#OH OH ALSO I FINALLY HAVE THIS EMOTE IN GAME!!

[firstkanaphans]

GMMTV 2025 Tier List

Thanks to @rythyme for the template. You can make your own here.

Overall, I was very pleased with this year’s line-up. I think it’s the most solid line-up we’ve seen from GMMTV, possibly ever, and the people complaining about it are simply never going to be satisfied by anything GMMTV does. 

A break-down of my S and A tiers can be found below the cut:

Ticket to Heaven (S): I was raised in a Southern Baptist church which, for those unfamiliar with the different sects of Christianity in American, is basically a cult. I have a lot of unprocessed and unhealed religious trauma that still fucks me up to this day, but for some reason, I gravitate towards shows like this that show gay characters overcoming the struggles I’m still fighting. I’m very excited for this one and I think it’s perfectly cast. It’s giving me ITSAY meets Your Name Engraved Herein vibes and will probably make me cry, but I’m not mad about it.

Girl Rules (S): Toxic Yuri? Yes, please! To be quite honest, I’ve never been a huge MilkLove fan, but this trailer totally changed my mind. I think I just haven’t vibed with the characters they’ve played in the past because Love in this??? Oh my god. She’s going to kill me. All of the girls were hot and horny. What more could you ask for?

Dare You to Death (S): Listen. Do y’all remember that Amazon show Panic? I was obsessed with it for no obvious reason because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even gay, but this is giving me that and I literally cannot wait. I also adore that they’ve finally let JoongDunk switch up their roles so that Joong is the one that actually gets to emote this time because boy does he look pretty when he smiles. 

Cat for Cash (A): Oh my god it’s so soft 😭 The found family feels are getting to me. I think it’s very obvious from this trailer that they only have concepts of a script right now, but I have high hopes that this could be something really special. P’Au was the director of MSP which is one of my favorite BLs of all time. He’s been stuck doing Japanese adaptations this year, which I don’t think he likes or excels at, but I’m excited to see him tackle an original script in the genre he’s most comfortable with. He’s P’Aof’s protege and their styles are very similar. 

Love You Teacher (A): This is my “hear me out” of the day. Age regression isn’t a trope I’m familiar with and I do have some reservations, but boy did this trailer make me feel things. If this was just a basic amnesia plot, it would probably be S tier for me. I think it was perfectly cast and I’m willing to reserve judgment until I see the finished product. P’Dome of Peaceful Property fame is directing, so I’m expecting that same brand of “romcom” where it’s actually not a romcom at all and instead makes you cry every single episode.

Only Friends: Dream On (A): I was going to put this in B tier, but EarthMix fucking on stage in an empty theater bumped this up to an A for me. I fully expect to enjoy this version of Only Friends more than the original because the original stressed me the fuck out. This time, I have no skin in the game and can just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Melody of Secrets (A): I’ve watched this trailer like four times and I still have no clue what’s happening, but I like the vibes. ForceBook proved in Peaceful Property that they can take on a serious script and I’ve always felt that Book especially is highly underrated as an actor. I’m excited to see them branch out and try something different.

Tagging a few people whose tier lists I would love to see, but feel free to ignore: @doublel27, @mbjw, @wangxianinventedromance, @elliebirdwrites, @khaopybara, @moonkhao, @boozles, @scrumptiousstuffs

And everyone else please feel free to participate and tag me in yours as well!

[superdillin]

The Time We Have

The Time We Have campaign ends soon and I REALLY want as many people as possible to experience this game. I also wanna talk about my experiences playing it!!

I've played this game twice so far. Once was private, with my friend @rowanzeoli, and once on recording for One Shot, with @morebluebs

I have brothers, but I didn't grow up with brothers, and there's the whole "raised a girl" thing so I was a little worried that the dynamic would be too unrelatable for me to truly get the most out of the game. OH! I was wrong.

I would never lay all my emotional cards out on the table for public consumption, because goodness knows that's not healthy to do. Trust me, the game Elliot and I played is emotional, and real, but still has a thin filter of the public boundary layered over it. But in that private game with Rowan I really, really did put it all out, as did she. I sat locked inside my bathroom with Rowan on the other side, and realized that I was playing through a scenario I spend a lot of time thinking about as a chronically sick person - saying goodbye and knowing I'm leaving people behind. Rowan was playing my little brother, someone who felt like I already had abandoned him when I left him home on his own with our homophobic parents. And then, in that moment, I'm leaving again forever, and won't be able to protect him from the horrors outside.

Gang, in all these years being sick, I've gone to so much therapy about confronting mortality, and how to cope with those anxieties. Sitting in that closed white room and playing out my own end of life with someone I love so much took a blacklight to all the unseen critters that I did not realize were crawling through the sheets of my subconscious. And of course that's not enough, because games aren't therapy*, but those are things I now talk about, with my loved ones, with my therapist, with myself. And when that door re-opened and I hugged Rowan we were 10 times the friends we were before. We sat on my couch with a drink, pulling on all the loose threads that the game experience made us aware of and unraveling them with each other. Identity and love and unfinished business and how we are all burdened by each other and why that is beautiful. I learned her life story, she learned mine, we shared insights and wisdom and every so often we kept pointing back to something that was said in that game that lit that part of our real self up.

Playing through themes like this is something that a few years ago, I would never have touched. I came into the hobby a little traumatized and green and I just wasn't ready to use games in this kind of deep and existential way. It was all escapism, no introspection. This game in particular makes me feel so grateful that I've gotten to a place where games can be as deep and as uncomfortable for me as they have the capacity to be.

I think this game is a little window to Elliot's enormous heart, and it speaks directly to mine, and I hope others will love it all the same.

Go back the game please:

*games are like, a little bit therapy. I know that's taboo to say, but like. Lots of things are therapy. These things are not so black and white. I could say more but that's not what this is about.

[toasthaste]

ok here are some In Stars and Time thoughts: (wow! that's a lot of thoughts actually! long post warning! also warning for like every possible spoiler, don't read this if you haven't engaged with the game to your satisfaction)

I'm obsessed with the fact that the loop that ends up being the final one is the one where EVERYTHING goes wrong. I spent the whole game subconsciously building up my Perfect Final Loop in my mind, how I'd get every item to make sure I didn't miss an opportunity to use em, do all the friendquests and such... I didn't even realize I'd been building up that ideal scenario until after credits rolled! Really really cool. The timeline where Siffrin does the worst stuff he does in any loop is the one that stays. And it's still a happy ending! it's a better ending because of that! His friends saw him at his worst and still loved him! He didn't have to do everything perfect to keep them around actually! Something about that feels so right, to me.

I keep using "ludonarrative resonance" to describe this game and yeah ok I'm huffing my own farts here whipping that out but whatever, it's REAL. The player and Siffrin are on the EXACT same emotional journey as each other, we're getting tired of seeing the exact same lines over and over again right alongside them, we're taking shortcuts because we've seen it all before and just want to grab key open door grab crest etc etc make the progress go. We're starting to find these previously-charming characters grating because we've just seem them repeat the SAME lines over and over and over and OVER again until they start feeling like caricatures of themselves who we can barely feel any real compassion for any more.... It's just so.... clean, it's so perfect, to me. It helps that Siffrin is also one of the more relatable characters I've encountered in, like, media. I don't usually relate to fictional characters much, but, man, the emotional constipation, the building scorn, the depression, the Being Weird About Touch... I mentioned in another post that it's really just Siffrin and Murderbot who I've ever found viscerally relatable, of all the characters ever in media. So like, it's a pretty rare position. (I do not relate to the pun-love though. I'm funny I'm good at goofs but bad puns are extremely tedious to me. Which perhaps goes to show how well-realized Siffrin is, given that I'm able to look the other way....)

I think they could have stood to make Loop's Whole Deal a bit more obvious. I had no clue what their fucking deal was at any point. I totally missed the interaction that lets you learn about The Incident and thus get more Loop info at the end, and... it's valid to have different endings in a game of course, but... I felt like I really missed out tbh! And I had no way of knowing I had to keep interacting with the silver coin.... idk. It felt a bit like a gotcha I suppose. And Loop's deal is really cool! Holy hell! I'm doing a quick replay of the game to see more convos with them with this context, and to get the ending with them, and like--!!! There's so much here! Loop tellins Sif to use the royal We, they even tell Siffrin, like-- Loop asks Siffrin why he doesn't just tell his friends about the loops, maybe they can help, why keep it a secret? Meanwhile... Loop!Siffrin is stuck in their own helpless timefuckery world and refusing to let Siffrin know about it! The Siffrin from the Start Again timeline never learned those lessons, they're still trying to help someone else while refusing to ask for help themselves, refusing to even let on that there's a problem! And getting more and more emotionally fucked up about it! Man it's good. I guess it does make a replay more rewarding, not knowing this until the end, the first time, but so much of the game is already a replay that, idk, it does feel weird to replay it. I've already done so many repetitions y'all.... But I guess that's pretty meta, also...

Oh I'm under the impression this is not terribly uncommon but I absolutely did get got by the ?diary? that had the story of the person making a duplicate of themselves so they had someone to talk to. Like I fully thought that was describing the King and Siffrin, I spent a long time under the mistaken impression that Siffrin was a copy of the King in some capacity. Oops.... I might try to gently lead Beloved Roomie away from this interpretation when she plays it. Planning on being pretty hands-off overall but this is one area where I feel it might be justified to violate the prime directive.... But we'll see!

I wish I liked the music more..... This is a game that I think really begs for some real heartwrenching tunes to enhance all of the everything but instead none of it does it for me at all. I think that's a real shame, it's by far my biggest complaint. I'm not asking for Undertale-tier, but, at least something I'd want to put on my playlist for the emotional resonance, y'know?

THEY ACTUALLY KILLED THE KID !!!! LIKE!!!! I guess I have some biases I might should think about but I was not expecting a game that begins with so many explicit pronouns introductions (rather than just giving us context clues) and that has no real cursing to be willing to kill the kid, even impermanently? Let alone so gruesomely? I think I was expecting a much greater level of.... idk, tweeness, fanglessness, than we actually got. In spite of being a fan of insertdisc5's comics for YEARS and years! And like! Damn! Props to them!

God. God. So, like. All the ending fakeouts were fucking great. I genuinely thought the All Friendship Quests ending might be the Real One, I was prepared to be disappointed because it felt too soon and just not.... quite.... right? But I did think that was probably where it was heading! But it wasn't! I got got and it's so heartwrenching and also so satisfying, the mood whiplash from loop to loop is fucking sublime.

And-- AND! The real ending! So like. Some of the stuff I missed was just me not pursuing specific content correctly. But some of it is genuinely just, like, stuff that has no actual purpose besides flavor. Flavor, and.... The locked passphrase door in Dormont. The four-pointed leaf you can get (but not in the final loop!), the bell chime, etc etc. You can't actually really do anything with any of this stuff. But you don't know that! It feels like there's still all these loose ends! And!!! Those loose ends do their job SO WELL! The dev knows Gamer Instincts, knows people are gonna have that mental tally of boxes-yet-to-be-checked. Left some forever unchecked on purpose, which-- At the end, the real end, when Siffrin is about to talk to the Head Housemaiden and find out, for real, if this is the final loop or if it's all going to happen again, again, again. He's scared. He's traumatized! He's thought he Had It so many times! SO many times!!! Hope is terrifying! Hope is a poison! And the game has left these loose threads, and at least for me I really was not sure it was going to work. Like it seemed likely but the same metaknowledge of story structure that made me think it was likely also told me "but wait, there's all these loose threads, and the only way for them to trick us again WOULD BE to make the ending SO elaborate and epilogue-y....." I was nervous right along with Siffrin! I was uncertain! Fucking fantastic work, using my own gamer's instincts against me. Thrilled about it.

All the characters are so well realized. They all have specific relationships with each other, not just with Siffrin (Important!!!!! Huge complaint I had with BG3, they didn't put their whole pussies into this!!!!). And, and, I love how they all have different feelings about the time loops. I love that Mirabelle doesn't want "spoilers," and meanwhile Bonnie doesn't mind them and thinks of their alt-selves as like... them-but-not-them in a very cool way.

There's something about-- the way the game starts as a regular degular videogame and then graaaadually becomes, essentially, a visual novel as the actual gameplay becomes trivialized. Which itself is like, really really cool with the themes! And also, just.... I never would have picked up a straight up visual novel, I just, don't get into them, I'd rather read a book, but! I was already invested! It got its hooks into me when there was gameplay mixing things up and those hooks weren't about to let go just because the gameplay didn't super matter any more!

Straight up when we first see Red I didn't at all process that it was a Color in a game with No Colors, Canonically. They had to spell it out for me. It didn't occur to me to be surprised. I'm just too used to colors existing I guess idk. I think I wish the colors thing had gone somewhere a bit more...? I'm GUESSING it mostly originated as just a cute little explanation for why the game is all grayscale and then fit in with enough stuff to be given elevated importance (?) But it felt... hm. Underdeveloped, maybe. I think I really want more stories in this.... "Setting" and "Universe" and "Series" are not quite the right words but hopefully you get the idea. I want more so there can be one that develops that more. Not that leaving stones unturned is, like, illegal ofc. I just find the idea very compelling....

What is it with time loop stories and themes of loss that cannot be outsmarted. Man. I wondered, for so long, if Siffrin's country was going to be restored in people's minds, if that was one of the main big Plot Things we'd see. And it just didn't! Their memory is going to keep being bad, they're going to keep having all these huge tragic gaps and it's just. What can you do. At some point you have to either be permanently paralyzed by the horrific injustice you've suffered-- or you have to try to live a life. And. Man. I don't think I've actually ever encountered a story that was so much about that exact specific form of loss, the loss of one's culture, history, language! All of it. Gone from everywhere. It made me think of the obvious things and just. Man. What a howling void. The contrast with Odile's deal made it a lot more effective too I think. More of an expanded meditation upon these themes than just one toe dipping in, I guess? Hm.

Odile's battle profile pic when she's at low health is so fucking hot this cartoon character is so hot goddammit.

Game good. You're only reading this if you've already played it, I hope, so I can't use this space to recommend it in a meaningful way but. Heck. Game good.

[darabeatha]

[kore-cryptid]

i finally played outer wilds for the first time in the past month, i cannot stress enough how much you need to play this if you havent already

it took me 5 years of going "oh ill get around to it" Do It Do It just load in and give it 20 minutes of your time just Give it a chance its so fucking good i haven't stopped thinking about it for weeks it blew my mind in So many ways

from the story and the world to the way the game is built how the Fuck did they DO THAT HUH????????????

its such an experience dont be like me and go "ah ill get to it" just Go Now Please im foaming at the mouth and BARKING

[kaythefloppa]

I always point out Bunk’d on the list of shows with a terrible finale (since S3 was supposed to be the last but it effectively did kill the quality of the show) but having watched the final episodes of Bunk’d that aired last night, I can now actually reaffirm that its ending is shit.

Because oh my god is it shit.

[lem-argentum]

reminiscing on when i was playing end.walker and got through all the heartwarming scenes before boarding the ragnarok andnh then they justj killed th.ancred instantly

[witherbythesword]

Me, normally: ugh i have way to many thoughts constantly. It's so tiring. Make it stoooooop

Me, when ill and my brain too stuffed to function: this is the worst. I'll literally die of this. Where are my precious thoughts that i hold nothing but love for pspspspsp

[lil-vibes]

i love xiao so much bro its not even funny,,, i love this adorable, introverted, angst ridden war machine i love his caring nature i love his stutter (jp dub) i love how he cant lie to save his life i love how hes grown fond of the traveler i just adore him so MUCH im in physical pain every time i see him. id burn all of teyvat down without a second thought for him in this essay i WILL -

[fellhellion]

touga is NOT the same level of shitheel as akio i am throwing myself into space

[waywardsalt]

now bc of that one post abt zelda getting fridged whenever that one guy directs a zelda game im thinking abt tetra just getting turned to stone in ph and like. what would it have been like if she were an actual character in ph. what would she have done how would this have changed the story

[epicwin64]

Everyone is going on about how Aerith’s death will be 100000x worse in Rebirth, but you guys realize that they have voice acting now, unlike the original. The way the party reacts to her death……

[uselessnbee]

if you think Will Byers would be angry at Mike and Dustin for joining hellfire when according to Dustin it's the only thing that saved them from bullying then you probably don't know Will Byers there i said it.

[nerice]

i wanna replay nier automata so badddd and in fact i can and i will after im done streaming nier replicant for a friend (in my weapon grinds era) the anime is so good it's nothing like the game it could never be you simply cannot replicate the experience of playing it the slow unraveling of information nier is a story that repeats itself etc etc the small banter during sidequests (ANEMONE.) the way the environment changes the way the ui and screen get increasingly fucked up during certain scenes or from interference the [everything abt route c] the moment yokotaro shoots you point blank and then flashes the game title 15hrs in because you just completed the prologue do you hear what im saying the anime does not compare but GOD DOES IT GET ALL THE BEATS RIGHT I WANT TO REPLAY SO BADLY

[perenlop]

the ending cutscene specifically pointing out that dedede was kidnapped in floralia by mistake but that without him, kirby would have failed, and also that the dreamstalk carried up his castle very intentionally…. dedede is so good in this game i love him

[noxtivagus]

head in hands FINAL FANTASY