#and that whole other entire original project which is still very very much back shelf

[koohiss]

in my defense, i really am that easily distracted if it’s not silly little irl adult things like work, it’s the internet, or as of right now, other writing ideas

[galaxy98]

With the recent confirmation that we'll get to see more of Yunan and Olivia in season 3, I thought it would be nice to give a little rundown of a certain idea I had for a story prior to the trailer. Will I ever go through it, maybe not. For one thing, I have so many ideas that I want to do on AO3 so some things may have to be sacrificed. Not only that, but despite the episodes having a limited runtime, thus having less depth, it's likely going to turn out better than what I put out. That and it would be less convoluted. So here's a bullet list of the idea:

The working title for the fanfic is called Lady and the Newt. I wanted to go with Lady and the Merc or Lady and the General, though the former didn't made sense since Yunan is not a Mercenary. Also since it's a Disney show, I thought it would be funny to make the title a tongue-and-cheek reference to Lady and the Tramp.

The best way to describe this story is 2 lesbians on the run. There's also a butch and her daughter but we're not there yet.

Obviously, this would take place after True Colors, but based on the clips I've seen, it would've been drastically different.

For starters, it would begin with Olivia and Yunan trying to find a way to escape Newtopia. While Yunan is more concerned about finding a way out, Olivia didn't want to leave Marcy behind. At the same time, Yunan is also reluctant, albeit in denial, of wanting to go back there since she felt betrayed by both Andrias and Marcy, despite the latter being a child who was just being manipulated.

However, Olivia feels like she's complacent in letting this all happened, so she wanted to back there for the sake of ridding herself of that guilt. In other words, the both are still shooken up about the whole revelation.

They would eventually escape, but it will be a hollow victory.

This would be the first time we get to see Yunan without her armor. She took most of it off when trying to save an unconscious Olivia from drowning. By the time they set up camp, she will chuck her medals into the river in anger. She does keep the claws since they might come in handy, but other than that, she's completely vulnerable.

The fanfic would explore on the aspect about the expectations and pressure that Newtopia places on its society and how Yunan and Olivia were both affected by this mentality. Yunan ran away from home when she was in her teens because of her strained relationship with her family (Something that I will get into later on) and how due to being found by Andrias was she able to show off her skills that would work her way up to the ranks and then eventually the youngest general in the army, Scourge of the Sand Wars, Defeater of Ragnar the Wretched, yada yada yada. However, you would see why her family relationship was dysfunctional due to the infighting with her sister and mother who just happened to be a famous artisan (hint hint). Prior to becoming general, she felt like she had nothing to show for and that being a part of the court made her felt like she was special. But the problem is that she feels like she's nothing without the rank. So while Yunan constantly introduces herself because it's effective, it's also because that's all she has.

Olivia, on the other hand, didn't want to be a part of the court. The only reason she has that title in the first place was because her family already had connections to Andrias's so she was basically forced into the role. Royalty never particularly interest her but because she was so ingrained into the role, she ended up living a very isolated life. It's why she has a very stoic demeanor. Only when there's nothing else to do does she masks off the whole facade after keeping appearances for a whole day. During the night after they escape, she would lament about where it all went wrong.

There would be a retcon where Olivia originally planned on running away from Newtopia and she wanted Yunan to come with her. But with the combination of Yunan's commitment to the general rank, taking care of Marcy Wu, and then the events that soon follow, it never came to be. Olivia wondered if going through with that decision would've only make things worse.

There would be flashback chapters where we get to see the dynamics between the newts and the 13 year old girl. Any one of them involving Yunan would be an explanation as to why she initially felt betrayed by Marcy's actions. It's only later on in the story did she reconcile with those feelings.

Most of the story consist of them trying to get far away from Newtopia as possible, all while the fear of Marcy's fate lingers. In tale of dramatic irony, they assume that she may have escaped along with the others. But once they found refuge at Wartwood, they notice that Sasha was the only that's still here. That's when they figured the out news. Again, dramatic irony.

So that thing I mention about how there's also a butch and her daughter in this story, well here's what I mean. Priscilla and Pearl are the additional characters in this journey. The reason for their inclusion is because I had a particular subplot in mind. I loved the headcanon of Priscilla being Yunan's older sister because the potential dynamic makes so much sense. During their childhood, they were both competing for their mother's love, despite the fact that she didn't want them to fight. So due to jealously and the strained sibling relationship, it prompted Yunan to run away.

On an unrelated note, you can check out my poem fanfic on AO3 called O' Sister Of Mine. It explores the dynamic between Priscilla and Yunan as siblings.

The entire subplot would be about Yunan and Priscilla trying to repair their sibling relationship after years of fighting and not seeing each other. When her and Olivia cross paths with the two of them, Priscilla initially rejected their offer of going together. Because of Yunan and Olivia's status, she was worried that it was not only going to put a target on her back, but also her daughter's, which is the last thing she wants. But since they can't stay in one spot, they have no choice but to go together.

I think by looking at the pattern of where this story is going, the entire lesson is about not taking things for granted and being the change you want to be. The three girls may be the main focus of the show, but this fanfic explores on the side characters who were affected by the events.

Well there you have it. This is mostly just a rough draft of ideas but it does get the main gist across. Like I said before, this likely isn't going to see the light of day, especially when Matt Braly's crew is going to come up with something better than I can. This is one of those big AO3 projects that I'll have to keep on the shelf, at least temporarily when I don't have a lot on my plate right now.

But if you want to express any interest in me doing this in the future, feel free to reblog or leave a comment in the notes.

[the-river-person]

The Eminent Doctor Gaster

Honestly Sans felt he was handling the afternoon rather well so far. He’d gone the castle that morning to speak with the King about plans for the Trial, which was going ahead whether he wanted to do it or not. At the rate things were going, the uneasy feeling Monsters had towards the Human might turn into civil unrest if they let it fester. Then he’d gone to help Alphys, who was having a breakdown, again. She’d been doing so well too. The Solution had given her a boost of confidence and she’d even managed to make some headway on what Sans was referring to as the “Amalgamate Problem”. But not fast enough. Even before everybody could remember the resets, people had begun trying to reach her for news on their family members, who had fallen down and then somehow been miraculously cured, or so the original announcement had said. That was before everything had gone wrong and the Determination proved to be too much for their Monster bodies to handle. Now the Hotland Labs were receiving floods of letters from anxious family members who wanted word of their relatives, especially after recent events. Some were even angry at Alphys’ attempts to evade answering questions. Naturally this had only made her more reclusive than ever. Sans had tried to convince her to make an official report to Asgore about it all. It’s not like she’d intentionally caused the whole mess, and her experiment had been approved by the Crown to begin with. The only thing that could get her in trouble was not reporting it sooner, and the King would understand. But no amount of convincing had been enough to get Alphys to agree, she was so stressed out by the near endless phone calls and letters that she couldn’t even think straight. He’d left her after making her more hot chocolate and getting her to watch some anime he’d plucked off the shelf. Maybe she’d calm down enough to see reason. Paps was not the person he’d been counting on to make the day so much weirder. The clothes were one thing. It wasn’t as if he never wore other things. But the mysterious friend in Waterfall, the creepy grey kid, and the appearing door... those were starting to freak him out. What on earth had Papyrus gotten into here? Sure he trusted his brother, who seemed to know what he was doing for the most part, but he had no idea how to even begin to ask the stream of questions that was flooding through his mind. The grey door creaked open slowly, revealing rooms beyond with a much lighter stone that was almost grey until you got a closer look at it, then it was silvery with veins of black running through it. Sounds of running machinery and the clinking of glass was coming from inside, and Sans hesitated a little at the entrance, not sure he wanted to meet whoever was inside. But Papyrus strode confidently in and after a moment Sans followed him. It was a lab. Not as fancy and well equipped as the Hotland Labs, but still functional enough. A figure was working on something at one of the tables. They wore a black coat and had a face of white, and white hands. Somehow they seemed a little blurry at first, as if they weren’t entirely in sync with everything else. But then that blurriness went away and Sans gaped as the white face solidified into a skull and the hands into familiar bones, though with a hole through the center of each palm. “Ah,” said the person, looking rather surprised. “Welcome. I wasn’t really expecting visitors. Papyrus its good to see you again. And Sans... Hmmm. Yes. It is good to meet you...erm... again.” Again? Had they met before? Something tickled at the back of his mind, like a half forgotten memory. It swam up as he tried to recall it, offering him images of working at the Labs, the back of a tall skeletal figure in a black lab coat, working with Alphys on the DT Extractor. This figure was the same one that he remembered, he was pretty sure. And hadn’t Papyrus mentioned the previous Royal Scientist who nobody seemed to be able to remember? Had started to call him... “Uncle Gaster?” Clearly this was not the response the person had been expecting, for they jerked back in surprise. But still, they didn’t seem displeased about it. “Why yes. I am, or was, your Uncle Gaster. Also Doctor Gaster if you wish. I do prefer the use of an Honorific, it makes me feel important.” The joke was rather dry, but Sans couldn’t help but chuckle a little anyway. The tension in the air eased a little. “Would you care to see what I’m working on? I’d offer you refreshments of some kind, but I’m afraid I have none at the moment.” Sans and Papyrus followed him further into the cave. Clearly it had once been much smaller, but large parts of the walls had been dug into, making more room  available for the tables and lab equipment. Gaster led them towards a particular table where bits of the strangely colored stone from the walls was broken into various pieces and some were being subjected to heat or chemicals. “WOWEE!” said Papyrus as he bent to look at the silvery liquid in a vial suspended over a bunsen burner. “NONE OF THIS WAS HERE WHEN I VISITED THE FIRST TIME!” Gaster smiled, “Yes indeed. I’ve begun to feel more like myself and get back into researching and experimentation.” He looked rather proud of himself, and Sans was struck with the intense feeling of familiarity. He knew this Monster. Knew how how he worked and what the tilt of his head meant, knew how he’d pretend to be finishing up work as they all left for home and then stay for several hours more to continue with some project or another. He understood Gaster as if he’d worked alongside him for years, which according to Papyrus, he probably had. “Looks like you’ve had a bit of a rocky start then,” he quipped with a gestured towards the stone fragments. It had been a moment before he’d managed to come up with a pun for it. Somehow it was getting harder and harder to pop out with them on the spot. It hadn’t been too big a deal at first, after all, he’d spent who knows how long doing the same puns over and over. He’d just assumed he was a little rusty at it. But every day it was a little harder for him to throw them out as quickly as he used to. Though of course he could still come up with jokes and puns at night so that he could use them later during the day. It was just when he was on the spot. Nervousness, that was all. Papyrus groaned and facepalmed but Gaster looked first confused, and then his face broke into a gleeful smile. “Of Quartz, but I managed to get back into things quick enough. I just had to be boulder with my ideas.” Sans doubled over laughing and Papyrus gave a shout of rage. “OH MY GOD! YOU TWO ARE JUST THE WORST! WHY ME!?” “Heh, Sorry Bro.” Sans made no attempt to look even remotely sorry. “So Doc, what is this fancy stone of yours?” Picking up one of the fragments, Gaster placed it under a microscope for them to view. “It’s actually quite fascinating. Though normal viewing of it makes it appear smooth, under close examination you can see the crystalline structure of the stone, which I’ve named K︎e︎n︎ó︎n. And of course the black veins are actually micro fractures in the stone, but instead of weakening it they actually make it much stronger than normal. This is because whenever the stone breaks it releases a blackish substance in an attempt to bind itself to the greater whole, resulting in a much stronger piece of stone than a fragment free from flaws.” Sans bent to gaze into the microscope. He could see the ridges and facets of the tiny crystals and the spiderwebbing of tiny cracks that covered the stone. There was also something else there, something he couldn’t quite pin down about the stuff, but it made him feel odd. But he shrugged the feeling away, from what he remembered, Gaster had always been experimenting with weird stuff and nobody ever got hurt... Except...somehow Gaster himself had vanished, not only from the Underground, but also from everyone’s memories. All records of him were gone or altered or unreadable. Only the things that couldn’t be erased were still around, like the Core, and the DT Extractor... Things that involved other people. Had it been some experiment that had landed the scientist here? Or something else? “My apologies, Papyrus!” exclaimed Gaster after about five minutes of happily talking about his experiments and findings. “I’d completely forgotten to ask if there was a reason for your visit! I’m more than happy to see you at any time, but I had thought that you might try to phone ahead or something.” Papyrus shifted, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “AH YES,” he said and hesitated. This caught Sans’ attention and he drew himself back from the pool of memories he was drudging up from the forgotten past. Paps wasn’t usually nervous about things unless it was serious. “I’VE ACTUALLY COME TO ASK YOUR ADVICE. YOU SEE, I HAVE THIS FRIEND. HE... HE ACTUALLY IS A VERY SMALL GOLDEN FLOWER WHO CAN TALK AND-” Both Sans and Gaster reacted in shock. Sans felt his eye sockets go dark, the white light that normally acted as pupils vanishing in his sudden fear and dread. Gaster on the other hand looked like someone had struck him and he stiffened. “A small golden flower?” the scientist asked, very calmly despite how he was acting physically. “What on earth has the Prince done now?” There was a long moment of silence as both brothers took in those words. In unison they turned on Gaster. “WHAT?!”

[nyrator]

another long vent post about depression/anxiety

extremely depressed tonight

first made the mistake of driving myself to the grocery store at 6pm, first I had to try scraping the ice off the windshield with nothing but a broom and bare hands, then driving itself was nightmareish, the car feels like a death trap to me, very loose and sloppy compared to my last car, so loud and uncomfortable with no audible music to calm my nerves. My eyes have worsened to the point where I can’t see anything at night- glare takes up my whole vision, even with anti-glare shades. I was driving well below the speed limit the entire time and still almost hit three pedestrians who were all recklessly out on the roads in all black for whatever reason. My nerves are completely shot from it, my chest feels like I’m in a vice and can’t breathe, my eyes are wide open and hunched over the steering wheel, and my body feels both like I’m about to wet myself at any moment and that I’m too stiff/tense/frozen to function as a human at all, it’s that fight-or-flight response at its extreme. Meanwhile, my skin must be weak- my knuckles bleed when driving, and my wrists bled just from carrying in bags of groceries.

then getting home and just dealing with personal drama of someone I know who is so depressed and self destructive and too smart to reason with, who refuses/is unable to seek professional help, who just doesn’t understand or just can’t help venting to me nonstop, no matter how much I beg them not to over and over- their life is so terrible that suicide seems like the only option to them, and I don’t want them to do so, but I can’t keep suffering like this either and I feel like the only thing preventing them from doing so, as poor a job as I do as a human being anyway. But I can’t help them if they can’t help themselves, even if they were just ate a bit better, or just had a journal or someone anonymous they could talk to, but it seems inescapable and impossible to change anything and all we do is argue over it until I snap at them to leave me alone. That person is probably reading this right now and probably hating it, but I doubt anyone on this site even knows who they are.

Tuesday morning, I couldn’t sleep at all from anxiety- it was so severe and inescapable, I laid in bed for four hours feeling like I was dying until I was finally able to sleep for two hours. I can’t seem to stay asleep longer than two hours anymore. Was supposed to hang out with friends that day, but between lack of sleep, depression, and my absolute terror at driving in a snowstorm, I ended up just staying home.

Anxiety has gotten so bad again. I know a lot of how the mechanics work behind it, I know a lot of pains are from tension and lack of breathing. But my old coping mechanisms don’t work anymore. I can focus on breathing for several minutes straight and then fall right back into suffocating. Music, counting things, meditating, none of it helps anymore.

One way to describe the feeling of anxiety- it’s kind of like when you fall asleep on your arm, and you feel all the blood rushing back into it and that tingling sensation. Imagine that, maybe a bit less, but throughout your entire body (especially chest), your body is stiff and not numb, and your entire body is vibrating or shivering/shaking or something.

I still spend 16+ hours laying in bed every single day. When I got home from shopping, the walking around (and the stress of driving) was enough to send me straight to bed, I was so tired and weak. It’s probably why I don’t sleep properly, I’m half awake in bed all the time, what need is there for sleep

I have mail I haven’t opened, taxes I still have to do, messes to clean, and don’t care for any of it. Can’t even talk about some things I’ve been doing to myself out of spite or general depression, the way I’ve been abusing. I promise to try not to do anything too crazy or directly harmful, but even then I worry about slipping up- I tried one thing I shouldn’t talk about, which wasn’t too serious, but still seriously concerning how easy it was to try doing

still haven’t contacted a therapist, my fear of calling someone is so strong I can’t overcome it, especially not after just waking up. Talked to some friends, some agree that I should, at least one thinks it’s a waste of time and money- up to $125 per session to just get a glorified phone call thanks to covid restrictions. I just don’t see the point if I’m still stuck in my apartment at my computer, especially if I have an internet addiction already.

The lack of doing anything is driving me insane, I think. I’ve played four single player games in 2020- ACNH, KH MoM, Panel de Pon, and Picross. In terms of things watched on my own, probably just Japan Sinks and whatever else was on Netflix the few months I had it. Don’t feel motivated to play or watch anything anymore, nothing seems interesting, and mostly just do things with friends if at all

Even ACNH, the game I play the most, I barely do anything in it- mostly just get new items from stores, that’s it. My island decorating has come to a hard halt, mostly because I barely have any furniture I’d like to embellish it with, and mainly because I have no ideas to layout most of it

I want to create, but don’t have the energy to make anything at all. Rotten Nyan is still my current goal, but anxiety has made it next to impossible to work on. I’ve tried several times the past few weeks, all met with failure- the anxiety’s too much, half the time I don’t even know what’s causing it, but my body just gets too tense and cramped without even doing anything, and I just can’t breathe at all while working on it.

Thought about making an omake comic for it, then realized what a terrible idea it was, and how hard it is to draw comics in general. Or anything in general. Wrote down the entire comic while laying in bed one day, went to draw it, was unable to, tried making it a yonkoma, gave up, and felt sick thinking of all the gross things in it that I just made a vent description of Middle Lave and just posted that to the RN tumblr instead.

I can’t think of any ideas, I feel like my art has regressed- I’ve taken more shortcuts for the sake of my hands tensing so fast from anxiety, and I’ve gotten decent at drawing middle Lave I feel, but anything besides a character standing is impossible for me- any environments or character interactions that I’d love to do just feel impossible, let alone my inability to write good ones. Anything I try to think of writing-wise always ends up the same gross content that burned into my memories that I just can’t feel comfortable talking about much at all, nor do I think it’s content people want to see at all.

There’s a lot of detailed kind of art I’d like to do. I kind of want to loosen my restrictions on myself and just draw whatever suffering I feel like, maybe once I use the RN twitter more I might get a little more courage to do so. I see many artists draw detailed scenes in single images, and no matter how hard I try, I just can’t capture that feeling.

Part of me feels torn about it being an autobiography for people to relate to, and being a suffering experience for people to find some weird enjoyment out of. I feel like I’ve lost sight of what it was originally meant to be and now just enjoy “bullying” Middle Lave half the time I guess, but unfortunately for me, bullying makes me feel like vomiting and is hard to draw consistently- maybe I’m too nice. I don’t know, I’m just rambling at this point. The comic is still laid out and just meant to explore the life of Lave, but it’s just so hard to work on.

In terms of other things, I have no idea what to do

Vtuber/streaming? Hate my voice, can’t focus on learning what I need for it in terms of rigging and texturing models. I only know the basics of making 3D things and nothing else.

Console art? I already designed all the ones I’m mainly interested in, but like I mentioned before, can’t think of any character interactions at all that I feel like drawing.

Making a game? I know 2k3 well enough to make anything in it event-wise, though never got over my map failings, and I can’t commit to anything long-term. Godot or another program, or programming in general? Good luck.

I just want to make something, work on a project without losing steam or letting anxiety prevent me from learning. Can’t focus on anything long enough to learn it- Japanese, making a game, programming, a new hobby, anything. I just don’t have the drive to do anything and will give up anything I even try to start, so what’s the point in even trying anything. I have books I haven’t read that I’ve been meaning to read for years, and still don’t have an ounce of energy to want to even organize them on their shelf, let alone open it

At the very least, I got my first big commission (second one ever), designing an OC for someone, and it’s going well, though tonight I’ve lost steam to finish it, and I hope I can get it back tomorrow to try to finalize it.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I really wish I just had someone guide me with art- I miss doing those 30 day challenge kind of things, or “send a number/emoji” kind of asks for OCs, but tumblr’s so inactive that I don’t see them on my dash anymore, and don’t know how to even look for them, especially not on sites like twitter these days. Though, the problem is, no one knows exactly what I like, and I feel awful letting people down if they ask for something I don’t want to draw

I can’t focus on exercise long term, and I’m so out of practice that exhaustion is too strong to beat. I’ve been trying to walk up and down on a step stool for exercise to get me back into basic movement, but even that’s too tiring. Want to do it while watching something, then I realize, I don’t watch anything at all, not even youtube, just an occasional artist stream that I mainly chat with rather than watch

I feel like I’m going to collapse if I turn or move too suddenly, and my eyes are absolutely terrible- glasses are okay, but without them I’m completely blind now- not just blind, but it’s like my eyes see at two different angles sometimes, like one is slanted or something, very disorientating.

It’s 7:30AM, and no desire to sleep at all. Terrified of laying in bed and letting anxiety take over me again. Part of me wants to become completely nocturnal and just avoid everyone during the day and just respond to messages in the AM hours, just wake up at midnight each day and avoid dealing with people. Go to sleep when everyone starts to get active and just isolate myself entirely from society.

I feel like I exist with no purpose whatsoever, and it’s driving me insane- not that life is meant to have a purpose, but I could at least be doing something more than laying in bed all day every day for a year

[almasexya]

Monster Monday: Godzilla

Well, I’ve decided to do it.

I’m going to go through every Kaiju movie that Toho has put out, front to back. We’re in that phase of quarantine y’all, and I’ve got an entire shelf full of these. I’ll try to keep the general structure of these write-ups fairly similar, with an overview and review of the movie, along with how I watched it and if I’ve seen it before.

So we might as well start at the beginning, and that beginning is of course, 1954′s Godzilla, or Gojira if you prefer the Japanese pronunciation. With 36 Japanese-language releases and two American remakes, along with multiple cartoon shows, the Godzilla series is one of, if not the longest-running film series out there, and it was starting up what we’d now call a “cinematic universe” way before Nick Fury showed up at the end of the first Iron Man.

Toho, the studio behind the Godzilla series also made other kaiju movies, and by the fourth Godzilla sequel they started tying these other creatures into their cash cow franchise, and before you knew it, there was a whole continuity. There have been different directors, writers, actors, monsters, you name it, but Godzilla himself is always a constant. While the continuity may at times be tenuous or outright bizarre, it is very much present, and it's what makes these movies so fun.

Though you won’t see any of that in the original Godzilla. Aside from possibly Shin Godzilla, there’s no other Godzilla movie that even comes close to the original, either in its bleak tone or in its stellar quality. This is probably my fourth or fifth time with the original Godzilla, and this time around I watched it on the 15-film Criterion set, though there’s also a single DVD/Blu Ray release of the Criterion edit as well.

The film begins with a fishing ship being destroyed by a strange, bright flash from under the sea. No ones survives, and countless more ships go missing, (in a fashion that absolutely evokes the Lucky Dragon incident, which in 1956 was still a painful memory) and a vicious typhoon strikes nearby Odo Island, an expedition travels there to try and find out what’s happening. Among the crew are three of our main characters, Ogata, a salvage ship captain, (Akira Takarada) his girlfriend Emiko, (Momoko Kochi) and her father and renowned paleontologist Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura). The trio encounter Godzilla, who rampages through the island before returning to the sea.

Yamane presents his research back in Tokyo, concluding that Godzilla is an ancient dinosaur disturbed by H-Bomb testing. Lines are drawn, with many wanting to kill the creature, and others, prominently Yamane, who wish to leave the creature be and study it. This conflict brings in our fourth protagonist, Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) a reclusive scientist working on a dangerous project.

Afterwards, Godzilla attacks Tokyo, first briefly and then in full force, destroying buildings and incinerating countless civilians with his atomic breath. Nothing the military does has any effect on the beast, and he levels huge swaths of the city before returning to the sea. In the aftermath of the attack, scores of people are dead and even more are sickened with radiation poisoning. Emiko and Ogata convince Serizawa to use his creation, a weapon known as the oxygen destroyer, to try and kill Godzilla. Ogata and Serizawa dive into the sea and release the oxygen destroyer, after which Serizawa cuts his line to the ship and dies with the monster, so that his research can never be used again.

The film itself is a grim, bleak metaphor for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with a giant radioactive dinosaur standing in for the atomic bombs. The carnage Godzilla causes is played completely straight - hospitals are crowded with victims, and in one poignant scene that eventually wins over the reticent Serizawa, a children’s choir sings a stirring dirge for the dead, and it’s a scene that can’t help but stay with you.

Ishiro Honda’s direction is the deft, with sweeping shots of Godzilla that convey power and menace that none of the sequels can match up to. Scenes of Tokyo burning with Godzilla silhouetted against the flames have a chilling effect, and the camera lingers on them for just the right amount of time.

The stirring, bombastic score by Akira Ifukube deserves special mention as well. Many of the themes that would become franchise classics were born here, and they have an optimistic, brassy quality that lend excitement to the military scenes, as well as dread to the scenes of destruction.

Eiji Tsuburaya’s effects work is also stellar, especially considering this was their first real test of what would become a winning formula. The model cities are top notch, though there are a few shots of falling cars and trucks that have a toy-like quality to them, they’re gone in seconds and don’t detract from the experience. The Godzilla suit itself, a 220 lb beast that suit actor Harou Nakajima could only wear for around three minutes at a time without fainting, looks fantastic, though it’s clearly bulky and difficult for the actor to move in. The same praise can’t be given to the hand puppet used for the close ups of Godzilla, which looks clearly nothing like the suit and is really the only outright failure of the film. Later sequels would handle it better, so it’s difficult to fault the team too much when they were still finding their feet.

Overall, the original Godzilla is a tour de force, and it’s damn hard to find anything negative to say about it. The performances are great, and the human story draws you in, waiting for Godzilla to finally appear (though unfortunately his first on-screen appearance is in puppet form, which lessens the gravity a bit). The haunted Dr. Serizawa deserves a special mention here, a clear nod to the legacy of the atom bomb, he is torn apart by guilt that his invention (that he created on accident) could be used to cause yet more harm to the world. Dr. Yamane, in his desire to see Godzilla protected, is clearly wracked with pain seeing this creature that humanity unleashed have to die, yet he knows even more suffering will follow if it lives.

The story is tight and a joy to watch - there’s a palpable sense of dread whenever Godzilla is onscreen, and Nakajima moves slowly and deliberately, like a confused animal reacting to the world around him. Unlike many of the American monster movies from the same time period, the cast have sympathy for the monster, and there’s no great victory in killing it, only sadness both for the sake of Godzilla and Serizawa, who couldn’t bear to live in a world that would abuse his invention.

If you haven’t seen the original Godzilla, or if you’re more familiar with the campy 60s and 70s sequels like Godzilla vs. Megalon, do yourself a favor and watch this one. Clocking in at 96 minutes, there’s no scene wasted, and it’s a real thrill to see where the king of the monsters came from.

The film ends with a melancholy Dr. Yamane ruminating on the possibility of another Godzilla out there, waiting to be released if humanity continued its nuclear testing. That Godzilla, and not the original, would be back, much sooner than the good doctor expected.

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 163

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 15 - “Nozomi’s Hustled Help!” Date watched: 6 December 2019 Original air date: 13 May 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Uq68glk Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

without the bowl this looks like a very different kind of accident

Nozomi’s mom is feeling under the weather and Nozomi has to take care of her! Except, as you know, Nozomi is pretty clumsy, and everyone is afraid she’ll do more harm than good. It’s a whole episode of slips, spills, shatters, and shakes. Also, Gamao is a lazy fuck. Let’s dig in!

The Plot

Rin and her mother, Kazu, visit Nozomi’s mother, Megumi, at her salon: Espoir Hair & Make (note: “Make” is a Japanese abbreviation for “makeup” and I hate it). Through their chatter we learn that the two mothers were also childhood friends, which is a fun bit of world building. Unfortunately, Megumi is getting a headache, so Kazu advises her to go home early and get some rest. She obliges, and when Nozomi finds out why her mom is home so early, she takes it upon herself to do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and other chores for the day while her mom rests. Unfortunately, Nozomi is a klutz and makes a bigger mess, spilling water, breaking glasses, and overloading the washing machine. The commotion makes it hard for Megumi to sleep, and of course she’s worried about her daughter, but Nozomi just tells her to go back to bed and rest!

Over at Natts House, Rin has gotten wind that Nozomi is on the hook for dinner and chores, and worries because she knows how terrible Nozomi is at the basics. The other girls, as well as Coco and Nuts, recount their own experiences of her clumsiness and ineptitude, and come to the conclusion that her mother is in danger and they have to go help Nozomi before she burns the place down. However, they’re compelled by the power of PLOT to go to the grocery store first, and Kazu shows up at the Yumehara residence instead. She sees the mess and gently offers to help Nozomi clean up and prepare some warm food for her mother, which she had been trying to do. She commends Nozomi for her effort, saying that her mother would be proud. Now that she’s cheered up, Nozomi needs some eggs for the porridge she wants to make, so it’s off to the grocery store for her as well.

What none of the girls know is that Gamao has taken up a job at this grocery store. As usual, he is extremely lazy and belligerent, so when he sees the girls walking around he seizes his opportunity to try to steal the Dream Collet and leverage his way back into Nightmare by turning a cash register into a Kowaina and wrecking the store. The girls fight back, and Gamao gives them some grief about how he’ll totally leave them alone if they just give him the Dream Collet. Naturally they do not, and Nozomi yells about how she needs to get home to see her mom. They defeat the Kowaina, Gamao flees and apparently abandons his job again, and order is restored. While the girls are out, Kazu teases Megumi that Nozomi is actually more competent than she was at that age, and Megumi begs her not to tell that to their daughters.

All five girls follow Nozomi back to her apartment to help out, and introduce themselves to Megumi and Kazu, who thank them for looking out for Nozomi and Rin. Nozomi then assures her mother that everything will be just fine now that they’re all there to help, so just relax and they’ll do all the work.

Well it turns out, Urara, Komachi, and Karen are all equally clueless about what to do, and too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth. Urara breaks some dishes, Karen gets eggshells in the egg mix and sees this as fine, Komachi is off in her own world chopping bean jelly, and Rin is pulled five ways to sunday trying to call all of them out, so the porridge burns again. Coco and Nuts start yelling at them, which the mothers hear and rush to investigate. Nozomi tries to assure them everything is fine even as the other girls are yelling from around the corner that it’s burnt. Both mothers nearly faint from exhaustion, exasperation, and bewilderment at the chaos unfolding in this apartment, and that’s how we end.

The Analysis

What a fun episode. It manages to balance out comedy and empathy, a strong suit of this show in particular. The plot is nothing to write home about, so the characters really make this episode, more than in some others. That’s kind of the theme of this part of the show, fleshing out the world and characters so the audience roots for them and cares about them, and I’m not complaining. Due to this, my assessment for this episode is going to focus on the characters and their interactions with each other.

On the one hand, Nozomi is trying her hardest to take care of her mom, and I can’t disrespect that. She’s going above and beyond even if she’s klutzing it up. That’s Nozomi’s strength, she perseveres, even as she messes things up, she never quits. Her dedication to a cause is truly admirable and a good role model for everyone to see. Kazu recognizes this, when she comes over and sees that Nozomi has made a mess of the house, she still complements Nozomi for trying so hard to help her mom, instead of scolding her or acting exasperated or anything of the sort. She then helps Nozomi to clean up, because she recognizes that Nozomi needs the help, but she does it all gently and kindly. In contrast to this, all of Nozomi’s friends give her grief, directly and indirectly. It’s a good reminder that, however mature the girls may be, they’re still growing and learning. They make bad choices sometimes, act a little mean, but they do right in the end. Kazu is also sympathetic because, evidently, Megumi was even more clumsy as a child, so she’s spent her whole life dealing with this.

I particularly like the revelation towards the end that, despite all their fears that Nozomi can’t take care of her mother because she’s so clumsy, none of the other girls bar Rin are really any better. Karen gets waited on hand and foot so she doesn’t realize egg shells don’t go in the mixture. Urara is also clumsy like Nozomi and has probably never been in a kitchen before, except sets. Komachi is just off in her own world, cutting bean jelly because it’s all she knows. Rin has enough common sense to say “no this is wrong” but isn’t able to stop all four of the others from wrecking the kitchen all over again. It’s a karmic payoff to an entire episode of going “oh no we can’t give Nozomi any responsibilities, she’s too clumsy” when she’s trying her best.

Nozomi and Rin being second generation friends is a really cool little detail. It helps to expand their world and give their parents a little bit of easy character, especially since they’ve both only had brief appearances prior to this. We get to see more about where each of them gets their personalities, but also how they differ from their parents. Kazu is very patient and understanding, while Rin tends to be more vocally critical. However, though she may not have inherited her mother’s demeanor, she got her eye for flower arranging, and apparently she’s starting to resemble her mother at a similar age as well. Megumi, meanwhile, appears much more composed than her daughter, but Kazu informs us that she used to be even clumsier than Nozomi, so we know where she gets it from. Age seems to have mellowed her out, and will presumably have the same effect on her daughter. Both mothers are kind and loving, of course, embracing their children’s shortcomings and thankful for their roles in each other’s lives. Behind closed doors, Kazu also gives Megumi a friendly ribbing about her past behaviors, a lighter version of how Rin and Nozomi act today, and that’s a delight.

Okay, last order of business... Gamao. Gamao is a lazy slob who sleeps on the job (even though he probably got plenty of sleep the night before), acts rude to his supervisor, and complains when she tries to make him do his job. He doesn’t know how to work the register? (doubtful, or he would have raised that concern sooner) Fine, he can go stock shelves. I’ve been a stocker before. Sure it’s not the easiest job in the world, but it keeps you busy and out of the way, and there’s many more challenging positions as well. But nope, lazy slob Gamao calls this “employee abuse” even as he makes his job easier by placing cans on the shelf with his tongue instead of arms.

The fact that Gamao is a lazy slob is not at all new, that’s been a recurring theme of his character, but he continues to impress with every new low. Let’s recap his journey so far:

He ran away from Nightmare when he couldn’t retrieve the Dream Collet from Dream, Rouge, and Lemonade

He was starving on the streets, trying to figure out what to do for food, before finally accepting he’d have to get another job

He was working as a janitor at a park, picking up litter, and presumably abandoned that position after fighting the girls

He works as a checkout clerk and stocker at a supermarket, and probably abandoned that position after fighting the girls

For better or worse, Gamao is the most predictable of the villains right now. He’s belligerent, lazy, and thinks everyone else is responsible for his problems. He sees the Precures as the reason he struggles to afford food, and will always attack them, trying to obtain the Dream Collet to bargain his way back into Nightmare. If it sounds like I hate him, I don’t. I enjoy his episodes, but he really only has one scheme and not much room to switch it up, unlike the others. He serves as an easy foil when the lesson of the episode is about the value of hard work, because he wants everything handed to him on a silver platter. in this case, he serves his purpose, even if it is very convenient that Rin, Urara, Komachi, and Karen decided to go to the grocery store with no explanation, so all five girls could be together to fight him.

 In conclusion, this is a great episode about family, and doing what you can in a rough situation. We get to see Nozomi’s serious side, and learned a little more about her and Rin’s moms.

Next time, Komachi learns how to take criticism.... and Nuts learns how to give it. Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 kettei!

[anythingsaidproductions]

My song “Riot Grrrl Zine” is a long time coming from the way I grew up. Being a child in the 90’s put me in an odd spot with finding what it was to be empowered as a girl. Flooded with pop culture, I became immersed in a certain idea of “GIRL POWER” that would later drown me. I saw women who performed music in an entirely different way than I saw men. Therefore, as I grew into a young woman who, herself, wanted to be a singer, my idea of what I had to look like became my main focus.

I appreciated the large landscape of possibilities with music from a young age. I loved how it made me feel, without having to be touched. As I grew up, insecurities would set in, and self doubt would pave the way to self sabotage. The desire inside to sing and perform music has never been questioned. I simply didn’t see in the mirror what I saw on TV, or in magazines. The reality of being a pop singer felt like less of a possibility as time went on.

By the time I was 15, I had dealt with “normal” issues like parents divorcing, moving towns, and gaining emotional-eating weight. The end result left me unhappy with my body and unhappy with myself ultimately. At that age, I had made attempts at self-harm and being bulimic, but I wasn’t able to push past the physical pain of it. When a friend of mine gave me a burned CD of The Used’s self-titled album, I was reminded of how music numbed my emotional pain. I couldn’t get enough of this beautiful, angry and very sad music. Anything in this genre, I became obsessed with. Linkin Park, Taking Back Sunday, My Chemical Romance became my remedy to life.

By the time I was 18, I was figuring out music was my only answer. I remembered how badly I wanted to be a pop star when I was younger, but I didn’t look like Britney or Christina. I started desperately seeking a woman to look to for guidance. Paramore became my rock. They embodied the music that got me through my years, but had a woman singer who I could relate to. I no longer wanted to be a popstar, I wanted to be able to sing. Sing my heart out with every bit of pain I was drowning in.

The problem was that every time I opened my mouth to sing, my childhood insecurities resurfaced. I was comparing myself to the level of talent and skill of experience Hayley Williams had herself. I just wanted to make music that felt good and sounded good, but I had no real understanding of what it took to become that level of singer.

I did what I knew I could, and I found a voice teacher who specialized in live-performance singing and rock music based training. I trained and I practiced and I visualized and I believed this was happening for me. I believed that my dreams were around the corner, and I was going to be on stage with Paramore themselves, singing a duet. I worked hard, and started writing a lot of music. I was able to write and record a 6 song EP entirely on my own.

As quickly as I believed it was happening, I just as quickly lost hope in my dream. The EP I put out didn’t get me signed, it didn’t blow up on soundcloud, and my youtube videos of song covers weren’t going viral. I blamed everything on not being “good enough.” Finally, the glorious day came when I watched the documentary called Miss Representation. I took the red pill, and I woke up from “the matrix” of the patriarchy. I had no idea how my mind was manipulated into seeing myself as a participant in this world.

Flashbacks to being 10 years old, in the locker room of the tennis club, as my grandmother stands me in front of a mirror. She pinches my tummy, which is exposed from my two piece bathing suit, and tells me “This is fat. You don’t want this.” She was a Hollywood starlet, and I know honestly it wasn’t her fault she believed this was the base of a woman’s value. She was looking out for me, the best way she knew how. In her industry, to be skinny, was to be liked. This is what fed my doubt for the next decade of my life.

At 25, I watched the documentary The Punk Singer, about Kathleen Hanna and her part in the Riot Grrrl movement. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had the green light to go after my dreams. I wanted to sing my pain, and these women knew how. The honesty of their experiences, being screamed through a microphone was a whole new world for me. Up until this point, I thought only men could do this, and definitely the only ones who were taken seriously. I finally saw that I could make my music, and not have to look or sound a certain way.

I desperately sought anyone who would want to join me in my crusade to make loud music. I struggled to find bandmates, and so I looked to my partner of 5 years. She had originally introduced me to Riot Grrrl music, so I asked if she’d be willing to learn the bass guitar. A short amount of time went by before our band, I Dream of Darlene, was created. We wanted the name to combine our passion for strong females in good sitcom television, and our “punk rock” attitude. Naming our band after Darlene Connor from the show Roseanne, we felt like we had plenty of inspiration to get us going. We wrote songs surprisingly well together, and made a set list we were both proud of.

I was too eager. I was too earnest. I wanted to be on stage creating an experience. I booked us shows, and before I knew it, we were on stage. Simple rhythms and easy chord progressions were trying to carry the meaningful message I felt like I was singing. When the show I had put the most time and thought into finally came, we played to a nearly empty venue. Drive and passion are important, but I was reluctant to do the work before putting it on display.

Hiend sight truly is the clear vision of our actions, and most definitely the mistakes. The self doubt was obviously still eating me from the inside, because I practiced music the same way I looked in the mirror, with blinders. I never really allowed myself to examine my body too closely, for fear of how badly I would tear myself apart. I never allowed myself to participate in my own music, for fear of hating what I was working on. I don’t think I ever truly gained the calluses on my fingers that would have led to proper guitar playing.

Like every other project up until this point in my life, I put it up on the shelf to be finished at another point. This was in 2016, and since then I stopped performing live. I went to my voice lessons, but still hiding away from the world. Until I got an invitation to audition for t.v. show The Voice. I thought to myself, this is it! Immediately, I began my training like I was going to the Olympics. I pushed myself farther than I ever had before, my own dedication actually inspired me. I sang so much, that come the audition, my throat and voice was shot. Regardless of not getting it, leaving the audition I was elated. I was actually doing what I had always wanted to do. Sing.

A lot of events happened in my life between 2016 to 2019 that molded me and helped me grow. For a year, my wife and I took care of our niece when she was just 10 months old. I grew patience, I grew understanding, but most of all I gained the faith in my capabilities to go after any dream of mine if I took the right steps.

My voice teacher set me up with his best friend’s son to produce a song together. For years, he had told me that he loved my song “Riot Grrrl Zine,” and promoted it more than I ever did. It needed some finishing touches before being sent off to be produced, so I sat down with my wife and asked her how she first discovered the music of the riot grrrl movement. I wanted the song to have these answers for people hearing it for the first time, and who don’t know about this movement. Filling in some new lyrics, and finding a bridge to complete the song, finally it was finished and sent off to the producer. Now I waited... Finally the day came to go to the studio. Things were finally moving forward and I was going to a real music studio to record my own song!

The hardest lesson to learn is that I needed to experience life to grow. No book or movie can give the full understanding it takes to make things happen. I sat back in my comfort zone for many years, hoping that enough wishing on stars was going to make things happen. Action has to take place, and the more times that action occurs, the stronger that dream becomes a reality.

“Riot Grrrl Zine” is my story of how I may not have grown up with riot grrrl music, but it eventually reached me and made its imprint on me. I may not embody the punk rock spirit entirely, but the music is a piece of me and I am excited to share this with the world.

[uselessdiceroller]

Little Bookshop Thought~

hi, i haven’t had the opportunity to read the book yet, watched the series in one sitting on a school night, and live in the USA. please have mercy on my dumb self, and feel free to add on!

One day, a very tired, confused, and terrified teenager comes into Aziraphale’s bookshop.

Probably pulled an all nighter, looks extremely stressed & desperate. Super tense posture, keeps glancing around and taking quick peaks at Aziraphale, clearly not wanting to be in there in the first place.

Usually, Azirphale really hates people coming into his bookshop, and would absolutely do the most to get them out as soon as possible. But this kid can’t be older than 16, and looks like it’s a cat caught in the rain, or a mouse trapped in a barn completely filled with cats.

Fear is practically radiating out of this kid, and after the whole saving the world from Armageddon situation, Aziraphale really just can’t bring himself to start glaring at an already terrified out of their mind kid.

The 16-year-old-or-so is still looking around and nearly has a heart attack when Aziraphale is suddenly next to them asking if they need any help.

Immediately, they’re like “Oh no, nope! All good! I was just leaving! Sorry!”

Aziraphale just internally screaming because Wait no no no I’m sorry I didn’t mean to scare you--

Him just being like, “It’s okay, you’re quite alright. Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you?”

Kid .5 seconds away from booking it, but after seeing how genuinely concerned Aziraphale is being, and even though he was known to be an asshole to customers, they REALLY needed to find this information out for their project and were struggling to find information elsewhere. So, okay, I’ll ask and see if he has anything.

The 16-year-old-or-so explains how they have this history project due, but they’re really struggling finding good sources and information to use. They ask if he has anything on the topic.

Aziraphale just lights up because he practically knows this topic by heart. Tells the kid to follow him to a different shelf, because he knows exactly which book would be helpful.

Kid is taken off guard, because is this really the same guy people say looked like he was going to murder them and curse their entire bloodline if they as much as blinked in a books direction?

The whole way, Aziraphale is just rambling about this event and time in history. Oh, it was such an interesting time! And this event? Astonishing! Well, not REALLY astonishing. Most history is, well, bleak, and bloody, and- well, it wasn’t all sunshine and halos, that’s for certain, but my if it wasn’t intriguing! Oh! There was this one person--

The 16-year-old-or-so getting whiplash from both the overwhelming amount of information, and the giant smile Aziraphale had, rather than a glare they had to mentally prepare for.

Aziraphale finds the exact book, and miracles a copy of it to give to the kid. (He wanted to help the kid, of course, but also... books. Need Aziraphale say more?) (Learning human magic and sleight of hand really was helpful in situations like this.)

The kid, still unable to even begin processing this whole situation, thanks him and asks how much it costs.

Aziraphale telling them this book is on the house. He knew the value of his books by heart, but it felt wrong charging for a miracled copy, and, hey, it was the least he could do for nearly giving this kid a heart attack.

Kid asks if he’s positive, and they have money, and are you sure--

Aziraphale just smiles, waves his hand, and ensures them it’s no problem, and that he hoped he helped.

Neither Aziraphale or the kid forget about this encounter. Aziraphale still really tries to keep people away from his shop, and the kid finally has some good bits of information for their project.

Not too long later, the kid comes back for some more help. They’re still a bit wary, because they might have just caught him on an overwhelmingly good day and you can’t be too careful, but he seems like he’s a historian or something and he clearly knows a lot,, so… it wouldn’t hurt too much to try, right?

Aziraphale recognizes the kid, and helps them immediately. The kid gets the information they need, thanks him, insists on paying this time, and leaves. (Aziraphale only took the absolute bare minimum from the kid. He knew they wouldn’t give up, and didn’t want to hurt the kids feelings.)

The pattern continued for awhile, with more kids slowly starting to come in, the 16-year-old-or-so becoming a frequent visitor. They’re all so considerate and kind, and Aziraphale figures it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he’d sell some books, even if they were either miracles or a copy. (Aziraphale had already been face to face with the actual, completely possible, near end of the world itself. Really, this was just a walk in the park compared to that. Would he give the original copies of the books? Well, no, but, hey. Some sacrifices are okay, and these kids are extremely cautious and have genuine curiosity.)

Aziraphale always takes time to help each kid, explaining the events to them as he pulls out the books. He finds that he enjoyed talking about history much more than previously thought.

One day, the 16-year-old-or-so asks if it’d be okay if they came to the shop to do their schoolwork. It was a lot quieter than at home, or at the cafe, or even the library. They’d be okay with sitting on the floor, and if it wasn’t too much of a problem, he’d really appreciate it, and he’d buy something of course, but if it was a problem it’s okay, and he doesn’t mind, he just wanted to make sure.

Aziraphale just,,, melting immediately. Of course that’d be ok!

Aziraphale decides to take it upon himself to reorganize the layout of the shop just a bit to make a cozy little seating area in a corner, so that if anyone needed a quiet place to just sit down, they had it.

He absolutely had Crowley help him reorganize the whole thing.

Aziraphale hadn’t stop gushing to Crowley over how pleasant these kids are, and about how fun it was to be able to explain all the history they’d observed throughout their 6000 or so years on Earth.

Crowley, having never met these kids before in his life, could tell you their name, grade, address, interests, eye color- you name it. All just from how Aziraphale talked about these kids, he knew he had clearly made efforts to help them and make them feel welcomed. Which, really, took Crowley completely off guard, since he’d never expected Arizaphale to so openly welcome people into his shop, but figured it did make some sense.

It became a little known thing among students that if you needed information, Aziraphale’s bookshop is really the best place to go.

Adults were extremely suspicious, and they still opt to stay away from the place. They’ve all heard stories from a friend, or a friend of a friend, or a friend of a friend of a friend, who’d gone to that bookshop and had a horrible experience.

Aziraphale having these little weekly “lectures” with the kids, where he’d talk about their current school topics in depth and help clear stuff up from them.

Seriously, you’d have thought he’d been there to see this all happen! The students say.

One day, Crowley saunters into the bookshop on one of these days. (He absolutely knows this is going on.)

He heads over to the cozy corner where Aziraphale is deep in explanation, leans against a bookshelf, arms folded, and before Aziraphale can acknowledge his prescense, Crowley just-

Gives a dramatic, overplayed scoff, “That is not how it went down, angel.”

Aziraphale, blinking, “I beg your pardon?”

All the kids are looking between them, taken by surprise. Did he just call Aziraphale angle? Wait, we’ve seen this guy before. Yea! He’s practically constantly in the shop--

Crowley goes over to Aziraphale, claps his hands together as he faces the kids, and then starts explaining the event from his own experience. (Of course, he didn’t actually acknowledge what he was saying was his own personal experience. It was, just, you know, how history happened.)

The two take turns talking, at turns debating, about the event at hand and various other topics.

After this, Crowley starts joining in on these little lectures, too.

There’s a few things they’ve quickly learned are some sour topics. They really don’t talk much about the 19th century, and when they do, it’s usually pretty brief and to the point.

Once, a kid brought up the Library of Alexandria. Yea, it makes sense why people were always wary of Aziraphale’s shop, seeing how absolutely infuriated he got at the mention of it. There was SO MUCH information in that library! Centuries worth! Absolutely destroyed! For what?! That library was amazing! We could have learned so much from it--

Meanwhile, Crowley just leans back in a chair, muttering to himself. 23 stab wounds was too low, I could’ve done better. Gotten more people, maybe. Bigger daggers. Maybe swords? Swords would have been perfect--

Aziraphale makes tea and treats for them all. Of course, he ensures they’re all careful around the books, but he already knows how considerate they are, and so isn’t too worried. Plus, he wants to make sure they’re all taken care of.

Crowley makes sure the kids actually get sleep, and that they don’t spend hours upon hours awake with no sleep. (He said he’s slept a century straight, and if he could do that, they could manage to fit in at least 8 hours of sleep in their day. They think he’s exaggerating, but don’t argue with him, and do get some sleep.)

The kids all have both Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s numbers so if they ever need help with anything, they can easily get in contact with them.

Just,,, yea

[qlmondmilk]

reflex

pjm x reader. last day of summer, falling for a boy with telekinetic abilities + science crack.

part 1 of ? words: 1619

note: the first part as written a year before, so this was untouched for long, sitting in my drafts and gathering cobwebs. the build-up is so long but i'm sorta writing it with the most detail so it would smoothly run in your imagination?? like a tv show hehe 

shitty title preview bc i know nothing about graphics

Jimin was pissed, to say the least.

The start of regular activity in San Fransokyo Institute of Technology was a sleep away, but no one in his university cared for a few more popsicles to consume and savor. Far too eager to start on their respective projects, almost everyone busied themselves with the sense of responsibility and the desire to create. This included Jimin's reasonable number of friends, leaving him to be the only one aching for the one day left for rest. Given that he'll celebrate the sunset alone, he declared that today would be somewhat peaceful.

Not.

Of all mornings to mess around with, Yoongi decided that Jimin would be a perfect lab rat for his seasonal crack project. Without any warning or whatsoever, Yoongi managed to wake up in the ungodly hours to set up a station and special headphones, testing if specific wavelengths and frequencies would easily influence an orgasm. On Jimin.

Jimin was happy to be greeted by a Daniel Caesar song, but not too keen on flushing red for having to cover and change his embarrassingly soaked sweats. He would've chased after Yoongi, who ran out of his room with a triumphant gummy smile after recording all of Jimin's stunned antics; but Yoongi wasn't to be fully blamed, for it was partially his doing as well, having entrusted his hyung the keys to his room. That, and for being a heavy sleeper.

If only all geniuses would dedicate their time to making good use of their aptitude, Min Yoongi wouldn’t have used ‘for the greater good of science’ as an excuse to obtain blackmail-worthy material, and Park Jimin wouldn't be hacking into Min Yoongi's database so damn early only to be hit with arbitrary urges. A generous sip of good booze could salvage his morning.

The only solution to silence the impulse was to give in, naturally — so it's 6 o' clock am and he's got his least favorite sweater on, set out for a bottle of vodka. Coming out in that dire time of the day means seeing little to no one at all, which is a relief, he wouldn’t have to encounter a crazed schoolmate eyeing him up as a potential lab rat.

This morning in San Fransokyo is quiet, save for the constant humming of the technology scattered all around. Matching the infrequent serenity, the city seems to bathe in the sun’s soft illumination, on the rare hope that when people step out, they’d appreciate its kind appearance reserved only for the last day of summer. Still, even without the harsh lighting, Jimin’s eyes remain weary, comfortable wearing them as crescents for a while.

He doesn’t notice that Yoongi’s not the only one who didn’t pay attention to the sun, and definitely not the only one who woke up extra early to work. The streets near his university were made of the asphalt with infused programming and coding tools, a special project of the seniors a few years back. Anyone was free to reach down, do their magic, and have their work plastered on the ground for 24 hours. Every midnight it reverts back to an empty canvas, so the serious programmers wouldn’t dare leave their code vulnerable to the public and have all versions of it gone by the next day.

The cobbled code path Jimin’s walking on turns out to be coded on already, resounding with his quick footsteps, imploring for him to look down and take note that he’s stepping on someone’s unfinished code art, and shit, his steps were precise accidents, but it looks like sabotage. But he doesn’t look down, and what used to be half a butterfly is now a muddled creature with its forewing absolutely wrecked, compound eye gone, antenna sticking out way too long - only the proboscis is intact.

Blessed are his feet, truly.

Damn Jeon Jungkook. Jimin is ill-equipped to be buying alcohol. 

Not that Jimin looked like a kid and he'd need verification to drown himself in liquor, no. The Christmas sweater that Jungkook gave wasn't enough to shelter Jimin from the coldness of the store and the icy stares from middle-aged ladies that were there for marked-down items. They didn't wake up early to see an abominable sweater being worn by a resting-bitch faced kid that looked like he'd lived through a thousand lifetimes.

Giving an ugly sweater is one thing, but to give a sweater with a gingerbread man flexing his icing abs is on an entirely different league.

Even the store is on a different league. It's close-set, aiming to provide as much as it could with the little area it has. What its span lack, the height of its shelves surely make up for it, reaching up to 7 rows. Not tall enough to be touching the ceiling, but it definitely towers over Jimin. So he sucks it up, cold, height difference, and all.  

Height is an issue, yet the store's strategy in product location is ludicrous. Who in the right mind would allow such a thing? Jimin thought San Fransokyo was a progressive city, however, precious liquor settled in the same aisle as laundry detergent says otherwise. Most importantly, Jimin's favorite brand of liquor sits at the sixth row, just a little bit beyond his reach when he jumps. The only staff present are the saleslady that could challenge Jimin's resting bitch face, the two cashiers from his university looking dead before the semester even started, and that one janitor being reprimanded by one of the early-comer middle-aged ladies for placing a wet-floor sign near the 35% off fish fillet.  

This aisle is more than a minefield.

There are two ways to complete his task. One is to arduously climb the shelf, grab a bottle or two, climb down, then go in peace. Two is to grab it in his mind and the bottle will come floating down to him, no climbing involved. Telekinesis worked like that, right? But his presumably telekinetic abilities (powers, whatever) came to him out of nowhere, and it could betray him for no reason. The shelf isn't made for occasional customer climbing. Both options are dangerous, and there are other variables to consider. The janitor reprimanding lady could happen to pass by the aisle to get to the rack of 50% off wet wipes and see Jimin - may the convenience store gods forbid it.   

He tries to will the bottle to descend from the shelf. He imagines a path and directs it to his open hand, but to no avail, from any onlooker he appears to be forcing to shit himself. 

He tries again. The entire shelf of laundry detergent and the whole sixth row of bottles float for a while and he panics. The detergents somehow spill themselves and join in the 'make Jimin panic more' party. All but the bottle that he wanted stops floating and blesses the store's floor by simultaneously breaking, along with Jimin's heart at the thought that he had to explain the mess. What would he even say? 'Sorry, I didn't want to disturb your staff to get the item I wanted so I took it upon myself to miraculously break all the bottles on the sixth shelf? Don't worry, I may have student loans to pay but I'm sure I'll compensate for this mess eventually!'  

Even worse, he would have to choose whether to take the second semester and survive with cup noodles or work full-time as Yoongi's lab rat. He still has a shred of dignity to keep, no thanks, Yoongi.

He already broke things anyway, so it's all or nothing. Better come home with a bottle than none at all. Jimin resorts to first original option, because climbing is obviously way more safer than 'grabbing the bottle with his mind.'

So he climbs. Bingo. Should've done that the first time.

It's not a big store, so the small amount of staff and patrons they had heard the crash and are silently watching Jimin elegantly climb down the shelf, avoid bits of glass on the floor, and tiptoe on the sea of unicorn vomit. On one end of the aisle, the saleslady seemed heartbroken for the janitor, who didn't spare a second look at whatever calamity swept through. He had already turned on his heels, heading for his mop and bucket. The fish fillet lady looked absolutely furious. Not good.

Jimin is stuck a very delicate place.

He continues to tiptoe on the unholy offspring of fabric conditioner and booze until—

"Oh hey dude, what ha—?" One of the cashiers suddenly appears sat the other end of the aisle with a concerned look on his face, which iss oddly familiar to Jimin. Could he be one of Taehyung's past flings? Or that dude that Hoseok drunkenly kissed one time. Probably both. 

Regardless of the cashier's identity, Jimin runs away.

Of course he fucking slips.

"Fuck, fuck, fuuuuuuck." His palms and knees took most of the impact and earned scratches. Still all or nothing, he continues to run even though his limbs disagree with the spontaneous plan to exert energy, wobbling with the guilt and panic of evading responsibility.

"Sorry man, not my fault!" Jimin shouts. Immediately spotting a rack full of Hello Kitty bandages, he grabs a handful and speeds across the store as fast as his unwilling limbs could take it.   

A Jollibee statue is waiting for him at the exit, so with Jimin's last functioning brain cell he throws two 20 dollar bills somewhere and makes it out of the store, turning Jollibee into a casualty by knocking him down at the exact moment Jimin's legs give up.

"—ppened here?" the cashier says to Jollibee's decapitated body.

[newstfionline]

Erasing history

By Maria Bustillos, Columbia Journalism Review, Winter 2018

The Honolulu Advertiser doesn’t exist anymore, but it used to publish a regular “Health Bureau Statistics” column in its back pages supplied with information from the Hawaii Department of Health detailing births, deaths, and other events. The paper, which began in 1856 as the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, since the end of World War II was merged, bought, sold, and then merged again with its local rival, The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, to become in 2010 The Honolulu Star Advertiser. But the Advertiser archive is still preserved on microfilm in the Honolulu State Library. Who could have guessed, when those reels were made, that the record of a tiny birth announcement would one day become a matter of national consequence? But there, on page B-6 of the August 13, 1961, edition of The Sunday Advertiser, set next to classified listings for carpenters and floor waxers, are two lines of agate type announcing that on August 4, a son had been born to Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama of 6085 Kalanianaole Highway.

In the absence of this impossible-to-fudge bit of plastic film, it would have been far easier for the so called birther movement to persuade more Americans that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. But that little roll of microfilm was and is still there, ready to be threaded on a reel and examined in the basement of the Honolulu State Library: An unfalsifiable record of “Births, Marriages, Deaths,” which immeasurably fortified the Hawaii government’s assertions regarding Obama’s original birth certificate. “We don’t destroy vital records,” Hawaii Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo says. “That’s our whole job, to maintain and retain vital records.”

For years, our most important records have been committed to specialized materials and technologies. For archivists, 1870 is the year everything begins to turn to dust. That was the year American newspaper mills began phasing out rag-based paper with wood pulp, ensuring that newspapers printed after would be known to future generations as delicate things, brittle at the edges, yellowing with the slightest exposure to air. In the late 1920s, the Kodak company suggested microfilm was the solution, neatly compacting an entire newspaper onto a few inches of thin, flexible film. In the second half of the century entire libraries were transferred to microform, spun on microfilm reels, or served on tiny microfiche platters, while the crumbling originals were thrown away or pulped. To save newspapers, we first had to destroy them.

Then came digital media, which is even more compact than microfilm, giving way, initially at least, to fantasies of whole libraries preserved on the head of a pin. In the event, the new digital records degraded even more quickly than did newsprint. Information’s most consistent quality is its evanescence. Information is fugitive in its very nature.

“People are good at guessing what will be important in the future, but we are terrible at guessing what won’t be,” says Clay Shirky, media scholar and author, who in the early 2000s worked at the Library of Congress on the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Project. After the obvious--presidential inaugurations or live footage of world historical events, say--we have to choose what to save. But we can’t save everything, and we can’t know that what we’re saving will last long. “Much of the modern dance of the 1970s and 1980s is lost precisely because choreographers assumed the VHS tapes they made would preserve it,” he says. He points to Rothenberg’s Law: “Digital data lasts forever, or five years, whichever comes first,” which was coined by the RAND Corporation computer scientist Jeff Rothenberg in a 1995 Scientific American article. “Our digital documents are far more fragile than paper,” he argued. “In fact, the record of the entire present period of history is in jeopardy.”

On the other hand, says archivist Dan Cohen, “One of the good developments of our digital age is that it is possible to save more, and to provide access to more.”

In the 21st century, more and more information is “born digital” and will stay that way, prone to decay or disappearance as servers, software, Web technologies, and computer languages break down. The task of internet archivists has developed a significance far beyond what anyone could have imagined in 2001, when the Internet Archive first cranked up the Wayback Machine and began collecting Web pages; the site now holds more than 30 petabytes of data dating back to 1996. (One gigabyte would hold the equivalent of 30 feet of books on a shelf; a petabyte is a million of those.) Not infrequently, the Wayback Machine and other large digital archives, such as those in the care of the great national and academic libraries, find themselves holding the only extant copy of a given work on the public internet. This responsibility is increasingly fraught with political, cultural, and even legal complications.

Press-hating autocrats have grown brazen in recent years. North Korean state media erased some 35,000 articles mentioning Jang Song-thaek, the uncle of Kim Jong-Un, after his execution for treason in late 2013. Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan cracked down on his country’s press after a failed coup attempt in July 2016, shuttering more than 150 press outlets. The Egyptian government ordered ISPs to block access to 21 news websites in May 2017. This is to say nothing of broader crackdowns on public information such as Turkey’s ban on teaching evolution in high schools, or China’s recent attempt to force Cambridge University Press to censor journal articles.

Now let’s assume there are copies of these banned publications in public digital archives, such as the Wayback Machine. If a government wishes to remove information from the internet, but archivists believe the material in question to be of significant public interest and import, how are libraries and archives to respond? How do libraries balance the public interest against those with legitimate grounds for restricting access, such as rights holders and privacy advocates?

When we consider that the internet is a library, and that the community it serves is all mankind, the responsibility of digital archivists acquires a gravity that is hard to overstate.

[samleheny]

“What’s Happened to Bungie?”

There’s a lot of hubbub about Destiny, and its developer Bungie lately. I’m not interested in cataloging their various deceptions and plain old dick moves since the launch of the original Destiny, that’s been covered EXTENSIVELY already. But the accompanying questions: “Are Bungie in trouble?” ,“Is Bungie going to be bought out by Activision?”, “Has Bungie lost its mojo?”, and just generally “My god people, what’s happened to Bungie?”

I believe can answer this. But it will require some... philosophy.

Specifically Theseus’ Ship. A very old, still very relevant philosophical thought experiment. You’re probably familiar, and there are multiple retellings varying in unimportant details that don’t change the question posed by the story. This is the most succinct version: A ship leaves from a port in the town of Theseus. Its voyage will be long, spanning many years. As it sails, some of the ship’s components wear or get damaged and need to be replaced, be it a torn sail, a broken mast, or a rotted plank. As the ship visits various ports and islands, some of its crew decide to stay behind, and are replaced with new members. By the time the ship finishes its voyage and returns to Theseus, not a single component of its original structure nor a single member of its original crew remain. The entire ship has gradually been replaced, piece by piece.

The question posed by the story is this: Is the ship that returned to port the same ship as the one which left all those years ago?

There’s no definitive, correct answer. Maybe you feel like the ship should be considered technically a different vessel as soon as one of its pieces is swapped out, or maybe you think it retains its original identity so long at least one piece remains unchanged. Or maybe you feel like it’s a question of degrees, and that identities can be altered, stretched some way before being considered a properly disparate entity. Or maybe you feel like the ship’s identity should be considered changed when the amount of it composed of new pieces exceeds half.

The point is to make you consider what it is we mean when we speak of identity. When we say something is one thing and not another. It’s the same existential quandary we engage with when we talk about ourselves being different people than we were some years ago because so many of the cells composing our bodies have died and been replaced with newer ones.

It could be that you believe the ship is still the same ship that left Theseus as long as the pieces, new or old, are assembled in the same way. A question of how much of identity is a matter of that which can be physically measured and how much of it is perhaps historical, or even imaginary.

So what the hell is going on over at Bungie?

Bungie are one of the best and most storied game developers around. They achieved fame and glory with the Halo franchise, one of the most beloved and influential videogame series of our time. During Halo’s development back in the year 2000, Bungie was purchased by Microsoft, and in 2001 the first Halo game became a sensation that almost single-handedly put Microsoft’s new videogame console the Xbox on the map.

10 years and 5 highly successful Halo games later, the people working at Bungie, yearning for creative freedom, had secured their company’s independence in exchange for leaving the sole rights to the Halo IP with Microsoft.

The world was once again Bungie’s oyster, and after wandering around exploring different ideas for their big new IP, they began work in 2010 on what would eventually be Destiny... and the source of a whole lot of headache for Bungie.

Bungie had entered into a 10 year development contract with publisher Activision, and some of the bigger names to leave or be forced out felt that this relationship was becoming poisonous to the company spirit that had served Bungie so well. This deal was for a whopping $500 million, the largest development contract in videogame history, so valuable did it seem to secure Bungie’s next big series. Pete Parsons, Bungie’s COO told press they expected people would “...put the Destiny universe on the same shelf they put Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Star Wars,” And this game which had started out with the intention on the part of some of Bungie’s heaviest hitters of getting as far away from Halo as possible in search of a fresh new experience, ended up being, by their own admission, a lot closer to Halo in genre and design then they had wanted.

When it launched in 2014 Destiny was rife with problems, some slight, some pretty glaring and certainly surprising of a game with Destiny’s pedigree. And while through iteration and expansion Bungie eventually managed to steer Destiny in a direction at least decent, and while Destiny 2 released this year and was far better received (at first...), It’s pretty clear that those dreams of creating a cultural touchstone to stand with the likes of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, or even Bungie’s own Halo remain pretty illusive.

I’m still somewhat fascinated by the way the fans Destiny 2 earned for the franchise all now seem to be turning on the game and reporting that once you reach the end game content, Destiny 2 turns disappointingly back into Destiny 1, ie. a little bit shit.

And this is all to say nothing of the way Destiny (perhaps at the behest of Activision, we can’t be sure) has been treating its players with cloak & dagger design choices secretly aiming to sabotage any attempt of progressing through the game without turning to its in-game storefront and spending real world dollars. And whatever amendments they’ve attempted to make as they hop from one scandal to the next amounts to a cynically charged Peter Molyneux-esk cycle of 1) Enact predatory design decision/business practice. 2) If caught, apologise, fix problem(optional), vow to do better in future. 3) Repeat step 1. Immediately.

And news that Bungie is committed to making sure Destiny’s design going forward will revolve heavily around the Eververse (the in game storefront and source of greedy post-sale monetisation many are so upset about) comes out right as an organised online campaign, #RemoveEververse is firing up.

Destiny is nobody’s favourite franchise right now (which is a shame, because it was for a brief, glorious moment) and Bungie, of all developers, are nobody’s favourite people.

So what gives?

The details of what made Destiny’s four year development so turbulent have been covered pretty extensively by journalists, including an entire chapter in Jason Schreier’s excellent book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels. Suffice it to say that the Bungie that came out of Destiny’s development in 2014 looked a hell of a lot different than the Bungie that went in in 2010.

Jaime Griesemer - a major designer at Bungie for 13 years, Marcus Lehto - with Bungie also for 13 years and the creative director of Bungie’s last Halo game, Marcus Lehto - A lead designer at Bungie for 10 years, Adrian Perez - a programmer at Bungie for 9 years, Vic Deleon - a senior environment artist, Marty O’Donnell - composer and sound director at Bungie for 12 years, Harold Ryan - the motherfucking president of the company,

Over the course of development, all of these noteworthy figures at Bungie would either quit or be pushed out due to frustrations in Destiny’s development, not always on very good terms from the sound of it.

I’ll be frank but, I feel, realistic, in saying that while a studio’s artistic identity is a conglomerate of all of what each and every member brings to the table, some members’ input counts for a larger chunk of that identity than others. Some are more replaceable than others in terms of how much sway they have over the creative vision that the company will all work to bring to its audience, and what’s worrying was not that so many people left Bungie during Destiny’s development - people leave and join studios all the time - it’s that so many veterans, the kind of people who make up the majority of their studio’s identity left in such a compressed period.

Whether this is a sign that the project was mismanaged (it was), and that those who left should have something to feel betrayed over, or just a natural part of Bungie’s transition from one major chapter in its life as a Microsoft subsidiary to the next chapter as a free bird with new responsibilities and a new direction to chart, the point made by Theseus’ Ship is very relevant here. How much of the unique creative energy we know as “Bungie”, remains?

People have been calling the last couple of years “The Downfall of Bungie” or claiming that Destiny is the game that destroyed Bungie. Are they that wrong when considering that changing to a new identity does technically involve the destruction of the previous?

How many members, and which members of a group must leave and be replaced before that group can no longer be said to still be, even if the corporate entity known as “Bungie” is still well and truly operational?

“What’s happened to Bungie?”

Simple. It’s died. And was replaced by a new Bungie. It happens all the time (though usually more gradually). Change is inevitable. To try and resist this constant shifting of identities is foolish. After all, Bungie changed a lot to become a Halo factory we all loved for 10 years. The important question is what has Bungie changed into? We’re looking at a new Bungie. But is it a change for the worse? If 2017 is anything to judge by, I fear it very much is.

While the story of Destiny 1′s development from its initial release through to the Taken King expansion can be read as a developer releasing a... ‘not great’ game and working to make it better, Destiny 2′s post launch development so far is the story of a developer releasing a much better game and then doing everything they can to poison people’s experience with it.

I don’t know the size of the boot Activision has over your throat right now, Bungie, but do you want this new chapter of your life having left your overlords at Microsoft to be defined by an even more cynical and corporate Bungie?

[xtremedespair3d]

My 10 Year Journey

It’s here. The end of the 2010 decade is finally here and now we’re finally gonna enter the 2020 decade! Although technically the decade won’t start until 2021, but who really cares? I’ve seen people hyping “Best things of the decade” and whatnot, so it still counts.

This post isn’t just going to be a 2019 year review with what to expect in 2020, the year and the decade, but I’m also telling a bit of my life over the last 10 years, though I may vaguely remember what happened, so this is going to be my longest post yet.

Also, this is going to be my final post I’m going to publish in Tumblr, I’m quitting for good. You’ll find out why when you read this post.

First, let’s start off with my usual Top 10 (and 20) lists of everything that happened this year:

Top 20 Best Anime:

20.- Virtual-san wa Miteiru

19.- Kaguya-sama: To be honest, I wasn’t quite impressed with Kaguya-sama, I didn’t like it as much as everyone else but I did like parts of it. And I of course agree that Chika is best girl. Maybe season 2 could help me change my mind.

18.- Fire Force

17.- Watanuki-san Chi No: This one’s more calssified as a dorama instead of an anime like Virtual-san wa Miteiru but whatever. With this and Virtual-san wa Miteiru, I’m still optimistic about the future of VTuber anime because I want to see more.

16-  Dumbbell Nan Kilomoteru: I really need to go to the gym again or try to practice the home exercices as shown in the series.

15.- Tokunana

14.- Fate/Grand Order Babylonia

13.- Lord El-Melloi II Case Files

12.- Ikki Tousen: Western Wolves

11.- BanG Dream! S2

10.- Quintessential Quintuplets

9.- The Promised Neverland

8.- Rising of Shield Hero

7.- Isekai Quartet

6.- Bungou Stray Dogs S3

5.- W’z: Yes, regardless of the hideous visuals GoHands has somehow fallen to grace, I really liked it so much that it helped redeem myself on Hand Shakers as a franchise because of its story.

4.- Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter

3.- Fruits Basket

2.- Mob Psycho 100 II: Mob Psycho 100 is in a better hands than One-Punch Man has. No studio changes bound and Bones continues to deliver amazing animation that exceeds ONE’s art.

1-C.- Azur Lane: The Animation

1-B.- Kemurikusa

1-A.- Kimetsu no Yaiba: Ufotable wins for the second time in a row since 2018′s Emiya-san Chi no Kyou no Gohan series with this year’s Kimetsu no Yaiba!

All of the praise there’s been towards Ufotable with Kimetsu no Yaiba just make their other works (aside from Fate) otherwise forgettable (which is sad and I shouldn’t say that because I’m a Ufotable stan).

But, that’s not the end of the journey, there’s a film based on the Infinite Train arc happening and, surprisingly, it’s actually happening! It’s not a vaporware like the Katsugeki Touken Ranbu film or even Girls’ Work!

I’m still worried about Ufotable’s future given the tax fraud investigation, but whatever the case, I hope they can manage to clear things out and still running with marvelous projects, whatever they have in store (and literally in the shelf with the aforementioned Katsugeki Touken Ranbu film and Girls’ Work)

I had entries #1A to #3 and #20 figured out, but good lord! Figuring out what should #4 to #19 be! It took me forever!

Honorable mentions:

-Attack on Titan S3 - Part 2

-High Score Girl II

-Kakegurui XX

-Danmachi S3

-Manaria Friends

-Lupin III OVAs

-Welcome to Japari Park: This is a 2018 series but it has kept me on high spirit than Kemono Friends 2 ever has, it has given me depression instead. However, that doesn’t mean it tops the original Kemono Friends, this remains like my #2 favorite Kemono Friends anime. By the way, I didn’t know it was a two-cour series which the series got really interesting by the second-cour.

I really hope there’s another season, that teaser at the final episode has so much potential for them to not make any more Welcome to Japari Park!

UPDATE - February 1st 2020: As of the editing of this post, there’s still no season 2 to be found, or worse yet, I think it might not even be made at all. Well, it was quite a ride. F.

Top 6 Worst Anime:

6.- W’z

5.- Virtual-san wa Miteiru

Yes, I know I already had put W’z and Virtual-san wa Miteiru in my Top 20 Best Anime category, I had to include them as the worst because not only sometimes I do feel they’re kind of bad in their right with their visuals, but I’m mainly doing it for the sake of not looking like a lunatic. But there are 4 other anime that definitely need some of their own commentary.

4.- Mini Toji: Speaking of the Toji no Miko franchise, I heard that there’s gonna be an OVA based on the mobile game and my god, I really wish Toji no Miko can just die already.

(To be honest, I don’t know why I’ve grown to hate Toji no Miko if there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just an instinct or something like “I don’t like your guts”.)

3.- Granblue Fantasy The Animation season 2

2.- Miru Tights: I really wanted to like Miru Tights because it’s Yomu anime, but the show itself was pretty boring and tries to push the tights fetish so far that completely turns me off, but the worst thing yet is that TRUSS (The studio that made the series) privatized every episode as weeks went by! I thought watching the series on YouTube with English and Chinese/Taiwanese subtitles was a great accessibility for everyone to watch it! I thought they were considerate to do that but I have to take that statement back on having every episode privatized.

This is why I absolutely prefer stockings/knee-highs over tights/pantyhose, I love me that absolute territory so much.

1.- Kemono Friends 2 and One-Punch Man 2: That’s right, a tie between these two.

With One-Punch Man 2, the visuals are a major disaster and it nowhere near follows the heart from the original by Madhouse despite having some decent sakuga moments but still tries really hard and gets ruined with motion blur. Story is relatively faithful to the manga (because I do read it, unlike you RedMakuzawa), but it just wasn’t told properly with its horrendous animation.

I’m glad that pretty much everyone is saying that One-Punch Man 2 was a disappointment.

Kemono Friends 2 is obviously the biggest thing I truly hated the most this entire year. I never asked for a completely new storyline that won’t even follow the teaser from the first season’s ending, I never asked for a completely new human character to take Kaban’s spot as the main character (I’m happy that Kaban is still here but I’m not happy with her role), I never asked for Kemono Friends 2 to exist at all!

Although, come to think of it, there were like quite a lot of good moments, but most of the time, I couldn’t care less for certain characters like Kaban and Caracal and this entire recycled plotline, not to mention the occasionally inconsistent framerates in the animation too.

Both were destined to become my worst anime of the year, no thanks to studio changes.

Top 10 Best Movies:

10.- Captain Marvel: Let’s start with a little controversial. As a Marvel fanboy, I just tend to watch every MCU movie because of the story, regardless of quality and whatever, and I’m pretty sad that pretty much everyone hates it, even my older sister. At least there’s two friends I know who did like the film and it helps make me feel better.

9.- Once Upon a Deadpool: This is a 2018 release but I happened to watch it on January 2019, so I had to include this here. Yes, it’s Deadpool 2 but with the gore and profanity cut off, but it was worth rewatching the film even toned down.

Except I wasn’t prepared for the Stan Lee parts. ;_;

8.- X-Men: Dark Phoenix: I did enjoy the film, flawed (?) for sure but it wasn’t objectively bad. The way I think it’s flawed it’s because it just made me ask a lot of questions and lacks context about who the villains are, are they Skrulls or not?

(Wow, three Marvel movies in a row.)

7.- Detective Pikachu: So I’m not a big Pokemon person, but I’m sure this year was pretty much Pokemon year, from Sword & Shield, Ash finally winning a Pokemon championship and new anime series, and of course, Detective Pikachu.

This was quite a very good video game movie with appealing realistic Pokemon, albeit the pace was a little too fast.

With that said about how the Pokemon look, I think I’m definitely gonna see the Sonic movie. I’m pretty sure it’s not gonna be as great as Detective Pikachu in terms of story, but at least seeing Sonic’s new design is something.(We do not talk about Sonic’s old design)

6.- IT Chapter Two: There’s really nothing wrong with the film. It’s just as good and keeps up the same pace as the first film!

5.- John Wick 3

4.- Shazam: DC has been quite in a roll this year since Aquaman, things just gets better with Shazam and Joker (although Joker is its own self-contained universe and Shazam is DCEU). I nearly cried on the part where Billy’s adopted family turned into the Shazam family! Quite some comic book inspirations!

3.- Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel II. lost butterfly: This was truly the most chill anime movie experience I’ve ever had in the cinema. Code Geass: Lelouch of the Resurrection was also a decently chill but at times people did yell but not super loudly compared to the other films I’ve seen.

The worst part about my experience is that I was literally dying from the very second half of film! My god, I’m definitely not drinking a lot of soda very often, I even went to the bathroom earlier. I’m blaming it on the Takis popcorn we always eat!

With that being said about the crowd in my cinema, I actually wanted to get a very lousy crowd because I started audio recording my phone so I can share to people how annoying Mexican weebs in my cinema can be, especially at that Shirou x Sakura scene, but it turns out there wasn’t a whole lot of people and the theater was in absolute peace, so I pretty much recorded the entire film in audio.

Anyways, the film itself was still pretty nice, can’t wait for the third part and at this point, I probably shouldn’t be begging for Konnichiwa (the distributor) to bring it, I’m pretty sure they’ll definitely will given that they released the first two films so far.

2.- Godzilla: King of the Monsters

1-C.- Spider-Man: Far From Home: I really quite loved Spider-Man: Far From Home and because I’m heavily biased to Spider-Man films and MCU films for this to become either second next to Avengers: Endgame, the next film just took its place for a good reason.

1-B.- Joker: This was an absolute masterpiece of a movie I’ve ever seen in my birthday! The Murray Franklin interview scene is my favorite scene in the entire film because the Joker monologue where he talks about the three subway dudes he killed and society in general just really speaks to me, it sounds similar on my existential crisis rant I fussed over on Discord servers EARLIER.

Venom was also a good birthday movie I got last year, though it came out a day later and I’m kinda sad, but Joker, since it came out exactly on my birthday, is definitely a gift I wholeheartedly deserved it! I want my movies to be released right on time! I also need more villain movies in my birthday in my life! (Though it depends which character because I’m sure I won’t be as convinced as Venom and Joker)

However, even if it was one of the best birthday gifts I’ve had in my birthday, I DID NOT let Joker to dethrone this next film...

1-A.- Avengers: Endgame: My #1 most anticipated movie of the whole year finally arrived and the one I seriously did not let this film get dethroned like last year with Spider-Verse over Infinity War! Wouldn’t you know it, this film literally brought me into absolute tears, hit me in the feels, EVERYTHING!!!

The way the film was marketed, the secrecy behind it and everything, and while the film delivered, all that stuff we previously believed has all been a lie and it was quite a surprise! They did not mess around with how important this film was going to be!

But alas, there’s still those ungrateful bastards who just ruin the film with things they say they don’t like or whatever! LIKE, SERIOUSLY, COME ON! YOU DO NOT TALK SHIT TO A MOVIE LIKE AVENGERS: ENDGAME, EVER!!! I DON’T GIVE A SHIT IF CAPTAIN MARVEL IS FORCED AND BARELY HAS ANY SCREENTIME OR WHATEVER, JUST APPRECIATE THE FILM FOR WHAT IT IS, THE PURPOSE, AND EVERYTHING!!! LEARN TO BE GRATEFUL!!!

Ugh, whatever. At least I didn’t hear that many complaints that left me a sour taste anyways.

Marvel just went so far with rereleasing Avengers: Endgame but with extra minutes of footage with cut content! That really sounds amazing, and it gets better when it was a worldwide release, including Mexico! Although... I really would have loved to rewatch the movie, but the schedule turned out to be at 9 PM, so for 3 hours, I would have gone around 12:30 or 1 AM and that’s a big no-no, I would have been killed. I also wanted to see it with my older sister but she was hospitalized at the time, and we couldn’t anyways because of the late ass schedule, so we had to wait until Spider-Man: Far From Home instead.

I don’t really care if those extra minutes are rough unfinished CG stuff that we can just see from the Blu-Ray (which I’ll never get), I just wanted to rewatch everything in the cinema, but I couldn’t because of the ridiculous schedule my cinema chose.

The moment Captain America said “Avengers... Assemble!”, I literally started bursting into tears, and so were the crowd being hype as fuck! My god, what else can make me cry from something this hype?!

There’s just a lot of stuff I want to discuss about Avengers: Endgame but I really can’t just process it! This was my absolute #1 favorite movie of the year and I definitely did not let any other film dethrone it! I love it 3000!

Honorable mentions:

Toy Story 4: I enjoyed the film regardless of everyone saying “Toy Story 3 should have been the final movie for good and this is just a cashgrab” or whatever, thankfully I didn’t cry at the ending, but I’m sad that my older sister didn’t like it for some reason.

Promare: I’m seriously disappointed that Promare didn’t come out in Mexico while America were seeing the film. I’ve been seeing fan arts galore and maybe a bit of spoilers, though I’m kind of in the dark about it. I really hope Promare comes out in Mexico next week! Just as long as the crowd isn’t absolutely noisy, though I had such experiences before, but I heard that America is much worse on noisy people in the theaters when the film was rerun a couple of times, jesus...

Top 10 Best Games:

This might be my most controversial category yet because I literally haven’t played any single of these games (except for two) and I’m heavily biased towards franchise I care the most, developer(s) I care the most, aesthetic, etc., not so much about quality and most importantly, experience by having played them at all. But even so, I want to congratulate them by their existence.

10.- Persona 5 Royal: As much as I like Persona 5 from how it is, the aesthetic and everything (I haven’t played it myself, I’ve seen my older sister play it), but it has turned somewhat of a controversial topic for me, because literally everyone I know has quite some harsh feelings on the game and it just affects me so much given how much praise I have seen, so I kind of walk away from P5 nowadays.

But now, there’s Persona 5 Royal! Not only has some cool new content, but I hope it improves some issues the vanilla version has left behind!

(I only want the new content, to be honest)

I wonder if Persona 4 had this kind of similar backlash, because I see Persona 4 Golden in a different light where it just simply adds new stuff and not try to fix the issues from the vanilla version (it does but it’s not how I see it)

9.- Kingdom Hearts 3: I’m not a Kingdom Hearts person but I’m happy that the long awaited KH3 is finally out, although it might be quite divisive because of the story and its issues, but it seems like ReMind is going to fix these issues.

8.- Pokemon Sword & Shield

7.- Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3

6.- Fire Emblem Three Houses.

5.- Untitled Goose Game: HONK!

4.- God Eater 3: I wanted to tie GE3 with Code Vein, but I was eager for Code Vein the most than God Eater 3 and I haven’t seen much of it honestly, but I’m still including it here because I like the God Eater franchise but I’m not quite an avid fan, at least until I play GE2 and of course GE3. I just need to grow some interest with God Eater some more because I really like the post-apocalyptic aesthetic and everything.

3.- Azur Lane: Crosswave

2.- Resident Evil 2 Remake: Capcom’s redemption arc continues! And with its success, it’s even lead to the development of Resident Evil 3 Remake which it’s gonna come out next year, and I’m surprised that they’re working on it already.

1-D.- Code Vein: I’ve become quite furious when the reviews for it came out. The Metacritic shows that the game is average at best and people be like “This is garbage, I’m out” and my god, I’m seriously frustrated with all that shit. I waited for a fucking year and I don’t want to get disencouraged when I’ll ever have the chance to play it.

But thankfully it didn’t stop me from seeing people playing the game and it makes me more than happy that they do.

I had to go so far on spoiling myself and... what I heard was one of the best things ever, which I’m probably not gonna spoil for you.

1-C.- Astral Chain

1-B.- Devil May Cry 5/Travis Strikes Again: I have to make this a tie for two reasons, they’re my biggest franchises in my life, but they have differing levels of my personal importance.

With Devil May Cry 5, I never thought the good DMC will ever come back, after having to suffer through DmC, there was also DMC4: Special Edition released in 2015, but that’s kind of whatever, but then, shit just got real when it was revealed in E3 2018!

Anyways, let’s talk about post-release, the story is absolutely nice, they went with throwing a bit of throwbacks and it just screams everything absolutely worthy for answers and pay-offs, though the ending feels kind of inconclusive, seems kind of they’re going to be open with maybe a Special Edition of DMC5 or even DMC6, but who knows, but then hopes get ruined as Capcom announced they were done with the development of DMC5 after the Bloody Palace release, which means no more Vergil, Trish and Lady DLCs, which it’s utterly disappointing! (But will there still be a Special Edition? It took 7 years for DMC4 to get one (2008-2015))

One other problem I have with DMC5 is that Capcom might have done a very poor job on keeping Vergil a very big secret. I think it was already known that Vergil might have going to appear in DMC5 for so long, from Dan Southworth’s (Vergil’s VA) Facebook post with the #DMC hashtag, from people editing Urizen’s voice and they found a match on Dan’s Vergil voice, to Capcom outright releasing a spoiler trailer! Sure, people sure want to avoid that trailer, but really? Weren’t they supposed to treat Vergil like he was a really huge deal for the game that’s not worth spoiling at all?

Also, the game continues to be extremely stressful with the harder difficulties, but since I have played DMC3 a long time ago, my skills haven’t gone out of practice!... Mostly.

Now, let’s talk about Travis Strikes Again. The moment it was announced on the Nintendo Switch event in January 2017, I literally started bursting into tears and yelled out loud! Later in August, at PAX, a new trailer was revealed and even if it was a teaser CG video (it’s the first game’s opening post-release) and my god, it looked gorgeous. Then things started to get sour as Atkin Downes tweeted that he was “disappointed”, that he wasn’t brought back to voice Travis or something, and I was utterly disappointed, but things changed when in December, it turns out that Robin Atkin Downes was returning to voice Travis, not only him but the original voices for Shinobu and Bad Girl are returning as well, my hope was restored! (Though I was already gonna see how the game would turn out regardless)

The game came out and at first, I saw seeing Grasshopper‘s Twitter account retweeting positive reviews from lesser known articles, which I was good at first, but then someone posted the Metacritic where it has mixed reviews, like at 70 something (under 75) and I was kinda sad.

Some people may say that the game is a disappointment and the gameplay is repetitive, and boy, I don’t give a SHIT about what these fuckheads (see what I did there?) say about the game. Though I still have yet to experience the gameplay myself (chances are that I wouldnt really find it repetitive. Pretty much every game is. Uh, hot take), but when I watched walkthrough videos of the entire game, the Travis Strikes Back segments (a visual novel-inspired segment) are what brought me ABSOLUTE HOPE for the game overall, the story pretty much has! The lore and everything that explains what happened a little with Travis’s disappearance from Santa Destroy, he’s even got kids with Sylvia, Badman’s origin story from Badman Strikes Back from the DLC, EVEN THE EASTER EGGS LIKE FUCKING MONDO ZAPPA FROM KILLER IS DEAD, ALL THE EFFORTS SUDA PUT INTO THIS IS JUST AN ABSOLUTE LOVE LETTER FOR ME AS A NO MORE HEROES FAN (And for general Suda fans too, though I’m not the most hardcore Suda fan as I haven’t played The Silver Case and other games to understand the references).

The second patch of the game came and there’s a brand new opening featuring Killer7! And this just changes the No More Heroes Universe, no, the Sudaverse!

My god, there’s a lot of stuff I want to say but can’t process, but let me just say this: Even if you didn’t like the game, or you find it disappointing, you’re wrong! The story and the lore should be the biggest redeeming factor of Travis Strikes Again!

Just when I thought I want to get a Switch to play Travis Strikes Again, a few months later, a rerelease of the game with all of the DLC for PS4 and Steam came out in October and oh boy, that gives me a huge opportunity to play the game, either on my shitty ass laptop or in my PS4 (which I finally got it after so long and I’ll later explain why)! I really hope it goes the same for No More Heroes 3--WHICH BY THE WAY, there was a bit of problem around Travis Strikes Again where people thought NMH3 was going to be sequel bait when Suda said that if TSA sold well, the development for NMH3 would start, but I didn’t care if it was a problem or sequel-bait or not, I just wanted people to buy this game as much as possible, especially when the post-credits scene straightup teased NMH3!

One other thing I find it weird about TSA’s existence, is that Suda says that this isn’t much of a numbered sequel or a spin-off, I don’t really get what Suda means on what TSA is, but I’m still treating it as a sequel storywise, considering that NMH3 takes place after TSA. The post-credits scene definitely doesn’t mess around!

Then E3 2019 came and... NO MORE HEROES 3 IS A REALITY! IT’S DEFINITELY HAPPENING AFTER 9/10 YEARS!!! I’M REALLY GLAD TRAVIS STRIKES AGAIN GOT SOLD WELL ENOUGH TO MAKE NMH3 HAPPEN, AAAAAAA, I’M SO HAPPY!!!!! I NEED A SWITCH TOO!!! THOUGH I DO WISH THE GAME WILL COME OUT ON PS4 TOO, BUT AT THE MOMENT, I WANT TO GET A SWITCH FOR NMH3!!!!

Anyways, I’m done discussing Travis Strikes Again.

I put these two games as a tie for big reasons: They’re both my favorite franchises I hold dear the most (though I absolutely hold NMH at the very bottom of my heart more than DMC), both games are fighting between their pros and cons, one I definitely have played (DMC5) and one I haven’t (TSA)...

Let me point out their pros and cons real quick:

Devil May Cry 5:

Pros:

Amazing gameplay and graphics.

Amazing soundtrack.

Amazing story with neat throwbacks.

Cons:

Development finished, so don’t expect any more DLC.

Travis Strikes Again:

Pros:

Story that’s a much bigger love letter, helps explain what happened to certain characters after NMH2, etc. And even features Suda51 easter eggs.

Two DLC expansions than DMC5 will ever have.

Cons:

Kind of whatever gameplay. (for other people, not for me)

I do think Travis Strikes Again is much better in terms of content than DMC5 but it’s kind of a debate. They’re still amazing games regardless!

1-A.- Death Stranding: A Hideo Kojima Game = Instant #1 winner. And perhaps this is the most surprisingly divisive Kojima game I’ve ever seen in my life (Perhaps more or less divisive than Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain), at least with the reviews alone (At least in America, Europe and Japan have 9s, 10/10s), that doesn’t stop from seeing quite some cultural impact already, memes, fan arts and stuff.

I’m disappointed that it didn’t win Game of the Year in The Game Awards because obviously it’s such a big game, though not everyone really cares and it makes me sad, at least it’s still won some awards and won GOTY in other not-so relevant award shows.

The game is pretty much filled with an excellent gameplay, with a bit of realism where you trip yourself with rocks and everything, the game is filled with quite some originality, the actors, easter eggs, pretty much the most ambitious Kojima game ever and I’m having a damn fun with it!

As of the writing on December 28th, the day before I just beat episodes 4 and started episode 5, so it seems like I’m still long ways off on finishing the rest of the game and I still haven’t finished through the story (which I don’t find it confusing, by the way).

Part of the gameplay definitely reminded me of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the controls and everything felt familiar and it was really neat, even if it’s something for a completely original IP, part of the gameplay was still familiar with some MGSV vibes.

For those of you who think that Death Stranding is a disappointment or whatever (looking at you WatchMojo and everyone else), you are absolutely dead wrong! I don’t know what kind of Kojima game you definitely expected to be so bad but turned out to be something else, just get out of here and try to focus on something else, maybe you’re better off with seeing Kojima things with Metal Gear! Death Stranding definitely isn’t for everyone alright, especially for assholes like you!

I definitely expected Death Stranding to come out on 2020, but I enver thought it might already come sooner in November 2019 (Although Kojima did tease it might come out in the “year of Akira” (being 2019), so I guess I should have seen that coming, I completely forgot about it). Kojima has come a really long way with making his new studio, hiring people, finding studios to cooperate and make Death Stranding, everything in just 4 years and it was amazing for him and his team to put all of their efforts when it comes to making this and the wait was definitely worth it!

Honorable mention:

Custom Order Maid 3D2 English version: I had played the Japanese version before and I see there was a trial version for the English version. I hadn’t really thought it was gonna be an actual thing until I started seeing a Custom Maid Twitter artist retweeting a tweet of a Japanese gaming news site that the page for Custom Order Maid 3D2 was live.

Things around the English version of the game are relatively fine, but that is until the CR shop maintenance, talks about how to improve it, and even considering outlandish requests people make which aren’t on the original Japanese version of the game, the kind of original content just screams a huge insult for the Japanese Custom Maid community. Shit gets worse when the people I have talk with can’t even access the Steam page!

With all of the content that’s way behind and everything, I decided to go back to playing the Japanese version (especially when I found a torrent of CM3D2 + COM3D2 with all of the DLC until Spring 2019 or something). Except that given that it has way too much content, it’s so fucking slow for my laptop. But at least I’ll use the JP version for making characters and screenshots and I’ll play the English version for the campaign.

Whatever brand new original items might end up being, I hope they might be interesting enough for me to start begging for them to come out on JP so hard.

Alright, here’s a non-biased GOTY list with new releases that I HAVE actually played and some older games too.

3.- English Custom Order Maid 3D2

2.- Death Stranding

1.- Devil May Cry 5

Honorable mentions (Older games):

Valve games: Half-Life, Portal and Left 4 Dead games.

VA-11 HALL-A: I’ll explain the story of how I came to play this game later down the line.

Saya no Uta: Steam release. I know I probably shouldn’t rely on official Steam releases and go for the fan made translations especially when they don’t have the adult content, but the thing is I didn’t have trouble buying the adult patch, and it was super cheap too. Besides, I don’t have any trouble with the translation so far, even if I don’t really speak Japanese, even if the little I know I definitely understand with the official English translation, so I’m not really dumb.

Melty-Blood: This is the first fighting game I have played for a bit in a long time when I’ve grown to be less of a fighting games person. I haven’t played the story campaign nor I would want to right now because I’m going to save it until I play Tsukihime just so I can understand some characters and other things.

There, you happy? (I’m definitely not using this non-biased list at all and honestly, it’s a hard tie between DMC5 and Death Stranding because I love these games right now)

Anyways...

Dishonorable mention:

Left Alive: I’m not really mad about how bad it is, but it sure looks quite unplayable. How did the developers even get away with making a broken game like this? The only things I can appreciate this game is how good it looks (at least on still), and of course the Yoji Shinkawa art.

Instead of doing a traditional review focusing on 2019 alone, I’m going to explain my journey I went through for the last 10 years, of course I’ll review the year 2019 in there, and after that, my resolutions and what awaits me in 2020. I may not remember everything, I only remember the biggest parts of my life.

Worst game:

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG: Every time I look at the game, mainly from the writing, I can’t help but think the game just gives me an existential crisis, because if I pull some shit like how they referenced a real life death of someone and among other ludicrous things, I think I’m definitely walking away from joining the industry and for my creativity to exist.

Bonus

Song of the year

“P.S. RED I” by TK from Ling Tosite Sigure: Spider-Verse was a 2018 film, but it didn’t release in Japan until March 2019 and what better way to promote the movie is having a kick-ass theme song by TK! Seriously, ever since I’ve been seeing the Japanese trailers and I heard a portion of the song, I was absolutely eager to check the full song, and once I started listening to it, I couldn’t stop listening non-stop! I’m not sure if it’s actually featured in the movie, but even if it’s not, at least this song is still something!

Ling Tosite Sigure (The entire band) also made another Spider-Man song this time for Spider-Man: Far From Home titled “Neighbormind”. With these two songs, I want TK/Ling Tosite Sigure to make Spider-Man songs forever!

Sorry, Devil Trigger, even if Devil May Cry 5 is a 2019 game, you already came out last year.

Artists of the year

(NSFW content warning)

Ogata Tei: I sure am super fixated on Ogata Tei’s Childhood Friend series because at the beginning of the year, I really couldn’t care much for his new works, but until Summer, my spirit has been lifted where Ogata is still delivering more of the series, not just once but twice in two Comikets in a row! I seriously can’t wait for more Childhood Friend series to come out and buy every single one of the doujins! (If possible, I also wish Ogata Tei wouldn’t be so slow with the DMM FANZA releases because the previous two doujins took about a year for them to come out digitally) (Also, please, I’m not a stalker)

Hinosuna: This one is truly the best Custom Maid 3D2 artist I’ve ever seen and met, not only he makes amazing futanari CM3D2 pictures and he’s quite a gamer too. He’s also the first Custom Maid person to make collab pictures with my characters and he did some in July and for my birthday, and he event went so far for gifting me VA-11 HALL-A on my birthday and boy, that was one of the best surprises I’ve ever gotten in my life!

I’m really sorry, Souryu, no more Kouiunogaii, not worth mentioning you here.

(This is probably gonna be the last time I’m going to do this category)

And now, we’re finally done talking about our Top categories! Now let’s finally start talking about a bit of my life in the last 10 years, and then my 2019 review and what to expect in 2020!

2009: Let’s start off with a little silly but upsetting, this was the year where I made my definitive Roblox account. I have played Roblox like a year or two prior as a guest but I finally started to play as a full account or something. I’ve always been making like a few but I wasn’t getting satisfied with them, probably because the usernames had really long numbers, e-mail or password, something like that, but then one of the usernames with really long numbers stood out, and I decided to make into the Brandon2126 account, I played it non-stop until I stopped playing Roblox for good in 2013 the moment I got my PC fixed for like the 5th or lost count for how many times my old computer kind of got messed up, but this one had finally has Windows 7 Home Premium and my sister was like “No Roblox.”, and it magically made me stop playing Roblox anymore. And in the process where I was making the accounts, I was genuinely being yelled at and beaten and even threw water on me in the process... yeah.

There’s another bad memory in 2009 I have, and it’s where I was watching Life in Portal: Madness on Newgrounds, this predates Avengers: Infinity War with the most ambitious crossover 10 years ago, but for some reason, this kind of encouraged me because I kind of hated how they killed Eddsworld (or just Tom), my mom started talking to me and at some point, I yelled at her to the point that I legit made her cry... yeah... this was probably like the first time, even at almost 10 years old at the time, I was becoming a human trash like I partially become today...

Okay, what a lovely way to start my 10 year journey from 2009 with some bad memories, but now we’re moving on to the next years with short but good memories... that is until you reach 2012 or 2013.

2010: I don’t really remember much of what happened this year, but the only thing I remember is that in Halloween (October 30th or 31st), I went to an anime convention with my older sister, it was really neat but then I saw a booth with a screen playing Highschool of the Dead, and the one frame I remember is the bloody floor from episode 2.

I wish I can go to these local conventions very often but at the same time I tend to think how kind of cheap and poorly made are by my city’s standards or something...

2011: This was the year where I started to finally get gaming consoles, starting with the PSP Go, and it’s where I first started playing Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and I believe this was my genuine first Metal Gear game I started playing. I grew up with Metal Gear with Egoraptor’s Awesome series but I definitely haven’t played any of the games at all.

2012: I vaguely remember what happened to me or what were the most special things that happened and did, but all I can remember is that I’ve had some really bad problems with DeviantArt. Going by BMT2126StudiosMK, I had some seriously bad behavior during those times, to the point where I was kind of like straight-up method acting or something like that, and thinking about it just grosses me out and wish I can go back in time to stop myself for how I was back then.

2013: My problems with DeviantArt start to get much worse when this shit happened. Geez, 13-14 year old me was the absolute worst, ever.

That aside, ever since I played Metal Gear Rising, I can’t help but think that the game has gave me so much inspirations for the projects I want to make, it pretty much boosted my creativity in terms of the weapons, the technology, everything else in MGR.

2014: This year was my worst yet. It started with one of the best moments of my life early that year, because I get to watch Highschool of the Dead in my own cable TV with my older sister. I happened to notice that HOTD was coming to Mexican TV from a Facebook group about people who want to change Cartoon Network LA by removing the censorship and every other crap the channel has, if it weren’t from that group, I wouldn’t have ever known about it.

But in a few months later (I forgot specifically when), one night, I was watching La Sopa (Mexican version of The Soup), and when it was on commercial break, I checked my Twitter a bit, but when the show was back on, my sister came back and spotted me using Twitter, she yelled and then I ran away to my bedroom upstairs... There’s a lot that happened after that and either I can’t remember or I don’t really want to talk about it. Anyways, long after this happened, my family scolded me for who knows how many times I’ve been through this hell, the following weeks I’ve spent my life trying to make alternate accounts just so my sister won’t notice, but she ultimately has.

2015: This is where I finally started to become independent, like I was finally free from using my computer right next to my older sister, it happened like early in the year where I got to watch anime on my own and then watching seasonal anime ever since, starting with the Kancolle anime. (Regardless of what everyone says about it nowadays, I still enjoyed it)

2016: Here is where starting with Batman v Superman is where I had a hatred for critics. Every time a movie came out, they’re rated as trash, but when I saw them, they’re not really trash at all.

2017: This year has become my breaking point and I turned into the person I am today, someone with an absolute vendetta against opinions, I even had to make a post about my problems with them nowadays.

2018: You already know by now what a painful year 2018 was, and I can’t even bother to transcribe pretty much what happened, so I’ll leave my review here.

There were a couple of great moments, but the majority were painful moments after another, but still some positive ones somewhere.

If all my stories from all these makes make you disgusted at me as a human being, you’d better stop getting along with me now.

2019

Alright, time to finally discuss everything that happened to me this year and before we do that, let me give you a small headline of the year overall:

2019 is just as bad, if not, MUCH MUCH WORSE than 2018

Life continues to be a dumpster fire to the point where I’d really like to time travel and just stop everything. one can only dream. Anyways, let’s discuss why 2019 was my worst year yet, starting with:

The worst moments that drove me insane and nearly destroyed my life

For starters, the first two months were a hell of a rough start with my usual problems with my obsession with personal opinions and lack of progress in my novel; as for the latter, I had my older sister give me feedback on a few elements, but she later suggested me some ideas I’m not super comfortable at all, like not using real locations, nationalities, etc., literally make the entire world of my novel fictional, I had told her to not make me ruin my baby any further, she replied “good luck”, so I gave up on talking to her on my project for good.

Then in late March, one of the most heartbreaking incidents I’ve ever witnessed was that artist LOLICEPT and all the harassment he went through by one or two people thinking that one of his pictures was a poorly timed joke for the earthquake. I wasn’t aware of this until I saw hews tweeting about it, I was wondering what’s going on and I was looking at replies of that tweet hews made about LOLICEPT.

Then, I started tweeting thanking hews about a bit of context, while he wasn’t like 100% sure first, I thought that it was still something of a clue. Someone got in our conversation saying that they’re writing a thread of what’s happening and I was on board with the idea, I waited a little while and the document went live, I read the whole thing and I couldn’t help but feel heartbroken about what happened.

There was like a lot of shit that happened, but later on, I noticed that LOLICEPT was still active on Pixiv under a new name: Belko, he started like a day after the incident happened and deleted his old LOLICEPT accounts and I was late into that. Then on May, I noticed that he had a Twitter too, I thought he wouldn’t return to Twitter anymore but now he has, now my life seeing LOLICEPT again, even with a new name, is all I need, and I’m glad he’s still drawing which it’s the most important thing... although I have a complaint and I made a thread about it, but regardless, I’m glad he continues to draw, that’s it.

Now, there’s another issue that happened to another artist, I saw this tweet where it was an artist named kun0 and his girlfriend insulting DreamNekoTV’s art style live on Twitch, and that is not something you should do, you do not criticize artists like that. As someone who hates criticizing art and artists (well, I do have my rights to criticize whatever they make sometimes, I vent them out on my private server, but I do have a rule of NOT criticizing right AT them or anything; Okay, maybe art critique should still exist, but not like this, okay?), I just really can’t stand people criticizing whoever artist and their art style and stuff, because, well, that’s their art style and they all try their best (that is part of why I was never fond of the Saberface jokes on the Fate/Type-Moon community, same face disorder jokes is not something that should be ridiculed). This backlash was very big that not only fans, but even creators like Jacksepticeye, DrLupo, Joey The Anime Man, and many others have expressed disgust over this, and with that, DreamNekoTV has gained over 40k followers at the time (Right now she sits at ???k at the time of uploading this post).

So 2019 wasn’t the best year for artists.

With the kun0 controversy, I wish it had a much MUCH bigger impact, not only for the art community, but like the entire world as well, for non-artists like the creators I mentioned above have expressed.

But wait, things get a lot WORSE in the art community!

An artist under the name @Naju075 made this picture of Nessa and there’s nearly a thousand comments, most of which are people talking shit about “neSSa iS nOt BlAck eNOugH” or something like that, then there’s people who of course defend the artist, telling the artist to ignore the haters and even a meme of the art police who think they are vs who they are in reality (the former is they’re being like normal cops and “making things right” and the latter they’re straight-up clowns). This kickstarted a running gag amongst the art community where artists would occasionally make pictures of Nessa with intentional different color skins, including one from BOW with a rainbow Nessa, and even one from hews with a completely white Nessa intended to bait.

But that isn’t the worst of all, the next thing I’m going to discuss is the grandest worst thing from the art community yet:

Tutorial artist Manga Materials had posted a “Difference on a beginner and a pro’s line strokes” tutorial (which you can see on her Pixiv Fanbox now), this had caused controversy by a couple of assholes (Here are the culprits compiled by Andyface) were harrassing her because they thought her tutorial was “offensive” for the “beginner/pro” part. This harrassment was so bad that Manga Materials herself lead to close her English Twitter account for good, and she’ll continue doing tutorials on her Pixiv Fanbox account. She still has her Japanese Twitter account but she’s taking a break from it for a while and continue her work on Fanbox.

(Messages from her Fanbox: 1, 2. (Even though that second one is similar, but there’s still a different message in there))

This was the second artist scandal that pissed me off so grandly, it breaks my heart seeing artists suffering like this. I wish I could continue supporting her and see her tutorials, but I hate Pixiv Fanbox because it won’t let me use my debit card, and her subscriptions can be... quite expensive to say the least.

Like the LOLICEPT incident, as I mentioned that Manga Materials had deleted her Twitter, I don’t want to judge her decision, especially for a very sensitive person, I just would really like to see her pictures archived or anything. We’re going back to square one with the archive thing I mentioned with LOLICEPT above. (I wouldn’t like to be repetitive)

There’s another artist controversy that happened on early July, but it isn’t much about harrassment, it’s about plagiarism. Sky-Freedom had posted an Oneshota series titled “Rich Thots” starting on January this year (or late December because there are some pictures that Sky-Freedom hasn’t posted on Twitter; and the series wasn’t explicitly called Rich Thots, but the first pictures had “rich_thots” as the filenames so people took that as the series’ name), I never got to see the NSFW pictures from his Patreon until late June, I managed to save every picture right on time. Then, on July 1st, I checked my mail and I saw a picture Sky-Freedom posted, then I visited his Patreon... and every single of the JK oneshota pictures are gone. Sky released his apology and I was utterly shocked. It turns out that the first picture Sky made was a straight-up copy from a similar picture made by an artist called Shinjiro (@shnr2626/@shnjr4545). To think that Sky-Freedom himself would copy from another artist... This is hard to believe.

I want to keep supporting Sky-Freedom, but at the same time, I don’t want to anymore. Not because of the fact he plagiarized, I want to keep supporting him but I can’t even bother to care for his other content, such as Tejina Senpai and Azur Lane doujins which he sold at C96 like fire.

I wanted to ask Sky and Shinjiro about it but Shinjiro blocked me on Twitter (at least he blocked me from his talk account, I’m still following his art account fine), my obsession was so great that I even went so far on making a Twitter account (It was originally @JKOneShota but I changed it to @SkyOneShotaFan to be more a direct reference to being a Sky-Freedom JK oneshota fan account) to try to spread word and try to make both artists to communicate each other a lot more with the help of my feedback as to what I believe in the pictures themselves, unfortunately the account hasn’t met my expectations on spreading word and everything like I wanted, I want to delete the account now but I’ll leave it for historical purposes, even though it was meaningless. At least it serves as an informative account or something.

August 28th, 2019, the shnjr4545 Twitter account posted a new tweet, I signed in the Save Rich Thots Twitter account and spammed “ JKおねショタを復活させる” (Revive JK Oneshota) to that tweet, as well as the previous one (Seeing this image just adds fuel to the fire on the controversy) and... got blocked. I thought this was a pure art account and didn’t give a crap on people, yet here I am. 😂

So, yeah, Shinjiro pretty much doesn’t want you to talk about the Rich Thots series at him, or else he’ll block you. Don’t asking him anything about it, just stay silent.

But wait, after all that ranting with Sky-Freedom vs Shinjiro over Rich Thots, on October 7th, Sky-Freedom has revived the Rich Thots series and OH MY GOD, I COULDN’T HAVE BEEN HAPPIER. My heart and faith on Sky-Freedom has completely restored! (So much for that “protest” account. Although from October 7th to November 18th was kind of disappointing but I hope the next few weeks will start to get better. Even with the two new onee-sans featured lately, I wish Sky can reuse the other three girls before the plagiarism bullshit. At least change the two black haired girls a little bit and the blonde gyaru is 100% original)

Another thing I want to talk about artists is how at least two of them have been driving me insane with their art block. Moisture and sub_res, but the latter is the absolute worst). There isn’t really much to talk about with Moisture other than he just complained a lot about his “inability” to draw and stuff, I forgot when it happened but at least he’s stopped complaining. Now, moving on to sub_res and boy, I seriously hate this guy now. He complained literally every single day about his art block, his inability and all that stuff and no matter how many people tell him his art is fine and all that, sub is very neglective about listening to his fans and everything. He’s still going and at this point I really don’t want to follow him anymore if he continues to whine like that.

I seriously shouldn’t underrestimate the struggles artists have because I’m an expectator, but even if I’m a hobbyist artist, I do have my struggles to, but I do deal with them, I’m more confident with whatever I draw than sub does, especially when I don’t have such a mentality when I see some fine ass drawings as utterly shit (well, sometimes but most of the time not really) like sub.

There’s yet another artist drama around early November with artist Piukute062. It all started with him uploading this NSFW looking picture which it became the loading screen for the English version of Azur Lane. When I saw this picture, I thought it was super hot, but it was NSFW enough to be in a Azur Lane loading screen contest, and it happened... but only for an extremely short period.

As soon as the loading screen went live, it got removed out of the blue. Then a day later when Piukute posted a WIP for his next art piece, he stated that it got removed for the R-17 art, which it was expected because I always thought it was NSFW enough to be in the contest, but at the same time it sucks that it got removed. Two days later, he released an apology note to put an end to this drama for good.

Now, I’m glad that he’ll continue to do artwork for Azur Lane, whether fan arts or official, and he’s learned from this drama, but to be honest, I’m kind of conflicted about this...

Seriously, 2019 wasn’t the best year for artists.

Anyways, sorry for dragging all my talk with art and artists, but this shit matters for me as I’m more of a hobbyist artist. Anyways, let’s move on to even worse things that happen in real life.

On May 22nd, I went to Walmart with my mom and older sister, I find the Matchbox Jurassic World cars I wanted to buy, and we did, but when we were checking our bags when we were about to leave and pick the taxi, the cars went missing and we went rushing on searching for them, then a man came and and asked for the cars, and we were glad that this man came to give us the cars, but my mom and sister were in an argument and yelled at me that I need to be more careful, I felt a little sad and broken I had to make a thread about what happened, then my older sister messaged me on Discord and said that her friend saw what I posted and then she apologized. A friend of my sister, okay? Uh, okay.

Before I continue, let me address something: I think around early June or something (It’s been a while and I forgot), I was in the RPG Site Discord server and people talked shit about Persona 5, and pretty much everything they say about the game just hurts my soul so much that I decided to make a TwitLonger post about why I’m practically done with the Persona series for good. Later I made a bit of off-topic rant, going a bit existential and then I went to sleep. Then at 7 AM, my mom just came to my bedroom and she argued with me about the depressive stuff I write, she even went so far that the government was watching me. (Now that I think about it, there’s no fucking way that’s true). Later I checked Discord and my older sister DM’d me saying “My friend saw your stuff again, you need to lay off the internet for a while. You take people’s opinions too seriously.” It seems like my sister’s friend was apparently my stalker, this was starting to feel like 2014 all over again when I got stalked by one of my sister’s old friends. Wow, way to keep ruining my life for my “own good”... Thankfully a while later, they got suspended, and when they got back, they stopped following me. Moving on...

Etika... What happened to Etika was really sad. I don’t really want to talk too much about Etika because I’m scared that I may speak ill of him, but everything that happened to him leading up to his death sucks. Then there was also the Kyoto Animation arson, which that was an absolutely horrendous even to ever happen in Japan in recent years.

Around the same time Etika died, and I shit you not, a few days later, my older sister was hospitalized for her behavior, I don’t really know what happened but I remember hearing my mom having a phone call with the hospital and then i heard my older sister yell “WHO ARE YOU CALLING TO?!” and then they left and she got hospitalized.

Then around the same time, there was quite some problems with a DM group made by one of MysticDistance’s friends. First off, I’ve had quite some rough times with MysticDistance’s DM groups and I seriously feel bad because I hate being the way I am with my opinion vendetta, I can be quite a bitch. Anyways, with this new DM group by one of Mystic’s friends, first thing was that when my older sister was hospitalized, I spent most of my money buying stuff from Steam because it had the Summer Sale at the time (and bought other things that was a little expensive like Wallpaper Engine), then when I noticed my debit card’s wallet (Yes, I finally got a debit card, more details later), I started... e-begging, to get a bit of money so I can get like 300-400 pesos back because I needed the money for the three of us to go see Spider-Man: Far From Home, someone brought up the subject of our finances and one person got really mad at me because when I had shared my PayPal.me link about my financial struggles, someone else shared the other person’s PayPal link about their... cancer donations, and the person who made the tweet linking their PayPal for cancer donation really lashed out at me real bad, later I eventually clarified and all seems went to normal.

There was another situation in that DM group but we’ll get into that later.

Also, let me rephrase that, when my older sister was hospitalized, I spent most of my money I was supposed to use for Spider-Man: Far From Home buying shit from Steam! Man, I can’t get any worse. But don’t worry, my financial struggle quickly got fixed as one of my friends definitely volunteered to give me 20 dollars, which equals 400 pesos! The dude just saved my life.

My Summer vacation was the most boring and shallow vacation I’ve ever had in my entire life.

August came and went, and while the first few weeks were fine, like around the middle of the month, it just turned into absolute hell: Spider-Man leaving the MCU... but then that quickly got resolved a month later.

September came and there really wasn’t much big things to talk about, moving on to October boy, my 20th birthday was the absolute best I’ve had in my life. Still nowhere near the kind of birthday I always want, but I got some surprises and stuff that I’ve always been looking for. I’ll address this later in the positives of the year. Although there’s something I have to say which made me sad, but thankfully happened a day after my birthday: One of the Custom Maid 3D2 artists I’ve liked, kirishima_ss (NSFW, click with discretion) blocked me on Twitter after I tweeted them that yesterday was my birthday. Like... seriously dude? I just turned 20! Did they block me for the sake of not getting suspended from young accounts interacting with mature ones?! Or are they racist?! I kinda want to tell the other Custom Maid 3D2 artists who follow me but I don’t want to get them in trouble and they’ll end up getting blocked too...

Then like at the end of the month, I also got kicked out from the one DM group because I shared one of MysticDistance’s tweets saying something about popular series and whatnot, I asked what do they think and everyone proceeded to give answers like “I don’t care” and such. Me bitching out, I was like “...Really? Try to put some more heart to it” and one of the guys used me as an example of if a series is popular I kinda get angry with opinions and something like that, I asked that if that was really necessary to use me like that, and then I noticed that I got kicked out of the group out of the blue. I asked SAL about it and it appears that one of the people who was in the chat blocked me, I immediately thought of this one person and she did indeed block me. Well, okay, I always had the feeling she hated me anyways. (ROT13 message incoming)

Ebfr naq Wnevq, vs lbh obgu ernq guvf, ab, V'z abg tbvat gb haoybpx lbh. Jryy, V qvq sbe gur fnxr bs lbh ernqvat guvf, ohg bapr lbh qb, lbh'yy creznaragyl erznva oybpxrq sbe gur erfg bs zl yvsr orpnhfr V qba'g jnag gb frr lbh nalzber.

Wnevq, lbh'er fbzrgvzrf qvssvphyg gb gnyx jvgu, ohg Ebfr, V'z fhcre fpnerq bs lbh xabj gb gur cbvag jurer V ernyyl pna'g nccebnpu lbh ng nyy, V nyjnlf unq gur vzcerffvba lbh fgnegrq gb ungr zr rire fvapr gur gvzr V r-orttrq, naq abj lbh qb ungr zr naq lbh whfg xvpxrq zr bhg bs gur QZ tebhc, irel sbaq bs lbh gb trg evq bs crbcyr yvxr zr, V ernyyl tbg bire lbhe areirf jvgu gnyxvat nobhg gur fnzr vffhrf V unq sbe gur ragvergl bs gur lrne be whfg orvat n cynva nffubyr.

V qba'g ernyyl pner vs V'z xvpxrq bhg bs gur QZ tebhc abe V jnag gb erwbva, V jnf trggvat gverq bs frrvat zl Zrffntrf gno trggvat gur 1 vpba rirel qnl. Fb ybat.

November went by and nothing very big, but I have to say, and this isn’t much of a positive nor a negative thing but I need to address this here, on par with the first paragraph of this segment: When I opened Chrome and started checking on my WordPress site for my project and under my pen name, I came across two which were posted on October and I really have never noticed it in a month. The first one was just a guy saying “Hype!” because he was intrigued with my project, but the second comment from the same guy... was quite a long harsh feedback I’ve gotten so far. (Not the first or the most unhelpful (although it kind of is) but come on). The only feedback I genuinely care for my future as an author is I want grammatical issues, narrative issues maybe so I want everyone to give me suggestions on what do I do with certain characters I’m not sure about, but issues about the concept?

Let me real about this, the only kind of feedback I care about are grammatical issues, narrative issues maybe because I want to fix some character backstories and other things I’m not really sure with, but issues with the concept and everything? I don’t give a shit. Can’t there ever be some liberties with having to make some things without considering too much backstory or anything?

Oh, I almost forgot to tell something from November, I FINALLY GOT MY PS4!!! Though... the outcome didn’t turn out as hype and peaceful like I wanted. My mom and my older sister started arguing because mom used all of my sister’s money, and my sister got aggro. After seeing my mom and sister argue, my mom told me to come with her to go back home, but I turned and walked away from her and I said “I’m not going because you’re useless”. But then, I immediately felt bad and tried to search my mom around the plaza, but whatever, I decided to go home once and for all while my older sister was still hanging around in her own.

Later that day, my sister came back home, she and I finally set up the PS4 and I started playing Dark Souls 3 (Yes, I now understand how Git Gud feels like), but then mom came back home and she and my sister started arguing again, they even went so far to return and sell the PS4 back, then I (tried really hard to) pillow yelled that they were gonna sell the PS4 as soon as we bought it. But then, the next day, all got resolved and it turned out to be my sister’s fault for something. I have no idea what just happened, but hey, we’re not selling the PS4 anymore!

Seriously, my mom and sister are incredibly stupid, I always think their chemistry sucks. I wish either of them are dead already if this kind of shit continues to happen.

Anyways, moving on. December came and went, and the biggest thing that first happened and must talk about: The Game Awards. This was the biggest waste of time I’ve ever been, and the absolute worst one yet. The only things that I cared about were the No More Heroes 3 trailer (which I’ll talk about later), DMC5 winning Best Action game, and Death Stranding winning a couple of awards (I’m truly disappointed that it didn’t win GOTY, but at least it was something), everything was maximum sleep.

Anyways, Christmas came and I got some decent gifts: I got me a fluffy blanket, a new wallet and 500 pesos from my aunt. I got a new bath coat and a wristband from my mom. They’re good gifts but they certainly don’t top last year’s Christmas gifts where I got a new phone and Spider-Verse. (Speaking of which, I wanted to buy the Spider-Verse wristband but mom didn’t want me to because she thought “nobody wears wristbands”, and somehow she changed her mind with the one she just gave me. Now I need a ring so my hands look cool). I hope next year I get much better gifts, something crazier and expensive, though I might be asking for too much. Same with my birthday. But hey, at least the chocolates are always a nice side-gift (?) to get. (We always get bags full of various chocolates for Christmas, and got one for my birthday too)

This last paragraph wasn’t so much of a negative thing as it is more for positive, and this category is more like a long telling of my life in general throughout the rest of the year anyways.

And now we’re finally here, New Year’s day and, what else? You’re reading this post talking about my life throughout the decade and my long 2019 review.

Seems like there’s nothing else to discuss, so I think we’re done talking about the mostly negative things that I’ve been through in my entire life this year. But we’re just getting started...

The positives

For the most part I have pretty much discussed a lot of very negative things that happened in my life, but I had to do it so I can get it out of my way and I want people to understand what I’ve been going through in my life this year. It may or may not be worth getting sympathy over something that’s always my fault and stuff that is common in life, but at times it really drives me to give up on achieving my dreams and kill myself, but now the entire year wasn’t that bad like I think it is, so let’s discuss my biggest positives:

Starting around January, I finally got to have my own debit card and that seriously changed my life... For the better and for the worse. You see, the one thing I always do with my money is spending over 100 pesos on supporting artists, mainly on Fantia every month(Sometimes on Patreon when their pages are the ones that take away my money instantly, I’ve seen some that don’t really take away the moment I subscribe to one of their tiers), I also bought porn illustration CG sets in DMM FANZA. At some points, I went into a serious financial struggle. So yeah, I pretty much always spend my money with porn every month. I kind of wish I could try to save my money a bit, but sometimes, the Fantia artists’ content is too good to ignore them (Some pages have their contents posted limited for a month, others are unlimited).

I haven’t spent my money only on porn alone, I also bought games on Steam, especially during the Summer Sale. I bought various Valve games, Melty-Blood, etc. Even long after the Summer Sale, I managed to buy Killer7, Saya no Uta and Custom  Order Maid 3D2 (English Steam).

Man, my debit card is my best friend, I can finally start buying stuff and supporting artists I really care about, though the only problem is that I want to support artists on Pixiv Fanbox but Pixiv (Yes, all of Pixiv) won’t allow me to use my debit card at all. Sometimes Google Play is for some reason broken because when I try to buy stuff from Fate/Grand Order and Azur Lane, I always get an error despite putting my information correctly, but I hate Pixiv the most because they definitely strictly want credit cards. Sure, I can still use PayPal to support artists on Fanbox, but there’s no way anyone would ever give me money on PayPal.

Another best thing that happened in my life is that I finally achieved one of my long gaming dreams, I finally own a PS4 after years! Though, like I said, the outcome turned out grim, but still, I finally own a PS4 after so god damn long! My first PS4 games are Dark Souls 3 (We bought it along with the PS4 from some promo in the RadioShack we bought the PS4 from), Devil May Cry 5 (I never expected my older sister to buy DMC5 from Amazon a few days after buying the PS4 already), and lastly Death Stranding in December. November was basically Buen Fin (Mexico’s less chaotic Black Friday), so that’s how we got the PS4 after so long! (Though given how much I play DMC5 and Death Stranding lately, I don’t think I’ll ever touch Dark Souls 3 ever again). Man, I really hope I get enough money to buy so many releases we missed over the years!

About my novel I always wanted to make... Well, don’t really get me started on it. I still haven’t started publishing chapters of it at all. But still, early this year, I started making accounts with my pen name my older sister come up (I told her that I want her to help me out but as her feedback grew ludicrous, I gave up and decided to follow what I want to make myself), I’ve also been making a site with Wix, but several months later, I gave up with Wix and decided to make another one with WordPress.com and it’s so much better.

Even if I haven’t started publishing my novel’s chapters, at least I have been trying to write some of the prologue alone! So that’s something, I guess...

One of the best things that has happened to me on Twitter so far is that I’ve been getting followed by a few Japanese illustrators, but mostly Custom Maid 3D2 artists, and I can’t believe I happened to be friends with at least two who I really like talking with the most. Not only that but some also made collab pictures using my OCs and boy, I couldn’t be any happier. (See the collabs here, NSFW). This is how it feels like when having your favorite artists follow you but they also make pictures of your OCs. I’m very grateful that these Japanese artists are following and even talking to foreign nobodies like me, let alone Mexican.

Oh yeah, there’s also the fact that I’m attending fine arts school now, but it isn’t my best positive thing, I honestly feel mixed about it because my mom forced me to go to school again after a year being a NEET. But then, around earlier December, I got some scolarship money and just when I was thinking that I wanted to give up on attending this school after a year, the money just convinced me, so I think I have to stay a little longer, I guess...

And now, it’s time for the one big speech I want to make so my soul can finally be clean and set free once and for all!

My current mental health and trying to get my last laugh on everyone

As you probably might have guessed, my long struggle of dealing with people’s opinions and criticisms is never going to stop. No matter how much you tell me to ignore people with what they say and still try to like what I like, no matter how much how much you’re gonna tell me that I need to take a break from the internet for a while, none of that shit is going to happen.

I won’t take off the internet for a while because I don’t know what else to do (besides gaming and other things), I’m gonna get bored to death and there’s a lot of things that makes me happy, being fan arts and porn.

No matter how much you tell me and I promise to myself that I need to behave myself, I won’t keep my word and I will always continue to make fuss about everything about people’s mentalities when it comes to what they say and everything else in this life.

Everything I was a loner in 2015, as years went on, I’ve started to become more socially active and I have made more friends. But now, I’m not grateful for it. I wish I hadn’t made friends. I wish I remained an absolute loner for the rest of my life.

Let me try to make one last rant and hopefully somebody will understand and I will be free.

I don’t know what the hell is wrong with everyone, everyone always tends to attack some things I really find okay with or for no reason. Everytime I watch something bad, I’m like “Hm, okay, that wasn’t so bad”, and then literally everyone goes way too far by being insecure asses yelling at everything on how offensively bad these things are. I know I had some experience too, but most of the time, I don’t really care, either from fandoms or just general communities that have some things in their interests.

Even if people tell me that they don’t have problems that I like what they don’t, that doesn’t change their hypocrisy, they’re cynicism! It’s not just one person that has a contrary feeling to mine, it’s always, ALWAYS a god damn circle of cynics that I can’t even want to interact with them and get along!

The biggest problem is that even if I were to enjoy what I enjoy and ignore people that they don’t, there are people that are even precious to me, but my hopes and dreams immediately get destroyed the moment they say one bit of negativity around something I hold dear the most in my life and it’s an absolute red flag an absolute offense for me!

Talking about things, for example, Overwatch or even Star Wars with Rise of Skywalker, or even the Fate fandom, pretty much any community is absolute cancer. Even for general communities, hearing and reading what people are saying about stuff you like but then they proceed to say things that they expect you to believe is nothing but a social taboo! There is no fucking way that I’m gonna agree to literally everything you say and my means by disagreeing opinions is always by lifting my voice and fight for it! It’s a social taboo to the point that we’re not even “mutuals” because we have nothing in common!

If you even dare to tell me that you’re not forcing your opinions or anything, then don’t even bother telling me to not force my opinions because that’s what I pretty much want! I want to force my opinions towards people until they give up and admit that I win!

It’s even worse when there are “fans” out there that are just outright bashing things for absolute no reason! If you do that, you’re basically destroying your pride for that series you’re supposed to be into, what it means to you, what it represents you! Sure, I may have some issues with certain things, but at the same time, I don’t really have problems with anything nor I even care to think or even agree to anyone with whatever bullshit they say. I don’t give a shit whether nothing is perfect, well it is for me and my heart, as long as I have fun or don’t have problems, that’s it!

People think they’re fans of a certain franchise they represent, but no! Why can’t anyone become real fanboys to the point that they’re more like blind fanboys like me where I tend to support literally anything regardless of some situations!

It’s even dumber that there are people asking for people to make “good” things or anything that they think it’s “good”. First of all, please for the love of god, define “good” because you clearly have no idea what do you even mean or even want. If you think you want people to make “good” things as a general principle of life, you’re dead wrong! There’s no way anyone would ever make “good” things or whatever you want, instead, you might be thinking that the good stuff you want is stuff for you. So stop abusing the word “good” as a means of a principal rule for every creator to make, and instead try to find some things that you may find interesting, things that speak to you, by yourself!

The worst thing yet is that people abuse their opinions as “facts”. Like, seriously?! You do not use your opinions like that and call them “facts”, no way in hell anyone will ever believe you!

I always thought that people expressing their opinions by text is just harmful for me but I’m sure if anyone are able to speak it out by voice, then I wouldn’t have any trouble, but voiced opinions are no different because of the god awful tones people make with their voices! (This is part of why I don’t like watching The Unreal Bruhcast anymore)

So from now on, I don’t really care about pretty much everyone’s opinions. Not from friends (Belsheber Rusape, Pixelbuster), not from family (my older sister), not from YouTubers (Jacksepticeye), not from artists (Akai Riot), anyone! I’m really sick of anyone voicing their opinions, mostly expressing hate for everything I’m curious of, and what I hold dear the most, because I hate everyone, I really hate everyone so much!

You people have failed me! You have failed me! As friends! As mutuals! Everything! I have thought really high of you but then you always blew everything up the moment you start talking shit about the stuff I hold dear the most! I don’t want to be with you anymore! You always try so hard in trying to convince me by heart to ignore whatever bullshit people say with your empty words! Either that or I will seriously never learn and I will continue to talk shit right back at you!

By the way, @BrinkOfMemories/@BrinkArtist was one of the pioneers for developing my hatred because, my lord, every time I read their opinion tweets, they always gave me an absolute headache and I want to punch them so bad!

Now, let’s talk about my desire and my future of becoming a creator (artist, author, etc).

Every time I see people talking shit about stuff like Kojima’s writing, or any kind of poor writing people talk about, I always think that I would like to walk away from becoming a writer. why? Because I know nothing about the most basic things of “good” storytelling!

Seriously, who the hell do people think they are? They think they’re trying to be better than most of the creators (artists/writers/game devs, etc) are trying to be and what they make? Do they seriously can even understand the thought process of what people tend to make? Why do people always be like “This franchise needs to be this, the core” and all that shit. And what’s with all this “These characters need to be relatable to a lot of people”, “this story doesn’t follow the core of the original“, “this story is predictable”, like, what is all that garbage vocabulary?! This is why there’s no creative freedom anymore!

Not a single fan is even civil with the creators they respect anymore! Nobody really thinks what it’s like to be the creators they love and hate like I do, as someone who wants to get in the entertainment industry in some way! They can’t even think what it feels like to be the creators they inspire/aspire to be!

You think people like you who think they’re better than most creators do and even go so far by fixing some of their works because they’re incredibly flawed and all that shit, to be somebody but the fans themselves, they don’t! They think that people should make stories or anything and expecting them to be great instead of developing any sort of trust and cofidence and even try to be more hyped to check their works out regardless of quality, and then let everyone have their creative freedom!

I’ve had some really harsh feedback where in my project I want to make so bad that I tend to draw characters only to be shoved in the story by just showing them off and don’t have any real purpose, I don’t really give a shit! I’m just trying my best to figure out what kind of characters do I want to make or whatever! This is the kind of feedback that affects me so god damn much to the point where I seriously try to give up on making my project a reality! When that shit happens, I always think that I should give up in making my project beacuse nobody deserves to see my masterpieces I have in mind, my magnum opus I’ve been trying to develop for years! All because of your stupid intellect and you seriously think you have the means to make a “great” story with great storytelling, memorable characters, and everything that makes you think they’re so good, why not try to make that story with said things or even try to write my project yourself?! This is my kind of creative freedom I want to have and you people always destroy it! Not to mention that you always ask me what’s it even about and I seriously can’t process to answer what it actually is! It’s nothing but peer pressure!

Then there’s also another feedback I’ve gotten about my project as the “Why this?”, I get asked a lot of “Why...?” because people always want to look for a purpose for literally EVERYTHING and it makes me sick! Sure, I do have some things in mind for some things having a purpose, but dear god, can’t you just let anyone try to make anything without having to think of a story way too much?!

Speaking of which, there’s always these kind of people who are like “This character is my favorite because of their great actions” and whatever, and I’m literally the only one who’s just like picking a character and calling them my instant favorite from their designs alone! I may be a simpleton of a brainlet who thinks that way, but if you’re gonna force your opinion that the character I like is terrible, get out of my sight! Isn’t it something like a friend tells you “Hey, see that guy/girl over there? I think he’s/she’s hot.”, huh?! Shouldn’t it be the same for fictional characters as well?

If there are tons of things you hate in fiction so much, then I’m bound to make the same mistakes as everyone else! Make a gacha or any other things you hate that are being inserted in fiction! And do you have any idea why do creators keep putting things you hate? Because they have creative freedom! They can do whatever the hell they want! Why not let them be?! What about yourself?!

And then things get worse, there’s always a bunch of SJW assholes who always attack artists because they “promote pedophilia” when they draw shotacon/lolicon stuff? That kind of shit ALWAYS happens and it seriously need to stop! You seriously have to think that all what they do is ONLY FICTIONAL, you should keep that up in your god damn asses and never show up with these artists ever again! That’s the thing, aside from writing, why not let anyone draw whatever they want to?! Don’t you people know the rule that you should separate art from artists at all costs?! I draw gore and some dark shit a few times, but that doesn’t mean I’m an emo or edgy person! I just draw what I like!

Oh, and if anyone’s going to attack me because of my insecure opinions like this or even call me a p3d0 because I support shota/loli art (keep in mind this is strictly FICTIONAL), please don’t do that and get out of my sight!

Going back to the topic of my project, the project is absolutely top secret because if I become big enough and even under a different name, if I tell and suggest everything to everyone I know, it’s unlikely but some might make allegations about my rude behavior and how much porn I retweet, I’m basically gonna get cancelled and I don’t, for the faint of heart, I DON’T WANT THAT TO HAPPEN, PLEASE! So for all the people I tell everything about my project, I’m grateful for you to support me, but it’s time that I really wish you should forget about me and everything I said and just wait to get surprised!

After everything I just said, let me give one last fuck you to everyone I’ve grown to meet, like and hate

One last time...

I’m never going to be like you! I have my own reasons and I have better issues to be mad about and they’re not something everyone knows or even cares!

I think I am definitely done discussing what I always want to discuss and I really hope you will understand my feelings. Thank you.

Now, let’s finally move on to...

What to expect in 2020: The year and the decade beyond

Now that I’m finally done making my long review for 2019, let’s now finally talk about what am I gonna expect for 2020, mostly about the year and a little bit of the decade beyond!

Although, to be honest, I don’t really have high hopes on what the year and the decade has in store, because we’ve come to the point where we’re now in the age of extinction, pretty much everything and everyone we loved and care are disappearing, so I’m really scared of the future. Sure, I could move on but sometimes it might be hard thinking back on the stuff and people you used to admire not being there anymore...

Anyways, even if I’m going to lose the people and things I care the most in my life, there are still some new things I’m going to discover, so there’s that.

Now, let’s get started with talking about the 2020 things!

Resolutions

Like I said, I’m not really looking forward with making resolutions because I already know that I won’t be able to keep my word, pretty much anyone else might, but for me it’s kind of a big deal. I’m still gonna try to mention what are my resolutions are, and it’ll probably be the last time I’ll do this, so just in case, here they are. If I seriously don’t accomplish these at the very first days or anything, I’m basically doomed:

Release my novel once and for all: After my long ass rant about my future as an author with my project. LIke I said above, I seriously may still have not been able to start publishing at least my prologue alone, at least I’m still writing like 3/4s of it the best I can.

I’m publishing my novel as a serial on my WordPress site because I don’t want to publish them on Wattpad or Royal Road for one because I don’t have a cover, I don’t have the money to pay for an artist I want to make a cover for me nor I want to make like a placeholder at the moment.

Speaking of the cover, after making my pen name, all I did was asking a lot of Japanese artists if they can draw me a cover for the novel... When I’m already aware that I DON’T have money at all (I was asking for spec work). Thankfully some of the people I asked have turned down and most haven’t responded at all.

Let me tell you a little bit of my project. I used to dream of wanting to make this into a game, maybe an RPG Maker one right now, but I had no idea what to do with RPG Maker nor I think I would like to make my own textures and assets, I don’t think I would have gotten patience. But then about 3 years ago, I wanted to write the script for the game, but that turned out to be more like a character encyclopedia book because I really had no idea what kind of scenarios I wanted to write. Also, most of the character biographies was written by a friend who I regularly about my project with. So I gave up on my dream on making my project into a game. Besides, I don’t think I might ever learn game design or anything.

Then like two years later, I just somehow realized and learned the importance of books getting adaptations and stuff, I decided to turn it into a novel instead mainly because I want people to adapt it. So my dream of wanting my project to become a video game is still there, but all I have to do is make a novel and try to talk stuff like how I want to get it adapted or something.

(I’m not sure if that sounds like the best plan for you, writing a novel only for the sole purpose of getting adaptations, but that’s what I really want, to be honest)

I always thought that writing a novel was going to be easy as pie, but trying to figure out how to write the scenarios, describing them, the action scenes and everything is a nightmare!

I have researched quite a lot about the writing process, and the one advice that stucks to me is “You don’t have to write perfectly, just try to write something no matter if it’s garbage”, and that’s what I’m kind of trying right now.

Anyways, here comes the one thing I’m sure I might regret this, but I think it should be time to talk a LITTLE bit about something from my project.

Do you really want to know the name of the project? Well, I can’t give you the full title, but here’s a working title of sorts:

“Cebwrpg SZJ” (Definitely not used with something XIII)

(This is just to throw people off. The people I talked about my project with of course know what it means. And if someone figures out what it means, I’m probably gonna keep quiet. Although I think it might already exist somewhere...)

I’m afraid I can’t tell you what the project really is about, so I might have to leave you in the dark until I publish the novel and there’s a lot of attention and it becomes big, so that’s all you’re getting for now.

I have quite some ambitious goals which you may or may not believe me and might laugh at me but hear me out: I want to become the new SCP, Type-Moon and Marvel.

I want to be like the SCP because every time I look at the website, the creatures and everything, just truly inspires me, I’d love to do something like the SCP with writing a ton of information about my characters and stuff, but the big problem is that I really have no idea how am I gonna translate my thoughts or things into words to make lengthy profiles or something. I’d like to be like Type-Moon because... all I can think of is doing nothing but Cebwrpg SZJ as much as TM is doing nothing but Fate, but then they’re also toying with the idea of the multiverse, even though they never explicitly ever address if the Fate projects are multiverse because most of them tend to have their self-contained universe, it’s a general comic book concept of multiverse with different incarnations of characters I really can’t stop using the comic book things with Fate. Lastly, I’d like to be like Marvel because, we’re going full circle with the multiverse talk, but I’d also like to be like the MCU (Pretty much everyone else is) with shared universe and everything galore. Although for me, it’s not just going to be MCU, it’s also going to be more like the Disney/Pixar Universe theory. I just like shared universes, okay?

I would also love to become a Virtual YouTuber, just to conceal my identity and hide my public appearance, but at some point, I would still like having public appearances in conventions or any sort of these events anyways. The kind of VTuber I’d like to be is just all by myself, I wouldn’t like to be like Nijisanji or Hololive where it’s everything under corporate control and I wouldn’t like to play a character with features I’m not really sure with, I’d like to make and be my own characters.

This is the real job I want to start doing right now, and there’s no way I’m making my novel writing hobby for free, I really gotta get serious and try to make some money off from donations from chapters and eventually the full book release. (I’m planning to publish it on KDP, by the way)

I just want me and my franchise to become something big for the 2020 decade and for the Reiwa era, I want to be something! I want to achieve my dreams as soon as possible and I’d better make it fast! (I only have 10 years to do so)

Also, here’s my retirement announcement for you to read because there’s a reason why I want to stop writing blogs in Tumblr for good.

Try to behave better and be more respectful: Aside from taking people’s opinions seriously, another recurring problem about my behavior is that I always fight with my mom every time I do my older sister’s homeworks. There’s just really something from her that really frustrates me. I do feel like I really start lifting my voice at her for no reason, but my brain just feels like it’s tired of her shit, or that doesn’t want to be reminded or whatever, so I hope I could try my best at trying to have some more patience, but I still have to fight for it.

Get in shape: I gave up on going to the gym at the beginning of Summer because I wanted to rest and because I was gonna attend the fine arts school I go now because I wouldn’t have the time to go to the gym right in front of my house but I get back home exhausted and I want to save hundreds of pictures I retweet on Twitter and bookmark on Pixiv. But then Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru came and I immediately regret stopped going to the gym.

But it’s fine because it does show exercises you can do at home, and probably the most basic thing I can do to reduce my fat belly when having a decently fit body is doing crunches. Probably 3 sets of 20 will do, and I really hope I can do this every day. Not just crunches, I also want to do planks, but sometimes I’m not really sure if it’s effective or anything because I want to feel that my abdomen is getting burned or something.

Draw regularly until I improve my art drastically: Back in 2012, I used to draw comics mindlessly, now I’m feeling kind of tempted to draw comics again but this time it’s going to be focused with the Busujima Sisters. As much as I think that I would like to do so, I’m not really sure if I’m prepared to be drawing comics again. I mean, I do have ideas for some panels but I need some time to think better on how to structure things out.

I’m mostly a traditional person, but I really get frustrated on how the graphite is like really buried on the paper and I can’t erase anything no matter what, it’s even worse with lighter pencils, so I think I should also try to learn and have more patience with digital art. It drives me nuts on how digital art works, from brush size vs. canvas size (The bigger the canvas, the smaller even the bigger brushes are going to be) and my least favorite, layers.

So I think I might become a full-fledged artist account, not only by doing Custom Maid 3D2 pictures (Though I’m not really sure because I downloaded a torrent with CM3D2 and COM3D2 with most of the DLC and when I open COM3D2, it’s extremely laggy to the point that it might even be unusable for my laptop), but by posting doodles or even fully colored illustrations (if I have the patience) as well. I have posted pictures a little bit, but I think it should be time for me to become a full-fledged regular artist.

Choosing between traditional vs digital is a straight-up 50/50, but it’s going to be worth the try with both if I were to draw literally every day until I run out of sheets from my sketchbook because all I do is just doing doodles, but that’s the point.

Try to retweet less: This is one goal I’m not really 100% sure if I really want to do and I’m still gonna write it and not fulfill it anyways, so I’m just gonna write this here just in case. I’m always retweeting a lot of stuff, mostly porn, and I’m really concerned about my followers who might see the porn I constantly retweet a lot and they see my name everywhere, some don’t really mind but I seriously need to try to stop that habit for a bit.

Although even if I would stop retweeting, liking tweets is no different, I always retweet because I really like going to my profile and see the tweets I retweeted and everything. Retweeting tweets means keeping the person’s tweets to yourself, that’s what I always believed in my retweets. And yes, I’m lazy to go to my Likes page but I always tend to like replies, so they’re going to be a hassle to get through.

Most anticipated releases

It’s finally time to talk about my favorite part of every year, new releases! I’ve seen some stuff aimed for a 2020 release, but I’ve even seen some that are slated for 2021 and beyond, but for now, let’s talk about what this year has to store.

Although, I may vaguely remember what am I looking forward the most, but I’m just going to talk about the ones that comes to my mind first.

Also, better keep in mind that while some things may have their 2020 release dates, delays are always bound to happen, but we still have to count in some things anyways.

Anime:

There’s just so many anime coming out that I think I might have lost track. Sure, you can look at my previous Fall 2019 Final Impressions post to see what are my upcoming Winter 2020 anime, but here are the biggest shows for 2020 I’m excited for.

Attack on Titan season 4: This is going to be the final season of Attack on Titan and we have come a long way for the finale, especially that the manga is going to end soon as well. Don’t worry, this is slated for a Fall 2020 release, so as of the writing and publishing of this post, we have 10 months for S4 to come out, especially when the manga will finish by then. It’s to be determined if it’s going to be a one-cour series or a two-cour series, but what I expect the most is that it should at least adapt the finale, kind of like how Tokyo Ghoul:re the anime happened a while after the manga had ended or something, except Attack on Titan S4 is going to be faithfully adapted of course.

Akira remaster and new TV series: A 4K remaster of Akira is something I’m quite curious on how it’s going to work, but a new TV series is what I’m the most curious. Apparently, the new TV series is being made so it will fully adapt the manga where the film didn’t (the creator directed the film but the manga hadn’t been finished at the time), animated by Sunrise. I wonder if the Akira TV series will capture the original film’s style or something.

2020 sure sounds like it’s going to be the year of Akira, though 2019 was the year Akira (and Blade Runner) is set and then the Taika Waititi live-action film is going to be released in 2021.

Also, with that being said about an Akira TV series that adapts the entire manga, I think we’ve come to the point that we’re getting anime remakes with the sole purpose of adapting the manga to its ending, see Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Fruits Basket 2019. Speaking of which...

Fruits Basket season 2: I haven’t read the manga or watched the original anime, but just with season one of Fruits Basket 2019 alone, I was impressed, so with the second season, I’m looking forward on how will TMS adapt the ending!

Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel III. spring song: At this point I definitely trust Konnichiwa (the Latin American distributor) and of course they’ll bring it to Mexico and Latin America like they did with the first two films so far, I shouldn’t be begging way too hard on wanting to see them. (I am with Promare if it’s gonna happen)

Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0: It’s been years since we have last heard of Evangelion 4.0 ever since the film got delayed because Hideaki Anno was directing Shin Godzilla, now, the film is finally happening.

This is the one film that I’m sure fixated on wanting for Konnichiwa to bring it, I see Konnichiwa as the kind of distributor that brings big franchises and big hits and Evangelion is such a big franchise for another distributor to bring the film to Mexican and Latin American theaters!

UPDATE - February 1st 2020: As of now, Konnichiwa have announced the following movies they’re going to release throughout the year:

Violet Evergarden

Konosuba

Human Lost

Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel III. spring song

My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising

So... None of them are either Promare or even Evangelion 3.0+1.0, at this point I truly lost trust with Konnichiwa, they definitely lost me. Although it’s good that they’re still bringing Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel III and My Hero Academia, but no Promare or Evangelion? Really? Come on! Human Lost of all movies?! Who thought it was a good idea?!

Keifuku-san: As of the writing of this post in December 30th, this is a surprise I really never expected to see! I saw Marissa Lenti’s tweet about “new Tatsuki anime” and the tweet she was quoting was of the Crunchyroll news where Tatsuki teases a Keifuku-san anime, and I freaked out because I’m excited that he’s already working on a new anime already based on his shorts. The teaser was posted two days ago and I seriously hate that I missed it!

With the success of Kemurikusa 2019, I think we’re seeing some sort of a post-Kemono Friends reinassance with Tatsuki by making remakes of his old classics, except Keifuku-san is his most recent short but I’m glad he’s turning into a full-fledged series, I want more Tatsuki! More Tatsuki More Tanoshii! (This is the polar oppososite of “No Tatsuki No Tanoshii” and I hope everybody gets to make a similar phrase)

UPDATE - January 4th 2020: That mystery anime from Tatsuki turned out to be Hentatsu and it’s out today. What in the world did Crunchyroll think it was Keifuku-san though the box did imply it might have been Keifuku-san. But it’s fine, Hentatsu going from shorts to a full-fledged TV series is cool too!

Golden Kamuy season 3: Just when I thought there wouldn’t be anymore Golden Kamuy, it is indeed happening and I’m happy that it is!

Zombieland Saga season 2: I’m impressed with the first season and I’m happy the second season is happening and I hope it’d better pay off the final episode’s teaser, that teaser is just too good to pass it up!

Games:

No More Heroes 3: Easily my #1 most anticipated game of the year! I’ve been a long time No More Heroes fan and I’ve been waiting for a third No More Heroes game for so long! Although the one big thing I’m skeptical for is the soundtrack, since there’s a new composer, being Nobuaki Kaneko, and it’s no longer Masafumi Takada and Jun Fukuda (Though he’s still working with sound design, so that’s a plus), I’m pretty sure the soundtrack will be nowhere near as good as the first two games, and hearing the composer’s tracks in Spotify, my skepticism grows stronger, but we’ll see. Overall, I’ve been waiting 10 years for my whole life for NMH3 and it’s finally happening!

I just need to get a Switch as soon as possible so I can start playing it on launch, but getting a PS4 was my long time biggest priority. So I really hope Suda will do the same with Travis Strikes Again by releasing NMH3 on PS4 and PC!

Resident Evil 3 Remake: With the success of RE2, they immediately started developing Resident Evil 3 Remake, and with the trailers released, I’m absolutely impressed, and it uses the same gameplay as RE2 Remake. Also, Remake Nemesis is looking good. Though, honestly I’m not really sure about the nose, but if there’s one thing that I really love about Nemesis, is his teeth.

Tsukihime remake: The Tsukihime remake is the most infamous and meme-worthy vaporware from Type-Moon that it’s not even a contest between it and Half-Life 3, if “See you in 10 years” thing may be true, then there’s already signs of its existence right now, with confirmation of test plays. So there might be hope that we’re finally going to see something about the Tsukihime remake in the light of day, and even a release date eventually!

(I’m a terrible historian, I don’t really know much about the Tsukihime remake’s history)

Also, when there are news about Tsukihime Remake’s release date, I’m going to play the original! (As long as I finish Saya no Uta because I need to finish that one first)

Half-Life: Alyx: It still may not be Half-Life 3 as mentioned with the Tsukihime remake, but I’m surprised that Valve is finally doing something with their old IP after all these years, it may be a VR but it’s still going to be something interesting. I hope it’s going to kickstart a new reinassance era for Valve if they continue to make amazing games again after Half-Life Alyx, hopefully we won’t see any repeat with Artifact.

Death March Club: This is the very first project Tookyo Games (new studio by Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi) is releasing. Looking back, I was really not aware that Danganronpa V3 was going to be the end of the Danganronpa franchise for good and it makes me sad, there’s so much potential for V3′s univverse to be developed, but it appears that this might be it. I really hope Spike Chunsoft will do something about Danganronpa in its 10th anniversary, hopefully something new and good and not just some lame celebration messages or whatever, I want a new game or a new anime, something new Danganronpa! ;_;

Anyways, even if there may not be any more Danganronpa, I could still follow Kodaka‘s new developments with his new projects (along with Uchikoshi). Teased back in 2018, there are two projects featuring Rui Komatsuzaki’s art, one is a new game and the other one is a new anime by Pierrot, and I’m seriously the most excited for these two!

Movies:

Black Widow and The Eternals: I haven’t kept track with the upcoming Marvel releases right now, so I’d better keep a careful eye out for them. Not only Black Widow and The Eternals are coming out, there’s also going to be the MCU TV series in Disney+, like Falcon and Winter Soldier and WHAT IF...?. I’m especially intrigued for Falcon and Winter Soldier right now.

And for those who are like “Welp, time to stop caring about the MCU because all they want us to do is use our money for the movies and for paying Disney+” when there were news that Kevin Feige says that the Disney+ series are going to be crucial for the MCU, fuck you. (I’m talking to you, Pixelbuster and Macuelos. You boomers)

As for Black Widow, I’m concerned that it’s going to be Captain Marvel 2.0, not only for having SJW trolls (which that wasn’t the biggest deal for Captain Marvel), but rather even normal people bashing it out for its quality, the biggest thing people have criticized at the first trailer so far is Taskmaster’s costume where it looks nothing like the comics. That shit is seriously none of my concern and I really think Taskmaster looks really cool, it reminds me of Crossbones and that’s what makes their military aesthetics so special. (And please swallow that)

Venom 2: I’m supper happy that, regardless of its critical reception, the first Venom movie became a financial success and a cult hit with Eddie x Venom shippers. With that being said about making a lot of money, I’m really happy that they’re working on Venom 2 right away! That post-credits teaser with Carnage is just too good for a sequel to not be made!

I don’t care if it’ll “improve” the first film, I do think Venom 2 is going to be “better” but in a sense of topping the original because of Venom and Carnage, not because of improving the first film’s issues and all that shit! Give me more Venom movies and Venom vs Carnage and I just want the second film to be at the same pace as the first film which my older sister and I loved it!

I really hope the film will still come out in October, especially that in October 2020, my birthday is going to be on Sunday, which that means I’ll finally get to see a Venom movie DIRECTLY on my birthday just like with Joker this year!

Morbius: This wasn’t high on my anticipated movies list, but the trailer was released on January 13th 2020, I must talk about it now: The trailer looks interesting and I’m definitely going to see it, but the biggest surprise yet is that there’s Michael Keaton’s Adriam Toomes/Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming at the very end of the trailer. Seems like this is definitely setting up some small ties to the MCU with the Spider-Man characters, and it all depends if Tom Holland’s Spidey will appear in some form with either Morbius or Venom 2, most likely Venom 2 but we’ll see about Morbius.

Wonder Woman 84 and Birds of Prey: 2019 was sure the best year for DC with Shazam and especially Joker, though I’m concerned that the good DC movies period is already going to be over with Wonder Woman 84 and Birds of Prey where people aren’t going to be fond with these films, but I’m still going to see the films regardless. (Especially Wonder Woman 84 because a lot of people had trouble with the first film’s ending smh.)

There’s also going to be major events like the Tokyo Olympics 2020 and I’m curious to see how much of the anime pop culture there’s going to be for global television, but I’m also worried if the way they’re going to handle Comiket without using the Tokyo Big Sight because they are going to use it for the Olympics, and there are also news that they’re removing porn from convenience stores, basically the porn in Japan is being removed for the Olympics, but the biggest thing I’m concerned is that if Comiket 98 taken place in May is going to be the last Comiket for good because I haven’t seen like any news about it and that’s all what the Wikipedia page has, I really hope there’s still more Comiket in the future, even when I don’t really go to Comiket at all because I don’t live in Japan, but I really love seeing artists setting their circles and having their doujins all sold out.

There’s also going to be the Playstation 5, which it may or may not be the best thing in the world to happen right now considering that I just got my PS4 in November, although Sony did confirm that the PS5 has backwards compability with PS4, but then there are also reports that it’s backwards compability with all the previous Playstations and that smells like bullshit to me.

Anyways, I’m definitely not buying the PS5 at launch, I’ll wait in a few years until there are some really interesting exclusives, or even if there devs making new games for the PS5, they’re still bound to be released on the PS3 as well. Just like I did with the PS4, we never bought it at launch and we waited for a long time for cooler releases to get there and that’s where we finally decided on getting a PS4, albeit several years late but whatever.

The PS5 won’t be coming out until the Holidays 2020, so I have an entire year to play with my PS4 and take my best advantage of it, in the meantime, I’ve been playing Devil May Cry 5 and Death Stranding, and hopefully we can get to buy the many other releases we missed over the years.

Ugh, I don’t know what else is coming out in 2020 with different media, but I think that’s enough about my most anticipated releases that I could think of! As time goes on, whenever news about some things pop up, I’m of course going to keep track of those releases!

Conclusion

We have at least reached the end of this long long post I have made yet, I’m sorry if I made you through read all of this insanity, but I really hope you might have skimmed through some parts and read a little bit of the most important pieces, the ones that you find the most interesting.

This was an amazing yet painful but still a fun wild ride with this decade. I’ve had plenty of fond memories and developed lots of new interests, though having lots of suffering in the process, but still, it was a joy to live through out this decade. Can’t wait to see what will the decade have in store. Still not expecting for real life to become the future like we see in pop culture, but I’m sure there’s still going to be some great technological advancements and most important of all, lots of amazing pop culture! (I know lately has been mediocre with neglectful creators and corporates and cringey memes inserted by old men, but who really cares?)

I’m really hoping for a far positive 2020 decade, but as you would expect, countless groups of SJWs attacking innocent artists, scummy corporates, cringeworthy memes and pretty much everything else will remain unchanged.

But regardless, there’s still going to be amazing new things we’re going to discover to love and hate this decade and the Reiwa period!

As I said at the beginning of this post, this is the last post I’m going to make because lately I’ve seriously been getting burned out by writing the same posts and the worst part is that I’m always trying to make them huge and I really have no idea to process these posts. Another reason why is that I want to start focusing on my career as an author, I just need to get over this blogging side to be over and I’m sure it’s going to be even more painful than blogging, but that’s something I really want to focus and don’t want the blogging to get in my way.

As for the future of making posts like these, I’m just going to make like a thread of tweets of my top 10 anime/games/movies of the year with 4 pictures of my top 4 or make a TwitLonger, to make things simple because I’ve really been exhausted on making this post even when I had this MONTHS in the making. Man, I seriously need an agenda so I won’t try to remember certain events that happened.

Anyways, thank you all who supported me over the years and I hope we can continue to support each other out throughout this next decade, whether I succeed with my dreams or not. I love you all. Let’s all do our best, and I so hope I’ll do my best as well, until the day I die!

And just like that, good bye Tumblr. My time is finally done.

UPDATE - February 1st 2020: Nobody is definitely noticing this but every now and then, I’ve been adding some new words into this post. February and I’m still editing this post.

By the way, January was already dismal: I nearly lost my cool with personal opinions again, but my worst nightmare yet is my eternal procrastination. Although I have at least been writing like over 100 words every few days, my constant headache from perfectionism and brainstorming a decent, cohesive and believable story will just never stop.

Not to mention that I haven’t been drawing as regularly like I wanted, and recently, I went back on using my Wacom Bamboo pen tablet and I immediately regret it.

Better not worry, we’re still early into 2020, we only have 10 months to survive and I know I mustn’t rush things, but I really hope I get to be a little more productive as soon as possible.

My Carrd.

[breeeliss]

[Miraculous Ladybug]: Blind Spot

this is my remix fic that i’ve done for Week 4 of @thinkoutsidethelovesquare ​. i was assigned to @chatchevalier and i decided to remix her lovesquare fic look both ways (because it was so so precious) and turn it into an Adrinino fic!

make sure to read the original fic on tumblr and on ao3 and give it some likes, reblogs, comments, and kudos. 

hope you like it lauren! i really adored the fic and i hope you don’t mind the new pairing <3

--

Link to Archive of Our Own: [AO3]

--

Title: Blind Spot Pairing: Adrinino (Adrien x Nino), featuring Ladybug!Nino Summary: Sometimes you don’t have time to check all of your blind spots and prevent the worst from happening. There are going to be moments where you realize that someone was in the locker room with you when you let your guard down. But if you’re lucky, you’ll find that it’s the best thing that could’ve happened to you when you realize your best friend has been by your side this whole time.

Blind Spot

Of all the people in the entirety of Paris that could’ve found out Nino’s secret, it simply had to be someone he knew. And of course, in fate’s sick, twisted attempt at making matters worse, it had to be none other than Adrien. After all, there was nothing quite like having the biggest secret of your life busted by your best friend — the person you were supposed to tell everything to.

Needless today, Nino was pretty sure that he was thoroughly screwed.

He and Chat Noir had just parted ways after today’s latest akuma fight. The school janitor had finally snapped after Chloe — because it was always Chloe — dumped her entire visual arts project on the floor and walked away from it without a thought. She left the glittery mess for him to clean up on his own, haughtily stating that “it’s his job to clean up around here. I shouldn’t have to do it for him.”

It was a nasty villain that had taken almost two class periods to defeat, but the one saving grace was that they’d managed to contain him within the school building for the entire fight, minimizing the amount of damage he could’ve potentially caused. However, they’d cut their time rather close because by the time the fight was over and the akuma was purified, the time on Nino’s transformation was running dangerously low. To make matters worse, he couldn’t avoid being cornered by his classmates as they crowded around him, eagerly waiting for the chance to talk to Ladybug.

He managed to pose for a some of selfies and answer a couple of questions before his earrings started beeping in his ears again, alerting him that he had less than a minute to get out of here and find a place to detransform.

Nino covered his earrings with this hands. “Ah, sorry, guys. Can’t talk anymore. Gotta split real quick before things get awkward. But make sure you get to class on time, and always keep an eye out for anything fishy, cool?” He saluted them with a smile, swung out of the courtyard with his yoyo, and booked it toward the locker room that he was sure would be completely empty what with everyone in the building still congregated downstairs.

Nino barely had time to shut the door behind him and lean against it to make sure no one followed him when the flash of the miraculous’s magic washed over him and left him standing in his civilian clothes. He caught an exhausted Tikki in his hands and started walking towards his locker. “Hey, little dude. Doing alright? I’ve got some cookies in my bag you can snack on during class to get your energy back up, alright?”

“I’m fine, Nino, don’t worry. Good job today, though!” Tikki smiled. “Cookies during class sounds lovely.”

Nino pulled his bookbag from the top shelf of his back, gently laid Tikki in one of the front pockets where his snacks for her were kept, and started to pack his books for his next class. But once he turned around to head for the door, he froze. Standing off to the side in front of his own locker and rooted in place was Adrien, darting his eyes incredulously between Nino’s face and his bookbag and unable to say a single word.

Nino’s heart jumped into this throat and plummeted straight into his stomach in a matter of three seconds. He could see the confusion and realization written clearly on Adrien’s face, and he knew that he was probably piecing together the puzzle pieces in his head right now and coming to what could only be the obvious conclusion. There was no way that Adrien hadn’t seen him, and suddenly every conversation Nino had ever had with Tikki on what to do if his secret identity was ever found out by another person flew straight out of his head. It was often that dealing with Adrien left him feeling like he didn’t know how to react or know what he was supposed to say.

Adrien slowly lifted his finger to point at Nino, and he opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before he managed to force his throat to make a sound. “You….you’re….”

But in a moment of panic, Nino decided that if Adrien didn’t say the words right away, it would momentarily delay the horrible conversation that Nino would have to have with Adrien when they were still in school and expected to show up to their next class in just a short few minutes. So he rushed over to Adrien, grabbed his hand, and squeezed it tightly.

“Whatever you think you saw, you can’t tell anyone,” Nino pleaded, the words rushing out quickly in the midst of his internal turmoil. “This is important, you have to promise. Okay?”

Adrien gulped audibly, looking more nervous than Nino had ever seen him since they’d been friends. But Adrien firmly nodded in response, and whispered, “Of course. Okay. I promise.”

Nino breathed out a sigh of relief, although in the back of his mind he knew that Adrien wasn’t the type to gossip about other people’s secrets. No, Nino’s main concern was this — this heavy awkwardness and silence that left the two of them feeling itchy and uncomfortable in their own skin. But the school bell signaling the next period was already ringing, and there was no time for the two of them to discuss this now. Nino realized that he was cutting off the circulation to Adrien’s hand with his crushing grip, so he dropped it, scrubbed a hand over his face, and tried to not make his nerves too obvious for when he went back to class. He awkwardly gestured in front of him and allowed Adrien to leave the locker room first before he followed behind him without a word. The halls were empty now that their classmates were back in their classes, and every footstep and shuffle from both of them sounded louder and heavier than they usually did. They made it just before the second bell rung, and they were the last ones to slip into class and arrive at their desks.

Nino was standing behind his chair and pulling his books out when Alya tapped him on the shoulder, leaned over her own desk, and muttered in his ear. “Hey, did you and Adrien get into a fight?”

“N-No,” Nino frowned, trying to keep his gaze off of Adrien. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know, the two of you are all quiet and acting standoffish with each other,” Alya said. “You’re usually coming into class with your arms around each other’s shoulders and talking until the teacher comes. What happened?”

“Nothing!” Nino insisted. “I — nothing happened.”

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t worry about it, Al. The, uh….that akuma fight was just a lot of excitement, that’s all.”

Alya shrugged and decided to leave the subject alone, and Nino sat down in his seat and tried his best to distract himself by paying close attention to the lesson. But it was hard to focus on taking notes when Adrien’s elbow kept bumping with his own as they both furiously scribbled in their notebooks, reminding Nino of the mess he’d accidentally gotten himself into. The worst part of all of this was that as much as Nino wanted to talk to Adrien and allow the two of them to properly talk and react about this, they couldn’t very well do it in the middle of class or excuse themselves to do it in private. Which meant that the two of them were stuck trying to appear normal while their chests grew heavy with all of the words and all of the conflicted feelings they so desperately wanted to convey. It was absolutely maddening, and the longer they waited, the more Nino grew unsure about how they were meant to proceed from here.

When their last period finished, Nino saw Marinette poke Adrien on the head five times before smacking him on the shoulder and making him turn around to face her.

“You’re looking a little spacey all of a sudden. Is everything alright?”

“Y-Yeah,” Adrien stuttered. “Why would anything be wrong?”

“You totally missed the bell ringing,” Marinette frowned. “School’s over. We’ve gotta pack up.”

Adrien blinked, looked up at the clock hanging over the chalkboard, and quickly stuffed his books in his bag. “Oh. I must have been daydreaming or something.”

Marinette rested her hand on his forehead. “You promise you’re okay?”

Adrien shook his head a little and put on a fake smile. “Yeah, of course.”

Marinette sent a wary glance to Alya, and Alya was already leaning over her desk to try and talk to Nino. But Nino wasn’t in the mood in speaking to anyone right now, his thoughts whirling too violently around in his head to deal with his friends at the moment. Instead, he quickly ducked out of the classroom, and headed straight home.

  The moment Nino was safe in his room, he unzipped the pocket of his bookbag to let Tikki out, and promptly collapsed onto his bed with his head face down in the pillows. Tikki flew over and perched on top of Nino’s shoulder, patting his head. “Oh, cheer up, Nino,” she said. “It’s not as bad as you think?”

“What do I do?” he wailed into his pillow. “No one’s supposed to know, that’s like superhero rule number one. And Adrien of all people?” He let out a long groan and rolled over onto his back, hugging his pillow to his stomach. “He’s my best friend. You’re supposed to tell your best friends everything. Now he’s going to be upset or treat me different because I’ve been keeping something like this from him the entire time. I don’t want him angry with me, Tikki, I don’t think I can handle that.”

Tikki gently rubbed the apple of Nino’s cheek. “If I’m wrong, you can say so. But do you think you’re just a little bit more upset about this because you like him more than he realizes?”

Nino bit the inside of his cheek and avoided Tikki’s gaze. He let out a shaky breath and nodded. “I’m not keeping my hopes up or anything like that,” he said. “But if there is that really tiny glimmer of hope that he could feel the same way, I don’t want to give him any reason to think that I don’t deserve his feelings, you know? I don’t want him to think I don’t trust him or that I don’t believe in him.”

“And he’s not going to,” Tikki soothed. “I’m sure Adrien knows how important it is for someone like Ladybug to keep their identity safe at all costs. That boy doesn’t like the type to be angry at you for doing something that was meant to keep you safe. I’m sure he’s just surprised and not sure how to react. You trust him enough to know that his feelings for you haven’t changed because of this, right?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Nino replied. He lifted the corner of his mouth into a weak, crooked smile. “Is it dumb to still hope that he didn’t actually see anything?”

“We won’t know unless he tells you,” Tikki explained. “Although, judging from his behavior in class, I’m guessing he saw something .”

“Ugh, great,” Nino grumbled. “Okay. I just….won’t confront him about this yet. I’m just going to wait this out a little bit and maybe by the time that happens he’ll — ”

A knock on his door cut off his sentence, and Nino heard his mother calling him through the door. “Nino? Are you awake? Your friend Adrien’s here!”

Nino bolted up from his bed. “What?” he hissed quietly to himself.

His mother sighed on the other side of the door. “Hm. I’m sure he’s probably napping. Nino didn’t tell me you were coming today, dear.”

Nino heard Adrien speaking from down the hall. “He didn’t know. I sort of just came here myself. I wanted to talk to him for a minute. I’m sorry. It won’t take long.”

“What is he doing here?” Nino whispered to Tikki.

“I have no idea. But you should probably answer the door and get it over with. It doesn’t make sense to hide from this forever.”

Tikki had a point. Adrien was already here. Besides, it would look strange if Nino decided to ignore him and refuse to see him. He smacked his cheeks a couple of times, rushed over, and opened his door.

“Yes Maman?” he asked.

“Adrien’s here to see you,” she repeated, ushering Adrien over from the end of the hall so that he could duck underneath her arm and enter Nino’s room. She leaned in close to Nino’s ear and whispered, “I’m closing the door, but if you need anything I’ll be right in the kitchen if you boys get hungry. Try not to be too loud.”

“We won’t,” Nino promised, smiling at his mom as she shut the door and left the two of them alone. Nino turned to Adrien to find him standing uncomfortably in the middle of the room, staring down at the loose laces of his trainers.

Nino cleared his throat, trying to think of something casual to say. “Hey, man! Uh….how about that fight earlier, huh?” he chuckled, wincing at how forced the conversation starter sounded. Crap. Not what he wanted to open up with. The last thing he wanted to talk about was the akuma fight, but it was as if all the building nerves and insecurities inside of him were literally pouring out of him and making words come out of his mouth without his permission. “Poor Marc, right? He’s a cool dude. Good that he didn’t remember what happened afterward and that Chat Noir and Ladybug got there so soon. Weird that they showed up at the same time, right? Usually doesn’t happen like that. Pretty sure Alya was talking my head off the other day about how they tend to — ”

“Nino,” Adrien said softly. “You don’t have to….I mean….I know. So….”

Nino bit down on his lip. “Know what?”

“I know that you’re Ladybug,” he clarified. “I can imagine why you wanted to keep it a secret, and I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m sure you didn’t want anyone to find out.”

Nino deflated and let his shoulders drop. “Bro, please. You can’t tell anyone. Not Marinette, especially not Alya. I mean the chick means well, but….” He pulled his hat off his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m not mad or anything. I know it was a mistake and that it wasn’t your fault. But you have to keep quiet about this. Please.”

Adrien walked over to Nino, grabbed him by both of his wrists, and led him over to Nino’s bed so that they were both sitting on the edge. “You have my word, I won’t say anything,” he assured him. “But, uh….that’s not all I came here to talk about. I need to tell you something, too. You’re not the only one with secrets, and seeing how that seems to be the theme today, I figured it’s only fair that I tell you this.”

Nino frowned. There was something that Adrien had been keeping from him too? It had to have been pretty important if even Nino didn’t know about it, and now he was wondering what the secret could possibly be and why he would only want to reveal after he found out Nino’s biggest secret. But he just glanced at Adrien, keenly aware of his hands still curled around Nino’s wrists, and said, “What is it?”

“Well,” Adrien hesitated, suddenly looking more nervous than Nino felt. “It’s a couple of things actually….”

“Hey, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Nino said. “Just because you found out my secret doesn’t mean you have to make us even and share one of your own. I wouldn’t want to make you do that.”

“No, I want to. And in a way, I need to. I just….well.” He sighed. “Sorry, I don’t really know how to….okay. You know I’ve always really liked Ladybug, right? And you’re by absolute best friend, Nino. You’re ridiculously important to me. And I-I mean. I’m….I just wanted — ugh, maybe I can just show you and make it easier?”

Nino shrugged. “Y-Yeah, okay. Whatever’s easier for you.”

Adrien nodded harder than he needed to. “Okay. Yeah. Cool cool. Just, uh….if I do something that makes you uncomfortable, just stop me or tell me, okay?”

“Dude, what are you talking about?”

“Just promise, okay?”

“Yeah,” Nino said. “Sure, I promise. But what the heck are you trying to show me?”

Adrien gulped. “I’m Ch — ugh.” It looked like he was struggling to say something and couldn’t get the words out. He looked up at Adrien, his eyes shining with hesitation and just a small hint of fear, and Nino was suddenly feeling himself grow concerned over what could possibly be stressing Adrien out so much that he was struggling to tell Nino of all people. But Adrien looked like he had given up on trying to stammer through his secret and instead moved to cup his hands over Nino’s cheeks. Nino only had time to inhale sharply before Adrien squinted his eyes shut and leaned forward for a kiss.

It was a very short kiss. It only lasted about two seconds, and Adrien’s lips were puckered closed so that it couldn’t be considered anything more than a peck. Nino didn’t even have time to react to it before Adrien broke away from him and quickly scrambled backwards on the bed, staring at him as if he were afraid that Nino was going to explode at him for what he’d done. There was an adorable blush staining his cheeks, and Nino could tell that his own face was growing warm after the kiss. Suddenly, all his nerves started to unravel in favor of making room for the sheer amount of pure joy that was suddenly filling his body with courage. He crawled closer to Adrien on the bed, grabbed his wrists, and ran his thumbs over the backs of his hands. Nino stared at Adrien’s lips for a couple of seconds before slowly leaning in closer. Adrien’s eyes lidded for a moment, and he’d met Nino halfway for another kiss.

Nino had imagined doing this more times than he was comfortably willing to admit, and he had resigned himself to the fact that it would never happen because that’s what Nino tended to do with all the boys he liked that only ever liked him back as a friend. So there were a few short moments where Nino’s lips weren’t moving simply because he was trying to convince his mind that this was really happening to him and that he was allowed to enjoy it. But then Adrien’s mouth slowly opened against his lips, and Nino couldn’t help but sigh out and lock his lips with Adrien’s while his hand reached up to rest on Adrien’s jaw.

Adrien smiled into the kiss and pulled Nino closer by his elbow, and for a while the only noises that could be heard around them was the sound of their lips gently disconnecting and reconnecting and the short little sighs and exhales that they couldn’t help but let out every time they paused. Nino slowed their kiss down and left a few quick, short kisses on Adrien’s kiss before he pulled back, laughing when Adrien’s followed him and stole one more. Adrien’s shoulders shook with delight as he licked his bottom lip and held it between his teeth. “So, uh….I really like you,” Adrien muttered.

“I kinda got that from all the kissing,” Nino smirked. “I was kind of nervous I was the only one.”

“Wait,” Adrien blinked. “You mean, you….”

“Of course, you dummy,” Nino teased, yanking Adrien on the ear. “I wasn’t kissing you back as a joke.”

“Sorry,” Adrien grinned. “Just checking. I didn’t think I’d get this far.”

Nino kept his hand on Adrien’s jaw and moved his fingers into Adrien’s hair. “So, you mentioned there were a couple of things you wanted to tell me?”

Adrien laughed. “Right, okay.” He wrapped his arms around Nino’s neck and gently played with the hair on the back of his head. “Close your eyes.”

Nino did as he asked, squinting his eyes tight to make sure that he couldn’t see a thing. Adrien pressed a soft kiss on the tip of Nino’s nose, both of his cheeks, and finally a last one on her mouth before Nino chuckled and wrapped an arm around Adrien’s waist to pull him closer and kiss him harder. Adrien paused for a moment, breathed in between their lips, and whispered, “Claws out.”

The flash of green light shining in front of his eyelids startled him, and Nino’s eyes fluttered open to see Chat Noir sitting in front of him with his arms around his neck while Nino’s hand was splayed out against the hard leather suit stretched across his lower back. Nino could feel himself leaning back against Adrien’s — Chat Noir’s? — arms, and the sharp, cocky smile that he was so used to seeing underneath that black mask was replaced with a small smile hopeful smile laced with a touch of uncertainty.

“No way,” Nino muttered. “No way, no way, you’re Chat? Adrien!? You’re Chat?”

Adrien shrugged. “And you’re Ladybug. Surprise! I guess….” He winced and dropped his head, suddenly looking self-conscious. “Look, I know you didn’t want to know and that you didn’t want me telling you. But you looked so freaked out in the locker room, I figured it was only fair that we at least be on even footing. I didn’t mean to upset you. And if I did….I’m sorry.”

But Nino couldn’t even bring himself to care about superhero rules, safety protocol, or secrets that were supposed to stay secret. He yanked Adrien closer to him into a crushing hug, laughing when Adrien’s arms tightened around his neck and his cheek rested on Nino’s shoulder. Nino rested his hand on the back of Adrien’s head and muttered into the crown of his head. “Don’t be sorry,” Nino beamed. “I’ll admit. This is a lot. Sort of freaked out. Definitely gotta give me like a few days to get used to this. But….hey! At least we’re even.”

Adrien laughed in relief against Nino’s shoulder and turned his head so that his lips were ghosting against the skin on Nino’s neck. “God, you have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that.”

Their moment was interrupted when Nino’s mother’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Nino?”

Their eyes both widened and they jumped apart while Adrien hurriedly dropped his transformation and hid Plagg in the pocket of his shirt. Nino stumbled off of his bed and opened the door to his bedroom a crack, staring at him expectantly with a cooking spoon in her hands. “Is Adrien going to be staying for dinner?” she asked. “I want to know how many servings I should make.”

“Oh, thanks for the offer but I wouldn’t want to impose after I came here out of nowhere,” Adrien insisted. “I should be heading home soon anyway.”

“If you’re sure,” Nino’s mother smiled. “I’ll try and pack up some food for you before you leave.”

“Thanks so much, Mme. Lahiffe,” Adrien grinned, waiting until Nino’s mother shut the door before he turned back to Nino.

“So,” Nino began, leaning against the door. “What does….I mean, what do we do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, where do we go from here,” Nino clarified. “Things are a little different now, aren’t they?”

“For Chat Noir and Ladybug? Nothing,” Adrien said assuredly. “We’re still partners. Right?”

“Always,” Nino nodded.

“For Nino and Adrien….” he hesitated. “I’m not sure. This is all uncharted territory for me. I’ve never liked a friend like this before.” He stood from his spot on the bed and moved to stand on front of Nino, lacing their hands together and swinging them back and forth. “I was hoping we could just figure it out together? Take our time and see where we go from there? I don’t know how satisfying of an answer that is.”

“Don’t even worry, Adrien,” Nino assured. “I don’t think this is the kind of thing we should rush anyway. It’s new for me too. And if I’m figuring it out with you, then it won’t be so complicated.”

“Good,” Adrien smiled, allowing himself one more kiss before sighing in disappointment. “I should probably get going. The Gorilla’s been waiting outside the house for a while now. I guess….I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Nino held Adrien in place. “Hey. One more thing. Tomorrow’s Friday. You don’t have anything after school on Friday’s if I remember right.”

“Nope. Totally free.”

“You wanna, uh….do something tomorrow?” Nino asked. “I mean, I know we always do something but I was wondering if you wanted to do something. Like….”

Adrien stared at Nino hopefully. “Like a date?”

“Well, you know, just to test the waters out a little bit,” Nino explained. “See how it feels to be this now. Help us get used to it. Plus, I mean, more of an excuse to keep kissing, right?”

Adrien pouted his lips thoughtfully. “Compelling argument. I did enjoy all the kissing.” He brought Nino’s hands up and pressed a kiss to the knuckles, a familiar Chat Noir smirk on his lips. “I may just say yes because of that.”

“You nerd,” Nino said with a fond eye roll. “Your flirting is only going to get worse, isn’t it?”

“You can’t escape it anymore,” Adrien said. “Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Good morning texts and goodnight voicemails. You will forever be doted on, so prepare yourself.”

It was so silly and ridiculous, but Nino couldn’t even bring himself to care. He was the Chat Noir that flirted too hard and loved to make fun of him at every opportunity, but he was also the Adrien who was sweet, sincere, and the absolute best friend that Nino could’ve ever asked for. There had always been an ache in Nino’s chest when he realized that his most trusted partner would always have half of himself obscured, that there would always be a part of him that he’d never have access to. That same ache always persisted whenever he laughed with Adrien and slept in his bed and realized there was a looming secret, an integral part of him, that he could never tell Adrien. But his chest felt so light he felt like he could fly because he’d found his partner in real life and it happened to be the only person in his life that he could ever be completely honest and open with.

They had nowhere to go from here but forward with their love for each other for company.

[dazstormretro]

Discovering Retro Gaming Part 4

Being given permission by my partner to once again have my own man cave was very exciting. Finally after months of storage my retro console collection would have a dedicated space, my games easily assessable and my magazines neatly collated and displayed. Having decided on a suitable spot in my garden to build my man cave it was now time to find a structure which would suit my needs (and budget).

In the end after much research I chose a small wooden log cabin which you assembled yourself called the Mercia Sarah which was available from Tesco Online. The item was promptly paid for and the order put through. I now had a month before the summerhouse would be delivered so it was time prepare the ground to support my man palace. Rather than describe each stage of the build I’ve decided to create a separate blog where I will go into detail about the process and give tips and advice on building an outdoor man cave.

I must admit at the beginning I didn’t realize how much time, effort and of course money this little project would entail but roughly nine months later my summerhouse/man cave was finally built, painted and ready to move in. New shelving was purchased to house my games collection, a lovely IKEA metal cabinet was bought to hold my consoles and old shelving was utilised to create extra storage space.

Before long my entire retro gaming collection was once again on display. The walls of the summerhouse were adorned with gaming related artwork and my old magazines had their own dedicated Billy bookcase so I could peruse their contents without having to rummage through umpteen cardboard boxes. Items such as my M.A.S.K Bolder Hill playset which had been given to me as a birthday gift by some mates was no longer hidden away in the garage, now it occupied it’s own space. So to did my Lego Millennium Falcon, childhood Transformers and original console boxes. At last I once again had my own place to relax and play video games (plus drink beer from the mini-fridge).

Of course having this dedicated space meant a few more items were purchased over the coming months. A SNES Mini was soon added to my collection plus a couple of amazing books by Bitmap Books, the NES and SNES Compendiums. If you haven’t yet checked out Bitmap Books I highly recommend you do, the quality of their publications are second to none. Another item I had being eyeing up for a while was the Super Shinobi soundtrack on vinyl by DATA Disks. Being a massive fan of the classic Mega Drive game I had to purchase this LP for the artwork alone. Still to this day I don’t own a record player so have been unable to listen to the music but I’m more than happy simply having this amazing piece on display.

As of October 2019 retro gaming is still booming. We are constantly being bombarded with the latest remasters of a classic games, new mini consoles seem to be releasing every few months, more and more YouTube channels keep cropping up dedicated to the subject and the subject as a whole is always in the media in some form. Thanks to Switch Online I now have access to many NES and SNES games on the go and when I feel the need to buy a physical publication I can pick up the latest issue of Retro Gamer Magazine. This really does feel like the golden age of retro video gaming.

This basically brings me up to date. The man cave is complete and my retro game buying has slowed down dramatically of late. This is certainly helped by the limited space which I now have but this obstacle has allowed me to appreciate my collection even more. I no longer feel the need to constantly scan eBay or Facebook for a bargain so it can just collect dust on my shelf. I’ve amassed my favourite games, consoles and magazines I once owned as a child and with various ports of old games being released on the Switch and PS4 I can simply download these, saving both money and space. Of course there will be the odd splurge on a new Bitmap book or figurine from time to time but for now I feel content with my collection.

There’s nothing I like more than taking a stroll to the bottom of my garden and spending a couple of hours a week locked away in my little nostalgic word. As I write this final blog Im actually sat in my little time machine surrounded by these items from my childhood. Almost everything in here brings back precious memories from my past, times spent gaming with friends, long summer school holidays, magical Christmases and birthdays.

Nostalgia is such a powerful emotion which we experience more and more as we grow older. The smallest memory can trigger that warm fuzzy feeling which takes us back to a key point from our past. This could come in the form of playing an old video game, listening to a particular music track, watching a movie or even a certain scent. It’s all part of being human and these past experiences have helped make us grow into the person we are today.

People say you should never dwell on the past and that’s very true, too much looking back can be damaging but there’s nothing wrong with celebrating your past and that’s exactly what I’m doing. Im raising a toast to the time I completed Secret of Mana with my best friend, to all those multiplayer Goldeneye marathons and the day I finally mastered Ryu’s Shoryuken.

As an adult it’s too easy to get bogged down with daily life and the stresses it can bring. To combat this some people go to the gym, others play football, me, I like to play video games both old and new. Everyone needs some form of escapism so if something can take you away from this crazy world for a short while and make you feel happy then I’m all for that and that’s what retro gaming does for me, it’s my escapism, my happy place.

Replaying these classic titles from my childhood rekindles those carefree days spent playing video games with both friends and family back in the 90’s and helps remind me just how lucky I was growing up in such an exciting era.

[fureniku]

The return of my blog or something idk

Looks like in my last blog I said I’d not post my semi-private stuff here, only to a private blog.

Honestly, I can’t remember the name of the private blog; let alone the login/password. I think I only made one post there, to zero followers, and kind of lost the point of doing it. So fuck it, lets just go back to being here.

Days since last post: 614 Todays date: 30th September 2019 Start time: 20:39

Well, I guess we have some catching up to do.

I don’t know how many people on here were following me before. So, I guess I’ll start with a sum-up. My previous blog was just me ranting about anxiety/depression related things. It was a good platform for me to vent my thoughts without real life friends knowing; I had a few RL friends who followed it which was great as they could give me some support, but most of them didn’t know about the blog, which was also great as they then didn’t know a side of me I’d generally prefer to keep private. That blog was deleted in early January 2018, when the drummer from my then-band found it. I had made some comments about my frustrations in the band which were true, and I stand by them - but naturally it caused drama. I deleted the account, and instantly regretted it - I only had maybe 50 followers, but now I have two, so yeah.  Life since then has been... chaotic. Not specifically in a bad way, just a lot of things happened. When the blog ended I was; - Single - Playing guitar in a band - Working a dead-end job in a Warehouse - Had no ambition/drive to progress life

Three of those things have since changed; I’m still single (not for lack of trying but whatevs). I guess I’ll cover a timeline? Jan 2018: I deleted my old blog, and made this one, and a second one with a more secretive/anon name. I made a couple of posts on each, then abandoned it. Instead, I started relying mostly on just one friend to help me. May 2018: I got a new job, working for a games developer. It literally changed my life. Anxiety/depression started to clear up a lot, things just generally improved. June/July-ish 2018: I left my band. There was an argument about the fact another band was using our space for free, after we had offered it to them at a split rate and they declined. I instigated the argument, other members didn’t see eye to eye with me, so I quit. It was a final nail in the coffin kind of thing, but it was certainly the healthy thing to do. The whole situation had been kind of toxic for a little while, but I now get on just fine with all of them - I think if I had stayed much longer, that might not be the case. Our vocalist left very shortly after me as well - I don’t know the reasons why, but it seems the terms were... less happy.

September 2018: I started taking Japanese classes. Met a girl, had a crush on her for a bit, it didn’t go anywhere as usual. No biggie.

December 2018: Depression came back a bit, as it always does around then. Not much I can do about it so I just power through.

February 2019: I got made redundant from work. I was cool with it, I could see it coming for a while and there was like 12 other people too, my boss had fought hard to keep me but the game wasn’t doing so well, so I totally get it. I got a nice redundancy pay (which they by no means had to give me, so I’m super grateful). I applied for a job with another studio; quite a big one called Jagex. They were far from me so it would’ve involved moving and stuff, so quite scary. I made it to the final stages, but didn’t get it.

I now had a fair lump of cash (I had been saving for a house anyway), but not quite sure what to do with it. Followers of my previous blog can probably guess what I decided to spend it on...

April 2019: I went back to Japan! My mental-health-reset trip mark 2. I spent about two and a half weeks there (despite fucking up and accidentally buying a ticket to return mid-may... whoops). I got detained in China on my way home too but that’s a whole other story (it was all sorted and fine in the end).

While in Japan, I had time to clear my head and think. I decided I wanted to go back to university, so started thinking about how that would work. Here in the UK, we get a student loan to pay for university. It’s a bit complicated, but the way it works is you get your course length plus one year of funding. The day you set foot on campus, you use one year of funding. Now, I had already been to university previously - I studied music production. Totally dead industry, I dropped out about three weeks into my second year. That meant, I only had course length minus one year’s funding left available. So I have to pay the first year of university myself. At a cool £9,250.

My dad agreed to pay one term, so one third of that. I managed to save up another terms worth by working over the summer. I’m sat in my uni dorm right now, still not quite sure how I’ll pay for the third term... but I’ve got 6 months to figure that one out.

May 2019: I returned to my original job, back in the warehouse. Picking and packing sacks of bird food, so much fun. My mental health naturally slipped again, although everyone was really friendly to me while before it was kinda like I didn’t exist, so that was nice.

Around this time, I also joined an Overwatch team. It was a pretty big team with maybe 14-15 members, it was cool to make some new friends. Except one guy, was a dick. This OW stuff is like a whole side story from hereon... Anyway, I said to my squad leader (We’ll call her SN) that this guy is a dick. She said ok and she’d go talk to him. She said do you agree you’re being a dick, he said no. She said do you acknowledge one of the squad members thinks you’re being a dick? He said no again. Some other stuff I don’t know happened, and he got kicked off the team. He turned a load of people against her, caused loads of drama, and everyone blamed her when it was 100% my fault. So that was fun. The only reason I didn’t leave the team right then is because if I had, the entire drama would’ve been for nothing.

June 2019: My old boss who didn’t work there appeared at the end of may. I have a job for you. Ominous... but ok. Turns out, there was a new system being implemented on another contract. As I had experience with QA, and had done some IT stuff for them before, they wanted me to help with the testing and implementation. It was a job that would test my brain, while requiring little physical work - it was perfect for me. I really enjoyed it. It was supposed to be a four week thing, but we found lots of niggly little problems in the system... as far as I know, it’s actually only just gone live - but may have been delayed further.

While working up there, obviously there was downtime while waiting for fixes to be implemented. “What, you want this label a different size? oof, that’s gonna take about three weeks”. However, I got to stay in the office, doing odd jobs and stuff. One of the “odd jobs” ended up being a full on Android app, that my boss and me developed together. It was super fun to work on and really rewarding. That was worked on on-and-off between June and August.

July 2019: an interesting month. There was a major incident at work where a shelf holding very heavy metal shit stirrers collapsed. (The contract was a water treatment etc company, who provide all the clean water and water recycling for my local area. The things on the shelf literally stirred shit.) No one was hurt but it was a lot of drama, which was kind of entertaining to me as I was totally bunking off for the whole week where it happened. Not just the occasionally check Facebook on your phone at work kind of bunking off; I literally just messed about on Discord and worked on Minecraft mods for about two weeks straight. They had given me quite a big project to do, I automated the process... gg ez.

Around this time, the game I had been a part of before was to be officially cancelled. My old work invited me down to the studio to be a part of the formal funeral for the game, which was a big honour. I even got to fly the sky-whale which was awesome. It was bittersweet though, as the game meant a lot to me and had literally changed my life.

August 2019: haaaaaa august was a meme. I’d gotten kinda close with a girl (we’ll call her AP) in my Overwatch team. Like, we’d arranged to meet up at the end of August anyway but yeah, she was the first crush in a long time who actually knew I liked her. And she had certainly implied she felt the same way... like she’d been sending lots of hearts and stuff and talking to me 24/7, tagging me in “X has to take you on a date to Y place” memes and so on.  Anyways, so SN had apparently picked up on the fact I liked her, and started getting super pissy with me. I was pretty good friends with SN and we got on well, but in August she suddenly started getting crazy angry with me over tiny things. It all came to a head when I let AP kill me in a game (long story). Turns out, SN was like in love with me... despite breaking up with her boyfriend of over a year like 2 days before this conversation. So yeah, she told me to fuck off and that was that, she left the team etc, which thanks to chain of command meant that I was then in charge. fun. 

Anyways, get to the end of August, and I was due to meet AP. We met up, it was pretty cool. We hung out at a gaming festival, then suddenly like half way through she was like “lets split up for a bit” and I was like ........ok thats weird but alright. We didn’t meet up again until literally when she had like 2 mins to go, but it seems like she had a lot more fun without me being there. Clearly I’d done some major fuckup, which I still don’t actually know what it was. I had an anxiety attack before I even reached my car... and not a little one either. It’s quite possibly the biggest anxiety attack I’ve ever had, I barely made it to my car before having a total meltdown. It was the first one I’d had for about a year and it hit hard. It took me about 30 mins to calm down, then I headed home. 

I messaged her that night and asked her what happened, and she replied with “oh I never said I liked you”. It hurt a lot, like I’d been totally lead on. But hey whatever, that’s my life in a nutshell right? “Oh you want this happiness? this happiness right infront of you? HA nah”.  She said in the same message that I “seemed cool” and she’d like to hang out again sometime. But literally within a week she was clearly interested in another guy, so yeah whatever. We’re still friends and play games from time to time but I know she likes this other guy, so yeah. I still like her but whatever, not much I can do about it.

Work was a meme as well. I got taken off the fun and interesting projects to do paperwork. Literally, my job was to scan 35,000 documents because they couldn’t find a couple of bits of information. I suggested much better and more efficient ways, but the boss of the contract was like “no thats bad do it this old fashioned way we don’t want any fancy apps or anything” (I had suggested a spreadsheet or database). It took me about 3 weeks of just standing by a scanner which would jam up every 15-20 sheets in. It was mental health hell, especially in the last week after all the AP stuff had happened.

September 2019: I had one week left at work. I finished the hellish scanning project on Monday afternoon. “Oh as a thanks for your massive hard work we’ll make sure to find you things to do for the rest of the week” No it’s fine, I’m happy to just finish a few days early so I have more time to prep for uni. “No no no, we’ll find you stuff to do” They did not find stuff for me to do. I literally sat there, with nothing to do bar a few odd jobs “hey can you fix this printer”, for four days. It was incredibly mind-numbingly dull. The only thing ticking me over was “hey, maybe they wanna give me a card on my last day or something to say good luck and bye and thanks for doing this literal £20/hr job for half that because you’re agency staff”. But nah, a few people said cya later, but a lot forgot I was leaving entirely. So that was a fun way to finish what had mostly been a decent job...

I then had two weeks of freedom, before moving to university on the 21st. I was nervous; who wouldn’t be? but it was cool. I finally moved out of my house, and had a place where I could make a lot of new friends (LOL). On the day I moved in, I met up with someone I’d spoken to online a few times who was living in the same building as me, we’ll call her S. She was nice, we got on well, and it was kinda cool to have a friend who was a girl that for once I didn’t have a crush on (coz I’m still totally hung up on AP). We ended up going to a club in the evening which I’ve literally never done in my life, and she brought me out of my comfort zone a lot. She was great for my anxiety and really helpful. We’ve hung out a few times since, but I kind of feel like I was just a “filler friend” until she made new friends. She actually totally blanked me when I walked past her today, so that was fun. She has my Switch atm too coz I let her borrow it, I’ll probably just get it back later this week and then be done, its like I put in all the effort to be a friend and she couldn’t care less.

Anyways, so as I said I moved in on Saturday. I met one of my four flatmates on Saturday and another on Sunday, but hadn’t seen the other two at all. It gets to Thursday and I’m tidying the kitchen a bit, my mum’s about to pick me up so I can move in my last few things, and one of the mystery people appeared - she hadn’t actually moved in yet and was just unloading her stuff. She had loads of kitchen stuff, seems she’s really into her cooking.

Anyway, mum picks me up, we go to get my stuff, then we’re driving back, and my phone starts blowing up. S: Are you in? Me: No, why? S: Your building’s on fire. Me: lol nice joke S: no really *picture of everyone evacuated with fire engines outside* S: It’s your floor too, idk which flat. I wasn’t far out, so found her outside when I arrived. I’ve seen people going in, not being funny but one of them looked like [one of my flatmates]. Shit.  A few mins later, the girl who had just moved in came over. You know it’s our flat right? Shit. Turns out the extractor fan on the cooker malfunctioned. I won’t share the video itself coz one of my flatmates is in it, but yeah it just started spraying molten something all over the hob and surfaces. (They said it looked like molten metal, and they were there - but I don’t see how it would’ve gotten hot enough to melt any metal. My best guess is fat that hadn’t been cleaned from last years tenants)

So yeah, we got moved into another flat. The open cupboard right there was my one - I rescued my custom cup from it that the games studio had given me. It’s no good to drink from now, but it still looks ok so I’m glad I can keep it for decorative purposes at least. The rest of the food is waste, and I have to wait for the plates etc to get cleaned. I’m currently eating ready meals out of their cook-in containers, because I don’t have any plates, and only one fork and spoon. I bought some paper plates today though so I’ll use those from tomorrow, but I still don’t have any saucepans or anything.

I wasn’t around when they sorted out the replacement accommodation. Because of that, the other four from my flat went to the same new flat together, with one new person. I was put into a different flat which also had one other person in, my building manager assured me they’re “really nice”. I asked if they knew I was coming, BM said “they’ll know when we get up there :)”. That was Thursday, today is Monday. The only food in the kitchen is mine, I’ve not seen anyone. I’m 100% positive I’m alone in this flat.

And so yeah, that’s my uni experience so far. I had my first lectures today, it was cool because I already knew all the stuff so I got to feel smart (I’m doing computer games programming, and it was mostly about design docs which I read through extensively while working at the studio, so I knew exactly how they worked etc). But, I didn’t really make any friends. I kind of joined in with a couple of other people in each lecture, but it seems like they weren’t really interested, so whatever. I had an anime society taster this evening as well, and it was when I was on my way to that that S blanked me and I just got hit my like a wave of loneliness. I didn’t make any friends at the anime society, so I kinda just gave up and came back to my flat, and started writing this. As I was getting the fire picture from above though someone asked me if I wanted to hang out, so guess I’ll see how that goes. Not holding out much hope tbh and I’m at the point of becoming a full on hermit... I mean hey, at least I’d get a perfect score on my degree if I just focus on that and eliminate any social aspect right?

Finish time: 21:38 Length:  3,302 words/16,759 characters

[longforgottenunofficial]

The Pet Cemeteries

Yes, there are two.  Imagineer Kim Irvine (daughter of "Madame Leota" Leota Toombs) came up with the idea for the first one in the early 1980's.  Not a lot of time and effort went into the project.  Kim just purchased off-the-shelf yard statues of a dog, cat, skunk, and frog (complete with mouth hole for squirting water) and had Imagineer Chris Goosman compose some macabre epitaphs for the pedestals.  They were put in the vacant yard on the north side of the HM, alongside the wheelchair access path, reportedly to give them something to look at over there.

(pic by Monstersgoboo)

BIG JAKE Here lies my good dog Jake. Chasing a toad down a well was his one mistake. In memoriam MISS KITTY After losing eight lives you still had no fear. You caught a snake in your ninth and that's why you're here. R.I.P. BULLY You didn't drink, you didn't smoke. I just can't figure what made you croak. In loving memory of our pet STRIPEY You may be departed, But your presence will always linger on. Everyone seemed to like this little HM secret, so in 1993 they put another one in the front yard.

It has proven so popular that they subsequently added similar pet cemeteries to the WDW and Tokyo HMs. And so on. Those are the well-known facts, familiar to most Mansionites, if not to the general public.  Beyond that basic history, no one has bothered to say much.  But Long-Forgotten readers are a tough and discriminating audience.  They ask, nay, demand more.  Pry up those rocks and see what's crawling around underneath. A new addition came to the original pet cemetery in the summer of 2016. They needed to add another exhaust vent for the train tunnel going behind the HM and decided to make a virtue of necessity by disguising the vent as a crypt. So far so good, but the crypt is in the pet cemetery, and they made it up as a goofy, elephant grave. The crypt itself is tolerable, falling within the wide embrace of Victorian eccentricity (which, after all, gave us elephant foot umbrella stands), but that trunk looks absolutely awful. How can anyone over the age of eight, let alone Disney Imagineering, look at the exterior and landscaping of the Anaheim HM and conclude that it is an appropriate venue for this sort of zany kookiness? Barf. This looks like a refugee from the execrable queue in Orlando, disaffectionately known in these parts as PLQ:

Sometime around October a plaque appeared on the front:

More cutsie-wootsie stuff, ill-suited to the dignified exterior of the HM. And I hadn't noticed the mouse in previous photos, so I'll point to it now as part of the whole package. Anyway, bleahh. I'm only glad all of this is in a place generally unseen and easily ignored. I look forward to spending a lot of time forgetting it exists. As I said in the last post, I'm not a huge fan of the PC.  I think most purists and traditionalists see it as an unwelcome intrusion of sheer fantasy before the attraction even begins and would happily see it gone.  That's more or less been my position too, and yet I can't get worked up about it.  Something about the pet cemetery is okay, and it's time to figure out why.  Let's take a closer look. Much of the front yard version simply repeats the formula of the old one.  Once again you've got a lot of store-bought statuary sitting on pedestals with macabre epitaphs.  In fact, two of the statues (the frog and the skunk) are virtually identical to their back yard counterparts, although they have new names and texts.  The main difference out here is that some dates are attached.  The frog is "Old Flybait" ("He croaked, August 9 1869") and the skunk is "Beloved Lilac" ("Long on curiosity...Short on common scents, 1847").  There's also "Rosie" ("She was a poor little pig, but she bought the farm, 1849") and a dog named "Buddy" ("Our friend until the end"). The latter may be a long-overdue tribute to Buddy Baker, the musical genius behind the HM score.  The dating formula is obvious in the case of Old Flybait; it's exactly 100 years before the HM opening day, and this suggests that the other dates are really cryptic references to 1947 and 1949, probably the birth years of the Imagineers involved. There's nothing terribly out of place in any of these examples.  They are all of a piece.  We can easily imagine one or several family members in the mansion's long history being animal lovers and burying their pets out front, complete with whimsical epitaphs.  Even if the choice of animals is eccentric in some cases, there is nothing surreal involved, not even anything supernatural. In one case, however, these conventional statues are arranged in such a way as to suggest that the animals involved have business to conduct in the afterlife.

There is a clever thematic continuity between this cluster and some of the relationships you encounter inside the house.  Imagine the graveyard executioner, a man who in life wielded the power of death but who has now followed his victims into the grave.  It's called irony.  Better still, imagine the cat as Constance and the birds as her husbands, and you can feel the same chemistry at work.  No one forms a partnership with Death so powerful and so lasting as to avoid the same fate as Death's other victims.  It's a classic statement, made at least three times in the attraction, starting with this tableau.  I think the cat-and-bird set is perhaps the high water mark of the pet cemeteries. There is, however, a whole other set of grave markers.  These are original WDI designs, and they have a more fantastical flavor.  I suspect that it is these that rub some fans the wrong way.  There's Fi Fi the dog, with her cruciform tombstone made of crossed bones and her portrait with crossed-X eyes (like in the funnies).  This piece is significant for reasons that have nothing to do with the intentions of the designers.  It represents a change in the general culture between 1969 and 1993, but that will be the topic of another post.  For the moment, I'll simply note that it is the only cross-shaped headstone in the entire attraction, including all of the scale models and all of Marc Davis's concept art. The other weird monuments are for a snake, a bat, a rat, a fish, and a spider.  The pieces are nothing if not stylish.

It's a good deal harder to imagine these as simply the products of animal lovers in the Mansion's history.  The style of the monuments themselves is too bizarre.  Perhaps we are to imagine not merely animal lovers, but insane animal lovers, if we want to keep these within the imaginative realm of a real house with a history of real occupants—which is the starting point of the HM voyage. If imagining these pet monuments as items designed by crazy family members seems a stretch, then these freaky-deaky things simply don't belong here.  For me, there are enough tales of nutball Victorians to keep it all just barely within bounds. As if to illustrate exactly that point, Craig Conley sent me in November of 2016 the following clipping from a 1913 edition of Popular Mechanics,noting an 1855 grave marker for a fish.

Okay, even if we are not necessarily in the realm of fantasy, you still wonder what the original Imagineers were shooting for.  In one of the Long-Forgotten threads at Micechat, someone argued that pieces like Freddie the Bat were inspired by Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, which would eventually take over the whole Mansion every Fall and Winter, of course.  If you compare concept art for Freddie with typical NBC artwork, the similar look and feel is indeed striking.

But the dating is against it.  NBC was released the same year the pet cemetery was installed: 1993.  Better to look elsewhere for inspiration for this fantastic and surreal streak.  [Edit: But see new evidence below.]  As a matter of fact, the original HM Imagineers did kick around some lunatic pet ideas for the HM.  Ken Anderson toyed with having a man-eating octopus in a pit in the middle of a room in his 1957 Ghost House.  Which is pretty . . . out there.

Then there's this delightful but unused Marc Davis gag:

But if we're looking for justification for adding an element of the strange and fantastic to the Haunted Mansion, the obvious place to look is in Rolly Crump's unused "Museum of the Weird" designs.  Do I detect a whiff of the Museum in the pet cemetery? (Or *sniff* is that just a dead fish?)

Very, very few people know this, but Rolly actually designed some bizarre tombstones for the HM.  Where they would have been used, I can't imagine, but it must be admitted that Freddie the Bat has nothing on Velma Wingspan when it comes to eccentricity, and isn't the spidery lettering style used on the pet cemetery stones just a teeny weeny bit reminiscent of Rolly's "Museum" font?

"But even if Ken, Marc, and Rolly kicked these kinds of ideas around, they ultimately decided NOT to go in that direction, so even if the pet cemetery Imagineers were drawing inspiration from those guys, they also overrode their judgment by going ahead with this kind of thing." Yeah, I hear that, and it's a good point, but I still take some comfort in the idea that the newer Imagineers respected and revered the original masters and sought to draw inspiration from their work.  And anyway, since the pet cemetery, even at its most surreal, can be placed within the imaginative orbit of the Mansion, I've decided to call a truce on this one. New Evidence for Tim Burton's Influence One of our "Anonymous" commenters directs our attention to a short 1984 film by Tim Burton, Frankenweenie, produced by Walt Disney pictures.  Reportedly, Disney fired Burton after making it, claiming he had wasted company resources and had produced a film too dark for Disney to use.  It later had video and DVD releases. Well, SOMEONE at Disney liked the film.  There can be little doubt that it was a direct influence on the front yard pet cemetery.  The film is a parody/homage to Frankenstein, so there are important graveyard scenes—in a pet graveyard.  It appears also in the film's opening titles.

Fifi's tombstone at Disneyland is obviously taken almost directly from this movie.

There are several bone-cruciform tombstones in the Frankenweenie cemetery, but "Sparky" is the main animal character in the film. 

Even the shape of Fifi's head and the "X's" for her eyes may havebeen inspired by various other tombstones seen in the film.

Then there's "Earl."

There are also tombstones for a goldfish and a snake in the Burton graveyard.

This raises the distinct possibility that Imagineers (or at least Kim Irvine) were aware of Burton's work on Nightmare while it was in production and saw some of the models, and so possibly that artwork was an additional influence on the style of the 1993 HM pet cemetery. A big thanks goes to "Anonymous" for the tip.

Originally Posted: Monday, July 19, 2010 Original Link: [x]