#and just love creating horror content in general idk its fun

[yunogf]

alternative covers for NCT 127's original horror game FAVORITE: VAMPIRE

[transmascxielian]

timeloop story!!!!

OH HI HELLO OK THANK YOU ANON FOR ENABLING TO TALK AT LENGTH ABOUT MY OCS HEHE

so the story starts when camila (he/she) and matthew (he/him) are. created I guess? basically their main deal is that theyre human-adjacent. I say often that theyre basically anomalies within the universe that Should Not exist. theyre also perpetually a certain age (I think like 24ish) and always have been which leads to! existential crises as you do

but the universe can cope with two of these anomalies existing separately right? its only when they meet that the Problems and Horrors begin

basically when they meet theyre obviously strangers but essentially they end up dying together on a beach. it becomes strange after that when they are revived and eventually meet again. and when they die again after that. and again. you wont believe what happens next

so every time they die, matthew reappears somewhere random across the world and can Somehow end up coming back to camila who is (understandably) pretty annoyed that he doesnt have any means of knowing where matthew is. like the argument gets resolved but the lack of control is a pretty big point of contention. camila does sometimes get conversations with this like. entity that calls itself the universe but neither I or camila know if it's being facetious. im not sure what their deal is tbh. anyway yeah she sometimes gets to talk to them while being dead but theyre kind of a dick and it doesnt really help anyone but is somewhat useful in somewhat giving him an explanation. idk I kinda like nebulous and enigmatic characters (mainly bc I added them on impulse and idk really why) who are also just generally not fun to be around. hits it with a big cartoon hammer. anyway yeah that maybe evens it out a bit?

also sometimes when they die and are revived they (mainly matthew) get some sort of mutation like matthew is vaguely a vampire and also sometimes has 3 eyes depending on how I want to draw/picture him. camila also gets pigeon wings (specifically quite pale grey pigeon wings). he also one time woke up with idk just. free top surgery happened and theyre both like woahhhh holy shit this is epic

anyway it at some point becomes discovered that it's the act of them being together that causes the loop of dying and revival to happen bc like. their aforementioned anomalous status in the universe is ok on their own but impossible and overall Bad when they're together so the universe responds by. repeatedly killing them. this is confirmed to their great reluctance when they try to deliberately stay apart after they die one time and they just... dont die...

but by this point theyre like. very close (theyre queerplatonic and t4t and desperately in love. you know how it is) so they! decide theyd rather be stuck in this loop

ALSO at some point they end up working at this haunted house in the middle of the countryside with my other characters aoife and lauren (both she/her) who I! can very much talk about also if you want hehe

overall id say the main themes I wanna convey in the story (ive written a bunch of prose about them hehe but no like. concrete chronological story really) are 1. agency and 2. love as a choice and soulmates as a decision.

thank you SO much again for the ask and thank you if you read all this!!! PLEASE ask again if you wanna know any more hehe

[legionofpotatoes]

we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

[linkspooky]

Your analysis on shigaraki's worldview is 😍😍😍. Who's your fav bnha character btw, and what kind of manga are you into? (i mean as in genre, but my phrasing is terrible at times so idk how to put it all in the last sentence)

My favorite manga in the whole world are the manga that run in Weekly Shonen Jump. I read almost everything that runs in the magazine from week to week. I know that’s not technically a genre, but let’s not arguen semantics. 

And now because no one asked for it, my opinion on all of the manga currently running through Jump that I read. 

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba usually manga in shonen jump slowly get worse over time as they try to stretch their stories out, but Kimetsu no Yaiba is a story that continues to develop on itself and improve the longer it runs. 

The art is phenomenal and has a good balance of when to be silly and when to be drop dead gorgeous. It’s more of an ensemble piece tied together by a big brother trying to save his little sister, and because of that almost every character Tanjirou interacts with is fun and really immediately attention grabbing. 

It’s also a pretty heavy story that deals with death, grief and loss and trying to find life beyond a world that has suffering like that. I’m actually planning to make some meta of it soon, especially with the interactions between Domi and Shinobu. My only real complaint is that it’s deep but not too deep. Usually the demons are always bad and the demon slayers are always good in the end, even if sympathy is expressed for some of the demons. Once again though it does so well in the technical aspects of telling the story it wants to tell. 

My Hero Academia it’s pretty obvious that I like it. The biggest draws for me are the art style and the characters, specifically the villains. Also the idea of a reverse X men world where what are basically the mutants now outnumber normal people and dominate society is a fantastic idea for world building with a lot of options. 

I’ve actually followed Horikoshi’s work for a long time. His two previous works, Oumagodoki Zoo and Barrage both ran in Shonen Jump for a short time before they were cancelled which I find really unfortanate because they both had a lot of potential as well. 

I love both the hero kids and the villains, though sometimes I feel like the villains are more connected to the central conflict of the story than the heroes. It would be nice to see Deku evolve a more radical philosophy then just wanting to save people right in front of him, or protecting the status quo. The heroes should ideally act in response to the villains to create a better world and resolve a problem the villains brought up, but if say the League of Villains were wiped out now another League would be created later because the central problem of the story has not been dealt with. 

Dr. Stone this is a series that almost got cancelled, but was saved by a main character switch. Senku is really likable and unique as a character, kind of a mad scientist archetype who turns out to be the good guy and the hero of the story.

He reminds me a lot of Yoichi from the writers previous work, Eyeshield 21. In that they’re both laughing mad eccentrics who seem like they have little scruples for how they use and treat other people, and yet are surrounded by friends and act as the leaders of their team. They also both have a tendency for strategy over brute strength and like to outwit their opponents. 

The only thing I can say about Dr. Stone is that while the characters are a fun little group of oddballs, they rarely get any deeper than that. The most interesting thing is still figuring out the central mystery of the world and what happened to turn everybody to stone, which is why having Senku as a main character was a really smart move on the series part. 

Yozakura Family This is a new series that I actually really like and hope beats canellation at the two week mark. It’s kind of your basic romantic comedy characters get married in the first chapter promise, but also there’s some really strong character writing with the older brother. He’s one of the few examples of the obsessive and overprotective brother type that was portrayed as actually abusive and damaging for seeing his younger sister that way. 

The premise also reminds me a lot of Katekyo Hitman Reborn, just suddenly getting sucked into the underworld of spies and crimminals when you’re an unlucky loser with no social skills. If the character writing is as strong as it is for the brother I can definitely see a lot of improvement and staying power. 

The Promised Neverland the smartest written series in Shonen Jump write now with the best ideas. The Promised Neverland is all about theme, theme, theme, theme, which is why someone like me who devours stories for their nutritious value and content loves it. 

While there are only about three major characters with arcs that matter to the plot, Norman, Ray, and Emma they are some of the deepest characters in shonen jump currently and the complexity of their relationship and the way they all foil each other is superb.

It’s a story about children trying to escape a neverland where they can never grow up, and live in a world that never wanted them alive. Not only is it just about them though, it’s also about adults who are still inside the system and gave up at one point or another and decided to just live in the evil world rather than change it. It’s a deep story but it’s also undeniably shonen jump, the central theme is about not giving up even in a world that is determined to deny your existence. 

Act Age If you’ve read Chihayafuru this manga has a lot in common with that, because both of them are about very singleminded girls with complex emotions that they themselves don’t understand, finding themselves completely enveloped in a niche hobby to the point of obsession. 

Act-Age is a story that’s primarily about storytelling and the nature of stories themselves, with each arc focusing on an adaptation of either a movie made up for the sake of the story or a pre-written play ie, Journey to the West, Night on the Galactic Railroad. However, it’s also bout the nature of stories, as understood by the perspectie of an actor. 

There are only a few major characters but they all get intensely developed in their arcs. My absolute favorite relationship is that of the main character, quiet on the surface but with deep emotions that she uses for her acting talent with her rival an actress that’s much more like a pop star or idol. Rather than having deep talent she instead uses her ability to read people to appeal to them. She is cheerful and lively on the surface, but empty inside. The way they envy each other and learn to grow from each other because each of them has what the other one desires. 

Jujutsu Kaisen reminds me of really early bleach that was just Ichigo and his teenage friends fighting Hollows. This is one of the manga I definitely reccomend, because it’s one of the lesser known manga in jump currently. The art style has this scratchy look about it which really adds well to the horror aspect of the series. It’s a demon fighting anime with some of the best demon designs, more attention is put on making them look grotesque and scary then in series like KNY where the demons for the most part are pretty good looking still. 

The main trio is very solid, a reckless idiot who swallowed a cursed finger in the first chapter and is continually dealing with the consequences of that, the shadowy, quiet type cool headed one who almost never talks about his past or his true feelings on the matter, and between them the cheerful girl whose a tad on the merciless side. 

Not only are the characters good, but it’s one of the few series where the fights and lore are super interesting. Rather than dealing with demons directly Kimetsu no Yaiba style we deal with curses, which are generated from the human subconscious. 

For exmaple one of the villains Mahito is the embodiment of the fear humans have for other humans, that is the anxieties of life, and the fear and suppressed feelings that go hand in hand with humanity. Because that he’s much like a child curse quickly learning and progressing with a human intelligence. 

The fights, the powers of characters, they’re all used to further develop a really interesting world of curses and the people who live dealing with them that it feels like we’re only scratching the surface of right now and desperately makes you want to figure out the system they have in place for this entire world. 

Yui Kamio Lets Loose - I find it to be a really sweet romantic comedy about a stuck up boy obsessed with appearances and what other people think of him falling in love with two sides of a girl, the uncontrollable Yui that beat him up and constantly gets into fights and trouble, and the perfect demure girl who can only ever be helpless and kind and needs to be protected. It has a feel of a lot of classic 80s high school romantic comedies. The only real problem is that it needs to acquire a plot fast, because it’s at risk for cancellation which makes it hard for me to get invested in a series that might end soon. 

Double Taisei - One of those shonen manga that had a really interesting beginning chapter, but then failed to do anything with it. I think it would work well as a character piece between two personalities who act like brothers in the same body, but the characters aren’t strong enough quite yet to work that way. I do like the character design… 

Tokyo Shinobi Squad - It looked like a ripoff at first but the main character is actually fairly different from Naruto, and the manga itself is uniquely its own thing. I just hope it learns to utilize it’s cyberpunk setting better, because ninjas fighting in a cyberpunk dystopia is a very tropey premise and the story needs to utilize those tropes in order to work. I do like the fact that the main character starts out pretty powerful so it’s not a typical shonen formula about a main character slowly learning to gain power, instead it’s him taking in and being responsible for a kid. 

Manga I don’t read - One piece, Yuuna of the Haunted Hotsprings, Chainsawman, Samurai 8 the tale of Hachimaru, Beast Children, Miitama Security Busters.