#also i do understand that it’s your blog do what you want with it

[mamawasatesttube]

kon sweetie im so fucking sorry that someone would even say something stupid like that oh my god.

[hummingbird-games]

2024 in Review (Indie Games)

2023 | 2022 | 2021

Helloooo gamer friends!!!

I'm so tired.

Lol.

Anyhoo, y'all don't care about that!!! Y'all are here to see what games I played and what the heck I have to say about them! Reminders: I don't bash games I didn't like, and I try to post more in-depth thoughts and reviews and general yapping to Gem's Game Gems.

DEMOS

When Stars Collide - I am by no means a sci-fi girlie. I need a HEAPING dose of fantasy or fantasy elements to help me out. That said, y'all might remember how I went feral for Gilded Shadows, so I am locked in for this journey with WSC. It's just as mysterious and lore intense as GS, but also just as intriguing and engaging!

Love Me, Love Me Not - I looooove when a game charms me to pieces??? Our MC Addie, the introduced LIs, the story, the art??? Where do I begin?? Anyway, please check this one out y'all! I'm impatient for the full game (shocker, I know).

Threads of You: Beyond the Bay - So my thoughts and reactions for this one are on the side blog, but I really enjoyed the demo and I have eyes for Chris, Vince, and Alex hehehe.

Lost in Limbo - While I'd been keeping tabs on this game for what seems forever because of the character art that originally caught my attention, I almost didn't finish the demo because it was lowkey disturbing (I'm a wimp and not all horror is made equal). But!!! BUT!!!! I push through to the end, had a good time, noted that I need to play the full game in the daylight with the music turned down low. And I absolutely adore Ara and Xal so, so much.

A Simple Twist of Fae - Absolutely no one cares, but I read a lot of manga this year. Like, a lot-a lot. Like, ~180 books and 1/3 of that was manga. Anyhoo, When JMB announced she was cooking up this game, I was impatient to get my grubby hands on it. AND THEN I PLAYED IT AND IT WAS THE SHOJO INSPIRED GAME OF MY DREAMS?!?! Like.....I wish I could both have it on my computer and also on my bookshelf. Final build dropping when??? (Also the UI design is utterly delightful, I cry.)

The Summit Library (FULL DEMO) - The last time I reviewed this game, we got chapter 1 as a taste, and I was. Locked! In!! The full demo gives us the first 2 chapters as well as the previews for all the romance routes and while giving everyone a whirl I'm *still* undecided on who to go for in the future, I must mention this: TSL is so aspec friendly???? I do love a game with smut, don't get me wrong looks at College Craze but sometimes I have my moments of being overwhelmed/sliiiiiiightly repulsed and the variety of options you have to choose how you react and interact with the various LIs in this game is amazing. (I have more thoughts on this, so I'll try to remember to post to the sideblog, but please understand that this game is totally worth your attention and time imo!!!)

Fully Released & Played (at least 1 playthrough)

Rabbit Trail - This. Game. Is. SO. Cute. *punches the air* 😭🥹(Copy + paste of my review on the itch.io page -> This was so charming, so fluffy, so cozy, just delightful all around??? I've only reached one ending so far, but René is just the cutest protag to play as, and his interactions as he delivers his mail made me cheese so dang hard! (Also, I wanted to fight his parents for not properly appreciating their kid LOL))

Stuck by Design - I checked this game out because I was looking into games that fellow programmers had worked on, and this cozy game stumbled onto my lap. The music was perfect, the UI is beautiful and clean, and I thoroughly enjoyed the performance of the VA for the LI, Yuki.

Wake Me Up If You Need Me - I called this game older!HSDJY MC x Ryan coded and I'm still right. The voice actor MAKES this game, and the interactions the player has with Reed is so flippin' delightful?? All my love and adoration to the game developer. May they make more beautiful games.

CTRL FREAK - The developer team brought us The Faithfulness of the Universe which is a banger in its own right, and CTRL FREAK is the team's commercial, finished project that I also found delightful. The soundtrack and the animations are chef's kiss 💛

Breathless Winds - Ooo, baby, ooo. So. If there is only one game you play from this list and you have some spare cash to spend (at the time of writing, the game is on sale!!!) please, please, check this one out. It left me absolutely spellbound, both the orginal demo, and then the full game. While I didn't get to blog fully about this one, and I only tackled 2 of the 4 routes, this game is absolutely everything. This is my indie game of the year. Poppy and her journey resonated with me, and between the music and the art, everything just came together so perfectly.

Wake Up Magical Girl - Listen TF up, if miseri creates it, I'm gonna play it, idc, idc. That being said...this game had a kick to it that when I finished my first playthrough, I had to stare off into space and gather myself. It takes the concept of magical girls and heroism and gave me a teeny tiny existential crisis, but other than that, I'm fine, it's fine, play this game, thank you.

Sleeping Under Spells - God, I love me a game where I get to argue with a LI. I love it. Bonus points if it's lowkey stupid stuff we're bickering over LOL!!

Our Wonderland - Yeah, uh huh, you thought you'd escape me talking about this game this year, didn't yah???? Too bad. The fifth and final arc dropped this year and I played it and I cried and felt for the briefest moments that life was okay. To say something different than my review of last year, I love that this seems to be the game that helps fellow ace devs find and flock to each other, I'm not kidding 🤣 so thank you Carrot for helping us fellow aspec peeps feel seen and validated and understood!

I Watched a Full Game Playthrough and Highly Recommend

Replay Boys - Okay so technically at the time of posting, there's still one more video I'm waiting to watch (Naja of BlerdyOtome uploaded her stream to YouTube) but my Godddddd. I've had my eye on this game for FOREVER but I was lowkey waiting for it to move to itch.io (I'm still a lowkey Steam hater 🥹) anyhoo, watching this absolutely wild game made me go ahead and buy a copy for myself to replay at a later time, but it's just great. The summary only scratches this surface of what the game entails 🤣

Gemi’s Gushies

(a list within a list of games that have devs trucking along in the background and I want to spotlight for y’all)

Save the Villainess - Life got away with me and unfortunately I never finished my play of the demo BUT what I have played was fun and I hope to return to this in the new year!

Woman of Xal 2 - Plot Twist Studios is on that Sequel Train with the next installment of WoX!!! Which I'm VERY excited for!!! I've unfortunately only completed one playthrough of this game, but the first game is definitely a masterclass in replayability, and I hope next year I'll be able to do a second playthough as I wait for game 2's Kickstarter!

...

And that's 2024! Any shared favorites?

- Gemini 🫶🏾

[the-owl-tree]

what are your thoughts on lion king as xenofiction? it's obviously one of the most accessible and largest media that's xenofiction and i think it shares similarities w warriors with it's more rightwing undertones esp regarding divine right of kings/rulers and an honor code system that leans fascist when u think about it.

(None of this disclaimer is directed at you anon) Before I get any yelling at me for reading too deeply into this, (1) you are on the Reading Too Deeply Into Things blog and (2) watch this podcast episode about nazi furries where the Lion King was used as intro material and had the Circle of Life rewritten to be about being proud of being white (skip to 29:47 if you just want that bit).

"But Deer, that's not the Lion King's fault that they rewrote the song!" Okay but why did they use the Lion King? What themes, unintentionally presented, could people in this community pick up on that they use this movie as recruitment material? What choices in the casting of the hyenas and ideas about some species being destined to rule might appeal to a certain demographic? No, I am not trying to ""cancel"" the Lion King, I am trying to make people think why the Lion King has (unintentional) right wing themes and who that attracts.

"But that's not the writer's intention!" Meaning is made through the act of reading as well, there is no such thing as one true interpretation. You can read something and have a wholly different takeaway than what the author intended. Animals as an allegory for human relationships and structures are going to take that weight regardless. Analysis and making meaning is not an indictment on the writer, it is a part of engaging with art. Right-wing voices already shit themselves at the Washington Post's article trying to talk about this, please do not make me relive that era or I'll make fun of you.

Sorry for the hefty disclaimer, people get really mad about topics like this, especially when it comes to something so beloved.

The Lion King is decidedly not about lions lol the lions are a shorthand to signify royalty, it is Hamlet with animals! They are visual shorthands for the audience to understand the character's relationships with one another with the lions, lead by a king, as our royal family and utilizing hyenas, lions enemies in nature, as an antagonistic force. It's similar to how Disney's Robin Hood is also not about animals, it is using animals as visual shorthands for the audience to understand these characters (Robin is the sly and clever fox, Prince John is a scrawny lion signifying his royal status but the lack of mane implies shortcomings, and so on; also not without its shortcomings, man I wonder why Lady Marian is a fox and not a lion in this, what sort of implications were you trying to avoid, Disney?).

The Lion King is uninterested in the perspective of an actual lion, of a creature that does not share human morality and concepts of death and yada yada. Which is fine! It's pretty straightforward about this, but that doesn't erase that animal allegories still come with loads of baggage, especially with the voice direction of the hyenas and how that reflects with the overwhelmingly white cast of the original (there's like four major black voice actors in the cast with james early jones as mufasa, robert gullaume as rafiki, madge sinclair as sarabi, and whoopi goldberg as shenzi. minor roles that include black actors are jason weaver as young simba's singing voice and niketa calame as young nala's singing voice.)

So while I don't think the Lion King in itself is as intentional as Warriors can be about their right-wing themes, I do think that it's not an invalid or even that big of a stretch to read said themes in the Lion King. I actually quite like this video that discusses themes of Judaism in Lion King 1/2, it touches on the unfortunate implications and undertones that the Lion King 1/2 builds up from the basis that the Lion King set down.

I actually find it really interesting how the Lion Guard, a school for preschoolers, tried to engage with a lot of these criticisms. Whether or not they succeeded, up to you, but something about them engaging with "lion supremacy" and even the unfortunate subtext of the hyenas later on is really fascinating to me.

Okay, I've rambled a lot, hopefully I've made some sort of point here lmao but yeah! I agree, I can absolutely read a lot of the unintentional themes and subtext the films have when it comes how they utilize animals in relation to power dynamics. There is a concrete analysis to be made here, even if that's not the intention. I'd say as a piece of xenofiction, the Lion King is not actually that interested in animals, they are merely actors for a human drama. Which, you know, is what a lot of people seem to think xenofiction is unfortunately.

[pathologicalreid]

omgggg hey it’s me the odyssey anon i hacked your super awesome mutuals account ahhahahahahahaha moving on

ok so people are saying knowing what the odyssey is is a privilege because they’re under the impression that it’s strictly an english novel and not everybody knows english?? and THIS is coming from the people who are on classics twitter??😭😭 do they know google is free

i’m not really on twitter so i don’t entirely get it but going off of what you’ve said for the sake of an interesting conversation here (which you can choose to engage in or not! i am by no means trying to harass my fav spencer reid writer and i understand not everybody likes to debate for fun and it can come off as aggressive but im actually just a loser and a nerd😁), i still think whether or not you have even heard of the odyssey is inextricably a matter of cultural context informed by your socioeconomic status and location, whether that be in america or abroad. i ALSO acknowledge media literacy and literacy in general are at an appalling all time low. it is generational and socially reinforced so kids just aren’t socialized to pay attention in school or be interested in what they learn which sucks and is so hard to watch like these kids are gonna be impossible to have a conversation with one day because the culture and the system are failinggggg them soooo hard

also though a lot of people just don’t engage in media to the level that they’d realize it’s a retelling of or incorporates themes from classic literature, but beyond that, it would require a familiarity with classic literature that is just not ubiquitous!! lots of people who’ve read the book don’t realize that a court of thorns and roses is a retelling of beauty and the beast, and even fewer people know that beauty and the beast is a retelling of eros and psyche. it all depends on how much quality education is available to you. so i guess in that sense it sort of is a privilege, because culturally pervasive or not, even the most bare bones knowledge of classic literature requires an education and the ability to actually engage with your education. but also like i said these kids are just NAWT locked into their schooling at all i dont know what it is in the zeitgeist that encourages the active dismissal of education among students. maybe they’re all just pessimists and disillusioned by the world they’ve been born into so nothing matters to them or maybe im projecting

n e wayzzzzz promise this is NOT mean spirited at all i literally just like talking and think this is super interesting and nobody ever wants to talk with me about this stuff so i am seizing my opportunity but i also know my intense desire to debate is actually a deeply unappealing trait so if you hated this and you want me to deactivate my blog let me know i will show myself out🎀 also jesus i am yapper of the century omfg and watch none of this even be relevant IM SO SORRYYY FOR PUTTING AN ESSAY IN YOUR INBOX

sam odyssey anon nereidprinc3ss this is like a marriage proposal to me i'm not necessarily interested in debating the reach that the odyssey does or does not have i do want to share this because it raises an interesting point surrounding media literacy and literacy in general which is unfortunately one of my favorite topics ever. school-aged kids these days are victims of their environment where they are not only being encouraged to develop critical thinking skills but they are also going online and developing an attention span catered to seven second tiktok videos and depending on having information fed to them as opposed to contributing to their own edification. i elected to entertain this topic as a whole on tumblr as opposed to twitter because i believe twitter is a more vicious platform BUT im digressing!!! from what i've seen thus far it's much less of a socioeconomic issue and more of a location issue but i'm basing that conclusion on my irl social circle and tumblr following/mutuals. i will have to come to terms with the fact that i will likely never have a true answer to this conundrum but c'est la vie.

[jackie-whisperwind]

a bit curious about something if i may ask yall… so pirate101 and wizard101 are obviously made by the same company and the fandoms are pretty close if I may say so!

that being said, here’s my question: do you find it annoying (this is a strong word but just bear with me since I can’t think of anything else lol) if a blog that’s primarily for one posts about the other?

[maxdibert]

I honestly don't understand why you sometimes make such passive-aggressive comments about me asking myself. I get quite a few anonymous questions throughout the day, like many other blogs in any kind of fandom, I don't understand what makes you think I'm in the business of asking myself when I have a lot of unanswered questions due to lack of time that I answer as I can. I passed on it the first time because I thought it was irony or a joke, the second time because I tend to let certain attitudes slide, but it's becoming a regular thing and I don't quite understand what your point is or what exactly your problem is with me. You don't like the question I've been asked? I'm sorry, I don't choose it, but if there's one thing that tends to get on my nerves a bit, it's people making veiled insinuations about me with no basis whatsoever and literally coming out of the blue out of some personal paranoia. As I answered in another question, I haven't read fics in a while and I'm not up to date. I've been talking about what I read when I have time, on a personal level. And as I've said two hundred times: I don't usually judge ships, nor do I get involved in other people's tastes about it, even if the ships seem horrible to me, because unless they involve adults with minors I think it's fine to write and read whatever you want and enjoy it regardless of my personal preferences.

I also don't understand the equally passive aggressive attack on my personal tastes as if I don't give a shit whether people like what I like or not. I repeat again that I have already said many times that I don't interfere in other people's tastes and in fact I say so in my reply. That I don't mess with people and I always let people ship what they want, and then I proceed to talk about MY personal tastes which are MINE and are neither better nor worse than others, just something personal.

Really it's not the first time I've come across a response from you in a certainly aggressive tone and I would appreciate it if you have a problem with me or the answers I give you say so directly because I'm not here to decipher double intentions.

Being a Severus fan is so hard. Looking for fanfics where he's the protagonist on AO3 is such a hassle. When you finally find one where he's the main character, the summary is well-written and seems interesting, but then you check the tags and see: James Potter/Severus Snape, Sirius Black/Severus Snape, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape, Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape, or worse, James Potter/Sirius Black/Remus Lupin/Severus Snape. I lose all motivation instantly—it makes me want to explode.

The solution is to ask ChatGPT for a fanfic without those people in the spotlight because no one deserves this.

That's one of the main reasons why I never read fics centered on young Severus, because in the end, they always go in that direction. I mean, I have nothing against anyone shipping whatever they want, and honestly, I prefer that over seeing him as a supervillain horribly ostracized by a bunch of characters who are basically OCs with canon names, but personally, I have no interest. As I've always said, I'm more in favor of Severus x OC who has nothing to do with the people who ruined his life—I think that's the healthiest option. But well, that's just a personal preference.

[naggingatlas]

'thats not his role in the story!' hm i wonder what the point of it is then. hm i wonder what the dead pixel scene means. hm i wonder what wrong organ are trying to say with the context of 'awesome male friendship' and 'corporate hell where the only woman onboard is constantly under ridicule, abused or forcibly forgotten yet is the catalyst' if not this. hm i wonder how curly's physical agony being a direct parallel to anya's mental agony, stripped of voice, agency, just like her, and being forced to watch what happens while not doing jack shit, just like he used to, plays a part in this. i wonder what the moral of him being the final girl says about living with the consequences of your inaction, because of sentimentality, because of status, career and social. hm i wonder whatever the fuck this game was trying to say. hm i wonder what else is on this person's blog Oh Lord there's yaoi penice.

[eddiegettingshot]

i don't know how to say this in a way that doesn't sound ridiculous but it is genuinely insane to me how offended and/or concerned people get over blogs. especially blogs with some amount of reach. having strong opinions over literally anything. like i promise you that if i say something is stupid you are still allowed to write it and enjoy it and do your own thing and as much as i joke i am not usually expecting to change anyone's mind about anything. these are my opinions and i am expressing them in my own space on my own blog. everyone is free to do the same. like please go forth and write your jealous eddie your dom buck your eddie who doesn't want kids your buck who actually liked tommy your chris who lectures eddie about X or Y your shannon who was a perfect mother and so on and so forth. but to act like other people are like infringing on your right to do fandom however you want is soooo... like what is going on here. this is a web site. on the internet. just block and move on...

[evil-dsmpconfessions]

Sometimes I'm like "am I being too annoying with twinduo on main?" And I stop talking about them then I get asks questioning if something happened since I haven't talked about them and I'm like "aw hell yeah people like it lets gt back to my sillies" and then im like "what if its annoying" the then-

.

[marimbles]

the agony of enjoying MULTIPLE THINGS AT ONCE. How do people do it….

[dandyshucks]

blinks tiredly. i decide "hm maybe i should try to expand my circle and step outside of it a little, lets go look at the main community tags" and im just greeted with a bunch of edgelords who think saying "fiction doesn't affect reality, don't like don't read" is peak activism and "fighting censorship". head in my hands. this is partially why i do not ever go into the community tags, my nervous system cannot handle blocking fifty weirdos every single day just so i can have a normal experience in the community tags hfdsjkl

[front-facing-pokemon]

[talentforlying]

one of these days i'm going to write up all that i've changed from azzarello's bullshit era and the one (1) piece i've kept from milligan (and also changed) and the only thing currently stopping me is that it is going to be so, so inside-baseball incomprehensible. and i almost never want to go reading/screencapping azzarello and milligan to add references but i Want to add references.

canon is goop, just know that we continue to ride the bus down "hellblazer ended at #250 and looks like swiss cheese before that" street.

[itsahotminuteinbetween]

rfhhhrggghh

[tieflinglich]

i do think its fucked up to see actual arguments on here about how AI is good, actually, and if you think calling someone out for using AI and then blaming some sort of disability on it then you are an inherently horrible person. like yeah.

AI generated content is based on theft from tons of artists across the world due to scraping from the internet. it is bad. even ignoring any of the environmental effects, it is a horrible fucking thing to just rip apart the efforts of your peers in order to spare yourself a bit of time because you want to make a product but don't want to put in the effort. and trying to spin it as 'oh poor artist has a disability, they cannot create art, how dare you expect them to hurt themselves for your petty moral argument' ignores the tons of actually disabled artists who actively work with their bodies in order to create content that they are proud of.

it feels like instead of actually listening to anyone you're just willing to throw disabled artists under the bus because you want to make the most amount of money with the least amount of effort.

[uncanny-tranny]

Hello!

I am just curious why you put an asterisk after trans men? I have never seen anyone do that before. I did try using Google and it gave me many different reasons so I was wondering what yours is? I apologize if I did not say this well, English is not my first language.

Thank you!

I have answered this before, but it all comes down to brevity. It is the acknowledgment that not only trans men will have related to that post. It just signals that if that post applies to you, you are included.

I prefer, generally, to put it after the gender simply because the trans umbrella is generally understood, so it seems superfluous (to me) to re-clarify that transness is a broad category.