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angryschnauzer · 4 years ago

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Castle Under The Stars

Summary: You always worry when its a full moon and your husband is away on assignment, but this full moon is different as he comes home to be with you. Will it be for good? And just how much fun can two werewolves get up to during the full moon when they have a child to look after?

A continuation of Moonlight On The Sand

Pairing: Werewolf Captain Syverson x Werewolf Female Reader

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, Werewolves, Breeding, Breeding Kink.

Typos are free range and organic, allowed to run wild and free. I do not operate a tag list but if you follow @angryschnauzerwrites and put that blog onto notifications, you’ll get an alert each time i post something new. Past works can also be found there.

Castle Under The Stars

You stepped out onto the back porch and propped the door open with a boot, the warm summer's breeze blowing softly at the net curtains on the kitchen windows, bringing in the scent of the roses in from the garden. Wiping your hands on your apron before hanging it on the little hook by the door, you grabbed your garden shears and flower basket, and headed out with bare feet onto the cool grass. The windows of your cabin all stood open, allowing the warm breeze to flow through the house, but also so you could hear if your little one cried from his nursery.

Quietly you stood and let the breeze push your light skirt against your legs as you carefully selected roses from the overloaded bushes. Small clouds skidded across the night sky, and for a moment you turned your face to feel the soft moonlight on your skin. The reflection of the sun's rays on its surface from orbit made your skin prickle, as if someone was pouring champagne over your limbs, but that was as far as your transformation would go, with the exception of the ring of fire in your irises.

You had been Sixteen when you had been turned. On a geology camping field trip, nature had literally callen and as you’d been in the bushes relieving yourself that’s when the lupine had got you. It took a few months to realise what had happened, and it was only when your monthly period bleed coincided with a full moon did you turn. With irregular cycles through your teens and early twenties, you probably only turned twice, maybe three times a year, but eventually you got used to it.

It had however been a bit of a shock to your new husband, Sy, when you had turned for the first time. He’d knocked you up on the first day he met you, so it took a good 11 months before your cycle had come back, two months after the birth of your precious baby boy. That first night had been a challenge; dealing with a newborn whilst both parents were howling at the moon, however you were thankful that Edith who lived in the cabin down the lane knew of these things, and upon hearing the howling had rushed over in her nightgown.

Since then Edith had been like a surrogate mother and grandmother, as it turned out her late husband had the lupine tendencies too. Your deployment had ended whilst you were on maternity leave and you’d chosen to leave the Army entirely rather than take a desk job. Sy was special ops and in the middle of another deployment, but you had no idea when that would finish because of the nature of his assignment. Looking up at the moon you wondered where he was, hoping he was coping with the full moon and his monthly transformation. You weren’t ashamed to admit you actually really enjoyed when he was at home for a full moon; he was even more attentive and the sex was mind blowing. Standard sex with Sy left you bow legged and exhausted, but with the added power of the moon… well, it was out of this world and you’d had orgasms so strong you’d actually passed out a couple of times.

The sounds of the occasional truck on the highway a couple of hundred feet away sporadically filled the night, and you thought about that time Sy had driven out to the lake with you and you’d spent the night fucking under the moonlight in the flatbed which he’d covered with blankets and throw pillows. You’d been seven months pregnant but good god it was some of the best sex you’d ever had.

As you shifted to reach a particularly large rose you could feel your panties stick to you, just the thought of Sy was making you wet and ready. You wished you knew when he would be home, taking matters into your own hands wasn’t nearly as satisfying as the real thing from the man you loved.

Just then you heard a pair of owls hooting in the distance, a truck on the highway honking its horn, so you didn’t notice the sound of tyres on the long grassy driveway that ran up the hill to the cabin. Humming to yourself you were running your fingertips over the soft petals of a trailing white rose when the first hint of his scent reached you on the wind. It made you stop and doubt yourself, before it hit again and you felt the heat in the pit of your stomach bloom. Dropping the basket and shears on the grass you ran to the front of the cabin, the breeze catching at your skirts before you finally saw him, standing at the open gate to the garden, his large duffel hanging from his shoulder, the fire in his eyes as he finally saw you.

“Sy!”

He let the bag drop to the floor as you ran into his arms, launching yourself at him, your legs were wrapped around his thick waist as you kissed him. His deep laugh as you peppered his face with soft kisses, the tears of happiness rolling down your cheeks;

“I’m here Darlin’” he practically growled, and that’s when you remembered the moon.

Pulling back you looked him in the eyes, the golden ring of fire matching your own, and as he took long strides across the grass you felt the coupling connection again, just like that first night in the desert.

He set you down on the lawn, laying you softly on the grass as he pressed open mouthed kisses down your neck. Grasping the front of your dress he let out a growl as he ripped the garment clean in two, humming his appreciation at your swollen breasts where you were still breastfeeding and soft belly, before your soaked panties met the same fate as your dress. His lips continued their path down your body, until he reached the apex of your thighs and inhaled deeply, his eyes shining bright in the moonlight before he dived in and licked a wide stripe through your soaked folds. There under the soft caress of the moon’s rays your lupine husband pulled the first of many orgasms from your body that night, surrounded by the wild calls of nature and the overwhelming scent of the roses.

Sitting at the kitchen table, the morning sunlight streamed in through the windows as you flipped the pancakes on the skillet, smiling as you watched your two boys have breakfast. Michael sat in his high chair, babbling away as Sy seemingly understood every word of gibberish that came from his son’s lips.

Sliding the pancakes onto a plate, you set it down on the table before you felt a strong arm around your waist and Sy pulled you across his lap, his massive hands smoothing over your bare thighs where all you wore were panties and his t-shirt;

“Steady there Darlin, making me want more than just pancakes for breakfast if you’re walkin’ around in just this”

Just then there was a knock at the screen door, all three of you turning to see Edith smiling and waving from the other side;

“Edith! Come in girl, been looking forward to seeing ya!” Sy called out, a huge grin on his face that got even bigger when he spied the basket she was carrying covered in a red and white checkered napkin.

You reluctantly climbed off your husband's lap, excusing yourself to quickly grab your robe as Sy and Edith talked;

“Big Sy, i knew it was your truck that rumbled past my cabin last night”

“Was indeed, home with my girl and my little man” he paused as Edith set the basket onto the table; “Those aren’t….?”

“They sure are” she pulled the napkin up and underneath were her famous peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies.

Sy quickly pulled one from the basket and snapped it in two, handing half to Michael who happily chewed on the freshly baked treat.

“Hmmmnnnn, Edith, i could get used to these”

“You staying this time Sy?”

“I sure am Edith”

“Does she know?”

“Nope, wanna surprise her later”

“Moon’ll be up again tonight, you want me to watch Mikey?”

Just then you walked into the room, catching the last of the conversation;

“Are you sure?”

Edith stood and smiled, rubbing a finger over Michael’s chubby little cheek;

“Absolutely, why don’t I drop by after he’s had his supper?”

Setting Edith up with everything she would need for an evening of watching Jeopardy as your son slept peacefully in his crib, you grabbed the picnic basket and blanket and gave Michael a kiss, before stepping out into the night air. Sy had already taken off, with the moon rising before sundown he got antsy, but he would meet you at the lake. He’d set everything up ready, and just told you to drive his truck down, he’d set off on foot earlier, wanting to burn some energy in the calmness of nature.

The truck's tyres crunched on the gravel as you parked up, the lake a still mirror for the pink purple skyline as the sun set behind the mountains in the distance. But none of those were what you were looking at, no, what drew your attention was your husband quietly sitting on a rock at the shoreline, his boots resting beside him as he let his feet cool in the waters. With your sandals left in the truck you walked across the soft sand before reaching the shoreline, sitting beside him as he wrapped his big arm around your shoulders.

“Sy, what are you thinking about?”

He looked at you, his smile warm as his eyes shone amber in the low light;

“Lots of things Darlin… how lucky i am to have you in my life, how i don’t think i could have coped with what happened if it hadn’t been for you”

“Oh Sy…” your eyes watered; “I love you so much”

“I love you too Darlin. You and Mikey are my world…” he paused, poignantly; “There’s something else i wanna tell ya Darlin…”

For a moment you heart sank, dreading what he was going to say;

“Sy…”

“Ya know how Walt’s construction business is expanding and he needs a new site manager?”

“What?” whatever you were expecting, it wasn’t that

“Well, i got a surprise…” he pulled you onto his lap, his hands resting on your ass; “I’m done with the Army”

“No! You’d better not be fibbing…” your eyes were full to the brim, nervous tears threatening to spill

“Not fibbing… i’m done. Wanted to keep it a surprise until i knew for sure that the assignment was completed”

Crying happy tears you wrapped your arms around your husbands shoulders, burying your face in his neck as you sobbed joyfully that he wasn’t going away again.

When you had finally settled down and Sy had reassured you for the 10th time that it was definitely true, he was definitely staying home for good, the pair of you stood and started to walk along the shore of the lake barefoot, the warm sand beneath your feet as you clasped your hand around his.

The gentle sound of the water coupled with the feel of your skin touching his calmed Sy, even though the moon was out high above the pair of you, he didn’t feel the need to turn, the sense of utter contentment a balm on his soul. As you had rounded the lake he stumbled on a pebble, and in turn a giggle escaped your lips. Steadying himself he smirked and kicked at the water, splashing you a little as you let out a shriek at the cool water hitting your warm skin. Retaliating you splashed him a little more than you were expecting, soaking one side of his cargo shorts and he paused and looked at you with a feral smile spreading across his lips;

“Oh, now you’re in for it Darlin…”

Your legs carried you as you ran through the surf, knowing Sy would eventually catch you, yet the thrill was in the chase. You could hear his heavy footfalls gaining on you, but you had the advantage of being light on your feet and made a sharp turn into the woodland, the soft grass beneath your feet dry and coarse. You realised he wasn’t behind you and you slowed, turning to try and figure out where he went, when suddenly he emerged from the bushes, his eyes glowing amber in the darkness and he tackled you to the ground, yet somehow managed to turn your bodies so you were on top of him;

“Gotcha!”

He pulled you down so he could kiss you, turning your bodies until he was on top, shifting his knees so he could nestle between your thighs. Your skirt had rucked up in the tussle, and the harsh brush of his shorts against the soft skin of your thighs had your hips bucking up against him, eager for friction as your arousal grew. With the quick fumbling of eager hands you were both soon naked, Sy kneeling between your spread thighs to take in the sight of you, your nipples hard and your arousal a sheen between your legs. Grabbing your hips he pulled you up his thighs, your back arched and your shoulders still on the ground as he thrust into you, spearing your flesh with his own and you both let out a howl of pleasure.

Sy couldn’t tear his gaze away from where your bodies were joined, watching each time he pulled out and saw your juices glistening on his shaft, or how your cunt stretched open as he pushed this fat dick back into you, parting your walls and you cried out in pleasure. He fucked you like the feral beast he was, claiming his mate and catching the tell tale scent that drove him wild;

“Fuck, you’re ripe… gonna breed you and give you another pup. Thought i caught the scent last night but now i know for sure… can’t wait to see your belly round and your tits even fuller…”

He drove into your fertile body, feeling you cum around him yet he pounded through your orgasm knowing your cervix would be wide open now that you had cum and ready to take his seed. You were whimpering in his grasp, desperate for more but overwhelmed at the same time;

“Sy… please… please put a baby in me…”

“Almost… there… Darlin’...” he grunted through thrusts, before his body went rigid and he threw his head back, filling your womb with pump after pump of his thick seed, a broad smile on his face as he even held you in place knowing that gravity would help get every last drop of cum through your cervix and flood your fertile ground.

When he had finally finished coming he carefully settled the two of you onto the soft grass, holding you tight as your bodies were still joined, knowing that he would stay hard for another two or three goes. By the time he would be finished your bodies would be battered and bruised from the intensity of your lovemaking, yet the power of the moon would ensure by morning you would be healed, no outwardly visible signs that the feral carnality of the nights pleasures left behind, even if it meant you’d be sitting down tenderly on a cushion for the following 48 hours.

It was well into the early hours when the pair of you finally limped back to Sy’s truck, resting your head on his shoulder as he carefully drove home, the moon having set early thanks to its cycle.

When you arrived back at the cabin Edith was having a cigarette on the porch, the baby monitor resting on the rail next to her;

“Got it outta your systems?” she grinned as she took one last drag before crushing it in a plant pot of sand that sat at the doorway.

“For tonight” Sy smirked as he carried you bridal style up the steps of the porch; “Can we book ya for tomorrow night too?”

“Sure thing Big Sy, but you’ll owe me”

“I’ll come fix the drainpipe around your porch once the full moon has passed”

“Deal… you’re a good-un” the old woman smiled as she grabbed her keys and slid the baby monitor into your lap as you quietly snoozed in your husbands arms; “It’ll be a girl this time”

Sy’s eyes went wide;

“How do you…?”

“I just know Sweetheart… my husband wasn’t the only one that’d turn ya’know…”

Sy held you as he watched the old woman make her way down the grassy lane to her cabin;

“She’s full o’ surprises is that one…” he looked down at you and pressed a kiss to your cheek, before catching the screen door with his booted foot; “Lets get you to bed for some rest… gotta recharge for tomorrow night… maybe make it twins…”

You shifted in his grasp;

“That’s not how it works” you mumbled sleepily, a smile on your face, but the truth was neither of you knew how it worked when you were lupine… really, anything could happen.

#captain sy #captain syverson x reader #syverson x reader #werewolf!sy #captain syverson smut

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stranger-who-writes-fiction · 3 years ago

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♫ Surfing on a soundwave, Swinging through the stars, Take a left at your intestine, Take your second right past mars!

On the Magic School smelly space bus! ♫

SPOILERS for Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #2!

This is a comic where, the longer I sit with a particular issue, the more I’m like, ‘yeah. Yeah. YEAH.’

It’s dense in a way that invites the reader to go through it multiple times, and rewards additional readthroughs.

Also, it helps that the art is FREAKING AMAZING.

Seriously. Evely and Lopes should draw and color everything, forever, always.

(I will honestly be shocked if they don’t get an Eisner nom for this book.)

Anyways, all of this to say: Another issue that I enjoyed. It has one of the most genuinely sweet Supergirl moments I’ve seen in the comics in a good long while.

So, if you’re looking for a quick thumbs up/thumbs down rating, thumbs up!

If you’d like some SPECIFICS, though...

THE STORY

King is an evil genius because we don’t pick up where we left off--rather, we start in the midst of the Space Bus journey.

There is technically a Big Action Scene, but I was honestly surprised by how...casually? the story progressed.

Essentially: Kara and Ruthye are forced to travel by bus because 1.) Krem stole Kara’s rocket and 2.) this corner of the universe doesn’t have the right stars, so Kara’s still recovering from being under a red sun for an extended period of time.

The bus makes occasional stops; they encounter a space dragon; Kara takes some Red Kryptonite and saves the day; they eventually arrive on a planet with a yellow sun.

And again, all of this occurs with a kind of...breezy ease that I was not expecting at all.

I assumed that the space dragon fight would make up the final moments of the issue, after having built up the problem to a point where Kara needed to intervene.

But, noooope. The space dragon happens somewhere in the middle, which helps sell the central idea that this is simply Kara’s life. She’s been there, done that. She’s a badass who takes it all in stride.

But! Important to note! Ruthye still marvels at the sight of Kara taking out the space dragon, as well she should, because:

OH MY GOD. THE aRT.

There’s only so many times I can say, ‘it’s phenomenal, it’s gorgeous, it’s stunning’ before sounding like a broken record.

But it is. It truly is. This is the prettiest monthly book on the stands right now.

(Realizing I’ve been spelling Ruthye wrong this entire time, maybe? IDK. Apologies if I have.)

It’s in the final moments of the book that we learn what transpired after Krem shot Kara and Krypto and fled: Kara managed to get Krypto and Ruthye to a healer, and then passed out for a week.

Ruthye and Kara recovered, buuuuut...

Krypto is still very near death because the arrow was poisoned.

The healer can’t treat him until he has a sample of the poison.

Which Krem has.

(See where this is going?)

So! Kara regains her powers! Ruthye has a super on her side! KRYPTO’S LIFE HANGS IN THE BALANCE!

Gimme. Issue. 3. STAT.

THE CHARACTERS

Very much enjoyed Ruthye in this issue!

There’s a really tricky balancing act you gotta pull off when writing child characters; you don’t want to just write them as tiny adults, but you also don’t want to be obnoxious or cloying in trying to write ‘true-to-age.’

King gives himself a bit of a cheat, by setting her up as a rock farmer from a...what would you call it. An old-fashioned planet? And thus the kind of character who had to ‘grow up fast’ and behaves more maturely than your typical pre-teen might.

BUT! IMPORTANTLY! This is tempered by placing Ruthye in situations where her (understandable) ignorance is challenged/put to the test. Like, yes, she is mature, and well-spoken, and utterly tenacious, but she’s also out of her depth, and still in need of help and guidance.

(Which is how we get to The Best Scene which I’ll get to in just a sec.)

TL;DR - this issue has really sold me on Ruthye as our POV character and I am officially Invested in the relationship between her and Kara.

Speaking of...

It’s KARA-CTERIZATION TIME!

So, okay. There’s some ‘eh’ stuff in this one, but, BUT!

We got the goods again.

And by ‘goods’ I mean this:

Whatever other nitpicks I have (and I do! Have one! Which I’ll get to!) THIS. This right here! This is Supergirl. This is Kara.

And what a beautiful line to introduce this moment:

“And it began--as most things begin when you’re dealing with Supergirl--with a moment of kindness.”

It’s the same gentle concern we saw in the previous issue, where Kara knelt down to address Ruthye eye-to-eye.

Here, Kara’s facial expression, and the way she takes Ruthye’s hands and shows her what to do...

It’s just. SO SWEET.

Ahhhhh it’s so good. :D

So good! In fact! That the above scene offsets my one complaint, which is that Kara came off as harsh, IMO, when addressing the bus passengers, looking for Red K.

Other good stuff from this particular portion of the book: we get Kryptonese (maybe? I think?) And a mention of Kara’s mother being strict about certain things, which is in keeping with the 2000s series version of Alura.

Ruthye also asks if Kara ever tried to avenge the death of her family/culture and she says no; Ruthye says that she heard a lifetime of regret in Kara’s response, which I suppose could be read one of two ways:

1.) That she regrets her choice not to avenge them, or 2.) that she regrets not having the option to avenge them, as there was no one person to punch, no single action that could rectify the destruction of the entire planet.

I personally prefer the second reading.

Which I suppose contradicts the recent-ish “Killers of Krypton” arc, but who knows what is and isn’t canon anymore, honestly. XD

As for the rest of the issue! I found myself thinking of a Grant Morrison interview, actually.

Morrison apparently met a Superman cosplayer at a con and that’s when the character clicked for them: “[The superman cosplayer] was so in the character, but what really got me was the way he was sitting. It was this absolutely relaxed pose with one knee up and the arm bent over, and that’s what broke Superman for me. Suddenly I realized that Superman wouldn’t be a poser, he wouldn’t be a Muscle Beach steroid guy; he’d actually be completely relaxed because nothing could hurt him. He could be so open and friendly to everyone because no one can punch him or hurt him. He can’t get a cold, or be damaged by anything you’re carrying or wearing. For me that was the power of that, whether you want to frame it as magical or not, it actually informed the stories I wanted to write. I felt I understood him in a way I hadn’t until that moment.”

That’s always stuck with me, the idea that Clark would be the most at-ease, chill guy you'd ever talk to.

And THAT, I think, is what we’re seeing here with Kara. That at-ease-ness.

But in a way that is distinct from Clark! In the above quote, it’s clear that Morrison thinks it’s Clark’s powers that are the reason he can be so relaxed and at ease.

But Kara is de-powered here. So why is she so chill?

Because Kara is an alien.

Kara’s in her element, here. She’s used to space travel, she knows the ins-and-outs, she’s not shocked by any of the weird stuff they encounter on their journey.

Love it. LOVE. IT.

I am SO GLAD that King decided to go with Kara being the wizened mentor, as opposed to the naïve kid learning to be tough. It’s a much more interesting angle, IMO.

Also NO MENTION OF RIVALRY BETWEEN KARA AND CLARK. WOO. LET’S KEEP THIS ROLLIN’.

Alright, last, but certainly not least:

THE GOOD BOY! KRYPTO!

When I tell you I stress-read this entire comic first thing in the morning...XD

And I am STILL stressed. And a little sad that Krypto doesn’t get to go on another space adventure but! This is MIGHTY PREFERABLE to what I *thought* was going to happen, which is that Krypto would die from his injuries, and Kara would likewise be out for revenge.

Fortunately, that is not the case!

So like, the stakes?!?! Suddenly sky high. Find that dirtbag Krem and GET THAT POISON BACK TO THE HEALER!!

ART and MISC. STUFF THAT I LOVE

I generally don’t like to post entire pages of a comic, or panels without context, but the...reach? of this blog is extremely limited so. I think we’ll be okay. XD

So, alright! Some moments that I particularly enjoyed!

One of the panels that Mat Lopes shared early on!

I want this lettered version on a mug.

(Also she looks very ’Grace Kelly-ish’ here.)

Love Kara’s facial expression and her line about space travel being more fun when you can fly.

From the same portion of the book--such a neat detail that Kara keeps her cash in her sleeve!

Another set of panels that I think Tom King shared a few months back.

Love Kara’s little smirk, and the, “I’m wearing a big yellow S on my chest, and a very fashionable red skirt.”

It IS fashionable. WE SUPPORT THE SKIRT, IN THIS HOUSE.

Also the slrrrrrrp. XD

It’s good.

Okay, 1.) VERY COOL SCI-FI DESIGN and 2.) that line is great. “Can you feel it, Ruthye? We’re getting closer. The stars are changing.”

Mmmm, them good cosmic Kara vibes.

Kara’s attitude about the Red K here is fun, like, ‘WELP, sometimes you turn into a monster, sometimes you don’t!’ but again, the line is what gets me.

“Did my hair move?”

“I do not believe so.”

Honestly? I could post the whole comic here. Evely’s vision of ‘public transit, but space’ is just so immediately...not ‘real’, necessarily, because there’s such a fantastical element to it all, but it is fully realized. I think I used the phrase ‘lived-in’ and that’s it--this world feels like it has always existed; every grimy nook and cranny, every rando space bus traveler.

And Mat Lopes’ colors!

There are like, five distinct color palettes at work in this issue, and Lopes handles them all masterfully.

I think my favorite is the...I’ll call it ‘ethereal space aquarium’ lighting in the bus as they view the space dragon.

The glow and the shadows and the blues and pinks...

GGGGGGGGAAAHHHHHHHHHH so goooooooood

So, yeah. :D

I am very much enjoying this weird, wild ride with small, precocious Ruthye and wizened, crusty Kara. XD There’s some stuff that I don’t *love* but my goodness, it could be a lot worse!

Let us end on the beautiful title page:

#long post #supergirl: woman of tomorrow #supergirl: woman of tomorrow spoilers #dc comics #kara zor el #comic thoughts #comic opinions

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firesign23 · 5 years ago

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Author Interview

Tagged by: @aviss (And @luthienebonyx while I was answering!)

Name: Ehh, any variation of my usernames is fine. Or you can ask after we’ve talked. It’s too distinctive to put on Tumblr

Fandoms: I’m currently active in Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Game of Thrones, and occasionally still check in on the Agent Carter fandom when I have time. I’ve been fandoming for 18 years though, and couldn’t list all the ones I’ve been active in. I used to think I could, and then awhile back I was suddenly hit with a reminder that I wrote fic for X and had forgotten it entirely. 😂

Where you post: AO3

Most popular oneshot: (every single one of us) still left in want of mercy for GoT. For Miss Fisher, the answer actually surprised me--by hits it is A Hundred and One, which made some sense because it was my first fic and hit during that huge rush in the wake of series 3. By kudos? It’s Reservations, a Mac POV of Phryne and Jack’s developing relationship.

Most popular multi-chapter story: in the wild blue yonder, your star is fixed (in my sky) for GoT, which is unsurprising because I only have two and that is both older and longer. A Glass Splinter for Miss Fisher, which is also unsurprising because it is oldest and longest.

Favorite story you wrote: I always say Fear Not the Bugle, because it was long and hard and deeply personal by the end, but I think that answer changes a lot based on whatever definition of favourite I’m using.

Story you were nervous to post: All of them, every time. But, honestly, today’s chapter on in the wild blue yonder was… I told people I was expecting rage quitting, and while nobody’s said so, the subscription count has gone down for the first time. There’s any number of innocuous reasons for that, and of course people can read what they want and interests change and so on, but it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that it came after this chapter either. I am, of course, overthinking the whole thing like hell because that’s how I roll. I’ll be over it tomorrow--the story went the way the story had to go.

How you choose your titles: I scream at people until something clicks? I honestly… I’m so bad at picking titles. I’ll use song lyrics or poetry or quotes--lots of room for Shakespeare and Rilke with MFMM for obvious reasons, and also Edna St Vincent Millay and Anais Nin. And D.H. Lawrence, but also fuck that guy. Or sometimes I’ll just use a random word. I like to joke that I’m going to post a Phrack story and just call it “There’s smut, we all know you’ll read this regardless of the title”, but I don’t even have that going for me in the GoT fandom. THE HARDSHIPS, Y’ALL. I’m currently obsessed with finding a reason to use The Ballroom Thieves’ Bees for a fic, somehow, but I’m not sure which bit. Or which fic. It is sure as shit not going to be an angsty, canon-compliant Jaime POV of Winterfell though, that’s for fucking sure.

Do you outline: Somewhat? Before my season 8 fixit I was mostly writing casefics for anything longer than a one-shot, and I found that I had to have a super rough outline before starting so I could make sure the places clues were dropped were well-spaced and the resolution made sense on a super basic level. But this mostly took the form of a super general paragraph per chapter, and I didn’t really know how those things would happen until I get there. For yonder I have a list of shit that’s supposed to happen, maybe, and I’m winging it without knowing what’s coming in even a vague sense more than a couple of chapters ahead. Except for the final chapter, which was one of the first things I noted, back when I was telling @heavyheadedgal I wasn’t going to WRITE a fic, it was just satisfying to think about it, and anyway even if I did it would be a oneshot.

I do, however, sort of outline a chapter when I get to writing it. Outline mostly means a sentence, maybe two, per scene--X happens, the purpose of which is Y, tone might be Z--and any scraps of dialogue/writing that had already come to me during previous writing.

Complete: On ao3 I have… 150 or so? I think the full count is 152 or 153, and of those one is on hiatus and has been for years, one is complete but not yet fully posted because it’s for the 2019 monthly challenge for MFMM, and one genuine WIP. I have no idea what the true total over 18 year is though, other than a LOT.

In-progress: I am actively working on in the wild blue yonder, your star is fixed (in my sky) and the The Seasons Will Change Us New series (aka Minigolf AU), and have a few things like prompts that I pick at on occasion.

Coming soon/not yet started:

I have a ton more stories in the Minigolf series--the first on the docket is a one-shot of Brienne and Jaime grabbing coffee (that’s what I’m working on), then one set over the Midwinter holiday where their skiing holiday plans are interrupted by Robert’s death. Then there is the bachelor auction fic, which is going to be great because platonic neck kisses. And a few after that.

The third fic in the series of smutty character studies, which will feature pegging and domJaime (somehow?) and I have NO FUCKING CLUE what it will actually look like but I need it and nobody else is going to write it, so...

My next “serious” longfic will probably by the Persuasion/Anne of Cleves!AU, which is the weirdest mashup description ever. But the premise could be really great--it’s a canon divergence where Brienne and Jaime meet earlier in the timeline and become friends, then are separated by Cersei’s scheming and the ire of the court, both of them in love but not realising or able to act on it at the time. Then they meet again when she is Catelyn’s sworn sword (I’m handwaving so much politics in this fic and Ned’s death is different so Sansa is marrying Joffrey and UGH I’m not looking forward to that side of things because my grasp of canon is so bad), and there is angst and pining and strained sniping. Addam gets to be Charles Musgrove. It’s only the vaguest sort of take on Persuasion, but… The Anne of Cleves side of things is--okay, I kinda want to really lean into that inspiration, but the real point of that is to tackle Brienne’s ugliness from an angle that acknowledges that it can be a “Yes and…” situation--yes, she’s not pretty, and it can also be a constructed, weaponised attack on her. For example, I’m taking that “More of a woman’s shape” thing and running with it--she’s not feminine in build, but that gets warped into “Entirely indistinguishable from a man” by people out to discredit her, and even Jaime’s memories of her have been shaped by that propaganda.

Look, we all know I’m writing Cocks and Robbers and it is entirely the fault of @aurora-australis-tumbles

Do you accept prompts: Absolutely! I can be very slow at filling them though, because I… for a long time I was really struggling with writing for a bunch of complex reasons and I’m still working my way up to being able to write a lot in a day. It’s like a muscle injury that’s slowly healing, but I’m not pushing myself, and that means that I can’t currently sit down and bang out 5 or 6 ficlets in a day like I used to.

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: Persuasion AU, I think? What I have to say about beauty is probably rather niche and not interesting to the vast majority of fans, but it’s something that I like to explore. Or the bachelor auction AU because TROPES GALORE.

Tagging @whopooh @scruggzi @aurora-australis-tumbles @renee561 and whoever else wants to do it. I am super bad at remembering who has already done these things

#ask meme #well not really an ask meme but that's the tag

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moistwithgender · 5 years ago

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Monthly Media Roundup (May 2019)

The march of time inexorably proceeds beyond my grasp and so I must write another post. I’ve been a bit burned out, just focusing on one diversion (it was Zelda, you know it was Zelda), but after finishing it I recovered enough energy to get a few more things done in the last half of the month. I didn’t watch any anime or read any manga in May, though I did read some 70s Marvel, which I liveblog in my “curry reads comics” tag. Last time I did an actual capital-P Post about my Marvel reading was a year ago after marathoning a full(ish) decade. If people are interested in more of that I could work at making posts for each year of issues I read, recapping the developments and my thoughts on them (which will become more relevant as Events become more common, I imagine). I’ve just got a few games to talk about this month, but I imagine I have a lot to say about at least one of them.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): 2 years ago I did something I extremely rarely do: stood in line at a Best Buy at midnight for the release of the Switch so that I could buy it with BotW. BotW was also out on Wii U, which I had, but the promotional material for BotW had struck such a chord in me that it justified making the jump for the new console (this would eventually become troublesome when the first model of joycons failed, but, well). I got home, put some ten odd hours into it, and then put it down for two years. I’ve always had a problem where, struck with the intuition that I will end up forming a deep relationship with a work, I will put it off for years. I put off Persona 3 for five years after buying it at launch, and it eventually became the most personal game experience I would have, even seven years onward. I think the two factors that pushed me to finally play through BotW was wanting to watch a friend stream it (but also not wanting it spoiled for me), and needing a distraction for when I was taking care of my cat.

It’s been about two months now since he passed away, and I finally finished the game at 215+ hours about half a month ago. So, I was playing this game as a coping method while preparing for loss, and in dealing with loss. It’s appropriate that the game is effectively both a fantasy about reclaiming at least part of what you have lost, and a colossal exercise in coping. The game is as much about getting distracted from your responsibilities and fucking off to snowboard in the mountains as it is about being aware of the world around you. The Zelda games have frequently used themes of Shintoism to portray harmony in nature and in civilization. I’m currently replaying Ocarina of Time and the cosmogony myth (is it a myth if a talking tree explains it to you?) specifically words the goddesses as “[giving] the spirit of law to the world” and “[producing] all life forms who would uphold the law.” When I was younger (see: early 20s) I didn’t scrutinize the text much but now I figure it’s reasonable to read “law” as “natural order”. It should be noted that for an N64 game, OoT has remarkably good prose. BotW, in transitioning the series in what may be its third main genre (as opposed to the genres of Zelda 1 and OoT), has taken that Shintoist aesthetic and incorporated it into the entire philosophy of the game’s design. More than just being a game whose narrative concerns an imbalanced world, BotW embraces the trends of open worlds and immersive sims to create an immense, varied space where the coded laws of physics are always impacting the experience. Thunderstorms make metal equipment a liability, while rain covers the sounds of footsteps. Wind can sweep away items, fire and high temperatures affect flammable objects (including yourself), and aforementioned metallic items can conduct electricity, which can be used to solve puzzles in unintended ways. Weather changes regularly based on the region and changes the world in tandem. Rain doesn’t just fall, it actively collects, and ponds become bigger, and surfaces become slicker. Each systemic element (pun not intended) that was incorporated affected everything else in the world, and in interviews there were mentions that changing the volume of wind in one area had a butterfly effect on another, causing pots to fly off of patios in a village. It’s no wonder the game took five years to make, considering how rarely glitches occur in the game (and most that I know of have to be deliberately recreated for exploitation). You’re engaging with enemies as much as you are with the environment, and at times even with your own body, creating and consuming food and drink for the purpose of staving off sunstroke or frostbite. As a result, BotW’s Hyrule is immensely palpable, and easy to lose oneself in from how livable it feels.

When I first started playing at release, I was a bit disappointed to discover that villages existed in-game, as early promotional material and the state of the Great Plateau you start on painted a picture of a lonely world. In the end, the soundtrack and vast amount of uncolonized land does give an understated sense of melancholy that defines the game, though the fact that every five steps you’ll find a Korok micropuzzle waiting to YA HA HA and fanfare at you betrays that a bit (I still love those Koroks and their puzzles, don’t @ me). The NPCs in this are numerous, though, from the occupants of the villages to wandering traders, and their personalities are all distinct and charming, and probably the best I’ve ever seen in a game, or at least in a long time. If this game wasn’t railroading the Link/Zelda relationship so hard, I would have liked a Dragon’s Dogma-style “date any NPC (within reason)” mechanic. I’m just going to have to start a “NPCs you should marry” side-tumblr.

Another defining aspect of the gameplay, and easily what makes the game surpass arguably every other Zelda, is how Nintendo heard the decade or so of complaints about the linear Zelda lock-and-key formula being reiterated to the point of stagnation, and, after great success with A Link Between Worlds’ item rental subversion, just decided to make everything optional. You do the tutorial on the Great Plateau, and, if you feel especially gutsy, you can beeline it straight to Ganon. He’s in horse-riding distance, or running distance, if you’re tenacious. Will you make it to him, survive the hordes of enemies, and take him down? If it’s your first time playing the game and you haven’t learned the systems, probably not. Is it possible? Absolutely. Much like how the monthly cycle of a Persona game is a proverbial Rocky training montage of preparing for The Big Fight, everything you do in BotW is in preparation. A lot of open world games can feel dissonant in that you’re incentivized to be distracted as a player and make your own fun, meanwhile the protagonist keeps saying “I’m gonna get bloody revenge on the mafia boss!” during bowling matches. There is still, unavoidably, a sense of urgency played up for narrative sake in BotW, since Impa insists Zelda is waiting and can’t hold Ganon back forever, but it’s all much more narratively justifiable, if you want that. You know, because Zelda is for hardcore roleplaying.

I couldn’t resist a second playthrough, even after logging 215+ hours, so I went ahead and started a separate file on Master Mode, Nintendo’s weird in-house, in-franchise rebranding of, uh, a hard mode. Previously it was called Hero Mode. Why do you--well, okay, I know why they do it. They’re likely trying to distinguish it from a “we just tweaked the numbers” hard mode, and also want to make it feel less threatening than something labeled hard mode. If they’re going to go to the trouble to make it a distinct form of play, they want to try and appeal to everyone. And it is fairly distinct. All enemies are bumped up one rank, so a red bokoblin is blue, and a blue bokoblin is black, and so on. There is a new strongest rank of enemy, though in my run I did not seek them out. There are enemies (and treasure chests!) perched on flying rafts, which can be one-shot with proper bow aiming, but also carry dangerous elemental arrows, and can alert all other enemies in the area. Stealth is much more difficult, and pointless early in. All enemies regenerate up to a third of their health, including bosses! Though, that can be temporarily interrupted by inflicting any amount of damage on them, so it behooves you to be on the offense. Less autosave slots! This wasn’t a problem for me. Guardians randomly delay the firing of their beams! This was absolutely a problem for me and I avoided them entirely in my run. In the beginning when tools and resources are scare, particularly on the Great Plateau, Master Mode is at its hardest, and its most thrilling. Rather than aimlessly exploring, I was pressured to decide where I knew things were, and beeline it to them. Sometime in-between two of the four main optional dungeons, I had amassed enough valuable resources that the game had settled back into the same kind of difficulty as normal mode. Bosses were a little harder due to regen and my resources being somewhat scarcer, but they were manageable. Competently performing flurry attacks (upon successfully dodging attacks at the last second) was extremely valuable to me, but I imagine with enough food in my inventory, I could have brute forced my way through a lot of the fights (though, uh, obviously thou wouldst like to live deliciously (please hate me for this phrasing)). I chose to forego the Master Sword for the sake of challenge, and beat Master Mode with only seven hearts, in around 25 hours. You should play Master Mode, it’s fun.

Here’s a little gameplay SPOILER:

Something I haven’t done, but would like to eventually do, is avoid the main dungeons and just head straight to Ganon. When I played Master Mode, I wasn’t totally confident, and did the dungeons for the resources. After watching some speedruns I learned that if you skip the dungeons, and therefore the main bosses, you have to fight them all at once immediately before the fight with Ganon, without breaks.

That. Sounds. Great.

Wandersong (PC/Steam): Have you heard about Homestuck?

Okay, wait. Wait. Come back, wait. Stop leaving. PLEASE.

Okay, I got the most inflammatory sentence out of the way. Now that we’re eased into that: Wandersong is unignorably influenced by Homestuck. Homestuck conjured a lot of baggage, from having a really difficult, pretentious, arrogant author (I should know, I gave him the benefit of the doubt for way too long), to having some unfortunate narrative turns, to being a billion words long. Wandersong invokes the vaster-than-God scope, the minute and personal perspective of the heroes, and its inclinations toward emotional intelligence (it still surprises me Homestuck had these moments given the author’s deeply unsympathetic sense of humor), and… condenses it! It also makes it a light puzzle-platformer and is about performing music (note: not rhythm, you don’t have to have ANY rhythm), and looks like a Paper Mario game. It is very charming, very funny, very optimistic, and most surprisingly, uncompromising at times. Wandersong says that you, despite your role, are capable of great things, especially self growth and change, as long as you commit to it. If, faced with the consequences of your bad decisions, you choose to double down and keep at it, you will reap what you sow. This is distinctly different from Undertale’s brand of pacifism route optimism, where “no one has to die!” This brand of optimism is a measured but enthusiastic “you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, but you can save the rest” and I think that’s a uniquely valuable message.

I was a little confused about the resolution of the communist uprising chapter, but I recall the game bringing my cynicism into question, and the most important thing a work can do is make you question yourself.

(Also, if any of my mutuals are low on funds but interested, I do have a drm-free version I can share.)

Minit (PC/Steam): I don’t think I actually have a lot to say about Minit! It’s very fun and curious and short. You play a little… duck… thing, and you pick up a cursed sword which kills you in one minute. Then you wake up the next day, and die in a minute. Then you wake up the next day. Having only sixty seconds of vitality, you have to optimize your exploration. There’s a slow-speaking old man who you will die listening to, but the hint he gives at the end of his sentence will lead you to something valuable. There’s a guy in a bar angry about the lack of music. If you change the music, he will probably dislike it. If you keep changing the music, you might live to see him like it. There’s a boat ride to a tropical island you have to grit your teeth and wait through. Not all of the events are slow, some are quick bouts of hurried exploration. Most of it is, given the time limit. I’d say more, but given the overall length (it took me about an hour to finish), I’d risk spoiling a sizable fraction of the experience. It’s about $10, though I got mine in a Humble Bundle Monthly subscription. The spec requirements are very low, so your laptop can likely run it.

A Hat in Time (PC/Steam): Heads up, I’m gonna get into a lot of spoilers for this game, including endgame spoilers, but also heads up, the story isn’t really the point in this game. This is a game about tone and platforming. That said, I’m gonna be talking exclusively about the weird ideas in this game, and if you want those weird ideas to be a surprise, then just skip ahead until I put up big letters.

I’m somewhat hesitant to be critical of A Hat in Time because despite a number of weird Things about it, I recognize that it’s quite popular with a lot of people, and that always makes me pause and want to figure out what it is that makes it pass the bar for others. My guess at this point is that it invokes nostalgia through its unmitigated imitation of games that came before. The games it chooses to ape are all your childhood’s Greatest Hits, Wind Waker (which it most resembled in its earliest development), Super Mario Sunshine/Galaxy (which it most resembles now), Banjo-Kazooie, Psychonauts, etc. It never really surpasses those games, for me, and at times cribs from them to the degree that it obscures the game’s own identity. After all, what you enjoy may help define you, but you wouldn’t say it’s your personality. Well. Unless you kin the Gamecube. I guess. There are bonus levels to the game’s different “worlds” (I thought they were different planets, since your hub area is a spaceship, and you access them via different telescopes, but it turns out it’s just one planet?), and you can collect photographs, which sequentially tell a story about the residents of that “world”. Psychonauts did this because each level took place in the mind of a character, and the photos together told a story about the character that fundamentally changed the way you thought about them, and made the whole game feel richer as a result. I collected the photos for all but the DLC levels in AHiT (those are Really Hard), and of those five or so worlds, none of those bonus photos told me anything that changed how I thought about the characters. There’s a dock town run by a mafia (s-sorta) led by a chef, but did you know they all used to work at a processing factory before going there? There are two manipulative bird directors who are fighting over the same studio to produce their own film and win an award, but did you know they… wanted to be directors since they were kids? There’s a devil analogue who steals people’s souls if they wander into his forest, but did you know he was a prince, and the princess was mad he talked to another girl (it was a flower girl, he was getting flowers for the princess), and imprisoned him until they both the prince and princess turned into evil ghosts? That’s the only one that comes close to being an “oh” moment, but I don’t think it does for the reasons the writer was hoping for. In general, these are prologues without substance.

Speaking of substance, the game has a bit of an issue with theming. At least, it does at first. The first town is the previously mentioned dock town, run by a mafia. By “mafia”, I mean a bunch of meatheads who talk about how they like punching people, and refer to themselves individually, in the third person, as Mafia. Mafia loves to punch the poor and the birds. Mafia is a one-dimensional character copy-pasted across 20% of the game. Mafia laughs. They’re run by a chef, but also they can’t cook, so there’s a cat chef in hiding who routinely swaps out their food with his so no one has to eat bad food. I don’t know why, when the town has maybe three non-Mafia character. He does eventually leave and board your ship, so maybe he’s just looking for something to do. The leader of the mafia also boards your ship, for a joke and to sell you an upgrade. The mafia are also afraid of mud monsters, or aliens, or something. There’s a girl with a moustache named Moustache Girl who wants to use your Time Macguffins to overthrow organized crime, and Hat Girl decides that’s a no-go. There are giant faucets around the town that replace all the water with lava. You might be noticing these things have little to no connection. You might be suspecting this level was made first when the dev was inexperienced. I might be suspecting this. It’s fine.

Later worlds do a much better job of theming. There’s the movie studio split between two birds. One of them a penguin, who prefers science fiction, the other a…

...hmmm. I suspect this guy, The Conductor, is an OC the director has had for a while, maybe since childhood, that they just decided Is A Bird, and carried it into the game, since the game occasionally is like... bird?? Alternatively, it’s some sort of corruption of Woodstock from Peanuts. Possibly both. Anyway, this guy just wants to make movies that take place on wild western trains. He has a strong fake Scottish accent, and the penguin, named DJ Grooves, is some sort of disco Elvis. They’ve both hired owls as actors, and some crows have snuck onto the train set (the crows are so obviously the G-Men from Psychonauts’ Milkman level it bothers me a bit). This is already a little busy, but it’s okay! Birds, movies, two distinct genres, and you trapped in-between them, just trying to collect your macguffins. It works. You take part in both of their movies, and your performance in both determines the winner, when suddenly… CORRUPTION WAS AFOOT, and you have to explore the depths of the studio and engage in a showdown.

Another world is a spooky forest where your access is restricted by completing certain contracts for the devilish character. Sometimes it’s murder (reasonable), exploring a haunted mansion in survival horror format (ooh!), fixing the plumbing in a well (wait, what), and doing mail delivery (back up back up). Half of that works. The finale of the forest makes up for it, though. This game insists on most of its bosses having like 4-5 phases and breaks for dialogue and the gall required to get away with that honestly earned my respect. They’re pretty fun times.

The best level to play is, unsurprisingly, the first DLC. I say unsurprising because it’s clear the dev is learning as they go, and the level design improves as they go along. Aside from bonus levels, the first DLC takes place on a massive cruise liner titled the SS Literally Can’t Sink. Ha ha. It’s split into three parts. The first part has you exploring the many interconnected rooms of the ship to find broken shards of a macguffin, the second part has you taking that mental map and using it to frantically complete multiple timed fetch quests at once, and the third part, now that you understand the ship pretty intimately, capsizes the ship, requiring you to traverse frigid waters and overturned scenery to retrieve babies and the ship’s incompetent but adorable baby seal crew (the seals speak in hewwo talk, the game is unforgivably loaded with memes but let me have this). This progression is my favorite in the game, and while I haven’t bought the Nyakuza Metro DLC, I’m looking forward to it.

The ending level had me a bit bewildered at first because in the beginning when Hat Kid refuses to use time powers to stop organized crime, I saw it as a hamfisted way to create tension between Hat Kid and Moustache Girl. Apparently it was working up towards the moral of the story. In the final level, Moustache Girl has stolen all the macguffins, and possessing ultimate power, becomes corrupted ultimately, and summons everyone in the world to her Bowser castle to be judged and die. On first glance, I thought “well, sure, that’s sensible,” but when Hat Kid finds the support of all the villains in the game, I was a little confused. The villains sacrifice themselves to give you infinite health, explicitly stating that they’ll just come back through time magic if you win so who cares (cool stakes), and you overcome authoritarianism with the support of corrupt hollywood, organized crime, and the literal devil. This would be fine if at some point Hat Kid, you know, took them on a Zuko Quest to face turn all of them, but that doesn’t happen. They just all decide “hey yeah, fuck this girl! Also we don’t have time for the nuance this might require!” After all is said and done and you collect all your macguffins, you’re given the choice of leaving the defeated Moustache Girl a single macguffin so she can defeat the mafia (whose side are we on) or just saying nahhh. Neither appears to make a difference, but maybe in a year or two we’ll get a DLC that makes you regret your words and deeds. You try to fly your ship to your home planet, and the villains all grab on to your ship, which is in space, begging you not to leave. I seriously suspect they intended to incorporate face-turn scenes and just couldn’t find the time, because nothing but physical proximity implies these guys would have any emotional attachment to Hat Kid, and that’s a bit of a stretch. Anyway, Hat Kid brooms them off the ship to plummet down to earth and flies away. Sheds a tear about the whole thing. In the end, the moral was that Order good, but too much Order bad, except if you are Hat Kid, in which case Chaos good. Or maybe…

After finishing the game I decided to look into any left over secrets, since my completion score was in the 80s of percents. Turns out that if you use the camera badge to finagle the free look feature into a marginally open armoire somewhere on your spaceship, you can find a shrine to Hat Kid with a couple skulls, a bunch of blurry photos, and some strange symbols. If you doing this while wearing the mask that lets you see the secrets of the dead (for platforming and puzzle purposes, of course), there’s a bunch of alien text you can decode. And then there’s some youtube channels. And a twitter account. All sharing more of those decodable ciphers, all talking about vague dreamy apocalyptic histories and dark betrayals. Or something. That’s right, this game’s got a fucking ARG. I cut things off there. If the developer Gears for Breakfast is gonna make an occultist grimdark sequel to A Hat in Time, they can put up a trailer for it.

OKAY I’M DONE TALKING ABOUT A HAT IN TIME, the short of it is that I had a lot of mixed feelings but had fun.

How did I end up talking more about A Hat in Time than Breath of the Wild? What are my priorities?

Well, that’s everything I finished in May! Will I get back to anime and manga in June? Guess we’ll see! Again, let me know if you want me to do year-recap Marvel posts, since my liveblogging is mostly just shitposts, and the occasional attempt at thoughtfulness among those posts feels kind of out of place. Honestly, I’m probably gonna do that anyway, but it’s nice to see interest. If you read all this, thanks a lot! Go play Breath of the Wild and Wandersong.

#curry plays games

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mysterioustransmissions · 6 years ago

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My favorite comics of 2017

Keeping with my new tradition of posting this list super late, here, on the last day of 2018, is my best comics of 2017 list. I can offer excuses -- my wife and I remodeled our house and welcomed our first child into the world this year, and I’m also unfailingly lazy -- but 2017 was also a killer year for comics, making this a bit larger of an undertaking than usual. Both Koyama Press and co-publishers Retrofit Comics and Big Planet Comics had absolutely stacked lineups. You’ll see them listed as publisher for many entries below.

I always struggle with how to order this list. I got serious about organizing my comics collection in 2018, and am running into the same problem. There, I’m thinking of dividing it into two -- a single-author section organized by author name (which ends up being mostly minicomics and graphic novels), and a multiple-author section organized by title (which ends up being mostly traditional-sized comics). Here, I’m essentially doing that same thing, but mixing them together; some entries are by title, and some author name.

Comics I especially enjoyed are marked with an *.

Allison, Matthew; Cankor: Calamity of Challenge #2 and #3 (self-published).

Berserker 1, edited by edited by Tom Oldham and Jamie Sutcliffe (Breakdown Press). There was a lot of anticipation and very specific expectations placed on this book ahead of its release, but no one seemed to walk away from the finished product satisfied. But it’s got a killer cover, great production design, and strips by some of the best cartoonists going. I hope Breakdown does another one.

* Booth, Tara; How to be Alive (Retrofit Comics & Big Planet Comics). One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Booth’s drawings are a riot to look at, that the gags are also great is pure gravy. About as big as crossover hits get in my house. (I.e., my wife also loved it.)

Cardini, William; Tales From the Hyperverse (Retrofit Comics and Big Planet Comics). Cardini’s sci-fi world is made bigger and more engaging by the rapid-fire pace of this short story collection. His wild experimentation with color is always an inspiration.

Corben, Richard; Shadows on the Grave #1 - #8 (Dark Horse Comics). Not my favorite of Corben’s late-period Dark Horse horror books, but there’s plenty to enjoy. I was stunned by the sheer efficiency of the storytelling -- there are entire stories told with a single image and a few word balloons. A lot of these books sport great covers, issue #1 here, seen at the link for this entry, is one of the best.

Darrow, Geoff; The Shaolin Cowboy: Who’ll Stop the Reign? #1 - #4 with Dave Stewart (Dark Horse Comics). I was so bowled over by the experience of buying Shemp Buffet monthly that I initially scoffed at Cowboy’s return to more traditional narrative, but it turned out to be no less wild and no loss at all.

Davis, Eleanor; Libby’s Dad (Retrofit Comics & Big Planet Comics) and You & a Bike & a Road (Koyama Press). You & a Bike & a Road does something that’s often attempted and rarely successful -- it beats the audience down so it can then lift them up higher. Its success is due in no small part from its origin as a real-life journal. The visceral and emotional pain Davis feels on her journey is sincerely felt, and the lack of cynicism the storytelling choices are made with allow the reader to feel it whole cloth. And listen; it certainly doesn’t hurt that Davis is an amazing narrative storyteller besides -- Libby’s Dad is no less affecting.

DeForge, Michael; mini kuš! #43 'Meat Locker' (kuš!). I sleep on DeForge. I take him for granted. I feel like I’m not the only one? I see some excitement when his books come out, but no discussion. Blame it on the high volume and opaque nature of his work, the dearth of comics reviewers, and me, obviously. Also obviously, whenever something of his does find its way to my hands, I’m never sorry.

Estrada, Inés; Alienation #3 - #6 (self-published). The bundled version of this series, seen at the link for this entry, has the coolest book packaging I’ve ever seen in my life.

Expansion by Matt Sheean and Malachi Ward (AdHouse Books). I didn’t like this nearly as much as this same team’s previous Ancestor (due no doubt to its earlier and improvised creation), but damn, what a cover.

* Forsman, Chuck; Slasher #1 - #4 (Floating World Comics). I’d say the majority of my interest in Forsman’s work is in seeing how he presents his it and steers his career -- he’s among the best there is at that. Slasher is his first work I strongly connected with. It digs deep and gets wilder and wilder.

Ferrick, Margot; Yours (2dcloud). I’m a simpleton, so I was surprised at how deeply I was able to be moved by something this abstract. As always, grabbing 2dcloud’s whole line on Kickstarter expands my horizons and makes me a better reader.

Foster-Dimino, Sophia; Sex Fantasy (Koyama Press). I’ve actually only read the minis of this. This collection has the one I’m missing, plus some new material, but I love Sex Fantasy. It’s like a perpetual motion machine for thought -- you can just think about it forever.

Fricas, Katie; Art Fan (self-published). One of those things you dream of happening at a show -- picked this up at MICE not knowing anything about it, and was delighted by the artwork and knocked out by the “reviews of trippy art events”; particularly the first, about Duke Riley’s Fly by Night.

* Friebert, Noel; WEIRD6 (self-published), SPINE: I’ll Still Watch (Bred Press), Old Ground (Koyama Press). Sometimes when I have a fever, I can’t break loose of a single, circular thought -- I have the same thought over and over, only to realize once the fever’s broken that it was barely coherent. Friebert’s newer, decompressed work is like that. You turn page after page, and nothing happens. It’s the same characters still doing and saying the same things, again and again. You turn the pages faster and faster, almost in a panic, hoping to break the cycle and resolve the unease before you. But it’s no use.

* gg; I’m Not Here (Koyama Press), Valley (kuš!). I’m Not Here is one of a few books I recommended to people who were enjoying season 3 of Twin Peaks at the time. It doesn’t convey information so much as emotion, and rewards as much thought as you want to put into it.

* Hankiewicz, John; Education (Fantagraphics Books). I loved this so much I only read a few pages a night to make it last. Michael DeForge once called Noel Freibert an “astronaut” -- that applies to Hankiewicz also. No one’s ever done anything like this before, and if we didn’t have Hankiewicz I don’t think anyone ever would. Bringing poetry and modern dance (!!) into the language of comics, this was another book I recommended to watchers of season 3 of Twin Peaks -- you don’t understand the story by connecting facts, you understand it by connecting emotions.

* Hanselmann, Simon; Portrait, XMP-165 (self-published). XMP-165 was the first big payoff of the longform nature of Megg and Mogg, and it destroyed me. Also released this year was Doujinshi, Cold Cube Press’ gorgeous re-release of a Japanese Megg and Mogg fan comic.

Harkam, Sammy; Crickets #6 (The Commonwealth Comics Company). People talk about how good this book is, and I agree, but I’m not sure I could tell you why.

Haven, Eric; Vague Tales (Fantagraphics Books).

Hernandez, Gilbert and Jaime ; Love & Rockets Vol. IV #2, #3 (Fantagraphics). I made the terrible error after Love Bunglers to trade wait Locas, and for whatever reason they haven’t released one since. So I was way behind when this started coming out, but I bought and read it anyway. I initially found the story to be light, but I eventually realized I had a free ComiXology trial and caught up. It’s as great as ever.

Ito, Junji; Dissolving Classroom (Vertical, Inc.), Shiver: Junji Ito Selected Stories, and Tomie: Complete Deluxe Edition (Viz Media). Tomie may have come out in 2016 actually? I describe it to people as being about a beautiful woman who stands around until some total lech of a man inevitably murders her, then she comes back and annihilates him in the most unpleasant manner possible. Repeat ad infinitum. I don’t think the text 100% supports my reading, but that’s what it means to me.

Landry, Tyler; Shit and Piss (Retrofit Comics). The ephemeral, disjointed nature the single issue format served this story better, but it’s still extremely rad.

Loup, Celine; The Man Who Came Down the Attic Stairs (self-published).

Marcus, Ben; Crisis Zone 3rd Edition (Bred Press).

Mignolaverse and John Arcudi; Dead Inside #3 by Arcudi, Toni Fejzula, and Andre May, Lobster Johnson: The Pirate’s Ghost #1 - #3 by Arcudi and Tonci Zonjic, Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea by Gary Gianni, Mike Mignola, and Dave Stewart (Dark Horse Comics). Ignoring a few years in college when I was a lapsed comics reader, I’ve bought every Mignolaverse comic since I was about 13. That loyalty has slowly eroded over the last half decade about. I’m not alone in thinking the Arcudi-Davis run is one of the greatest of all time, and that the books started to go downhill after Guy Davis left. Beyond the departure of Davis, there are a few reasons for that, in my view.

First was the decision soon after to expand the line’s offerings. Doubling the line’s output and bringing in (inevitably) inferior creative teams was a no-win proposition for readers. Who wants more of something not as good?

Second, I think that Arcudi, a great writer, has shifted his focus from tightly-plotted five issue arcs to series-spanning character arcs. While I’m guessing this reads great in big chunks, it doesn’t spread out month to month, some months out of the year. I’m looking forward to a big re-read of everything after B.P.R.D. wraps in a few months, to see if this theory holds. Lobster Johnson: The Pirate’s Ghost came close to standing on its own, but was still rife with moments that I can only assume were big character payoffs because I didn’t remember enough to know. (Especially cool covers by Zonjic on these issues.) However, the non-Mignolaverse title Dead Inside offered the type of visceral, plot-based payoff his B.P.R.D. run with Davis hooked me with. I hadn’t been this thrilled by an Arcudi book since Killing Ground.

But third, and worst of all, has been the addition of writer Chris Roberson, whose books read like updates to the Mignolaverse Wiki. (The Visitor: How and Why He Stayed was okay, but pretty much solely due to Paul Grist’s fun art and layouts.)

I’m staying aboard the main B.P.R.D. book as it races to the finish line, and will continue to buy anything Arcudi writes, which seems to be mostly these Lobster Johnson comics. (Although even that’s looking increasingly, and sadly, unlikely to continue: https://twitter.com/ArcudiJohn/status/1075086925436874753) And I’ll certainly buy any more of these very sporadically-released Hellboy OGNs, like Into the Silent Sea, they decide to release -- the only real non-Mignola drawn Hellboy books anymore.

* Milburn, Lane; CORRIDORS (self-published). Sits comfortably next to Inflated Head Zone by Zach Hazard Vaupen, one of my favorite comics. They both forsake straightforward narrative in favor of theme-driven emotional impressionism, and do it with horror. This is catnip to me, and something I aspire to (although I’m far too boring to achieve it).

* Mirror Mirror II, edited by Sean T. Collins and Julia Gfrörer (2dcloud).

Now: The New Comics Anthology #1, edited by Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics Books).

* Providence #12 by Jacen Burrows, Juan Rodriguez, and Alan Moore (Avatar Press). It came out months after, but it’s a safe bet Moore wrote this before Trump got elected, right? A more accurate depiction of the shell-shock of being thrust into a post-facts world I haven’t seen.

Roberts, Keiler; Sunburning (Koyama Press). Another big crossover hit in my house.

* Shiga, Jason; Demon Volumes 2, 3, and 4 (First Second). Demon became a book I wouldn’t stop showing to anyone who would listen. Like Gina Wynbrandt’s Someone Please Have Sex With Me, its hook transcends the normal comics reading audience -- you can show it to anyone and they get it right away. Specifically I would show people this amazing video https://youtu.be/NRxCTeM5pyU, which would clue them into what Shiga does enough to get them to read Demon. Demon has a story, but it’s more about rules -- establishing them and playfully subverting them with a level of inventiveness that regularly leaves you in awe.

* Terrell, Jake; Extended Play (2dcloud). This delightful book took me completely by surprise, an experience made possible by 2dcloud’s subscription model.

Tomasso, Rich; She Wolf: Black Baptism #1 - #4, Spy Seal: The Corten-Steel Phoenix #1 - #4 (Image Comics). The end of this second series of She Wolf approached the same hostile disregard for what came before as the end of Tomasso’s previous series, Dark Corridor. But where Dark Corridor acted on that impulse by simply burning it all down, She Wolf has enough respect at least to replace what came before by pivoting into a completely different comic. The freedom this affords the plot to dart in unpredictable directions is exhilarating. And it’s fun and beautifully laid out and designed, as always with Tomasso.

Tran, Thu; Dust Pam (Peow). Gorgeous!

Vaupen, Zach Hazard; Combed Clap of Thunder (Retrofit Comics and Big Planet Comics).

* Willumsen, Connor; Anti-Gone (Koyama Press). The part where the protagonists drive their boat past a window with a dog in it rewired my comics-making brain forever. This was another comic I only read a few pages of a night to make it last longer, and also recommended to friends of mine who were enjoying season three of Twin Peaks -- the plot is obfuscated in a similar way.

Yanow, Sophie; What is a Glacier? (Retrofit Comics and Big Planet Comics).

Yokoyama, Yuichi; Iceland (Retrofit Comics). Another comic I recommended to Twin Peaks season three fans. Similar to the residents of the Red Room, the characters seem truly of another world, their motivations and actions incomprehensible to us.

#best of the year

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burningdarkfire · 3 years ago

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end of year book asks except i answer literally all of them because i want to

original ask meme found here! with extra thanks to @eskelent for sending to me 💖

How many books did you read this year?

121! about 90 of those were full-length novels/books and the other 30 or so were novellas, short stories, etc.

Did you reread anything? What?

homestuck book 3 act 4 (i read this on 413 because of the way homestuck still has a death grip on me after all this time)

sir gawain and the green knight, armitage translation (i read this before seeing the green knight which was a banger of a movie)

into the wild by erin hunter (i just reread this because i was talking to a friend about it again)

graceling by kristin cashore (i found out there’s a fourth graceling book and this was seriously one of my fave series as a preteen so i needed that reread)

What were your top five books of the year?

foundryside by robert jackson bennett (do u ever read a book that is simply just Written For You? this is the book for me)

the raven tower by ann leckie (i wish i had written this)

jonathan strange & mr. norrell by susanna clarke (sometimes things give me english degree vibes in the best way possible)

a desolation called peace by arkady martine (unsurprising that the sequel to AMCE that fixed everything wrong with AMCE is in my brain)

empress of salt and fortune by nghi vo (absolutely beautiful novella that strikes the perfect blend of poetry and prose)

Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

oddly not really? a lot of my fave books from this year aren’t enough for me to say i love the author (robert jackson bennett’s writing lacks artistry, arkady martine overwrites too much, nghi vo drags horribly at points, both the raven tower and jonathan strange & mr norrell feel too exceptional to the author’s usual output)

if i had to pick one i might say fonda lee. i’ve only read jade city but i have a lot of faith that the green bone saga might be a 5* series, and i really enjoy her writing style

What genre did you read the most of?

i read 33 fantasy books, which accounted for 31.1% of my reading! scifi was in second place at 21 books/19.8%

Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

i had a loose goal at the beginning of the year to read one epic high fantasy book each month and that did not pan out lmao. the greatest loss from this is that i still haven’t read the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon which has been on my tbr for so many years and i’m so sure i would like it!!

What was your average Goodreads rating? Does it seem accurate?

i’m pretty happy with 3.4. it’s a good middling score. my scores do naturally lean high since obviously i pick books that i think i’ll enjoy

Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

my goodreads reading goal was 120, which i did fulfill. i also had a separate goal to randomize a book off of my TBR each month and read it, which i did and actually surprisingly really enjoyed so i’ll do that again in 2022

Did you get into any new genres?

both contempary lit and thrillers got a noticeable jump from last year, though they’ve kept their place in the genre list.

What was your favorite new release of the year?

a desolation called peace by arkady martine is the obvious winner here but since i already mentioned i’ll give a shout out to iron widow by xiran jay zhao, which was just an incredibly fun book that reads like an anime. i don’t usually prioritize new releases though so i think i read only one other book released in 2021 this year?

What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?

idk about favourite but i did finally read the man in the high castle by philip k dick as part of my monthly RNG challenge this year. i’d wanted to read it for about a decade and i’m glad i finally did. it was a challenging read for me (i don’t really do historical fiction so alternate historical fiction was just. hard) but ultimately i found it interesting and rewarding

Any books that disappointed you?

the most disappointing book for me this year was these violent delights by chloe gong. a romeo and juliet retelling in 1920s shanghai sounds like it was made for me but it was just so shallow and slow. it had no clear stakes but it sure did have incredibly annoying characters and way too many of the usual YA pitfalls

What were your least favorite books of the year?

i’ll do a top five, from the worst to the bad-but-less-bad:

the well of ascension by brandon sanderson (i literally have not forgiven him for this book like ten months later lmao)

the maidens by alex michaelides (has every problem that bad thrillers have but worse. just incomprehensible)

serpent & dove by shelby mahurin (enemies to lovers done extremely wrong)

maybe you should talk to someone by lori gottlieb (it reads as so condescending and self-centered and not at all helpful)

the silent patient by alex michaelides (honestly i hate it a little extra because it’s alex michaelides but it’s just standard bad thriller)

Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?

i have shelves on goodreads for booker, giller, and canada reads winners. i also have shelves for hugo and nebula nominees. from those, i read in 2021:

the city in the middle of the night by charlie jane anders (DNF, 2*)

a memory called empire by arkady martine (4*)

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone (2*)

the city we became by n.k. jemisin (3*)

network effect by martha wells (5*)

What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone (this felt so shallow and fluffy to me. books with this much purple prose are distinctly not for me)

mister impossible by maggie stiefvater (every day we are out here chasing the highs of the raven cycle)

the murderbot diaries by martha wells (don’t get me wrong, i loved network effect, but the rest of them were pretty average novellas. fun, but definitely over-hyped)

Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

probably network effect was the most surprising to me, considering how average i found the rest of the series. i truly did force my way through five novellas before discovering that i really enjoyed the novel!

How many books did you buy?

35 books! which actually feels really high to me but in my defense i thought i was going to get a new shelf this year (which i still don’t have 😭) and i didn’t want it to be nearly empty lmao

Did you use your library?

99 of the books i read were from the library!

What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

probably these violent delights by chloe gong which is why it hurt so bad when it sucked 😔

Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?

no thanks lmao the number of times i’ve considered starting a book .. something social media is too high to count but i literally just won’t do it

What’s the longest book you read?

jonathan strange & mr norrell by susanna clarke clocked in at 1006 pages

What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?

obviously i read a lot of short stories or novellas in one day, so i won’t count those. i also tend to read a look of books within 24 hours but with a sleep in between (ie i start in the afternoon and then finish the next morning). all of the below novels i truly read in one day:

these violent delights by chloe gong

dial a for aunties by jesse q. sutanto

they never learn by layne fargo

i’m thinking of ending things by iain reid

frying plantain by zalika reid-benta

Did you DNF anything? Why?

the city in the middle of the night by charlie jane anders (i truly just found this incomprehensible lmao)

calypso by david sedaris (tbh i don’t know who this guy is and i realized halfway through this collection of his essays/talks that i don’t care)

What reading goals do you have for next year?

i’m still undecided between keeping the overall count at 120 or dropping it to 100. 120 pushed me at a reasonable pace but i’m not sure i enjoyed it, and it’s obvious to me that i read so much more at the expense of other hobbies

i will keep up the monthly RNG challenge and i’ll also plan to read one book a month that i already physically have on my bookshelves!

#my posts #books #liveblogging books #reading wrap up

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Are Republicans Trying To Cut Social Security

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-republicans-trying-to-cut-social-security/

Are Republicans Trying To Cut Social Security

The Republican Record On Social Security

Huff Post Reporter: Biden’s documented history of trying to cut social security

1935: Almost all Republicans in Congress oppose the creation of Social Security.

1939: 75 percent of Republicans in Senate try to kill legislation providing Social Security benefits to dependents and survivors as well as retired workers.

1950: 79 percent of House and 89 percent of Senate Republicans vote against disability insurance to defeat it.

1956: 86 percent of Republicans in Senate oppose disability insurance; program approved nonetheless.

1964: Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and future president Ronald Reagan both suggest that Social Security be made voluntary.

1965: 93 percent of Republicans in House and 62 percent in Senate vote to kill Medicare.

1977: 58 percent of Senate votes against amendment to provide semiannual increases.

1977: 88 percent of Republicans in House and 63 percent in Senate vote against an increase in Social Security payroll tax needed to keep the system solvent.

1981: President Reagan proposes $35 billion in Social Security cuts over the next 5 years. The cuts would have included the elimination of student benefits, lump-sum death benefits, and a retroactive elimination of the $122 minimum benefit for three million recipients.

1981: Reagan administration begins a wholesale review of the Social Security Disability rolls, resulting in over 560,000 eligibility investigations in 1982 360,000 more than the year before. Ultimately, at least 106,000 families were removed from the rolls.

Republicans Aren’t Going To Take Away Social Security

Without beating around the bush, the Republican Party is often associated as being the party of the well-to-do — and the rich typically aren’t reliant in any way on Social Security income. There’s, therefore, been a long-running belief that Republicans would aim to do away with Social Security sometime in the future. This is nothing more than another in a long line of pervasive Social Security myths.

Both Democrat and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have an understanding of the importance that Social Security plays in keeping some 22 million people currently receiving benefits above the federal poverty line. Though both parties may have suggested tweaking how revenue is generated for the program, neither party would remove or replace any of the three funding sources: the payroll tax on earned income, the taxation of benefits, and interest income on the program’s asset reserves.

In other words, no Republican is going to advocate scraping Social Security. And even if they did, the idea would have no chance of gaining traction in Congress.

The Average Retired Worker Benefit Could Be Cut By More Than $4300 In Less Than 15 Years

The good news, if there’s a silver lining to pull out of this mess for seniors and future retirees, is that Social Security won’t be bankrupt, even if Congress fails to act. Two of Social Security’s three sources of funding — the 12.4% payroll tax on earned income and the taxation of benefits — are recurring sources of revenue. As long as the American public continues to work, money will be flowing into the Social Security program for disbursement to eligible beneficiaries.

On the other hand, no money left in asset reserves would mean that the existing payout schedule, inclusive of cost-of-living adjustments, would no longer be sustainable. Translation: Benefit cuts would be necessary to maintain Social Security’s solvency for decades to come.

According to the latest Trustees report, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust would only be able to pay 76% of scheduled benefits once its coffers are cleaned out. Put another way, it means retired workers and survivors could face an across-the-board benefit cut of 24% by 2035.

Now, think about this for a moment. In May 2020, the Social Security Administration published data showing that the average retired worker was bringing home $1,512.63 a month. That’s $18,151.56 a year for the typical retiree. A 24% benefit cut would, in May 2020 dollars, equate to a benefit cut of $4,356 a year. That’s terrifying when you consider that 62% of retired workers rely on their monthly payout to account for at least half of their income.

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The Average Retired Worker Could Be Taking Home A Lot Less From Social Security In 15 Years

This has been a challenging year in so many respects for the American public. The COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed the way we interact with one another, and its displaced more than 20 million workers. If youre an investor, you were also taken on a wild ride, with the stock market packing about 10 years worth of volatility into a period of four months. And dont even get me started about the murder hornets.

But one of the few solaces working Americans have always been able to take is the idea that, if they earn 40 lifetime work credits, a Social Security benefit will be waiting for them when they retire.

The Social Security program has navigated through 13 recessions prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite some obviously grim outlooks during those previous recessions, youll note that Social Security is still here, and its been paying continuous retired-worker benefits for more than 80 years. This is why its often referred to as Americas most successful social program.

But just because its been a historically successful program doesnt mean its necessarily in great shape to service future generations of retirees.

What You Should Know About The Gop And Social Security

Who’s to blame for this mess? Well, some Americans would point their fingers specifically at Republicans in Congress. While they absolutely do take some of the blame, the inaction by Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill makes them equally culpable in exacerbating Social Security’s problems.

When it comes to Republicans and Social Security, here are the four things you absolutely need to know.

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With A Potential Debt Ceiling Increase Afoot Liberals Brace For Obama To Once Again Push For Social Security Cuts

Paul Ryans Wednesday Wall Street Journalop-ed was perhaps the starkest sign of a striking shift: a government shutdown and debt ceiling showdown pitched by Tea Party members to be about blocking Obamacare is being framed by GOP leaders as a push towards entitlement reform. In Wednesday interviews, leaders of liberal groups commended the presidents consistent insistence on not offering new budget concessions in exchange for reopening the government or averting debt default. But they pledged an all-out effort to defeat Social Security or Medicare cuts if Obama offers them once again after the default threat is delayed. GOP leaders push for a six-week debt ceiling increase suggests that moment could come very soon.

Charles Chamberlain, who directs the Dean campaign offshoot Democracy For America, told Salon that it would be a huge mistake for Obama to once again push the Social Security cut called chained CPI, and the president would face a gigantic amount of opposition from progressives nationwide if he did. Still, said Chamberlain, he put her on the table once before. I dont think hes going to take it off.

Meanwhile, the presidents support appears to have tempered opposition to Social Security cuts within the Democratic Caucus. A work-in-progress whip count from Social Security Works so far counts a dozen Democrats in the Senate and 46 in the House whose statements suggest they would oppose any deal including chained CPI .

They Haven’t Taken A Dime From The Social Security Program That Isn’t Accounted For

Another misconception is that the Republican Party stole money from the Social Security Trust and used it to fund wars. More specifically, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush have come under intense scrutiny for borrowing from Social Security and “not putting the money back.”

However, the truth of the matter is that Congress has been able to “borrow” Social Security’s excess cash for five decades, and it’s happened under every single president over that stretch. In fact, the Social Security Administration is required by law to purchase special-issue bonds and certificates of indebtedness with this excess cash. Please note the emphasis on “required by law” that I’ve added above. The federal government isn’t simply going to sit on this excess cash it borrows from Social Security. It’s spending this cash on various line items, which may be wars and the defense budget, as well as education, healthcare, and pretty much any other expenditure you can think of.

This setup is actually a win-win for both parties. The federal government has a relatively liquid source of borrowing with the Social Security Trust, and the Trust is able to generate significant annual income from the interest it earns on its loans. Last year, $85.1 billion of the $996.6 billion that was generated by the program came from interest income.

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Trump Keeps Proposing Entitlement Cuts And Then Denying That He Did So

In 2015 and 16, Trump differentiated himself from the rest of the Republican presidential hopefuls by campaigning on a vow to not cut entitlements.

Im not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and Im not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid, Trump told the Daily Signal, a conservative publication affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, in 2015.

As his budget proposals indicate, this promise was an empty one. Trump, however, seems to realize that cutting entitlements is a political loser for him, and as a result has continued to make assertions about preserving them that are at odds with reality.

All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they dont, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!

Donald J. Trump

Last month, however, Trump seemed to have a moment of radical honesty when he told CNBC during an interview conducted in Davos that at some point entitlement cuts will be on the table.

CNBC: Will entitlements ever be on your plate ?TRUMP: “At some point they will be”CNBC: But you said you wouldn’t do that in the pastTRUMP: “We also have assets that we never had”

Aaron Rupar

Those comments created a negative stir, so the very next day Trump tried to walk them back.

Democrats are going to destroy your Social Security. I have totally left it alone, as promised, and will save it!

Donald J. Trump

Democrats Have Already Signaled Trumps Budget Is Going Nowhere

Trump Vows To Protect Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid

While Trump tries to have it both ways by proposing entitlement cuts while claiming hes not really doing that, Treasury Department spokesperson Monica Crowley was somewhat more straightforward during a Monday morning appearance on Fox Business.

Asked by host Stuart Varney if she agrees that the new budget hits the safety net, Crowley said the president understands that Washingtons habit of out of control spending without consequence has to be stopped.

Treasury Secretary Assistant Sec. Monica Crowley defends cuts to entitlements in Trumps new 2021 budget proposal: The president also understands that Washingtons habit of out of control spending without consequence has to be stopped.

Aaron Rupar

But for Trump, not all spending is bad. While his budget cuts non-defense spending by 5 percent, he actually slates defense spending for an increase to $740.5 billion for fiscal year 2021.

Budget proposals are just that proposals. And while Trump insists that Republicans are the ones trying to save entitlements from destruction, the irony is that the truth is exactly the opposite: Entitlement cuts are dead on arrival as long as Democrats control a chamber of Congress.

House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth alluded to this reality in a statement he released on Sunday blasting Trump for proposing deep cuts to critical programs that help American families.

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Is The Gop Really Trying To Do Away With Social Security

Social Security is unquestionably the nation’s most important social program, with more than three out of five current retired workers leaning on it to account for at least half of their monthly income. Yet, this crucial program is on shaky ground, with the latest annual report from the Social Security Board of Trustees painting a grim intermediate- and long-term picture for the program.

According to the report, Social Security is facing an inflection point this year. For the first time since 1982, aggregate expenditures, which almost entirely includes benefits, but also takes into account administrative expenses and Railroad Retirement exchange contributions, will exceed revenue generated. Although the net cash outflow is only estimated at $1.7 billion, which is relative peanuts when compared to the $2.89 trillion currently in asset reserves, it’s a conclusive sign that the existing payout schedule isn’t sustainable.

Things begin to get really dicey in 2020 and beyond. Beginning at the turn of the decade, ongoing demographic shifts are expected to cause the net cash outflow to balloon. By 2034, following 16 years of outflows, the $2.89 trillion in excess cash is expected to be completely gone. Should this happen, Social Security would survive, but payouts to then-current and future retirees could be cut by up to 21%. That’s not a pleasant forecast given the noted reliance of seniors on the program.

Meet The New Gop Plan To End Medicare Same As The Old Gop Plan To End Medicare

We here in the Democratic Whip Press shop will give Republicans credit for their transparency. They are not even trying to hide the fact that their Cut, Cap and End Medicare bill would end the programs guarantee.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said yesterday the plan basically mirrors the budget proposal that the House passed this year.

That would be the same Republican budget proposal that ends the Medicare guarantee and more than doubles heath care costs for seniors, all while preserving tax breaks for the wealthy.

And the Republican Cut, Cap and End Medicare plan is no different.

But dont just take our word for it. According to theCenter on Budget and Policy Priorities, the measure:

stands out as one of the most ideologically extreme pieces of major budget legislation to come before Congress in years, if not decades.

The legislation would inexorably subject Social Security and Medicare to deep reductions.

In addition, the extreme and draconian Republican proposal would reverse decades of precedent that exempt cuts to basic services for the most vulnerable among us. More from the CBPP:

Since the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law of 1985, all such laws have exempted the core basic assistance programs for the poorest Americans from such across-the-board cuts. Cut, Cap, and Balance, by contrast, specifically subjects all such programs to across-the-board cuts if its spending caps would be exceeded.

Recommended Reading: Did Any Republicans Own Slaves In 1860

Republicans Will Cut Social Security And Medicare After Tax Plan Passes Says Marco Rubio

Update | Florida Senator Marco Rubio admits that the Republican tax cut plan, which benefits corporations and the wealthy, will require cuts to Social Security and Medicare to pay for it.

To address the federal deficit, which will grow by at least $1 trillion if the tax plan passes, Congress will need to cut entitlement programs such as Social Security, Rubio told reporters this week. Advocates for the elderly and the poor have warned that entitlement programs would be on the chopping block, but this is the first time a prominent Republican has backed their claims.

Expect all the guests on the Sunday shows to be Republicans explaining how they now have no choice but to slash Social Security & Medicare because the deficit has suddenly and mysteriously gotten much worse.

Bruce “Snarking and Barking” Bartlett

“You have got to generate economic growth because growth generates revenue,” Rubio said at a Politico conference. “But you also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn’t the driver of our debt. The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries.”

Rubio’s talk of structural change is vague but will likely include changing the rate and age of Social Security and Medicare payouts.

So where does that money come from?

Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch said Thursday that “liberal programs” for the poor were wasting Americans’ money.

The Political Outlook For Social Security Reforms

But the Biden administration and its Congressional allies are instead focused on threading the political needle for an ambitious $3.5 trillion infrastructure spending package, while also dealing with the fallout from the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Leading Republican legislators have called for so-called entitlement reform , but that’s a tough sell in the current ;Democratically controlled Congress.

“Does the report mean the timetable argues for real concrete action on Social Security? Probably not. Will it revive the rhetoric that the sky is falling? Sure,” says Robert Blancato, national coordinator of the Elder Justice Coalition advocacy group, president of Matz Blancato and Associates and a 2016 Next Avenue Influencer in Aging.

The issue over how best to restore financial solvency to Social Security isn’t going away. That’s because the program is fundamental to the economic security of retired Americans. Social Security currently pays benefits to 49 million retired workers and dependents of retired workers .

However, the tenor of the longer-term solvency discussion has significantly changed in recent years.

To be sure, a number of leading Republicans still want to cut Social Security retirement benefits to reduce the impending shortfall. Their latest maneuver is what’s known as The TRUST Act, sponsored by Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.

Read Also: Did Any Republicans Vote To Impeach Trump

Democrats Urged To Reject Latest Gop Attempt To Hold Social Security ‘hostage’

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday said he would be willing to vote to raise the federal debt ceiling in exchange for a policy that could result in cuts to Social Security and Medicare, a proposed trade-off that progressive advocacy groups implored Democrats to reject.

“Fortunately, Democrats can protect Social Security and Medicare by raising the debt ceiling in the forthcoming reconciliation package.”Alex Lawson, Social Security Works

With members of Congress staring down an to increase the debt limitthe amount of money the federal government is legally permitted to borrow to meet its financial obligationsGraham toldBloomberg that he could bring himself to vote yes on a debt ceiling hike if Democrats agree to legislation establishing commissions tasked with crafting Social Security and Medicare “reforms.”

But Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy organization, was quick to warn that Graham’s offer is a thinly veiled trap.

“Lindsey Graham and his fellow Republicans will stop at nothing to cut the American people’s earned Social Security and Medicare benefits,” Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, said in a statement. “Graham has now telegraphed his party’s intention to demand a commission to cut Social Security and Medicare as the price for raising the debt ceiling.”

Social Security Works and other groups warned at the time that the proposal was nothing more than “a plot to gut Social Security behind closed doors.”

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thechashow · 3 years ago

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You guys!!! This brilliant thing happened!!! Repost from @blackcoffeewithwhitefriends • ⁣ This book was my first foray into any kind of feminist/womanist consciousness – though I was just a kid and had no idea about any of that at the time. All I knew was that the day I first cracked it open and began to read, I felt more understood than I had the day before. ⁣ ⁣ If you’re not a paid subscriber to Black-Eyed Bible Study, I hope you’ll consider jumping in now so that you can be part of this book club where we get to revisit old favorites and encounter new ones. With @chabare co-hosting with me, my plan is to have fun doing something I love—reading—with people (mainly women I hope) who also love to read and laugh and think and question. I’m looking for women who wanna inspect everything we were every told about ourselves using books as our excavating tools. ⁣ ⁣ Did you love this book? Was it banned from your home or school? Have you read it again as an adult, bringing all of your wild wisdom to its pages? ⁣ ⁣ The beautiful Cha Sears-Barefield @chabare and I will be talking about all the things that got this book banned and yet made it so beloved. We’ll have mantras, games, giveaways, and challenges to connect more deeply to our younger, ageless selves – but also so that we can actually have some fun! Sure, we’ll do some serious book nerdy things like comparing the preteen protagonist, Margaret, to pre-teen girls in the Bible, but we’ll also compare her to Hannah Montana too! ⁣ ⁣ This will be fun, and I hope you’ll become a paid subscriber to Black-Eyed Bible Study so that you can join in. It’s $5/month for the weekly Monday Whatever List, Wednesday Bible Study and Monthly Book Club (and there’s a podcast coming too, y’all) Find the link in the bio. ⁣ ⁣ If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you for your support and I am absolutely loving chatting with y’all in the comments. It’s been such a joy getting to know you. ⁣ ⁣ Buy the book! Start reading! Paid subscribers will receive the prompts, the challenges, and announcements via email. We’ll have our big discussion and celebration of this book on June 30th! ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ 🖤✌🏾✊🏾+🤓📚⁣ https://www.instagram.com/p/CPDZM3Sp5Ky/?utm_medium=tumblr

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bakechochin · 7 years ago

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The Book Ramblings of February

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related this year. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

Gogol - The Collected Tales (as published by Granta) It took me a while to find a Gogol collection with all the stories that I wanted; this is still not it, but it’s as close as I could get without buying the Everyman’s Library edition with the shite cover. I’d describe Gogol as a nice writer; his narration is always warm and inviting (even when adopting different voices for the frame narratives of the individual stories), his tales are often engaging, funny, and easy to follow, and there’s no shortage of amazing weirdness. The book is separated into his Ukranian tales, which remind me a lot of Russian fairy tales (and I guess by extension Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale), and his St Petersburg tales, which are more like what I’ve known Gogol to be from my readings of his work in the past. I haven’t the foggiest idea what to call his works, which is just as well since critics can’t figure this shit out either; it’s like magical realism but with subdued magic and a loose grasp on realism, where weird and unrecognisable events happen in a weird but recognisable world. I love both of these varieties of stories for different reasons, but I reckon I prefer the St Petersburg stories; fairy tales can get a wee bit repetitive (especially if you read them one after the other), but the St Petersburg stories are just inherently interesting, if only because of how bloody difficult they are to describe. Gogol manages to create some bloody great characters, distinctive and memorable, out of just a few sentences of description, and yet his descriptions are worded so nicely as to find the good in everyone and never outwardly antagonise any position in society (with the noteworthy exceptions of dissolute drunkards and the devil - Gogol really hates those guys). This does mean, however, that the really minor characters get a maximum of one sentence dedicated to establishment, and when there’s a shit load of minor characters being introduced as soon as they appear, it can be a tad confusing and not a little frustrating when it comes to trying to figure out if I’ve missed something. Also, not to seem thick, but I found remembering all of the million Russian names, and being able to match everyone to their names, a bit of a challenge (especially since, in some stories, the spelling of said names changes every now and then). There are some much-appreciated fiddlings with the storytelling format in Gogol’s tales that usually make for interesting reading; some of such additions to the stories, such as the establishment of some definitive narrators to form a frame narrative to the tale in question, or how unreliable narrators mess with the reality of the story, work quite well, but there are some that are a tad frustrating by how unnecessary they seem. For example, 'The Terrible Vengeance' does not reveal the framing explanation for the story’s events until right at the end, making everything prior to the explanation confusing and subsequently tedious, and 'Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt' is deliberately written to not have an actual ending - I get enough of incomplete stories from writers who unintentionally don’t finish their works, without Gogol pulling a deliberate fast one on me because he cannot be fucked to resolve one of his stories. I will, however, admit to being a tad hypocritical in this complaint; consider for a second ‘The Nose’, how it is deliberately written to be obscure or to have no clear explanation for the story’s bizarre events, cuts away from every encounter without revealing why anything happened as it did, is questioned even by the author, and yet is probably my favourite Gogol story (to some extent because of this stupid structure). The titles of the story’s bely how interesting they actually are; in the St Petersburg stories, the titles are short and succinct and can convey mystery through ambiguity in just a few words, but the titles for the Ukrainian tales were often needlessly verbose and consequently established the stories as perhaps being a tad boring (kind of like the titles of the short stories in Lem’s anthology Mortal Engines).

Voltaire - Candide This is some quality satire right here. This is a ridiculously fast-paced rollercoaster of a novel, a wild world-spanning picaresque narrative of stupid proportions. Harking back to Oliver Twist, another novel that uses satire to examine the world, I wrote that I found its highlighting of social issues to leave a sour taste in my mouth, as I didn’t believe the reasons for foregrounding these issues to be noble; society doesn’t dramatically change its flaws just because some dickhead wrote about them, and so I reckon that writing with the intentions of ‘improving the world’ is folly and what’s more total bollocks. However, this book is not trying to change anything. It is a big fuck-off harangue in novella form, less concerned with changing anything as it is with taking the piss. It expertly highlights exactly how the optimistic philosophies spouted by its idealistic cast are total bullshit, by writing this whole book to completely and utterly fuck these characters up. Reading these characters stumble from one horrendous catastrophe to the next is bloody hilarious; you’re prompted to keep on reading just to see what shit these lads would end up in next, and how their circumstances could possibly get any worse. Obviously a book that emphasises the very worst acts and disasters that the world has to offer might come across as a bit sad and fucked up, but this book avoids such labels by a) making the pace so fucking fast that you don’t have any time to have a contemplative pause about the atrocities being written about before you move on to the NEXT horror, and b) our protagonist Candide is so unwaveringly happy and genial, emphasised excellently with the reductive language of the characters and narrator. The story is absolutely ridiculous, spanning half the bloody world and satirising every city Voltaire could get away with writing about (although I will say I wasn’t a fan of how England was not a major part of Candide’s adventure), and yet characters still fortuitously stumble across one another (usually in significantly shittier circumstances than when we last saw them). If I was feeling cynical I would say that the constant returns of characters previously thought to be lost was due to the fact that there really aren’t many memorable characters in this story, and so Voltaire needs to get the most out of the few interesting characters that he has; of course all of the characters are funny because of their status as reductive character archetypes (and because of their laughably hyperbolic downfalls), but aside from Pangloss and Martin there aren’t many characters in this story who will stick in your memory. However, I am well disposed to this convoluted and stupid story, not only because such serendipity is justified within the framework of the picaresque narrative, but because the circumstances behind characters’ impromptu returns to the text are often fucking hilarious (especially Pangloss). The story is just the right length; it’s fast pace ensures that it gets more than enough out of its ninety-something pages, and if it was any longer than it would probably outstay its welcome and lose some of its novelty trying to come up with new problems for its protagonists to be fucked over by. I’ll freely admit to knowing absolutely fuck all about the setting that this book takes place in, but for the most part, thinking about that was hardly forefront in my mind as I was reading; the setting changes so rapidly that you hardly have a chance to focus on any one setting, and since the story is entirely defined by a long stream of grim and miserable events, it’s hardly as though you need to know all the relevant historical context to understand what’s going on. This does, however, make the constant namedropping of place names and historical details seem a tad incongruous with the breakneck pace, as I’ve got to keep flicking to the annotations at the back to understand them. (Yes, I really ought not to bother, as not knowing all this shit isn’t essential to understanding what is going on, but I still feel like I’m missing something in my reading if I’m not understanding everything). I feel that the story takes quite a long time to get to the moral; as much as I love the great amount of shit that is dealt to the characters, the book really keeps dealing out the shit right to the very end, to the point where when the ending moral does finally come along, it seems very much out of the blue and wasn’t really given enough build-up.

Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita This is among the more interesting texts that I have had to analyse, due in part to the fact that the narrative is split into two storylines, one of which is incredibly compelling and fun to read and the other is really rather dull and boring (especially by comparison). I suppose it’s lucky that the Pontius Pilate storyline (i.e the really boring one) is overshadowed by this book’s vast quantity of good shit. I’ve been trying to take a more professional look at the books that I ramble on - these are classics, after all - but I must admit that I struggle to think about this book in a professional way, because it’s very reminiscent of the usual low-brow fantasy nonsense that I pass the time with. Anything ‘proper' I can think of to talk about this book pales in comparison to the nonsense and hilarity of its content. Supposedly it is a satire, and I’ve held the view that all messages in satire are painfully obvious once you know that the text in question is meant to be satirical, but I struggled finding the message of this book. The gist of the book is that the Devil comes to Moscow to bring havoc and disarray to society, but the trouble with this is that I’m no expert on how the seemingly very complex and convoluted Russian society is supposed to run, and so any disarray catalysed by the Devil and his entourage is somewhat lost on me when I could have just as well attributed it to the overall madness and chaos of this sensationalised depiction of normal Russian society. Even before the Devil comes along, there are aspects of society that are told by the narrator as though they are attributable to otherworldly or otherwise fantastical sources, but because I often wasn’t fully sure as to what such fantastical stuff was actually satirising, I didn’t really get the full impact. Some elements of the satire are basic comments on universal human nature, with the Devil making fools of people who are vain or gluttonous or whatever, but oftentimes the satire is indeed dependent on knowing the ins and outs of 1930s Moscow; some of it I could surmise, some of it I couldn’t. The story follows a series of different characters whose lives are negatively altered by the influence of the Devil’s entourage, with things going wrong in any number of ways, and it is amazing fun to read; it’s very disorderly, but that’s the whole point. What did pose a challenge to me is how, with all these characters popping in and out of the story, with minimal descriptions and often not as much characterisation as I would have liked, I often got confused between them all - because, of course, we’ve got an abundance of three-part Russian names with ten bloody syllables in them (honestly whoever thought up the idea of patronymic surnames can bugger off). Obviously this isn’t a deal breaker, and anyone who reads this book will get the hang of it, but this book’s abundance of minor characters posed a bigger challenge than usual. (Oh and also the character names differ in different translations of the text, which is ever so fun to have to figure out). The characters are all alright, especially the Devil and his retinue, who are an absolutely delight (though they are admittedly best when they don’t have to carry stories on their own). I did however feel that the eponymous Master and Margarita didn’t really seem like main characters; the Master isn’t introduced until a good ways into the book and even then could easily be mistaken for another of the minor characters who appear and disappear in that part of the book, and though Margarita has a good few chapters to herself that really establishes her as quite a good character, by the end of the book she is subsumed pretty much entirely by her relationship with the Master. Also their connection to the ever-so-boring Pontius Pilate storyline can get a tad vexing, having to keep on returning to read about Pilate for a bit before the actual storyline can continue. I was wondering how a book with such a basic premise as this would have ended, since I didn’t really think this book could have ended in a way more interesting than ‘the Devil went home again and things returned roughly to normal’, but this book cleverly subverted my expectations by making the ending more Pontius Pilate bollocks.

Burgess - A Clockwork Orange I get the feeling that a lot of modern classics that are heralded as ‘the book that will change your life’ are going to be like this one, in that the actual story will by far and away be the most forgettable aspect of the book. Most of the things I love about this book are attributable to the narration. As someone who loves colloquialisms, Nadsat is an absolutely incredible language and it colours the book so brilliantly. Not only does it make the book incredibly fun to read, but it’s incredibly versatile, being able to diminish the horror and repulsion of the book’s acts with its alien descriptions and subsequently reflects Alex’s desensitisation to such matters. Alex is an incredibly interesting and compelling character, to the extent that I can forgive the book for not really having any other memorable characters. The book is really rather disturbing at points (to the extent that I don’t reckon I’ll ever be able to watch the film), but the aforementioned beautiful writing style/language and overall black comedy tone of the book carries it well. You don’t get a detailed look at the dystopian setting that the story takes place in, but what you can glean from Alex’s perspective is bloody amazing. However, the story is exactly what I expected it to be; heavy-handed satire with a few cool bits interspersed throughout, but overall the least interesting part of the book simply because it only serves to highlight the issues that it is satirising. The premise for this book is really cool, but in practice the story cannot do much other than display Alex being a bad person, or describing how his sadistic tendencies are remedied, over and over again. And in the end it hardly really mattered, because he goes back to the way he was at the beginning of the novel, and the one permanent change of his character occurs right at the end of the book in a rather anticlimactic manner. But of course you can’t feel too irritated by it, because the story, seemingly uneventful and circuitous as it is, is written so eloquently and fantastically that it is still a joy to read, and you’re willing to forgive its possible flaws.

Himes - The Heat’s On I haven’t read many books in the hardboiled genre, mainly because I felt that I didn’t need to read a lot of them to get a feel of what they are all like. This book features most everything I would expect from the genre, but perhaps a tad more sensationalised, which I like a lot. There’s a big horrible crime-ridden city, and there’s not one but TWO hard-as-nails policemen who have got to swear a lot and pistol-whip some motherfuckers for the good of society. Reading the blurb of this made me think of Sin City; the setup is generic but the characters and events within the story are absolutely ridiculous and very memorable. Characterisation is kept minimal because this is hardly the most profound of books, but none of the characters are one-dimensional. The writing is of course bloody great; it’s tight and clear, employs some excellent turns of phrase that make for surprisingly rich analysis despite how simple it is when taken at face value, and facilitates the story��s fast pace. Oh and of course, an important trope of hardboiled literature, this book included, is that the ending simply must be an anticlimactic frantic tying together of all loose ends. Since this book is essentially what I’d expected from a hardboiled text, I don’t have anything to say about it as an overall piece that couldn’t have already been surmised from me saying ‘it is a hardboiled text’; therefore, any comments that I have on this book aren’t really especially academic, but are more of just little subjective nitpicks. I do think that this book does venture at points into being a bit too silly; obviously I’m not expecting, or even hoping, for sophisticated literature here, but there needs to be consistency in its established stupidity. There’s a fine line this book walks between Machete’s level of dumbness and Machete Kills’ level of dumbness, and it often threatens to audaciously cross that line. Though I do appreciate the fast pace, because you need a fast pace in a book like this, there are times where character development occurs too quickly to be logical, and said development is often made when the plot itself has somewhat slowed down, which makes the irrational changes within people all the more noticeable. I base what I know about the hardboiled genre off of Hammett’s Red Harvest, and I reckon that although Himes is better than Hammett, Hammett did a few things better. Red Harvest took place in a fictitious city, and whilst Himes’ representation of Harlem is very sensationalised and fun, his constant name dropping of real place names can be a bit alienating when I know fuck all about anything American. Also this book isn’t really as centred on Harlem itself as I would have liked, instead continuously reaching out to other places in the world for its characters and plot progression. The lack of any molls or femme fatales was a bit saddening in some regards because that is a trope that I enjoy, but honestly the pursuit of love isn’t really forefront in the protagonists’ minds, and I’m content to substitute some romance subplot with more stupid action sequences.

Stuff I read this month that I couldn’t be arsed to ramble about: Maud: A Melodrama by Tennyson and a few miscellaneous poems from Christina Rossetti.

#book reviews #book ramblings #gogol #candide #voltaire #the master and margarita #bulgakov #a clockwork orange #burgess #the heat's on #himes

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ledenews · 4 years ago

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Chris Thoburn: Running for a Reason

When you meet Chris Thoburn, you discover two things about him quite quickly. One, he’s a big fan of sports. His extensive and varied resume in the industry can attest to that. But two, and more importantly, Thoburn is a lover of people, not just in their stories, but in how his life can affect theirs in a positive way. That’s why he’s spent the majority of his adult life giving back and doing for others as much as he does for himself. His career in the sports industry has gone from sales and broadcasting, to sports information duties, play-by-play announcing, and a bit of writing. He knows the importance sports play in people’s lives, and he’s happy to be a small part of it. But away from his profession is where Thoburn really shines. He’s a volunteer fireman for the Colerain Fire Department. He’s a youth leader at his church, and he coaches youth sports, helping to start the indoor roller hockey league in St. Clairsville. What drives him the most however is distance running, specifically, running for others. Thoburn runs to promote two causes that are near and dear to his heart, and he admits that if not for that purpose, he’d hang up his running shoes and call it a day. Those types of people are rare, ones who put others before themselves and lead by example. The trick is to follow them.

Your post-graduate life is full of careers in sports, from broadcasting and play-by-play to sports information, even the sales side of the industry. What got you into it, and is there one aspect you enjoy more than others?

When I was doing my internship with the Wheeling Nailers, Craig Bommer told me, “To be successful in sports broadcasting, it's always a plus to have a sales background.” So, during my internships, I learned a lot about building relationships. I actually don’t like the word “sale.” I consider it relationship building and helping companies further business with our products. I’m also forever thankful for all the staff at Wheeling Jesuit when I was there. They let me do so much in Sports Information and helped me land my first full-time job at Oklahoma State. The Cowboys were coming off the Big 12 Championship in football and just recruited Marcus Smart for basketball, so excitement was high all around the area. The cross-country team also won a National Championship while I was there, and being a runner, that meant a lot to me. I enjoy the broadcasting the most. I’d sit there at a very young age, turn the TV on mute, and commentate the games on my own. Even at times during my internships with the Nailers, Tulsa Oilers, Oklahoma City Barons, and Washington Wild Things, I’d bring out my recorder and call a period or inning for my resume tapes. It brought me to where I am today. I absolutely love high school and college football. Being able to broadcast local high schools is a dream come true. People keep saying, "We want to see you on ESPN," and I said I’m fine just where I am. In my hometown, calling games for our hometown teams. If the opportunity presented itself at ESPN, of course, I’d consider it, but I’m so blessed to be back home. Broadcasting is my definite number one.

You grew up in the Upper Ohio Valley and worked a bit here before your time in Stillwater at Oklahoma State. What brought about that change and then what ultimately brought you back home?

I started applying for jobs in January before I graduated from West Liberty, and nothing ever came about. I started working at UPS and then over at Wheeling Jesuit. Finally, after applying for two years after graduation, I got one of the greatest phone calls of my life from Adam Hauka, and I owe so much to him. We chatted, and he gave me my big shot, my chance. and of course I was going to go. It’s just so funny it came a few months after I was sitting there rooting on Oklahoma State to beat Andrew Luck and Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl. My main job was customer service and retention for Football, Baseball, Softball and Women’s Basketball. However, I had so many opportunities in Sports Information, PA announcing, broadcasting, and other duties. We’d be here all day if I listed all of those, but I’m forever blessed for that opportunity, and those were some of the best times of my life. Unfortunately, while I was there, I also received one of the worst phone calls of my life when my mom told me her cancer returned, and it was Stage 4. I didn’t know how long she had left, and she’s the most amazing woman ever, so I actually called Craig Bommer again, and a few months later I was able to return home and work with the Nailers while spending four more years with my mom and reconnected with a longtime friend and eventually married her. She’s the love of my life, and everything happens for a reason. Momma Thoburn was at the wedding too, and we got to do the Mother/Groom dance and just had a great night of celebration.

A few years ago, you began training to be a paramedic. You also volunteer as a youth coach and youth leader at your church. Have you always felt compelled to give back, and what specifically appealed to you about these different rolls?

I wanted to give back wherever I could to my community. Unfortunately, the paramedic path didn’t work out for me. I do hold a Firefighter card, but I was in a rough place after losing my mom and some other mental health problems I was having. There’s no excuse; I just failed, and I let a lot of people down. I help where I can on fire calls. My home church gave me so much and supported me so much throughout my high school years and even when I moved away. When I moved back, I met someone who became the best man in my wedding. Working next to him for those years was the best. It broke my heart when he and his family moved back to Alabama, but his wonderful wife is proudly serving in our U.S. Military, and when duty calls, they have to go. The roller hockey coaching is awesome! Believe it or not I only played roller hockey one year and was terrible at it because I was on ice so much. The St. Clairsville Rec Center called me about starting up a developmental league, and of course if anything can grow the game of hockey I wanted to volunteer. I’ve met some amazing people through that league, and it means a lot to me. Being a former hockey player and growing up in my church youth group really made me want to give back to people who gave so much to me. Because of the COVID-19, the roller hockey league was canceled this year, so I’m hoping we can pick back up next year.

Chris and young Milana Zatolochenko pose for a picture at Thoburn's office. When Thoburn runs, he wears his #TeamMila shirt to raise funds and awareness for the girl he calls his "hero."

You’ve gotten into distance running, representing both Team RWB and #TeamMila. What got you involved with both of these groups and what way can others help out?

Distance running is in my blood. I ran my first 5k at 10 years old and my dad ran for WVU, so it was something I was destined to do. I got out of running for a while and was in a very bad place health wise. After a scare that landed me in the emergency room, I decided to change my life around, but I vowed to use my running to help others too. I met Milana, nicknamed Mila, during my time with the Nailers and found out she had a severe motility disorder, the same disorder as the little girl from Miracles From Heaven movie. So, I started Team Mila to raise funds for her. It started as just local races, but then expanded into other states including the Team USA Olympic Trials in Atlanta this past March. Running for someone renewed my passion for not only running but for life in general. She saved my life. Her parents Maggie and Stephen are some of the strongest folks I know. I’m a better person because of them. I found out about Team RWB while at races. Of course, I’m a huge supporter of our current military and our veterans. When I learned that it was a civilian/veteran organization I really wanted to do my part in helping our local veterans. We do monthly socials, weekly rucks, and runs. We also fly the Eagle on our shirts at races. Usually how I’ll do it so I can support both, I’ll run with my Team Mila jersey and then during post-race will throw on the Eagle. The day that running becomes about me, is the day I hang up the shoes. It’s all about Milana and our veterans.

Chris met the love of his life Jennifer after he returned from Stillwater, Oklahoma. They married in 2015 and Thoburn credits his wife with allowing him the time to train to keep up his race regiment.

Speaking of running, despite the pandemic cancellation, you still completed both the Ogden Newspapers 5K run and Half Marathon on Memorial Day Weekend? Was it important to you to keep with tradition? Or was it a good day to train without an official race, so why not participate on the course you originally planned to?

Last year, I had my first ever DNF (Did not finish) in a race and it’s haunted me so bad. So, after the cancellation, I was still more motivated than ever to get back out there and run that course. Now, yes, partially this one was for me, but also for my superhero Milana. I badly sprained my ankle on mile 7 last year, but I was so discouraged and upset that I couldn’t get up and finish, but mostly that I let my superhero down. This year wasn’t about a medal. It wasn’t about a time. It wasn’t about tradition. It was about redemption and it felt great. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of me. It’s been extremely weird during training. I honestly don’t know when my next race will be. I’ve shifted my focus to Atlanta and Myrtle Beach in 2021. They are back to back weekends and I’m up for the challenge. I’ve completed numerous half marathons and nine full marathons. My goal for 2021 is to complete one more full marathon and my first Ultra Marathon. I will never settle for where I am. I want to get better each and every day. My favorite quote is “Success is never owned, it is rented, and the rent is due every day.” This is more than me, it’s for a little girl that needs our help. I want to thank Mila’s family for letting me run for her, my wife Jennifer for allowing me the time to be out on the course or track training, all my training partners, and of course all the supporters of Team Mila. Read the full article

#nailers #oklahomastate #running #teammila #teamrwb

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bondsmagii · 7 years ago

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here’s the rest of those questions because I can’t resist a challenge

1: Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora?

I don’t actually use any of them... used to use Spotify until it betrayed me by capping me at 10hrs of music a month. like bitch I listen to 10hrs in a day lmao. at the time I couldn’t even afford the small monthly charge so I stopped using it and now my petty ass won’t give them a penny.

2: is your room messy or clean?

clean but cluttered. there’s nothing gross like trash or used plates, but there’s a lot of random stacks of paper, books, notes, etc. it’s alright at the moment seems there’s been a recent tidy, but usually it’s very cluttered.

3: what color are your eyes?

green! I also have heterochromia, so there’s a thin ring of brown around both irises, and a small slice of brown in one eye.

5: what is your relationship status?

dating @karlacton and have been since 2015!

7: what color hair do you have?

it’s black, which is pretty cool. emo me loved it.

8: what kind of car do you drive? color?

I drive a renault and it’s silver!

9: where do you shop?

like.. for what? groceries? clothes? books? because aside from “tesco” I couldn’t tell you, it’s usually all online. if I’m splashing out on books I’ll go to Waterstone’s.

11: favorite social media account

I hate them all. release me.

12: what size bed do you have?

a queen, I think? or a double? I don’t even know if there’s a difference.

13: any siblings?

one older brother, deceased.

15: favorite snapchat filter?

I don’t have snapchat.

16: favourite makeup brand(s)

I don’t know shit about makeup.

17: how many times a week do you shower?

it sounds bad because it averages out to three or four times a week, but when you remember that my days are frequently 36-48hrs long, it averages out to about every other day.

18: favorite tv show?

I don’t own a TV or keep up with much shows, but I do binge-watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

19: shoe size?

uk size 7.

21: sandals or sneakers?

sneakers. fuck sandals.

22: do you go to the gym?

lmao

23: describe your dream date

good food, scary movies, urbexing, driving around to good music, more good food. an equal balance of opportunity to talk and opportunity to see if the silence is comfortable.

24: how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment?

I don’t carry cash. or a wallet, for that matter.

25: what color socks are you wearing?

black.

27: do you have a job? what do you do?

I do, but I can’t go into specific details. it’s to do with computers and security.

28: how many friends do you have?

I got no fucking clue my dude. depending on the definition of friend, anywhere between 2 to 15 or so.

29: what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

you’d probably have to ask somebody else if I’m honest, I don’t have a good grasp of what’s actually bad or not lol. there’s stuff I might consider bad for a while, but then I get over it and stop seeing it as such a big deal. there’s some stuff that might count from a legal standpoint, in terms of like I don’t know, how seriously it would be taken, but I’m not sure of the statute of limitations on it so fuck if I’m mentioning it.

32: 3 favorite girl names?

saoirse, vesper, oksana

35: who is your celebrity crush?

bitch colin firth

37: do you read a lot? what’s your favorite book?

I read a hell of a lot, usually between 2-4 books at the same time. as for favourites I have way too many, so if you wan recs keep an eye on my reading list and see what I’m screaming about.

38: money or brains?

brains. if you play your cards right, brains can get money.

39: do you have a nickname? what is it?

people who know me in other places call me Rat, either because I like the animal or because of the hacker from The Core; people who know me from the SCP Foundation call me Konny or Kon, after the character.

41: top 10 favorite songs

right now:

Space Oddity by David Bowie

Never Quite Free by The Mountain Goats

We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel

The Longest Time by Billy Joel

Brothers on a Hotel Bed by Death Cab For Cutie

Blame by Bastille

Tomorrow Will Be Kinder by The Secret Sisters

Nothing to Remember by Neko Case

All Alright by fun.

The Spine Song by Cake Bake Betty

this changes like, daily, by the way.

42: do you take any medications daily?

nope.

43: what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc)

normal? bit dry in some places at the moment though, but it always is at this time of the year -- the cold air coming down from the mountains will blast freeze anyone’s skin.

44: what is your biggest fear?

the current rise in fascism erupting into another world war or holocaust.

45: how many kids do you want?

ideally I would have wanted two or three, but life circumstances have made it so it’s best I don’t have children, unfortunately.

47: what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc)

the place in scotland is a three-bedroom flat which is quite large. the place in london is a two-bedroom flat which is slightly smaller but still big for that area of london.

48: who is your role model?

writing-wise, john le carré and stephen king. life-wise, kim philby for the scamming and productivity, and lord byron for the scandal.

49: what was the last compliment you received?

I can’t even remember. probably something to do with my writing, as I’ve been sharing that with some people recently.

51: how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real?

santa is real my good bitch

52: what is your dream car?

literally no idea.

53: opinion on smoking?

I smoke occasionally and don’t care if people choose to or not, however I support the smoking ban in public areas and I will be an asshole and cough loudly if you blow it directly in my face.

54: do you go to college?

graduated.

55: what is your dream job?

anything fast-paced, high-risk, and that requires me to constantly keep learning and improving myself to keep up.

58: do you have freckles?

some in the summer, across my nose and cheeks.

60: how many pictures do you have on your phone?

a couple of hundred.

61: have you ever peed in the woods?

absolutely. it’s a necessity when homeless/on road trips.

62: do you still watch cartoons?

nope.

63: do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds?

never been to Wendy’s so McDonalds by default. love me some McNuggets.

65: what do you wear to bed?

sweatpants, an old t-shirt, and a hoodie. it’s the mountains, I need to wrap up.

66: have you ever won a spelling bee?

nah, we don’t have them here but I did come top of my class during spelling tests all through primary school.

67: what are your hobbies?

reading, writing, photography, urban exploring, paranormal research, soviet history, researching espionage, meteorology, a whole load of things.

70: what was the last concert you saw?

florence and the machine probably.

71: tea or coffee?

both depending on my mood, though I go through stages of drinking one more than the other. right now I drink more coffee than tea.

72: Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?

never been to Dunkin Donuts, so Starbucks.

73: do you want to get married?

one day, hopefully.

74: what is your crush’s first and last initial?

CF, take a wild guess lmao

75: are you going to change your last name when you get married?

acton and I have discussed if we ever get married, finding a cool name we both like to change our last names to. so maybe.

76: what color looks best on you?

green.

77: do you miss anyone right now?

not really, to be honest. I don’t miss people often. I might have moments of oh, I wish they were still in my life, but it’s never a constant thing, thankfully. it sounds like it would be a drag.

78: do you sleep with your door open or closed?

closed right now, we need all the heat conservation we can get.

79: do you believe in ghosts?

hell yeah I do. had lots of experiences too!

81: last person you called

my boss?

82: favorite ice cream flavor?

mint choc chip.

83: regular oreos or golden oreos?

regular.

84: chocolate or rainbow sprinkles?

both.

86: what is your phone background?

lmao it’s a picture of julian assange because I live to annoy him.

87: are you outgoing or shy?

I’m very outgoing. a lot of people think I’m shy but actually I just go through stages of being really anti-social.

89: do you like your neighbors?

I have no major issues with them but they’re a weird bunch. the downstairs neighbour I’m pretty sure is a ghost, and the neighbours across the way are so strange. they do DIY in the dead of night and several of them just sit in their cars at 3am with the lights on, staring at nothing. odd.

90: do you wash your face? at night? in the morning?

when I shower, or if I have something on it. I don’t have a routine.

91: have you ever been high?

yes.

92: have you ever been drunk?

way too many times.

95: summer or winter?

aesthetically? winter. in terms of not feeling suicidal all the time? summer.

96: day or night?

night. I’m a night hoe.

99: what is your zodiac sign

aquarius, watch out.

100: who was the last person you cried in front of?

no one bitch... I don’t cry

#about me

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gamerzcourt · 5 years ago

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Playing Games On Your Phone Is Good, ActuallyPlaying Games On Your Phone Is Good, Actuallyvideo games

New Post has been published on https://www.gamerzcourt.com/playing-games-on-your-phone-is-good-actuallyplaying-games-on-your-phone-is-good-actuallyvideo-games/

Playing Games On Your Phone Is Good, ActuallyPlaying Games On Your Phone Is Good, Actuallyvideo games

I’m a handheld video game enthusiast. I’m sure of this, because people in the office make fun of how much I use and love the PlayStation Vita (hi, CNET!). The first console I owned was a Game Boy, and I’ve owned and loved every Nintendo and Sony portable released since (even the PocketStation). I have a long commute, so I always have a dedicated gaming device in my backpack. But lately, I’ve been spending an exceptional amount of time on a platform I had previously written off: an iPhone.

Now that your eyes have rolled, I want to clarify that I’m not talking about the kinds of games you might traditionally associate with being “phone games,” though I do love those–I’ve played far more than a healthy amount of Marvel Puzzle Quest, and I love playing the cool stuff that crops up in the bespoke iOS scene: Florence, Reigns, Threes, 80 Days, and anything by Zach Gage. Instead, my recent revelation involves the kinds of video games that I would have previously preferred to play on a home console or PC.

Florence is pretty cool. You should play Florence.

Here’s an obvious statement: There’s never been a better time to be a handheld gamer. The 3DS is filled with great, unique first-party Nintendo titles. If you like Japanese RPGs, 2D platformers, and revisiting the finest titles in the original PlayStation library, the Vita is incredibly good, I promise (that OLED screen! That d-pad!). And of course, the Nintendo Switch is a fantastic hybrid console that redefined what kinds of games I could expect from a portable system.

Now, thanks to my phone, I’m getting that same Switch-style buzz once again. I recently took a vacation, and as usual, I packed my three portable consoles to entertain me during periods of extended downtime. The thing is, you can’t always prepare for when or where extended downtime happens. For one reason or another, there were a few times where I felt like playing a video game, didn’t have a console on me, and eventually was content to see what was on my phone so I could stop looking at the ocean or whatever for 15 minutes.

Tired of what I already had installed, I browsed the App Store for anything that caught my eye, and a free demo of Sid Meier’s Civilization VI was what did it. I’d been thinking about picking it up again on Switch, and was now morbidly curious to see how it ran on an iPhone. As it turns out, pretty well. It was visually impressive enough to pop on the small screen, ran smoothly with a smartly adjusted UI, and didn’t appear to have any feature concessions compared to the PC version. It was also the perfect game to play on a portable device: slow-paced and turn-based.

Civ VI on an iPhone–it’s better than you think, but still a little pricey.

That experience was a turning point for me, and I learned a bunch of things at that moment. One: 30 bucks is too much money to pay for a second copy of Civ VI, especially when it doesn’t have the expansions. Two: Phones are capable of surprising technical performance. Three: The best console is the one you have with you. Four: The convenience of being able to download games wherever is very good. Five: I don’t have five things.

I’m very aware that all the people I see playing PUBG and Fortnite on the train, as well as the entirety of China, are eager to tell me how late to the party I am. But ever since then, I feel like I’ve reconfigured the part of my brain that decides what kind of games would be more suitable as a PC, console, or handheld experience. For certain titles, I’ve managed to overcome the mental hurdle that stops me from tackling my pile of shame with a newfound curiosity that wants to see how differently they play on a phone.

I really enjoy playing short, focused games. But I’ve missed out on a bunch because I’ve always believed that I needed to dedicate a good chunk of time in front of a monitor in order to get through one, and often by the time I get home from work, all I want to do is play more Tetris 99 or, you know, spend time with my family. But ever since I got over myself, I’ve managed to play and finish a bunch of 2018 games I’d put on hold in a week’s worth of public transit rides–games like Donut County, The Stillness of the Wind, and The Gardens Between. I recently picked up Whispers Of A Machine after resolving myself to the fact that I was never going to find the time to sit down at a PC to play it, and as it turns out, my phone is perfect for the point-and-click adventure games I love so much. These more technically conservative titles also perform virtually like-for-like with their desktop versions, which helped eliminate my fears of opting for a “lesser” experience.

Even more graphically demanding titles can impress: I already own two different versions of challenging puzzler The Witness, but never found the courage to finish it. I then bought it for my phone, and I was surprised by how decent it looked. More importantly, I found myself building a different kind of relationship with it–one that I hope will finally help me see the end. If I’m stuck on a particularly hard puzzle, I can easily put it away and mull over it while I do something else. And, because it loads right where you left off, I can take another quick stab at it while I wait for a coffee.

The Witness–I’m not going to let Jonathan Blow defeat me.

However, I’m not completely abandoning my other handhelds–Persona Q2 and Cadence of Hyrule just came out, after all. I’ll absolutely chase after any game that gets me excited, but I’m finding that the convenience of form factor also plays a big part in what I now choose to pull out. If it’s standing room only on my train, or I want to lie sideways in bed, I’m less hesitant to pull out a Switch. The Switch is great, but it’s a little too big in these instances. It really isn’t a big deal to pull out a phone. Certain games, like The Gardens Between, Elder Scrolls Blades, and various Dragon Quest ports, have the option to be played with one hand in portrait mode, which I am incredibly thankful for.

The relatively lower price points for the iOS versions of games (unless you’re 2K or Square Enix) takes the sting out of having to buy some of these titles for the second time. I’m happy to throw down a few bucks to give myself a portable version of something I know I liked, but want to find more avenues to play. The convenience of being able to download the games over a cellular network instantly helps, too. I had a sudden hankering to play a good tactical strategy game on the way to work the other day, so I redownloaded XCOM: Enemy Within on iOS. It’s not as good as XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen, but it was available and ready to be downloaded as soon as I had that impulse. I saw GameSpot’s Tamoor Hussain tweet about Pocket Cities, so I gave that a try (I liked it). While I was walking, I heard Giant Bomb talk about Brawl Stars on a podcast, so I downloaded that too (I didn’t like it). Everyone is still talking about The Outer Wilds, but it’s a game that I can’t find a spare few hours in front of my PC to download and actually play. The ability to quickly feed my whims on a phone is incredibly useful.

I came to another realization while thinking about my new habits. When the Apple Arcade game subscription was announced in March, I thought it sounded interesting, but outside of a few games that I was already planning to play on other platforms, it didn’t think it was for me. I’m not an Xbox Game Pass subscriber, nor an Origin Access person. I don’t want to pay a monthly fee for access to a bunch of games I’m not going to play. I’m a Nintendo Online subscriber, but I rarely play the included library of NES games because I forget to download them until I’m browsing the library on a bus.

Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick recently expressed a similar skepticism over video game subscription services on an investor call, saying “people do consume video games differently than they consume linear entertainment.”

He explained: “In the case of video games, it is possible that the average user in those 45 hours might be playing one, two, maybe three titles; certainly not 70 titles. In that event, if you play one, two, or three titles and you play them for months in a row–which often happens in [the video game world]–then a subscription model may not be such a great deal for the customer.”

I’m beginning to change my mind, however. I’ve installed and played over two dozen games on my phone since my revelation, most of which I can access on different platforms–but I haven’t. It’s been a pretty positive experience that’s been assisted by the ability to easily jump between games on a whim and download them anywhere I am.

Apple Arcade is currently poised to include a bunch of games that I was already keen on–Sayonara Wild Hearts, The Pathless, Beyond A Steel Sky, Klei’s Hot Lava, and ustwo’s Repair–and if they’re all going to be readily available on my phone there’s a way better chance I’ll actually play all of them. I’ve already got early access to tactical survival game Overland on PC, but I’ll be damned if that isn’t a perfectly-suited portable game. I can totally see the reasoning behind Apple’s big push into the video game space now–they likely want to stay competitive with the likes of Microsoft and Google, of course, but they’re also capitalizing on a different kind of gaming behavior which I’m only just cottoning on to.

I can’t wait to play more Overland.

An Apple Arcade subscription will also give you access to these games on MacOS and on Apple TV, which seems handy for when I actually have a chance to sit still for a while. Additionally, Apple recently launched the ability to connect Xbox One and PS4 controllers to iOS and Apple TV, which suggests that they’re interested in keeping their platform as flexible as possible. That’s a nice touch, because if there’s one thing I still haven’t come around to, it’s playing complex action games with a touchscreen interface–I don’t know how the people who play PUBG on the train do it.

I’m surprised at how much I’ve come to genuinely appreciate my phone as a portable gaming device. The convenience of accessibility make it incredible for catering to whims, it runs a variety of the games I personally love to play (and in some instances, ones that can’t be found on any other platform), and I can use it in situations where it’d be too uncomfortable to use any other portable. I can’t believe it took me so long to take it seriously–I could’ve actually finished The Witness and become a genius by now, instead of embarrassing myself with a PS Vita for years.

(I’m sorry, PS Vita. I didn’t mean that. You’re still cool, no matter what anyone says.)

GameSpot – All News

#ActuallyPlaying #Actuallyvideo #Games #Good #Phone #Playing

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