pretty major bumps in the road (Dead Cells, Devil May Cry). I’m satisfied with what I played, and I look forward to my 2025 (which is looking to start with Majora’s Mask!).

To speak on this retrospective itself, though, I think 2024 was a good year for me. I played a lot more games that were divisive in my mind than I expected to, but it was the year I began writing and the year I decided to take games a lot more seriously, critically speaking. Looking back, though, I’m certainly unhappy with the writing I did. This is an inevitability of creating anything, mind you, but I think the four reviews I’ve written were mostly forced. In retrospect, they feel unfocused, and though they’re not technically weak, I think they’re very formulaic. More like checklists than meaningful pieces, in my estimation, caring more about their form than their function. I have an awful habit of trying to sound smarter than I am, and it bled into my reviews hard. Even this retrospective, as I’ve written it, has made me realize my style is no longer indicative of the writing I want to do, or the mood I want to create. I’ve always written in a very academic way, but as my character has grown, I’ve found that style to be less and less reflective of my personality. This is a long way of saying, ‘I don’t love this retrospective.’ I think it is too winding, too impersonal, too concerned with being thorough than being genuine. But I think it was valuable, and it gave me a good chance to talk about things I otherwise wouldn’t have put to paper. It let me reconsider my thoughts on the games I played in 2024, soften up on some and harden on others. And it gave me a checkpoint. In a year’s time, I will have grown as a writer, and as a critic. I’ll write essays with ideas that last, and whatever retrospective I make next year (if I even make one) will not be like this one. I’d like to thank you for reading, and apologize for the bloat above. I hope that in the year going forward, I can do better, and write some things that truly resonate. I’ll see you soon, hopefully!

[5mind]

(( computwr that is older than both ppl present at work is acting up big time while im on a deadline what if i turned into da joker and then what

[fawningoveradream]

another attempt at me drawing my hot topic wannabe hellhound fursona Pretty Pink Devil Princess E (or PPDP-E or E to their friends).

[curiousrentals]

Download: Devil's Circuit | DOWN LOAD 南無阿弥陀仏は愛の詩, 1992

“I don’t get it. Why did Namiho have this kind of data? What’s she caught up in?”

[humankk]

my, contribution

Whiteboard time baby!

keep it PG

try not to draw over other people's stuff

the board autodeletes in 14 days so mark the date if you want to screenshot anything

have fun!

[inseobts]

Idk if u do request but can you do Scary reader x One piece men? Law, Shanks, Sabo, Ace, Croc, The monster trio & whoever else you want! Basically the reader is really scary but {{char}} finds their scariness attractive.

Attractive Scariness

a/n: sorry but at some point I got out of ideas lmao

characters: luffy, zoro, sanji, law, ace, shanks, sabo and crocodile

words count: around 0.4k - 0.9k each

masterlist || ao3 || ko-fi

── .✦ Monkey D. Luffy:

You’re used to fear.

The wide eyes, the shaky hands, the people stumbling over themselves to get away, etc. It’s always the same. Ever since you ate your Devil Fruit, people have called you a monster. Even when you’re not fighting, your presence alone makes people nervous.

So when you land on this island and step into a small village, you already expect the usual reaction.

And you get it.

The streets clear as soon as you walk in. The market stalls empty. Even the shopkeepers pretend not to see you.

You sigh.

“Again?” you mutter “I just want some food…”

You’re about to turn around when someone doesn’t run. A boy in a red vest and a straw hat stands right in front of you, grinning like he doesn’t even notice how scary you are.

No. He notices. He just doesn’t care.

“Whoa!” he exclaims, eyes shining “You’re super strong, huh?”

You blink “What?”

“I can tell!” He nods, completely sure of himself “Strong people have this feeling about them. And you feel really strong!”

You stare at him. That’s… new. No “stay away from me” or “please don’t kill me.” Just pure excitement.

Luffy tilts his head “What’s your power?”

You hesitate. Usually, this is the part where people scream. But he’s looking at you like a kid waiting for a magic trick.

You raise your hand. A shadow swirls around your fingers, shifting like smoke. The air around you grows heavy, dark, unnatural.

Luffy gasps.

“That’s so cool!”

“…Huh?”

“You can control shadows? Or darkness? Or... wait, is it nightmares?” He’s practically bouncing “Can you do giant shadow hands? Or make yourself super big? Or—”

You blink at him “You’re… not scared?”

Luffy grins wider “Why would I be? You’re awesome!”

This has never happened before. Ever. You don’t know what to do.

Then Luffy grabs your wrist “Hey, join my crew!”

Your brain short-circuits “What?”

“I’m Luffy! I’m gonna be King of the Pirates, and I need strong people on my crew. And you’re really strong!”

You open your mouth, then close it. You look at him, at his bright, careless smile, at the way he’s just standing there, holding onto your wrist like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Like you’re just a person.

Not a monster.

“…You’re weird” you say.

Luffy laughs “People tell me that a lot.”

You stare at him for a long moment. Then, for the first time in forever, you smile.

“…Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll join you.”

Luffy cheers, throwing his fists in the air “Yes! This is gonna be awesome!”

You have no idea what you’ve just signed up for. But for once, you don’t feel like a nightmare.

You just feel like you.

Years have passed since you met Luffy. Since he grabbed your wrist, called you strong, and changed your life without even trying.

Back then, you weren’t sure what you were getting into. Now, you know.

Being with Luffy means chaos. It means waking up to find him hanging upside down from the ship’s mast, laughing like it’s normal. It means fighting beside him, watching him charge straight at danger without fear—because he trusts you to have his back.

It means love.

A love that is loud and wild, but also simple. Easy. Because Luffy has never been afraid of you. Not then, not now.

Right now, you’re on an island, sitting in the shade while the crew runs around. The villagers are keeping their distance, just like always. Even after all these years, people still fear you.

But it doesn’t matter anymore.

Because across the field, Luffy is waving at you, smiling so wide it makes your chest feel warm. He doesn’t care that people avoid you. He doesn’t care that you’re “scary”, to him, you’re just you.

He runs over, plopping down next to you with a grin “Whatcha doin’?”

You raise an eyebrow “Sitting.”

Luffy gasps dramatically “No way. That’s crazy.”

You snort, shoving his shoulder. He just laughs, leaning against you without a care in the world.

For a while, you sit there together. The sun is warm, the breeze is nice, and Luffy is… Luffy. He hums a little song under his breath, playing with your fingers like he’s fascinated by them.

Then, he says “You know, you’re kinda scary.”

You pause “Oh?”

He nods “Yeah. Like, super scary. When you fight, people freak out. Even Zoro said you’re the last person he’d wanna fight seriously.”

You wait for the usual words to follow. Monster. Freak. Too much.

But instead, Luffy grins and squeezes your hand.

“I love it.”

Your heart stops for a second.

Luffy keeps talking, like he hasn’t just turned your entire world upside down “It’s awesome! You’re so strong, and you do that cool shadowy thing, and when you get serious, even the bad guys look like they’re gonna cry.” He laughs, eyes shining “It’s really cool.”

You don’t answer right away. Because what is there to say?

For so long, your power was a curse. Something that made you different. Something that made you alone.

But here, with Luffy, it’s just another part of you.

“…You’re an idiot” you mumble, looking away.

Luffy laughs “Yeah, but you love me.”

You roll your eyes “Unfortunately.”

He gasps “What?!”

You shove his face away, and he just laughs harder, wrapping his arms around you like an octopus. He clings to you, laughing and warm, and you sigh, pretending to be annoyed.

But the truth is, you wouldn’t trade this for anything.

Because you are strong. And scary. And Luffy loves it.

And that is more than enough.

── .✦ Roronoa Zoro:

Zoro knows strength when he sees it.

He can sense it in the way people move, in the way they breathe. Some fighters hesitate, some carry doubt, but you don’t.

From the moment he meets you, he can tell. You don’t just fight. You hunt. And for some reason, he can’t take his eyes off you.

It starts on an island known for its warriors. The crew stops to rest, but Zoro wants a challenge. A real fight. So when he hears rumors of a swordsfighter so deadly that even bounty hunters avoid them, he doesn’t hesitate.

But when he finds you, it’s not what he expects.

You’re not some old master or a towering brute. You’re just… you. Sitting under a tree, sharpening your blade like you have all the time in the world.

Zoro stops a few feet away, arms crossed “You’re the one they’re all scared of?”

You glance up. Your eyes are sharp, your aura heavy, and for a second, it’s like the temperature drops.

Zoro grins. Oh, yeah. This is gonna be good.

You sigh, standing up “You here to fight me too?”

He smirks “Yeah. Unless you’re scared.”

Something flickers in your gaze, something dark and dangerous. Then you smile, slow and sharp “You’ll regret that.”

And then you move.

It happens fast. One second, you’re standing still. The next, your own blade is inches from his neck. Zoro barely blocks in time, his instincts the only thing keeping his head attached.

His blood rushes.

You don’t fight like normal swordsfighters. Your movements are smooth, calculated, but there’s something more. Something predatory.

Zoro grins “Not bad.”

You tilt your head “Not bad?”

And then you attack for real.

The clash of steel echoes through the trees. Zoro meets each strike, but he can feel the difference in the way you fight. You don’t waste movement. You don’t test him. You go straight for the kill.

Most people would find that terrifying.

Zoro finds it hot as hell.

His smirk widens “You don’t hold back, huh?”

You don’t answer, but there’s something in your eyes... curiosity, maybe. Like you’re testing him.

Good. He likes a challenge.

The fight goes on, fast and brutal, but in the end, neither of you go all out. It’s just a taste, a promise of something more. When you finally lower your blade, Zoro does the same.

You study him for a moment, then nod “You’re not bad either.”

Zoro huffs a laugh “High praise.”

You sheath your sword and turn away “I’m going back to town. You coming or what?”

He watches you go, smirking to himself.

Yeah. He’s definitely interested.

Years Later – Zoro should probably be concerned that his partner is one of the most terrifying people he’s ever met.

But he’s not.

In fact, it just makes him like you more.

Right now, you’re standing on the deck of the Sunny, staring down a group of bounty hunters dumb enough to challenge you. You haven’t even drawn your sword yet, but the way you look at them, sharp, unreadable, deadly, makes them hesitate.

Zoro leans against the railing, watching with amusement. He already knows how this will go.

One of the bounty hunters shifts nervously “Y-you gonna fight or what?”

You tilt your head, smiling faintly “You first.”

There’s a moment of hesitation. Then they charge. Big mistake.

Zoro watches as you dodge effortlessly, your blade a blur. The fight lasts seconds. By the time you sheath your sword, your opponents are on the ground, groaning in pain.

Silence. Then, Luffy cheers from the mast “That was awesome!”

Zoro smirks. Damn right it was.

You turn to him, raising an eyebrow “You just gonna watch?”

He shrugs with a smirk “I was enjoying watching... and didn’t wanna get in your way.”

You walk over, stopping in front of him “You’re getting lazy.”

He scoffs “Oh yeah?”

You lean in, voice low “Yeah. Maybe I should fight you next.”

Zoro feels a familiar rush of excitement. His hand twitches toward his swords “You sure you can keep up?”

You smirk “Try me.”

And just like that, he’s gone.

Lost in you, in the fight, in the thrill of having someone who meets him blow for blow.

You’re terrifying. And beautiful. And stronger than hell.

And he wouldn’t have you any other way.

── .✦ Vinsmoke Sanji:

Sanji has seen all kinds of people. Beautiful women, powerful warriors, even actual monsters. But he’s never met anyone like you.

You meet in a quiet, dimly lit tavern. The crew stops for a meal, and Sanji, always on the lookout for interesting faces, notices you immediately.

You sit in the darkest corner, barely touching your drink. Your posture is relaxed, but there’s something wrong about it, like you could strike at any moment. The air around you feels heavy.

People glance at you and quickly look away. A group of bounty hunters at a nearby table seem tense, whispering among themselves.

Sanji watches as one of them inches toward the door. His hands are shaking.

That’s when he realizes, they’re afraid of you. A lot.

Sanji takes a slow drag of his cigarette. Interesting.

“Hey cook, what are you doing there, standing like an idiot.” Zoro says while they all sit at a table.

He’s about to turn back to his crew and reply to that marimo when the bartender makes a mistake and accidentally spills a drink on your sleeve.

The entire tavern stops breathing.

The bartender goes pale “I—I’m so sorry—”

You say nothing. You don’t even look at him. Just slowly, carefully, you pick up a napkin and wipe your sleeve.

The silence stretches.

Sanji almost laughs at how scared everyone looks. What, do they think you’re gonna kill him for a drink spill?

The bartender swallows “Please, let me—”

“It’s fine” you say.

Your voice is quiet. Smooth. Too calm.

The bartender flinches anyway.

Sanji watches as you set the napkin down, push your drink away, and stand. You turn toward the door, and the crowd parts around you, everyone desperate to get out of your way.

Sanji, curious as hell, does the exact opposite.

He steps into your path, smiling “Leaving so soon?”

You stop and lift your gaze, as everyone there gasps.

Most people can’t meet Sanji’s eyes for long. His confidence, his sharpness, it makes them squirm. But you?

You stare right through him.

For the first time in a long time, Sanji feels his heart skip.

“…Who are you?” he asks.

You tilt your head slightly “Does it matter?”

That voice. Calm. Slow. Like a knife dragging against silk.

Sanji exhales smoke, smirking “I’d like to think so.”

You study him. And for some reason, he feels like he’s the one being hunted.

Then you smile, small, unreadable “See you around… cook.”

And just like that, you’re gone.

Sanji stands there, heart pounding as he thinks, oh, I’m in trouble.

Years Later – Sanji likes to think he doesn’t scare easy. He’s faced warlords, monsters, and the wrath of Nami’s fist.

But nothing terrifies him more than the way you just appear.

“Sanji.”

“GAH—!”

He jumps, nearly dropping the plate he’s holding. You’re suddenly right next to him, quiet as a shadow.

He clutches his chest “How do you do that?!”

You blink “Do what?”

“That!” He gestures at you wildly “I didn’t hear you at all! You just—just materialized!”

You tilt your head, amused “I walked in.”

“No, you haunted in.”

You hum in thought “Maybe you should pay more attention.”

Sanji groans, running a hand through his hair “You’re gonna kill me one day, I swear.”

“Wouldn’t be much fun,” you say, smirking slightly “I’d miss this.”

Sanji pauses. Then, with a slow, dramatic sigh, he pulls you into a hug.

You stiffen at first, but he’s patient. He knows you’re not used to softness.

When you relax, he kisses the top of your head “You’re cruel, y’know that?”

“Am I?”

“You make my heart stop every damn day.”

You smile against his chest “Good.”

── .✦ Trafalgar D. Law:

Law prides himself on being composed. No matter the situation, he never loses control.

But then he meets you, and for the first time in a long time, he feels something close to unease.

It happens on a stormy night. The Heart Pirates dock at a quiet island, and Law sets off alone, drawn by rumors of a dangerous individual hiding in town. Some say you’re a ghost, others call you a demon.

He doesn’t believe in superstition. But he believes in threats.

So when he finds you in the ruins outside of town, standing perfectly still, eyes dark and unreadable, he watches you carefully.

“You’ve been causing trouble” he says, testing your reaction.

You don’t move. Don’t speak. The wind howls through the ruins, but you remain as still as a statue.

Most people shift under his gaze. But you? You don’t even blink.

Law narrows his eyes “Who are you?”

Finally, you tilt your head “You already know, don’t you?”

Your voice is calm. Steady. Wrong.

It reminds him of the quiet before a scalpel slices skin.

Law tightens his grip on Kikoku “What’s your ability?”

You step forward, and the ground cracks beneath your foot. A shadow flickers at the edge of his vision, stretching unnaturally.

“Does it matter?” you ask.

Law doesn’t flinch. But something deep in his chest tightens.

Because he knows that feeling. The quiet hum of danger.

And yet, instead of fear, he feels something else. Intrigue. He's actually really attracted and he can't deny it.

It takes Law a while to notice. To really notice.

Because you’re fearless in battle. You fight like a force of nature, silent and merciless, the kind of presence that makes enemies pray they don’t cross your path. You don’t just win fights, you end them.

And yet, when you’re with the crew, you’re… different.

Law catches it in small moments.

The way you ruffle Bepo’s fur when you think no one’s looking. The way you always make sure Penguin and Shachi get extra food after a long day. The way you quietly fix things around the ship before anyone else notices they’re broken.

And he feels it most with him. Like when you sit beside him in the submarine’s dimly lit halls, comfortable in silence, just existing next to him without expectation. Or when you lean against him after a rough mission, exhaustion making you a little softer, a little less guarded.

Or, most obviously, when you think he’s asleep.

He catches you once, fingers brushing against his hair, barely there, like you’re memorizing the shape of him.

He should say something. Call you out. But he doesn’t.

Because for some reason, the realization that the person who terrifies even seasoned killers, is so unbelievably gentle with him?

It does something to him.

Something dangerous.

Years Later – Being in a relationship with you comes with some complications.

Like right now.

“Sit still, damn it” Law mutters, pressing bandages against your side.

You sigh “It’s just a scratch.”

Law glares at you “It’s a stab wound.”

You shrug “Same thing.”

He clenches his jaw, grabbing your chin and forcing you to look at him “I swear, you are the worst patient I’ve ever had.”

You smirk “And yet, I’m still your favorite.”

Law groans, but he doesn’t deny it.

Because despite everything, your terrifying strength, your eerie presence, your complete disregard for injuries, he can’t help but be drawn to you.

You are the only person who unsettles him. And somehow, you’ve also become the one person he trusts the most.

He huffs, finishing the bandages “Try not to die.”

You grin, leaning in “Worried about me, doctor?”

“Tch” He flicks your forehead “Shut up.”

And despite himself, he smiles.

The next time you get hurt, Law doesn’t even bother hiding his frustration.

“You’re reckless,” he mutters, tightening the bandage around your arm “One of these days, you’re gonna get yourself killed.”

You watch him, amused “Would you miss me?”

He scowls “Shut up”

You smirk “You would.”

Law clicks his tongue, looking away. He hates how smug you sound. Hates it even more because you’re right.

Instead of answering, he sighs, finishing the bandage. Then, before he can talk himself out of it, he presses a hand against your jaw, thumb brushing your cheek.

“You’re lucky I like you” he mutters.

For the first time, you freeze.

Then, slowly, you smile. And Law knows he’s in so much trouble.

── .✦ Portgas D. Ace:

On a nameless island, a pit stop for pirates and criminals alike, Ace hears the rumors first, stories about a lone warrior, someone so deadly that even bounty hunters won’t go near them.

He thinks it sounds like fun.

So when he walks into a bar and sees everyone stiffening at the mere sight of someone sitting in the corner, he knows he’s found you.

You sit alone, idly spinning a knife between your fingers. Your expression is calm, unreadable, but the tension in the room is thick.

Ace grins, making his way over “Mind if I sit?”

You don’t look up “Do what you want.”

He plops down across from you, resting his chin in his hand “Y’know, people are real scared of you.”

Silence.

Ace watches you carefully. You don’t move like a normal fighter. There’s something off about the way you breathe, the way your presence lingers like a shadow stretching too far.

It should probably freak him out.

Instead, it makes his blood rush.

“So,” he continues, smirking “What’s your deal? You a bounty hunter? Are you here to fight?”

You finally meet his eyes. Your gaze is sharp, calculating, like you’re dissecting him without lifting a finger.

"I was just curious who everyone was talking about, turns out it was you."

“…You’re not scared of me?”

Ace grins wider “Should I be?”

The knife in your hand stops spinning and or a split second, the air feels heavy.

Then, slowly, you smirk “Maybe? You tell me. That's what you came here for, isn't it?”

Ace laughs. Loud, bright, genuine.

And just like that, he decides that he actually finds you very attractive, and isn't letting you go so easily.

Years Later – Ace still remembers the first time he saw you fight.

He has always been the kind of guy who laughs in the face of danger.

He doesn’t hesitate to charge into battle, doesn’t flinch at the thought of death. He’s faced warlords, marines, even entire armies.

But when he saw you fighting? For the first time in his life, he felt like prey, even if you weren't fighting him.

How you moved like a phantom, striking fast, silent, merciless. How your enemies barely had time to scream before they hit the ground.

Everyone calls you terrifying. A monster. A nightmare in a human form.

And yet, right now, curled up against him, grumbling sleepily as he wraps his arms around you Ace can’t help but laugh.

You groan “What? You going crazy now?”

“You,” he teases, resting his chin on top of your head “You’re supposed to be the scariest person alive, but look at you.”

You swat at his chest “Shut up.”

Ace just grins, pulling you closer “Nah. I like reminding you.”

"You're always so annoying..." you say turning to not let him see you blush.

Because despite the way you fight, despite the way you terrify your enemies, Ace has seen what no one else has.

How you tuck into his blankets when you're alone. How you always make sure the crew eats before you do. How you fuss over him when he pretends his injuries don’t hurt.

You act all tough, all sharp edges and killing intent.

But Ace knows the truth.

You’re soft. At least, with him.

And that makes him fall for you even more.

He turn your head so that he can see you and with a smirk he says "Don't worry you're hot both ways, I don't mind your soft side at all"

Then he kiss your forehead and you try to hide again, making him laugh softly.

── .✦ Shanks:

Shanks has seen a lot in his life.

He’s fought warlords, crossed paths with the most dangerous men on the seas, and stared death in the face with a grin.

But when he meets you, he realizes he’s never met someone who could scare him and turn him on at the same time.

It happens in a crowded port town, where pirates and mercenaries walk side by side, tension thick in the air. Shanks and his crew are enjoying a round of drinks when Benn nudges him, nodding toward a shadowed corner of the bar.

“Oi, I found out that one’s got quite the reputation.”

Shanks follows his gaze and sees you.

You sit alone, posture relaxed but too still. There’s something about you... something in the way the people around you refuse to meet your eyes, in the way the bartender serves you with hands that tremble, scared to even do his own job.

The crew isn’t easily shaken, but even they seem wary.

Shanks just grins. Because if there’s one thing he can’t resist, it’s a challenge.

“Think I’ll go say hi.”

Benn sighs “Of course you will. Never doubted it.”

Shanks strolls over, drink in hand, and slides into the seat across from you without asking.

You don’t react. Just lift your gaze and meet his like you’re peering into his soul.

He whistles “You’ve got quite the stare.”

“You’ve got quite the nerve...” you reply smoothly.

Shanks chuckles “I get that a lot, actually.”

Silence stretches between you. He expects you to get annoyed, to tell him to leave, but surprisingly you don’t.

You just watch him. Measuring. Calculating. And damn if it doesn’t send a thrill up his spine.

Finally, you speak “You’re not scared of me.”

Shanks smirks, tipping his drink toward you “Should I be?”

Your eyes glint with something sharp. Dangerous. Interested.

“Maybe not, but who knows.”

Shanks leans forward, grinning “I like my odds.”

"I can see it..."

Years Later - “You’re doing it again” Benn mutters.

Shanks blinks “Doing what?”

Benn nods toward you. You’re across the deck, casually sharpening a blade, the crew giving you a very wide berth.

“You’re staring like a love-struck idiot” Benn sighs.

Shanks laughs “Can you blame me?”

Because despite years of being with you, despite knowing exactly how terrifying you can be, Shanks still finds himself completely captivated whenever you're fighting or not.

He’s seen you end fights with a single strike, watched entire battlefields fall silent at your presence. You are ruthless when necessary, the kind of person who doesn’t waste time with threats, just action.

And yet when you think no one’s watching, he sees the little things.

How you make sure the younger crew members eat first. How you adjust someone’s coat when they’re not paying attention. How, late at night, when exhaustion weighs heavy, you let yourself lean into him.

And Shanks?

He eats it up.

Because out of everyone in the world, you choose to be soft only with him.

Later that night, as you both sit on the deck watching the waves, Shanks stretches, throwing an arm around your shoulders.

You roll your eyes but don’t push him away.

He grins “Y’know, for someone so scary, you’re kinda sweet.”

You turn, raising a brow “Wanna say that again?”

Shanks chuckles “Not if I value my life, and I do.”

You smirk, leaning against him just a little.

And that small, rare gesture is worth more to him than any treasure. He's totally in your hands, can you believe it? Because even he something looks at himself and shake his own head at the thought, but at the end who cares? He's with the most attractive person out there.

── .✦ Sabo:

Sabo isn’t the type to scare easily.

He has fought world nobles, infiltrated enemy territory, and stared death in the face more times than he can count. Fear isn’t something he entertains, it’s something he’s learned to push aside, to control.

But when he meets you?

For the first time in a long while, he actually hesitates.

It happens in a revolution-friendly town, the kind of place where people whisper about rebellion but fear retaliation too much to act. Sabo’s here on business, but what he doesn’t expect is to hear a name spoken in hushed, almost fearful tones.

A name that isn’t a government official or a bounty hunter, but yours.

“Who are they?” he asks a local, intrigued.

The man pales “Someone you don’t want to cross.”

Sabo just smirks “Is that so?”

He should probably be cautious. Should probably listen to the fear in the man’s voice.

But instead, he just wants to meet you more.

You’re exactly as the rumors say. You're cold, calculating and dangerous.

When Sabo finds you, you don’t attack him. You just watch him. Still. Silent. Your presence alone feels heavy, like the weight of an unseen blade resting against his throat, daring him to make a wrong move.

Most people would crack under it.

Sabo just grins “Heard a lot about you.”

You don’t react “Likewise.”

He hums, studying you. Most would be unnerved by your unwavering stare, the cold calculation in your eyes. But Sabo finds it fascinating. Finds you fascinating.

He hums, studying you “And? What’s your verdict?”

Your eyes narrow slightly, assessing him like he’s prey “Too early to tell. I don't judge based on rumors.”

For a moment, the two of you just stand there, a quiet tension settling between you. Sabo knows he should be cautious, he knows he’s facing someone whose strength is being feared even among revolutionaries.

But all he can think is — Damn. They’re kinda hot.

Years Later – It’s funny.

Everyone fears you. The Revolutionary Army sees you as a force of nature, one of their strongest, deadliest members. You’re efficient in battle, merciless when necessary. People whisper about you in the same breath as high-ranking officers, speaking of you like a phantom, something to be respected, but never approached.

But Sabo sees more than just the deadly aura that makes people tread lightly.

He sees the way your eyes gleam with amusement when a mission goes exactly as planned. He sees the way you tilt your head in interest, studying your enemies as if they’re puzzles to be solved before being discarded. He sees the way you move, every motion precise, effortless, a dance with death that you never lose.

And he loves it.

Loves the sharp edges, the lethal grace, the way you make his heart race, not with fear, but with something far more intoxicating.

And yet, he also sees the moments no one else does.

You, sitting beside him late at night, absentmindedly tracing circles against his palm.

You, making sure Koala doesn’t overwork herself, leaving her favorite snacks on her desk without a word.

You, rolling your eyes but still letting Sabo pull you into a hug after a long mission, even though your reputation could probably shatter just from being seen indulging him.

“You know,” he teases one night, tilting his head, “for someone so scary, you’re kind of a softie.”

You give him a flat look “Take that back.”

Sabo laughs, eyes gleaming with challenge “Nope. Never gonna happen.”

You grumble something under your breath but don’t pull away, and he counts that as a win.

Because out of everyone in the world, he knows you’re only ever like this with him.

And as much as he adores every part of you, it’s that razor-sharp danger in your eyes, that power in your every movement, that makes his blood sing.

It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating.

And damn, does he love you for it.

── .✦ Crocodile:

Crocodile has met aaaall kinds of people.

Cowards who grovel at his feet. Fools who think they can challenge him. Liars who smile while plotting his downfall.

But you? You don’t fit into any category.

Because when he first meets you, standing over the broken bodies of bounty hunters, face calm, eyes cold, he doesn’t see fear. He doesn’t see arrogance.

He sees power.

And for the first time in a long while, he’s interested.

When in Rainbase, long after the fall of Baroque Works, Crocodile has been rebuilding, regaining influence, cutting down anyone foolish enough to think he’s lost his edge.

And then you show up.

A ghost in the desert, they call you. A storm without warning. The kind of person who doesn’t make threats, just leaves bodies in their wake.

Crocodile hears the whispers. He almost ignores them.

Until one of his men ends up dead.

Then it's when he decides it’s time to meet you himself.

He finds you in a back alley, wiping blood from your blade.

You don’t look surprised to see him.

“You’ve been causing many problems” he says, exhaling smoke.

You tilt your head, unconcerned “That depends on who you ask.”

Crocodile’s lips curl into something amused. He’s used to people trembling in his presence. But you? You just stand there, watching him with the same detached intensity one might give a corpse.

It should irritate him.

Instead, it makes his blood thrill.

“I don’t like loose ends,” he says “So tell me, why shouldn’t I kill you?”

For the first time, you smile.

Not kind. Not warm.

Just sharp. Cold. Dangerous.

“You could try, I'm happy if you try.”

The air shifts.

Crocodile’s grip on his cigar tightens. His instincts, honed from years of surviving the worst of the worst, tell him that fighting you would not be easy.

And he likes that.

Years Later – Most people don’t look him in the eye.

Most people don’t speak without permission, don’t challenge his decisions, don’t dare to stand too close.

You do all of that.

And Crocodile lets you.

Because unlike the weaklings who grovel before him, you don’t need protection. You don’t need his power to survive.

You’re strong. Cold. Unshaken by blood or war.

And that makes you the only person truly worth his time.

One night, you’re both on the balcony of his hideout, looking down at the city below.

Crocodile exhales smoke, glancing at you “Most people would rather die than be in my company.”

You don’t even blink “Most people are weak.”

He chuckles, low and dark “That so?”

You finally meet his gaze, and in your eyes, he sees something sharp. Something dangerous.

Something that matches him.

He smirks.

Because finally, after years of dealing with fools, liars, and cowards, he’s found someone who is exactly his kind of monster.

[thirstencounters]

❛  touch  yourself  for  me .  ❜

 ―    ﴾  𝚗𝚜𝚏𝚠  𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚝𝚜  ﴿   :    𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒  𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐘  𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍.

Mulder had always been one to watch others, but never did he think of someone else wanting to watch him. The very idea of it, the very mention of it, causes a surge of heat to rush though his veins, settling heavy on his groin. His breath catches, lashes fluttering as he looks to Dr. Lecter sitting on the other side of the couch, across from him. They're both comfortable, both reclining but one was very much the predator and the other the prey. Fox, with his back against the arm rest, at first laughs it off but realizes that the other man is very, very serious.

There's a moment where he hesitates, excitement and fear pulsing though his veins. Everything was new with Hannibal. Everything felt as though he were standing on a cliff, with the other just waiting patiently behind him. Those eyes, haunting, piercing, unwavering as Mulder slowly eases his legs open. His hand smooths along the fabric of his slacks, fingers caressing thigh and pressing along the bulge that was forming underneath the surface.

His breath quickens, eyes beginning to dilate as the reality of the situation sinks deeper into his skin. His cock throbs, not only at his touch but at the way the doctor looks at him. A soft moan escapes his parted lips, and he gives a squeeze to his aching hard-on. Already he can feel himself begin to leak.

@eatsinsides

[ranoutofficssoiwritemyown]

Hello! Can I request the lads boys with a reader that’s typically super composed losing their composure? It could be something serious or super small, they just hit their breaking point.

Okay, this might be longer than I intended it to be but les go

Zayne

Zayne flinches slightly when you slam the door shut as you enter.

“Hello, dear”

“I can’t fucking believe it”

Zayne raises his eyebrow. He has never, and he can swear that he never, ever heard a swear word coming from your mouth, nor has he ever seen you this angry.

“Don’t these people look where they’re going at all? Look at my shoes, they were white when I left home this morning. At least three people have stepped on me. What the fuck?”

Maybe Zayne should thank god that you don’t notice how he sneaks a glance at the calendar and once he makes sure it is nowhere near your period he stands up and approaches you, however, you interrupt whatever he is going to say while you’re pacing back and forth.

“Then I was late to work, and to make matters worse I got stuck in the elevator. I was there for at least half an hour. And when I finally meet Jenna, because that’s why I was there actually since it’s my day off, I found out that I can’t go to any mission for at least three days, because a certain doctor doesn’t recommend it”

Zayne’s eyes widen at her last sentence. No, he’s not scared of you, generally. But he’s also never seen you like this. The thing is, you and Zayne are on the same wavelength. Both of you are calm and composed, even during arguments, which are rare, none of you raise your voice. Now he’s standing here watching you pace around in his office and shouting curses because you had a bad day, part of which is apparently his fault and… he fears for his life.

Only when he sees angry tears does he come out of the trance and grab your hand pulling you to him. He cups your face and you look up at him with a frown.

“Okay, take a deep breath with me” he inhales deeply and you copy him. He does it a couple of times before seeing you slightly relax “Good. Now, listen to me. I understand you had a bad day and I’m sorry that you can’t go on missions for a few days, but you had an injury a week ago”

You open your mouth to speak but he shushes you with his finger on your lips.

“Shh, let me. I know it’s healed, but you were on bed rest and even if you feel like it, you’re not completely fine. Let’s give it a few days, hm? Trust me, I’m not doing this just because.”

You stay silent and Zayne sighs.

“I’ll be off in an hour. How about you wait for me? Then we can go home and have hot chocolate while watching the show you’ve been begging me to watch together for weeks.”

“I wasn’t begging…” you mumble as you look down.

“What was that?”

“Okay”

“Okay,” Zayne kisses your forehead before you get comfortable in the armchair in the corner of his office.

Rafayel

‘Well, she needs a fucking exorcism’ is his first thought as he sees you stomping in his studio. Apparently, your cat is lost, and Rafayel might or might not have something to do with it. In his defense, it wasn’t on purpose. How could he have known that if he’d leave his door open that little devil would run away?

“I knew I shouldn’t have left him with you, I’m so stupid- actually no, you’re so stupid. How the hell did you lose him?”

“I told you, I left the door-”

“I know what you told me, it was rhetorical- god is your brain of a fish too?”

“Wow, that’s mean”

Rafayel pouts slightly and he would become dramatic in a moment if it wasn’t you being dramatic right now and you weren’t even doing it on purpose. Oh no, Rafayel has never seen you this furious, nearly having a mental breakdown and his brain short circuits.

“He must be so scared and hungry and… lost” You sniffle and Rafayel realises you’re crying.

“Hey, hey, look. We’ll find him okay? Thomas is out there searching for him. I’m so sorry I lost him but we’ll get him back, I promise”

“How? You don’t even-”

“Look who I found”

Thomas enters the studio with an orange cat in his arms. You run to him immediately and Rafayel sighs in relief. He thinks you would actually kill him if Thomas couldn’t find the cat.

“I owe you my life” he whispers to Thomas.

Rafayel approaches you, eyeing the cat in disdain.

“I’m never leaving you with him,” you say to your cat.

“Oh- oh no. Please don’t take him away from me”

You laugh at his sarcastic answer.

“I’m sorry I called you stupid”

If Rafayel couldn’t act dramatic before, now was the perfect time.

“Yeah, you should be. That was really mean, you know? Your words pierced through my heart like a dagger-”

You cut him off with a kiss

“Does this make up for it?”

“What was I talking about?”

You laugh.

Xavier

Xavier has never in his life regretted anything like he regrets letting you play on his gaming console. Who would know that as much as you are calm and collected, there is a rage in you that only the videogame can take out on the surface. Maybe not. Xavier knows you've been stressed lately and maybe you're taking everything on your teammates in some stupid videogame. Either way, it doesn't look good.

“Are you serious? You are a support for fuck’s sake, why are you taking my kills? I’m the adc here. I’m playing with degenerates”

You’ve been shouting at the screen for so long that Xavier becomes tired. He tries to tune you out, he really does, but there’s only so much he can take. He gets up from the bed and unplugs the gaming console. You look at him like he just stabbed you in the back.

“Wh-what- why? Oh my god, I’m gonna get banned for being afk”

“It’s my account, I’m gonna get banned and I don’t care. This game is driving you crazy… and me”

“But-”

“No,” he says it like, you’re a kid “Come to bed, I wanna take a nap”

“I’m not sleepy,” You say while yawning and Xavier chuckles slightly.

“Okay, come on”

You take his hand and drop to bed, taking him with you.

“I bought a new hero, by the way”

“YOU SPENT MY GOLD?”

“Shh, let’s sleep”

You shush him quickly as he grumbles something under his breath. Whatever, it's a much healthier coping mechanism anyway.

Sylus

Sylus didn’t expect to see you bawling your eyes out when he entered his bedroom. To say, he is surprised, would be an understatement. The most out of control he has seen you is when you… well, when you wanted to kill him, to be honest. Even then, he pulled the trigger on himself. So seeing you in his room, sobbing in his bed is something new and terrifying. In a second he is beside you, gathering you in his arms while you sob into his chest.

“Sweetie, tell me what’s the matter. You know I can make it disappear, whatever it is… or whoever it is.”

You don’t answer, couldn’t answer. But you try to get ahold of yourself.

“He-” and a sob escaped your lips again.

Sylus stayed silent to give you time to gather your words as he planned the most painful ways to murder whoever ‘he’ was, in his mind.

“He loved her and he didn’t tell her, because-” you sniffle as Sylus gets more and more confused “because he thought she would never look at him”

You grab the book beside you and suddenly everything makes sense. You’re crying because of a book. Sylus almost laughed, but he stopped himself from making a grave mistake.

“But she loved him too and now she’s married but they both still love each other. And she named her son after him”

Sylus understands half of it as he wipes your tears.

“What do I do with you, kitten, hm?”

“What?”

He laughs before kissing your cheek

“I’ll get the bath ready and tell me about the book while we relax, okay?”

“Okay”

“And maybe next time, don’t give me a heart attack”

You frown.

“It’s really sad. Doesn’t it affect you at all?”

“Fictional tragic love? Not my cup of tea. But coming home and seeing you having a mental breakdown over a book affects me… a lot, may I add”

You laugh sheepishly

“Sorry”

He kisses you, before disappearing into the bathroom.

Caleb

Caleb has known you since childhood and has seen every side of you… or so he thought. He can swear he has never seen you so angry and to make matters worse, you’re angry at him. Now he regrets every life choice he has ever made.

“Okay pipsqueak, calm down-”

Another apple comes flying to his face and he barely avoids it.

“Don’t tell me to calm down, you asshole. Am I your prisoner now? You locked me in your house while you were god knows where and even had the nerve to not answer my calls. I swear-”

You try to throw another apple at him but he grabs it before you can.

“I know, I know. I’m sorry but I wasn’t near my phone, what was I supposed to do?”

“Maybe not lock me into the house?” You exclaim.

“Oh, you’re so hot when you’re mad”

There is a moment of silence before you lunge at him.

“Fuck, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that- Ow!” He rambles as you hit his chest repeatedly. He steps back and trips over something. Next thing he knows, he’s on the floor and you’re on top of him, straddling his waist. You are breathing heavily as you blow loose strands of your hair from your face.

“There’s something wrong with you”

You say calmly and he stays silent.

“Why would you-”

“You tried to leave”

He says suddenly.

“What?”

“How would you know you were locked in if you didn’t try to leave?”

You look at him dumbfounded and almost started pounding on his chest again.

“I didn’t know what to expect when you’d wake up and I had to go to work. I didn’t want to come home and find you gone so I did what I could think of… And I really wasn’t near my phone when you were calling me, I swear.”

“you are so stupid”

You mumble as you get up. He follows you and dusts himself off.

“I wanted to get some air, take a walk but no my boyfriend is a paranoid freak”

“I’m your boyfriend?”

He grins suddenly. You watch him for a minute before letting out a scoff

“An idiot is what you are”

[aquasoftware]

𖦹 SMASH OR PASS? 𖦹

Snippet | “Who you foolin’, doll? Look atcha—fuckin’ ruined for me.”

FT║ Fem!Reader ✘ Toji, F.

Desc║ A harmless Smash or Pass game in the break room turns into a real experience when Toji overhears your bold declaration—and later that night, he ensures you live up to your words.

Cw║ Smut proceed w caution, minimal plot, Co-workers trope, Dom/Sub dynamics, mānhandling, s!ze k!nk, tummy bulge, overstim, degrádàt!on/praise, creamp!e, chok!ng/breath play, light impact play, scratching/b!ting, a bit of säd!sm (?), humiliation, mirror sɛx, dumbǐfīcation, cocķ drunk reader, unrealistic d size, forced eye contact, implied consent + rough sėx.

WC ➜ 2.3K ➜ ML

15 minute read. | Fic type: Oneshot.

The break room was a breeding ground for gossip or useless conversations. An extremely comfortable olive-green sofa—dubbed the equivalent of a bear’s hibernation spot—stood out in contrast to concerningly constant flickering of fluorescent lights, an indented scent of roasted black coffee tip-toeing throughout the room, soon followed by cheap air freshener, while a few faded vending machines—marked with worn-out “Out of Order!” signs for what felt like decades completed the dreary atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the only real pop of color in the otherwise dull break room was the sofa everyone was obsessed with. And when you give employees a sofa with little else to entertain them you get insanely bored, unanimous groans echoing until someone suggests starting a corny game of smash or pass starring some other co-workers.

The thing is you weren’t particularly interested at first, completely tuning them out as you scrolled through cute orange cat videos on TikTok, your phone nestled in tired hands. That was—until someone blurted out, “Smash or pass Toji Fushiguro?”

A few people had the absolute nerve to say pass without even giving any reasoning. You broke your neck turning toward them, clicking your phone off to save a little battery—suddenly caring about the game you thought was so ‘stupid.’

You couldn’t deny it—you took that personally, as if Toji had already put a ring on your finger and asked for your hand in marriage on one bent knee. Lips parted without a second thought, you jumped in to defend him, readily interrupting, “Y’all are wild for passing thee Toji Fushiguro, but more for me, I guess. Smash. In fact, I’d let him manhandle me if I had the chance!”

You practically gushed, recalling every time his pecs looked one flex away from obliterating his poor, helpless uniform. The stretch of fabric over hard muscle, the teasing glimpse of skin whenever he rolled up his sleeves—it was certainly dangerous. And those brief glances you two shared? Just a flicker of eye contact was enough to make your heart stutter and your daydream-state brain short-circuit.

Laughter erupted, loud enough to deafen poor ears, splattered across the room, along with an appalled gasp from an observant co-worker.

“Oooh, speak of the devil…” she teased, wiggling her brows and covering her mouth.

Because, unluckily for you, Toji stood tall, folded arms, leaning against the doorway that nearly was unsuitable to fit his build. Clearly amused by your bold statement, a smirk rested easily on his face, piercing green eyes locking onto yours.

“Oh really, sweetheart?” he teased, running a hand through his short, jet-black hair. His chuckle was deep enough to shake the room, sending heat pooling between your needy thighs—yet startling enough to make your heart lurch at his unexpected presence.

“Oh my god, Toji, I didn’t mean-” you struggled to breathe out, your throat going dry as you shoved your slightly sweaty palms into your pockets.

Why’d he have to come in literally on cue? you thought, stomach twisting into knots, your skin burning like a furnace.

The room watched in silence, entranced, as if they had just been left on a cliffhanger in a movie, whispers shooting amongst them left and right.

Toji pushed off the doorframe, taking a slow step inside. “Didn’t mean it, huh?” He kissed his teeth, eyes dragging over you in a way that made your skin prickle with goosebumps. “Shame, y’seemed pretty confident about that little claim a second ago.”

“Fine, fine, I said what I said.” You huffed, rolling your eyes, forcing yourself to stand your ground—even though you weren’t prepared for him to literally make you eat your words.

Because later that night, Toji had you pinned against his bedroom wall, facing him, one sore leg flung over his shoulder—completely vulnerable to his merciless speed.

Each brutal thrust knocked the breath from your lungs, the humid air filled with loud, staggering gasps. His grip was cruel, fingers digging into your hips as he kept your wobbly leg steady, smug at the way your body trembled under his touch.

The freezing surface of the wall contrasted with the intensity between the two of you, while looking in his direction at a time like this felt impossible.

Not that he let you look away—when you did focus anywhere else feeling embarrassed by how easily you let him fuck, his big rough hand grabbed your chin forcing you to look at him.

“Shit, that’s it baby, want you to look at me while you takin’ it.” He whispered, hot breath fanning all over your ear.

Your walls fluttered violently at his sinful words, your body bouncing feebly against the wall with every ram into your velvet walls. You could hardly take his strength, nothing more than a ragdoll for him to use, each filthy, deep stroke claiming you as his property.

His thrusts alone were enough to tell you—you were his little fucktoy.

Breaking eye contact for a brief second he peeked down seeing your one unsteady leg in action, borderline hissing at him for the amount of time he had you pressed against this wall.

“Mmmh, poor thing, huh?” he sneered, proud you struggled to keep up with him. “Leg already shakin’ we’ve barely even started.”

A taunting lie.

You had been at it for hours. There was no way in hell this was just the beginning. You could barely believe your ears when he had the audacity to say otherwise.

Before you could even attempt to reply, his hand shot up to your throat, thick fingers wrapping around your neck with precise control.

He squeezed just enough to leave your head spinning, your drooling cunt twitching at the way the pressure made the pleasure more intense—hypnotic, all-consuming.

And the moment you let out those choked, gasping moans, Toji grinned like a cheshire cat.

He knew he had you.

“Ohhh, fuck yeah—there it is, mhm,” Toji murmured smoothly, placing a soft kiss on your jawline—as if he wasn’t currently scrambling your guts.

Your walls clenched around his fat length, so fucking snug, your body basically begging for more.

Mouth falling open letting out whimpers that sprang off of the thin apartment walls, eyes hazy, with furrowed brows having a mind that could hardly function as your head lolled against the wall.

The only thing you could focus on? How impossibly full you felt, every thick inch of him smothering your sweet spots.

“Shit, baby, you really are dumb for my cock, huh?”

Toji’s lips curled devilishly, ego soaring at how easily he reduced you to just this—mindless, whiney, hungry slut for him.

“Aah, y-yes, yes, yes!”

“Good answer, pretty girl.” He spat, chest looming over your smaller figure.

Body grinding up into your sweaty pelvis real slow to catch you off guard a little feeling him nudging on your throbbing clit causing you to squirm.

But that little break didn’t last for long, he was right back to slamming into your sopping hole.

“Ooh, fuck—s-slow down, s’toomuch!” you pleaded, legs trembling as another sharp stroke sent a shockwave of ecstasy straight to your core.

Your stiletto nails dug into his shoulders, scratching deep, drawing thin rivulets of blood—desperate for something, anything to hold onto.

The sting only made Toji groan, a low, thirsty sound rumbling from his chest.

“Too much? Thought you wanted some manhandlin’ sweetheart.” He mocked.

His hand left your throat solely to slap your soft tits triggering a jolt reaction in your body, eyes glued at the way they jiggled every time his cock speared into you hitting so unfathomably it made your stomach bulge.

“Can’t handle me hm?”

“I can it’s just-” You tried to argue, but your voice came out weak, wrecked, breathless—like it had run out of ink from being used too much.

Toji snickered.

“Who you foolin’ doll? Look atcha, fuckin’ destroyed for me.” His voice ridiculed, one arm wrapped under your ass, lifting you effortlessly, stepping closer to the broad black-framed mirror across his room, as he used two fingers to turn your head.

Your reflection looked absolutely torn apart.

Toji’s markings were painted all over your skin, bruises and love bites that made it painfully clear you’d need to stop by a convenience store for some heavy-duty makeup before work tomorrow.

Your pretty pussy splitting open around his thick ten-inch cock, sparkling with slick.

Your mouth fell open in pure shock, infused with just a hint of awe.

Toji smirked slyly. “Didn’t even realize how fuckin’ filthy you looked, huh?” he rasped, licking a slow stripe up the side of your neck, his sharp teeth nipping at your ear—provoking a full-body shudder.

Tiny frame looking so good blended with him, quaking, mewling, accommodating his size. Struggling, you could barely handle him, and yet, he was sure he was a perfect fit for your little cunt.

Your stomach clenched at the sight, your walls grasping around him, signaling you were close again.

Toji growled at the way you crushed him.

“Ohh fuck yeah, Y/n you like watchin’ yourself get ruined?” He cooed, vibrating his voice with lust.

His thrusts got sharper, meaner, as one of your hands slid to your lower stomach, pressing against the bulge of his ten-inches.

Melting at the feeling was honestly an understatement.

“God, you’re so deep,” you hummed, your voice thick and sultry, nearly a duplicate of aged wine.

“Yeah? You feel me right there, huh?” Toji’s almond eyes parachuted down, watching how even his curved shaft outlined inside your belly. “Bet you love bein’ stuffed like a lil’ whore.”

You eagerly nodded, your breath hitching as Toji drove into you, each ruthless snap sending blasted waves through your body.

The way he fucked you—deep, unrelenting, possessive—had your mind hazy, You could already feel it building again, that overwhelming heat coiling tight in your core, ready to burst at any moment.

The instant his thick, mushroom-shaped tip slammed against your A-spot, pleasure unfurled inside you—deep, raw, and all-consuming.

Each precise, relentless thrust sent sharp thrills of euphoria rippling through your body, the pressure working up at an unbearable pace.

Your walls fluttered around his length, as the pleasure crested violently, surging through you in frenzied, pulsing waves that left you breathless.

Your entire body tensed, every muscle seizing at once as a wave of electric desire scampered over you.

Your vision blurred, unable to focus on Toji’s face anymore, the sheer intensity washing over your senses—momentarily drowning you in the mind-numbing pleasure.

A string of blaring curses rushed out of your lips, as the climax punctured through, feeling demolishing. Fingers clenching, toes curling, your body jittering with aftershocks.

The world around you faded, leaving mainly the astounding gratification, the lingering tremors that left you stunned.

“Hahhh, oh fuck—there she goes,” Toji grunted, watching your reflection convulse, loving the way your pussy clenched down on him, gripping him so tight he pulsed inside you.

You sobbed, false lashes coming loose, tears slipping down your scorching-hot cheeks.

He didn’t slow down whatsoever.

If anything, he fucked you through your orgasm, chasing his own—dragging you along for the ride.

Your arms wrapped around his neck, hypersensitive as he kept pushing deeper, hitting that same devastating spot.

Skin slapping together rained through the entire bedroom, incapable of holding any noise back due to the immense mix of exhilaration this gave you, leaving Toji room to comment on it.

“You’re so loud, princess—y’want the whole damn building to hear us?” he scoffed, not in the mood for noise complaints later.

To solve this issue?

His pink-lips crashed against yours, swallowing your cries. The kiss was messy, drool droplets forming at the side of your mouth, a futile effort to muffle the high-pitched moans spilling into his smooth lips.

He fucked you through the overwhelming overstimulation, each deep thrust making your entire body tremble.

You were already too sensitive from previous rounds, pleasure teetering on the edge of pain, but he didn’t care—if anything, the way your walls kept suffocating him only spurred him on.

His groan was low and rough when you let out a broken, high-pitched sing-song moan, the sound shooting straight to his cock.

And with the way he was still so ridiculously hard, his length bulging against your stomach, pressing against that sensitive spot over and over?

You could barely think. A strangled whine slipped from your lips, your lashes fluttering as your vision blurred, overstimulation pulling you into a hazy, delirious state.

But Toji was right there with you.

His pace turned sloppy, thrusts losing rhythm as his control started to dissolve.

He buried his face against your skin, breath hot and heavy, panting against the shell of your ear. His grip on your waist tightened, fingers pressing into your flesh like he was trying to brand himself into you.

“Shit—gonna fuckin’ fill you up, baby. That okay?” he groaned, voice strained, desperate asking for permission.

All you could do was mumble out a frail “Yes!”

“Gonna make sure you feel me in this tummy for weeks,” he murmured, exaggerating the words, but fuck—at this point, you believed him.

Your eyes rolled back, your body going rigid as another orgasm crashed into you without warning, pleasure slamming through your veins like a lightning strike. Your walls clamped down around him so tight he nearly choked on a groan, his whole body tensing at the feeling.

That was it for him.

His hands locked onto your thighs, grip bruising as he slammed into you one final time.

His teeth sank into your shoulder, muffling his deep, wrecked moan as he came—thick, hot spurts spilling deep inside you, emptying himself like he hadn’t had sex in months.

Another pulse sent another sharp jolt of pleasure through you, making your legs shake as he fucked his release deeper, hips jerking uncontrollably with every last drop.

“Fuuuuck, fuck, fuck, Y/nnnnnnn,” he sighed, voice heavy with exhaustion and bliss.

His head fell back, eyes screwed shut, his cock still twitching inside your spent, quivering walls.

His arms tightened around you, locking you in place against his chest, making sure none of it went to waste—making sure you took all of him. You shuddered in his hold, completely wrecked, all his.

That bastard just smirked, pressing lazy kisses to your cheek.

“If I knew you were fangirling like that,” he muttered, cockiness entwined his tone, “I would’ve given you an autograph sooner, sweet thing.”

➜ ML

➜ I don't usually write rough sėx so, I hope you enjoyed 😋

➜ A rb, like, or comment is highly appreciated!!

Divider creds | enchanthings-a + hyuneskkami.

[revelboo]

Transformers x Reader Masterlist

Or ‘look, I organized the nonsense.’ Only the first chapter appears here, with previous/next navigation added to the parts to make it easier to read.

This is a 🔞 blog. MDNI. I write spicy Transformers x human reader storylines and scenarios

Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/revelboo

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RevelBoo/works

About/Warnings/Assorted Headcanons and Scenarios are here

More Scenarios

IDW/G1

Starscream x Reader/ Soundwave x Reader/ Megatron x Reader Everything Is Alright Everything Is Alright-full chapters

Wheeljack x Reader Circuits and Wires

Jazz x Reader Over it Now

Soundwave x Reader-stand alone When You're Around

Thundercracker x Reader Better Open the Door

Bluestreak x Reader Where I Belong

Prowl x Reader Stand Too close

Cliffjumper x Reader TKO

Sideswipe x Reader, Sunstreaker x Reader Can't Finish What You Started

Optimus Prime x Reader Gravity

Bumblebee x Reader Last Night

Skyfire x Reader Floating Down The River

Rumble x Reader Alcohol Eyes

Skywarp x Reader Stop Talking

Ratchet x Reader Feel Like Rain

Waspinator x Reader Worker Bee

Ironhide x Reader Hold Me Down

Vortex x Reader I Can't Decide

Grimlock x Reader Shiver

Constructicons x Reader Drive

Insecticons x Reader You (Don't) Know Me

Trailbreaker x Reader Too Tired To Wink

Hound x Reader Heavy Boots

Sunstorm x Reader Love Me Dead

Cosmos x Reader In Space

Astrotrain x Reader Sweet Tooth

Alternate Takes

Megatron x Reader Skin and Bones

Metroplex x Reader I Can Feel You

Seeker Trine x Reader True Romance

Soundwave x Reader, Shockwave x Reader Clumsy Heart

Rainmakers x Reader No Strings

Megatronus Prime x Reader Give It Up

D 16 x Reader Fight For You

Silverbolt x Reader Save World Get Girl

Various TFs x Reader Otome Needs and Wants

Lost Light

Megatron x Reader Invisible Monsters

Drift x Reader The Samurai Code

Rodimus x Reader Attractive Today

Whirl x Reader Delirium

Scavengers x Reader A Lifeless Ordinary

Ultra Magnus x Reader The Conversation

Swerve x Reader Lose Control

Swindle x Reader Hangman

Tarn x Reader L.G. Fuad

Pharma x Reader Pulp Fiction

Skids x Reader Hysteria

Starscream x Reader Overdone

Sunder x Reader Whipped Cream

Rung x Reader Anything For You

Brainstorm x Reader My Way

Chromedome x Reader x Rewind Circles

Tailgate x Reader x Cyclonus Chain Me Free

First Aid x Reader Hum Along

Fort Max x Reader Move

Kup x Reader Don't You

Riptide x Reader A New Brain

TF Prime

Soundwave x Reader Bad Idea

Ratchet x Reader The Weakends

Knockout x Reader My Favorite Accident

Megatron x Reader Broken Arrow

Wheeljack x Reader Crooked Ways

Shockwave x Reader Point of Extinction

Starscream x Reader Bottom Feeder

Dreadwing x Reader Anything At All

Smokescreen x Reader Resolution

Steve and Vehicons x Reader Coin-Operated Boy

Predaking x Reader Rewind

TF ONE

Megatron x Reader It Had To Be You

Starscream x Reader Inside Out

B-127 x Reader The Coma Kid

TF Earthspark

Tarantulas x Reader Disappear

Megatron x Reader Give Up/Give In

Bumblebee x Reader The Future Freaks Me Out

Soundwave x Reader Son Of a Gun

Starscream x Reader Disaster Hearts

TF Armada

Starscream x Reader Even If It Kills Me

TF Animated

Optimus Prime x Reader Broken Heart

Blitzwing x Reader Hello Helicopter

Bulkhead x Reader Time Turned Fragile

Blurr x Reader A-Ok

Shockwave x Reader Safe In The Dark

Megatron x Reader The Devil You Know

Ratchet x Reader Heads Up, Hearts Down

ROTB

Mirage x Reader Before I Wake

[munsonify]

— eddie munson masterlist —

— fully written

praised whispers || eddie praises you as you take his fingers || smut 18+ MDNI

straddled waist || you straddle eddie in nothing but a pair of black panties and one of his corroded coffin shirts || smut 18+ MDNI

staring into the eyes of the devil || when stood head to head with eddie munson, the man who was labeled the ‘freak’ of hawkins high, you couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would think so lowly of him

leather jackets || while waiting for eddie to come back from work, you fall asleep on his couch with his leather jacket around you

ice cold || after forgetting his gloves you bought him, eddie resorts to sticking his frozen hands up your shirt.

snowed in || “Hi! I was wondering if you could write a Eddie Munson fic where him and reader get snowed in readers house and he ends up staying the night and finally confesses to having feelings for reader :) 💚”

polaroid || a polariod of you slips out of eddie’s wallet that makes you a little emotional

— short ideas

braiding eddie’s hair

long days away from eddie || smut 18+ MDNI

stealing your panties || smut 18+ MDNI

rings + face slapping || smut 18+ MDNI

eddie + short circuited brain || smut 18+ MDNI

eddie’s the kind of guy who… || smut 18+ MDNI

boot humping || smut 18+ MDNI

soft sex with eddie || smut 18+ MDNI

soft eddie thoughts || some smut 18+ MDNI

callouses

eddie’s a tit guy || smut 18+ MDNI

sub!eddie who… || smut 18+ MDNI

valentine’s day necklace

thoughtful eddie on valentine’s day

— moodboards

ghostface!eddie || pt. 2 || 18+ MDNI

boyfriend!eddie

hands || 18+ MDNI

— series

you’ll be mine || coming soon…

[loves4ge]

tattoo artist!au, cw: partial nudity, mdni

choso can feel his heart stutter in his chest, bumping against his ribcage. god, who just walked in? the pen he's using to draw in his tablet clatters to the ground, though he can't be bothered to pick it up because he is too busy staring at you.

oh, you, with your lovely little dress hitching near the middle of your thigh. strappy sandals and painted nails, you have him hooked. the parlor is dimly lit and smells of ink and paper and alcohol. the kind that's used for cleaning wounds and not the one that you get drunk on with your friends on friday nights. he doesn't even hear your words and you have to repeat them.

"sorry, what did you say?" he sounds out of breath despite not doing any physical exertion. and you grin, that smile would put the sun to shame.

"that's alright. i wanted to get a tattoo but i wasn't sure if you accepted walk-ins?" you trail off towards the end in an inquiring tone. you know that they don't. it's their pinned post on social media.

he does not accept walk-ins. "sure we do, what do you have in mind?"

your eyes brighten, grinning even wider, and choso thinks he might just die and go to heaven right now. he can't stop glancing at you when you show him the designs on your phone.

"where do you want it done?" he asks at the end, opening a blank page on his tablet to finalize a design. you can't help but observe him, leaning over the counter, hair in two twin ponytails and eyeliner done to perfection.

"i was thinking my hip? like if i wore a bikini, i want the tattoo to be partially obscured by the bikini bottoms." choso thinks he may as well have short-circuited with the speed his brain is malfunctioning. you notice his delayed response and almost cooed. he's shy.

this isn't the first time a client has asked for a tattoo in a risqué position, and he's never batted an eye at nudity either. but he's entirely unsure of himself when you strip down to your panties (you ended up taking off the short dress, though you did wear a cami underneath it), and he's thinking maybe he does have a problem with nudity after all (most people call this problem an erection, but choso's not that crude).

"you're gonna have to pull it aside, or i can cut it off." he doesn't specify which part, and now your eyes widen.

swallowing thickly, you ask, "what do you mean?" you know what he means, but you sort of hope he meant something else.

"the side of your underwear, we can just cut a slit—oh," he understands what his previous sentence sounded like when he sees your face contort into disbelief and then promptly dissolve into relief.

he doesn't look at you directly, "sorry, i don't know why i said that. it's, oh god, sorry to make you uncomfort—" he's cut off by your words of understanding.

"it's my fault really. i swear i'm not uncomfortable. really, choso." oh, the money he'd pay to hear his name leave your lips again.

"…if you say so. i'll use the scissors now, if that's okay?" you nod, smiling to encourage him. god knows he needs no encouragement to cut off your panties. there's silence in the parlor except for the sound of fabric being cut. he hands you a small towel to cover whatever you need to, but you just place it to the side. you know what you're doing. choso isn't sure if you're an angel or the devil.

he makes sure his ponytails aren't loose and puts on some nitrile gloves, black like his hair. you're wondering if you should break the silence, make some small talk, put the boy out of his misery, or just let the tension simmer.

"i really like the face tattoo thing you've got going on." he snaps up to look at you, then immediately reddens. his fingers hover above the black stripe across his face.

"yeah?"

"mhm." you lift your hand, thumbing his cheek where the tattoo ends. he's still the entire time.

you'd be the death of him.

with careful hands, he sanitizes the part of your hip where the tattoo would go on. he may have taken a little bit longer than usual, his fingertips pressing into your skin with the thin layer of an alcohol wipe acting as a barrier. your skin is soft, and he wants to grip your hips more actively. without the façade of a tattooist doing his job.

you're not feeling calm anymore, and in a sudden fit of unadvised decision-making, you grab choso's wrist (this choice was not peer-reviewed by your groupchat, but at the moment you find it in yourself that you don't really care). he startles but doesn't say anything.

"i'm nervous," you murmur. he instantly softens, melts, and reaches out to grab your shoulder in a sort of platonic 'i'm there for you' way. you're not planning to be platonic.

"that's alright lovely, everybody gets nervous before tattoos. it's more common than you think. would you like water?" his voice is soothing, and the way his lips move. you know what you need. you know what would calm you down.

"i know another way we can get rid of my nerves."

"mm, how so?"

"kiss me."

he almost chokes. he looks at your dead serious expression.

he is so fucked.