#I haven’t yet been bored with the game once in over 1000 hours

[takamoris]

It’s time for your regular reminder that Final Fantasy XIV is peak, and based, and goated, and literally my favorite game. And you should be playing it.

[sterekchub]

Written for "get-beached" Weight Gain Summer Challenge Week 3: Double -Dip. ~1000 words Prompt: Netflix/Video Game Binge, Post-Quarantine Excursion

Part 1/2

How fat do you think I could get over quarantine.

You’re already fat

fatter

How long do you think quarantine will last?

No idea. 3 months? I’m bored. I miss you. There was no response for a few minutes. Impatiently, Stiles sent another text. ten pounds a month? i haven’t moved all day You got delivery twice today fine. I walked from the door to the couch. Sex is was my only exercise, Derek! It’s your fault. I’m gonna be fat and lazy when you come back.

Damn it, Stiles. Cora is sitting right here.

Tell her I’m jealous you get authentic Mexican food and I’m stuck with taco bell

You love taco bell

I love ALL FOOD Stiles sent a picture of the remains of his lunch, although he was too lazy to get off the couch, so the picture had his rounded belly in the frame, blocking part of the mostly empty pizza box and  containers of what had contained wings and mozzarella sticks visible to the side. As predicted, his phone almost immediately rang with Derek’s picture lighting up his screen.

****

           Seven months later, Stiles nervously stood by the doorway to his apartment. Derek’s plane had landed an hour ago. Any minute now he was going to be walking up the stairs and seeing Stiles for the first time in nearly seven months. Derek had been visiting his sister in Mexico when the quarantine hit and between the hassle of finding a plane back to Beacon Hills and concern about Cora being left alone, he decided to stay for the foreseeable future. It was the best decision, and while Stiles respected his boyfriend’s choice, he was a little upset after spending the first month of quarantine by himself, with no end in sight. He and Derek texted daily and video-called at least once a week, but Stiles started going stir-crazy by week two. Which naturally, brought about what he affectionately called: Project: Drive Derek Crazy.

           The project namely just involved sending lots of pictures of Stiles’ increasingly large and frequent meals. Stiles’ job had graciously sent him home, with no work but pay, which meant he had turned to long Neflix binge watches and video games sessions that lasted from the afternoon to the early morning.

***

You know what the biggest lie in Lord of the Rings was?

Movie or books?

Both

I have no idea, Stiles. Did you rewatch those again?

Got bored. I’m trying the hobbit diet

And?

And it’s SO much food there is NO WAY the hobbits fit in those little houses

Hobbits had meat and potatoes. Not fast food

Rude. I didn’t have fast food today.

What did you have?

Toast and oatmeal with Dad. Pancakes and bacon with Scott. Pizza, a few sandwiches, the leftover Chinese, made some chicken and sweet potatoes, then had the rest of the pizza.

Jesus, Stiles. Pretty sure that could feed a few hobbits

I’m really full. Need you back to rub my gut, Der.

He sent a few sad face emojis before attaching a photo. It had taken him a few tries to stand up and take the photo, but he was proud of the results. He looked big, further emphasized by wearing a shirt of Derek’s, which was sizes too small, even despite Stiles’ best attempts to stretch it. It clung to his chest, which was soft as the rest of him, and starting to rest on the crest of his stomach. The shirt refused to stretch further than his belly button, exposing his blubbery lower belly, hanging over his waistband.

Gonna be a full-time job if you keep eating like that. I already need two hands to lift up all of that blubber.

…

…

Is that my shirt?

Mine don’t fit

Derek sent back a skeptical face emoji. You must be at least 4 sizes bigger than me now

You have muscles!

And you have….what? 150 pounds on me?

Told you, I’m not telling. You’ll find out when you get home.

***

           Derek was a chubby chaser. Stiles found out fairly soon into their relationship that his boyfriend was a shameless feeder with a deep wallet. He kept their apartment stocked with Stiles’ favorite foods, supplemented with a steady diet of take-out, and encouraged Stiles to stuff himself as much as possible. No one had to tell Stiles twice – his diet before meeting Derek was basically curly fries and diner food and now he had the added bonus of a hot, doting boyfriend, who was far from turned off by Stiles being too full to do much in the bedroom but lay there and let Derek take control.

           At their one-year anniversary, Stiles had tipped the scales at two-hundred and sixty-four pounds, fifty-seven pounds over his pre-Derek weight. He had felt heavy, Derek’s hands around his softened middle, caressing his stretchmarks, and yet in the back of his mind, he knew it wasn’t enough.

           That was the thought that brought him to his current, much more significant, and enthusiastically encouraged by Derek, gain. Seven months. He had been separated from Derek for seven very long, gluttonous months, dying to see Derek’s expression when he could finally see, in person, just how much fatter Stiles was since they last met. In all their texts and calls, Stiles had kept the rising number on a scale a secret.

           Leaving airport now. Be home in 35

           Can’t wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you stop and get burgers?

[thesteadydietofeverything]

Top 10 Games of 2019

This was an extremely good year for games. I don’t know if I played as many that will stick with me as I did last year, but the ones on the bottom half of this list in particular constitute some of my favorite games of the decade, and probably all-time. If I’ve got a gaming-related resolution for next year, it’s to put my playtime into supporting even smaller indie devs. My absolute favorite experiences in games this year came from seemingly out of nowhere games from teams I’ve previously never heard of before. That said, there are some big games coming up in spring I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from. Some quick notes/shoutouts before I get started:

-The game I put maybe the most time into this year was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I finally made the plunge into neverending FF MMO content, and I’m as happy as I am overwhelmed. This was a big year for the game, between the release of the Shadowbringers expansion and the Nier: Automata raid, and it very well may have made it onto my list if I had managed to actually get to any of it. At the time of this writing, though, I’ve only just finished 2015’s Heavensward, so I’ve got...a long way to go. 

-One quick shoutout to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that came out on Switch this year, a remaster of some DS classics I never played. An absolutely delightful visual novel series that I fell in love with throughout this year.

-I originally included a couple games currently in early access that I’ve enjoyed immensely. I removed them not because of arbitrary rules about what technically “came out” this year, but just to make room for some other games I liked, out of the assumption that I’ll still love these games in their 1.0 formats when they’re released next year to include them on my 2020 list. So shoutout to Hades, probably the best rogue-like/lite/whatever I’ve ever played, and Spin Rhythm XD, which reignited my love for rhythm games.

-Disco Elysium isn’t on this list, because I’ve played about an hour of it and haven’t yet been hooked by it. But I’ve heard enough about it to be convinced that it is 1000% a game for me and something I need to get to immediately. They shouted out Marx and Engels at the Game Awards! They look so cool! I want to be their friend! And hopefully, a few weeks from now, I’ll desperately want to redact this list to squeeze this game somewhere in here.

Alright, he’s the actual list:

10. Amid Evil

The 90’s FPS renaissance continues! As opposed to last year’s Dusk, a game I adored, this one takes its cues less from Quake and more from Heretic/Hexen, placing a greater emphasis on melee combat and magic-fuelled projectiles than more traditional weapons. Also, rather than that game’s intentionally ugly aesthetic, this one opts for graphics that at times feel lush, detailed, and pretty, while still probably mostly fitting the description of lo-fi. In fact, they just added RTX to the game, something I’m extremely curious to check out. This game continued to fuel my excitement about the possibilities of embracing out-of-style gameplay mechanics to discover new and fresh possibilities from a genre I’ve never been able to stop yearning for more of.

9. Ape Out

If this were a “coolest games” list, Ape Out would win it, easily. It’s a simple game whose mechanics don’t particularly evolve throughout the course of its handful of hours, but it leaves a hell of an impression with its minimalist cut-out graphics, stylish title cards, and percussive soundtrack. Smashing guards into each other and walls and causing them to shoot each other in a mad-dash for the exit is a fun as hell take on Hotline Miami-esque top down hyper violence, even if it’s a thin enough concept that it starts to feel a bit old before the end of the game.

8. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I had a lot of problems with this game, probably most stemming from just how damn long it is - I still haven’t finished my first, and likely only, playthrough. This length seems to have motivated the developers to make battles more simple and easy, and to be fair, I would get frustrated if I were getting stuck on individual battles if I couldn’t stop thinking about how much longer I have to go, but as it is, I’ve just found them to be mostly boring. This is particularly problematic for a game that seems to require you to play through it at least...three times to really get the full picture? I couldn’t help but admire everything this game got right, though, and that mostly comes down to building a massive cast of extremely well realized and likable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with the structures they pledge loyalty to fuels harrowing drama once the plot really sets into motion. There’s a reason no other game inspired such a deluge of memes and fan fiction and art into my Twitter feed this year. It’s an impressive feat to convince every player they’ve unquestionably picked the right house and defend their problem children till the bitter end. After the success of this game, I’d love to see what this team can do next with a narrower focus and a bigger budget.

7. Resident Evil 2

It’s been a long time since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I still consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was highly skeptical of this remake at first, holding my stubborn ground that changing the fixed camera to a RE4-style behind the back perspective would turn this game more into an action game and less of a survival horror game where feeling a lack of control is part of the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much they were able to modernize this game while maintaining its original feel and atmosphere. The fumbly, drifting aim-down sights effectively sell the feeling of being a rookie scared out of your wits. Being chased by Mr. X is wildly anxiety-inducing. But even more surprisingly, perhaps the greatest upgrade this game received was its map, which does you the generous service of actually marking down automatically where puzzles and items are, which rooms you’ve yet to enter, which ones you’ve searched entirely, and which ones still have more to discover. Arguably, this disrupts the feeling of being lost in a labyrinthine space that the original inspired, but in practice, it’s a remarkably satisfying and addicting video game system to engage with.

6. Judgment

No big surprise here - Ryu ga Gotoku put out another Yakuza-style game set in Kamurocho, and once again, it’s sitting somewhere on my top 10. This time, they finally put Kazuma Kiryu’s story to bed and focused on a new protagonist, down on his luck lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. The new direction doesn’t always pay off - the added mechanics of following and chasing suspects gets a bit tedious. The game makes up for it, though, by absolutely nailing a fun, engrossing J-Drama of a plot entirely divorced from the Yakuza lore. The narrative takes several head-spinning turns through its several dozen hours, and they all feel earned, with a fresh sense of focus. The side stories in this one do even more to make you feel connected to the community of Kamurocho by befriending people from across the neighborhood. I’d love to see this team take even bigger swings in the future - and from what I’ve seen from Yakuza 7, that seems exactly like what they’re doing - but even if this game shares maybe a bit too much DNA with its predecessors, it’s hard to complain when the writing and acting are this enjoyable.

5. Control

Control feels like the kind of game that almost never gets made anymore. It’s a AAA game that isn’t connected to any larger franchises and doesn’t demand your attention for longer than a dozen hours. It doesn’t shoehorn needless RPG or MMO mechanics into its third-person action game formula to hold your attention. It introduces a wildly clever idea, tells a concise story with it, and then its over. And there’s something so refreshing about all of that. The setting of The Oldest House has a lot to do with it. I think it stands toe-to-toe with Rapture or Black Mesa as an instantly iconic game world. Its aesthetic blend of paranormal horror and banal government bureaucracy gripped my inner X-Files fan instantly, and kept him satisfied not only with its central characters and mystery but with a generous bounty of redacted documents full of worldbuilding both spine-tingling and hilarious. More will undoubtedly come from this game, in the form of DLC and possibly even more, with the way it ties itself into other Remedy universes, and as much as I expect I will love it, the refreshing experience this base game offered me likely can’t be beat.

4. Anodyne 2

I awaited Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s new game more anxiously than almost any game that came out this year, despite never having played the first one, exclusively on my love for last year’s singular All Our Asias and the promise that this game would greatly expand on that one’s Saturn/PS1-esque early 3D graphics and personal, heartfelt storytelling. Not only was I not disappointed, I was regularly pleasantly surprised by the depth of narrative and themes the game navigates. This game takes the ‘legendary hero’ tropes of a Zelda game and flips them to tell a story about the importance of community and taking care of loved ones over duty to governments or organizations. The dungeons that similarly reflect a Link to the Past-era Zelda game reduce the maps to bite-sized, funny, clever designs that ask you to internalize unique mechanics that result in affecting conclusions. Plus, it’s gorgeously idiosyncratic in its blend of 3D and 2D environments and its pretty but off-kilter score. It’s hard to believe something this full and well realized came from two people. 

3. Eliza

Eliza is a work of dystopian fiction so closely resembling the state of the world in 2019 it’s hard to even want to call it sci-fi. As a proxy for the Eliza app, you speak the words of an AI therapist that offers meager, generic suggestions as a catch-all for desperate people facing any number of the nightmares of our time. The first session you get is a man reckoning with the state the world is in - we’ve only got a few more years left to save ourselves from impending climate crisis, destructive development is rendering cities unlivable for anyone but the super-rich, and the people who hold all the power are just making it all worse. The only thing you offer to him is to use a meditation app and take some medication. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that this whole structure is much less about helping struggling people and more about mining personal data.

There’s much more to this story than the grim state of mental health under late capitalism, though. It’s revealed that Evelyn, the character you play as, has a much closer history with Eliza than initially evident. Throughout the game, she’ll reacquaint herself with old coworkers, including her two former bosses who have recently split and run different companies over their differing frightening visions for the future. The game offers a biting critique of the kind of tech company optimism that brings rich, eccentric men to believe they can solve the world’s problems within the hyper-capitalist structure they’ve thrived under, and how quickly this mindset gives way to techno-fascism. There’s also Evelyn’s former team member, Nora, who has quit the tech world in favor of being a DJ “activist,” and her current lead Rae, a compassionate person who genuinely believes in the power of Eliza to better people’s lives. The writing does an excellent job of justifying everyone’s points of view and highlighting the limits of their ideology without simplifying their sense of morality.

Why this game works so well isn’t just its willingness to stare in the face of uncomfortably relevant subject matter, but its ultimately empathetic message. It offers no simple solutions to the world’s problems, but also avoids falling into utter despair. Instead, it places measured but inspiring faith in the power of making small, meaningful impacts on the people around you, and simply trying to put some good into your world. It’s a game both terrifying and comforting in its frank conclusions.

2. Death Stranding

For a game as willfully dumb as this one often is - that, for example, insists on giving all of its characters with self-explanatory names long monologues about how they got that name - Death Stranding was one of the most thought provoking games I’ve played in a while. Outside of its indulgent, awkwardly paced narrative, the game offers plenty of reflection on the impact the internet has had on our lives. As Sam Porter Bridges, you’re hiking across a post-apocalyptic America, reconnecting isolated cities by delivering supplies, building infrastructure, and, probably most importantly, connecting them to the Chiral Network, an internet of sorts constructed of supernatural material of nebulous origin. Through this structure, the game offers surprisingly insightful commentary about the necessity for communication, cooperation, and genuine love and care within a community.

The lonely world you’re tasked to explore, and the way you’re given blips of encouragement within the solitude through the structures and “likes” you give and receive through the game’s asynchronous multiplayer system, offers some striking parallels for those of us particularly “online” people who feel simultaneous desperation for human contact and aversion to social pressures. I’ve heard the themes of this game described as “incoherent” due to the way it seems to view the internet both as a powerful tool to connect people and a means by which people become isolated and alienated, but are both of these statements not completely true to reality? The game simplifies some of its conclusions - Kojima seems particularly ignorant of America’s deep structural inequities and abuses that lead to a culture of isolation and alienation. And yet, the questions it asks are provocative enough that they compelled me to keep thinking about them far longer than the answers it offers.

Beyond the surprisingly rich thematic content, this game is mostly just a joy to play. Death Stranding builds kinetic drama out of the typically rote parts of games. Moving from point A to point B has become an increasingly tedious chore in the majority of AAA open world games, but this is a game built almost entirely out of moving from point A to point B, and it makes it thrilling. The simple act of walking down a hill while trying to balance a heavy load on your back and avoiding rocks and other obstacles fulfills the promise of the term ‘walking simulator’ in a far more interesting way than most games given that descriptor. The game consistently doles out new ways to navigate terrain, which peaked for me about two thirds of the way through the game when, after spending hours setting up a network of zip lines, a delivery offered me the opportunity to utilize the entire thing in a wildly satisfying journey from one end of the map to another. It was the gaming moment of the year.

1. Outer Wilds

The first time the sun exploded in my Outer Wilds playthrough, I was probably about to die anyway. I had fallen through a black hole, and had yet to figure out how to recover from that, so I was drifting listlessly through space with diminishing oxygen as the synths started to pick up and I watched the sun fall in on itself and then expand throughout the solar system as my vision went went. The moment gave me chills, not because I wasn’t already doomed anyway, but because I couldn’t help but think about my neighbors that I had left behind to explore space. I hadn’t known that mere minutes after I left the atmosphere the solar system would be obliterated, but I was at least able to watch as it happened. They probably had no idea what happened. Suddenly their lives and their planet and everything they had known were just...gone. And then I woke up, with the campfire burning in front of me, and everyone looking just as I had left it. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to stop that from happening again. 

What surprised me is that every time the sun exploded, it never failed to produce those chills I felt the first time. This game is masterful in its art, sound, and music design that manages to produce feelings so intense from an aesthetic so quaint. Tracking down fellow explorers by following the sound of their harmonica or acoustic guitar. Exploring space in a rickety vessel held together by wood and tape. Translating logs of conversations of an ancient alien race and finding the subject matter of discussion to be about small interpersonal drama as often as it is revelatory secrets of the universe. All of the potentially twee aspects of the game are balanced out by an innate sense of danger and terror that comes from exploring space and strange worlds alone. At times, the game dips into pure horror, making other aspects of the presentation all the more charming by comparison. And then there’s the clockwork machinations of the 22-minute loop you explore within, rewarding exploration and experimentation with reveals that make you feel like a genius for figuring out the puzzle at the same time that you’re stunned by the divulgence of a new piece of information.

The last few hours of the game contained a couple puzzles so obfuscated that I had to consult a guide, which admittedly lessened the impact of those reveals, but it all led to one of the most equally devastating and satisfying endings I’ve experienced in a video game recently. I really can’t say enough good things about this game. It’s not only my favorite game this year, but easily one of my favorite games of the decade, and really, of all-time, when it comes down to it.

[thisselflovecamebacktome]

I’ve been seeing a lot of those “there’s a real person behind the screen you’re sending hate to” posts circulating around the Swiftie community and it’s made me reconsider my place, or more lack of, in the community both past and presently and how online hate from this fandom has influenced that.

I guess in short, and to poke a little fun before getting into the serious part of this post, for a good 90% of my time in this fandom, I’ve felt like that Squidward window meme where I’m inside alone watching from afar as seemingly the rest of the fandom is out having fun together.

Now for the more serious stuff. To start this story, I want to take you back to a time that feels like lifetimes ago now; the beginning of 2015. 1989 had only been out a few months, I had successfully rebuilt my life and finished high school at the end of 2014 after having my world crash down over the span of 2011 - 2012, had amazing friends and what I thought was a ride or die family given how many major fights we had had yet still had each other’s backs. I was on a gap year and my then boyfriend of about two years and I were talking about leaving town and starting our lives together. Things seemed pretty amazing. But easy they come, easy they go as I soon realised.

Within the year of 2015, almost every part of my life was taken away from me. Even with volunteering and my usual day to day life, being on a gap year while not doing paid work messed with my mental health and sense of self worth within months. Not long after, I lost a friend without warning/explanation that I genuinely thought would be at my hypothetical future wedding. The rest of my friends were all at university and/or working everyday and it became real that I wasn’t as close to some of them as I thought and that school was the thing keeping us together. Around the same time, my family fell apart for the last time. My sister was removed by the police over her behavioural issues and I haven’t spoken to her since. Not long after, it was uncovered gotten us in thousands of dollars worth of debt and, despite their marriage breaking down, expected my mother to fix the damage. He moved out at the end of 2015 and despite everyone heralding how I was his favourite child for my whole life, went running back to my sister who mistreated him and would spend months at a time not talking to me only to call me when his parents were in town right up until I cut him off in late 2017. My extended family on both sides sided with him and my sister despite, again, them spending 20 years acting like I was the golden child. Again, I have not spoken to them for the last five years. The destruction of the family left my mother suicidal and bitter to the point she still says she cannot love anything, my brother and I included. It also pushed my brother to work up to 48 hours a week, meaning he wasn’t around. Given all of this, I stuck with my mother and decided to put off moving away, attended university here and ultimately based every decision around her not killing herself; a choice that put strain on my romantic relationship until it broke in late 2016. Once my father moved out, Centrelink refused to give my mother money, and so, despite my brother working full time and me part time, my mother, brother and I were only eating an average of once a day for about 8 months due to financial reasons and the debt my father left us in. It also meant that I wasn’t medicated for my bipolar/ptsd or going to see my psychiatrist like I should because we just could not afford it.

During this time, there felt like there was exactly one unchanging thing in my life; being part of the Taylor Swift fandom. And I’m well aware that some of you see that as unhealthy and stupid; god knows I see just how unhealthy it was now, but that’s how it felt. 

So I spent so much of the 1989 era trying to do all I could to interact with people in the fandom, get Taylor’s attention, become a “big blog” and everything else the fandom was doing at the time to no avail. But, alongside this when I held opinions that are now seen as popular surrounding the era feeling like it was made for outsiders, 1989 as an album feeling less personal and not liking Tayvin, I expressed them here. In return, I received dozens of hate anons a day for over a year ranging from “Fuck you you fucking whore” to “Nobody, especially Taylor, will ever love or notice you so you may as well kill yourself now”.

Likewise, in the Reputation era, after I felt I had found my connection again with Taylor and honestly, loved her more than ever, I mentioned that I loved how much of a recovery album Reputation was as well as saying that I thought the Delicate music video was the perfect representation of not only the song, but Reputation as a whole. Despite Taylor talking about her mental struggles, I still receive anons along the lines of “Taylor’s not fucked up like you, you crazy bitch”.

In the seven or so years I’ve been in this fandom, I received ONE apology for anon hate. In early 2017, I was privileged enough to go away to a spot without wifi for a week and returned to a bunch of hate messages alongside one simply saying “Please do not have actually killed yourself. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Please just answer this”.

Thankfully, somewhere in between the 1989 era and the Reputation era, I reached a point where I was healthy enough to just block anon hate and moved on with my day. Additionally, thankfully I learned that my value does not come from the opinion of others the first time my life fell apart. Honestly though? I fear for the day I hear about someone like me who hasn’t come to that realisation being targeted like I was because I know in my heart that things could have gone very differently for me and that anon hate could have been the thing that pushed me over the edge.

Despite being able to block it however, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like it had an impact on me. And some of that is on me. When I decided I wasn’t going to be an active member of the fandom anymore in the middle of the 1989 era and in the years since, I went from following over 1000 blogs to 50. I no longer try to reach out to people to be friends. At best, I go through relevant tags once every few weeks when I’m bored instead of daily like I used to. But they’re choices I wouldn’t have made if I hadn’t felt unwelcome in the fandom.

I’d also be lying if I said it didn’t make me sad to think about the what ifs of if I didn’t make those choices. Like sometimes it feels like I should have just “played the game” and followed the fandom trends, but it upsets me to feel like I had to be someone I’m not years ago just to participate properly in the fandom now. I mean I know this sounds up myself, but I honestly feel like I could add so much to this fandom. There’s so many ideas I have for cool interaction nights and so on, but honestly it just does not feel like it’s worth doing because I’m not a big enough blog to pull it off on my own and I’m not close to any of the people who hold these kind of things to try run it through them. And again, that just makes me sad.

Anyway, I’ve written a novel here, but I just want to reestablish that yes, every person that has received hate messages on this site is a real person with real feelings and real circumstances happening behind the screen and this is just one case of that.

I also want to end it off on a positive note, so to anyone who has ever messaged me non hateful messages anon or otherwise, been my friend or even just reblogged my posts with tags or liked them, I see you, I love you and it means more to me than you will ever know.

[the-friendly-quilava]

Everything stressing me out and then some

Dad: I am 99.99% sure that my dad is cheating. He told me the story of his first love a while ago, and I tried to call him on father’s day and he didn’t pick up. He later texted me asking what’s up. I told him I really only called to say happy father’s day.  He then later told me that he’s going to go because he wanted to talk to “her” because he hasn’t all day. 

He has also been bothering me every day to check the mail for mail for two pieces of mail for his other company (a bank mail thing) and an airport card company and put them in my room to hide it from my mom. I never found them and then just two days ago my mom told me that she found out that he had a bank account at another bank without her at another bank.

He also borrowed $300 dollars from me after my brother’s wedding to get back into his trucking. He also took 40 from me to change into singles to throw at my brother during the wedding (an Albanian thing.) But I had just found out that my dad took a plane from either Michigan or Ohio to Florida and then rented a car from Mamai and drove to Orlando. And then did use his credit card until 3 days after when he got back in Ohio. He paid cash for the rest of time being. This was the same weekend as father’s day weekend. 

He also finally came home for the first time in like 3 weeks and he made me pick him up (after I was already in the pj’s and getting ready in bed). When I picked him up, he was being oddly nice, saying that he would buy me an ice cream or a smoothie the next day. He then saw my gas tank and told me to fill up my tank with premium gas with his card. He then told me to drop him off at the gas station to fill out lotto tickets, and then he wanted to walk to half mile home.

Mom: My mom has an idea what my dad is doing and she started to break down crying. She told me that my dad refuses to talk to her and it hurts her. Because they used to talk for hours and hours. Then she said his personality change and refuses to talk to her. He used to call us and made us talk to him so he wasn’t as bored. She also told me that she said that my grandma (dad’s mother) was lying to both my dad and mom and my grandma is slowly breaking apart my parent’s marriage. She also told me that my uncle (dad’s brother) and aunt leave my grandma alone every weekend. 

She also told me that she feels that my brother knows more but won’t tell her things (which I’m also thinking that). 

Brother’s Wife: Oh boy. She brought her cat and her cat has been fighting with my dog (who my brother wants to take with him when they finish fixing their house). And she is being hostile to both me and my dog because her cat is starting fights. And I’m trying to be nice, but I can’t take it anymore. I don’t know if I’m going to be verbal with her or be physical. She won’t discipline her cat, so he gets to do whatever he wants, while I still have to discipline my dog when she misbehaves.

Brother: I know you’re supposed to side with your wife, but he has not once stopped her from being hostile to me. He hasn’t done anything one on one with me in years and he has barely taken care of the dog and yet he wants to take her. At this point, I don’t care if I’m dead to him again.

School: I’m afraid I’m not going to pass my art history class. I just cannot stand the subject but I need it for my degree. But, speaking of that, I sometimes think I’m not creative enough for a graphic designer. 

I also want to join the school’s club swim team, but I’m scared because I can no longer swim butterfly and my schedule doesn’t work the best for the four days but I want to swim, and I just want some friends. Because I’m so lonely.

Swimming: I was told that I couldn’t swim with my club team anymore, and that broke me. I couldn’t do my stress reliever anymore, I’m gaining weight and I can’t push myself to go work out. 

Boyfriend: My boyfriend is really pushing for me to move down to Texas with him and to transfer to an uni down there and live in an apartment with him and his brother. He wants me to get away from this toxic environment, which I appreciate, but I’m so terrified of moving. I barely liked moving to just 17 miles. I don’t know how I can handle moving several states away, to go over 1000 miles away. I’m scared. 

I also feel like I’m having lots of fights with him. Which isn’t like me, I grew up with listening to my parents fight nearly every day, and all of my friends tell me that I can read situations well enough to not fight. But I’m not sure what’s going on with me. I also feel like I’m becoming clingy, which is also not like me. I don’t know what’s going on. I feel like I'm losing my independence. 

He is also playing this game, and I don’t want to make him stop playing a game he likes so much, but I feel so pushed aside. It made me really dislike the game, so much that I and other people are calling it my repellent. 

My own body: My body messing with me. My period is coming late and it is very heavy. I finally went and got birth control again. I’m supposed to start the pills when I start my period and it’s only been two days, and I’ve been taking it, but when I first take it, I feel slightly off. Like I want to throw up a bit, which is weird because I have taken this pill a couple years ago. 

I’ve mentioned that I’ve gained weight, I’ve lost all my of my toning. I’ve had people say I don’t look almost 180lbs but I feel bad. I appreciate that people tell me, but I have gained about 30-40lbs since my surgery last August. I lost all my upper body strength. I want to go back to being toned and back in shape. 

My therapist: The place I went for therapy closed down so I haven’t been able to do. Nor do I know if I can go to her anymore. The place used my insurance when I didn’t want that and now I have to pay nearly $1000, and I don’t have that money.

I’ve become more and more depressed this year, and I’m not sure why. It’s so much stress going on in my life.

I only feel normal when I'm at work and I'm so busy to worry about anything else.

tl;dr: I’M REALLY STRESSED 

[pantlesssteve]

Maybe my favorite thing I have ever written

Just getting this whole Tumblr thing up and running and wanted to start off with one of my favorite things that I have ever written. It’s a little old considering Destiny 2 is about a week away, but I thought it was a good introduction into what you can look to expect from here. So without further ado, I present....

I've played 1000 hours of Destiny.  Why?

Hello all, resident Destiny “expert” Pantless Steve here. Lets talk about this little thing called Destiny for a bit. I have spent a disturbing amount of time playing this game. Many ask me why, or how I can play the same content for that long. I'm going to attempt to put my feelings for the game in writing. Let's see where this goes.

Destiny has taken over my gaming life in a strange way. It's a game that I want to stop playing, but I don't think I can quit it. I have heard many people describe their time with World of Warcraft as an unhealthy obsession. While Destiny is a very different game, I feel like my day to day life lines up with that same obsession. I wake up and log in before work just to see what the daily bounties are. I plan them out and see if I can finish most of them in ten to fifteen minutes before I have to leave. While at work, I think about what my plans will be in the game come night time. I look up stats on certain guns, where to unlock them, how to best maximize my time spent before getting them. I constantly do math on how many resources I have, how many I need, quickest way to get to the amount I need. I'm not kidding when I say that I think about this game for a majority of the day. But why?

It's a question that I'm not sure that I can honestly answer. My time with the game has been unlike any gaming experience I have ever had. (Disclaimer: I have always been a console player. So much of what this game does has been done before on PC. I have just never experienced it)  So here goes, this is what keeps me coming back every single day:

- Community:  I have met and made friends with so many people through the shared love of this game. Some of those friendships have manifested into real world meet ups. In a world where game communities have become so rotten and exclusive, the Destiny one has been extremely open to most. Of course there are always a few bad apples, but I have generally never had a bad experience. It's a community that feels like it is always working towards a common goal and wants everybody to achieve that goal. They welcome in "newbies" for raids or nightfalls, they take the time to explain mechanics, they stop to show people where collectibles are even when they don't need them anymore, and they celebrate with you when you get something new and exciting. It's an experience that I have honestly not seen anywhere else. Once you experience it, you then want to turn around and share that experience with others. It's a chain reaction of positivity.

- Fear of missing out: This was a big one early on and has only been amplified with the release of The Taken King. Daily missions, weekly missions, weekly playlists, raids, and Xur are just some of the things that everybody looks to accomplish. Daily and weekly stuff often rewards with currencies that allow you to advance your character. You advance your character so that you can enter into raids and other end game content where you unlock the best of the best gear. Along the way you are collecting strange coins and anticipate the arrival of everyone's favorite black market dealer on Friday. Eventually you get to the point where you have your character where you want them and are able to complete these things rather quickly, but you still want more. Now you have two characters and eventually even three for some. Now you take the activities that you are looking forward to and multiply that by 2 or 3. You never know if there will be a secret one day only thing, so you "have" to log in daily just to see. Once you are in, you might as well complete some bounties.

- Gameplay: Moving and shooting in Destiny feels like it should. This may seem like common sense, but if you have ever played a first person shooter that has felt "off" you know how much that breaks the experience. Every gun type feels different when firing it. If a gun is supposed to hit hard, you generally come away feeling like you did big damage. Of course it helps that damage numbers are displayed, making you feel like you are really punishing the enemies in the game. When jumping, your characters feel like they have weight. Even thought it's all made up, the world feels real. That creates a sense of immersion to your character(s)

I would also like to take some time to address some common complaints that are brought up. They are all completely valid and I understand how they can be turnoffs for anyone. Hopefully anyone with these complaints would be willing to give Destiny a second chance. The game has evolved with its player base. Anyways….

“But there is no content, how do you play the same thing over and over?”  While this was initially a valid point, this has changed greatly. We are now 3 expansions deep. The addition of the quest system has changed how the content is delivered. Even though you may be revisiting certain areas, you are doing so with a new goal in mind. A lot of times, a new path will be open that allows you to explore deeper than you have been able to. Sometimes you come back with a specific goal of completing a bounty. With the release of The Taken King, new quest lines continually pop up and give reason to revisit older content and areas. Bungie uses what they have in very smart ways.

“Destiny is a loot game and has no loot!”  Again, a valid point that has been addressed. While the game was never designed to be on a Borderlands level with the loot it drops, it was light early on. This is yet another area that The Taken King has addressed. Loot drops are much more frequent now and you are constantly getting new stuff. Higher end gear generally has a very explicit way of unlocking now as well. So if there is something you want, you know what has to be done to acquire it. You can let the loot just come to you or target specific items.

“The game is so boring to play alone!”  100% agree. This goes back to the community aspect though. There is always a group looking for one more. I'm sure your friends list is full of people that would love to play with you. Just ask! Again, this community is fantastic. There are also LFG sites that can help you out if you are looking to complete something very specific. The game is not built to play alone and if that is the only way you have experienced it, I highly recommend reaching out and putting together a fireteam. Hell, invite me. I'm clearly always looking to play more.

Hopefully this allows you to understand at least a little bit into why I don't shut up about the game. It's a love for a game that I haven't experienced in a very long time. This is probably just a long ramble of words that I had to get off my chest though. Thanks for sticking around this long.

My gamertag is Pantless Steve. If you see me online, send me an invite. If you see me in the tower, come up and wave and lets play.

Just don't do that damn Carlton dance!!!