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teastyun · 11 months ago

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Hiii! How r uu?? I just read edges hatred and omg that was so good. I have a little idea for u 🤭🤭🤭

Okay okay so how about Abby and reader were best friends, they knew each other since salt lake (they were both fireflies) but since joining the WLF, Abby grew distant from reader and reader didn’t understand why. They ended up becoming enemies until one night reader found Abby breaking down (in tears, not dancing 😭😭) because she just broke up with Ow*n for the 3rd time so reader decides to cheer her up if u get where I’m coming from 🙏🙏🙏

༉‧₊˚ denial is a river in Egypt

sfw!

one night, you hear a big fight happening between Abby and Owen in her dorm on your way to the bathroom. will you be able to cheer her up, despite you two being sworn enemies for the last few years?

╰┈➤ masterlist

a/n: I'm fine, how are you?? thank you so much for trusting me with your idea!! I had so much fun writing it ♥

stationed in Salt Lake City, you and Abby grew up to be the best friends anyone would be jealous of. you two were the typical duo that would only be found together no matter place or time; eating meals, training or studying. anything you do, Abby would always tag along.

growing older, you and your crew joined the WLF in Seattle after a fatal attack by a madman on your people, including Abby's father dying from a shooting attack at the place he was stationed at. Abby's world was shifted by an instance and she needed any support and help she could get badly.

as her best friend, you were always there for Abby. sleepovers were already quite common for you, but after experiencing such traumatic experience, you two would always stay together at night and help each other through the rough times.

you still remember the way she would wake up drenched in sweat next to you, her breathing unsteady as you try to get her to calm down from an anxiety attack, which were sadly common for her to wake up to due to her repeating horrible nightmares of finding her father dead at a medical office. she clawed to you crying herself to sleep, as she slowly calmed down in your embrace.

Abby often has dealt with those nightmares, so she occasionally tried tried to sleep in her own half of her you two's shared bunkbed. failing miserably, those repeated stressful nights lead her to climb into your part of your bunk bed. most of the times you wouldn't notice her joining you as you were fast asleep, but you'd wake up tangled with each other, and you weren't timid of her touch. even the opposite, you loved to embrace the platonic intimacy by hugging and cuddling her in response.

like a cure, you always made her nightmares and terrors go away in an instance. she saw you as her guardian angel, but she could never tell you as she thought it was awkward admitting it to you in person.

few weeks before moving to Seattle, Abby slowly started to grow distant from you. the reason for that, as she reveals to you when you were on your weekly training sessions, is Owen, who she, at that time, recently grew romantic interest for. you weren't quite sure why, but you were deeply hurt. to not worry Abby, you assured her that you're happy for her as long as she is.

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡

few years later, your hurt feelings developed into irritation, frustration and also slowly into hatred.

although, the love and physical attraction you've already developed in Salt Lake for her never left. she became such a strong, masculine and slightly feminine woman, who is (against your will) absolutely your type. no matter what she's doing, your senses are always hyper fixated on her. god, you know those veins in her arms by heart. your physical attraction towards her growing over these last few years didn't help you at all, leading you to countless nights as you help yourself with a vibrator you found in an abandoned sex shop several months ago, hoping it was her tongue making you come.

luckily, your crew always stayed the same except for Manny, who joined you after moving from Mexico to Seattle. the only difference is that Abby and Owen are in a committed relationship for the last two years, which may or may not agitates you to a certain extend, but you are way too embarrassed to admit it. no one knows how badly you want to show her that you could be a better boyfriend than him, showing her all the things he could never do for her.

although those are only your fantasies, you're actually quite onto something. no one knows that Abby and Owen broke up several times already, simply because of disagreement or incompatibility. Abby would never tell anyone about it, since she and Owen would always come back together after a few days of separation.

the real reason she wouldn't tell anyone was that she was scared of you finding out, since she wants to appear as flawless as possible in front of you. since you two started having quite bad feelings for each other despite the strong friendship you had before, her aim is to prove that she can do well without you, and she is persistent.

she admits that it is definitely a toxic way of thinking, but she is in deep denial with herself; anytime she sees you, she feels butterflies dancing tango in her stomach. when you're around, her senses are hyperaware of anything you're doing. she always listens to what you're saying, even if she's not part of the conversation.

you grew from her cure to her curse, and you are the only one able to lift it.

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡

her roommate Manny and you are really close friends, so you'd see Abby at least once a week in her dorm when you and Manny play video games on their tv, but she would always find an excuse to leave the dorm.

for Abby, she feels like she can't breathe when you're around. it's much worse to her than actual spores; it feels as if you'd draw her in, but at the same time a way barricades the space between you two, keeping you separate from each other. after so many years of actively trying to avoid you, she feels like she's suffocating, especially when you're looking so pretty in your everyday clothing.

the smart guy Manny is, he notices Abby's sudden changes around you, but he would only silently observe. seeing how tense Abby can get, he doesn't want to put any more pressure on her. he thinks you two will be able to figure it out sooner or later.

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡

one night, you were on your way to clean yourself up after a hard day of work. you walk past Abby and Manny's dorm and you notice angry sounding voices, making you stop in your tracks to listen.

"you think I wouldn't notice? Abby, what the actual fuck!" you hear Owen say, as his voice rises with each word by the end of his sentence and you wince at his harsh tone.

you have no idea what their fight is about, but you had no time to think any further, since Owen bursts out of the room and slams the door shut behind him and runs off the hallway.

unsure whether you should intervene or not, you end up knocking on the door.

"Owen, there's no point in-" you hear Abby say in a broken tone as she opens the door several moments after. she stops when she realises it's you who's knocked on her door with worry written all over your face. although she sniffles, she tries to hide her emotionally wrecked state and tries to pretend nothing happened by taking a second to maintain herself.

"Manny isn't here yet," she starts, but she stops to take a deep breath to keep her facade up. "I know, that's not why I'm here," you speak quietly, trying to not stir anything in her. "may I come in?"

Abby hesitates and takes a deep breath, but opens the door eventually for you to step inside the room. she walks further into the room.

you can tell how exhausted she is not only physically, but mentally as well. she has her usual khaki cargos combined with a light tank on, showing her beautiful curves and strong build underneath. the black bra's straps beneath it peak around her shoulders, and god, she looked so fine despite the broken state she's in. her hair was in a French braid, but several streaks were loosely framing her face, telling you that she had a hard day of work as well.

she silently leans on the railing that separates Manny's part of the room from hers, as she looks through the window on the nightlife decorating the stadium. her gaze was focused on the sight, obviously avoiding any eye contact with you.

trying not to pressure her, you mirror her movements and carefully ask "what are you feeling?" hoping to not agitate her by your question.

you see a shift in her movement after a few moments, as she answers in a whisper "I don't know." she sounds confused, but your question seems to calm her down. you try to think of a logic answer, but she continues "well, no, I feel angry and frustrated,"

surprised by her honest answer, you turn around to face her. she still looks ahead at the stadium, clearly in thoughts. her eyes are reddened and her light eyelashes dark due the tears, which streaks you make out on her cheeks. the sorrow sight of her makes your heart ache, but you still remember the situation you both are in nonetheless, so you silently wait for her to continue.

"you know what he did?" she starts, finally looking at you. in response, you slightly shake your head.

she blinks several times before turning away from you again, "he cheated on me. several times, probably even more than I know of. with Mel," she tells you and takes a small break in between her shortened sentences.

shocked by what you just heard, you aren't sure how to react appropriately.

"I- we broke up, but not for the first time," she continues, not daring to look you into your eyes again.

"why... would you ever go back to him after what he did to you?" you ask clearly confused.

she sighs and drops her head. "there's no fucking way you'd ever understand," she tells you as her tone rises, and removes herself from holding onto the railing. at first, you thought she's about to leave the room, but instead she paces around the room, clearly trying to think of how to deal with the situation

her sudden change of attitude provokes something inside of you, so you say "why wouldn't I understand, Abby?" as you watch her still pace the room. she stops mid-tracks as she hears your tone.

"what does that have to do with me?" you sound equally frustrated as your tone rises, not caring anymore whether your reaction catalyses something in her.

Abby unsteady breath reveals her frustration even further. she seems to think of something, before she walks straight towards you. seeing her so angry creates goosebumps on your skin, but you try not to show your nervousness by gaining a steady hold onto the railing behind you.

stopping right in front of you, she looks down into your eyes. "you- you have no fucking idea what those years did to me," she tells you, caging you in by holding into the railing behind you. her eyes would glance between your eyes and lips, hoping for you not to see it.

"I- fuck," she curses in denial.

"Abby," your chest rises with each deep breath you take to calm yourself.

she blinks several times and breaks the eye contact again. her emotional state makes her bite on her own lip. her eyes are glassy, revealing how frustrated she is with the situation.

carefully, your hands rose to grab her chin softly to motion her back to you, "tell me, Abby, please" you beg in a whisper, your hands now resting on her warm cheeks. it feels so natural and strange at the same time to touch her so intimately. she looks at you so hurt and grieving, but lovingly at the same time, like you were always hers.

Abby feels your breath on her lips, just now realising how close you two are. her heart is racing, her mind spiralling, her eyes focusing on only your eyes. so many times she thought of kissing you, even after your two's friendship went downhill. she feels like she's slowly loosing control over herself.

now, your smell captivates her mind and she feels herself becoming dizzy in your presence.

she wants to touch you so badly. hug you, kiss you, make you feel good, all at the same time. she looks into your eyes, trying to read whatever is written in them. they are glassy from your emotions and she couldn't help but get lost in their mesmerising colour.

"I..." she starts, "I can't tell you,"

her answer frustrates you, leading you to sigh and shake your head frustrated, as your eyes get even more teary than before.

"here I am, thinking I finally get to talk to you. fuck, Abby, I really thought we could finally solve this," you say with a breaking voice, tears running down your face. you are about to push her away from you, but her hands go up to hold your wrists to stop you.

"isn't it obvious?" her voice sounds shaky, but she continues, "it's been you the whole fucking time. I always went back to him so I could forget you. to forget the desire of you, your touch, everything of you. fuck-" she stops her rambling, trying to focus back on what she actually wanted to say, "you have no idea how often I think of you. I'm in fucking denial of loving you and I don't even really know why,"

surprised by her confession, you stare at her. your wrists are still in her hold. like in a trance, Abby starts rambling again, "I- god, I can't even form coherent thoughts-"

"Abby, can you shut up for one second?" you interrupt her with a growing smile on your lips, slightly amused by her chaotic rambling.

she looks at you with her big grey eyes and slightly parted lips, just now realising your wrists in her hold. she releases them and your hands immediately go back to rest on her cheeks.

"-can I kiss you?" you ask in a whisper, and Abby doesn't think twice of an answer. she finally connects her lips with yours in a desperate and longing kiss, as if your touch was the only think she ever craved for her whole life. your hands wander from her cheeks to her neck, as wrap your arms around her tightly.

moaning into the heated kiss, she wraps her arms tightly around your waist, wanting to feel every single inch of you against herself. you bite her lips, when you feel her knee pressing between your legs, which create friction against the zip line in your trousers.

"fuck-" you mumble into the kiss, "I missed you so much" you continue as you grab her hair, longing for even more.

Abby grins in response, and squeezes your ass. "me too, baby," she kisses your neck, "me too," she draws you into a tight hug, while she leaves several pecks on your neck.

her love and affection after so many restless years make you smile so big, but a sudden thought interrupted your two's moment. you softly pushed her away to look at her face, as you say "did you just tell me you love me?" with a challenging tone, but still smiling big.

"do I really have to say it again?" she murmurs embarrassed. you softly cup her face in your hands, "I love you too, Abs."

at that, she takes you in for another kiss, but the door suddenly opened.

the door frame revealed Manny, who is still oblivious to what's going on, "Abs, I brought you dinner from the canteen-" he starts, but immediately turns around as he sees you two's position, "doesn't matter, see you later!" he interrupts himself and turns around to close the door behind him as he leaves.

you and Abby got back as a strong and healthy couple, catching up on all the things you couldn't do the last few years ♥

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stayevildarling · 30 days ago

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Hello I know you are very busy so only if you have time please but maybe you could do a Delia, Mina, Billie, and Reader sick fic? I know you have written a few but I just love a sick fic and another one is always a treat. Thank you for your wonderful work in this fandom. Sending love!

Cordelia Goode x Wilhemina Venable x Billie Dean Howard x Reader- Echoes of Comfort

A/N: hello dear anon!🫶🏼 I think you literally requested this months ago and I‘m so sorry for never writing this until now. considering I was badly sick the last few days, I thought about writing this.

tw/tags: established poly relationship, female reader, mention of sickness, mention of vomitting, mention of pain, mention of fever, mention of cramps, mention of doctors, mention of medication, mention of anxiety

word count: 3.6k

taglist:

@lunaticwhittaker , @billiebeanhoward , @lanawinters-ily , @kenzbro , @minaslittleone , @httpfiftyshadesofgay @whitelotus00 , @ninaahelvar , @paulsonsratched , @vintagepaulson , @isle-of-earle , @grilledcheeseandguavajelly , @lucyintheskywithxanax , @fanfics4world , @mymiraclewitch , @hazard-to-myself , @awritersometimes , @wastdstime , @p1pecleanerwitheyes , @queen2234 , @ihartnat , @lifebyinez , @ahsatanizgay , @blu3dimples , @stepintomyworld

It all started the night prior, settling into bed with your lovers, ready for the last day of work this week tomorrow before spending the weekend with your girlfriends. You had a nice evening really, enjoying a warm cosy bath, your favorite pairs of pyjamas and cuddles. Since dinner your tummy felt a little off, at first brushing it off for some indigestion but the feeling never went, eventually turning into nausea. And as the hours passed, the feeling only got stronger and stronger, leaving you restless through the quiet hours of the night. You tried water, some music to calm yourself down but nothing seemed to help and as you didn‘t want to wake your lovers, all you could do was snuggle into their arms and wait for sleep to take over.

But when you woke up the next morning, the nausea was even stronger, leaving you a little anxious. You had just started working this new job a few weeks ago, scared of their reactions if you needed to call in sick. Billie was already gone by the time you woke up, Wilhemina also on her way and Cordelia in her office. You tried to sit up slowly, sip on some water before trying to get up to slowly get dressed. It being friday meant your short day and you wondered whether you may be able to get through today but as soon as you stood up, you knew it wasn‘t meant to be, a wave of nausea and dizziness overtaking you. You quickly sit back down, grabbing your phone and calling out for the day, knowing there was no way you‘d manage to get through today anywhere else beside bed.

Seconds later the nausea hits its peaking point and you can tell what‘s about to happen. In a quick attempt, you try and get up but fail miserably and so all you can do is reach for the bag that you put beside your bedside last night, unable to find a bucket with your state. The retching echoes through the silent academy as well as your sobbing moments later, throwing up always making you cry even though you never understood the reason. It takes mere seconds for the door to burst open and for the supreme to rush inside, her eyes wide and the concern written across her beautiful features. „Oh sweetheart“ she coos, watching you empty the contents of your dinner into the bag. She wastes no time in flicking her wrist and making a bucket appear, replacing the bag with ease. She quickly sits behind you, putting your hair up for you as she soothingly strokes your back, waiting for it to pass with you.

It takes a little while until it finally stops and she wastes no time before using her magic to make the bucket and contents disappear and make a new one appear beside bed just incase. Your sobbing continues before some panicking settles in, hating to be sick and the fear of it happening again. „Y/N, can you tell me what‘s wrong baby?“ she tries, not sure what your sobbing means. „Hurts“ you manage to coax out despite the strange taste and she gets up to face you, seeing your scrunched up expression and how you are holding your stomach, your body slightly curled up. „What hurts baby, your tummy?“ she asks gently as she wipes your tears and all you can do is nod in response.

„Okay sweetie, how about you lay down for me and get some rest?“ she offers and you look at her through exhausted eyes before you glance towards the bathroom. „Brush teeth“ you mumble and she nods before she takes your hands, noticing your legs shaking and stabling you. She sits you on the edge of the bathtub before brushing your teeth for you, her brown eyes keeping you safe as her touches are feather light. She notices your clothes are stained in sick, not having seen this before as the concern distracted her. She wastes no time in changing you into some comfortable loungewear and socks before helping you lay back down. The supreme stays by your side, helping you to some water before you close your eyes, struggling through the pain of the cramps and the aftermath of vomitting.

The supreme steps out of the room a little while after, noticing that your state isn‘t improving much, your face pale and the signs of pain obvious on your features. She reaches her phone, the concern evident on her features as she debates who to call. Billie was undeniably always there for you three but equally the medium often struggled with her own anxiety and she didn‘t mean to worry her too much. In the end she opts for Wilhemina, knowing the redhead was mostly the one telling her when shes overreacting with worry but always having the right amount of worry and the ability to stay sane in these situations. Cordelia hated this, hated seeing you sick, hated that she couldn‘t do much or make her magic fix it as she didn‘t know exactly what was causing you pain and those symptoms.

„Cordelia?“ the redheads voice echos through the speaker and the woman knew if Cordelia called her at this time in the morning, something was bound to be wrong. Her thoughts immediately travel to you, how you hadn‘t been out of bed this morning, how she thought it may just be your schedule as she hadn‘t memorized it so far with the new workplace. How she noticed the bag beside you but didn‘t question it further until now. „Y/N is sick“ is all Cordelia says to confirm the redheads concern. The worry practically radiates from the supreme and for a moment Wilhemina remains silent, hating the fact of you hurting more than anything else in this world. „What‘s going on?“ the redhead questions after a moment, knowing Cordelia to sometimes worry too much after all.

„I‘m not sure, she was sleeping and then I heard her being sick and she‘s in pain“ the supreme explains and Wilhemina‘s eyebrows furrow as she listens to the woman explain further. „Do you think she needs a doctor?“ the redhead asks and there is silence again before the blonde speaks again. „Maybe? I don‘t know.. I can‘t get away though, there is no one for the acadmy and I.. I- Mina I don‘t know“ the supreme sighs, clearly overwhelmed by your state and soft whimpers of pain closeby. „I‘m on my way, get her dressed and ready“ Wilhemina instructs and Cordelia sighs gratefully before hanging up the phone.

Moments later she returns with your shoes and a coat, as well as a bag for the car, her rational side always there despite the concern. Your eyebrows furrow before she speaks softly „Mina is coming and will get you checked out my sweet girl“ she coos as she places a kiss on your forehead and checks for a temperature. You frown, hating doctors and the thought of having to go to one but the pain is too strong to fight her so all you do is nod as she gets you dressed and lays you back down, waiting for your redhead girlfriend to return.

It takes less than twenty minutes rather than the usual thirty for Wilhemina to return and when the door opens, your eyes flutter open, seeing the concern in her eyes. „Hi little one“ she greets you softly before glancing at Cordelia. „How has she been?“ the redhead mouths and the blonde informs her about no more being sick but the signs of pain and how quiet you had been. The redhead doesn‘t waste a lot of time before she helps you sit up and locks eyes with you. „I‘m just gonna take you to get checked out little one okay?“ she asks and you nod before they help you downstairs and into the redheads car. The place is less than ten minutes away and despite the silence, the redhead can tell you are in pain by your posture but also how you seem much more awake now.

By the time she pulls over and opens your door for you, she can see the tears in your eyes and her eyebrows furrow as she looks at you. „Is the pain that bad little one?“ she asks carefully but you shake your head. „I‘m scared“ you admit and it hits her then how terrified you are of doctors, how bad your health anxiety is but that you never ever mention it to her considering her struggles and past. How Cordelia had mentioned how much you struggle with medication, that you hate doctors and hospitals, that your anxiety always makes you fear the worst. „I understand it‘s scary but I‘m right here and I won‘t go anywhere okay?“ she reassures and you nod as you see the honesty in her eyes, feeling safe and sound as her hand reaches for you. It doesn‘t take long until Mina walks you inside, fighting the usual snappy receptionist and her complaints about you not having an appointment.

Moments later you are laying inside one of the rooms, getting some blood taken from your fingers, so tired that you mostly don‘t notice whats happening around you. The doctor shows up minutes later, asking a bunch of questions which Wilhemina answers due to your fatigued state. „Alright, I‘ll just examine you then“ she smiles at you softly and you nod as she begins pressing down on your tummy, asking if the pain is getting any worse which you shake your head to. You answer some of her questions before she leaves for a moment to look at the blood results. „Test results are fine, her infection levels are 0.29, anything up to 0.5 is completely normal“ she tells Wilhemina and some of the words reach you in your tired state. „I assume some food poisoning, or a small infection but nothing serious, if it gets any worse over the weekend take her to ER though“ the doctor explains and Wilhemina nods as she listens carefully.

„I can give her painkillers and anti sickness through an IV or give you a prescription to take home“ the doctor explains and Wilhemina glances at you, seeing your eyes widen at the mention of an IV before she opts for the second. The doctor nods and leaves for a moment before you smile at Wilhemina through tired eyes „Thank you Mina“ you mumble gratefully and she returns the smile before murmering a soft „you‘re welcome sweet girl“. It doesn‘t take long for the doctors to finish writing everything down and sending you both your way and almost instantly as you get into the car, you fall asleep, the exhaustion weighing heavy on your body.

The next few hours are a blur, Cordelia and Mina took you back to bed, giving you the medicine that the doctor had prescribed for you but you are in and out of it for a while, mostly asleep and some soft whimpering escaping you, barely awake enough to register what‘s going on before falling asleep again. Cordelia made sure to send the girls home for the weekend early so she could stay with you, Mina equally by your side, the two of them taking turns, already having informed Billie and asking her to pick up some essentials for you. Despite the sleep supposedly helping your body, your entire body feels sore by the time you wake up, your forehead burning, despite your body shivering, your legs aching badly as well as your lower back. Tears sting in your eyes as you wake up properly for the first time in hours, mouth dry and feeling the weight of the sickness slowly dragging you down.

„Hey sweet girl“ Mina coos softly as she notices you waking up but as soon as she gets a proper look at you, her features drop seeing how much you are shaking. „Delia, get the thermometer“ she instructs and the next thing you know is feeling the cool sensation in your mouth as the blonde gently soothes you through it. „She‘s burning up“ the supreme sighs and Wilhemina doesn‘t waste any time before walking to the bag from the pharmacy, reaching for some of the painkillers and some water. „Open up little one“ she instructs with a soft smile, placing the tablets gently in your mouth before leading the glass of water to your mouth. „Drink up“ she instructs and you do, your mouth feeling terribly dry. You sigh heavily before laying down again, Delia reaching for a cozy blanket that she wraps you up in. Seconds later you are asleep again, your body clearly needing it to fight off whatever it is you are battling at the moment.

„She‘ll be just fine“ Wilhemina encourages as the supreme sits beside her, the two of them watching over you. And despite the concern fading from the supreme with having Mina by her side, the redhead doesn‘t like this, knows you shouldn’t be burning up like this. For now, all they can do is watch and stay close to you, one of their hands lingering nearby as they take turns in giving you little head scratches and checking your temperature. It takes a few hours before Billie returns and your eyes immediately open as you hear the door open and the light turn on. The medium stands there with a bag in her hand, the concern radiating from her features as she sees you on the bed. „God babydoll, you are so pale“ she sighs as she sets her things down and walks over to you, her manicured hands cupping your cheeks. „You‘re burning up too“ she mumbles, glancing at both Wilhemina and Cordelia almost accusingly, wondering why they didn‘t do anything about the state you are in.

„She‘s had medicine and what the doctors gave her, as well as water“ the supreme explains, calming down the medium a little. „She needs to sleep it off“ Wilhemina reassures before Billie raises an eyebrow. „Has she eaten anything? had some tea? she looks awful“ the medium sighs as her hands still hold onto you. „She hasn‘t been awake for any of that“ Wilhemina explains and Billie nods, understanding how awful you must me be feeling. The entire thing feels like a fever dream, both shivering while feeling your forehead is a volcano about to errupt. Your entire body aches, legs hurting so much that you can barely make it to the bathroom to pee. Your state concerns your three girlfriends, especially the soft whimpers escaping you and how pale you are.

„We should try and keep her awake a little to get her to eat and drink“ Cordelia encourages, causing Billie and Wilhemina to nod. They waste no time as the medium walks downstairs to collect the rest of the things she had bought for you, Cordelia joining in order to make you some tea as Wihemina stays with you, watching over your shivering frame. „Little one are you cold?“ she whispers and you nod before shaking your head seconds later. „So hot but cold too“ you manage to mumble and she frowns seeing your body shake but feeling your forehead burning up. The redhead looks at the time before realizing it was almost time for some more medication, turning a little in order to collect them but when she does, she feels your cold hand reaching for hers. Your teary eyes plead with her not to leave and for a moment it almost brings tears to her own eyes, never having seen you so clingy before, never having seen you look so awful and sad before. „It‘s okay, I‘ll stay“ she reassures before she leans a little closer, positioning herself behind you before she takes your shivering frame into her arms and places you in her lap.

Instantly you relax, the shivering stopping momentarily and her cold hands soothing your head as you feel the little circle motions calming you. It takes mere seconds before Billie returns, the medium of course having gone all out there on things she had bought for you, never not spoling you rotten especially when you are sick. She bought some supplies for soup, some tea, some electrolytes and also some self care things, some new pj‘s after hearing you were sick in your favorite pair, some cozy socks after hearing how cold you had been and a little teddy bear, knowing those are your favorite and knowing you deserve all of them. But Billie also knows its way too soon for most of those things as you are too out of it and so she softly places the bear on your night table before approaching with the cold bottle of gatorade.

„Babydoll?“ she whispers carefully, seeing you so comfortable in Wilhemina‘s arms. Your eyes open for a moment, rolling back as you feel the fatigue and how tired you are. The sight of you worries both blondes deeply as they kneel in front of you and they exchange glances for a moment. „Sweetie, we need you to drink“ the supreme encourages and you frown at the thought of it and seeing both a glass of water and the blue bottle. Instinctively you try and reach for the bottle but your shaking hands betray you. Billie frowns again as she opens it for you, passing it to your mouth and smiling proudly as you take slow and gentle sips. Once the amout is sufficient, Cordelia places some painkillers in your mouth and hands you some more to drink before you exhaustedly collapse against Wilhemina‘s chest.

Sleep washes over you in seconds again and Billie sighs heavily, hating to see you like this. „Poor baby“ she coos, as she runs her nails through your hair. They decide on settling between you and Wilhemina, watching over your sleeping form. You are in and out of it for the remainder of the night, waking up occasionally to drink some more and by the time you wake up and need to pee, you find both blondes asleep beside you. However, as soon as you move slightly in Wilhemina‘s arms, they are awake in an instant and by your side. „Sweetie, are you okay?“ Cordelia asks with concern in her voice and you nod before whispering „Just need to pee“. The supreme nods before she walks over to the other side, holding your hand before leading you to the bathroom. She waits patiently for you to finish and when you do her hands move to your forehead, sighing in relief as she notices your temperature much more normal now.

„How are you feeling baby?“ she asks and you smile at her before whispering „Much better but sore“. She returns the smile feeling reliefed, frowning when you mention feeling sore however. „Would you like some tea? a hot water bottle?“ she offers and you nod gratefully before she leads you back to bed, positioning you beside Billie and Wilhemina who wait patiently for you. „You feeling better little one?“ the redhead asks as Billie snuggles into you sleepily. „Yes much better“ you whisper and she cups your cheeks before pressing a kiss to your forehead. „I‘m so glad little one, you had us worried“. You pout apologetically as she pulls you a little closer into her chest. Delia returns moments later with some tea, having made it the right temperature to drink and you waste no time in taking some sips, the warmth feeling comforting as well as the heating bag on your sore stomach. „Thank you Delia“ you whisper gratefully and she waits patiently for you to drink up before taking the cup and placing it on your night table. „Anything for you my sweet girl“.

By the time the next morning comes around, you are feeling and looking much brighter and your girlfriends can tell, the colour having returned to your face, no signs of pain in your eyes and actually speaking to them. „I‘m so glad you‘re feeling better“ Billie coos as she holds you in her arms. „We make sure you rest today sweet girl“ Cordelia coos as she hands you some oats for breakfast, wanting to go gentle as you hadn‘t eaten anything the day before. When lunchtime comes around, Billie draws a bath for you, having bought you some bath salts and getting you dressed into the pyjamas she had bought for you. Her gestures causes some tears to swell in your eyes, feeling the love and care from your girlfriends and they frown at first, worry overtaking them but quickly replaced by relief as they realize why. „Thank you for taking care of me“ you whisper as Wilhemina dries and takes care of your hair for you.

„Always sweet girl“ they almost coo in unision and after a while you find yourself back in their arms, body still a little tired and week, needing to catch up on some rest as the bath exhuated you. „That was awful“ you sigh after a while and they can‘t help but chuckle before pulling you closer. „It really was, you had us freaked out“ Billie smiles as she presses a kiss to your cheek. And in their loving embraces you manage to giggle again for the first time in a few days, knowing no matter what life may throw your way, you would always have your girlfriends to rely on, caring for you and soothing you back to health. You relax in their steady arms, feeling the love from their actions, the affection in their words and the feeling of home and where you belong. With them, always.

#sarah paulson #asks #cordelia goode #wilhemina venable #ahs #american horror story #anon #billie dean howard #sarah paulson x reader #cordelia goode x reader #wilhemina venable x reader #billie dean howard x reader #ahs coven #ahs apocalypse #ahs murder house

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alexwilltellyouthings · 5 months ago

Text

Entirely self indulgent rating post about the top 10 TV shows that made me fucking insane for some reason

10. Sense8

God, this was so good. Such a blessing. I saw part of the cast during a Pride Parade and it's one of my favorite memories. I felt every possible emotion with this show, I love it.

9. The Last of Us

This is kind of a cheat, because the obsession comes from the games, but it is what it is. It's one of the few games that had a big impact on me and I closely relate it to my relationship with my dad. Can't wait to cry my heart out at season 2.

8. Good Omens

It's a given, isn't it? That stupid angel with his stupid demon and their stupid God. GRRRAAWW. A lot of thoughts and feelings came from the fandom, I have to point out. It's been very nice.

7. The Umbrella Academy

I have the first issue of the comics autographed by Gerard Way!! I mean, yes, it's because I'm a MCR fan, but it became even more precious after I got into the show. I'm rewatching right now, preparing for the last season. I'll be a mess when I say goodbye to them. Can't even really think about it too hard or I'll cry right now.

Continues under the cut

6. Our Flag Means Death

LISTEN THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING TO ME. What do you mean we can have a show THIS queer? It's all I want now. I ate it up. I smiled so much. I wanted this so badly and had no idea.

5. Interview with the Vampire

Feels like it should be top 3 honestly but I'll get there. This is also a cheat, I've been reading the Vampire Chronicles since I was like 15. Growing up with Anne Rice probably messed me up but hey at least I have great taste. And seeing them on screen? The way they made it BETTER? And Lestat?? Who has been haunting me for 15 years on and off??? And the second season and their reunion and and and?????????? I'm STILL insane about them and will be forever, I'm afraid.

4. Doctor Who

Listen. Listen. Okay. Yeah. What can I say? If you get into it, you're doomed. And I have been doomed for 10 years at least. I stopped watching for a while and got back last year, and it hit me all over again. I love this dumbass genius alien in a way that's calm, even. Just a permanent part of who I am now.

3. The Untamed

The year was 2022, it had been a while since I had a proper fixation and I didn't think it would happen with this danmei live-action, but then came Wei Wuxian. Guys, if I tell you I fell in love. Couldn't stop thinking about him. Everyday I was plagued by his smile and red ribbon and tragic backstory, yadayadayada. I really like other characters too, and their stories, but WWX did something to me that I still don't quite understand.

2. Queer as Folk (US)

This was a looong time ago and it didn't really persist over time like the others, but it was my first actual obsession. I was clinically insane over these gays. I had no one to talk to about them, so for every episode I wrote several pages of notes to comment to my (only) friend at school the next day, the poor thing. It was pretty much all I talked about because I spent EVERY MINUTE we had to talk going over the notes and explaining the episode. Like, between classes, during breaks, everything. Months of that. She held on firmly because she was a good friend, but I'm aware it must've been terrible. Like I said, insane.

1. Dead Boy Detectives

Maybe I'm putting this up here because it's my current hyperfixation? Maybe. But I don't think I have felt something hit as strongly as this since QaF over there. This time I can participate in fandom so I don't need to write every thought I have because it's all a big talk anyway, but I'm still pretty much having those thoughts all the time for *checks notes* nearly three months. I'm writing more than I have in years. I'm back at Tumblr after I don't know how long. I'm staring at GIFs over and over like I have the fucking time for that. I'm distracted at work daily. I talk about it in therapy. I have the main cast's notifications on. I'm getting involved in fandom discourse sometimes even knowing I shouldn't. It's a nightmare. I love it. I love them.

If you read all of this, congrats! Now you know how my mind works, kinda!! I'm open to talk about any and all of these shows. It's amazing how they mess us up. It's also scary, but anyway.

#sense8 #the last of us #tlou #good omens #umbrella academy #the umbrella academy #our flag means death #ofmd #interview with the vampire #iwtv #doctor who #the untamed #mo dao su zhi #queer as folk #dead boy detectives #dbda

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maochira · 2 years ago

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Hi Mao! Im not sure if this has been requested before but like y/n who is best friends with Karasu, Otoya, and Yukimiya. Sooner or later Karasu and Otoya find out that y/n has a crush on Yukimiya (who may or may not know who knows) and try to help them get together.

The platonic chemistry between these three that I see around the fandom makes me wish for a group like them because it sounds so fun.

Anyway I hope you've been having a good day and I hope u continue to have a good week ahead (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

This is my third time writing for Yukimiya and ngl I feel like I'm developing a platonic crush on him😭😭 so keep requesting stuff for him!!! Writing for him makes me giggle kicking my feet

Requests open! - current writing event - masterlist

Tags: gn!reader x Yukimiya, some sort of high school AU I guess??, you're classmates with those three

-ever since you first met Yukimiya, Karasu and Otoya, all of you became best friends pretty much immediately

-at first you only spent time with them in school, but after a few weeks Karasu started asking to hang out after school and on weekends, so you got even closer with them

-sleepovers!!! Lots of them

-most of the time you're at Karasu's place because he has the biggest room. Most of the time you watch movies or YouTube videos on his TV while you just talk

-random late night deeptalks!!

-Karasu is the first to notice you have a crush on Yukimiya. He literally notices it before you realize it by yourself

-Karasu always organizes the sleepovers in a way that'll end up with you and Yukimiya sleeping next to each other

-one morning, you wake up and the way Yukimiya is sleeping next to you, sunshine across his face makes you realize you're in love with him

-Yukimiya is the first one to return home from the sleepover, which gives you the chance to tell Karasu and Otoya about yout crush

-Karasu responds with "That's why I made you sleep next to each other" and you're like "How did you know???"

-Karasu starts listing all the small reasons why he had noticed your feelings for Yukimiya and it gets you a little embarrassed because how did Karasu realize before you did?

-Otoya didn't necessarily expect it, but he isn't surprised by it either

-they really want you to confess to Yukimiya, but you're way too scared of him rejecting you and the possibility of ruining the friendship

-Otoya and Karasu promise to not tell Yukimiya anything, but they secretly make plans together on how they can set up you and Yukimiya

-sometimes you do karaoke together, and whenever there's a love song Otoya and Karasu make you and Yukimiya sing that together. That actually happens to often, there's one specific song you don't even need the lyrics for anymore

-Yukimiya is a bit clueless about everything, but the way the others make him get closer to you, makes him develop a bit of romantic feelings for you as well, and they only continue growing over time

-your and his feelings grow over time and there's so much romantic tension between you all the time, Karasu and Otoya can barely stand keeping it to themselves. They really want to tell you to start dating already, but they don't because they've promised you that they wouldn't

-it takes TWO MONTHS until you and Yukimiya finally confess to each other and start dating

-Karasu literally throws a small party to celebrate that and (badly) decorated a storebought cake with lots of sprinkles in your and Yukimiya's favourite colours. He also wrote "Yukimiya x (Y/N)" on it with frosting

-that one love song you always sang during karaoke together??? It's your relationship song now and Yukimiya has given you a nickname based on it

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theladyofshalott1989 · 6 months ago

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Hello.. 👋🏻

I read your answer about the motivation to write with low engagement and want to thank you for your words, because I currently struggle a little with this topic.

I love to write, always have, but beeing in the HL fandom helped me to (more or less) consistently write and publish something. For the last months I changed from writing mainly little snippets, to focus on my long fic, because I finally want to put everything on paper, that lingers in my mind. 😅

And I will keep writing, because it has become very personal and some sort of healing for me.

But from time to time I struggle, because I think it's not good enough. There are people who read it, but barely any engagement. And I want to learn and become better so badly.

Sometimes I think, it's because my first language isn't English and I can't convey all the feelings with my translation. But then, it's not that the original is doing so much better.. 😅

I'm sorry for venting to you and it feels a little weird because I don't want to fish for compliments.😅

But maybe you have some tricks up your sleeve that can help with the feeling to be not good enough? Or writing better in general? 😊

Hi! Thank you so much for your ask. First off, you are not alone. Your feelings are valid and shared by many, myself included. <3 I am so glad that HL brought you back to writing. It was the same for me too, and I will also be forever grateful for that. Before I share my practical tips, I want to establish that engagement does not always equal quality. It could FOR SURE (I am not calling out anyone here!), but, like with all things, certain tropes/pairings/topics are more popular in one fandom than the next. Sometimes someone started writing at the perfect time, usually right when a new fandom pops up, or they are uber talented and can provide not only a story but also fan art! Those people blow my mind and I have so much respect for them.

But I digress! Onto the practical tips... Keeping in mind that I do not always follow my own advice, so typing this up is making me laugh at myself. (It's good to laugh at yourself sometimes though.) 1. Pick up another hobby so writing isn't your only one. For me, it's classes at my local gym. IMO, an active hobby is the most helpful because the endorphin rush helps a lot. 2. Set a day aside each week where you do not go online at all. I did this during peak Covid, and it was so therapeutic. Our minds are not designed to be constantly on. We need a break from social media and the internet every so often. 3. If you can, find a small group of buddies and interact with them. <3 My HL buds keep me sane a lot of the time. They're lovely people too and they've introduced me to other fandoms as well. 4. Block tags and/or blogs you're not interested in seeing. I have only blocked one blog (I'll be transparent here: it's the Hogwarts: Legacy Confessions blog, just for my own personal sanity; no hate toward the creators at all), but I block a lot of tags for personal reasons, and it really does help a lot.

5. Have you tried a review exchange? On Reddit there are groups that swap and review each others' stories. I've done this a few times for some of my one-shots and it's great! You can even specify if you want critique (or not). I can send you links to these subreddits if you wish. Just let me know! I really hope these tips help. Also, please never apologize for venting. Putting yourself out there creatively is a very vulnerable thing; it's only natural to be upset when you feel like you don't get out what you put in. <3

My messages are always open too. Please don't hesitate to reach out!

#asks

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yxstxrdrxxm-a · 9 months ago

Text

And that... Is the end of Flawed.

Or the one I hosted for my silly event here anyway.

[ TL;DR under read more: The lack of interest and stress I got from irl matters led me to drop the event and ending it early, but! I have a blog made for the sake of continuing/restarting the event.

Please vote on the poll if you want it to be catered to the reader or stick to Yesterday, and be unbiased, too. Vote what you want, and I'll try and make it happen.]

CONTEXT UTC:

So, I know you guys have a lot of questions, and I can't blame you. I know the biggest one in your mind right now, which is:

Why did I end Flawed early?

The reason why I ended Flawed was actually multiple. Please keep in mind that these are for my observations, and overall I'm not blaming anyone for this. I just noticed it and thought I should bring it up lol.

1. Writing for days burnt me out.

Although Flawed is a passion story/project of mine, writing so much burnt me out. And by a lot. There were days I struggled to think of writing because I have other commitments to do, and sometimes its why polls came out super late or super early. I tried to compensate for it by posting 1 poll a day, but when it didn't work, I pushed myself to make more for 1 day.

I wanted so badly for the whole event to flow like a CYOA because by next month (April), I won't be free to host this as I used to with OLC. However, in that process, I burnt myself out to the point I needed to take longer breaks/forget this event.

It sucks. I would not recommend doing this if you think you want to (because it is NOT worth it).

2. Interactions were... Lacking.

This event is interaction heavy, and the reason why is because you guys control the story that Yesterday and others are in. Naturally, this also affects the characters and how I shape Flawed from start to finish. I have a plot line for it, of course, but the interactions were... Not there.

I noticed the usual ones from my mutuals, sure, but there were moments that I felt like I was simply posting to no one. It was unfortunate during the time with Diluc, where I had hoped that some of you would go, but due to complications (ahem, the votes weren't able to decide on going when the deadline was up), I had to write how it's supposed to go with some... Changes.

It also made me feel sad to see that there weren't much (if at all) interactions to Yesterday. Tinuvion received a fair bit, which is nice because he's a little shit (please bully him lol), but Yesterday after the first week and a half just... Didn't get any. At least, in my records.

I'm not saying this to guilt you guys to interact more, but I am saying this because it feels sad for me to see that unlike OLC, this... Flopped. I had a lot of responses + moments planned if it took off that much, but... Oh well. There's always that one story that won't hit for everyone.

And finally:

3. Maybe you guys wanted it to be catered to you, not to an OC.

I had a feeling that, from the start, Flawed may not take off.

Unlike One Last Call (which was a matchup event + story), Flawed was a CYOA but you guys aren't the main focus/MC, Yesterday (my oc) is. I was hoping that with this method, you guys get to play the omnipotent voice and see how far the story can go until it's conclusion.

However, as I hosted the event for the next few days to weeks, I realized that it was simply too difficult. Maybe I wasn't prepared to host this type of format, as ambitious as it is, but I realized that maybe, you guys don't deserve this format and I should've made it catered to a reader insert instead.

It was hard for me to swallow the pill that this event may not be fun for the majority. I knew that having an OC be the MC + canon characters interact with them may be flaky at best (esp the whole OC x Canon being... well. very much a huge "oh dear"), but seeing minimal interaction/interest than my friends were (and people I admire, too. Hi Harmony! o/!!) and realizing that maybe I shouldn't have done this just... Made me regret it.

For that, I'd like to say:

I'm so, so sorry that this event failed. I'm very sorry if you guys expected it to be like OLC: about the reader/reader insert format.

I know it's not right for me to apologize, but I feel that I have to. I let all of you down, and I don't want you guys to be disappointed in something that you all don't like to see in this blog.

So I decided that I'll run this event in its own blog, but here's the thing.

I don't know if I should keep Yesterday in the blog.

I have to open up a poll for this, so here's the options you guys have for it's fate:

If you guys want it to be a reader insert game (aka you are the main star, not Yesterday), I will set up a menu to BUILD your personal darling.

This means that you guys get to decide how darling will look, the gender, their preferences, and even their job. However, this will be for your darling, and if darling dies, you can't use them anymore.

PROS: This is catered to the reader, and thus, you guys are the ones to choose your own destiny. I won't be the one to decide this time, and if the majority agrees on a specific option, your darling will do just that. This is also more open for variety + reader/canon interaction because I know some of you would have a lot of fun being able to see yourselves in the story.

CONS: When your darling dies, you get the chance to restart. However, the game will continue on with a new darling you guys will have to make and the stats reset to zero. The characters will also mention your past darling, and you'll have to restart from scratch. I still need to tweak this, but just know that it is VERY tricky for you if your first darling dies.

If you guys want it to stay the same (Yesterday is the MC), the format will remain the same.

This means what you witnessed here in the blog WILL happen on the other blog.

PROS: You guys get to either continue or restart with Yesterday's story, and with newfound knowledge, you get to choose more options that were previously unavailable. This also opens up to you all being able to essentially shape Yesterday's outlook + what'll happen to them, because you are the one guiding them to their happy ending.

CONS: This one does not offer a restart like the reader insert (one try only), and this could result to another "this'll flop because many people aren't interested". We've seen it happen here, so please decide wisely.

If you guys want BOTH, the format will be different as you have the option to build a darling (reader insert) or stick to Yesterday's story.

This means there will be a new system for both options to be available, alongside new menus!

PROS: You guys get to have a chance of an 'easy route' or 'hard route' and all of you can use your experience/s to get your desired ending for either one <3 go crazy lol

CONS: If you choose one of the two options for both, the latter will be locked. That's the only consequence I have for this one tbh.

So yes, I'd like to say thank you, and sorry for the fail of Flawed on this blog. I wish I could give you all the quality like in OLC, but there were... Too many things to consider. Sobs.

If you guys still want to continue, please lmk. I worked hard on Flawed and I still want to continue, but this time, its a permanent event and will be on my own pace.

Thank you for your support. Again. And I'll see you guys next time (be it a random fic or the next event <3)

#💌 ;; messenger writes #💌 ;; promising letter: flawed

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tideswept · 7 months ago

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Hello!!! For the game, perhaps time travel? 👀

never have I ever

Technically no? I've had a few plots in mind, but nothing made it to the writing stage as the scope and potential of it has intimidated me. I feel like I need to have an intimate understanding of the characters and their relationship to successfully pull it off.

As well as a dang good reason for it. It feels like, I dunno, a forbidden indulgence to go into it without a Plan™.

Here's how I'd do it, using the Kingsman idea that probably got the closest to almost making it on paper.

A few months after the end of Kingsman, Eggsy is sent into the past. But far into the past--as in, when Chester was a young agent, perhaps even a trainee.

(I've given some consideration to Chester having held the title of Lancelot originally, which would have, I think, added some delicious flavoring to his rejection of a pleb coming along to possibly take up his title, but I really feel like they would have mentioned that little detail at some point if that were true. Same goes for him having been Galahad. Thus, I arbitrarily decided that it was Lamorak. Though Percival is a close second.)

So Eggsy finds himself weirded out by how much he and Chester have in common as he infiltrates Kingsman. We know from the original Kingsman script and a very clever accent slip-up during his death scene that Chester's background was likely more similar to Eggsy's than Chester ever wanted to admit.

Eggsy's goal may be to save Harry, but he doesn't want to fuck up time too badly, so he has no choice but to play along for a while, only, whoops, now he's being shoved X amount of years into the future (so from the 50s to the 60s) and Chester still remembers him, so he knows Something Is Up about Eggsy, but he cares about Eggsy (friendship? or more? who knows) so he doesn't turn him in. Cue another time jump to the 70s. Eggsy is still trying to evaluate what the best way to handle this is. Kill Chester? Tell him what's going to happen? Ask him to make sure a Harry Hart never gets chosen as a trainee?

But before he can decide, it's the 80s, and despite his best efforts to avoid them meeting, Harry is there. And Eggsy falls head over heels for this Harry, who is so different from the man he knows, but it's still Harry, after all.

Chester, now having left Lamorak behind and being made Arthur, notices and puts two and two together that this is the reason why Eggsy has been coming in and out of his life now for almost forty years. It was never about him, or Kingsman, or anything else that had occurred to him.

... but it still takes until the next time skip (hello 90s) for Eggsy to pull the trigger, so to speak. He has to make a decision now. What to change, and how, in a way that doesn't completely mess up the future? He might have trusted Chester a little the first couple of jumps, but now this is the Chester who was a callous fuck about Lee dying.

Meanwhile, Harry is hurt and furious and confused that Eggsy vanished and Arthur (nee whatever his original title was) seemed to know exactly what happened and only infuriatingly told him to be patient and wait.

(And that's another oof for Eggsy -- has he already changed things too much? Harry in the future will recognize him, won't he?)

Eggsy makes the difficult choice to kill Arthur, but Chester talks him down from that, and asks him the real story of what's been happening, pointing out that he's kept Eggsy's secret for fifty years; if that's not a sign that he can be trusted, well...

Eggsy decides to gamble it all on this Chester not being a complete bastard and tells him an edited version of the story (mostly withholding specific names and dates). Not just what happened in Kingsman, but also how fucking stupid Valentine's plan actually was, and the disasters that it caused even when it didn't fully go through. How close the world came to nuclear fallout.

Eggsy then is propped to 21st century, but he stays under the radar for this final visit to the past, not wanting to meddle further with time. At least as far as Kingsman is concerned.

(Dean, on the other hand, gets a very scary visit from a man that promises to slit his throat if he ever lays a finger on his wife and stepson again. )

When he's finally returned to the present, nothing has changed. Fuck. Fuck. He shouldn't have trusted Chester. Or maybe it was all futile to begin with. As far as he can check, everything played out almost the same way, which means that maybe time just can't truly be changed.

Some time passes. And then he receives a message. From an account named Lamorak, asking to meet in a location that only Eggsy and Chester knew about. Eggsy shows up armed to the teeth, not sure what to expect, but sure as hell not expecting to find Chester and Harry alive.

Both of them had put together what they'd both been told (intentionally or unintentionally) by Eggsy and come up with a plan. They'd play out events to the best of their ability, aware that the Eggsy they'd one day meet was not the same that they'd already met--with some insurance. There was never a poison in Eggsy's drink, it was always a drug so that Arthur could pretend to be dead. Harry didn't get shot in the head, he grabbed Valentine's hand and got shot in the heart instead.

You know. Supposedly.

They've both been lying in wait, unsure of exactly when Eggsy went back into the past, and taking the chance that enough time (ba dum tish) has passed and it's safe to come out. They've come up with an excuse for Harry to still be alive and have the trail of paperwork to back it up, but Chester is done. He's not coming back. He's fine with being known as a traitor. It was about time that Kingsman had a good shake up, anyway.

Low-key bittersweet parting, with lots of hugs (Eggsy insists because it's a long-running joke that Chester finds hugs insufferably twee and ridiculous) and Chester disappearing, and Harry and Eggsy getting their happily ever after.

we do not accept Kingsman 2 in this household, thank you.

#asks #ragnarlothcat #kingsman #hartwin #woooo that was long #i'm so sorry i know it's probably not what you were expecting lmao

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whoredmode · 6 months ago

Text

The SRR Retrospective

The retrospective all three of you have been waiting for…here’s my thoughts on the Saints Row Reboot. The good, the bad, and the somewhere in-between. It's quite long, and it took me a few months of leaving and coming back to it, but with Shan finishing the game for the first time yesterday, it really got me thinking about it all over again.

Before we get into it: these are all just my opinions so do not take it as gospel, I just enjoy writing things like this. If you love everything about this game, if you hate everything about this game, I totally get it and I'm happy for you either way. None of this is a jab at anyone (nor are any of my opinionated posts on any games ever an attack on anyone), just my personal thoughts on a very divisive game. This is just fun for me to talk about!

So I have a habit of always wanting to be a little contrarian. If something or some character is really hated, I always wanna like it. If something’s super popular, I always kinda wanna rip into it. It’s probably something I should work on, but I think it’s a trait most everyone’s been guilty of in some way or another at some point in their lives. And when I started playing this game, there was a part of me that really wanted to like it just because I knew how badly it got torn to shreds. But I went in as neutral as possible, and I gotta say…they weren’t wrong for being upset. But I do think a lot of people got upset for the wrong reasons.

I wanna split up this review into three parts. First, I’ll talk about what I genuinely liked about the game—because there was some good stuff in it. Second, I’ll talk about the things that were in the middle. Not entirely good, not entirely bad, just stuff that needed a little more time. And finally, what everyone’s been waiting for, I’ll talk about the bad. Because…there’s a lot that was just plain awful.

THE GOOD

Santo Ileso is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. It brought me back to the days of SR1 and SR2 in the sense that I had so much to explore, so much to see and understand. It felt like a real place. It felt like a city that would exist in the SR universe. I loved it. I love how much care and thought went into making their history–one that spanned hundreds of years. I love the fact that there’s little information booths that you can discover to learn more about the city. It’s not necessary, but it adds so much. That’s part of why Stilwater was an effective city; the little details they added in were not “necessary” but they changed the way you interacted with the environment and improved the game so much. Stilwater is like a home to me, and Santo Ileso felt like a memorable vacation in the best way. It’s a place I’d wanna return to, and plan to with my AU (and it even cameos in my canon in-between story). I’m also just a sucker for desert locations, and it came as such a refreshing change of pace after the last games being set in big cities. Stilwater will always be my favorite, but Santo Ileso is definitely second place. Also because anything’s better than Steelport.

Up next, the Wanted App. I loved this. So hitman has always been my absolute favorite activity of the entire franchise. Hands down, no competition. It’s so much fun. However, after SR1, I did feel like it was lacking in some areas. While it may be a controversial opinion, what I loved about the SR1 hitman system was that you had to do the job in a specific way with a specific weapon. Y’know, like an actual hit. I was always kinda sad that it was removed from later games, but then this game brought it back and put such a refreshing spin on it. I loved the added details of calling on a burner phone, of picking up certain items like car keys or outfits in order to properly do the job. I loved the backstory that went into the hits, something that I’d always wanted more of. The other games it always felt a little impersonal (though this was remedied somewhat in SRTT with getting specific blurbs on who/why the job was being done), but in SRR it almost felt the most real. And I loved the idea (not so much the execution) of a mission where everyone recognizes you and starts to attack; it’s a great set-up and I’m definitely using it for my AU (though adjusted greatly for my narrative lol). My biggest issue however is that I think the app should’ve been a little more underground; I said it in another post but I think it should’ve been the kind of app you would have to jailbreak your phone to use. The whole “even killers are getting in on the gig economy!” was way too on-the-nose for my liking. Detracted from the whole thing a bit.

The camera! I really enjoyed that. I was glad to finally have a decent camera for taking screenshots/being able to hide the HUD. It’s a small thing but as someone that loves to take screenshots/clips in their games, it was extremely nice to have. Not to mention the actual photography side activity was really fun to me, and a good way to make people engage with the city.

The score was also pretty good. I think for the time period and the setting it was very effective. The fact they even composed and wrote their own country songs was a nice touch. There were some super atmospheric songs and sounds throughout the game. Actually speaking on the general sound design and visuals for a minute, I really appreciated that animals and insects felt more common this time around. Seeing and hearing birds and flies more often and clearly, even coyotes in the desert apparently? A small thing, but it added a lot.

This kinda goes into my next point, but the general visuals were nice. Yes, there were some issues, and I’ll be getting into that, but in my opinion it’s not a Saints Row game without some bugginess. But overall the visuals of this game were gorgeous. I was so glad they brought the day/night cycle back. The dust storms were a fun addition. It was a very pretty-looking game, which was nice to have after the slog of SRIV and GooH.

To end this section, I’ll finish by adding that I appreciated the return of fast travel, and I enjoyed the character creator and the fact you could save multiple boss designs at once to one file. It’s great if you’re someone who likes to make specific characters and take pics of them. But that about does it for this section; I’m sure there’s a few smaller things I missed, but overall these are the major aspects I genuinely enjoyed. Like I said, there’s plenty to love about this game.

THE IN-BETWEEN

This will likely be the shortest section. Here I’m gonna talk about things that didn’t fall under entirely good or entirely bad umbrellas, at least for me.

The biggest one that I need to mention is the overall technical performance of the game. I played on the PS4, and I only ever had two major technical issues—one at the very beginning of my playthrough and one at the very end. Some very fitting bookends if you ask me. The first one was the game froze on its loading screen, and the last one the Nahualli glitched and became stuck/invincible during the first phase of his boss fight in the casino, so I had to reload. So I’ll be upfront right now and say I am not the person to talk to when it comes to the technical prowess of this game as I had little issue with it running, however it is absolutely worth mentioning that some people had very messed up copies of the game. I mean, they patched it several times. Also worth noting I actually did play the original unpatched version for the first few days of my playthrough before getting the latest one; I purposefully didn’t update my PS4 at the time because I wanted to see what the release version was like, as I did not play this game the day it came out. It felt unfinished, and I’m glad they fixed it, but damn it should not have been released like that. I absolutely understand why that first impression soured so many people’s views of the game.

Talking a bit more neutral here, I think overall the cars of this game were alright. The customization felt like any other Saints Row game, and there were several additions that made me stop and go “Wait, this wasn’t already a feature in the other games?” so that’s worth something. Speaking of cars, the car radio. I mentioned before that I did like the general score of this game, and every SR game has something good on the radio. I wish the radio ads were a little more interesting, but it was generally fine. Still wish we got an Aisha song on the tracklist though.

Normally I’d probably put this next part in the bad section because it’s something I personally am not a fan of, but I see the merit in it and I understand why someone would really enjoy it. The perk system. I think there’s some worth in the idea of something like that, but all-in-all it just leans way too heavily on formulas of games I dislike, and some of the things hidden behind what are essentially experience paywalls was just insane. What do you MEAN I can’t call nearby Saints for help whenever I want? I gotta fucking build up for that? Really?

THE BAD

And now what we’ve all been waiting for. I suggest turning back now if you’re either a huge fan of this game or you haven’t completed it, because we’re getting into big spoilers and me really hating a majority of this game.

The writing. Let’s talk about it. To be blunt, it’s just bad. There’s no subtlety, there’s no figuring things out for yourself, everyone’s so heavy-handed with how they talk. The writing holds your hand through it all. It has some unbearably corny moments, some cheesy conversations that felt straight out of a sitcom, and, at its worst, is so irony-poisoned in its writing and commentary that it just makes you roll your eyes and wonder how and why this was greenlit.

I’ll talk specifically about both character and story writing, because there’s problems with both. Let’s start with the characters first.

The reboot cast of Neenah, Kevin, and Eli are some of the most generic and lame main characters I’ve encountered in a while. There is very little charm, even less character, and very poor examples of how to write meaningful players in your story when looking at these three. I’ll touch on the Nahualli in his own section in a bit. For now, I wanna illustrate my point by comparing the reboot cast to the original SR1 cast.

I believe the major problem when it comes to the very basic likeability of the main cast stems from the fact that the writing of the game itself feels the need to hold your hand and spell everything out for you. Look at Johnny Gat in the first game. Our introduction to Johnny is him telling you about his cock. We get to sit and watch how he talks to Dex, how he talks to Aisha, and how he leads Playa by just demanding you get the girls back from the VK (something he will later smugly take credit for, which Aisha makes sure to call him out on). Now look at Dex in the same game. Dex, in contrast, doesn’t tell you much about himself, instead going right into his detailed plans. Even simple things like body language tells you everything you need to know about these guys right away: Johnny is relaxed and overconfident in his chair, propping his legs up on the desk. Dex is standing around waiting for the next course of action, listening intently to whoever’s speaking. Because both of them are in the Saints already, and presumably have been for a while now, we understand immediately they’ve been impacted in some way by the gang violence in Stilwater and likely come from the Saints Row district itself. We know they believe in Julius. They don’t need to tell us that.

Compare this to the new cast. Kevin will straight up tell you he’s a people pleaser and how he thinks it comes from his bad childhood. He tells you why he joined the Idols and how he wants everyone to be happy. Neenah will tell you she joined Panteros because of her family situation, how she’s missing familial connection. What should’ve been major moments for these people come and go in the same mission (see: Neenah’s car). We get no time to actually watch these characters show how these aspects of them shine through in their actions. We get no depth outside of them telling us they’re sad, they’re lonely, they had a rough upbringing. At its best, it’s lazy. Almost kinda funny at some points (I called this game the CW's Saints Row [à la Riverdale] for a reason). At worst, the lack of faith in the audience to have the capacity to figure things out for themselves is just insulting. “Show don’t tell” is a phrase that gets used ad nauseam in visual media for a reason, and the reboot is in dire need of following those instructions. Then again, the later games probably took the “show” part of that phrase to mean “showy,” so perhaps it’s not entirely surprising that the writing ended up this way when comparing this game to ones like SRTT, SRIV, and GooH.

I’ll be here all day if I nitpick every single aspect of these characters, so I’ll move on. The story itself is just as lackluster. The gangs are boring, the antagonists are forgettable, and the big twist moment has zero impact.

I really thought Panteros would be my favorite. On the surface, it’s a gang with an orange color scheme that seems to be harkening back to the likes of the Brotherhood from SR2—these are all aspects that should’ve made them perfect for me. Instead, we get by far the most bland antagonist from the entire series, across the board. I’ve seen wet paint with more character than Sergio. There’s no words to describe just how dull, uninspired, and uninteresting Sergio is. There’s so little to go off of I can’t even properly talk about it. I wish I was exaggerating. They gave us nothing so what more is there to say. Fuck this game for forcing me to give the ugly ass aliens from SRIV an edge here. Oh my fucking god. I wish y’all could see me bashing my head against the keyboard trying to think of any meaningful analysis for Sergio here.

Similarly, the Idols and Marshall are also just. Boring. Poorly written cult (which, if you’re familiar with my canon you know I have thoughts on an armed cult being an antagonist for a game) and a mustache-twirling bad guy. Granted, I do think there’s some ideas here that could’ve been quite good had the game been written better, and there are some choices in the art direction for all these gangs that I actually really love, but it’s unfortunate that for every halfway decent part there’s dozens of other things that drag it back down.

Speaking of halfway decent things that get dragged back down. The Nahualli. For one brief, shining, glimmering moment, the Nahualli felt like the most Saints Row part of this whole game. And then the game had to tell me to my face that this 50-year-old career criminal doesn’t know what tagging is. And that’s when I knew everything was about to get much, much worse.

His betrayal isn’t even a surprise. Of course he’s gonna betray you. What for? This man wants your friends because he never had any. This man, old enough to be you and your friends’ dad, wants your life.

Only once in my life has a game ever had a moment so contrived, so badly written, so achingly inane that it made me stop the game in the middle of a mission and made me quit. And it was a moment in SRIV. But the reboot definitely came close to being the second one to make me do that.

Going on a side tangent for a moment, one that I’ve discussed before but it bothers me enough that I need to bring it up in this big retrospective. How and why did the Nahualli have a soundstage? Revealing a bit of Ted Lore here but my absolute favorite villain trope is that of the former star. If an antagonist happens to be a former TV/film star and it influences their actions as a villain, I’ll eat it up every fucking time. I bring this up because the trope of “the villain forcing characters into a soundstage to play house” is a bit I’m extremely familiar with and actually enjoy when done well. With the Nahualli, this was 100% just put in because some writer had the idea and wanted that imagery in the game so bad that it was tossed in without any thought on if it’d flow thematically, or even make any goddamn sense. There’s no motivation for that. It comes out of nowhere. The Nahualli has nothing like that to him, for as little as we understand about him. He’s a hardened career criminal. Him wanting to fucking play house with your friends is the most cartoonish, sanded-down, and laughable motivation you could have for a Saints Row antagonist. That’s like if when Maero offered to make a deal with you in SR2, it was actually because he wanted to take Carlos too because he was jealous of your friendship. I can’t overstate enough how bizarre of a choice this was, and how anyone on the team thought this was a solid idea is beyond me.

Stepping away from the story writing for a moment, here’s some smaller miscellaneous things that were also just plain bad: the NPCs, the NPC dialogue, how they left any decent ideas for ventures/side hustles, the fact they called them business ventures and side hustles at all (put a pin in that, we’ll get into this in a moment), the preciseness/unresponsiveness of buttons, the weapons wheel, the general placement and usage of controls, how the phone menu doesn’t actually pause the game, and, as I hope I’ve made abundantly clear at this point, the incredible lack of stakes in the entire game.

The NPCs and their dialogue is probably the worst it’s ever been with this game. Which is saying something, because it was already pretty bad as early as SRTT, and even worse in SRIV. But in this game, the NPCs have nothing to them. No bite, no intrigue, not even dropping the most basic mentions of anything to help fill out the world. In SR1 and SR2, NPCs would comment on how you dressed, how often you changed, actions you’d taken, recent missions you’d completed, areas you’ve destroyed and people you’ve killed, and that’s not even touching it all. NPCs in the reboot won’t even insult you anymore. Which may sound insane to anyone unfamiliar with the Saints Row games, but that’s a huge part of the charm. No longer am I bullied into changing my cool outfit because I’ve been wearing it too long, instead I’m only ever constantly praised with the same compliments over an outfit I made out of whatever options the game had for me (which, the shopping/clothing system in and of itself I had some issues with, but I digress). It’s tedious. It’s exhausting. Beating up randos doesn’t feel the same anymore, not to mention I can no longer friendly fire at other Saints.

In fact, I never called up my homies during the main game at all. What was the point? Why should I call up characters you’ve made it impossible for me to care about? I know they’re not gonna have any interesting dialogue like homies of the past games. Why would I waste my time hearing dated one-liners that I know will add nothing to the characters themselves or to the larger world around them? I’m not gonna act like every line homies spoke in the previous games were some golden perfect pieces of dialogue (because they weren’t; SR2 Shaundi literally says “so that happened” when you hit things in your car), but the key difference here is that I actually liked them as characters. I didn’t mind if they joked around or said something stupid because I liked having them with me.

Going back to the technical side of things for a moment: this may have been my game, but did anyone else have issues with buttons being insanely precise and ultimately unresponsive? In so many cases I had to be in exactly the right spot, completely still, waiting for the prompt to show up and it often not working. This was especially egregious during the mission at The Forge, because all this happens while several giant Panteros with large hammers are bludgeoning me and throwing me from the spot I’m supposed to stand at, while others shoot at me from all sides. It was by far the worst mission in my playthrough, wholly brought down by the shoddy controls.

Similarly, I hated how the phone menu worked. In literally every single game before this one, pulling up your phone menu paused the game. As it should, in my opinion. This game, for some godforsaken reason, decided not to. There’s really nothing else to say other than I hate it. I do think this makes for a decent segue into my general dislike of the overall control scheme. Some things, like driving for instance, feel really good. Ramming into cars is great. Other things, like the combat, are just not as fun as they should be. I didn’t have many issues with the gun controls (though I know many did) but I really hated the intrusive weapon wheel they went with. I wish they’d kept things similar to previous games, because for all its faults I actually really enjoy the general combat system of the Saints Row games. It’s very solid. The reboot however—and this goes back to my earlier points about things like the perks—leans very heavily on things I personally don’t like when it comes to combat in games, so overall it just all falls very flat for me.

Let’s come back to that pin we put in the business ventures and side hustles. I wanna start out by saying that the trajectory of this game, the direction it went, it makes a lot of sense when you look at it from the point of view of the most popular game in the series: Saints Row: The Third. I want to bring this game up specifically because the themes it has play into the themes of the reboot.

SRTT follows the Saints we know from the previous two games and their rise to stardom, how they’ve become very commercialized, less a gang and more a brand. They’re a part of the Ultor corporation, and the game follows, though not very well, their struggle with this new identity. In the bad ending (non-canon), they renounce it and take over the island of Steelport for themselves, no longer bound by the hands and contracts of Ultor. In the good ending (the canon one), you watch as they sink lower than ever, being the stars of their own movie. In a better game, I would’ve said “Wow, what a subversion. How impactful and provoking that the real ending is them continuing to lose parts of themselves, completely devoting their identities to their brand. They’re just another piece of Ultor. They’ve become what they’ve hated.” But this is Saints Row: The Third. That’s not the intention at all. Not even close. In the next game, we’re gonna sink even lower than that! But I bring this up because I’ve come to feel that the reboot plays on similar themes as SRTT and, like that game, fails to actually analyze it in a meaningful way. In some ways, it hurts even more in the reboot because it feels as if they wanted to do just that, but are so impeded by their terrible writing that it makes the whole game feel as if an executive wrote it.

There’s a corporate coat of paint over everything in the reboot. Calling things “business ventures” like this is some shitty tech start-up. The fact that the main characters go into it seeing the Saints as a corporation. This is supposed to be a series about gangs.

This topic deserves meaningful analysis. SR1 and SR2, even if not perfect (what game is), had a purpose to the story they were telling. There was intent and real commentary and discussion to be had with its themes. With the reboot, there’s nothing there. In the modern age, this is a perfect time to have a conversation about exploitation and identity as a brand, commodification of the self, gentrification and the way it continues to insidiously evolve, the way we’ve come to view so much of modern life through an entrepreneurial and capitalistic lens. There’s a lot to work off of, but instead we’re left with a story so soulless that I suppose it does reflect the corporations they want the Saints to be. So in that case, I guess they accomplished their goal.

“Empty” is how I’d describe the writing of this story. As empty and vast as the Nevada desert, even.

FINAL THOUGHTS

When I started this playthrough, I said that this game felt like one big question mark to me. And in some ways, it still is. There was so much behind the scenes production issues and rewrites and changes that culminated in a game that feels somewhat unsure of its identity. Which, honestly, is par for the course for this series. Ever since the early days of being just “a GTA clone,” this series has struggled with how it’s perceived. It went wilder, more outlandish; sometimes it worked out, and other times it really didn’t. It’d be wrong of me to say there wasn’t care and effort put into this game. The people who made it were doing what they could, and it’s obvious so much of their work got washed out by marketing/executive changes. It’s something that happens in all areas of media, and I wish it didn’t happen to such a degree with this game. I can see the vision. I can see where this could’ve been a fantastic new Saints Row game. And perhaps that’s the most frustrating part of it all.

This is one of those games where I can completely see how and why people would enjoy it. I get it. And I understand the opposite. It’s wrong to say there’s nothing good about this game, because despite its issues, there’s some truly great stuff. However, it’s not immune from actual criticism, and people shouldn’t be ostracized for doing so (in meaningful ways, I should say. You should ignore the dudes getting mad there’s a female boss or whatever); but there’s so many problems with this game in its writing and mechanics that are worth a discussion and analysis. And I hope I’ve done a sufficient job laying out my thoughts. If nothing else, this game made me wanna go back and replay the first two games again. And it was a lot of people’s introduction to the series, so for it to inspire people to seek out the earlier games is something that cannot be understated. It’s almost like SRIV where I think about how bad it is and remember just how incredible and special the original Saints Row was.

And, hey, for what it’s worth, I liked the reboot more than SRIV. But if you know me, you know how much I fucking despise SRIV. So it’s probably not that big a feat. It’s not hard to be better than that game.

#srr tag #i always get so nervous posting things like this but #ppl seem to enjoy my essays #not really in the mood to argue or debate anything rn. like i said this just my thoughts #and i totally understand either completely loving or hating this game.

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cloudynyims · 8 months ago

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This is part two of the untitled Jamie/borrower fic I started... 6 months ago D: I genuinely didn't think I would lose gusto for that long but January-April is always busy for me w/ school so I'm not terribly surprised. But as promised, here is part two! Enjoy my first writing in 6 months :) Part 1 is here if you didn't read or forgot what happened! This part is about 2.1k words!

Roy was pissed off when they told him what happened while he was gone. “That stupid fucking prick. Not only was he lurking in my office, but he scared you half to death,” he seethed. They knew better than to interrupt Roy when he was worked up like this. Even still, they rolled their eyes.

“He didn’t scare me that badly,” They mumbled to themselves, trying to downplay the mind-numbing terror they had experienced.

“Fucking hell. Are you sure you’re alright?” He asked them for the millionth time. They hadn’t seen Roy get this protective since the team first found them a year ago.

“I told you, I’m fine. He didn’t do anything to me. He just asked me a few questions and then left me alone.” Roy didn’t seem to trust their words, but they knew he was just concerned. If Jamie had done anything, he’d be the first to take care of it.

“When I get my hands on that bastard, I swear I’ll…” They began to tune him out. When Roy was aggravated like this, it became a one-sided conversation. They usually listened politely, but their thoughts turned to Jamie. They kept replaying the moment in their head. When he saw them for the first time, how their entire body froze up with fear, and they could barely get a word out.

But each time they thought about it again, his actions became less scary. He didn’t grab them, hurt them, prod at them, or do anything they seemed uncomfortable with. He didn’t yell, nor did he act malicious in any way. But they also couldn’t ignore how strongly the team felt about him.

They should still be cautious, right?

The Jamie they encountered was so different from the Jamie everyone described. He was gentle, considerate, and attentive. He was a little annoying before he noticed them, but after he wasn’t. He wasn’t demeaning or narcissistic either. The mix of opinions and actions messed with their head. Was he trustworthy or not?

For the next week, they tried to solve that mystery. They still spent most of their time during training in Roy’s pocket, but that was fine with them. It made it easier to observe Jamie. They started peeking out of the pocket when they were certain Roy wasn’t paying attention to them. They wanted to watch and understand how Jamie operated. They needed to see what he was like for themselves.

To their surprise, Jamie seemed distant. They hadn’t seen him practice before, but this was not what they had expected. From what Roy had told them weeks prior, Jamie was still the same self-centered type of player. While his gameplay wasn’t really affected, even they could tell he seemed off. He had a few uncharacteristic errors during training.

Ted was getting on him about those, and Jamie just took it. They knew Jamie could run his mouth; his insults and backtalk often drove Roy to the edge. But now, he was hardly talking at all. He only nodded absently to any direction he was given. They were even more confused than they were before they started.

They couldn’t figure it out. Why was he acting so strange? Roy still wasn’t coaching him, but that never bothered him before. The only thing that had taken place recently was him discovering them. They scoffed. He had no reason to be affected by that. He didn’t get towered over by someone he was told to be wary of. He didn’t get his wits scared out of him. There was no reason for their existence to influence him.

Practice had finished once they returned from the depths of their thoughts. Roy brought them back to his office to stretch their legs. Once he set them down, they began pacing on his desk, thinking again. He could tell something was wrong. “Oi,” He said to snap them out of their thoughts. “What’s up with you?”

They turned to face him. “Sorry,” They said with a small smile. “I was just thinking. I didn’t mean to worry you.” “You’re not worrying me.” He observed as they continued pacing. “Are you thinking about Jamie?” He asked suddenly. They looked up with a start. He continued, “If that twat is making you stressed out, I swear to fucking God that I will beat his ass into next week.”

That made them chuckle. “No, no, no, you don’t need to do that. I promise I’m okay,” They said waving him off.

He knew that wasn’t everything. “But?”

“I just… I can’t figure it out. Why has Jamie been so off lately?” Roy didn’t comment and waited for them to continue. “Is it my fault? He makes these errors in practice now, and I know how much it annoys you when he *doesn’t* make errors. And he seems so distant. He’s not talking much, and he hasn’t annoyed you in days!”

Roy sat back in his chair. “You say that like I enjoy it when he annoys me. I’ve been enjoying the peace,” Roy said with a ghost of a smile.

“That’s not what I meant,” They clarified. “I just… I feel bad. Like I drove him to this point or something.” They paused. “Like... maybe if I hadn’t been so nervous… or… maybe I should apologize—”

Roy interrupted them. “Apologize for what? That prick was snooping where he wasn’t supposed to be. Given how shitty he is, he shouldn’t have been surprised you reacted the way you did.” They cast their gaze down, still unconvinced.

He reached out to tap their shoulder reassuringly. “You’re a good person, and I know you care. But don’t waste your energy worrying about him. He’ll get over himself. His attitude is not your fault.”

Roy’s words dispelled their guilt for a few days. But Jamie’s mood wasn’t getting any better, so their guilt returned tenfold. One day, in the middle of training, they made up their mind. They were going to talk to Jamie and figure out what was going on. Roy would kill them if he found out, probably because this was their stupidest idea to date. But they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves if they didn’t.

They knew Roy had a coaches meeting today, so they waited until he left them in his office. Once the coast was clear, they walked over to the edge of the desk. The office didn’t have much to help them get to the floor, much to their annoyance. So, they went back to their roots and headed to their old stash of supplies in the walls. Finding their old hook wasn’t difficult, and they made their way back to the edge of the desk.

“Phew, it’s been a while since I’ve had to do this,” they mumbled to themself. Digging their hook into the groove they previously made at the edge of the desk (they were grateful Roy still hadn’t noticed), it all came back to them. With practiced ease, they descended to the floor, gathered their hook, and jogged toward the door.

It was closed, but they were small enough to squeeze underneath. They crawled under, with their hook getting stuck behind them. After yanking it free from the narrow opening, they looked at the locker room. It had been a while since they had seen the locker room from here. They had almost forgotten how looming it all was. A twinge of fear crept up their spine.

As fate would have it, Jamie was the only one present. He was standing in front of his locker, messing with something inside. They took a deep breath and started heading his way. Doubts crept into their mind, but they pushed the thoughts away, their resolve stronger than their fears.

They had almost reached where he was standing when he suddenly turned away from his locker. With not a moment to lose, they scrambled out of the way as he stepped way too close for comfort. They felt the ground shake as his shoe landed a few feet away. Eyes wide, they stared up at Jamie, who was oblivious to what just happened. Penny in hand, he walked toward the laundry bin and tossed it in absently.

Their heart was racing from the close call. They pressed themselves against the bench wall as he ambled back their way. Jamie promised he would never hurt them, but they guessed that only counted if he knew they were around. He sat down on the bench in the middle of the room and began untying his boots.

They took a moment to catch their breath and calm down. Their heart was still pounding, but they were directly in his line of sight now. There was no going back. “Jamie?” they called hesitantly. His eyes found theirs in an instant.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said with a remorseful tone. “What’re you doing over there? Did you need something?” Jamie was being extra careful. He could see how their fingers tugged anxiously at their sweater. While they weren't as terrified as the first time they met, it was clear they were still nervous.

“…” They debated telling him about the recent scare he just gave them, but deemed it counterproductive to their mission. Peeling themself away from the wall, they took a few steps closer. “I just wanted to know if—" they paused as Jamie leaned a little closer to hear them better.

Every instinct was telling them that they shouldn’t be here. But Jamie looked so concerned with what they had to say. So, they regrouped and continued. “I just wanted to know if I did anything to upset you or make you feel bad. I’m sorry if I did.” They noticed that Jamie’s face twisted into a confused expression. “It’s just… you’ve been acting strange since that day, and I feel like it’s my fault and I threw you off your game or something…”

Now he looked downright bewildered. “You’re... apologizing to me?” He asked.

They nodded. “I thought you might think you hurt me or something… but I’m okay! I was just nervous. I didn’t mean to come across that way. I’ve just heard so much about you from the team and it was wrong for me to judge you so quickly. I wanted to apologize for that too.” They steadied themselves. They were getting worked up into a panic again. “Roy would kill me if he knew I was here but… yeah.”

Jamie didn’t know what to say. They were the last person he wanted an apology from. In his eyes, they hadn’t done anything wrong. Why were they apologizing for how they reacted? Were they so nervous that they thought they had to make amends for being scared? Now he felt even worse. “I don’t think I ever got your name,” he said softly.

The question was out of the blue. “Y/n,” they responded.

“Listen, you don’t need to apologize to me for anything. How I’ve been feeling is… complicated. But none of it is your fault.” They watched as he stood up from where he had been sitting. They shuffled a few steps back, anxious. He loomed over them even more while standing, but thankfully he squatted down soon after.

“I’ve been off because you made me think about myself. I’ve been trying to be… better,” he explained, but it was almost painful to watch him say it. “I don’t hate you, or anything like that, I’m just…” He looked like he stopped himself from going further. “It doesn’t matter, but don’t feel like anything is your fault, okay? I get it. I’ve been a dick in the past, and the team only wants the best for you.”

They were nodding along, taking in what he had to say. “But, could we maybe be friends? At some point? Could I earn your trust?” Jamie asked hopefully. He wasn’t stupid. He could tell they were more than a little uneasy around him, no matter how much they tried to appear otherwise.

They shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. “At some point,” they said after some deliberation. A thought came to them and they smiled a little bit. “It would drive Roy crazy, though.”

Jamie shrugged. “I can live with that.”

They found themselves opening up slightly. “So… we’ll take it slow?” They asked, just to be sure.

“As long as it takes,” he assured.

They nodded. “We’ll be friends… eventually.”

PHEW now that this is done, I can start on new ideas and scenarios and things :D I don't like the end but when do I ever lol.

#g/t #giant tiny #borrower #giant/tiny #size difference #borrowers #giant #g/t writing #ted lasso #ted lasso g/t #roy is trying his best to be a good friend #jamie's redemption arc>>>#i like redemption arcs in general #jamie in his sad hours #it's less g/t than I thought more interpersonal relationships #should've added more adjectives #oh well

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novadreii · 2 months ago

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hold up. pause.

i couldn't get 15 minutes into the finale without crying. had to stop and write this. my heart SO goes out to marissa! i relate to her so hard, having been in a weirdly similar situation to her. was also with a two-faced performative leftist Nice Guy who looooooved that i'm a Strong Woman with intense energy in the beginning, and once we moved in together decided actually, i was too much. EERILY similar to ramses.

"that's what every guy feels. they love the first few months of dating me, cause the energy is so fucking great. like i get it, i've heard that before." i wanted to hug her so badly!!!! it's the most vile feeling on earth for someone to use the reasons they used to love you as the reasons they don't anymore.

meanwhile, marissa sees their difference in vibe/energy (ramses being the "calmer" one and marissa being the more intense one) as something to be celebrated and just worked around where consideration is needed. her love supersedes and she doesn't have a need to be in a relationship with someone who is exactly fucking like her.

the poor girl was so shooketh. she couldn't believe how suddenly he changed his mind, from one minute loving everything about her and wanting to get married to wanting to break up the next. god, i understand the whiplash from that shit. she is going to need therapppyyyyyyyy.

we as women need to stop thinking that men are just having a great time in a relationship with us if they haven't brought anything up!! they do not communicate the way we do. women being quiet = everything is fine. men being quiet = everything MIGHT be fine, but he could just as equally be deeply unhappy and plotting his escape/affair. they actually are sociopathic in that they can act like they love us to placate us while they find a way to fade out of the relationship. us women know that if we're done we can't even touch him anymore!

i'm so tired of seeing the pure love of women be fucking corrupted by user men. please understand that a man's emotional landscape may as well be an alien planet, they do not experience love the way we do at ALL. women love unconditionally, faithfully, like mothers. a man's love is conditional to the dopamine he gets from your presence. that's it. and because dopamine and therefore feelings fade in and out, you point blank cannot trust a man to stay by your side throughout all of your seasons of life.

maybe he's good for right now, sure, but don't depend on him being in the picture long term. imagine when you give birth and experience physical and emotional changes, or if you go through an illness, experience a personal loss, etc. most men will not hesitate to cut you loose the moment you don't make him feel good 24/7 anymore and need to lean on HIM. they don't want to be depended on, because dependence = expectations, and expectations = control = loss of freedom to a man. there is nothing more important to a man than the freedom to do whatever the fuck he pleases at all times.

please watch this show as a way to better understand how duplicitous men operate. i don't care if you don't watch reality tv bc you're better than that, neither do i, but this show is the exception.

every SINGLE man on the cast this season has displayed GIANT red flags from day 1 IF you know how to look. there isn't a single man on S7 who i would say is real husband material. whether it's being a liar, unfaithful, hiding things about their pasts, and being actual man children who have never had to lift a finger in their entire lives, it's clear this season that the casting of the men was meant to be a cautionary tale.

#like i don't get it!!! marissa is BEAUTIFUL and vibrant and sweet and accomplished and is going to be a lawyer!!!!#if someone like THAT has to beg and cry for a mid male to love her the rest of us don't stand a chance #we see over and over on this season the theme of the women having their shit together #and the men...don't #and rightfully so the women are like hey....are you going to be an adult in this context or do i have to remind you #to do the dishes get my mom a gift etc etc #and the men are like #wahhhhh you're trying to control and change me stop you evil wench #WHAT is it with men who see the dynamics of involved partnership as their wings being clipped????#they want all the benefits of partnership with women but they don't want to give anything or have any expectations placed on them #please watch this season and if you see any of this crap irl please cut it the fuck off EARLY #i don't even watch reality tv but love is blind is the exception #i have personal experience that i relate to the subject matter on #and i'm using it as research to see how narcissistic and avoidant manchildren operate so i don't fall for that shit ever again #there ARE signs educate yourself!!#love is blind #love is blind season 7 #god her cries got to me #how she cried about just wanting to be chosen for once #i used to feel the same way and then i got therapy #that helped me realize that being chosen by a man is a nothingburger status.#actually it's statistically a negative to your quality of life if you're a woman #realize that male validation is a false trophy we are trained to chase after from birth that literally means nothing.#choose yourself. love yourself. and realize how historically your life has been BETTER without a man literally dirtying it up.#what does it mean to be chosen by a man who can barely wipe his own ass properly?#who has to be reminded to clean his space who lies to you with a straight face who feels nothing for you when you cry?#what does being chosen by an objectively shit human being grant you as a person?#please untangle how the patriarchy has rotted your brain as a woman and set yourself free.

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radellama · 1 year ago

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Games I played 2023 - Part 1

As yet another year closes, I have been looking back at the games I’ve played over the year, and spent about a month trying to write them up. I feel like I got the system down for this, as it’s a fun tradition I’m glad my friends have encouraged. With refinement of my note-taking, and being heavily opinionated, comes very lengthy retrospectives/reviews. So elongated, in fact, that I need to split this year’s goty list into two parts. It didn’t feel like I played many more games than I have in previous years, but I certainly have a lot to say. Also, I skipped my Resi breakdowns last year for reasons you can read about when I post it, but it’s back this year >:)

I’m still not sure what to call these, but I lean more towards retrospective- so be warned! Spoilers of varying degree and strong opinions moving forward.

~~~

Hitman: World of Assassination Trilogy, PS4

In the elusive target mode, you're given a brief with a target to kill, dropped into the map, and you have to find and kill the target with no further assistance. It was pretty fun, but they are tied to real time- in that there is something like a 3 day window to take on the elusive target, and once it's over you can't retry. If you die, you're locked out from attempting again. It's a one and done kinda thing. I appreciate that- it makes the stakes much higher and places a huge focus on the stealth and recon aspects in particular; especially due to the fact that you cannot use your hitman senses to highlight the target in this mode. However, getting only one chance is a little sad, as the first few times I played last year felt a little discouraging when I’d made a simple mistake (or even had my controller give up on me) and I’d be locked out from trying until the next mission drops. And while I appreciate the ‘real time’ sense of these missions… Man, it just sucks if you’re an adult who gets busy between work and life and just don’t have an hour or two to sit and dedicate to figuring out these targets within the allotted time. They’re really fun challenges and it just seems like a bit of a shame that the accessibility I’m whining about goes directly against the point of these missions in the first place lmao. There is still a gallery where you can replay old elusive targets, but I haven't played that much... Cause what I have been addicted to, is the freelancer mode.

So... IOI did a complete overhaul of the Hitman trilogy, renaming it the World of Assassination trilogy, and streamlining all purchases to two primary options - base game and DLC. No more complicated bullshit! (Also their patch notes were some of the most entertaining I have ever read lmao)

One thing that came with this massive overhaul was that everyone who has the base game can now access a few things - for free - that you couldn't before. Mainly, the freelancer mode. With this mode, we have access to 3 of the DLC maps and get to play a campaign that's a kind of mix between the story campaign and elusive target mode. Elusive Target missions are ones I didn’t really cover in last year’s review, and that’s because I didn’t play them enough to feel I should speak on them lmao.

Compared to the story mode, in freelancer mode, you don’t have any story missions to help guide you into setting up a kill. And, just like the elusive targets, the stakes are higher and more self driven – you need to take down syndicate members in various levels leading up to a ‘boss’ level, where you’re required to pick out the syndicate leader based on limited intel and kill them.

It’s fantastic.

As I’ve played through the year, I’ve seriously levelled up the way that I play and approach kills. At the start of the year when this mode just dropped and I was utterly addicted to it, I sucked so bad and often had to restart campaigns after fumbling too badly – and I didn’t care! It was still super fun and it felt like I was learning more about the way the game worked so that I’d be more prepared for next time.

The targets aren't the same as the main story campaign the elusive targets; in the missions leading up to the syndicate leader, your targets are just randomly selected NPCs. When you do get to the leaders, they're more similar to the story targets, but due to there being so many (with the intent to confuse you and make you more observant while you identify the correct person) and them not being as basic as an NPC, there's still that free-er feeling as you play. It's honestly up to your creativity with tools/items/weapons and your knowledge of the levels to be able to pull these off. Some levels I’d be able to speed through in under 10min, others would take over an hour, or anywhere in between. Levels that I really enjoy, and therefore know pretty well by now, are SUPER fun to play because I already know the floorplan, I just need to figure out how to get to my target and how I'm going to kill them. It's completely up to you if you wanna try and get through it without getting caught, or try and make a mad dash after making some VERY public executions. While freelancer mode is very free-form, there are also mission objectives that reward bonus xp and currency for completing. Each level will have three objectives based on the type of syndicate you’re fighting, and a special objective you choose before each level. These are all optional, but in hard mode, the special objective becomes compulsory. I quite enjoy this, and I’ll often pick campaigns based on what maps and objectives I’ll be tasked with and strategise around that.

The other massive thing within freelancer is that you have a hub. A really nice hub. Its a big swanky house in the middle of nowhere, and the more you progress and gain xp, the more you get to play interior decorator. The focus of the place is the weapons storage area, which is where you’ll also be selecting and setting up your missions. Any weapons and items with rarity that you find or buy while out on missions will be taken back home and stored for later, and as you unlock and dress up other areas of your house, some tools and items will be lying around for you to take with you too. These are things like gardening tools, a stethoscope to be used as a fibre wire or a banana to help create distractions and accidents. It was really fun to work hard and bring home a bunch of awesome weapons, and it really hurt when I failed and lost all of my favourite gear.

I believe this is my first time playing a rougue-like style game, and once I got a grasp on how it generated targets, it was incredibly addicting. I also found it quite fun to play through the handful of DLC levels that are freely available here, as I haven’t bought the DLC and played through their missions yet myself. One of my favourite maps to play was the Bank in New York, and I quickly found a little exploit that I loved using. You usually spawned in the underground parking garage near the security room and the vault, and on the wall next to the security room was a locked cabinet with a bottle of chloroform. You could start every level by gassing all the security guards in the room by pouring chloroform in their air conditioning filter, pinch the vault keycards and unlock it, and then treat yourself to a nice handful of the in-game currency. Like, you could pick up 3 coins that were worth a couple hundred dollars each, and then pull the server and wire a couple thousand to yourself, and all before you actually started killing anyone. Unfortunately, about halfway through the year, this was ‘corrected’ by devs and there’s no longer chloroform near the security, and no more coins. I don’t know if its just misremembering, but I swear that it’s a little harder to get into the vault now too. I get it, sanctity of the game and whatever but… this is a completely single player mode. There was a patch added to change the wording of the stock market thing you unlock in your personal vault at home to make it clearer that you’re essentially playing a coin toss where you could lose most the money you’ve accumulated, but thats another element that has the potential to give you heaps of money if you’re lucky. This isn’t a huge and genuine complaint, but it is annoying and I miss starting off my bank missions by looting the vault. I still loot it almost every time I play, but it doesn’t hit the same anymore…

Anyway, all this to say that the new freelancer mode is awesome and that I’ve been having fun playing it all through the year. I’ve also been slowly chipping away at hidden objectives and such during the story campaign, which has been interesting. There’s so many ways to set up kills for all of the targets, and there’s heaps of funny easter eggs to unlock too. I also wanna mention how much I appreciate the sound design of the game, the game actually does a great job at communicating info with the audio cues – so much so, that when trying to play the game muted while I’m on the phone with a friend, I fail miserably because I’m missing important cues without that audio.

Overall, this has been a game that I’ve been playing a lot over the past two years now, and I enjoy heaps. It’d definitely crept up towards the top of my personal favourites, and I can’t wait to keep playing more.

Freelancer Safe house Theme

Safe house Outdoors

~~~

Mario’s Super Picross, SNES

I mostly played this around the Christmas and New Years period last year, struggling and losing my mind in the summer heat! (It reached 40°!! I don’t have air conditioning in my apartment it was hell!!! And we can expect similar this year!!!! I hate summer!!!!!)

I really like picross as a concept, it’s like if sudoku had a baby with colour by number puzzles. It’s simple! And it allows for some pretty challenging puzzles, especially when you get to bigger canvases.

Mario Picross was fun enough, and the unlockable Wario Picross was certainly a challenge! I just felt a bit disappointed by the fact that all the puzzles were just random things, and nothing related to or even resembling anything Mario. Like?? I dunno, it think it would’ve been fun to have the puzzles be the sprites of various items and characters from Mario games, and even recreating scenes from certain Mario levels in the larger puzzles. The only Mario element here is that the man himself congratulates you at the completion of every level, which is nice, but man. I really wish I could’ve been filling out a mushroom or a power star or something, that would’ve been fun.

The general UI and controls were fine, but I still like the Twilight Princess Picross the most out of all. Also the music was kind of annoying, so I barely played with volume. I’d just have my switch on the couch and play muted while I watched video essays or Bob’s Burgers lol. The exception is Wario Puzzle 1, CERTIFIED BANGER!

There’s not much more I can really say. If you’ve played Picross, you know what to expect. It’s a good brain teaser, I wish it was Mario themed instead of random general stuff, but it was fine. I played it and enjoyed it for the most part.

Wario Puzzle 1

~~~

Nonograms Prophecy, Switch

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, IT IS A SCAM. IT IS ACTIVELY HOSTILE TO PICROSS PLAYERS AND CONTAINED PUZZLES THAT WERE UNSOLVABLE.

I initially bought this as a cheeky little impulse buy for my birthday. I like picross, what can I say? It was on sale on the switch store and I took it as a sign – unfortunately, it was a bad one.

At first glance it is a pretty simple, if bland, Greek God aesthetic in a black and gold cut out style. I’ve never really been particularly interested in the mythos, and never more than a passing interest- but this is literally just using the aesthetic for a game that has absolutely nothing to do with Greece or it’s religious historical culture.

Same goes with the soundtrack, a nice and simple acoustic guitar, but it is the ONLY song in the entire game.

Onto gameplay; due to the limited colours, it was incredibly difficult to see which square I was hovering over to mark, and when the numbers are greyed out they are practically invisible due to the value being almost the same as the background colour it is on top of. To make matters worse, the numbers grey out arbitrarily, which fucks up the literal point of playing the game. How are you supposed to play the puzzle if you can’t see the number of squares you’re supposed to fill out?

There’s also little things that should be standard on all modern digital versions of picross that are absent or poorly implemented here. You can’t press and hold to fill in multiple tiles, you cant x out a square you’ve coloured and instead have to clear it first and then x it out (and vice versa, why add that extra step in?) and the coloured puzzles have multiple of the exact same colour, with the only difference being inside the code and not visible to the player. How am I supposed to know which of the THREE SEPERATE BUT IDENTICAL SHADES OF PINK I’ve placed in the wrong pink zone?

There are some things that were interesting qol, like when filling out a chain of squares, a number would appear to show you how many you have filled. This would be an interesting and helpful addition to gameplay IF IT WORKED CORRECTLY. There was also an option to fill out an entire row with the L+R buttons, if it was one that had to be completely filled. That’s about the only thing in here that worked and was appreciated.

I gave up when getting past the piss easy early levels, and then realising that the puzzles were fundamentally broken and showing an incorrect number of tiles to fill. It was so shit, and this was noticed on my second or third day of playing, so I contacted Nintendo for a refund. I don’t usually ask for refunds, but this time I did.

Fuck this game, put effort into making a real picross before putting it on the eshop, fuckers.

~~~

Zelda Picross, 3DS

I’m pretty sure this is a fangame, and considering that – it’s pretty nice! Though, I am of the opinion this would be better on PC, as there were times where I could barely see the details of the puzzle, despite playing on a 3DS XL.

The whole game looks like a mix between the SNES and GameBoy Zelda aesthetics, with covers of various songs across the series in a similar sound. It definitely feels like a passion project, and for that, I can only commend it.

Now, onto the meat of it. This is actually a solid Picross, and a great taste to wash my mouth out with after the shit I had to get refunded. It’s not perfect, by any means, but it was good fun and I enjoyed my time with it, which is all that matters, right?

To play each level, there is an over world where you select and unlock levels to progress further. And, surprise surprise, the puzzles you fill out are all generally related to the Legend of Zelda! This traversal made it kind of feel like a massive Zelda dungeon, which was really fun! Another charming aspect is that you have hearts- except instead of enemies attacking you, you lose a heart every time you hit an incorrect square. I actually really liked this, as it feels so linked to Zelda, but also feels appropriate here. As you progress, you can unlock more hearts too, which is helpful for the boss levels. They entail two large back-to-back puzzles- which means if you use up most your hearts fumbling in the first boss puzzle, you better be extra sure you know what you’re doing in the second. To get to the bosses and unlock more paths, you’ll often have to travel through the over world maps and collect items. To unlock them, you’ll need to solve a picross puzzle depicting the item you’ll be getting. THAT’S ALL I WANT BABBBEEEEEYYYYYYY!!!!

Apart from it getting a little cramped and hard to read in later levels, my only other criticisms are that the colour palettes are pretty muted and a bit bland looking, which can be detrimental in some levels. Each of the puzzles have a different theming based on where you are, which is a great touch- but on levels like the ones in Death Mountain, there’s not enough visual change to tell the difference between filled and unfilled squares. Some are worse than others, but I think forgoing some of the fancy details here for readabilities sake would’ve worked in their favour. There’s nothing wrong with having cute details and art in the borders and background, but I think it ended up being too cluttered as it is currently. Another part that got a little frustrating, particularly near the end, what that the cursor doesn’t stand out enough and I get lost! I can’t see it most of the time, there’s not enough contrast for it to stand out, and even with the rows and columns highlighted, I’d still fudge choices cause I’m one square off!

Overall, considering my main issues with this game are that it’s visually not polished enough for my tastes, I’d say this was a pretty great game. I had a lot of fun playing, and it reignited my old ideas to make a pircoss fan game of my own someday… I’d honestly recommend playing just for the interesting way they’ve presented adventure mode, it was really good!

~~~

My Nintendo Picross - The Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess, 3DS

Ahhh… My favourite picross game…

There is just a certain polish to this game that makes it stand out above the rest for me. I don’t feel like I even have to say much- you just read my other reviews. You know what I’ve complained about, and the kind of things I value in a picross game. I’m sure you can assume this one is pretty good.

I don’t really care for the second mode here where the numbers are semi obscured by covering two rows and columns, instead of each set of numbers being their own. It’s playable, but not my favourite, I vastly prefer the classic picross experience. That said, I would’ve loved more than just one level of the massive level, as it was quite fun to zoom in onto chunks and solve a picross that is just one square of a larger one.

Controls handle well and feel intuitive, the puzzles are fun and fit the theme. I like this game a lot.

Tutorial / Inside a House

Hyrule Field Main Theme

Ganondorf Main Theme

~~~

Castlevania, NES

This has got to be the most fun I’ve had with an NES game… like, ever. I thoroughly enjoyed so much about it, and in a way I feel that it reinvigorated my love for video games.

Despite not knowing what to do for the first few hours that I was playing, and not realising I could save within the collection I’ve been playing on to pause and pick up later, I didn’t care that I kept starting over every time I jumped back into the game. It’s a classic 80’s game, after all. How else are you supposed to play if you don’t continually replay the early levels as you try to push forward a few more screens?

However, I am glad for modern conventions like state saves and the like, as although I was loving it, I do have sensitive eyes and was struggling to play for my usual extended gaming sessions. Towards the end of my playthrough, I took advantage of save states and a few cheeky walkthroughs to get the best experience, as the game IS filled with a bunch of 80s bullshit, too.

The plot is VERY simple, and that’s something I enjoyed- as though there wasn’t much text (or subtext, for that matter) it was easy enough to follow along with. Dracula is the big bad, and we gotta storm his castle and take him and his monsters out! The visuals of the game are more detailed than I expected them to be, filled with a charming mix of monster movie and early gothic horror styles. While simple, the sprites for both Simon Belmont and the various enemies and bosses you encounter are filled with character, and with backgrounds that were filled with details- I only wish I could’ve played this on a CRT to experience the full depth! I find the CRT filters on LCD TV’s never truly mimic the way the pixels would bend and blur on those old screens, and simply opt for simple scan-line overlays that barely cut it.

As expected for a controller that consisted of basically a d-pad and two action buttons, the controls for this game are stupidly simple. This didn’t stop it from having an interesting weapons system, one that was surprisingly more complex than I initially understood it to be! Your main attack is your trusty whip, which can be upgraded a few times to have a longer reach, which is SUPREMELY helpful, and definitely felt when it’s taken away as you get hurt. The other method of attacking is via the subweapon system, which drop at various points from enemies or interactable elements of the levels. Along the way, you can collect hearts that are dropped- but these are not health. This took me a bit to figure out, as I kept dying and wondering why my health was so whack if I had been collecting so many hearts! Turns out, the hearts are more of an ammo counter for your subweapons. Once I figured this out, it really changed the way I approached the combat, and soon figured out which subweapons I enjoyed the most. I really liked the range of throwing the crosses like boomerangs across the screen, and throwing holy water to stun enemies while I whipped the hell out of them. There’s a bunch of other subweapons, those were just what I used most often, but it leaves room to experiment with what you want to keep on you, or where you want to swap out as you come across more subweapons. The more I played, the more I began to build strategies around what kinds of subweapons I had, and found that this system is actually a lot more nuanced than I assumed it to be in my early hours of play! Btw, if you want health, instead of hearts, you need to find a delicious roast leg in secret compartments in the wall. Mmmmmmm wall meat~

While the combat makes up the ‘action’ part of this game, the other part of it is platforming. Now, I really liked it once I got a feel for the controls, but it IS filled with a good dose of 80’s jank that is hard to get used to with modern gaming fingers. However, maybe it’s just because I am a cranky gamer, or because I grew up playing stuff of this era from my dad’s hand-me-downs… I loved the platforming here! I wanna reiterate just how detail filled the locations are, as it’s just dripping with character and creates a fun atmosphere to platform across. Although some stages had areas that were difficult to figure out what exactly was part of the platform I could walk across, you start to pick up cues and understand the visual language the devs are talking in. The platforming was a genuine challenge, there were times where I felt that 80s jank getting in my way, but there were also plenty of times where I felt I was so close, and that I just messed up what I was supposed to do. It helped that I could change the window boxed borders around the game, and had the gorgeous illustrated game cover to the side. It was me and Belmont’s mini skirt against the world!

And, it would be remiss of me to go this whole review without mentioning the music. IT’S GORGEOUS. I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW HARD IT WAS TO JUST CHOOSE 3 SONGS TO LINK AT THE END, THERE’S SO MANY INTERESTING TRACKS!! Considering the limitations of the 8-bit era, there is such a depth and masterful composition to these songs that it was a genuine treat to listen to. Of course I’ll be linking the classic Vampire Killer, but for such a small OST, there are so many bangers! It was so nice hearing familiar motifs across various songs, and honestly just fun hearing what I consider to be amongst the best of NES’ sound. I feel like I could listen to some of these tracks for hours, but I already have with how much I spent in some levels!

Maybe this earlier era of gaming is just something easier for me to connect with quickly, but I can confidently say that I have no nostalgia clouding my vision, as I never got the chance to play this growing up. It’s something that I always wanted to play, and it’s a series that has come to mean a lot to me the more I play and learn about it- but seriously. What a game. It’s difficult, but not in a way that makes it impossible to just pick up and start playing. If you want a challenge, and haven’t already, I cannot recommend this game enough.

Stage 01 Vampire Killer

Stage 13 Heart of Fire

Stage 16 Out of Time

~~~

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, NES

This game fucking sucks. I love it.

In a similar style to Zelda II being a strange semi-rpg side scroller, Simon’s Quest is a bit of a departure from the simple action platformer it’s predecessor was. Though, I’d argue that this strange shake up feels more at home here than it did in Zelda II, as Castlevania was already a side scrolling game. Expanding it to exploring a whole world instead of exclusively Dracula's Castle is an interesting step, and despite the fumbling that is mainly down to poor translation and console limitations – this game was a surprising hit for me.

We continue on from the last game, following Simon as he deals with a curse placed upon him in the previous game when he defeated Dracula. To lift the curse, we must travel across the lands and retrieve Dracula’s body parts in the hopes that reassembling and defeating him once and for all will cure Simon. To do this, we must travel the land and find helpful hints and items within the various villages scattered about, and fight our way through the castles of Dracula’s loyal followers, who guard his body parts from people like Simon. The clearest way that the curse shows itself in this game through the day/night cycle, where enemies are twice as strong (or Belmont’s twice as weak), zombie-like creatures invade the villages, and all the villagers lock themselves away. I find this so fascinating because the sheer ambition of this narrative style is really pushing the limits of the NES – whether or not it was successful is to be elaborated on, but they tried and I love that.

This leads me to the perfect place to start discussing the gameplay itself, which is… ehhh… a bit of a mixed bag. As I just mentioned, the transitions from day to night are ambitious- but not great in practice. The cycle lasts about 3 minutes real time, which is far too frequent and actively destroys any and all pacing or momentum you have going. It also feels disproportionate for a cycle, the nights drag on FOREVER and the days barely last. It especially sucked when I was trying to get to a specific town with the express purpose of trying to talk with someone or buy something, only for it to turn to night just as I’d arrived. It’s just so poorly implemented due to the hardware limitations, and regardless how interesting or narratively involved it is, I’d estimate a good third of my playthrough was spent sitting in a village corner away from beasties and writing notes for this very write-up. This is THE biggest roadblock that turns people off this game, followed closely by the piss poor translation – which is a shame, because if you’re willing to trudge through all it’s failings, I actually think this is an awesome game.

There were definitely moments where I really got into this game, and even spent time thinking about it when I wasn’t playing. The enemy sprites are so cool and expressive for 8-bit, the music is even more banging (who doesn’t love bloody tears!) and there are occasional clever things to do that make it easier to progress, like throwing holy water to see where the false floors are. I also appreciated ‘quests’ like the crystal exchange, it was easy enough to follow despite the weird translation, and it was very clear that I was supposed to buy and trade them once I came across villagers who adamantly DIDN’T want to trade with my lame ass crystal. Even things as simple as coming across the house where you find the morning star merchant was really fun – I never played this as a kid, but that moment felt like a shot of pure nostalgia.

As I mentioned earlier, the translation fucking sucks here; which sucks even more because this has a few rpg elements thrown in, so it is important to actually talk to villagers and see what they have to say. One of the most well known things about this game is the botched translation regarding the red crystal; where, in the Japanese text it was clearer that to activate it and progress, you need to equip it and hold down in the right place. In English, it’s utter nonsense, and I only knew what to do as I had knowledge of this exact scenario. I wish it was translated clearer, as I had already figured out that pressing down was a good way to use the shield, and would bounce back fireballs if I stood still. It already had set up an understanding of the kind of button inputs to use with items, so it’s a shame that the instructions on what to was botched. There were some characters that had funny things to say through the strange choice in words, and I found it particularly amusing going through the village where everyone hates you. I keep repeating it, but I just need to keep saying it, I WISH THE TRANSLATION WAS BETTER. I’d recommend looking up fan translations/translation notes, as there’s a fascinating discrepancy between the two, and the JP version was more successful at setting up a certain tone and vibe amongst the villagers that helped get it just that much closer to successfully pulling off their ambitious ideas.

I can say for certain that the music helped tremendously, and this maaaaayyyyyy be my favourite soundtrack out of the trilogy. Let me replay it a thousand more times and I’ll get back to you. There’s such a bombastic feeling to the tracks when you’re walking around during the day, and at night it feels a little more subdued, but still in a kind of action-oriented way, if that makes sense. It’s dangerous for Simon to be out at night with his curse, but it’s still dangerous for the enemies at the other end of his morning star whip. I also liked the kind of eerie and adventurous vibes the castle themes have- I linked castle 1 cause its a banger, but if you’d be so inclined to check out castle 2, highly recommend.

Platforming in the game is pretty much the same as in Castlevania I, though there were more sections that felt like classic 80s bullshit. I even got stuck in a really weird spot and I found it quite amusing. It sucks a bit that water is an insta death, especially when there are some precarious platforms to jump across, but it wasn’t so bad. With regards to dying, I’m not sure I fully understand it, as you seemingly get three chances before you’re given a game over with the choice to continue. Continuing respawns you where you died, which is great, and the L is that your hearts are reset as punishment for sucking. That’s fine with me, as you’ll quickly rack up the hearts you need again when killing enemies, especially when you have the morning star, as there’s not much else to do during the night.

Before I get into the endgame stuff, I should talk about the rpg shit that’s here. When you kill enemies, you get hearts and experience points. You can level up in every castle, and doing so will expand your health and defence. There are also merchants in most towns, and a strange hooded person selling something special in each castle. Hearts aren’t just weapons ammo here, they are also currency, so there’s definitely an incentive to kill enemies instead of trying to outrun them. It was interesting to see such a basic NES system, but it worked, so I can’t complain. I’d be curious to see a modern take on this game, not only to get a chance for the original intent and ambitions to shine- as well as a more accurate translation for those of us overseas -but also to see if this rpg system should be expanded upon, or left the same. I’m not sure if I have a preference, but it is something I thought about a few times while playing (despite not generally being one for needless remakes and reimaginings lmao)

As the whole deal of this game is to collect pieces of Dracula, reassemble him, and then kick his ass for good, I found it quite interesting that you can actually equip pieces of Dracula! Using his claw and eye were particularly cool when thinking about them in-universe, not to mention they were just practical. Once you’ve collected all the pieces and make your way to Drac’s castle, I thought the set up was awesome. See, the village nearby was completely empty, save for one old lady who says “let’s live here together.” If I’m not mistaken, the town where everyone hates you is also en route to the castle, so it makes sense that they’d recognise and blame their supernatural troubles on the Belmont. By the time you get to the titular Castlevania, you’ll find that it’s completely empty.

How eerie.

I loved this, it was so unnerving, and at this point in the game, you will have battled many enemies and gotten used to keeping an eye out for them – so to enter the final castle and have it be completely devoid of life was something that stood out to me. All you have to do is find your way to the final chamber, and reassemble Dracula. His fight is piss easy, but going with the narrative in-universe, I’m fine with that! Overall, I think what made me connect with this game was how compelling the tid bits of narrative were. Not because it was outrageously complex and ground breaking – but because it gave a fitting, if tragic, context and justification to go on this journey. With the success of the Netflix Castlevania series, and the generally positive reception towards it’s spin off- Castlevania: Nocturne, I’d be incredibly interested in seeing the tale of Simon adapted and elaborated upon. Whether this is through a modern remake or animated adaptation, either would scratch that curious itch for me- but I may just have to write my own fan adaptation in the meantime, ahaha!

Near the end of the game, I did find myself getting lost as I struggled to orient myself. The ‘open’ exploration being horizontal in nature is the main reason for this, but despite this, I found it quite cool how large they were able to make this world feel for a 2D sidescroller. What sucks balls though, is that your ending will change depending on how long you take to gather up Dracula and kill him again – and most players will go through multiple day/night cycles while they play, locking themselves in for the ‘bad’ ending. That’s the one I got, though the way the text was worded didn’t seem all that bad to me. It was a positive, if tragic, outcome, all things considered. Thankfully, in the age of the internet, it’s really easy to look up the other endings – but a few years down the line when I get ACTUAL nostalgia for this game, and not just the feeling that I should've had nostalgia for this as I would've adored it as a kid; I’m certain I’ll be attempting to get the good ending for myself.

It’s clear that despite it’s many flaws, I loved this game, and consider it to be a misunderstood gem. I’d highly encourage putting in the effort to look past it’s shortcomings, find a good walkthrough for backup, and give it a try. It didn’t quite hit all of it’s lofty ambitions due to limitations in hardware, and was also undercut further in the west with the poor translation, but I truly felt the passion the team put into this, and enjoyed it all the same.

Stage Theme Bloody Tears

Castle Theme 01 Dwellings of Doom

Day Time The Silence of Daylight

~~~

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, NES

The opening ‘cinematic’ of this game says everything you need to know about this game: Castlevania is back, and better than ever.

I found it quite charming that the intro had an old film look, with the visuals of the tape rolling to make it feel all the more grand. By this point, the devs knew what they wanted to make- confident in creating the gothic horror imagery they want to portray, and succeeding! I said it eariler, and I’ll say it again – I am so surprised and excited to see just how much detail they managed to put into an 8-bit NES game, and Dracula's Curse is a step up once again.

The gameplay is a return to the familiar style of the first game- though, the second hasn’t been completely forgotten, as at the completion of areas, you have to choice on which path to take as you continue your journey. It’s interesting, and though it doesn’t feel as open as Simon’s Quest, the world here still feels very large.

This is also helped by the fact that there are so many innovations on the gameplay to keep it feeling fresh. There are new gimmicks to certain levels, like swamp water acting like quicksand, water rising levels, and more complexity to boss fights. There are also some quality of life changes I noticed: in Castle II, I often died when platforming as my jumps would be compromised by hitting my head on a block above me and falling directly into water below. Here in Castle III, I noticed that when you jump under some platform bricks, you can jump through your full arc instead of hitting your head on them. Clearly, I died enough this way in II that it was noticed and appreciated here.

The main new thing to this game, however, is the buddy system going on. While you journey, you have the option to come across some friends who will join you. There’s Grant Danasty; a pirate guy who can climb walls and ceilings, and uses a short dagger to attack- Sypha Belnades; a powerful magic user who is weak at everything else- and Alucard, the son of Dracula and bearer of PENIS BLAST!!!!

Okay… He can turn into a bat and fly around the level, and use magic fireballs, it just looks like he’s throwing it from his penis. Out of the three recruitable characters, Sypha is the only one who doesn’t have a boss fight. Grant was turned into a monster by Dracula, so you have to fight and knock some sense into him- after which, he joins you. And Alucard challenges you to a battle, of which he’s using as a gauge to see if you are strong enough to help him with his patricidal agenda. Trevor Belmont is the guy you start with, and who is always available to switch back to, though he’s exactly what you’d expect from a Belmont. This character switching system is quite fun, though I don’t think it’s any secret that I love Alucard and therefore mainly played as him or Trevor for most the game. I did start a replay to make sure I recruited everyone and try out their move sets- everyone has a special ability that uses the hearts as ammo, and has different strengths and weaknesses compared to Trevor’s more well-roundedness (especially when you’ve upgraded his whip!)

The music here is absolutely stunning, people love the Castlevania soundtracks for a reason, and it’s due to the masterful composition of this trilogy. There’s even a familiar deja vu to enjoy amongst all the new tracks.

I honestly don’t have much more to say on this game, I just enjoyed playing it and didn’t feel the need to take many notes, as it’s a solid step up and refinement for the series. My only real criticisms are that some of the sprites readability isn’t very good, and detracts from the detail filled world. The background blended in with intractable objects and resulted in times where I couldn’t clearly see where the stairs and platforms I’m supposed to be using actually were. I found this the worst in 9-01, and struggled with eye strain the most in this game. As I’m playing on a modern tv, I do wonder if playing on a CRT would’ve made this critique a moot point, but I’ll just have to chalk that up to the sacrifice of detailed pixel art in the 8-bit era.

Oh, and I guess I should mention the fight with Death, as it was definitely a challenge- one I found harder than the Dracula fight. So hard, in fact, that my only note on it was: DEATH ON 8-03 WAS INSANELY HARD! SAVE STATE FUDGE FOR DESSERT!

This was just a great time, and I’m tied between recommending this or Castle I as the definitive experience for new players wanting to try the og stuff. I’d say just play the whole trilogy, but I had such a great time with all of these games, and it was super fun playing the game that the Netflix Animated series was mostly based on.

I love Castlevania.

Beginning [Level 1]

Mad Forest

Riddle

~~~

Super Mario Odyssey, Switch

The first time a friend got me to try Odyssey was in late 2019. It was his favourite game at the time, and he really wanted me to play it. I gave it a good 40 min or so, but I really wasn’t enjoying it. I commented that I felt that it was trying too hard to recapture the style of Mario Galaxy and failing, and that I’d rather play galaxy instead. Obviously, 40 min isn’t enough time to truly understand WHY I didn’t click with it, but now, after 25+ hours, I can tell you exactly why.

It’s shit.

I was selling old switch games I never played and was able to take advantage of a deal to get Odyssey relatively cheap, and it was the only switch game in stock at the time that seemed somewhat interesting. I thought I may as well give The Mario Title for the switch a go- and give it a fair go at that. I played through every world until I finished the game, exploring and collecting as much as I could, but there was no way I was going to attempt 100% completion.

The basic rundown of the game is the base Mario formula you’d expect. Peach is kidnapped, it’s Bowser’s fault, go save the Princess. The companion character, your hat, joins you as his sister has been kidnapped with Peach; so you both have a common goal. There’s other details to it, but I really couldn’t get invested and I often found myself very lost plot-wise. In 3D Mario fashion, every new instalment seems to stray further into that vague open-ended, pseudo open world style of gameplay. Having such a loosely connected plot and not much more of it connected to the main goal of collecting power moons lacked the clear motivations I needed to get through the game. Like, what am I doing? Am I just collecting power moons? To upgrade my ship and travel to a new kingdom? To do what…? Collect more power moons?

There wasn’t any charm here for me, and I constantly felt as though the game were hollow and devoid of the Mario characteristics I’d expected as a bare minimum. Perhaps thats a failing on my part, but I DO enjoy games where there’s not strictly a reason why the game is happening, just that it is – but you see… those games are usually mechanically interesting, or just plain fun enough that it outweighs my need for plot to help suck me in. This game was not fun, I don’t think I enjoyed myself at all, maybe save for moments where I was desperately trying to look for positives and begrudgingly noting that one area isn’t that bad… I guess. It just feels shit, and I had a similar problem with BOTW. It may be something as simple as outgrowing the target audience, or being a nostalgiaphille who prefers the games from decades ago ‘just cause;’ but I really feel that there is a disconnect in this era of Nintendo and I’m struggling to enjoy any of it, despite generally wanting to enjoy them.

The main gimmick of this game is your hat friend (who’s name is Cappy, despite being a top hat?), and their ability to possess creatures all over the various Kingdoms and utilise their unique skills to complete platforming puzzles across the levels.

I HATE THIS.

All the possessions are functionally the same thing. The fucking onion that I hate. The octopus with a butthole. The fire thing. THEY JUST JUMP. YOU KNOW WHO ELSE CAN JUMP? MARIO. GIVE HIM A FUCKING IRON CAP OR FIRE FLOWER TO CROSS THE DOMAIN AND LET ME JUST JUMP AND DO ACTUAL PLATFORMING. Some of the possessions are really stupid too. I can be a slab of meat, or a manhole, but I can’t be a spiny? There’s hammer bros, AND FIRE HAMMER BROS, BUT MARIO CAN’T JUST BE MARIO BUT WITH A FIRE FLOWER?? I CAN BE A PIRAHA PLANT IN THE LUNCH LAND, BUT NOT IN DONKEY KONG CITY??? WHAT IS GOING ON!?

I remember complaining about the arbitrary and limiting nature of the possessions to my friend, and he said, “If these were flowers you ran into to absorb their powers the same way you do in Galaxy you wouldn't be bitching.” Yeah, cause then I wouldn’t be some big stone guy with glasses to use bad version of the lens of truth, or some fucking onion. I don't want to be an ONION I want to be MARIO. Power ups in Mario are ADDITIONAL powers using MARIO as a base. These possessions are REMOVING Mario and ONLY letting me use the new power. THAT’S SHIT! I would rather deal with power ups like in Mario Galaxy where it’s an addition to the Mario abilities, or a strategic gain one lose another (like the bee mushroom, you can fly and walk/climb on honey, which Mario cannot, but if you touch water you’ll lose the power, unlike Mario who can swim) Said friend brought up the spring mushroom in galaxy, but I hated that power up for the exact same reasons I hate these possessions! They’re dumb gimmicks that don’t do anything!! Most the possessions are various forms of limited jumping, and if it’s not that, it’s some dumb one (maybe two) trick gimmick thing that controls poorly!! Whoop dee doo!!!

To top it off, the base Mario controls suck too. They felt terrible and really weird for me. The depth perception is the worst I’ve experienced in a 3D Mario; I’d often try to jump off things and be flung in a direction no where near where I directed it, and I couldn’t get the hang of the motion controls. The motion controls on the switch are the worst I’ve ever played; and I asked friends and went through various forums trying to make sure my joycons were calibrated properly, but I can only conclude that the controls just suck. They suck badly. I was never able to perform the cap jumps with any consistency, so I avoided using them and had to get creative in other ways (or just give up on trying to get to particularly difficult-to-reach areas). One thing that WOULD’VE HELPED would be if you were still able to access those particular moves with button controls, HOWEVER you’re fucked if you wanna play handheld only, or just can’t seem to figure out the motion controls. This is yet another reason why I will never understand the switch lite (or the fact that the switch is touted as a hybrid console to play docked or handheld, but it’s clearly meant to be docked with game design that actively fucks over players in handheld modes or are just otherwise unwilling or unable to use motion!), but to not even have a toggleable option to play with button only or motion controls is baffling. WHY IS ONE OF THE MAIN DRAWS OF THE GAME LOCKED BEHIND MOTION CONTROLS!? I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND.

The camera was also incredibly frustrating. It was locked onto some kind of predetermined path (one that felt specifically designed to yank away from where I was TRYING to position it) which made exploring even more frustrating. Half the moons of each level that you need to collect are hidden in corners and strange areas that you’re intended to find through exploration, which you do in part with the camera controls. If I’m constantly in a battle with the camera, despite it being one I can supposedly control, what the hell am I supposed to do!? Even when I’d position it where I wanted, as soon as I started walking, it’d reposition itself, but never in ways where I could leave the camera and just trust that it would generally point to where I wanted. What’s the point.

And, not that boss fights are anything stand-out to me in a Mario game, but all the fights FUCKING SUCKED. I hate the controls and I hate these ugly rabbids looking fuckers! I don’t even like the extended Bowser clown kid lineup, but that’s preferable to random ass rabbit characters. GROSS. What’s wrong with Bowser and Bowser Jr? The lack of Bowser’s presence felt sucky to me as well, I missed him and feeling the looming threat and consequences of his actions if we don’t step up and punch his dick. It’s just a wedding. Oh no. A wedding that Peach doesn’t consent to and even though Bowser is evil and pushy, he still has some minimal form of respect to leave Peach alone when she walks out. (Also, did anyone else feel a bit weird when Mario joined in on trying to propose as an alternate option for Peach? Just me?) When we finally got to Bowser’s dick-punching… THAT SUCKED TOO! Shitty icing on the shitty cake. Fart_Reverb.mp3

While I’m complaining about game mechanics, I want to talk about the main collectables – coins and moons. Theres… not really a difference between them, to be honest. Moons are the same deal as the power stars from Galaxy… but dumb. They’re just hanging out in the levels, free for the taking the same way coins are. Even if there were little mini game things to complete before getting a moon, they felt more like an obligation on the game dev’s part to ‘spice it up’ with ‘varied methods of collection.’ Some moons are more special than others for reasons I cannot see- why are some moons given a cutscene when you collect them, but others aren’t? Why is the ‘grand star’ of moons just three moons at once, which feels even more un-special. I also don’t like that there’s no intrinsic stakes to collecting the moons, it’s the exact same value to find a moon by simply walking up to it, or doing a simple ground pound, to something more complicated that actually requires platforming or some other kind of challenge. Some of these moons are easier to find than coins, which is why they feel as devalued as them. I vastly prefer the way this was handled in Galaxy, where there are different tiers of stars to make it feel proportionate to the effort you put in to collecting them. There’s the power stars themselves, which are usually the main goal of any mission and require some traversal and platforming or puzzle solving of some kind to find and unlock. There’s the power stars that are broken up into bits, where the challenge is much easier but spread out so you have to collect all the bits before unlocking the star, and there’s the grand power stars that were usually locked behind a boss fight. There were easily understood stakes with that system, but here in Odyssey, there’s not a single difference between finding a single moon or a cluster of three, other than the physical number. It’s dumb, and it feels lazy and almost insulting that they’d strip it down to something so basic. Kids could understand Galaxy, why do you feel the need to make it even more basic and like a participation trophy?

The thing with the moons being the same value as coins, is that the coins don’t matter either. Coins are the health currency of the game, but also the economic currency. If you die, coins are deducted and you respawn. If you die with no coins… nothing happens. Your health isn’t even restored when you collect coins, which breaks any connection between coins and health to me. If they’re taken away as punishment, shouldn’t they also reward health when collected? There’s not even the classic 100 coins = 1up here. (Did you also notice that there’s not a single mushroom item in the game? Way to go on skipping more Mario iconography!) Coins being as perfunctory as they are, and in some cases even rarer to come across compared to moons, completely deflated any value either of them have to me. Why am I collecting either? Sure, I can unlock more levels if I collect enough moons, and I can buy stuff with my coins, but every level has a seperate local currency that you have to collect to spend within that world anyway! WHAT IS THE POINT OF ANY OF IT!!

Lastly, I want to touch on the visual and audio vibes of the game, of which I feel disappointed in both. Visually, yeah, there’s a lot of detail and it’s pretty and whatever… but it all felt very bland and hollow to me. So many levels are surrounded by a sprawling abyss of nothing, which felt really uninspired and made me miss when efforts were put into skyboxes and distant parallaxed background elements to make it feel dense and detailed without overwhelming the player or the system. A particular example for me is Bowser’s Weeb Ass Castle – for the end goal of the game, it REALLY felt like something you could slap together in Unity (derogatory). Where’s the spectacle, the theatrics? I can’t even recall anything feeling particularly Bowser about it, it’s just a Japanese inspired level…

I couldn’t even enjoy levels that were technically fuller and more detailed, due to recognising characteristics of other bland levels that come before and after. It felt like an illusion, that the levels had so much shit there, yet there was barely anything to do. Gripes with previous 3D Mario entries, warranted gripes, are ‘fixed’ by… doing the same thing. It’s just that it looks prettier with modern graphics, so it’s technically better enough for the devs to say, “nuh-uh! We fixed it!”

Take for example, a big issue many people have had with all 3D Mario games since Mario 64, is how the pacing feels choppy with continually getting spat out at the end of a level when you collect a star. That’s something frustrating that stayed all the way until Galaxy, where even when you could reasonably collect two or more power stars within the one level, you’re forced to exit the level and re-enter it fro each individual star. I can say similar things about botw, and them taking on the criticism of “there’s too much text!! We want voice acting!!” to become a game that had poorly voice acted cutscenes, ALONG WITH WALLS OF TEXT TO READ ANYWAY. In Odyssey, there are STILL issues with the pacing of collecting stars and still being forced to come to a halt while you watch a cutscene or need to re-enter a level, but because it’s not the same explicit getting-spat-out-of-a-level as previous games, it’s somehow the ‘fix’ players have been asking for. Do you see how that’s a non-solution dressed up as the fix made in response to criticism, without the devs actually addressing or even understanding WHY complaints were made about it in the first place? But cause it’s been ‘fixed’ in a weird way, its not only ‘innovative’ for the newest era of 3D Mario, but its alllll better.

So much of this game felt like a very empty identity crisis, barely resembling Mario or the Nintendo polish I’ve come to expect. Mario has always been a weird series with things that really push what it means to BE a Mario game – but I feel for most previous entries in both his 2D and 3D adventures, there’s always been enough recognisably Mario within the game that it’s easier to roll with whatever whacky thing they’re introducing. Galaxy was already pushing it as a ‘recognisably Mario’ kind of game, but at least it was charming with some solid NPCs and a decent, if simple, plot to follow and tie everything together. I’m more than willing to admit that rose-tinted nostalgia glasses may be fuelling the way I’m digging my heels in on this during comparisons to Galaxy, but I feel that Galaxy was the furthest I can appreciate the pushed boundaries of what makes a Mario game, and where I draw the line in no longer being able to connect with and appreciate it.

Apart from looking bland, the game often sounded bland too. The first couple of worlds have very ambient and minimalistic music, which sucked in my opinion – and although there are some great tracks later on, it just made me feel even more like this game lacked the Mario charm I’d been told to expect. The top 3 tracks I’ve linked at the end are all really nice songs, though they sound like they’re from completely different games, and none of them a Mario one. I felt saddened by the fact that I had to play through 5 worlds before I came across a track that I enjoyed, and even then, it was just enjoyable in a general sense, and not in a way that felt like it belonged in a Mario game. When I listen to the tracks I don’t even know WHICH LEVEL they belonged to for most of them, they don’t sound like the music that should be playing when you’re playing, and more like I just muted the game and put on a playlist of other music.

There’s a lot of elements in Mario soundtracks across the games that can be drawn on to further refine and evolve for a new game, but again, I can only describe the soundtrack as an identity crisis. While there are some of the classic tracks we all know and love rearranged for the game, it was so few and far between that it actually felt jarring to hear Mario music in what is supposedly a Mario game. One of the last worlds you unlock is a massive reinterpretation of the outside of Peach’s Castle from Mario 64, and thats the main area that you hear anything that sounds like traditional Mario in this game. It was disappointing, and I found myself too burnt out and cynical to enjoy something that felt like too much like nostalgia bait instead of loving homage. Overall, while listening to the soundtrack again as I write this, it is genuinely and objectively a nice collection of songs.; it just lacks a certain je ne sais quoi and the specific Mario-flavoured cohesion to tie it all together in my opinion.

One thing that I did enjoy- for the most part -were the 2D platformer sections present in every world. In these sections, you go through a pipe and get turned into an 8-bit Mario to platform across an area and get a power moon. In the early hours of my playthrough, I considered this the highlight of my playthrough… but the more I played, feeling frustrated with the intended platforming and level progression of the game, the more I felt jaded towards these sections. They’re genuinely nice, a short section that’s a return to form for cranky old gamers like myself, and accompanying them is an 8-bit remix of the level’s theme, and Mario will be wearing pixel interpretations of whatever outfit you had on. It’s fun! I want to love it more than I do, but towards the end of my playthough, it began to feel like pandering in order to secure old fans as part of the target audience, while also capturing kids and new fans that are more easily excited by putting a hat on a dinosaur and being able to run into things with bad controls.

They’re spreading themselves thin, in a way that feels non-committal in a way that’s overly safe. I would’ve rathered they put more effort into buckling down and making the possession concept a lot stronger, or whatever other weird direction they wanted to go in, and just believe in it. They’ve already built games around the concept of ‘Mario but he has a water gun,’ and ‘Mario but there’s weird gravity;’ but where those games felt more successful is that they felt like they put more effort into exploring that concept in multiple ways – whereas I feel that theres not really anything fun, interesting or innovative about the possessions in this game. For a game that’s only defence against most of my critiques being, “but it’s for kids! And people new to Mario!!” I want to ask, what exactly is this promising for the future of 3D Mario? The whole game wasn’t that memorable, and that mechanic felt so all-over-the-place that it didn’t get a chance to really shine. I can’t really visualise any levels or gaming moments when I hear the soundtrack or think of this game, and I’m a more visual thinker- that should be easy for me! It’s a glorified tech demo, and even that is a generous description in my eyes. It’s just so epic to play a Mario game where you’re encouraged to not play as Mario for most of it! (But it’s all still Mario, because you have his hat and moustache! Duh!)

I feel like I have so much more to say, but it would be getting even more nitpicky and whingy than it already is. I’ve cut back a lot of what I wrote down when playing, this is the SHORT version!

Well, ok it’s the shorter-but-still-a-classic-Rads-review-slash-retrospective. I’m not really sure what to call these, retrospective feels the most appropriate, but yeah. That’s all I’ll say about Mario Odyssey for now. My copy has found a much better home being regifted to my younger cousins who got a family switch last Christmas. They enjoy it very much, and I fucking hated it and what it represents.

Fuck you, Mario Odyssey!

Steam Gardens

Bubblaine

Bowser's Castle 2

#rads reviews #goty #not tagging individual games again. it can be a surprise when you read more :P

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