#and missed so MANY good examples and counter examples that twist the tropes

[gilbirda]

I wish I could bottle the huge amounts of obvious contempt video essayists have when covering topics you can tell they dislike/hate

like. no shade. I get that sometimes making content is what brings the money and eventually you run out of topics that you are passionate about and end up doing videos about things you are indifferent to or even don't like

but like

dont?

maybe don't.

because audience can tell you did the minimum amount of research, you can't help but paint everything as negative; and, for sarcastic essayists, you make fun of something instead of being funny.

[blogging-time]

When I Kissed The Teacher

Dialogue Prompt List – Long List My Fic Masterlist

Prompt: “Let’s drink wine and trash talk our co-workers.” - Logan and Roman. (Friendship) - Submitted by @louisthewarlock

Summary: Roman Crowne has just been dumped by yet another co-worker. Logan Sanders makes it his personal mission to console the heartbroken Spanish teacher while also convincing him to turn off that godforsaken ABBA soundtrack.

Warnings: Post Break-Up (Not Logince), Alcohol Mention.

Pairings: Platonic Logince/Foreshadowing Romantic Logince, Past Royality, Past Prinxiety, Past Roceit, Background Intruality.

Word Count: 1,688

~ ~ ~

“Well this seems like a perfectly healthy and not at all counter-intuitive way to conduct oneself post break-up,” Logan remarked as he slowly entered the almost vacant looking Spanish classroom.

The sight awaiting him was that of his co-worker – Roman Crowne – sitting slumped over a rather busy looking table, his unusually messy head of hair tucked uncomfortably between his hastily folded arms. Surrounding him were various pages that Logan couldn’t quite decipher, as well as some familiar looking textbooks that Roman would use to teach his sophomore classes when the school board once again forbid him from making “Pan’s Labyrinth” an official part of the school’s curriculum. The most notable item at Roman’s disposal however had to be his mobile phone, as it was currently playing “When I Kissed The Teacher,” repeatedly on Spotify.

“You know most people actually knock before inviting themselves into a colleague’s classroom, right?” Roman half-heartedly muttered against the cheap plywood.

“Well you should know that most teachers actually prefer to work at their own desks instead of downgrading to a small student’s table. I guess we’re both just feeling a little unconventional today.”

With a heavy sigh and even heavier limbs, the Spanish teacher finally mustered up the energy required to pry his face off the aforementioned table. As soon as the pair made eye-contact, Logan couldn’t help but smile sympathetically at Roman. No matter how many times he found the man in this heartbroken state his tearstained face simply never failed to upset him.

“There’s a window,” Roman responded vaguely before Logan could even make an awkward attempt to console him. Then, upon recognizing the science teacher’s confusion, he unenthusiastically waved his hand and explained, “There’s a window embedded in the door to this classroom – I’m sure you’re well aware of it. Had I chosen to lay about and wail over my lost love at my own desk then surely any old passer-by could have caught me in my moment of lament.”

As sympathetic as Logan was towards his friend’s situation, he still couldn’t help but roll his eyes at how dramatic the man was being.

“Janus Marshall merely terminated his relationship with you, Roman. He himself is not deceased.”

“Hark! For his love for me is dead at least – dead and buried beneath the heels of some younger, prettier thing! Its ghost takes the form of the man I once danced with, and it taunts me as I pass him by in the corridor on my way to lunch.”

“Would you kindly stop and think rationally for five minutes instead of writing another soliloquy?” Logan may sound exasperated, but in reality, he simply hates seeing his friend’s thoughts spiral out of control like this. “Janus made it abundantly clear to you months ago that he would be migrating to England at the end of the year in order to teach Psychology at Oxford. Since neither of you were ever interested in long-distance relationships, I thought this break-up would seem inevitable to you.”

Roman visibly deflated upon hearing such a logical argument, yet somehow Logan didn’t feel victorious.

“I know… I suppose I just got a little carried away again. Deep down I’d honestly hoped we’d be able to make it work.”

“But why?” Logan asked, “Why would you allow yourself to get your hopes up time and time again? Every time you’ve dated a colleague your relationship has ended within six months or less.”

“Now hold on just a moment, Charles Rush-In! Just because I happened to date – and consequently was dumped by – a few of my colleagues doesn’t mean having a relationship with one is inherently flawed and destined to fail.”

“While your current statistics would highly suggest otherwise, that isn’t the part that concerns me the most. What concerns me the most is that you’re clearly upset or made to feel uncomfortable every time you’re forced to work with an ex-partner.”

“Name one example.”

“Patton Hart.”

“You mean the Home Economics teacher? I love Patton! Well… not in that way… not anymore at least… Yeah things were a little awkward at first… and then things got awkward again eight months later when he asked if I would be okay with him dating my brother… but both of us are on very good terms now!”

Logan quirked an eyebrow at that, but ultimately decided it was Remus’ responsibility to tell Roman about his current engagement plans.

“Okay then, what about Virgil Rae?”

“Ah yes, the English teacher who never stopped reading too much into things.”

“You and him seem to argue a lot.”

“To be fair we also argued before and during our relationship too.”

Logan clicked his tongue in perfect time with ABBA before naming, “Janus Marshall.”

“That’s a fresh wound! It’s hardly fair for you to twist the knife in that!”

“I can’t help but disagree considering you’re currently spending your lunch break marking papers and crying in your classroom just to avoid encountering Janus – something you wouldn’t have to do if he wasn’t your colleague.”

Roman couldn’t deflate anymore, so instead he was forced to sink further down in his admittedly rather uncomfortable plastic chair. Mentally he made a note to stop by the thrift store and his aunt Dot’s place after work to see if he could somehow acquire twenty-six cheap cushions that would make hour long lessons in these chairs more comfortable for his students.

“Why are you so determined to prove the successful office romance trope is unattainable?” he asked in a voice that already sounded so defeated.

“Why are you so determined to prove me wrong?” Logan countered.

Roman met Logan’s eyes for just a moment before completely averting his gaze. Logan coughed into his elbow for just a second in a manner that conveniently covered both of his cheeks. A minute passed, and neither man acknowledged either his or his co-worker’s sudden actions.

Eventually Logan decided to break that uncomfortable minute of silence with a sigh of his own.

“Do you have another class immediately after lunch?”

“Not today. I was supposed to be teaching Freshman Spanish for the next hour, but apparently Principal Sanders has called in a public speaker. I won’t have a class again until last period. How about you?”

“It appears I’m in a similar situation. I typically have the hour free after lunch on a Thursday until my Juniors come in for their Chemistry class at 2PM. If the circumstances today were any different then I would undoubtedly use this time to either grade my students most recent homework or to formulate a lesson plan for next week.”

“If the circumstances were any different?” Roman asked with a raised eyebrow and an only slightly watery eye.

“I have a bottle of Chardonnay in my car,” Logan answered. Then, upon recognizing the Spanish teacher’s concern, he quickly waved his hands and explained, “Your brother gifted it to me a few weeks ago, stating that it may help me to ‘loosen up around handsome men,’ - only he used far more vulgar phrasing than I. I can assure you that I would never drink and drive. I’ve simply never felt the need to consume alcohol since receiving the gift, and so I let the bottle sit forgotten in my car until now.”

“What? I haven’t driven you to drink already have I?” Roman joked, but Logan didn’t miss the way another silent tear disobediently slid down his still reddened cheeks.

Again, neither man acknowledged the sudden presence of emotion.

“Believe me, Roman, if any Crowne were ever going to drive me to drink then it would most certainly be that unfathomable brother of yours. My idea was more along the lines of… well…” The science teacher paused for a moment as he remembered how much more important Roman was to him than his reputation. “Let’s drink wine and trash talk our co-workers.”

Upon proposing the idea, Logan let out a nervous breath he hadn’t even realised he’d been holding. Despite the simplicity of their plan, inviting Roman to share a glass of wine with him during work hours just so that they could say negative things about their generally very respectable colleagues to him felt so deeply personal and borderline exhilarating.

Roman must have recognised how much the offer meant to Logan, as he too seemed shocked that the usually oh-so calm and collected science teacher would propose something so unorthodox.

“You want to share a drink with me now?”

“Well encountering your colleagues won’t be an issue after work hours – Perhaps if we start highlighting all of their potential flaws now, you’ll be less inclined to test fate and pursue another doomed relationship with one of them later.”

“Hey!” Roman shouted incredulously, but he was genuinely laughing now.

The sound was so infectious that his co-worker soon found himself chuckling quietly to himself.

“I’ll ask the canteen staff if they can spare two small cups so we don’t drink too much,” Logan offered, “Plus I keep more than enough spare change in my wallet at all times to ensure we can afford a cab ride home. We won’t be stranded here at school if you accept. All I ask in return is that you turn off that infuriating song – I’ve heard it more than enough times now, thank you very much.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr Berry,” Roman responded, his lips forming a playful smirk as he pretended to mull the proposition over. “What album would you suggest we listen to in its place?”

“How about ‘The Wall’ by Pink Floyd? I believe I still have that cassette sitting in my car right now, along with ‘The Dark Side of the Moon.’”

“Oh, wow…” Roman drawled as he blinked his eyes rapidly in only semi-feigned surprise. “I think you just aged ten years for every word you just said, Lograndad.”

“Of course, you can always just sit here and listen to the sound of Janus’ voice instead.”

“On second thought-” Roman announced, standing up rather quickly as he grabbed his nearby coat and bag, “-Pink Floyd sounds like an excellent choice. Why don’t you lead the way?”

~ ~ ~

General Tag-List:

@sholaghhh (Formerly @lunamay2006) @not-so-innocent-bi-sander @saphael-malec102 @anastasialestina @seraphlies 

Additional Tags:

@sympathetic-deceit-trash

Note: It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a fic, so this tag-list may be a little outdated. If at any point you want to be added/removed from my tag-list then feel free to let me know!

As always, feedback is much appreciated! I was pretty out of practice here, so I’m sure I’d benefit a lot from constructive criticism!

For spelling, punctuation and grammar I followed Microsoft Word's English (UK) rules. Feel free to correct any errors you may find in the comments, but please keep in mind that some words are spelt differently here in the UK! 

I hope you’re all have a fan-der-tastic day!

~ ~ ~

[sammgreer]

PREY - Review

How fitting for a game about issues of identity to have borrowed the name belonging to a completely unrelated game. There's barely even a passing wink to 3D Realm's daft shooter. Ah well.

What Prey is instead is a modern successor to System Shock but with heaps of novel ideas layered atop a familiar centre. It's also not too dissimilar from Arkane's Dishonored, albeit without the stealth focus. Whilst I think I prefer Dishonored overall (I'm a big stealth fan) I think Prey has a chance at being considered the best immersive sim around. What Prey has over them all is coherence. The game is a network of related systems, all interactive, fleshing out a single location.

Talos IV in this case, a corporate owned space station orbiting the moon in an alternate reality where the Kennedy space program took off due to first contact with a strange alien species. The station is the real star of the show. It is a completely intricate location where every staff member is  accounted for and every area has a logical contribution to the station's purpose. What a treat it is to not only be set loose on an intricate, dense location but one that fits together so completely. Whilst it never manages to be outright striking like the iconic Rapture, it still looks distinct; the decor offering a stylish retro themed alternative to the usual dull, gun metal grey corridors. And the score is a refreshingly stylish affair with the twang of an electric guitar cutting through the air instead of the bassy drone that seems the default for so much science fiction.

You play as Morgan Yu (who can be male or female depending on player choice), youngest child of the family owned Transtar corporation who run the station. Along with your eldest brother you're left stranded on the station, to deal with an alien menace. Worse, you've no memory of the last few months. Neuromods, the station's latest invention, allows anyone to acquire any recorded skill in seconds but it comes with a hefty price. Removing them resets the user's memory to just before they were installed. As a result you're left to pick up the pieces. Various characters will claim to be acting in your best interests but its up to you to pay attention if you want to decipher what's really going on and who to trust. There's a pleasant Philip. K. Dick vibe to it all, this oppressive paranoia dripping over everything. Even though it dulls over the game's many hours, it makes for an intriguing start. Beyond this beginning, what occurs is largely up to you and the game will react accordingly to every action you take. No matter what you do, you can reach a conclusion. Save the other survivors, leave them or even kill them if you somehow decide that's a good idea. Chase down secrets, discover what was really going on aboard the station and in your own past. Talos IV is so open to exploration, with dozens of connecting routes through every area. It's the density of details that impressed me the most. Looking for a specific crew member? Check the ship's roster which gives a location (in real time) for every single employee. Found a locked room? Hit a touch screen with foam darts through a vent in the roof to unlock the door.

Those examples are just scratching the surface and the further into the game you go, the more systems are made available, allowing you to exert more control within the established rules of the game world. I won't spoil the later secrets because discovery is so much of what makes Prey a joy to play. Even if I tried however there's almost no way I could spoil someone's experience with the game. There are so many approaches and options you will almost certainly have a distinctly different experience from me. Importantly, the game gives you plenty of reasons to try out these options. Part of that is narrative, with a moral element likely to factor into how you choose to approach a situation, chasing a particular outcome in the story. Other times its through design, with the game's admittedly steep difficulty pushing you towards finding alternative solutions or seeking new tools.

Enemies themselves are perhaps the least interesting area of the game. The much talked about mimics are, whilst somewhat tedious to actually fight, a neat idea. Able to imitate any object within the game world, you have to pay attention at all times to avoid ambushes. The novelty does wear off of course but by the time it does, the game offers you a device to identify them more easily, one of many instances where the game stays a step ahead of itself. The game's other foes feel relatively bog standard though. Phantoms are the main type and whilst they can have various properties that require unique counters, they're largely predictable. A few late game enemy types have their own twists, forcing you well outside your comfort zone but there's a long stretch of the game before they show up. All the enemies work well and they have that rare quality of feeling distinctly alien but few of them have much personality or leave a lasting impression.

What they all do pretty well is make you use the full extent of your arsenal. The devices you amass over its many hours are composed largely of "tools" with unique functions rather than dozens of guns. The GLOO gun for instance shoots a hardening foam which can be used to encase enemies, slowing them down, block doors or can even be used to create platforms to climb on. Then there's the abilities you unlock throughout, opening up an even greater array of approaches. Which does include, yes, the ability to turn into a coffee cup. Which has more uses than you might imagine.

The point is, the more you play the more creative you can be. A challenge you found daunting in the early hours or an obstacle that seemed impassable can be returned to, conquered with what you've acquired. It's the satisfaction of being given problems you can figure out your own solutions to that makes Prey feel so special. It puts its immersive sim competition like the new Deus Ex games to shame, with a depth and level of freedom that honestly felt a little dizzying at the start. I'm so used to endless waypoints, checkpoints and hand holding that absolute freedom can be overwhelming. It's also perfectly possible to overlook important information, fail to discover a helpful item or weapon. Nothing that will stop you being able to progress but can certainly make exploration all the more difficult.

It is exciting though and remains so as you see the effects of your choices throughout the game. Being one, interwoven location rather than broken up into distinct levels like Dishonored means your actions ripple through Talos IV much more organically. Events, both story-driven and player driven, develop nicely and lead to those “oh yeah...” moments as you bump into a result some hours down the line.

The story itself isn't the game's best feature. Your conflict with your brother is handled smartly, with their relationship fleshed out in the details rather than exposition but it does fail to deliver emotional punch, a real missed opportunity. A shame cause the game's characters are all pretty well written, with distinct, believable personalities from dozens of NPCs (with an admirable number of LGBT characters, including Female-Morgan). They even come with some great little sub-quests, offering some of the game's most emotionally satisfying moments. Prey uses e-mails and audio logs like a dozen games before it but sprinkles them carefully. Not to mention most only offer hints of important details, instead of a character having a monologue about their ideologies. You have to pay attention, read between the lines and that means I engaged with the information offered instead of passively absorbing exposition. With a deft hand and constant trickle of details the story and world managed to hold my attention.

All of which sadly leads to a predictable though fairly enjoyable climax (of the two major variations of conclusion, one is much more satisfying to play through than the other) but one followed by an utterly limp, rushed ending. Nothing that spoils the rest of the game but certainly a disappointment after all the world building and care given to make your choices up to that point feel meaningful. There is an after credits sequence that offers an audacious twist to events but it doesn't do much to salvage the ending.

Nonetheless, for almost its entire run time I found Prey an absolute delight. There's much that's derivative in it, System Shock remains the most obvious influence but Prey has more style and a far better interface than that game ever did. Mainly though, these are ideas we seldom see or see done this well, so what's borrowed never really felt like a negative. What's more is for every familiar trope, there's a unique idea at work. Each could serve as the premise of a game all unto themselves. Instead they're here together, in this incredibly detailed sandbox. A flawed one admittedly but Prey still manages to be one of the most coherent and inventive games in years.

[waynekelton]

PictoQuest Review

Picross is an old grid-based family of logic puzzles, rather like a mixture of Sudoku and Minesweeper. You fill in boxes to create a ‘pixelated’ image based on the numbers marking each row and column. A ‘5’ in a row means there are five filled boxes, one right after another, no more, no less. The rules are simple but the consequences aren’t. Picross had some mainstream success over a decade ago when it became part of the Nintendo DS’s large and diverse catalog (while popular, it never had the breakout appeal or sales of say, Nintendogs).

It’s always been a solid option. By adding a generic fantasy theme filled with magical potions, a standard bestiary and youthful heroes, PictoQuest attempts to give Picross a facelift. It tries to give a great puzzle form some pizazz to lure in new players. Reader, even for a puzzle-lover, the results are mixed at best. PictoQuest is a mashup of many conventional videogame ideas shoe-horned into a classic puzzle format. It’s pleasant enough and mildly challenging for newcomers, but ultimately derivative.

The game is structured around short levels with different enemy types. If you were just looking at screenshots, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was an RPG, or at least RPG-inspired, like PuzzleQuest was. (It isn’t either of these things, sadly). There are health bars for both you and the foe, but they are false symbols. A match is over when the picture is complete: the enemy is KO’d when the puzzle is completely filled in, no more, no less.

For your trouble, you get a little gold after each level. Any mistakes or long pauses mean the enemy attacks you, depleting your health bar. So in PictoQuest both speed and accuracy are important, which makes for a stressful learning environment. A little focus and concentration can make for better puzzle solving, but the real-time pressure can actually incentivize leaps of logic and deductive guesswork...which are punished by the skimpy, 3-heart health pool. Picross should be about the sure thing, the iron lattice of logic. PictoQuest can be beat with hectic tapping, magic items, and repeating a level over and over to just imprint the unchanging image grid on your brain.

The game’s different regions have pretty decent difficulty scaling, in terms of the raw complexity of the puzzle grids themselves. The purist approach dictates that logic puzzles should be approached methodically with an eye for chains of consequence. If a column says ‘8’, then the centermost six spaces must be filled. Most progress is made through the process of elimination, marking ineligible spaces X to narrow the field of possibilities. It’s the thrill of a crossword, or Sudoku, or any other activity where a mind can observe a pattern at work and unravel its consequences. There’s the vast wasteland of the empty puzzle at the very start, the slow build towards minor clues and victories, then as momentum peaks and the final few holdouts fall into place. Not exactly your typical gamer rush, but still a respectable and perfectly fun activity.

The puzzles themselves have been well-selected and ordered; the fancy ones come a great deal later. This smooth curve is undermined by the fact that the actual game mechanics are counter-intuitive and distracting. There’s plenty of stick and little to no carrot. It’s like asking someone to do as many pushups or squats in sixty seconds while turning a blind eye to their position and form. It encourages sloppiness and creates cognitive dissonance by tasking the player to improve at every metric simultaneously. Bosses will have progressively weirder twists and hit harder while the puzzle grid gets larger and the hints get less generous. It’s an ambitious challenge, but one that never actually feels hard. It creates obstacles and inconveniences rather than honing and refining the primary mechanic, and for this reason alone, PictoQuest is a letdown.

To enliven things, one-time consumable items can reveal tiles, restore hearts or freeze enemies, for a small gold fee. The game has no other tools to ameliorate the challenges it has set: it’s purely sink or swim. I can get behind a tiny set of rules, in the right circumstances it’s actually fantastically liberating (see: Miracle Merchant), but here the bonus effects feel hokey and tacked-on, as if someone tried to take a dollar-store puzzle booklet and make it come to life with the most hackneyed of video game tropes: a quest to save the kingdom. The fantasy theme and magic mechanics are merely window dressing, but also manage to be irksome and invasive.

There’s no great injustice in this: it’s not as if Picross puzzles are some holy grail, the pinnacle of the form which will tolerate no bastardization. Puzzles and high fantasy settings aren’t strange bedfellows by any means (see: Puzzle Quest and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes). But the limited gameplay makes the bare-bones nature of Picross puzzles feel a tad dated. For example, because each level is just a static layout, it could be brute-forced with a good memory and multiple failed attempts. It’s like two fun things decided to merge together haphazardly and the result is worse than either half separately.

The visuals are clean and bright, and the UI is nice, especially the greyed-out effects used to update the hint sections of the puzzle as they’re completed. The music strikes a clean balance between dynamism and peace: somewhere halfway between a battle theme and an elevator ditty. That, along with the note-taking system make for a thoughtful digital Picross experience, if only PictoQuest would stop pinging my character’s health bar. It also has critical hits and misses, for some god awful reason that is devoid of any informed statistics or player input.

PictoQuest is ‘gamey’ like microwaveable food is a meal: only just enough to do in a pinch, but never to be praised beyond the fact it is quick and cheap. Its sole saving grace is that all the gimmicks and stylish distractions are built upon a rock solid core of Picross, and the pixelated images do have some retro gamer appeal, if you’re feeling nostalgic or indulgent. Still, taken altogether, it’s a mightily mediocre experience, so in all honesty unless you’ve been craving this particular brand of puzzle, just stay away.

PictoQuest Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/