#I literally restarted the game last time this happened

[divaatrait]

Worst Case Scenario

Riding the high of her first successful acting gig, Claudia decided to give Cupid's Corner a chance for some casual fun. It seems like no amount of protection could have prevented this...

[iicehoon]

LEVEL UP | STREAMER!SOOBIN X READER

︶︶ ⊹ ︶︶︶⠀୨♡୧⠀︶︶︶ ⊹ ︶︶

"NO NO NO NO," you heard your boyfriend, Soobin, yell in despair.

Glancing at the Snoopy-themed clock, it read 2:30 AM, marking five hours since he started streaming. You recalled his excitement about being sponsored by the game, hoping for future offers if it goes well.

Rising from your spot on the shared bed, you crossed the dimly lit hall to quietly open the door to his room. He remained intensely focused on the screen, the soft clicks of his mechanical keyboard echoing as you entered. Frustrated sighs followed each demise of his character on screen.

"Chat, you don't understand," he started, setting aside his keyboard and mouse. "No username, I am not taking backseat gaming or any advice from you. The last time I did that, it made me restart the ENTIRE game."

You chuckled softly, watching your boyfriend ruffle his hair in frustration. His slouched shoulders hinted that he was nearing his breaking point and pretty ready to end the stream.

"Binnie," you called out, settling into the beanbag adjacent to his desk.

Soobin perked up instantly at the sound of his name, swiftly removing his earbuds as he rose to approach you. "When did you come in?" he asked, crouching down to your level. Leaning in, he planted a kiss on your lips before gently settling on top of you, eliciting a surprised yelp at his sudden weight.

"You've been at it for five hours, hun," you said, poking his side playfully until he squirmed and finally got up after the tenth poke.

"Come here, and I'll show you why," he motioned you over, patting his lap. His followers knew about you because he couldn't help but talk about you at times, and they have seen your face from the times you brought him snacks or a drink during his streams.

"Hi Chat," You smiled, bringing your face closer to his webcam and giving them a little wave when you settled on his lap.

"Okay," Soobin placed his chin on your shoulder and returned his hands to the keyboard and mouse. "Just watch and see why I just can't get past this stupid level."

You weren't as big of a gamer as Soobin, but you knew your way around from the games he played or even those you tried yourself from the days when he didn't want to be at his computer.

One of the perks of having a gamer boyfriend who was also a popular streamer was having access to his Steam account and his credits to buy games that piqued your interest, often discovered from TikTok.

Your eyes analyzed his movements, and you couldn't help but giggle when he dropped his head, hitting the back of your neck. "I don't understand why it's not working," he sighed in frustration.

"Well, it's because you're not hitting that when you're doing your runs," you explained, gently removing his hands from the setup in front of you. Slowly, you moved his character over to what you believed was the key element for him to pass this level. "See, it's breakable with that TNT sign on it."

You restarted the level and began to execute your run. As you played, Soobin's eyes moved back and forth between his main screen and your side profile, a lovestruck smile spreading across his face, just as his chat had claimed always happened whenever you were in his peripheral vision.

His smile widened as you cheered, successfully passing the level he had spent the majority of his time on. "Wait, babe, you're crazy good," he exclaimed, his jaw-dropping in amazement at the winning transition.

"I'm just better than you, Soobie boobie" you teased, twisting slightly to face him and sticking out your tongue.

He shook his head, laughing, and wrapped his arms tighter around your waist, giving you a quick peck on your cheek.

His joyful expression quickly shifted to one of furrowed eyebrows as he read his chat.

"Chat, she IS NOT replacing me," he groaned, "And stop asking if she's single. I'll literally make out with her right here, right now."

an | there is no specific game I'm referencing, I couldn't really think of one but if anyone has an idea, I can make it for another one!

[modernsuperhero]

Tbh as much as i love seablings i like the idea that lizzie's death has nothing to do with jimmy's curse more. Lizzie's death was her own. If we want to talk about jimmy's curse, instead of lizzie's tragedy, then let's talk about how it was broken on accident.

Consider this: every game has been the same except this one. Certain "curses" are attached to certain people - Jimmy the canary, Skizz the boogey, etc. But not this time - or, well.

Last game was the first time, according to martyn's canon, that two players were so damaged from the watchers' overfeeding on their significant traumas (pearl witnessing scott's suicide, cleo's own traumatic death) that the listeners were able to intervene and temporarily swap their souls out with, ofc, lizzie and gem, to give them reprieve to recover.

I like the perspective that instead of there being one death loop that restarts over and over, there are multiple happening all the time. They overlap. The watchers are of course constantly feeding - and perhaps this is why the members of each loop vary slightly over time. Adding ingredients, removing others, as time wears on. Lizzie was not actively in a loop during limited life - but that does not mean she hasn't been in death games in the meantime. Perhaps even gem has, too, though i believe possessing cleo was her first time.

Also last season, grian was yanked out of his body by the watchers, attempting to remove him from stunting the growth of their anguish farm (making it a game instead of a saw trap, as @stalarys so aptly put it). But he managed to keep his claws in the game, even going so far as to break beyond the literal borders of the game - "we're already dead," as he said, leading the nosy neighbors beyond the veil - because grian is nothing in any universe if not stubborn in the face of authority.

We know from last season that the games are already unstable. The listeners' influence is growing, and grian is proving to be more and more of a problem. (He definitely doesn't know about the listeners' existence, but he's likely unaware of how he may be helping them, and they him.)

Jimmy is not dead first. But he dies so soon after - the second body to fall.

The game, the watchers, the farm - it course corrects when things go wrong.

Grian, who has broken the rules this season not once but thrice - allowing an exception for scar to reroll, even allowing breaking of his own rule on helmets (for both scar and mumbo), and falsely rolling a success last session, is given a chaotic impossible task. (Grian tends to doom his allies - curse or simply bad choices, he is teamed with etho, and their rerolls are entwined. They seem personal, don't they? Etho ran from grian's wither once before. Grian died leading out a warden.) He succeeds, on one heart despite everything, only to be slain on top of the button itself.

He's stuck in spectator. Isn't that perfect? The game, HIS game, GLITCHED. His grip on his in-game body, the part of him he wedged into the mechanics of this death loop, slipped. He regained it, sure, but now he is forced to course correct: he comes back green when he should be yellow.

And grian has just seen the price of breaking too many rules. Jimmy's funeral was too soon. He switches back to yellow, rerolls for his deserved prizes at the cost of his own chances of victory.

(Because victory, while still a goal, is not the point. The point is to break the game.)

(Last season, tango watched one of his closest and most common allies sacrifice himself for his team. This season, he allies with him again. It's ironic that they're giving away their hearts to others - similar to giving away their time. Maybe skizz's death impacted tango too harshly. Maybe his pain fed a bit too much.)

(This is the first season since skizz, an angel, died so full of divine bloodlust that it manifested as the boogey curse, that he has been here and his curse has not. Two curses now, tentatively broken.)

(Martyn feeds the watchers more when he is an unguided hand, wandering and hurting, so ren has not been in this particular loop for a while now. He is available to replace tango, just for a bit, just like how gem and lizzie replaced cleo and pearl.)

Last season, the games finally started to break.

This season, we get to see the cracks.

(The watchers are more obvious this season. The keeper's symbol, grian's lack of achievement entering the end... They're grappling for control as it is slowly but surely dragged away from them.)

[igglemouse]

The State Of The Iggleverse 2025

The Iggleverse, a term I've used since starting my tumblr to simply explain my style of play. That is, everything I post is connected, from one sim to the next. The first iggleverse, that dated back to my first sim, Lourdes, went on for a few years and everything was connected.

I soft relaunched that iggleverse, which was easily done since, little did the reader know (since I never got that far) Telah had become the holder of the Watcher's Key (something I referenced then every now and then) and since I was literally the Watcher (well who else could it be!?) I used that little device to restart it even again. Dalton, Telah's son, who was the main heir in one of my darkest runs, had battled with Lovecraftian monsters and ancient deities and it had destroyed his universe...which was sort of explained by the introduction of his daughter who said she had escaped a destroyed universe...

Long story short, I still had connections to the first Iggleverse in even this latest one. For example, Gracelyn's mother was explained to be from another universe and her father was a traveller of different planes of existence...and her mother was a blood witch. Did this get mentioned? It might be mentioned in a post I have queued...but the term blood witch brings it all back to Dalton's story and a certain evil spellcaster that had summoned an ancient deity into his world...

All this to say. The iggleverse is kind of complex. I like that. But I try to tell a story with the intention of someone diving in at any moment and sort of getting right into it. It's why I always tell new readers, oh just jump in. To me, a story can be as complex as rocket science as long as the reader is focused on one thing at a time and is not overwhelmed. The past is a reference and the future is unknown.

After all, the beginning of any story is where you decide it is, but the ending, well, that's a lot more final.

The truth is, Frida, Zer, Gracelyn, and Teresa (who was cursed being 4th because of my fascination with odd numbers) have run their short course.

I hate doing this again but I only do it because it must be done. I realize that the way I was producing them and the past few set of heirs was completely wrong.

It took too long to even play one day of their gameplay because of how much I over thought things, over planned things, and then what made it worse is that I was still playing the game and so every time a sim did something different it meant rewriting the present and changing the future. For anyone that's tried to write a novel you know how much changing one thing can just cause a domino effect of you having to rewrite the whole thing...and this is what was constantly happening.

Example...I had a heir named Kyoko. Some of you may remember her, she was in Sulani and she had once met a sim that was supposed to be her romantic interest, don't remember his name, but they go out on a date and it was going well until one argument flipped her relationship with the guy. I was like well that sucks, I had like so much planned for this couple! But, I do not force my sims relationships, that would be boring! In the end, she end up becoming a mermaid and bleh...

Long story short, this is what was going on with my latest heirs and has been going on since maybe...I forget the last time I completed an actual heir maybe like 2021 or something?!?!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What Now?

Well, I do this for the love of the game! So, I still enjoy doing sim legacies and you will meet THREE new heirs very very very soon. Today, actually!

The Iggleverse must be made new and whole and beautiful and I hope these three heirs are the ones to bring it home and actually have a 2nd generations.

But who is to say you won't just do this again a few months from now?

Well, no one is to say, not even I know that! But, one of the big issues I had with the past one is how slow things were going. I was playing Frida for most of 2024 and she just now had a child! Like I mentioned, the production of my recent legacy attempts has been so slow. A whole episode was a lot of hours of work and then it'd just be like 3-5 days.

Back then I would have had multiple generations in a year like 2 or 3 and daily posting was easily done because I was usually sitting on like 70+ posts. I want to get back to that and the best part, I think I know how!

How?

I must put the legacy ahead of the story, for the longest I was putting story before legacy. It took some enjoyment out of the game because what was happening is I was planning out days for my sims for whatever the story I had planned for them.

Okay, but why not just do all the above and bring back the heirs I've read?

Because its just not how I work! I also have advanced the stories further than read and I don't like them. I feel like because I tried to do this mix of storytelling and plotting while doing gameplay it made me write my sims into arcs I didn't like. Kyoko's Mermaid...

Well, okay, but when will the new legacy start?

I don't have a date, could be tomorrow, could be a week from now, it just depends on when I feel like I am ready. It literally could be tomorrow though because the christmas week, the week I planned on posting Frida, Teresa, Zer, and Gracelyn, because I had time, I spent making new heirs and writing them and I have content ready to post! More than one might expect but that is because I've gone back to my old style of production. Which was legacy and gameplay first and story to tie it all together.

No big scrivener file with all the plots I have going (and there were A LOT), nothing but what the next sim day might bring!

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TOO LONG DID NOT READ!

Well! Just know that I am still around and starting fresh (again), for those that were attached to the previous four heirs, well, I am sorry and like usual, if anyone wants spoilers I'll post them! I think I'll just post pictures and explanations of what I had planned actually!

Because I want this iggleverse to be completely fresh, no connections at all to any previous iggleverse!

So. New year, new me, but also still the old me! I hope that is good enough!

[accirax]

DRDT Chapter 2 Recap Analysis

Heyyyyy everybody :D

I'm sure that, by now, everyone has heard the exciting news: DRDT will be back on Friday, September 6, at 7 PM EST! That's so awesome!!! I can't wait to finally see the end of the Chapter, and hopefully for the DRDT community to come back in full force, even if only for a little while. I missed you all :)

So, to get back in the swing of Chapter 2 theorizing (and recap what's just happened for everyone including myself), I've decided to run a bit of analysis on the return announcement itself, specifically the recap that occurs at the end. I believe that anything an author says about their works can hold clues as to how they view their story. And, in this case, what does and doesn't make the recap and how certain events are phrased can give us some last-minute clues as to what we should be keeping our eyes on going into the second half of the Trial.

I'm going to try to keep this as facts-focused and non-partisan as possible, but in a "theory" like this, confirmation bias is basically impossible to fully ignore. It's inherent that I'll be more likely to pick up on "clues" that work with my beliefs than ones that work against it. So, please remember that I am not attacking anyone who believes any of the things that I "disprove" in this analysis, and I'm also not saying that you're already 100% wrong about them at this point in time. I'm literally going to "shoot down," so to speak, some of my own theories, but I'm not taking this analysis as reason enough to abandon them just yet. We can't know if anything is true or false until the Chapter is finished, so it would be silly to call something completely wrong when the Chapter hasn't even restarted yet.

With that out of the way, let's recap that recap, and drain every bit of information out of it that we possibly can!

I think that the most efficient way to see what is and isn't present is to list out the "scenes" that occur throughout Chapter 2, and see what DRDTdev had to say about each of them. With that in mind, our first "event" is...

Eden Makes Breakfast

Notably, all mention of Levi helping Eden make breakfast is omitted from this recap. This includes in the visuals of the clip played.

In some instances, I'm going to write how DRDTdev could have phrased things if he wanted to highlight certain elements in an indented paragraph, just to prove that it was possible to convey the information differently. Like this!

"Chapter 2 starts with Levi helping Eden make breakfast for everyone."

Distributing the Motive

This part seems pretty all-inclusive to what I remember happening in this scene. The only thing I particularly have to note is the finality of "Arturo received J's secret"-- which really makes it sound like that secret was assigned correctly-- but I don't think literally anyone was trying to claim that Arturo was lying about J having that secret.

Investigating the Second Floor

Obviously, DRDTdev didn't go into detail about any of these interactions-- no notes on Whit's theory that the killing game was catered to them, about Levi really wanting to make things up with Ace, or Nico's struggles with socialization. It means that those details are probably less important to the end of the Trial specifically, but I don't think that's much of a surprise.

Caulking the Bathroom

A lot of detail is omitted from what Teruko and MonoTV were actually talking about in the bathroom. Most notably, however, is that the Monocredits are not included in the recap. This may mean that Teruko's second Monocredit will not be redeemed this chapter, but at some later time.

A Chat With Charles

Once again, the use of Monocredits are ignored, as well as the fact that Charles gave Teruko the secret he received in case of emergencies. Therefore, it's possible that the letter (which should contain Eden's secret) won't come up again in the end of the Trial, and that this scene was more relevant to Charles' plot of opening up to Teruko than anything directly related to the secrets themselves.

"Afterwards, Teruko goes to talk with Charles, who hands her his motive secret in case of emergencies. Flustered by Charles' trust in her, Teruko uses her first Monocredit to have MonoTV make Charles go away."

Eden Retrieves Teruko

A couple of things here! Firstly, DRDTdev draws attention to the fact that Teruko was removed from the group for a day. I don't know if this could factor into murder plans at all, given that it's a whole three days before Arei turns up dead, but it could be relevant. Secondly, any mention of Eden's blackmail AND any mention of Eden's philosophy are omitted from the recap. Given that that's both one piece of information that makes Eden seem more guilty AND one piece that makes her seem more innocent, I imagine that was probably just to keep things neutral/brief. Unlike some of the other text boxes that I showed could have been written differently, that descriptor was already pretty long.

Commotion in the Cafeteria

No comment on who was the one tasked to help each of those pairs (Eden, Veronika, Teruko) or Charles and Whit choosing to sit out, but none of those additions seemed incredibly relevant to the overall plot.

David Suggests Secret Sharing

In this case, "secret" is put in quotations, which strongly suggests that having a family history of depression, whether true or not, is not what David's secret actually was. But, the board basically confirmed that already. Far more wildly, no mention is made of Charles learning of Elliot's existence at all. This is particularly crazy to me given that the last video on the DRDT channel prior to this was the Yoidoreshirazu MV. It definitely implies to me that Charles' secret will not be relevant in wrapping up Chapter 2.

Arei's Breakdown

The use of "rebuffs" as opposed to "bullies" or "demeans" is interesting to me, as it's a relatively chill word to describe what Arei did. We also lost Eden slipping up and telling Teruko that the secret she has belonged to someone with he/him pronouns, but that was likely excluded because we've (most likely) already solved that mystery.

Rose's Secret

No detail about Rose's backstory, but we don't have all day. Far more interesting to me is that DRDTdev draws attention to Nico asking Rose to teach them to paint in a sentence that could have easily been cut. My guess is to highlight the importance of this in relation to Ace's "murder."

Nico Threatens Ace

Nothing of note here; this seems pretty standard.

Nico's Secret

The phrasing "David has Nico reveal their secret" is really cool for how non-partisan it is. It doesn't say "David FORCES Nico" or "David MAKES Nico," but it also doesn't just say "Nico reveals their secret," either. It points out how David pushed things in this direction, but did so in a way where it was still technically up to Nico. Anyways, we also lost Hu telling us about the origin of her name. This is a bit strange, given that it's the main scene we have (in Chapter 2 at least) of Hu and David working together and being on good terms before David's reveal. Perhaps this implies that any relevance this scene has on the Trial has already passed.

Teruko Threatens J

Honestly, the weirdest part of this to me is that it was important enough to make the recap at all. But, it did have a CG and everything. Actually, I wonder if this could have been included to help us remember that Teruko is actively carrying a knife on her at all times.

Ace Nearly Dies

DRDTdev directly phrases this as "Nico attempting to murder Ace," which really sounds like a soft confirmation that Nico was the one who tried to kill Ace, and therefore they were not framed for this crime.

"Late at night, Teruko and Eden spot Nico running away from Ace's nearly dead body in the Gym."

We also lose a lot of detail when it comes to Teruko and Eden investigating the initial scene of the crime, Ace chasing down Nico to kill them on the spot, and Levi offering his aid before being rejected and growing angry. It could indicate that the details of what happened after Ace "died" won't be relevant to the end of the Chapter.

Hu Defends Nico

This scene, in which Ace tries to expose what Nico did and Hu argues that Ace must have the wrong idea, is entirely missing from the recap. I bring this up because, very notably, this is the scene where Arei is last seen, not speaking. Arei's weirdly quiet breakfast is not highlighted in the recap at all, which may mean that it won't be relevant to the Trial.

Teruko and Rose Check Out the Gym

We once again call particular attention to the fact that Rose can't do a pullup because the grippy tape went missing from the Gym at some point around the time of the murder, although no focus is put on the fact that the Gym was closed in between when Teruko and Eden were there and when Teruko returned with Rose. This may suggest that the lockdown logic of how the tape went missing may be relevant to the remainder of the chapter.

A Chat With Charles and Whit

Once again, absolutely no mention is made of Ellie or Charles' childhood amnesia, despite that being the main point of this conversation. Weird.

"Teruko stops by the Computer Lab and talks with Charles and Whit about Charles' memories of a forgotten older brother."

Horror Movies in the Gym

Beyond the lack of detail regarding Veronika's philosophy, I'm quite surprised that Teruko's plan to end the killing game wasn't at all mentioned in the recap. I guess that'll be saved for a further chapter!

Motive Reveal Time

I don't think there's anything particularly important going on here, besides possibly drawing attention back to David being the one to point out that Arei was missing. It's possible that could still be relevant if the specifics of the BDA come up in the Trial.

Discovering Arei's Body

A couple of points on word choice in this one-- first of all, the text says "find her body," which, according to what was said on the slide before this one ("points out that Arei is missing"), should imply that they found Arei's body. However, the way that this slide is phrased allows for the very sneaky "Everyone goes to search for [Arei]. Teruko, Eden, and Whit find [J's] body hanging in the playground." Therefore, in my opinion, this part of the recap doesn't disprove swap theory, at least.

Secondly, the word DRDTdev chose was "find," not "discover." And, in this game, the BDA rule is phrased as "The Body Discovery Announcement will play when three or more people who did not witness the murder discover the body." Thus, by not directly saying that Teruko, Eden, or Whit was discovering the body here, this part of the recap also doesn't disprove the idea that Eden or Whit (or Teruko) could have done something to falsify the BDA. In fact, the BDA itself isn't mentioned at all.

"Everyone goes to search for her. Teruko, Eden, and Whit discover her body hanging in the playground, and trigger the Body Discovery Announcement."

Investigation

Absolutely nothing from the investigation makes it into the recap, likely because the investigation is an entire episode long on its own, and DRDTdev was trying to keep it quick. Not to mention, pointing out particular pieces of evidence here would really highlight what's going to be important in the Trial to come, and DRDTdev may be lowkey trying to further nudge people towards rewatching the entire investigation for themselves anyways. I think that the reconstruction of the note is probably the thing that I'm most surprised to see missing from the recap? I'll also point out that the video clips chosen for the "Investigating the Second Floor" section include Teruko and MonoTV looking up at the Gym's ceiling fans, which could be a sneaky way of drawing further attention to that setup.

Assigning Secrets

We have to go a bit later into the recap to hear about the motive secrets, and what we get is, predictably, very vague. Saying, "currently, the state of the motive secrets is like this" puts the full burden of proof onto the students to assign them correctly, with DRDTdev giving no indication here as to which are correct. Even the most highly contested assignment-- that Xander has the "the killing game is all your fault" secret as opposed to Teruko-- is still treated like fact here. Again, not a surprise, but not much to be gained.

Possibility of Suicide

The specifics of the blackened being the "most mastermind-y" person involved in the case are not included in the recap. This could imply that this rule may not be important to the outcome of this Trial.

Eden and Arturo

"Eden had Arturo's secret" also feels like a soft confirmation that that is Arturo's secret, and we won't reveal later down the line that Arturo actually had a different secret. I feel like this segment is also phrased like fact, therefore implying that Eden wasn't lying about this confrontation happening. We also get no indication as to Eden's feelings on Arei's vow, or whether them becoming friends actually happened.

"In the Trial, Eden claimed to have Arturo's secret, and that he attacked her when she revealed it. When Arei came to save her, the two of them forged a friendship."

What Ace Overheard

While not as plainly put as "it is revealed that," the phrasing "Ace reveals that" seems to support that Ace was telling the truth about overhearing this conversation, although the date on which it happened isn't reaffirmed here. Similarly, "David's secret is revealed" strongly implies that David does have the manipulator secret.

"Ace then claimed to overhear Arei and David talking about [David's] secret, and declared that David's secret was being a manipulator."

The David Reveal

(I'm going to write these ones out instead of having a screenshot because I ran out of images :,( And I'm too lazy to compress them... )

"In response, David acts aggressively and admits to being Arei's killer. Everyone nearly votes for David, but Teruko and a few others believe that David is lying. Then, Charles interrupts and reveals that he has some yet-unknown information that changes the Trial..."

To be honest, I didn't realize that "a few others" were siding with Teruko. Like, Charles for sure, and possibly Ace, given he still thinks Nico did it...? That phrase could be a hint that we'll hear more about other students who don't think that David is the blackened quickly after the plot resumes. Maybe my prediction that we're about to head into a scrum debate for 7:30 AM vs 7:30 PM will turn out to be correct...!

And, that's pretty much all I had to say... 30 images later. Look, a lot of it is images, so there wasn't actually that much analysis involved! Besides, now is the third-best time to be hyped and rambling about DRDT Chapter 2-- the top two being while the chapter is airing and just after it's finished, obviously-- so I can say as much as I want! And so can you!

If there are any particular phrasings within the recap that struck you as interesting, feel free to talk about them in the comments or a reblog! I'd love to see what other people think about this, and add my two cents (if desired).

From what it seems, the DRDT community seems to be just as excited for the return of DRDT as I am, which makes me very happy. I hope you enjoyed reading this analysis, and once again, please remember that I'm not trying to shame anyone for believing in anything that may be "disproved" by what DRDTdev said, or to fully convince them out of it before the Chapter begins. If I were DRDTdev, I would be trying to phrase things in the most vague and misleading ways possible to throw off nosy people like myself. It's also definitely possible that I read into things too far in my excitement. That's what this practice round is for, before we dive back in to the real meat of the mystery on September 6th!

Oh my god... we're actually going to dive back in to the real meat of the mystery on September 6th...

See you then!!!

[mysteriouslyjovialcolor]

Abu Dhabi 2024

-Seeing Charles in p19 is stuff from my nightmares

-“Leclerc at the back of the grid” Just why

-“Max Verstappen will be a menace, won’t he?” Yes! Bring it on!

-Franco!! It’s too early for emotional talkkkk!!

-Valterri too? Come on, I can’t watch this race with teary eyes

-Can they stop talking about Sergio leaving already??

-Holy fricking shit! Max, you literal menace!!

-Oh no Checo too?? What in the telepathic connection??

-Charlesssssss! Up to p8 already!!!!

-Checo?!? No! Istg!!! Aaaaaaahh whyyyy???

-Charles overtaking masterclass is what I was praying for

-“Kevin Magnussen, what a great first lap for him” Went in with the right amount of chaos! Let’s go!

-Ooh Pierre!!

-Max didn’t waste any time there, getting past Liam at the restart

-Oscar??

-Valterri was the won who hit Checo? Why???

-Early pit stop from Oscar

-What an end to a season from Max. That 10s penalty sums up everything. Since when do we penalize first lap incidents anyway?

-“Yup, move of a world champion that one” Hehe

-“Whilst they were swapping around on the inside, he was dancing around the outside” Happy Charles>>>

-How are we only 7 laps in?

-I’m so so happy for Charles

-Oop Oscar’s got a penalty too. Can’t we just cancel out both penalties now?

-Go Max!

-“6 different constructors in the top 6” Fun

-Charles, Charles, Charles

-Why are so many drivers having false starts lately??

-Woah good move there from Lewis Liam

-Charles? Track limits? Come on be cool

-Charles and Max simultaneously making moves! Let’s go!

-“No pace mate” WHY

-Ugh come on! Slow stop for Kevin

-Still salty about Esteban not being here

-Come on Charles! P3 yeah?

-Poor Zhou, him being in a Sauber should be penalty enough

-I had such high hopes of a Hulkenburg podium :(

-Ferrari starting off pit stop games? Oh nvm

-If they mess up Charles’ strategy I will murder someone

-“Stay out” “Why?!” Hahaha mood

-Genuinely what was the point of bringing Jack in this race?

-The wheels aren’t on??

-What’s going on at VCarb?

-Franco?!? Oh no, whyyy??

-Fricking James Vowles

-10s stop and go? Goddamn

-“Slowest pit stop for Max Verstappen this season” Did we all collectively forget about Mexico?

-What the hell happened to Valterri’s tire??

-Kevin?!

-“Isn’t that just f*cking great?” Should I just kms?

-Woah Aston Martin playing strategy games. You don’t see that very often

-“Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Max Verstappen” Champions line-up

-Aw he said “Hammer time”

-Let’s go Max!!

-The sky looks so pretty there

-Kevin with the fastest lap. Please let him keep it

-Just realized Yuki’s still in points. Yay.

-🎶 Max Verstappen 🎶

-“Here comes Max Verstappen” I love hearing that

-He said top 6 finish and he got top 6 finish (please let him burn the car after the race)

-Oscar??

-“This is the rhythm” Laughing through the pain

-At least we get Charles and Carlos sharing the podium one last time as teammates

-Lewis really pushing there

-Ferrari trying a gamble? Please don’t

-Puncture??

-Yesss Lewissss!!

-Woo! Okayy constructors champions! Pretty cool how the last time McLaren were champions, the current drivers weren’t even born yet.

-Are they the youngest ever constructors champions lineup? Cause that would be cool too

-Lewis donuts??!

-I’m so glad he gets to end on a high and make better moves next season

-Going to really miss Kevin, Zhou, Valterri and Franco (and Daniel and Logan and Charles and Carlos as teammates and Nico and Kevin as teammates and please let Checo stay and and)

-Brb going to cry

[lynx-doodles-indie-games]

minor and moderate worldless spoilers ahead! i really like this game so please play it so you can have the full context of my stupidity

this upload's gonna be a bit different, since i wanna talk about a Very Very Stupid Thing i did when i played worldless last month, and hopefully some of yall can enjoy me being the butt of the joke idk. minor spoilers are ahead, but i'll put the moderate spoilers under the cut below.

also because there isn't a better place to put this, the colors i used throughout these doodles are from sweetavery's zenith, it's an impeccable fit for this game!

so, picked up worldless last month and yet another game pestered me about playing on a controller as opposed to keyboard. "how dare!" i shouted at my computer, "for i have bested the pantheon of hallownest in hollow knight and make for a fine accomplice in rain world's jolly co-op with just a keyboard! i don't need a controller!"

well, to absolutely no one's surprise, the default keyboard layout SUCKS. but that's nothing a little rebinding can't fix. i messed around in the menus, experimented with what made the game feel mildly more comfortable to play, which worked for about twenty minutes.

so i haven't talked much about the story, yeah? well that's because this wrestling with the controls took up so much of my attention that i could barely clock in what was happening! so that when the above happened, well… you can see how well that went out.

i actually put the game down out of frustration because i was really excited for it and yet the controls were so obstinate. this was my first impression, and it… was not a great one, you can tell.

about a week later i was bored out of my mind and picked up the game again. i'd wondered if i should've started a new save or picked up where i left off. i wish i had done the former. because…

yeah, i'd gone off the intended path and ignored the objective because i'd literally forgotten what the game had told me it wanted me to do.

that's as much i'm willing to divulge to the people who want to play the game with as few spoilers as possible. moderate spoilers below.

rest assured, i'm getting a pair of controllers later this month. the transition is gonna be… rocky. i'd been meaning to get some for being able to play horizon zero dawn and hyper light drifter and other games of that caliber, but this experience with worldless urged that along faster. (i am not looking forward to relearning how to play hollow knight and rain world on a controller)

---

back to the game:

so yeah, even at this point, i had not connected the dots that the guy who beat me up was the same guy i was chasing across the map was the same guy i saw in that apparition was the same guy currently crouched in front of me. i get "early-game amnesia" every so often (ask me sometime about my experience with shovel knight this summer), but worldless has been the worst example of it happening to me, not helped by the awful controls distracting me in the opening, not playing it for a long enough time for my memory of the first twenty minutes to erode, and then returning to my old save file instead of starting up a new one.

i somehow blearghed my way into resolving the conflict peacefully, since i'd known the battles are a bit like puzzles and this one had given me the capability of using wisp's cry. so i did, thinking it was simply the resolution for the battle.

and this. this took me off-guard. but, obviously, not in the way the devs had expected. i didn't know who this guy was so suddenly playing as him was rather confusing.

which is a shame, really. i wish i'd restarted the game instead of picked up from my current save. i wish i could erase my memories of the game and replay it afresh (but with more optimal controls). i wish i'd gotten a controller before playing worldless.

but what's done is done. i wrestled the controls into something somewhat manageable. in the span of less than two weeks of active play, i'd beaten the game, found the secret boss, ascended the path of determination, and overcome the ultimate trial all on a keyboard.

dw tho, i eventually bonded with my beloved deuteragonist (dubbed him "coal" in contrast with the original deuteragonist "wisp"). i've drawn a ton of them in the past couple of weeks and i'm hoping to share em soon. gotta get the word about this game out somehow :D

idk how to end this lol

[cant-get-enough-btr-forever]

Big Time Games: "Recycle Rush."

In my last post, I said I would give y'all a play-by-play of Big Time Rush online games. So, that's exactly what I'm doing.

Unfortunately, I can't upload more than 30 images per post. So, I'm only including Recycle Rush in this one. Don't worry—"Stage Rush" will come next.

Enjoy!

The rules are simple: Hit the spacebar to drop the trash on the boy below you (he catches it). The trash eventually gets dropped into a dumpster.

Also, lol—cows give you bonus points. "Green Time Rush" approves.

This is how my very first game went:

Side note: Notice how the Palmwoods only has two floors. The levels literally stack up as the game goes on. Interesting.

Let's try this again!

Carlos drops it on James...

...James drops it in the dumpster...

And, uh, yeah. That's it. That's the whole game.

Level 2: I noticed that these yellow exclamation points pop up over their heads. They let you know when the boys are about to turn around. Good to know! I just wish someone had told me...

Suddenly, a wild Kendall appears.

To accommodate this new arrival, the Palmwoods morphs into a 3-story building. See what I mean?

Kendall valiantly carries out his duty.

Level 3: There is now a 2-liter bottle magically floating in the hallway.

So this is how you get bonus points—you need to drop the trash on the bottle and the guy simultaneously. It isn't always a bottle; sometimes it's a banana peel or a soda can. Clearly, you need a bit of timing (and patience) for this.

But since I'm an expert, I pulled it off. On the second try.

Ah, Logan. 'Bout time you showed up.

Side note: The elevators' positions don't make sense. Why are they so far apart from each other?

Crap. I dropped trash all over the lobby. Bitters is not gonna like this.

Logan's exclamation point works well here—it's like he's saying, "What the—dude, seriously?! I'm over here!"

Anyhoo, I was able to restart Level 3…

…only to fail once more.

This is not good for my ego.

'Tis but a scratch. I brushed myself off and labored on.

Level 4:

Listen, I really wanted to know what would happen if I dropped the trash on the Cow.

Don't make the mistakes that I made, friends. You must always ensure that the boy is under the trash, too.

Still, it was hilarious to watch the Cow plummet whilst enveloped in a trash bag.

I corrected my actions, and was rewarded with the sight of Logan carrying the whole frickin' frackin' Cow on his back.

Ahem. Anyway.

Does this mean that they're going to recycle a...a cow??

Whew. The Cow jumped out. By the way, in this level, the dumpster moves from side to side. Is the Palmwoods haunted again, or...?

Level 5: The guys are now speed-walking. Thanks, boys. Make my job harder for me.

Also, here's something bizarre: Carlos starts out on the top floor, while James is directly below him.

Moments later, Carlos is several floors below, and James is in the lobby.

Well, they ain't called Big Time RUSH for nothing!

Level 7 (Level 6 is identical to Level 5): Okay, everything is going about the sa—

Wait.

Oh, dear God.

There are two Jameses.

Who recycles more garbage than YOU?

I love this game, guys.

From here onwards, the difficulty doesn't change much. So, I simply got my score to 10,000 before stopping. Which took a lot longer than I'm willing to admit.

Final Thoughts: This is quite fun. More fun than I thought it would be, which is always nice. I give it an 8/10.

If anyone wants to give it a whirl, here it is. Be sure to use a computer, and not a mobile device.

Happy playing! 😁

[possibilistfanfiction]

world cup goals! footy au? Literally anything though, thank youuuuuu

[shoutout to katie mccabe & also everyone's suits. love this wc]

//

it took four years too long, but finally — finally — you get to watch ava in a world cup. you're, of course, the face of the nation, the captain, all the hopes of a repeat resting on your shoulders. this time, it feels light; it feels like a gift, to have people believe in you — to have people think you deserve their faith. you know, without a doubt, that you will play the best football you possibly can. when you answer ava's facetime just before she gets on the bus — so she can show you how she's opted to wear the team suit, perfectly tailored, a deep navy, without a shirt underneath it, mismatched earrings and an opal drop chain you'd gotten her a few months ago, because you saw it and knew she would love it — and she smiles, you know that you already have the faith of the most important person in the world.

when you watch from the conference room your team has reserved, your opening match not for two days still, but it counts as film studies, really, all things considered — lilith rolls her eyes but is currently curled up on the couch next to you in an oversized hoodie that smells suspiciously like camila's perfume — it fills your chest so immensely you don't know how you keep breathing for a moment. ava jumps the line with a grin, her socks slipping low and one side of her shorts already pulled up and tucked into her compression shorts, and you think you might burst.

the commentators mention her missed world cup last cycle, but they don't have much time to dwell on it because, only a few minutes in, ava brushes hair out of her face and lifts her hand, taking the first corner of the game. lilith rolls her eyes before it even happen, and joy — amusing, overwhelming happiness — fills you when ava hits a perfect olympico, one of her favorite set pieces to goof around with on the training ground. she's laughing, when her team runs over, when she turns to the fans screaming her name, when she holds up her hands in the shape of a heart to the camera.

'god, she's so insufferable,' lilith grumbles.

'are you grumpy because you haven't scored an olympico?'

'we haven't even played yet, beatrice.'

you shrug, reveling in ava's bright play all up and down the left side after the restart, the way she tracks back and holds the ball patiently, the exuberance and fearlessness of some of her overlapping runs. 'worried you won't win the golden boot this time around?'

'just about as worried as you are that you won't win the golden ball.'

ava whiffs — badly — on a cross and just accepts her teammates' good natured teasing, a playful shove to the shoulder as they gather themselves defensively before the goal kick. you wait a beat and then lilith giggles, literally giggles, and you can't help the laughter either.

'i am begging the football gods to show me a replay of that,' she says, already on twitter to see if anyone posted about it.

ava plays the rest of her pre-planned sixty minutes with the same fervor — cheerful, creative, fun. she nets another goal and lends an assist before she's subbed out, gets in two nutmegs, which you know she secretly enjoyed the most. she is a formidable opponent, and you've learned, by now, it's because of how she plays: light, everywhere.

she facetimes you after her presser, just as you're settling into bed. she looks so soft in a team-issued crew neck and tired, content eyes, her hair still damp from her post-game shower.

'did you enjoy that first goal?'

'well, that's one way to kick off your world cup tenure.'

she grins. 'you thought it was sexy.'

'unfortunately, i think just about everything you do is sexy.'

ava pouts. 'come on, bea. an olympico? in my first world cup match ever? please admit you loved it.'

'lilith hated it.'

ava barks a laugh, grins with teeth.

'and, of course, darling. i loved it. i love watching you play.'

she softens, immediately. you've gotten spoiled, getting to play club with her for so many years — there are few nights spent apart, and those are mostly because of national team camps or, a few rare occasions, when one of you has an overnight stay in the hospital following a procedure. you wish you could fall asleep with her now, you wish you could help calm her buzzing energy and that she could keep you warm.

as it is, though, you just lie down and listen to her talk about the ins and outs of the defensive formation they had to break down, the pivot sixes they're going to play against the next team in their group — 'to practice, honestly, for when we play you, which i shouldn't be telling you but whatever, you're so smart anyway. good luck to us.' — and how her lats have been so tight after training but felt better during pt tonight.

'hey,' she says, about to get off the bus, 'i'm going to let you go. you keep closing your eyes for longer and longer. you should get some sleep.'

you hum, fight to keep your eyes open just a little longer. 'i love watching you play.'

her mouth quirks up. 'jogo bonito, right?'

you want to kiss her; you will, just as soon as you can. 'jogo bonito, yes.'

'goodnight, bea.'

'make sure you take your pain meds before bed, and —'

'i know, babe,' she says, soft and gentle. 'i got it. thank you for reminding me.'

'always.'

'i love you,' she says.

'i love you too.'

'i'm gonna dream of you in your suit tonight.' ava laughs, waves, and hangs up.

you toss and turn a few minutes before you admit defeat and google ava silva world cup suit and stare at pictures online for a few minutes, and then put your phone aside on the charging pad and, with quite the image in your mind, fall fast asleep.

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE C

Dean Winchester Propaganda:

Rewrote his own memory about his friend dying. I know this seems weak and unexpected but there actually a ton of stuff i just can't quote it.

This isn't even about The Winchesters its about him rewriting his memories of Cas staying in purgatory and of his own trauma (courtesy of his shitty dad). He's not obviously an unreliable narrator but he very much is one.

The Narrator Propaganda:

Just... Just listen to the "unfunny" clip, what's more to say, vote for the gay old guy

Depending on the ending, he can be

Spoilers I guess??? He's always trying to guide Stanley to the outcome HE wants, which is a very, very small chunk of the game where the player just obeys everything and doesn't experience anything else. Obeying Narrator to a T will win you the "Freedom" ending, where Stanley can finally leave the office building, and Narrator will wax on about how Stanley's "happy" and "finally free to live at last". ...exceeeept, on completion, Stanley will spawn right back in the building as though nothing happened, restarting the adventure all over again. The truth is that Stanley will never be free, regardless of what the Narrator says. Stanley is trapped in the building and will stay trapped no matter what. This truth can only be acknowledged if you're defiant, and even then, I may be mistaken but I'm pretty sure the Narrator never fully admits this??? The museum ending has a WHOLE DIFFERENT narrator explain their mutually fucked circumstances. The dishonest factors can increase in other ways from the player's input (for example, the Narrator might say "Stanley walked through the left door", but the player can use their input to defy this statement and go through the right one instead, therefore making the Narrator's statement inherently dishonest and the Narrator will get pissy about it, changing the outcome for that path). Sometimes he'll misdirect when he's petulant, especially if the player is directly defying his instructions, which makes the game feel like a game of tug-rope for control at points. I want to say there are times where he directly attempts to trick the player but admittedly I can't think of an exact instance. Plus you know, the Narrator has a large ego and always talks big about things like his importance and integrity and whatnot so who knows how much of that is even sincere and how much is a sad veneer, but that's getting into overanalysis territory and my fingers hurt so let's leave this here. I hope this was coherent.

he quite literally rewrites the story whenever he has issues with the direction stanley starts to go in, i do not know how to explain it better than that

He is literally the narrator, and he constantly tries to mislead and lie to Stanley through the narration to get him back on the story’s proper path

He constantly narrates what Stanley is feeling as if it is the truth, when it is not. He speaks as a authority, and while he is one, he is definitely not reliable.

[anons-has-hlvrai-aus]

The Metamorphosis of Gordon Freeman [Chapter 6]

Asking About Monty Armadillos

Chapter 1 | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Chapter Summary: Gordon just wanted to get some errands done. Unfortunately, the wall had other plans.

Word Count: 6,425

Ao3 Version Link

Notes: This chapter was originally going to be about Bubby’s job at Burger King, but I decided that Gordon needs to spend this chapter and part of the next one dedicated to more slice of life stuff. Or at least the closest thing to slice of life that’s possible with these characters. That’s partially why this chapter took so long to release, it was meant to go in a completely different direction.

It had been a couple weeks since Benrey had moved in. For now, life was pretty much the same as it had been for Gordon, except now he had to deal with somebody eating his Honey Nut Cheerios straight out of the box like a fucking animal, and he now had to dedicate about thirty minutes of every evening to purposefully utilizing his Sweet Voice. He was at a point where he could easily toggle the ability on and off without fail, and he hadn’t had any particularly extreme emotions recently that would cause him to spew it out involuntarily. He was incredibly thankful with how easily it came to him, because he did have a life outside of the Science Team, and he couldn’t afford to lose it on account of some bullshit that was absolutely Benrey’s fault.

Always Benrey…

He supposed the man’s inclusion in the household did have some benefits other than having a ‘teacher’ near him at all times.

It encouraged him to play more video games he hadn’t experienced before, for one. As somebody that had familiarized himself solely with computer games in the last four years, Benrey’s surprisingly wide PlayStation collection was admirable, but his weird fascination with 2000’s Crash Bandicoot games, specifically Mind Over Mutant, was a tad concerning…it wasn’t a massive game changer, though. As long as Benrey didn’t start making proud exclamations that he was going to name his firstborn child after the funny marsupial, it was probably fine…

Another benefit, Gordon considered, was that Benrey was generally helpful around the house, offering to do his share of the chores not even a day after their first lesson, and this seemed to tie in well with Benrey’s technical skills with the various appliances in Gordon’s possession.

Benrey was immensely competent with technology in a way that nobody else in the Science Team could possibly rival. Tommy was up there in terms of technical literacy, able to explain in simple terms to Gordon how to restart his router when the internet had crapped out, or how to fix his computer when he accidentally flipped the screen upside-down that one time, but Benrey seemingly knew every appliance and piece of technology in the house from the inside-out. He’d even figured out how to get discs for his older games to read on the PS4. It wasn’t supposed to do that, but Benrey had found a way, like with the Internet Wad.

He shouldn’t have been surprised at this point that Benrey was continuing to challenge any and all previously conceived notions Gordon had about him. Hell, Benrey had literally walked up and asked to borrow the manuals for all the home devices within a few days of moving in; Gordon had obliged to get the man off his back, but he did, in fact, see him reading those manuals throughout that following day. Of course, this only led Gordon to wonder why Benrey seemed to arbitrarily forget things they had talked about, even if it happened minutes before.

Benrey wasn’t dumb, that much had always been obvious, but there was definitely something holding him back. Maybe he was scared of large responsibilities, so he played dumb to avoid them…no, that was giving Benrey too much credit. He was smart, but all his decisions were notably short-sighted and only focused on his current wants and needs. So, yeah, he had no idea what was going on there.

An operatic tone pulled Gordon out of his thoughts.

“Yooooo.”

“Hey Benrey.”

The other man pried his attention away from the box of Honey Nut Cheerios being held close to his chest. “…Nice shirt.”

Gordon looked down…and gave an awkward thanks.

“Where’d you get that?” Benrey probed.

According to a conversation Gordon had with one of his neighbors some time ago, there was a long-running joke involving novelty shirts that was entirely localized in the Anomalous Materials department and had resulted in said department having the means to create them whenever they wanted, which certainly explained how he had ended up with so many in the first place. Outside of a few notable exceptions, almost every single novelty shirt Gordon possessed came from his old apartment in Black Mesa and followed the criteria of either being related to his pre-game backstory, or was a joke shirt he had (apparently) created in his free time; unfortunately, neither of these things existed in his current memory. The fact that all of these shirts came from the same printing company, and that the few remaining members of the original Anomalous Materials crew could be counted on one hand and were incredibly spread out geographically, meant Gordon would have to take the daunting task of determining which shirts were legitimate creations by his workplace and which ones were created by himself in a previous life, or at least inadvertently by The Player, into his own hands.

Gordon wasn’t sure which category ‘I got my top surgery done at Black Mesa’ fell into, and honestly he didn’t care enough anymore to find out.

He responded to Benrey’s question with a shrug and a very neutral “I don’t know,” which seemed to appease the non-human enough to continue eating breakfast on the couch like a heathen.

“Is there another reason you called me over, or did you just wanna see my pajamas?”

The lingering silence, occasionally broken by audible crunching and sniffling, could drive somebody crazy. Gordon had learned that rushing Benrey didn’t help any, so he just walked away to make his own breakfast (sadly not Honey Nut Cheerios, because a certain somebody was hogging them). If his new housemate had an answer for his question, he would get it out-

“Bubby’s on his way.”

“What?”

-right now, apparently.

Benrey sniffled again before responding. “Bubby’s on his way. Gonna be here soon.”

“How do you know that?”

“Smell ‘em.”

“You can…smell him coming? While it’s raining like hell outside?”

“Yeah.”

Great, wonderful. Write that up as another horrible power to look forward to. “Why is Bubby coming to visit?”

Benrey smiled, a mischievous green color escaping from his lips. “He’s got a uhhh, feet pics.”

“He does NOT!!!!!!”

Gordon blew his own Sweet Voice back at his tormentor, who simply laughed. ‘Blue means stop it, you!’

Okay, so maybe saying he didn’t have any extreme emotions was a bit of an exaggeration, but so far these slip-ups were only happening at home and almost entirely triggered by something Benrey said or did.

It’s fine. He’s fine.

The sudden rapping and ringing of the doorbell that occurred immediately after their spat, thankfully, did not come as a surprise.

Gordon had the Science Team’s usual hints of arrival memorized: Tommy had a slow and calculated knock, Darnold rang the doorbell twice in succession, Coomer rang the bell then knocked, and the ever so extra Bubby would perform five knocks and a ring of the bell.

The seamless performance of ‘Shave and Haircut’ more than confirmed the claim of Bubby’s arrival. Again, not like he should have been surprised anymore. Benrey’s behaviors since he moved in made it clear he made a lot of shit up, but so far he never lied about how his powers worked; although he did get oddly quiet whenever he was asked about how many powers he had.

Weird but…whatever.

Gordon got up from his spot in the kitchen and opened the door for Bubby.

“I got the job at Burger King, Gordon!”

“What?”

“I got th-” He paused. “Where the hell did you get a shirt like that from?”

Normally, Gordon wouldn’t have advertised any part of his absurd shirt collection to other people, other than Benrey who he had correctly assumed on day one wouldn’t have cared, but he wasn’t really in a position to keep Bubby waiting. It was, after all, wet as fuck outside. Explaining the whole backstory behind the shirt would be too much, so he simply replied “I don’t remember.”

“Well uh, let me know if you do…I want to get one for Harold. He’d find it hilarious. Anyways, I got the job at Burger King, Gordon!”

“Oh shit, congratulations.”

“No need to boost my ego, I knew it would be easy!” Bubby beamed with arrogance. “I start in the next week or two, you should come say hi once I get my hours!”

“I don’t see why not. We’ve celebrated much smaller occasions.” Gordon looked over his shoulders, “How about you, Benrey?”

“Oh fuck YEAH bro!” Benrey’s disgustingly loud affirmation peaked like a cheap microphone. He slipped into a valley girl accent, making the experience significantly worse for everybody involved as he began chanting “Road Trip! Road Trip!” ad nauseam.

Gordon responded with another line of blue at Benrey, much less aggressive than his earlier stream. The message was conveyed, but he wasn’t sure if it actually had the same influence on Benrey that it had on himself or if Benrey was just listening to him out of kindness. He wasn’t exactly willing to try it out on anybody else to find out, either…

“You’re really getting the hang of that!” Said Bubby.

“Thanks.” A warmth peppered itself around Gordon’s cheeks. He still felt awkward about ‘expressing’ himself like this around other people. A little bit of praise did a lot for Gordon’s fragile ego, even if he had no plans to display his powers in front of anybody outside of the Science Team. “So uh, when do you want us to show up once you get your hours?”

Bubby hummed in thought before responding. “If it’s the morning shift? Probably around lunch. It’ll be the best possible time to show off my sick customer service skills.”

“You have customer service skills?”

“Well, not yet I don’t!” He half-chuckled, “But I imagine the other workers will have me trained up real quick! See you then!”

“See ya, man!”

Both men exchanged waves before Bubby slammed the door behind himself, leaving Gordon to look over his nasty self. It was, like, 1 PM. He desperately needed to put on some normal clothes.

“I’m gonna take a shower.” Gordon loudly announced. “Please don’t do anything crazy while I’m in there.”

He didn’t hear Benrey’s response, but he did catch a glimpse of him returning the cereal box to its rightful place before clipping back into the attic, which he had officially declared his place of residence. Personally, Gordon would have preferred the nice and comfy guest bedroom with a massive window to let sunlight inside, but he didn’t particularly care one way or another if Benrey rejected the objectively better living space.

If the man wanted to sleep like an opossum, then so be it; more luxury for Gordon. Although, he did secretly wish Benrey would move his sleeping quarters for the sake of his legs. Climbing the ladder to the attic kinda sucked ass.

Other than that, there were no issues…at least, not any that needed worrying about at the present time. It was the weekend, after all, which meant he had two full days to attend to whatever needed doing at a leisurely pace, not that he was pressed for time in any way. He was still unemployed after all, it was the illusion of leisure that really mattered here.

So Gordon took his sweet time in the shower, or at least he tried to. For a moment he remembered that it was raining outside and he was reminded that it was possible to get electrocuted in the shower during a thunderstorm. But, it wasn’t thundering right now so…maybe it was-?

There was a rumble outside.

Hastily, he scrubbed the remaining soap suds from his hair, ran some conditioner through for good measure, and hopped out from the awkward tub. It was annoying to maneuver over the knee-high wall of porcelain, but it was so much easier to clean compared to the sliding glass doors that had been there when he moved in, a necessary evil. Plus, you just couldn’t get the same privacy from a frosted window that a shower curtain could just as easily provide for much cheaper.

He threw on a bathrobe, a habit he had to start picking up to avoid any uncomfortable encounters with his new housemate in the hallway since the master bathroom was sadly not connected to his bedroom, and hurried across the hall to complete his routine.

There was a knock at his bedroom door while he finished combing his hair. “Goin’.”

“Going? Going where?”

“Forzen’s.”

Gordon silently let Benrey be on his way. The odd man had been hanging out with Forzen a lot since he showed up, which checked out since they were apparently best friends again. Or…maybe they never stopped being best friends from Benrey’s point of view? He wasn’t sure, and it didn’t really matter anyways.

What did matter right now was getting some of his tasks done, like grocery shopping and stopping by the movie rental shop. He decided to get the latter done first, the grocery place was bound to be crowded right now. It wasn’t that he doubted his ability to be seen in a crowded public space without a Sweet Voice outburst that wasn’t prompted by the presence of Benrey, he could do that just fine, he just didn’t like crowded spaces.

He swiftly grabbed the copy of All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 (which Gordon could now definitively say he did NOT die at the end of, much to Benrey’s continued insistence) and its predecessor from the TV stand and made way to his car.

‘Who DID like crowded spaces?’ Gordon wondered. He certainly couldn’t name anybody off the top of his head. It was a question he would consider pondering later.

In around one hour he had gone to the rental store, carried a pretty casual conversation with the lady at the counter, and exchanged his duology of animated films about dogs and the consequences of toying with life and death for the original trilogy Jurassic Park, a completely unrelated series of movies also about the consequences of toying with life and death. And he’d gone through the entire scenario without even a single bubble of Sweet Voice, once again proving to himself that he was fully capable of integrating himself into human society without breaking the veil of normalcy. He could only hope that Benrey would be able to do the same. If Forzen could do it…

Actually, that was a good point.

Forzen and Benrey were pretty much the same guy aside from Forzen obviously being human, that much Gordon already knew but…shit, man. Maybe this was a good thing.

If he could teach Forzen to fit in, why couldn’t he do the same with Benrey?

Clever Gordon, very clever Gordon. And it would work out perfectly fine in the long run because Benrey was teaching Gordon how to handle his new fucked up alien puberty anyways, why not do Benrey a favor in exchange and help him integrate as well? It was a win for everybody involved.

This was good.

This was SO good!

He was absolutely electrified about this revelation; he’d dare say he was actually looking forward to Benrey getting home so he could share this brilliant plan. It was amazing, HE was amazing, and…and…his house keys were gone.

He didn’t forget them this time, he wasn’t making that mistake again, but there was a hole in the back pocket of this particular pair of jeans that he’d never really paid any mind to, just large enough for his keys to wiggle through. It wasn’t a particularly heavy set of keys: just the house key itself, the key ring attached to it, and a little plastic tag for scanning himself into the local gym. Perhaps a clunkier keychain would have saved him the embarrassment of losing his keys, but it was a bit late for that.

‘Don’t panic, Freeman.’ His inner scientist urged.

…

He wildly checked his car, convincing himself that the distinct lack of stuff on the key chain would have allowed the keys to slide around with the almost minimal amount of friction possible on a carpeted floor mat. And of course, there was some space underneath the seat that could have allowed the keys to slide to the back of the car as well. Alas, there was neither a nook nor cranny that he could scour that yielded his house keys.

Defeat engulfed Gordon like an ocean wave, he had to face the possibility that his keys were, at worst, being toted about by whatever burglar found them on the pavement outside of Aftermath Plaza; best case scenario was that they were just in another pocket…

He checked, just in case…Nope.

‘Silver lining: they may be somewhere on the floor of the rental store, and you just have to drive back for them.’ Another fair point from his inner scientist.

He leaned against a wall near the front door while he called the store. He hated the rain, it had stopped reminding him of being shot a long time ago and now just felt uncomfortable, but he was too stubborn to return to his car until he was absolutely certain that he actually needed to go back in. The overhang of the roof did a fine enough job of keeping him and the DVDs dry as it was, anyways. Perfectly justifiable.

The phone hummed, once, twice, three times. If he lingered on the noise for too long, he felt shivers from a now-ancient memory. It paired itself to pins and needles across his whole body and his mind pulling itself like taffy to see beyond a veil that he was lightyears from being able to physically reach; a voice that both was and wasn't his own spoke behind it. So thick was the veil, the voice was not even a whisper when it came through, and his own voice, when he was held together enough to speak, was even quieter by comparison. Their voices made no sound, their presence was felt and to each other was deafening. An argument in two separate realities, both sides rumbling in his skull.

His own voice manifested from the vibrations.

He leaned his focus into the voice…

“This is FYE at Poastgame, New Mexico. Judith speaking.”

“Hi Judith!” He answered way too cheerfully. Reality continued as it normally did.

Gordon explained his predicament to the woman on the other end, getting quiet hums whose meanings he didn’t quite grasp; he waited for a response once done.

The silence on the other end lasted for just a while longer before Judith spoke again. “I’m afraid I don’t see any keys around here, sir. I’m sorry.”

Great. He thanked Judith for her help regardless and followed through with the pleasantries of wishing her a good day, waiting a bit too long for her to hang up first before he stashed his phone away.

“Fuck my life.” He groaned.

He had Benrey’s number. If the man could sniff out Bubby, maybe he could sniff out the house keys as well, it was just the matter of…messaging Benrey for help that made him fucking livid. He didn’t wanna ask somebody for help.

He didn’t wanna ask Benrey for help, but it would have to be done eventually.

He gently thumped his head against the wall rhythmically, swearing under his breath with each successive impact.

This continued for about a minute. It likely would have continued for much longer if his head hadn’t decided to abruptly disobey every law of physics and pass through the wall like a knife cutting through silk. A tickling sandpapery feeling enveloped a sliver of his face, moving as his head moved. He craned his neck so that he could slip more of his head through the wall. When his eyes went into the wall, the white texture of its plaster glitched with weird black lines that quickly flickered in and out of his vision. This visual error vanished as soon as his eyes were entirely through the wall, whereupon he could now see the (upside-down because of how far back his neck was craned) interior of his house.

Noclipping.

This was noclipping.

Gordon had noclipped his head into a fucking wall.

And he was still noclipping his head into a fucking wall. He couldn’t help it, he was simply too baffled to move further.

It was like the universe was teasing him by putting him into the exact scenario where he would need to learn how to clip himself back into his own house.

He was not partial to the idea, but it was better than the alternative of…asking Benrey for help, he supposed. He didn’t care if the man was supposed to be his teacher, he should be allowed to figure at least some of this shit out on his own. Just like how Benrey had already sorta been independently figuring out how to act human beforehand. Something-something ‘independent learning’ or whatever.

This was good though, admittedly. He wouldn’t have to wait in the rain or in his car for Benrey to show up. The thought that he’d have to grab his spare house key from the bedroom and make a copy of it so he still had at least one spare key wasn’t fun, but he supposed it would be a small price to pay for a chance to figure some shit out on his own for once.

He slowly moved further into the wall, trying first to get the Jurassic Park rentals into a dry place; his empty hand passed through just fine, the one holding the DVDs, though, required a bit of force and him mentally begging for them to follow his will. He was able to place them on a side drawer so he could put the rest of his focus into just clipping himself through the wall.

He started by reorienting himself so he could see his house rightside-up again. His back was not happy with the hunched over posture he was in, but it was fine. He would be on the other side of the wall very soon.

He pulled one arm the rest of the way, then his shoulder, then the other arm. His whole chest was inside the house now.

His legs and feet refused to go through, he’d had to try pulling himself in like a cartoon gopher. Getting his hands to cooperate was hard too, they kept wanting to clip again when he really just…needed them to stay solid so he had leverage. Was leverage the right word? He wasn’t sure.

Eventually his hands decided to play nice and treat the wall like a solid object again. Good.

He pushed his arms some to pull himself inside, the rest of his chest coming through just fine…so far so good, and then part of his stomach. The awkward position of his clipping meant he had to lift his legs some to get himself further inside, but it all was working fine.

All he had to do now was get his legs, and hope he didn’t get stuck halfway. That would’ve sucked.

He dragged himself in now, his upper body sulking onto the floor, further inside and…of course, of course he got stuck. The sandpaper feeling was a ring of sensation around where the belly button was.

He’s fucking jinxed himself. No amount of clawing or kicking got him any further into or out of the house, and his hands were still treating the wall like a wall again so he couldn’t pass them through to grab the phone from his pocket. He was a spitting image of that coyote character chasing the bird, stuck in a problem of his own creation.

It’s fine.

Benrey would be back soon, hopefully. He just had to wait.

It was later now, he supposed…might as well ponder that question about people who like crowds while he waited…and maybe reconsider getting a garage for the car while he’s at it.

-

Benrey was beholden to a pretty humorous sight: Feetman half-clipped into a wall near front door, the bottom half of his sweatpants fucking soaked from the rain, and his phone, on the wrong side of the house, just slightly covered in mud after seemingly falling out of his pants pocket. The whole situation reminded him of something but…he wasn’t sure what.

He peeked his head through the door, no key required. “Yo!”

“The hell were you doing at Forzen’s?!” Damn, not even a hello? “I was starting to worry it would be dark out by the time you got back.”

“Catching up on all the memes I missed, bro.” Was he going to use any of those memes? No, not really. He didn’t roll that way, but he did like being in-the-know when it came to humor.

He phased the rest of the way through without issue, he was pretty sure Gordon was displaying jealousy on his face for a couple seconds before responding. “Of course you were. Can you uh, help me out? I’m uh, Gordon’s…Gordon’s kinda stuck.”

“Like a square peg?”

“Yeah, sure, like a square peg.”

“Yeah.” Benrey echoed Gordon’s feelings. Being stuck wasn’t fun, he remembered that much from when he was still fresh and new. This remembering was completely different from the other thing he was currently trying to remember on purpose, but he did remember that fact.

He hovered around Gordon from multiple angles, inside and outside of the house, carefully assessing the degree of stuckness so he could help with utmost care. He spotted the phone again in the ground while outside and scooped it up, wiping off the mud and the rainwater so it looked clean.

“Here’s your phone sir. One phone, extra wet. No fries.” He said, handing the device off to its owner.

“What do you have against me and French fries???”

“Kettle chips are better.” He said. The appeal for the humble french fry was entirely lost on Benrey, the insides were simply too soft for his liking.

“You know what?” Gordon said, “I’m not gonna argue with you about that.”

Holy shit for real?

“I’m totally with you about that, man. Kettle chips are awesome.”

If Benrey wasn’t determined to become Gordon’s best friend before, he 300% was now. Do you have any idea how much 300% is?? That’s like, a LOT!

“Tommy…” Benrey had to pause so he could process how excited he was to find something he and Gordon had in common. Potato products are a big deal, after all. “…Tommy makes good kettle chips.”

“Oh fuck yeah. First time I actually tried Kettle chips was when Tommy made them for my birthd-can we please focus?” Gordon’s face went all serious as he cut himself off.

“Yeah man no problem.”

“Cool.”

Wait. “Wait!!!”

“What?”

Dude. Oh god. “Oh my god dude.”

“What??”

“Bro I…I missed Tommy’s birthday! I’ve missed like, four birthdays! I gotta make it up to him, man.”

“Can we PLEASE fucking concentrate on what’s going on right now instead of some shit that’s already happened?”

“Wow, okay.” Benrey huffed, trying to convey a playful tone. “What a way to talk to the guy getting your ass un-wet from the rain.”

“Please do not use those words in that exact order ever again.”

He laughed and did another lookover of the situation, starting from the outside. There was a faint chuckle from the interior. What a wonderful laugh. That was a laugh that needed to be put in the laughter hall of fame with Tommy’s laugh, and his own…

Yeah. Gordon was suuuuuper stuck no matter how he framed it. He could drag him out himself easily…or he could make this into a Benrey Teacher Moment.

He dramatically flung himself onto the floor in front of Gordon, posing brilliantly. “So uh…you got stuck in a wall, did’ja?”

“Are you fucking flirting with me?” He waited for an answer before sighing. “…Yes. I did get stuck in a wall, thank you for noticing. Are you gonna help me out?”

“Not yet, not yet, this is, uh…impromptu lesson.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.” Benrey nodded. “You gotta learn to get your settings menu under control. You can do shit by thinking about it, if you think too hard about something, it’s gonna happen, and then you’re gonna get in situations like this all the time. Yeah?”

Gordon nodded back at him, slowly. He couldn’t tell if the man’s face was from anger or from thinking very hard about his settings menu.

“Gonna get stuck a lot more often if you don’t figure yourself out. Just like uh……”

“Like what? What are you trying to conjure up with your head?”

“Like uh…” He still couldn’t remember. It had something to do with walls and… “armadillo?”

“…What?”

“Armadillos, man!!” Yeah no, he was totally onto something. If he just explained it enough, he would remember. Or at the very least Gordon would know what he was talking about. He started to kick his legs behind him and play with the ears of his fuzzy hat in excitement, not really focusing on Gordon like he was supposed to.

“What do you mean armadillos? What are you talking about?”

“You know, armadillos! They’ve got the thin curly horns. Monty armadillos. They were in the uh, the floorboards or something, or…actually it was also in the walls, like you are right now…”

“Benrey…”

“…Like they were just living there. And there’s this guy and he’s like ‘Uuuugh. Buuuh. There’s armadillos in my wall in the basement or whateverrrrrr.’ Cause there’s holes in the wall right? Like armadillo holes. So they were getting in and out with the holes…”

“Benrey.”

“…and the reason they were coming in was because they were stealing his wine. Just taking all of it. Don’t know why though, maybe they just like it. So he tries to fill in the holes in the wall and the armadillos are like ‘bro you don’t have any caulk we stole it all’ and he was like ‘okay then what’s this?’ And then bam! He had the caulk with him the WHOLE time!”

“BENREY!”

“Whaaaaaaa-tuh?” Benrey whined. He looked in Gordon’s direction with his arms splayed out in front of him.

“I need you to be quiet so I can focus.”

“You don’t like armadillos bro? Funny deer guys? Live in Africa?”

“First of all, pretty sure that’s antelopes. Second of all…are you thinking of fucking…the Edgar Allen Poe thi-” Gordon let out a pained profanity, punctuated by a particularly loud thud.

“Oh shit you got out!”

He flipped himself over like a pancake to meet eyes with Gordon, who was now clambering himself out of the Ass-Up-Crumpled-Napkin Position he had managed to get into.

“Crongatulation you have uh, paper clips.”

Gordon physically cringed at the mutilated pronunciation of ‘Congratulations’ and shook his head, “No. No way, man, you’re gonna have to explain this shit better…But-!”

Benrey jumped.

“I need to tell you something first, and before that-” Gordon strutted into the hallway. “I need to get into something not soaked with rainwater, I can NOT work like this.”

“Don’t like rain bro?”

The conversation continued at a medium-volume shout between the foyer/living room and Gordon’s bedroom. Yet another thing Benrey didn’t quite get…not the bed part, the open windows. At least this one he understood was because humans didn’t go into immediate sleepytime when drenched in blue light. Lucky.

“I like the CONCEPT of rain and I like how it sounds on the roof at night when I’m going to bed, but I don’t like the feeling of getting rained on. It’s like a shower I didn’t consent to.”

“We gotta fix that.”

“Fix what??”

“That sleeping thing. Shouldn’t have to do it every day. Super inefficient.”

At this time, Gordon had walked back into the living room with a new pair of jeans and had returned his voice to a normal volume. “Are you telling me you don’t need 8 hours of sleep every day?”

“What? No!” Man he WISHED he could stay up for days on end. That would be cool as fuck. “No, I just think it’s dumb that we need to sleep every day. They should make it so you only have to do it once a week…or just make it optional.”

“Who the hell is gonna change how sleep works?”

“Sleepytime gods.”

“I don’t think those are real. Anyways…”

Benrey huffed. Again, to display he wasn’t being serious. He even made an exaggerated pout. “You don’t know that.”

“ANYWAYS!”

He was led into the living room, Gordon picking up a stack of DVDs near the front door and placing them on the tv stand before sitting in his recliner. Benrey debated on whether or not to sit on the floor, but out of courtesy decided to sit in the seat nearest to him instead.

“So, I know I said I wanted you to help me work out the noclipping stuff, but I need to share this with you before I forget it.”

He nodded.

“I have an idea on how we can make this…” he waved his arms around, “situation more beneficial for the both of us. Okay?”

Another nod.

Gordon started with a long-winded explanation on how he had ‘fixed’ Forzen’s social skills.

Bullshit, there’s nothing wrong with Forzen, he’s just Forzen. What happened to him wasn’t even his fault…but then again…did Gordon even know about that? Forzen didn’t like to elaborate on stuff unless he needed to so…shit, maybe Gordon doesn’t know about That Thing, then. He would let this offense slide since he obviously doesn’t know what happened…

Now, Gordon was talking about helping Benrey himself with social skill stuff and…okay, but like…he’s already doing so good at fitting in? At least, Benrey thought he was doing good. He’s not human though so…maybe there’s some stuff he’s doing that isn’t sufficiently human-enough.

Normalcy mattered a lot to Gordon, that’s what Doctor Coomer had said to him a couple days ago. Something was going on with Gordon that was making him paranoid, something that had him convinced that the Science Team as a whole needed to act as close to normal humans as physically possible, especially while in public. It was going to be addressed in that meeting that ended up not working out…but, well, that kinda blew up for reasons somewhat outside of their control. And now Gordon was asking for Benrey to be more like HIM, to tighten up how he acts around other people.

It was…he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He absolutely wanted to fit in, now that he was free from Black Mesa, but what would that entail? What were Gordon’s standards for him fitting in? Was it worth it?

…

It…it had to be worth it. It just had to be. Benrey had spent a lot of time alone, figuring things out on his own before Black Mesa captured him. He liked attention, even bad attention, but he didn’t like the consequences of the bad attention. This, though? This felt like good attention, being able to have Gordon’s approval felt like good attention.

This was worth it, he decided.

If it meant they could become friends one day, then jumping over however many hoops Gordon wanted was more than worth it. Proving he was worthy of Gordon’s friendship was worth it. It wasn’t like this was being done without compensation, he was already helping Gordon with his own shit. By that logic, it only seemed fair that Gordon do something for him in return, besides letting him stay at the house.

So…he smiled back at Gordon, to the best of his ability, and agreed.

“Yes! This is great!” Gordon laughed, what a gorgeous laugh it was. “This is perfect, even!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, dude!”

Benrey laughed too. This was worth it. It was fine. This would all turn out fine.

“God…that reminds me.”

Benrey tilted his head. Did Gordon forget something too? He wouldn’t blame him if he did.

“I was gonna go to the grocery store today but, I’m honestly too people’d out to physically go anywhere now. And I’d rather get the noclipping figured out before I leave the house. Do you wanna like…come with me tomorrow?”

“For real?” If Benrey had a tail, it would be wagging with excitement.

“Yeah just…so that I don’t have to worry about getting stuck again. I actually can’t afford to NOT go to the store tomorrow so the help is appreciated. And it-it’ll be good practice for you! I’ll even let you buy, like…a fun snack or something for the trouble.”

“Road trip?”

“No.”

“Road trip?!”

“It is NOT-”

“ROAD TRIIIIIP!”

“BENREY!!!” Gordon got up from his seat, phone in one hand while the other was cupped around his mouth. “I need to-I NEED TO CALL ACE HARDWARE! ABOUT COPYING MY HOUSE KEY! AND THE GYM ABOUT MY MISSING MEMBERSHIP TAG THING!”

“ROAD TRIIIIIIP!”

“I’LL BE OUTSIDE!”

Road trip! Road trip!!!! Fuck yeah!!!!!!!!

Totally worth it!

-

Gordon’s shoulders slowly relaxed, his relief nearly palpable. “Thank you, I appreciate the understanding.”

“Of course, sir. There’ll be a $15 fee for the replacement tag, but you should be fine as long as you can provide the phone number your account is under.”

“Awesome, thank you again. Have a good night.”

“You too, sir.”

Click!

Given how long he’d been stuck in the wall for, he was not too surprised that pretty much everywhere was nearing closing time, not that it mattered since he had no plans to leave again tonight. He just wanted to know when everything opened tomorrow so he could get everything done as soon as possible.

Now that he had done that, he could enjoy the sound of rain on the overhang above and reflect on his conversation with Benrey. He expected a tiny argument at the very least, but the man had accepted the deal without a hint of complaint. He was honestly thankful that Benrey accepted so quickly, he wasn’t sure he would have had the energy to properly defend his idea if they had argued. Overall, this had been a very successful proposition.

“Dude!”

Gordon yelped. “What?!”

“Cask of Amontillado!”

“Huh??”

Benrey was gone before he could ask any sort of coherent question. Not too surprising, but certainly not ideal…

The first thing on his Benrey-specific to-do list was going to be volume control. The second was going to be…context, he supposed. Context for whatever the fuck he was talking about at any given time.

Goodness knows Gordon was gonna need it.

[mk-wizard]

Top 15 Games that SHOULD get a 100% Reboot/Restart

Hi. I felt like doing something positive especially after my last post, so as a follow up, here is a list of games that I think should get the reboot treatment. And when I say reboot, I don’t just mean remake with fancier graphics and bonus features. I mean restart altogether with fresh new storylines that go their own way though in some specific cases, all they need is a new look. Note that this is my subjective opinion and nobody here has to agree with it. It’s just a fun suggestion.

1- Metal Gear - I don’t mean Metal Gear Solid, I mean Metal Gear in general. In fact, I think the “Solid” should be retconned entirely because it not only stopped being about Solid Snake who is the hero, he was done dirty with a pathetic ending and the only sequels we get now are prequels. Not to mention the constant drama and tragedy became nauseating. My advice is to restart from the beginning by rebooting the games that date back to the NES as are with better writing and then after that, only do a half-reboot of Metal Gear Solid and then go its own way while respecting Snake as a main character. Solid Snake is a staple in war themed games and set the standard of how we create them. He should REMAIN the main character and have his endings always remain open with him still standing with dignity.

2- Dino Crisis - I don’t think I need to say much here. Everyone is dying to see this game get remade and it’s not hard to see why. With the exception of the third game and the spin off, Dino Crisis 1 and 2 are amazing. They are dinosaur themed games that actually feel like survivor horror games and not like shooter games with the dinosaur gimmick. This series deserved a reboot and a third game that gives it proper closure.

3- Parasite Eve - Like Metal Gear, this series did dirty to its main character (Aya Brea) in such a way that they wrote themselves into a corner. Only the first game feels unique and special while the second and third instalments have an identity crisis, a confusing weapons and spell system, and a tank control that never belonged. Only the first game should stay as is with a simple remake and then, its sequels should actually be true sequels that keep the battle, spell and control system as are. Let’s just forget that PE2 and The Third Birthday ever happened.

4- Silent Hill - Let’s be honest. Harry Mason is the most underrated male protagonist in survivor horror because unlike all the others, he is not a man of action, not a badass and very relatable for it. He is a widower, a writer, a pacifist and one heck of a dad who literally jumped into the underworld to save his daughter. Now, while I like a lot of the sequels, this series lost its way. With the exception of Silent Hill 2, I think Harry and his daughter should have remained the main protagonists of the series. Harry is proof that real men come in all flavors and having one like him is different while still showing the best attributes of masculinity.

PS: I know Silent Hill 1 got a reboot, but it was bad. Period.

5- Turok - Before there was Dino Crisis (and I’m not discrediting it), there was Turok. The titular hero who might I also add is aboriginal which is a very underrepresented group in fiction period who literally kills dinosaurs with his bare hands. He is a badass and he while he has gotten reboots before, none of them hit the mark yet, but creators should not give up on him. He is worth the effort and if they keep trying, they will strike gold.

6- Castlevania - This series is ICONIC and nobody ever gets tired of it. It should make a comeback and it is one of the few series where being 3D would make it better. And considering that medieval settings in video games is all the rage now, it would be great to see Simon Belmont back in action. Heck, I would even be open to seeing a Belmont fighting evil in our modern times in 3D.

7- The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time - Now, I stand by that this series doesn’t need a reboot, I think this game specifically should get a remake because it is a great game that reshaped the series into how we know and love it now, but it was very buggy and the graphics were not that great even for their time. Everything else about it is great, but it does need a facelift.

8- Prototype - A forgotten gem if there ever was one. This series is unique in that it is the one game where you play as the monster who is also an anti-hero. Yet again, its series did its main character (Alex Mercer) dirty though on top of that, left too many questions unanswered. This series needs a reboot with a much better storyline. If you haven’t seen it, play the first game and you’ll see my point.

9- Tomb Raider - Now, we can all agree that this series has lost its way. While I am all for origin stories and I admit it makes sense for Lara Croft to not be hardened or toughened up from the start. Keeping her as a weak frightened girl doesn’t make her realistic nor does it make her a likeable heroine. And I am woman enough to admit that being athletic, confident, daring and badass is a part of Lara Croft’s character. I don’t want her to be realistic. I want her to be cool and fun to play. This series needs to go back to its roots when it was fun and Lara was allowed to shamelessly be herself.

10- Dead Rising - Another case of a game losing its way and its main protagonist becomes someone they’re not. The second instalment was the only game that felt true to what the series is supposed to be and even then, it felt like a spinoff not a part of the main story because Dead Rising is Frank West’s story. Another thing that also stood out about this game is that unlike most zombie themed games, the main character is not only not a fighter, he’s a total lover in all the great ways. Frank is (or rather, was) compassionate, honest and it isn’t for nothing that you only got the best ending when you would save everyone. Heck, he would save people who tried to kill him. This series should get a total reboot and a total rewrite after game 1. And can we please not give Frank a heart of stone? Him being loving is what made him great.

11- ObsCure - Another lost gem with a unique premise and group of protagonists. This game plays up our childhood fear of the dark because the monsters in this game literally are allergic to the light and the setting is in a highschool. It feels like Scream meets the Blair Witch Project making it a lot of fun, and the monsters are so delightfully creepy. Plus, the story was compelling. Sadly this series only got one sequel which was actually great, but never got that third instalment that would wrap everything up. I say we give this series a reboot, so it can finally finish what it started.

12- Resident Evil Outbreak - I know this is a spinoff series, but it’s one of the best in the series. It fills in a lot of gaps in the main storyline and any game that allows you to have your own tyrant fighting alongside you is awesome. It also has a multiple ending system which was well done and very rewarding when you get the best ending. I think this should get the reboot treatment and even have a third game that expands the aftermath further.

13- Resident Evil Dead Aim - Another one of the best spinoffs in the RE series because it expands the story specifically in how tyrants are made and how the variants work. And to be honest, I even liked the characters. I would love see new life breathed into this compelling game even if it just remains the only one of its kind.

14- Days Gone - I don’t care what anyone says. Any game that allows to play a biker with the spirit of an honourable warrior is badass. Also, can we talk about how this is one of the few games where the main protagonist is married and remains loyal to his wife even long after?! He may be white, male, straight and Christian, but he is still pretty progressive and embodies the BEST part of masculinity. The parts that drive a man to be romantic, noble and heroic. This game with extremely misjudged to the point of bigotry and it deserves a proper reintroduction because it was going places.

15- Half-Life - This series helped Valve get its jump start and it had the most unique and most iffy type of protagonist in an action/sci-fi game possible yet worked: a scientist. After all, who expect the skinny nerd with the big thick glasses to save the day? Yet, it worked and this game has tons of monsters that became iconic in video game lore. What’s really sad is that a third game was in works, but never saw the light of day. I say we reboot this series and give it the chance to honour its promise to give that third game at long last.

Bonus - Other honourable mentions here are Left 4 Dead because Back 4 Blood stinks, Alone in the Dark though I hear a reboot is in the works, Doom, Devil May Cry and the right way please, Bloody Roar, The Suffering, Fatal Frame, The Evil Within and any other fantastic game series that either went bad due to bad sequels or never got the chance to keep going.

[kinopioa]

This is what I think regarding ShtH routes @beevean @crusherthedoctor

I see people get mad that Last Story can't be aligned with any route path, then say it's story is automatically bad cuz of that

But I think the bigger thing missed is the theme of the game: Choice

Last Story Shadow is doing his own thing mostly (guillibility really), regardless of player choice. Some events mirror what was seen in routes (Eggman gaslighting, Black Doom mem hack, Commander having hatred to Shadow), but I think rigidly defining it to be 1:1 to routes is wrong. Last Story is the TRUE canon story, not the other way around

Already in the routes you have places where you get each Emerald rapidly change in routes themselves. The only standard one is Westopolis for the green emerald in the beginning. Everything else varies

I think partially what fuels being unable to accept Last Story doing its own thing is gameplay forcing you to get 10 endings. The stress of that makes routes seem more canon than they are, despite the game being directly advertised as "mostly fun whatifs". Same with being unable to restart mid route, which forces further feelings that routes matter more than they do

I see people try to reconstruct the game so that routes matter more, and awkwardly it removes endings and levels. The whatif factor and being able to do a 180 in a route is ruined

Similarly you have people randomly think Rouge or others have all the answers when...no? The end of Heroes was literally her not knowing if Shadow was the OG or not, and no other char is aware of the Shadow Androids. Heck, this isn't confirmed in any route; it's a Last Story bonus if you wait

Personally if I were to remake the game;

-Have a disclaimer how Routes are mostly noncanonical, with some scenes mirroring what happens in canon with some differences in time and setting

-Have different interactions in scenes and missions depending on previous route. This seems to be planned if filename and event loading code is to be taken, though scrapped to neutral reactions in final, regardless of prior path

-Similarly, have missions vary counts to prove loyalty in later levels depending on prior path. If you did a lot of bad previous routes, you need to do more good to make up for it. Inversely, the mission is easier if you already are aligned with path. Lava Shelter interestingly checks this

-Have the ability to start a new route mid path of a finished one. Instead of replaying Westopolis 3 million times

-Have Last Story unlockable with simply 3 unique endings

-Have end of Last Story encourage playing more missions and whatif scenes. Heroes does this to encourage playing other teams. Shadow already does this for weapons

-Have the Devil Doom easter egg Eggman says easier to hear. So many fans missed it

-Correct some Localization duds. Surprisingly not many, despite cheesy dialogue, but the President thanking Gerald is wrong. Also explain how Tails' plane crashed randomly in the "you know what" scene

-Story wise I guess explain how the Chaotix got to space. It'd be interesting if Rouge is the reason, she surprisingly is barely in the game. Maybe tease how she was wrongly hostile in Heroes. To follow this...

-Note side char motivations better. Newcomers get a refresher for Shadow, but other characters are too sparse at times. Doesn't need to be detailed, or even voiced. The game uses static pics for SA2 flashbacks already. Heck, it can be unlockables for messing around in routes

-Have vehicles not play like shit. Gunplay funny enough is fine, though most physical weapons are too fragile

-Buff multiplayer. 3 stages ain't enough. A coop mode added also wouldn't be too bad (Sonic was scrapped after all...). Maybe configure weapon type and hitstun/invul time with settings

The game's very flawed, but I feel people missed the core point of it being a whatif fest

[artyphex]

So. In both God of War games Atreus/Freya are coded to follow the player right? In any game with companions the companion is obviously basically glued to the player and in a lot of games (Dragon Age for example) the companions will interact with the environment as best they can, climb letters, jump over stuff, etc but if the player gets to far away they will just teleport to their location so you don’t lose a companion

In God of War this doesn’t happen. Atreus/Kratos always follow you by naturally interacting with the environment. If you climb they climb, if you jump they jump, they never teleport. That’s because God of War’s AI is so good there’s almost never a need to, they’re really good at not getting stuck or left behind

But

Sometimes. It still bugs out. and the results. Are incredibly funny

I’ve had this happen to me twice, once in the first game, once in the second game. Both only with Atreus, never lost Freya which tracks honestly

In the first game I lost Atreus in Ivaldi’s Workshop and if you don’t know what that is because you don’t play GOW but still read the posts I make about it (I love you) Ivaldi’s workshop is an ever changing labyrinth filled with saw-style booby traps consisting of death propellers or 20 foot saw blades or classic “just fucking squish’em” the ceiling falls down traps AS WELL AS thick ass fog that makes it so you can’t fucking see and also it’s POISONOUS so if you stand in it for too long you straight up die and I have lost my kid in it

And suddenly I went from playing God of War to playing a “Lost my kid in the mall” simulator except the mall is a death trap filled with toxic fumes and ever changing walls aka any suburban mall. I am walking down all these halls trying to find this dumbass and the only thing I have to go on is sometimes I can hear his voice distantly through the mist. Far away. He’ll just say something and I’ll walk in that direction and he won’t be there. It was hell. It literally sounds like Kratos’ hell. I never found him I had to reset the checkpoint

The second time I’ve already talked about but it was awhile ago and it’s still one of the funniest things that ever happened to me in a game so I’m talking about it again.

I was doing Surtr’s trials and was getting to the last six (?) trials at the very end. If you’ve done these, you know if you do all of them in one go rather than leaving and coming back you get REALLY methodical at it. Arena one, arena two, main arena. Arena one, arena two, main arena. Again and again and again

The thing is, at the start of each of these fights the arena gates slam shut. Which makes sense since it’s supposed to be an arena. Arenas have gates and they’re usually shut. Well. I managed to move from arena two to the main arena so quickly that Atreus didn’t have time to get out of the first arena and got locked in behind the gate

I didn’t even REALIZE he wasn’t there until I tried firing arrows and nothing happened. Finally I turned around and I couldn’t see him. Then I heard a tiny, distant “Watch out father!” And got cleaved in half by a draugr. I would’ve had to restart either way several enemies you NEED Atreus with you to beat and he was in JAIL

Just the image of Atreus on his toes, locked in another arena with his face pressed against the bars screaming at the top of his lungs “FATHER!! BEHIND YOU!! HE’S BEHIND YOU!!!!!” Is the funniest thing in the world

This absolutely actually happened in my mind. Atreus thinks both are funny now, Kratos does not

[adachimoe]

I've gone down the rabbit hole and started reading Meguro's comments in the P4 OST booklet regarding songs (remotely) related to Adachi. As usual, these are not literal translations at all; I'm just kinda paraphrasing.

New World Fool: He can't say anything about this because of spoilers, but he writes, "You didn't expect they were the culprit, did you? Eh? Wait, you saw that coming?"

Fog: The very, very last song he composed for Persona 4. He absolutely loves what he wrote for the "hook" - That One Guitar Part that makes you want to start headbanging.

The Almighty: I found this comment pretty amusing... Meguro came up with the hook (the part at ~1:20 that starts after the half second of silence), then he pulled the rest of the song out of his ass lmao came up with the rest of the song (he calls it the "A" melody), which was difficult. Apparently, this happens to him a lot while writing boss encounter music.

Omg. I thought "A" melody was how Meguro was notating his own work, but it's an actual Japanese music term. MY BAD. After making the hook, he had a hard time making the verse (song structure theory is intro -> verse -> bridge -> chorus, or intro -> A melody -> B melody -> hook).

Who's There?: He talks about how he's written tracks for their games that usually have some kind of "strange" element. But this time, it was particularly difficult to compose a "strange" BGM because the game didn't just have Demons and Shadows... gasp... it had a serial killer too. (This feels like a deadpan humor bit to me w)

Long Way: If you keep running into shadows and getting into battles, then you won't hear the 2nd half of the track because it restarts every time you get out of battle. Meguro suggests that when you're tired of fighting shadows, why not chill and listen to one chorus of this piece? (In one of the floors in Magatsu Mandala, Adachi tells you you're not allowed to attack Shadows... Guess he was trying to get you to listen to Meguro's bgm!)

[davidmariottecomics]

Save Your Work!

Hello, friends! 

This week is going to be very quick because, not to get ahead of myself, but next week is likely going to be pretty long. I didn't mean to time things out so there'd be a long one right after I'm done with work for the year and most people are off for that final week, but that's how things worked out. And the week after that, the last weekend of the year, I'm going to do a Best of 2023 round-up. 

But, in my brief update this week, I wanted to talk about some very straightforward best practices. 

I turned on my computer this morning and was shocked to find that I was *turning on* my computer this morning. One way or another, it had shut down since the last time I used it. Maybe it was Becca or a planned restart or something, but however it happened, my computer was off. And as any artist should know... you neeeeeeeeeeeed to make sure your stuff is saved again and again. You see, I was working on my holiday gift guide that I'm building for my Patreon when the computer shut off and I lost a whole spread and some change. All of it. The images, the hyperlinks, the text--both in terms of what I wrote and the font choices I made--everything. It shouldn't be terrible, but it'll add at least an extra hour on as I have to rebuild all of that. So, if you ever work on anything that would benefit from being saved, make sure you do!

The other best practice I want to emphasize today is something I say a lot. If you'd like to work in comics professionally, please make it easier on yourself and any potential collaborators/hiring folks, by making your web presence clear and accessible. Something I've slowly been working on over the past few weeks is going through my Twitter as I get ready to delete it before the end of the year and looking to make sure I have contact information from anyone I'm interested in not losing. I'm looking for emails, or agents, or websites. And the more varied the information, the better. Because I'm trying to incorporate that into my existing digital rolodex, whenever possible, while emails (for talent or their agents) are the things that are most helpful, I am looking to add your website info so I can quickly pop to it before emailing you and make sure you're who I think you are and your style is what I think it is. As much as possible, when I look through info I got from old like Visible Women sheets and the like, I'm looking for people who aren't just including their handle on one social because those can change, or who aren't just linking to an Instagram or Twitter account with "DM me" because while I know some people work best in DMs, for legal paperwork and the like, an email is so much more helpful. 

Lastly, and this should go without saying, but this is a post about common sense practices, be kind to folks. I don't know why this seems so counter-intuitive to certain people, but if you're openly hostile toward your peers, they don't want to work with you. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of ostracization. It literally can't be said enough. Comics as an industry is doing just fine and differentiation in the medium in both format and talent is only a good thing. 

Alright. More next week! 

What I enjoyed this week: Dungeons & Daddies (Podcast), Reverse 1999 (Video Game), Nancy (Comic), Lego Masters (TV show), Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror (Short story collection), Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links (Video Game), Dandadan (Manga), Godzilla: Minus One (Movie), Godzilla Raids Again (Movie), Cunk on Earth (TV show), I'm a Virgo (TV show), Clyde Fans by Seth (Comic), getting and making some really exciting 2023 news. There's some amazing stuff to come! 

New Releases this week (12/13/2023): Sonic the Hedgehog: Winter Jam (Editor)

Final Order Cutoff next week (12/18/2023):  Godzilla Valentine's Day Special (Editor) If you haven't seen it, I put together a little explainer on what exactly a "Final Order Cutoff" is and why it matters! And if you found this helpful and have a platform where you think people should know, those explainers are watermarked and good to share! 

New Releases next week (12/20/2023): Godzilla: The War for Humanity #3 (Editor) Godzilla Rivals: Jet Jaguar vs. Megalon (Editor)

Announcements: If there is one blog this year that you should not miss, it's next week's. Big news to come. 

The Cartoonist Cooperative is still doing E-Sim cards for Gaza. You can donate a digital sim card so that residents can get access to the internet and have more functional phones and, in exchange, get some comics or a drawing or whatever else is available from the many participating artists. Additionally, the CC is hosting their mini-comic awards! It's a cool way to maybe get your mini-comic recognized and make some scratch! 

You can also give more directly. If you don't have money, and I get it, you can call or fax or email or show up at the offices of your representatives. Keep your eyes open for actions too, whether they're another general strike like what happened last Monday or demonstrations and marches in your area. Given the nature of the things, they often come together fairly quickly, so do exercise your due diligence. Also, of course, being informed and just giving your time to Palestinian writers is incredibly valuable. Whether that is journalists on the ground--who are being murdered at extraordinary rates--or reading Fiyah's Palestine Solidarity issue or anything from Verso's solidarity reading list, having and sharing that knowledge is significant. 

Becca just did their Art vs. Artist post for 2023. They did a lot of really cool work this year! They also posed a spicy art version. And as if it could not be said enough, while we've got some things brewing (and now on a schedule), you should reach out if you'd like to work on comics with them! I think we're both looking to do more next year! You can find their gallery on their website and also, y'know, maybe pick up a few things for belated gifts while you're there! 

If you aren't a Patreon backer yet, well, like I said above, I've been working on something pretty cool. I'm building a holiday gift guide. It won't probably be out with a lot of shopping time for Christmas in particular, but I thought it'd be a fun way to showcase some of what I've been learning more generally about design and how to make comics and zines and stuff. I'm really proud of it and it'll be exclusive to $10+ backers for December and then will be made public in a couple months. Also at that $10+ tier, there's stuff like a tour of my workspace, an adults-only podcast pilot that Becca and I recorded called "Abandoning the Premise" (short sample here), a review of root beers is also coming up quick, old D&D campaigns I ran, and more! Another goal of mine for next year is to grow my Patreon and also have it start making some money to fund more comics ventures for myself. 

Pic of the Week: I teased it last week, but the Winter Jam team did a Winter Jam-piece! Our fabulous leader, Iasmin Omar Ata, got Reggie Graham, Adam Bryce Thomas, Abigail Oz, Shawn Lee, and me to put together a happy holidays card from the Winter Jam cast! I did the thought balloon Froggy because even when Big is holding "Froggy", he can't stop thinking about that frog!