#anyways it’s only 10 dollars a year I might pay for it

[brasiliangp]

is everyone paying for mutv or am I the only one who’s in a country who requires a subscription to watch this game? 😭

[deadsetobsessions]

Sea Cryptic! Danny AU- Pt.3

[Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.4] [Pt.5] [Pt.6] [Pt.7] [Pt.8] [Pt.9] [Pt.10]

“Aquaman.” Batman swept into the room, beelining straight for the suddenly apprehensive Atlantean king.

“Batman. What can I do for you?”

“Phantom. Does he pay taxes?”

“Pardon?”

Batman makes a low noise that had Aquaman’s danger senses buzzing.

“Does Phantom have to pay taxes. Towards Atlantis.”

“No…? Why?”

“He wanted money, in exchange for… information, of a delicate sort,” Batman said, diplomatically avoiding the topic of Phantom bargaining for the identities of corpses in exchange for a measly $100 dollars per identity. Like a flea market dealer, that one was.

“You encountered Phantom again?” Aquaman perked up.

“Yes. Gotham’s bay is… polluted.” Batman paused. “With victims. Of murder.”

The entire area quieted as heads turned towards the Dark Knight.

“Yes, I am… distantly aware of Gotham’s waters.” By that, Aquaman gets green around the gills whenever he turns his awareness in that direction. There’s a reason he doesn’t enter Gotham, and the Dark Knight’s ban is only half of that reason. “Ah, but you’re correct. For what purpose would Phantom need mortal currency?”

“Hn.”

“Maybe he needs some stuff?” Flash zipped to a stop next to Batman, feet tapping as he dug into the pile of snacks cradled in his arms. “Us mortals are always coming up with new things, maybe he wants to try some games or something?”

Batman tilted his head down, seriously considering Flash’s suggestion. “It’s plausible.”

“Barry, Barry, Barry. He’s old as hell, right? He probably wants to try the new booze!”

“Hal, my man!” Flash fist bumped Green Lantern, who came up. “You’re back! What happened to John?”

“Dunno. He got called somewhere that way,” Green Lantern waved a vague hand towards the left. “Had to deal with a politician or something from that area.” He shrugged, swinging an arm over Barry’s shoulders to put him in a headlock and stealing a chip.

“Huh. Anyways, would our mortal alcohol even work on a demi-god or something?”

“We should ask!” Hal turned towards Batman. “You should ask if he wants to go for a drink, spooky!”

“He’s a child.”

“He’s been around for more than a millennia, Bats.”

“Informational gathering, right, Hal?” Flashgot out of the headlock, quickly munching on his snacks to stop Green Lantern from stealing them.

“Totally. Yup.”

“…Fine.”

“Wait, are we just gonna ignore that Gotham’s waters are full of bodies?”

“Yes.”

——

“What?” Danny asked, mind half on the bags he’s dragging out of the water and the other half on the essay he has to submit in about four hours.

“Green Lantern wanted to invite you out for a drink.”

Danny turned to the stoic Gotham knight, who had his wrist computer out to log the bodies’ info the moment Danny gave him the information. Some of them even told Danny who murdered them, so Batman could start building cases with solid leads.

Danny’s only twenty. He’s not legal yet but he doesn’t want to give any clues to who he is. How is he supposed to…

Ah!

“Can’t.” Danny shrugged. “I’m not legal. I died when I was fourteen so…” Danny trailed off, speechless at the drowned puppy face Batman was giving him. What the fuck.

“Anyways, fork over my payment.”

Batman wordlessly hands him a wad of hundreds.

“What do you need cash for?” Batman suddenly asked.

“Huh? Isn’t it obvious?” Danny tucked it in. “Material things, obviously. I need a blanket,” because holy shit, Gotham is damn cold this time of year. “Anyways, see you same time next week, litterer.”

“I don’t litter.”

“Tell that to the batarangs I found under the water,” Danny grumbled. “But I’ll stop calling you that if you get a signature from Poison Ivy. I have a friend who loves her.”

“An alive friend?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, weatherboy?”

Danny snickered and disappeared. He’s gotta cram that essay.

——

“There’s a possibility Phantom might be homeless.”

“Batman, I mean this in the nicest way, but for the love of Atlantis, please stop giving me headaches. It’s time like these I wish I stayed a lighthouse keeper.”

[nenoname]

Journal 3’s references to Stan

(…does the Lost Pages count as J3 when some had to be in J2 and also may or may not be a truth lie turducken? idk. Ford’s TBoB letters sure as hell don’t count as J3 but I’m including them here anyway)

Lost Journal Pages

"STANLEY COULD HAVE MADE HER LAUGH"

“My stomach sank a bit when I realized… it was my birthday. This day has felt… odd, since S and I… parted ways.”

"I was adjusting my TV antennae for weather reports (looking for ideal conditions for F's first portal test) and spat out my coffee when I saw THIS! My brother hawking scams under the name "Panley Stines." I had half a mind to call that number, just to pretend to be the police and maybe scare S straight for once! There is something so galling about seeing your OWN FACE committing crimes on your own TV! When my Muse saw me break my stress ball, I decided it was finally time to vent about Stanley."

""How about that; you've got an inferior clone! Why didn't you just eat him in the womb? Think of how powerful you'd be!"

"You can't just eat your twin, Bill."

You'd be surprised what you can eat! I say sure, call him if you want him to start mooching off you again! ME, I went no contact with my home dimension and I don't regret it. All they did was hold me back and sabotage my talents! Can you imagine?"

"More than you know. But you do ever wonder if maybe... maybe things could have been different?""

"Our heat budget was so tight that Mom forced S and me to wear one sweater at the same time. (She called it the "Abominable Snow-Stan." Our cat lived in fear of it year-round.)"

“DAMN! This morning I found F rummaging through my old copy of Urban Legends of New Jersey, where I had forgotten I had hidden some old personal items! I’ve quickly re-hidden them here, away from prying eyes.”

"But then he crossed a line. Helplessly I watched Cipher in my own body limp up to a pay phone and dial... STANLEY'S phone number from the infomercial?! No. He wouldn't.

"Hey brother, it's Sixer. I'm going to take a swim in the frozen lake tomorrow, and I might not ever come back, so if you don't hear from me, I just want you to know that it's because I never loved you. BUH-BYEEEEE."

My heart was in my throat until I heard the dial tone... The pay phone was out of order. The message hadn't gotten through. Cipher turned back to address me.

"TSK, TSK, TSK. LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME MAKE YOU DO! TOMORROW'S TAPE IS GONNA BE MUCH WORSE.""

(Bro secret code) "miss you"

“The snow has begun to fall again and there’s very little time. There’s only one left I can turn to to protect my journals while I prepare for the journey…”

"S is an overgrown child with none of my rigorous mental training. Who knows what could happen if Cipher stepped inside Stanley's mind for even one minute...

What if Stanley somehow manages to destroy the portal just like he destroyed my perpetual motion machine? I suppose that machine did work in its own way... It kept me perpetually angry for thirty years."

(Bro secret code) "HAVE I BEEN TOO HARSH ALL ALONG?"

"What if he tries to rope me into his latest get-rich-quick scheme? His latest commercial was for "Stan Sauce: The Miracle Sauce that's too cool for the FDA!"

What if... he mocks me? What if he sees that I abandoned our family to become a recluse on the brink of madness? Could I risk admitting that I was... wrong?

PROS: I have no one else. Well, that settles it. It's time to come face-to-face with a face I haven't seen in 10 years. My own face. Which... is my brother's face. God, I miss sleep."

Ford’s Letters

"In the weeks since Weirdmageddon, I conducted numerous tests on Stanley's mind (his terrible jokes are still intact) and inspected the state for dimensional leakage (we also took turns kicking the statue, and Stanley took a few cracks with a crowbar). I burned every Cipher-shaped item I had ever collected, and even threw away all my one-dollar bills, just to be safe (Stanley, of course, found and pocketed them).

“I emerged from my lab after days of agonized contemplation to find- to my shock- that Mabel was reading the book, out loud, to Stanley, Dipper, Soos, and Wendy!”

“They didn’t see me as an irredeemable screwup. Stanley said, "So, your past is just a giant pile of mistakes? Congratulations- you really are a Pines!”“

"Bill may tell you that happiness requires conquering galaxies and living forever, but I've seen enough of the universe to tell you that he's wrong. I've found my happiness. And it looks like this:"

"If you're reading this... then I am dead. Kidding! Sorry, Stanley thought that would be funny. Ha-ha! We're currently out shopping for harpoons to prepare for our trip to the arctic."

"Stan, if you end breaking into my lab at some point later today- Bravo! Still as good a locksmith as in 8th grade. Beers are under the desk."

(It kinda strikes me that the BoB Lost Journal pages about Stan sound far more like post-portal Ford’s opinions on Stan instead, where he’s openly angry at both being pushed into the portal + at the portal being opened again + his murder suicide attempt being foiled + Stan disowning him + turning his house into a tourist trap + taking his identity vs pre-portal Ford being more… melodramatic(?) constantly being reminded of him but not wanting to linger too long? idk the vibes are different

Plus pre-portal Ford pretty consistently only calls Stan "S” or just refers to him as his brother (with the exception of him writing his name in a Caesar cipher). I think he only ever messes up the general naming scheme a single time when he wrote Fiddleford instead of F

…not to mention the perpetual motion machine comment says thirty instead of ten years)

Other sections: Pre-Portal, Post-Portal, Post-Weirdmageddon

[queen-mihai]

We only need a few rich people

And we need zero billionaires

The "need" in society to have rich people running around is mostly for entertainment value.

Let's say someone who earns $20 million a year due to some really popular product she invented and maybe some smart investments.

This person will never be a billionaire

BUT she will be a fun person to have around on some dumb TV show

"Oh yeah I bought myself a second yacht this year 😅. They're kind of a guilty pleasure of mine so I thought I'd splurge"

She's not rich enough to get around paying her taxes, which means she's probably giving 10-15 million a year or more straight to the government as taxes.

Now, she's paying the people who build the yacht, keeping them in business. They hire tradespeople and artists to make her ship nice, and those people go on to further stimulate the economy by spending the paychecks they earned building her yacht

She buys houses, clothes, cars, puts her kids through expensive classes, and sets aside a little nest egg so she can retire in comfort and her kids can go to school

That's not so bad. She's probably on TV shows talking about how fun it is being rich and everything. Maybe she gives some money to charity and people kinda wanna be like her.

You know what we don't need?

Someone rich enough to, instead of buying a car, buys the entire car manufacturer

We don't need someone who has enough money to stop paying their taxes and then pretend they still do.

We don't need someone who can spend a million dollars in a day and have it replaced that same day.

Spending money SHOULD hurt. Or make you feel SOMETHING.

If you're collecting money so goddamn fast that you literally can't spend it fast enough to ever see your bank account go down, we don't fucking need you.

If you're collecting that much money, your bank account should just be a wide open door where people can rob you all they want because you won't even notice anyway.

Are you a billionaire reading this? Give me ten million dollars and I'll think about shutting up. I won't, but I'll think about it.

You're gonna have to give ten million to every other person reading this though cuz they're probably not gonna shut up either.

You know what? Actually it'd probably just be easier to PAY YOUR DAMN TAXES. That would get a lot of us to shut up.

Try it. You might like it

[aq2003]

I've had a vague urge to get more into Shakespeare for years; what are the top 3-5 plays you'd recommend that AREN'T Hamlet or Much Ado? And what version of each is your favorite?

(sorry for omitting two god tier ones but I've already seen David Tennant in each of those and I surmise that you're insane about both so I'm looking for some new plays)

gonna be some basic bitch answers but here:

macbeth - the tragedy of macbeth (2021) movie adaptation starring denzel washington. this movie is fucking stunning and the way they did the witches was SO good. also i have the throne of blood (kurosawa's adaptation) also on my watchlist since i've heard REALLY good things about it

richard ii - 2013 rsc production w/ david tennant (link). he gives me catastrophic gender envy, i need to become more masculine to become more feminine etc. ben whishaw in the hollow crown series (link) is great too

romeo and juliet - romeo + juliet (1996) movie adaptation directed by baz luhrmann. this is like, the most well known romeo and juliet and you might've watched it already but i'm listing this anyway because there will never be a better mercutio and the way they did the setting is SO fucking funny and inspired

twelfth night - so far only saw this one Outside On The Grass Where They Performed This At My College but i liked it a lot... reccing the 2012 globe production with mark rylance (part 1 / part 2) (his hamlet was one of dt's favorites as an aspiring actor) (i'm putting my faith in letterboxd and david's taste for this one)

coriolanus - 2014 donmar production w/ tom hiddleston (on archive.org). this is directed by josie rourke, who also directed dt/ct's 2011 much ado! the staging and the effects are fucking awesomeeee (also peter de jersey and elliot levey are in this, i love them)

also shoutout to the ones i want to watch:

the 2016 production of a midsummer night's dream w/ ncuti gatwa (i have found nowhere to pirate it and i might just crack and pay the 10 dollars to watch it)

the 2015 production of the love's labour's lost w/ edward bennett (he played laertes in hamlet (2009) and he's REALLY underrated, i love his benedick SO FUCKING MUCH even if that production overall was a little dull)

either hollow crown's or greg doran's henry iv (it's two whole plays i need so much time to watch that. and ideally i want to watch both lol)

kurosawa's ran (1985), an adaptation of king lear set in 1500s japan

vishal bhardwaj's omkara (2006), an adaptation of othello set in india

[not-poignant]

Hello! Wanted to ask about Ream. You said that you set your tiers a long time ago, and with current horrors of Patreon and such will you add some tiers to Ream so that once-a-month payers on Patreon could find a tier with same price on Ream and would be comfortable moving? Thanks!

Hi anon!

So this is something I've been thinking over for months actually.

At first I was like 'yes of course' and then a very good friend sat me down and I realised that...actually maybe not.

Here's the reason (tl;dr I haven't increased my income in 10 years and actually cost of living has gone up in that period of time and I need to eat too):

Those prices haven't changed in a decade. I haven't had a 'wage increase' on that front in a decade. You can't change tier prices once they're made, they're locked in place forever (until you delete or retire the tier).

Not only that, but I offer about...3-4 times as much as I used to.

In the end, I increased my prices on Ream (a semi-midway point between charging once and charging twice) because of inflation and cost of living.

I know that everyone reading this is impacted by that too, and that might mean some people can't subscribe to Ream (or can't subscribe on the same tier) for a few dollars more because it's just too much, but I am now drastically undercharging compared to so many other authors on the market who do subscription.

Where I charge $5 USD for base early access, most charge between $10-20. I settled on $9 USD on Ream. Some authors have tiers of like... $100-200 per month, and I couldn't ever dream of doing that. But this is my career, and it's the money I use to pay for food, bills, etc. I don't make a minimum wage with the hours I work, and the idea of just hitting the country's average yearly income feels like a distant dream.

Granted, some of that could be down to my marketing options (like maybe I'd make more if I took all my writing offline and made people pay for all of it, but I don't want to do that, I like the model I do now, but it's dependent on those who can comfortably afford to support it... supporting it - if they want!!)

When I set up Ream, and set up the new tiers, I set them up with how much the cost of living has changed in a decade and how much other authors are charging on the whole. And I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I have 10 years behind me, I'm offering 3-4 times as much as I used to and am only charging about 50-80% more, cost of living has changed, and since I don't rely on book royalties (I love Perth Shifters but royalties work out to about $30 every 3 months), subscription is where the changes need to happen.

I'm not super happy about that, like, obviously I don't want people to feel hard done by, but all I can do is remind myself - and remind you and others anon - that unlike 99% of other authors in subscription, almost all of my writing becomes freely available if folks just have patience. That's something I know for a fact some other authors think I'm stupid for doing, lol, but I prefer doing it this way because it feels fandom and community friendly in a different way.

So even if folks can't afford a few dollars more to subscribe on Ream (you can become a follower though and still get email notifications - no one needs to pay to follow me on Ream, that's completely free), you just need to be patient. Like I get it, that few dollars is the difference sometimes between a bill getting paid and not getting paid - I feel and live that myself. I'm so angry at the Patreon situation, because honestly, if my account goes tomorrow and I get banned there, I may have to quit writing if Ream can't pick up fast. I cannot work for like... 50c an hour.

And I need to make some posts about this on Patreon obviously, but the stress of it is so overwhelming, because it's like staring down the barrel of a potentially career-ending policy decision.

Anyway, re: tier prices, the one exception to not changing / offering half-priced or lower-priced tiers is the merch tier, where I have thought about approaching Ream with getting an ongoing discount code, since I calculated sending merch on the merch tier at the $25 USD rate with the awareness that some people would be paying twice as much, and the leap there is the most significant one. That's a place where I'm willing to compromise if I can work that out, and Ream is typically very accommodating.

Folks who can't afford it still get access to nearly everything eventually - and not in a year, but like...in a few months, or even just a handful of weeks.

Folks who don't think my writing is worth a modest increase can choose to bow out whenever they want (or sign up to a lower tier and still get access to nearly everything eventually)!

I am grateful to any and all folks who choose to support my writing whether it's financially or not, and I do get that like, sometimes the budget just does not allow for an increase of any kind. Or maybe you only signed up this year and don't believe in paying more than what you do already, and so it doesn't matter that my prices have been the same for a decade. Most artists / creators / writers have put up their book prices / art prices / etc. Ream is the first time I've ever done it.

Anyway on the matter of the merch tier, I'll talk to Ream about organising some kind of perma-discount and offering it specifically in that tier. For the rest, I'll keep thinking about it, and maybe talk to Ream to see what they suggest too.

fdsalkfkdjsa

Anyway, I'm just... I am sorry anon, in a perfect world, I would have been able to incrementally increase my tier prices all along with a lot of warning in advance. And I'm also like, extremely and intensely hoping that I can just stay on Patreon, but that seems less and less likely with their new policy changes. I'm not uprooting, I will keep posting on Patreon until the lights metaphorically go out. It's just, they could kick me in an hour and I'd have no recourse and there'd be no point in appealing. Or they could kick me in 5 years, or 10.

In some ways this isn't a problem until Patreon makes it a problem for all of us, but yeah, that's where I'm at. A friend basically reminded me that it's okay for me to value my writing and my 10 years of experience and my track record and my stories a bit more, and I took their advice to heart, and then have felt terribly guilty ever since, lol. I'll keep thinking about my options here, and what I can do, because I obviously don't want to leave a lot of people behind, either.

[genericpuff]

Alright, update on the tablet situation, I do NOT have good news but there are some silver linings.

First off, thank you all so much for your patience. That one week I took off to relax seemed to be an invitation for the universe to fuck with my shit because my tablet literally chose the worst time to get on my nerves ( This is totally not something I'm gonna bring up with my therapist as proof that I'm not allowed to rest /s) I've tried just about everything to get it working again, I got a replacement 3-in-1 cable and even that didn't do anything, so I've ordered in a new pen, but that's not due to show up for another week or two.

However, I do not want to wait a week or two on the off chance that a new pen even solves the problem.

So the GOOD NEWS in all this is that I do still have my iPad. It wasn't setup with Clip Studio Paint because I own a perpetual license for my PC, but seeing as how now I can't use it on my PC (at least not with my tablet pen) I've gone ahead and setup the mobile version on my tablet, thankfully I got a discount because I already own a perpetual license but it's still gonna cost me $10/month so that's yet another subscription to slap on the 'ole credit card.

Now that does mean I have to go through the painstaking efforts of moving everything from my PC onto my tablet, but thankfully that issue is easily solved with cloud backups and transferring. Really all I need to be able to do is draw, I can still do speech bubbles and text input and texture overlays and all that post-production stuff on my PC, but anything that requires actual drawing I'm gonna be using my iPad for. So please, don't mind if you notice some weird little art differences between Episode 30 and 29, I'm adjusting to a new workflow! It shouldn't be too bad because I'll still be using the exact same brushes and textures and all that fun stuff that I do on my PC, it just comes with the adjustment of drawing primarily on iPad, which I don't normally do (I usually only draw on my iPad for tattooing and that's in Procreate which I still suck at using outside of lineart LMAO)

This is a very stressful situation that I'm hoping will only be temporary until I get that new tablet pen, and if THAT doesn't solve the issue, then I'm gonna have to start shopping for a new tablet entirely, and that's not something I can do immediately because I'm already starting to struggle financially due to the slow season creeping in at work and I'm still paying off that new PC I put down on layaway (which I'm regretting already). All that said, if you want to help a pal out, please consider tossing a dollar or two at me on my Ko-Fi, it's all gonna go towards a new drawing tablet if I need it (and if the pen solves the issue, then you'll be helping me stay afloat so I can keep bringing you guys the good shit LOL)

What's wild is that in all my Google searching, I found a thread from two months ago with literally the EXACT same issue, under the exact same conditions, in which OP's tablet pen unexpectedly stopped registering with their Huion Kamvas 22 Plus that they had owned for two years. According to them, it did start working again, after resetting the PC and re-installing the driver over and over again, but I've already done that myself a ton of times and I'm tired of being let down and that doesn't seem like a "real" solution beyond luck, so I'm gonna take a break from doing that while I get my iPad set up. I have the sneaking suspicion this might have to do with some recent Windows updates that just rolled out, my PC had definitely gone through a couple leading up to the malfunction. This wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has fucked with my tablet functionality so I literally wouldn't be surprised if it was something like that. Either that, or the '2' in Kamvas 22 stands for "will only last for 2 years before stopping entirely" LOL

Anyways, that's all for now. Thank you all so much for your patience and understanding through all this. While I don't want to have to reduce the quality or frequency of what I put out for you guys due to technical issues, I also don't want the comic to stop entirely, so if this turns into one of those desperate situations where I'm delivering you guys episodes of Rekindled drawn on a Nintendo DS, so be it. I'm not gonna let this beat me.

[eat-the-richard]

GOTY OF THE YEAR 2,000,023

IT'S ABOUT THAT TIME AAGAIN FRIENDS! Another overly long written ramble about the very best in my personal gaming life and experience delivered DIRECTLY TO YOUR EYEBALLS!

And what a year it was!! For gaming! All of it! Just a comprehensive onslaught of video game products from all different genres and developers. From Triple As to Indies to whatever the fuck we're supposed to call the middle ground of those two. No matter who you (yes, YOU, not the general ""you"") are, something came out this year that tickled your little small little balls in one way or the other.

The best part of all, though? A year like this will NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!! Certainly not next year, like my god look at that 2024 upcoming games list, man. It is *slight*.

You wanna know why? Because this amount of quality output, of course, does not come from studios or companies or brands or even the almighty dollar sign. It comes, of course, from people. People who are insanely talented and passionate about their craft. Likely those who dreamed for years to be a part of this seemingly amazing industry of creative professionals all striving towards the same creative goals. And for gaming developers, 2023 was not a year worth celebrating. Sure the products that they worked on released to the public to play and enjoy, but as soon as these projects wrapped up, the studio or company or brand or even the almighty dollar sign ditched their ass RIGHT TO THE CURB!

Because to all of those previously mentioned abstractions, talent is expendable. Demand for talent should be at an all time high, given that gaming continues to be the most money-making entertainment medium of the 21st century. So more games should be in development, therefore necessitating more job opportunities and areas where passionate individuals can spearhead their own creativity into a golden goose. But, of course, this is not how abstractions operate. The talent who creates these fine pieces of art are mere cogs to them, oiling and greasing a machine that will continue to move as long as the pieces are in place. And there will always be a new crop of cogs fresh in the industry who will be willing to take meager pay, miserable conditions, and limited flexibility in their line of work, as long as they get a chance to work with the abstractions.

This, of course, will not happen. The continuous horror of the modern gaming industry spreads far and wide. Notably to our youth, as chronically online as they are, who likely will not want to invest their time and life into a career that will never respect them. As for the talent who have been laid off every month this year? They won't stick around. Their services are applicable in many other fields that not only pay better, but have far more job security. So the talent pool dries up, there will be increasingly fewer individuals looking to refill, and the gaming bubble finally pops.

We're at the precipice of it, and it's hard to ignore the warning signs. It's hard to write a piece about the "great year in gaming" we as consumers had as it feels like the industry that created it might not look the same way in 10 years. Gaming won't die, obviously, there's too much demand for it. But the 300 million dollar blockbusters, the 3-4 year crunch periods, the constant race to produce technological best. That will die. And this year was the last hurrah.

So, in that spirit, let's celebrate the year that was for me. The 10 best games from this year and previous that remind me why I love it in the first place. Why I want to support it, and wish it nothing but the best. And most of all, highlighting the talent who ultimately made it possible, rather than the abstraction who will tear it down.

---------------

Anyway! Enough of that SHIT!! Video games are cool, and I like them. Today, we’re going to RANK the TOP 10-ish GAMES I PLAYED in Twenty Twenty Three. But before that, let’s dive into some dis/honorable mentions.

REMASTER I REALLY LIKED BUT DIDN’T WANT TO RANK BECAUSE ITS A REMASTER OF THE YEAR: Metroid Prime Remastered (NSW)

Take your pick of, like, six or seven different 25-30 year old Metroid fans and slam them elbow-first into a padded cell. Once they come to and they start talking about Metroid, as you do in confinement, about five or six of them will confess that their first love was Metroid Prime. I would count myself one of them inside of the cell, even if it took me until 2015 and the shudders Wii U Virtual Console for me to finally give it a try.

The six-or-seven imprisoned Metroid fans will inevitably start comparing the two most popular entries in the series: Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. To me, Super Metroid is all about its scenario. Finely tuned and expertly paced, “Super” is a game I play for that jolt of the Metroid formula that currently makes up ½ of every game that comes out nowadays. But Metroid Prime is about atmosphere. The reflections of Samus’ face in the visor dotted by raindrops from above. The movement of fauna, shade & various enemies flowing through every screen. Honestly while I’m writing this the Phendrana Drifts theme is playing in my head.

Metroid Prime isn’t as precise as Super Metroid, but its ambiance is striking. This presentation, already beautiful on the GameCube, is only enhanced on Switch. Despite very little of the original Prime team still being at Retro Studios, you can tell this one was crafted with an enormous amount of respect for the source material. It gets the rare yet coveted distinction for a remaster/make/release of looking just as you remembered it your first go around, yet looking obviously much better when compared side by side. It does well to continue the legacy of this momentous game, to hopefully expose its importance to more than just the five-or-six of us currently jailed. 

By the way, the one other guy who didn’t grow up with Prime? He was chatting our ear off about the “subversive excellence” of Metroid Fusion or something. How “forcing linearity in an otherwise exploration heavy series can make you feel weak and frightened” and “it has a much tighter difficulty curve than any other title in the series.” Something like that anyway, couldn’t really hear over the all-time noogie numbers I was putting up while he was stuck in a headlock.

GAME I'M MOST MAD AT MYSELF FOR NOT FINISHING: Outer Wilds (PC)

Is it a me thing? Am I not the type of guy who would truly appreciate a game like Outer Wilds? Spoilers ahead, obviously. Don’t read this part if any part of your bones and back wants to try this one out, dead serious.

Because what a HOOK this game gets you in. The first time the sun engulfed my puny little carcass, the previous session reverses itself right in front of me and the world just completely reset itself? Astonishment, blown away? Other thoughts like that. Conceptually, Outer Wilds is a knockout. The obvious point of comparison is Majora’s Mask, but the mystery at the heart of Outer Wilds is a lot less simple than Find The Four Giants. It’s a weaving thread binding all the game’s planets, but one you must piece together largely yourself.

Which made dropping it back in April and trying to come back to it hard. I probably just have to totally restart it and really really focus on what each little node of information is saying. Or just use a guide or something idk

LEAST FAVORITE GAMING EXPERIENCE OF THE YEAR: Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon (PC)

Ok this title might be hyperbole a bit since I didn’t completely hate it, I just wanted an excuse to write about SONIC AGAIN! I LOVE BLUE MEN!!

Speaking of hyperbole, how about the reception of Sonic Frontiers? Seems like everyone was busting their loads over this one last year. I get it, to a certain extent. As BlazeHedgehog said in his one-hour dissection of the game this year, food tastes better when you’re hungry, and us poor Sonic fans are starving. I don’t think Frontiers is perfect by anyone’s standards, but it at the very least leaves a decent yet slightly rocky foundation for future games to knock it out of the park with.

The Final Horizon is “future games”, I guess. And uh, yeah this one didn’t knock it out of the park. Kinda bunted? Maybe tripped over first base or something idk how to make better baseball analogies than this. 

My main disappointment comes from the three new playable hedgehog/hedgehog adjacent creatures. Maybe it's my fault actually, since I had this wonderful idea in my head of how sick it would be for Knuckles or even Amy to have fully decked-out combat trees. Instead, these new characters are actually terrible at combat and you shouldn’t even try. They’re pretty specifically geared towards platforming challenges, unfortunate since all of them feel pretty miserable to control. My original review of this update was “Knuckles controls like an asshole” but they kind of fixed the controls so my review has been updated to “Knuckles controlled like an asshole* *when it launched therefore when everyone played it Knuckles controlled like an asshole”. 

Despite my gripes with base game Frontiers, at the very least it felt like a game that was rigorously playtested. Not polished by any means (for crying out loud they never fixed the pop-in), but most platforming challenges had a certain sense of flow to them that made the open zone concept work. Final Horizon does not feel properly playtested. Levels are far less scripted, which would be a great thing in an engine that didn’t feel this busted. The difficulty spikes up seemingly at random, with the three titan boss rush on hard being probably the most unfair challenge in a Sonic game that I can remember. Even the final boss (which features one cool scene where blue eyed Super Sonic gets shot out of a gun) requires a target switching mechanic the game never expects you to know or use by that point, unless I’m an idiot. Which is always the fear.

Ah well, at least it was free. And I don’t want this to be a sign for Sonic team to ditch the open zone for the next game. I do think it can work, but the main gameplay engine needs an overhaul. Not even a Sonic Utopia masturbatory “iT sHoUlD jUsT cOnTroL lIkE tHe ClAsSicS” style control necessarily, just one that feels inherently fun to run around an empty field in. Which is easy to say, I guess. “Make the Sonic feel more funner to control,” the critic says. “Allso give me a cheeseburger “

Congratulations on winning your oddly specific category awards, previously stated video game products! Time for the top ten which was going to be a top sixteen but I’m already incredibly late on this so I’d rather not write about six extra games sorry.

10. Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage (PS1/PC)

The intro to Spyro 2 was fun all three times I played it this year. Once on original hardware at a friend’s house, another time on my own through a PS1 emulator, and a final time through the Reignited trilogy remake. Reignited was where I played through Spyro 1 for the first time some years ago, and although the Spyro 3 remake is allegedly trash (according to my one friend who learned how to read by playing Spyro 3 at age 3), the remake of Ripto’s Rage is pretty OK by my less demanding standards. Plus it ran well on Steam Deck for whatever that’s worth.

Thankfully, playing the intro to Spyro 2 three times was actually a worthwhile thing to do! Unlike Spyro 1 which basically just lets you 100% complete every level the first time you go through it, Spyro 2 requires abilities and unlocks from later levels in the game to get every orb & collectable. Every time I replayed the various levels in Summer Forest, I learned which levels (even areas of levels) I should avoid until I learned how to climb up ladders or whatever. It is much more enjoyable on a replay to keep these types of things fresh in your mind rather than coming back to it years later as a grayed & tired old hag.

While I’m not as story-pilled as a lot of my gaming peers, even in simple games I appreciate when it feels like your actions have weight to them. Completing every level in Spyro 2 isn’t just about collecting the shiny objects and touching the top of the flagpole. Each area has its own particular race of organism coming to you with an issue caused by Ripto. And while it isn’t super complex, your actions through the level are helping that particular group of living beings. When going through the entire game, and thereby helping all of these groups with their minor or major little quibbles, it’s pretty satisfying to look back on once the game comes to a close. That element is, I think, what makes a crusty little game like Spyro 2 still hold up in the face of a very different world.

9. FEZ (PC)

For a while, I didn’t want to like FEZ. I had it on Steam, but only as a result of a Humble Bundle, back when you could specify how much of your bundle purchase went to each specific game creator. And I will never forget looking at Phil Fish and his stupid face, gleefully pulling his contribution slider allllll the way to the bottom, probably capping out at $0.01.

That was 2014. 10 years later, I have two thoughts. 1. Phil Fish’s controversy feels very very trite in comparison to what the internet or, fuck, even the ENTIRE WORLD has turned into. And 2. Phil Fish is a genius.

People were saying it at the time but I just didn’t want to believe them. And I probably didn’t have the capacity to wrap my head around what FEZ was doing. It’s an entry into what I want to define right now as an “unraveling” game (remember this, it will come up later!). On the surface, FEZ is simple. It even has simple graphics! You’re a simple man, living in a simple town, with only a jump button to your name. Then, another layer. A Fez, perhaps, on the top of your gay little head. In gameplay terms, the perspective now shifts when you press the triggers, I think all Fezes do that? Anyway, fun little platforming gimmick for a little 2D game, right?

Wrong. FEZ is a 3D game. Your position in the world is a little tricky to manipulate, but it is mapped in a 3D space. You can even view the world in 3D once you beat the game and get sunglasses. I think all sunglasses do that? Anyway, this allows for some inventive puzzle solving through trying to figure out where to jump and where to shift perspective to make your way out of the room. Can be pretty tricky, but ultimately achievable, right?

Wrong. The puzzles at the end of FEZ are not possible. Literally, I think. The last puzzle is not possible without datamines and brute-forcing it. But for the puzzles that are possible, the amount of honest to god code cracking you need to do at the end of the game is not what I was expecting. I had to bring out an honest to god notebook made of paper from wood and write down my interpretation of the game’s little language. Other games certainly take inspiration from the unraveling layers of FEZ,

8. TUNIC (PC)

Hope you were paying attention! Thank god this game comes right here on the list so I don’t have to test your attention span. TUNIC is also an unraveling type game, in sort of the exact same way to FEZ actually. It appears to be a gorgeous yet sort of simple claymation sorta interpretation of the original Legend of Zelda. You’ve got a couple a silly lookin enemies, item pickups like bombs and potions, you get to explore an overworld and some dungeons. It’s Zelda 1, right?

Wrong. TUNIC is Dark Souls. Beyond just being able to fat roll, enemy encounters can get brutally difficult, and they all respawn when you die. Upon death, you drop a bit of your coins on the ground in a ghost that will stick around when you come back to that same spot. You save and respawn at a fire. Now, comparing a game to Dark Souls is kind of like the most overdone thing in games writing at the point, but it definitely helps that you can get a sense of that original Zelda formula in all of FromSoft’s games. So TUNIC aping those trends feels like a good match, I think. From here, progression might start to make sense. You travel from save room to save room, clearing dungeons and beating bosses. Eventually you’ll find a really big one, and the game is over, right?

Wrong. TUNIC is a game about not being able to understand English. The story is pretty well known at this point I think, but the sole developer of TUNIC was inspired by playing through the notoriously obtuse-without-a-manual Zelda 1 without being able to understand the words of said manual. In TUNIC, you will find pieces of a very similar looking manual all throughout the world in no particular order and in a language you cannot read. Eventually in TUNIC you’ll hit a wall where you have no idea what to do or where to go. And suddenly, you look at a single page of the manual in a slightly different way, maybe even with your head tilted a little bit more to the right. And suddenly it all makes sense. 

There’s another way in which this game unravels but it’s sort of like the impossible puzzles in FEZ and I haven’t even begun to try and wrap my head around it. I beat this game with the bad ending and I still had a jolly ole time with it. Very much my sort of game this one is. No spoken dialogue, story communicated entirely through gameplay, and hard as balls bosses. Now if only this one featured a funny little dwarf….

7. Deep Rock Galactic (PC)

Me and my friends cycled through a lot of different games this year. Still wrought in grief over the loss of TF2 and Overwatch, I think. I was kind of the outside guy in these multiplayer romps, as I am burdened with two jobs and game at weird times of the night, but I got enough time in each of them to get the idea. But of all the multiplayer games I dabbled in, the one that I am so sad I wasn’t around to play more is Deep Rock Galactic.

DRG is immediately charming. Playing as a stupid drunk dwarf is kind of inherently a little ridiculous and Ghost Ship leans into that hard. There’s of course the dedicated ROCK AND STONE button, but did you know there’s a dedicated coughing button? Not even loud obnoxious coughing either; subtle, painful coughing that feels like a burden to deal with (don’t @ me I know it’s not supposed to be a coughing button). The hub of DRG is honestly the most fun part of the game, I think. Just spending time with the buds fucking around with barrels and getting drunk on exploding IPAs is quality stuff. 

I only played Driller, I think? The rest of the characters are probably fun though. I just liked being able to serve that oh-so-important purpose of pressing M1 in a direction and overheating by accident, as well as using my flamethrower to hurt my teammates. And using my C4 to hurt my teammates. I’m sure they all hate playing with me since I suck ass, but it’s hard for me to get mad at myself when I’m bad at the game since the stakes feel pretty low. Co-op games like this always appeal to me more than PVP for that exact reason, and I hope I can put DRG on this same list next year when I’m a little bit more seasoned.

DRG also fucked up my reflexes for every other game as I always want to press F to throw a flare into a dark room. Even in real life! 

6. Dying Light (PC)

Another multiplayer game, although this one isn’t really originally intended to be multiplayer. This game flew under the radar for me for a long time until one of my friends randomly suggested we play it co-op one day and we all happened to have it for free on the Critically Acclaimed Epic Games Launcher. First thing to address here, this game is shockingly seamless as a multiplayer game considering it’s obviously a single player game primarily. Ok, maybe not quite seamless since all the player characters are the same generic white guy protagonist. At least you can wear a clown outfit? But the connection never dips, you’re never kicked out for no reason, everyone gets to watch a cutscene at the same time. Great co-op experience overall.

Honestly, the story and scenario of Dying Light is very uninteresting to me. We haven’t even beat the main story yet. In fact, we go out of our way to not do the main story and just focus on side content as much as we can. Because the core gameplay of Dying Light is fantastic. Again, this game completely flew under the radar for me and I feel like the same thing happened to most people I know. So I was shocked at how good the game feels. Jumping from roof to roof rarely doesn’t work once you know what you’re doing thanks to the generous ledge grab system. And once you get a grappling hook? Bitch, every game should have a grappling hook. 

Combat is where the game really shines though. We set the difficulty to hard right away, which initially made it practically impossible to kill even the most basic type of zombie. If you’re just trying to whack the undead with a simple melee weapon, you’re probably going to get your health drained in an instant. Obviously you get better weapons, even guns towards the back half of the game. But you don’t want to use those all the time, especially guns since they make a ton of noise and alert a ton of infected. So it’s when you start unlocking cool-ass moves like the little kick you do to finish off downed enemies skulls, tackling zombies to the floor, vaulting over their heads to get a quick move on, even a whole ass dropkick to send them tumbling into a spike wall that Dying Light starts becoming fun as hell to just run around in. 

Dying Light is also tied with Zelda Tears of the Kingdom as having the most “dark” “darkness” in a game I played this year. You straight up cannot see anything at night in this game, and if you turn on your flashlight you might wake up your mom. She’ll grab and kill you!

5. Lethal Company (PC)

What makes writing about Lethal Company hard is that, in a way, it’s undeniable. There’s no wonder why this became one of 2023’s best sellers practically overnight. Its charm is just that apparent. But why? To me, it’s how it straddles the line.

Obviously, Lethal Company is hilarious. It’s baked into the animations, with a jerky running animation that radiates Scooby-Doo-like energy and the single greatest dancing animation in all of gaming. Despite picking up items to later sell being the whole point of the game, they pack in so many silly little trinkets that are hard to separate yourself from; some can even make sounds! The first time I ever picked up the airhorn was on video, and I popped off harder for that than anything else this year. You may find yourself barrelling off the edge of a railing to your death because you thought you could jump over a gap with a big screw in your hand. Lethal Company is not only trying to make you laugh, but gives you the tools to get into a situation that’ll make your friends laugh. 

But Lethal Company is also terrifying. Especially when you have no idea what you’re doing. Deep within the halls lurk otherworldly abominations with behavior that isn’t easy to parse your first time through. Some can be easy enough to avoid like the loot bugs and spiders. But others force you to change the way you move through the level, like the Bracken that requires you to constantly look behind you or else have your neck suddenly snapped, or the Coil Head that requires constant eye-contact or else have your neck suddenly snapped. If the terror was just contained to the halls, that would be one thing. But every Lethal Company player remembers their first time seeing the Forest Keeper, silently tip-toeing your way just out of sight else get eaten alive. You can certainly learn the patterns of each of these hostile entities to make progression easier, but keeping them all in mind while juggling the keys, ducks, and generators in your hands can often be too much to handle.

Despite all the horror elements, though, I never really get too scared playing Lethal Company? At least never for too long. And that’s the beauty of it - the line that the game is teetering on between comedy and terror. Even in observing the objectively very dangerous Bracken, it’s hard not to laugh at how sheepish he looks when backing away from you. When killed suddenly by a big dog outside your ship, the tension breaks once you realize that your friends are going to have to deal with that same dog and laugh as they die with you. Ultimately, Lethal Company’s charm lives and dies by how well it executes its two polar-opposite fundamental elements. 

If updates can give more of a reason to keep playing the game after you learn the trick to each of the monsters, then this will be a multiplayer game for the books. That and add in suit customization bro, like come on the rack is right there!!

4. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (NSW)

If I was 7, Super Mario Bros. Wonder would be my favorite game ever. I am actively envious of the kids who get to grow up playing this game. Mario always hits different when you’re first getting into this method of experiencing media. Learning the fundamentals of controlling Mario is a gaming memory I will always cherish.The timing required to stomp on blocks and enemies, juggling the power-ups required to get certain secrets in a level, and the flow state you reach in jaunting through the familiar sights and sounds are baked into my gaming DNA. 

As such, I found Super Mario Bros. Wonder to be very easy. There are some harder levels sprinkled throughout the game, but in a year that I beat every Super Meat Boy chapter without dying for fun, those didn’t give me much trouble. With that, plus the sheer number of Mario games I’ve played over the past 15 years of my life, I ate this game’s lunch and didn’t break a sweat. It’s probably unfair to knock a Mario game for being easy, but considering I’m not the only person who’s broached this criticism, I think it has enough merit. But again, I am envious of those who do not have this level of skill. To the kids wiping their greasy spaghetti hands on their Switch and Joy Cons, experiencing Mario for the first time because you liked Chris Pratt’s performance in the Mario movie. If this is your first time, this will leave an unforgettable impression.

Course-clear Mario games like Bros 3, World, 3D World, NSMB, and a bunch of other words and letter combinations are built on gimmicks. Gimmick is often used in a derogatory sense in gaming discussion circles to talk about shallow, meaningless fluff added to a game just to add a pinch of variety and extend run time. But as Mario has proven time and time again, gimmicks can be good, actually. It allows each level to stay fresh, with new ideas constantly being thrown at you with no time given to let any of it grow old. Mario Bros. Wonder is built off this same foundation, but goes absolutely nuts with it. The first part of every level is designed as normal, with some set of enemies, power-ups or other obstacles being presented at an easy pace. But as soon as you Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy, that gimmick is either flipped on its head or is magnified to the highest extent possible. When you allow your development team to design a game for years with no deadline, this is the type of experience you can create. 

Also, this should go without saying, but this is probably the best looking game I’ve played all year. It doesn’t do anything crazy technically (like this probably could have been done on the Wii?), but each screenshot is blooming with color, flavor, and life. Shouts out in particular to the new Luigi model. I have no idea what specifically they did to his proportions, but DO NOT change it. This is perfect. Look at him. Perfect.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (NSW)

Hilariously, this is the second Nintendo game in a row on the top half of this list that I’m going to spend half the review bitching about. Because TOTK is the exact same as Breath of the Wild. No, not in the way you’re thinking, although that is somewhat part of it. Not because the world is the same, the overall presentation is the same, the areas are largely the same, the combat is the same, the structure of the game is pretty much the same. Not any of that, rather that this game shares BOTW’s biggest problem - it gets worse the more you think about it.

Because while I was playing it, it felt like the coolest thing ever. Ultrahand is a marvel of design and programming, obviously. Should go without saying that the potential of ultrahand is boundless, and that week where everyone was posting their Zelda creations was very fun. The abilities in general are so ingenious that they actively tricked me into playing the same 100 hour game again. Ascend in particular is one of those things that just breaks your brain and makes you want to do it in every single game that you play afterwards. The first time I discovered the depths, after not getting spoiled on it and not noticing it at all in the game’s trailers, made me feel the same magic as those opening hours of Breath of the Wild. It also shares a spot with Dying Light for having the “darkest” “darkness” in video gaming. Congrats! The awards in the mail. And after what I believe to be one of the greatest endings a Zelda game has ever had, with a killer final fight and that moment with Link and Zelda at the end, I was convinced I had played my favorite game ever.

But of course, you cannot make these sorts of decisions on your favorite X thing ever in a day, a week, even a year. It grows with time. And over time, I had a stark realization that Tears of the Kingdom didn’t really fix many of the issues I had with Breath of the Wild, even if I thought they did at the time. Item degradation was annoying the first go around, but the second time, especially considering all the crafting you have to do to get good weapons, feels especially tedious. The story is just as daft and pointless, even if it ends on a better note. The “Sacred Stone?” repetition has already been memed to death at this point but it’s notable how I didn’t even notice it at first since I had already long since tuned out of the story. Dungeons still don’t hit the same as in previous Zeldas, with the precise almost Metroid-like design of items locking progression not even attempted for a second time. Even the depths, which enamored me so deeply when I first found them, gradually became a slog to travel through as its visual repetition and lack of unique content started to dawn on me.

When I was playing Breath of the Wild for the first time, in a life that feels like it was ages and ages ago, I distinctly remember being in awe of the world they had created and the joy I had in exploring it. Even though I had my faults with the game, as I kept thinking about it, that lasting impression is what sticks out so many years later. Will the same thing happen to Tears of the Kingdom? Will its strengths persist in my head in a decade? Or will its blemishes keep it from true greatness in my mind?

One thing’s for sure: I never want to see a god damn Korok again. At least in this game you can create a device that sets them on fire, smushes them with a giant hammer, then catapults them over a mountain into a bottomless pit. Kinda fucked up you can do that…

2. Pizza Tower (PC)

Pizza Tower is fucked up game made by a fucked up man. How else can I explain the absolutely batshit insane ideas this game throws at you? The first level is called John Gutter. There’s another level in this game called “Oh Shit!” where you run around in the sewer. Mort the Chicken from the PS1 game Mort the Chicken returns to grab onto your head and force you to do double jumps. You’re forced to play golf. There’s a level where you get jumpscared by FNAF pizza topping animatronics and at the end you get to Shoot Them With A Shotgun. One of the bosses is a fucked up version of yourself that’s actually made of liquid and is secretly just a brain with eyes. You’re italian. 

I could go on. Despite my cursed Nintendo centric brain, I’ve never dabbled into Wario Land, which Pizza Tower obviously takes a lot of inspiration from. But when looking at gameplay of those older games after finishing this one, I don’t think I would really get a whole lot out of it. Pizza Tower is basically those Wario Land games made by a guy with as sick of a brain as I do, drawing all the assets with MSPaint and cramming each level with crazy bullshit and fun gameplay ideas. Those other games would probably feel kind of lacking in comparison. Like Mario Wonder, the levels in Pizza Tower are gimmicky by design, introducing one-off gameplay ideas and passing the ball to the next idea as soon as possible. So why is Pizza Tower higher than Mario Wonder?

Because Pizza Tower is an anime. When completing each level, you’re ranked from a scale of D to S, same as Sonic. At least that’s what it seems at first, though, as there is another rank. The coveted P-Rank is locked behind not just a perfect run collecting all the pizza toppings through the level, but looping back around and racing through that same level again. All within the time limit given to you when smacking the John at the end of each level. As you can probably tell, this is fucked up. Nothing else in Pizza Tower, not even the batshit level ideas, can reach how fucked up getting a P-Rank is in any level of this game. I’ve only gotten two I think? But Christ, what a rush it is. Pushing your familiarity with the controls and the level like this, reaching a glorious flow state is exactly where I love to be in a 2D platformer. And when I see that sick as hell anime OP ass P-Rank animation, I reach COMPLETE GAMING EUPHORIA.

I am so excited to jump back into this one once I have the time and give this the thorough beating it deserves. Just like how Peppino has been thoroughly beaten….. By The Cruel Hand He’s Been Dealt Through The Struggles Of Maintaining Your Own Pizza Business In A Horrible Capitalist Nightmare………

..

1. Pikmin 4 (NSW)

Hell yeah Baby!!! Pikmimn 4 Sweep! If you don’t play Pikmin 4 I’ll KILL YOu you stupid piece of shit!! 

Pikmin is doomed to be a niche. It’s got a bunch of cute little men walking around and a circular dog that you jump on the back of. But it is so brutally punishing that kids are almost certainly going to bounce off it. And the strategy-heads that would undoubtedly enjoy what it has to offer almost certainly won’t even give it a chance because of the cute little men and the circular dog. This dichotomy, of course, is why I love Pikmin.

I began the year in preparation for Pikmin 4 to finally play the original Pikmin on GameCube. Previously, I had one playthrough of Pikmin 3 but it honestly didn’t do all too much for me for whatever reason. So I wanted to go all the way back to the most busted up, brutal game in the series so I could understand the appeal. Within the first hour of play, all of my Pikmin had either been drowned or crushed by a giant Bulborb because I had no idea what I was doing. And that game has a strict time limit, so you can only fuck up so many times before you get a genuine game over. 

So what’s the appeal? Well Nintendo finally found a word for it in the marketing for Pikmin 4 that probably doesn’t exist in English so they just said fuck it and used the Japanese word anyway: “Dandori 段”. Basically being able to manage your tasks and resources in a timely fashion to reach maximum efficiency. Pikmin 1 forces you to figure this out to some degree or else you’re not getting home. And with the limited scope of that game’s levels, Pikmin types, and enemies, I think it’s a great way to learn. Each Pikmin has a clearly defined use case that directly corresponds with their color, and the obstacles in your path are easy to understand in relation to those basic abilities. Need a powerhouse that can take quick work of this giant beetle? Red is your go to. A ship part is stuck high up? The lanky and tall yellows are your guys. Water? Blue. You get the gist.

The problem with Pikmin 1? And every other Pikmin game for that matter? It’s not enough. It needs more. I’m cool with short games but Pikmin 1 can be beaten in like 3 hours. Pikmin 3 is like 10. Usually more content isn’t what makes a game “gooder” but I do genuinely think that the short run time of previous games made this idea of Dandori harder to tap into on a single playthrough. How did they fix this in Pikmin 4? 

WEll, my friend, they did this through VARIETY OF MODES!

The main story of Pikmin 4 is basically the 10 hour tutorial. A gentle romp through all the major areas, some largely easy enemies, no game-long time limit, heavy tutorializing, an introduction to all the Pikmin types, basically baby’s first Pikmin. Even if you only play the story, you have so much to sink your teeth into. The above ground areas are as fun as ever, with the addition of Oatchi as a Pikmin platform AND a way to introduce platforming into the Pikmin formula being such an obvious and fun addition. Caves return from Pikmin 2 as a break from the time-limit imposed by the rest of the game, allowing for some tighter combat sections and the satisfaction of scouring an entire area and getting 100% item completion. Dandori challenges scattered throughout the levels provide a taste of that hyper-focused time limit gameplay from Pikmin 1, forcing a greater degree of focus and understanding of the mechanics and design than in most of the rest of the game. Nighttime missions morph the usual Pikmin gameplay into more of a tower survival type of thing, protecting key areas while using the uniquely powerful new glow Pikmin. And each of the major areas all being in the garden of just somebody's house that you THEN get to go inside in what is by far the most unique level in a Pikmin game is some serious chef’s kiss type beat.

So that’s all well and good for the base game. But the post game? The post game? This is what takes Pikmin 4 to legendary heights. I CAN’T EVEN WRITE HERE everything I want to say because I KNOW YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED THIS GAME, and it was so joyous when I had these experiences blind. What I will say is this - this idea of Dandori and your understanding of it will be tested in some of the late game Dandori challenges. Entirely optional content by the way, nothing needed if you aren’t fucking with the idea of being an ancient Dandori master or anything. But this is the type of thing I live for in games. Mechanics and design being stretched to their limit, pushing your boundaries and forcing you to execute nearly perfectly to get the win. Usually uber-hard platformers are all that get this type of reaction out of me. Maybe I should be a strategy gamer? Am I finally ascending to be the Total War XCom Starcraft freakazoid I was always meant to be?

Maybe it was the surprise in how much I was enjoying Pikmin 4 for my entire 40 hour playthrough that gets it this high on the list. A marriage of gorgeous presentation, compelling mechanics, and content out the ass that no other game this year quite reached for me. DLC for this game is a must buy. Honestly, I might just play this game again some time soon, I need to make sure my feelings about it aren’t a fluke. 

And most importantly, YOU (yes, YOU, not the general ""you"") need to play this game. I DO NOT CARE if you have a Switch. DOWNLOAD THIS GAME FROM NSW2U.COM AND DOWNLOAD THE YUZU EMULATOR AND SEARCH ON GOOGLE “Nintendo Switch Keys Download” TO PLAY THIS GAME FOR FREE ON YOUR COMPUTER. Maybe you won’t even love it but DAMN IT I do. I’m glad Pikmin got another chance and for that chance to be the most feature-packed and gloriously executed game in the series by far. Hope this isn’t the end for our Pick-ed Men… Hope they don’t throw my colorful men in IP jail for 10 years again… Hope I can say hi to my good friend Olli mare one more time before I’m old and gray………

Thats it ok bye

[bunnyb34r]

Okay finally rested enough to talk ab the craft show!

So for YEARS this one has been heaaavily coveted by many crafters and has been hard to get in, but always told that it's worth it. That you'll make your table cost back in like two hours!

Yeah no... had mom not made wreaths, we would have lost money... Anyway super super dead at times like absolutely no one walking around, just the vendors getting up and shopping bc they could. Then it would pick up but you would get maybe 2 interested shoppers out of every 10. 4 if you were lucky.

People adored the boo boo bunnies and cat toys and I sold the most of them. So now I have to make more cat toys 😭. It's not the amount of effort it takes to make them, I love making them. I hate stuffing them with catnip 😭😭😭 but that's why people (and cats) love them. Also need to put bells on them bc people really like the ones with bells, which I stopped doing bc several people kept asking if I thought their cats would eat the bells... like you can cut it off man idc sgdggdgd once you buy it it's yours idc if YOU eat it if that's your thing just give me my dollar

Have to make a card for the bunnies bc it's hit or miss on if people know what they're for (you pop em in the freezer and hold them to a small "boo boo" and use it like a little ice pack, or you can pop out the reusable cube and use ice. Either way it's a cute little ice pack.

Only my one cousin bought any handwarmers 😭 and her wife had to pay me in $4 worth of quarters sgsgdggddg I was like take your time you could pay me in pennies and that'd be fine too (had a little kid pay me 25 cents for a slap bracelet in various coins and it was so sweet 🥺)

My mom posts our shows on her fb so that family and friends can show up to support us, and the first time since we've been doing these, we had 3 groups of family come in!

But that wasn't always a good thing...

[Put under read more for length]

My mom's cousin brought her daughter and granddaughter, and they talked for awhile and eventually mom's cousin bought a wreath (thank god). And she was like "oh my god this is so beautiful!! 😍" and complimented my stuff as well (but my stuff is more geared towards kids/parents like the boo boo bunnies, so she didnt buy anything from me agdgdgdg)

Then my cousin (not the handwarmers one) came and I used to really love her/she was my favorite cousin... until she moved back to the state and I realized goddamn you're super annoying and have 0 social awareness (in a THE ATTENTION SHOULD BE ON ME! and a never really thinking ab the situations she puts people in when she does shit, way. Not a "I am incapable of grasping social norms/social rituals"/"I cannot control how loud I'm being/why what I say might be considered rude" way.

Anyway she fosters dogs and has 4? Of her own, anyway she always has at least one dog with her at any time. Doesn't matter if you were attacked by one when you were a small child, or that you only have cats, it's a small dog! You're gonna like this one!!

She takes them into the grocery store too 😑. Anyway she brought her foster dog to it and ofc everyone kept coming over to see it and every fucking time she would canvas this dog like "his name is Bob. He goes up for adoption in two weeks at [shelter she volunteers at]" to every goddamn person who walked by.

"But Mar, doesn't that mean she brought customers to you?"

Nope! She and her dog blocked customers from my table bc they couldnt fucking get in with the people cooing at the dog and figured eh I'll skip this one, there's 100 vendors here.

Doesn't mean that every person who skipped would've bought from me, but none of the people who came up for the dog bought anything or so much as looked twice at my shit anyway. 😑

She did tell our cousin to meet her there though bc our cousin's wife is a photographer and she was gonna take pics of the dog at a nearby park. Didn't mention AT ALL that we had a booth, so they didnt really bring a lot of money, they thought they were just gonna say hi to us real quick then go.

My cousin's wife was like YOU DIDNT TELL US THEY HAD A BOOTH HERE?!?! OMG LOOK HOW CUTE!!!!! and they bought 2 handwarmers from us 🥰. And we gave their son some stuff for free as a gift (plus bc they ended up staying for like 2 hours and that shit is only so fun for a 7 year old for so long. But it was more so just Handwarmer Cousin staying to talk to my mom for most of it while her wife, son, and Dog Cousin went shopping/canvased Bob around. But I like HW cousin still so it wasnt bad sgdggdgd I just half listened to them talk while I took care of customers. Sold 1 ornament (the whole show), some cat toys, and I think another bunny, in that time lmao)

But the whole time Dog Cousin was there I was like 😐/🙁 instead of my fake customer service smile bc that smile only lasted until the second person she canvassed Bob to and that was approximately 30 seconds.

She didnt even consider buying anything, or say anything ab our table. Only when my mom asked her if our prices were reasonable. To which we got a "yeah." Then immediately back to Bob. 😐

After they left I went to walk around and goddamn there was nothing really good there except two crochet tables which had little plushies but nothing that jumped out at me.

Did trade a tooth pillow for a small tombstone shaped bar of soap of about the same price with another vendor sggdgdgdgd which was odd but nice

Anyway here's hoping my cousin wont come to the next/last show and that we find fun stuff at that one to buy sgdgdgdg

[bethanydelleman]

Difficulties Part 1

I usually keep pretty well to Austen or British literature of the last century, but as Jane Austen is very concerned with the plight of women, I wanted to share two small things that happened to me, that impress upon me the difficulty living in the world as a woman.

I had a job that I really loved at a university in Canada. I was unionized, had unlimited sick days, medical benefits, paid time off, a pension, and reasonable compensation. After about two years at this job I left for maternity leave, which in my country was 1 year at half pay. I was worried however, because my department had a nasty habit of laying off women during mat leave. This would usually be illegal, but research work is all based on grants and contracts, so it can happen more easily in my field than in others.

I was anxious about going back to work, but at the 10 month mark my boss emailed and asked if I could come back early. I agreed, partially because I was bored but also because I was worried I might lose my position if I didn’t go back. So I went back 3 days a week (I had actually started at this job 3 days a week and moved to five over time) and my son went to a great little home daycare. I made it clear to my manager that as I had a 2 hours a day commute, I didn’t want to work more days. I thought she would understand as she had also worked part time when she had young children.

2 months in, I was laid off. I was only 2 months away from my contract becoming permanent, something that happened automatically after 3 years. I also had worked so few hours that it was impossible for me to collect employment insurance. It turned out they just wanted me to cover a three month leave of another staff member.

Now I feel I must justify myself, I was good at my job. When the news got around, I was approached by several people I had worked with who offered themselves as references. One person even swore when she realized she’d have to train someone new on the complicated medical software that I had mastered (just ask a nurse or doctor how user friendly their medical records program is...). Even though they were not required to, many of the doctors I worked with still included my name on their published research papers.

Anyway, we were in a terrible position as a family. My husband and I had just purchased a new house, since my job had seemed secure. I fortunately had about a month’s vacation pay as a buffer, but that was it. My daycare graciously let me take my son out until I found another job, if I had lost my space it would have been worse. I desperately applied for jobs and eventually accepted one with the same employer that was not unionized.

I lost my pension, sick days, medical benefits, and paid vacation and was only given about 2 dollars more an hour in this new job. I never would have accepted it if I hadn’t been so desperate. 

And the worst part is, the people who did this to me were all women. My manager and supervisor were both women. And they didn’t care. The one even seemed surprised that I was angry at the final meeting. She said it was best for the projects. I highly doubt it.

Anyway, this is my little proof that having a uterus and being a mother who wants to spend time with her child still can destroy your career and that you can’t rely on the compassion or humanity of your superiors.

Note: Why do I need medical benefits? I live in Canada, but we have a strange form of universal healthcare that covers all hospital and doctor visits, but not eye, dental, most therapy/mental health care or most medication. So for a person my age at the time, the most commonly covered would be things like birth control, glasses, dental visits, and physiotherapy.

And yes, this creates problems were someone with say, type two diabetes can’t afford their very cheap meds and instead ends up in the ER frequently which is super expensive. We have plans where if you are poor enough you get free medication but it’s a mess and honestly they need to fix it.

[bakafox]

God fucking dammit.

Carl’s gave me the WRONG SANDWICH AGAIN, I totally forgot I was planning to check it before leaving the lot.

I do not know what the problem has been recently, I almost always say I am ordering a “Number ELEVEN” to try and make it easier than ‘bacon swiss chicken sandwich’ bc sometimes they seemed to have problems catching the full phrase through the speakers- but they more and more are giving me a #10. We’re losing entire syllables here from those on the line, since the person at the register usually charges me for the one I ordered.

So I am paying $1 and some change extra for bacon, cheese, lettuce and tomato that I am getting only about 50% of the time as of January of this year, after getting 99.9% correct orders for the previous six years I have gone to this Carl’s.

Like, I am in no way going to be shouty and awful at the people who work there, I am frustrated, not enraged, but... that’s an entire dollar I am paying for stuff I am not getting, and I need to remember to check in the parking lot to politely ask them to PLEASE give me the correct sandwich.

All the #10 chicken sandwich has on it is like, mayo-ish condiment and pickles with the bun.

EDIT: I am like the ideal customer for people who get orders wrong, I got home before seeing it was wrong, and was too tired to go back, so I just ate it anyway despite it smelling weirdly like a fish sandwich (I am guessing they have the fish ones back for Lent and the oil’s picking it up??) and possibly having had tartar sauce on it rather than the usual mayo/ranch/whatever thing? Though it was definitely chicken.

I might go out later to see if there’s survey stuff on the receipt which I left in the car but I also am just as or more likely to take a nap and forget about it until next time.

[garudabluffs]

The Rachel Maddow Show 10/26/2024

TRANSCRIPT closed caption

5:00 this is not normal American stuff this isn't American at all this is strongman

5:07 authoritarian form of government stuff which our constitution protects us from

5:13 explicitly but he wants to get rid of all that and he is saying if you vote for him he will get rid of all

5:21 that

+tonight we're going to speak with Julia Navalny tonight about the challenge of standing in opposition in leading opposition efforts in a country where the Independent Media has been eliminated I mean what Trump is proposing to do here in America to the media is what Putin of course has already done in Russia in Russia it is State controlled media only and that's the case everywhere you've got an authoritarian in charge that's the case everywhere you've got a dictatorship that's the case everywhere in most cases you've got a monarchy any place you've got authoritarian leadership in Saudi Arabia the state controlled media includes Al Arabia TV you get a handy reminder of the fact that it's state controlled media if you watch any of their Clips online um Trump loves Saudi Arabia right one of the many under reported things in the presidential campaign this year I think was that in the midst of our presidential campaign just this summer Trump signed a deal to build Trump Tower Saudi Arabia uh in jeda in Saudi Arabia that is a huge real estate deal that is the the Saudi government doing out a huge financial favor to Trump while he is in the middle of his presidential campaign they are expecting presumably that if he does get back into the White House that huge personal financial favor they just did him will still be fresh inhis mind when it comes to making American policy American government policy towards Saudi Arabia the Saudi royal family you will recall also stuffed $2 billion with a B $2 billion into the pockets of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner as soon as he left the White House the New York Times recently reporting that they the Saudis have seen precisely zero return on that supposed investment in Jared Kushner he's just kept all the money and skimmed out over a hundred million in fees for himself while returning nothing to them at least sofar but presumably that's because they're not expecting to be paid back by him they're expecting to be paid back by the White House by the American people the Saudis don't seem to be all that eager to get any of that money back from old Jared because they know they'll get it back another way from us from policy at our expense to pay back the people who have paid him so the Trump relationship with Saudi Arabia is very well oiled honestly if you wanted to create like a kindergarten level textbook one of those like those books where that the pages are cards right card stock if you wanted to create a kindergarten level textbook to explain to a kindergartener what corruption is right this is how you might spell it out fail imagine your friend is running for president somebody gives your friend a huge sweet business deal while he's running for president and that same someone then gives your friend's family billions of dollars while he's running for president C is for corruption your friend is corrupt right and then if it was like a you know a good children's book it would say oh but don't worry this could never happen in the United States of America yeah we'd have to update that textbook uh but anyway um today Al Arabia Saudi State controlled media posted a new interview with Donald Trump and this new interview with Donald Trump it was just published today it got basically zero pickup in the United States which is kind of amazing right a presidential candidate interview gets zero pickup two weeks before election day but I think the reason this interview didn't get any pickup might be because of the headline that Saudi State controlled Al Arabia slapped on the video when they posted it look at the headline they put on this quote Trump says Middle East peace possible if elected oh yes that's what we're all expecting right elect Donald Trump what's going to happen well for starters you'll get pieces in the Middle East it's evaded the Geniuses of many generations but that six-dimensional chess player will be able to sort it out yeah um Peace and Trump will will bring about peace in the Middle East if he's elected...

++"...this is not a normal election between two normal

candidates if you want to know how this one is going to end this is the time for you to make a difference as to how it is going to end this is it now or never we be right back in 2013 so 11 years ago um Donald Trump posted on Twitter about hosting

345 Comments

[so-many-hills]

Your writer-ly "freedom" does not constitute my $50

Dear author/journalist/media professional,

I might have enjoyed your writing in big magazine/newspaper/new media site, but I am not willing to send you, individual author, $50 a year to hear only your voice on a platform that still seems to be totally OK with hateful content, especially if you only write long form once every now and again with the rest of your compositions essentially tweets. I definitely do not want to read your words in an increasingly walled off AOL-esque compound. Notes! Chat! Comments! DMs! Video! Podcasts! Your customers can enter (for a fee) and never need to leave!

Author, you do what makes the most sense for you. But don’t pretend your solo project that offers you an “unfiltered outlet” – one without the journalistic support of fact checkers, editors, and so on – is, ipso facto, good for readers. Especially if you’re already well-to-do several times over, like a best selling author perhaps, angling for even more money from your readers sucks.

Maybe you, author, should get over yourself.

However, let’s consider the possibility that everything you write is, in fact, precious and needs its own revenue stream. Please bear in mind that not everyone who wants to read your stuff has the money to do so. Not all your readers want to live in the newsletter platform ecosystem. Not everyone wants 10% of what they pay to read your words to go to a service that platforms Nazis and hate groups. Not everyone wants to be nagged to download the platform’s lock-in oriented app to engage further.

What do I suggest? Come together. Defector, 404 Media, Flaming Hydra, and now Hearing Things are a collection of writers with unique voices using more open platforms on the back end. Readers and subscribers can engage with the content on their terms, for the most part. Voltron yourself with some other authors. Take a cut of the subscription/donation rate, share technology and support, and give your readers more value for their increasingly stressed dollar. Even Medium offers a subscription that will let you read different authors under it, which is good as things are rather fallow there at the moment. Then there are sites coming back from the dead like The Onion and The A.V. Club under new, supportive ownership. I’m keeping an eye on them. I am encouraged by what I see so far. Keen readers will note a lot of these sites are from folks who used to live in the Gawker-verse.

Anyway, these collectives offer more for both readers and writers/producers. The one-platform-to-rule-them-all approach, aside of traveling the down the same path that inevitably leads to enshittification, is geared to the writer/producer but ultimately the platform and advertisers.

These collectives also support an open web. RSS feeds! Email newsletters that go to actual email inboxen! Support for the IndieWeb/fediverse! Letting readers engage with the content on their terms outside of a walled garden! They own and control their own stuff in a P.O.S.S.E. fashion!

For the love of all that is readworthy, authors and collectives, please encourage your platforms to offer authentication options (e.g., username/password with 2FA, maybe passkeys) and not the BS that is the email “Magic Link”.

[p-t-f-s]

everytime i make a new friend or i open up about shit it /always/ ends up at one point or another they say my life is like a tv show or i should write a book or pitch my life - like more a handful amount of times, like damn near every time i make a friend. and like. i wish they were wrong when i try to look objectively at what im telling them and not just. my life that i wake up and live and go to sleep with every day. but also like. thats also a looooooooooot of people ive met??? everyone has interesting and fun stories, but most of life is so similarly repetitive that we forget it more than we experience. also i do believe it is my autistic rizz. and ability to self sooth and parent.

[its all just personal life bitching/discussion/musings below]

anyways i wish life would be calm for like. a couple months pls. i know a year is too much to ask but literally this year has been a lot. like last year was a lot but it wasnt a fucking competition. getting my car stolen again, then losing my job in what was supposed to be my 5 year anniversary, and then finding out my uncle had stage 4 cancer. then it was spring break and i got to visit my cousing with a thankfully preplanned and prepayed vacation during the midst and height and she and her husband were like "heres our cocktail maker. get as drunk as you want" which was nice of them so i stayed tipsy half the time i was awake instead of high while in seattle. went to a wine tasting expo. got throw up drunk. my cousin was very impressed by my ability to keep my manners while drunk past my tits and wait to throw up till after id rolled the window down and stuck my head out. i was getting blackout drunk bc id apparently texted my friends i loved them which i had no recollection of doing considering my phone was actively dying while i was still only actually tipsy at that expo. i was also less stress then bc my car had been found. totalled, crashed and smashed in the front which thankfully i owed less than it was worth so they payout covered the downpayment for my new car. rip to not getting my personalized horse license plate with my name on it. then i get back home and my uncle is now dead and the whole family is in town for the funeral. its been a cascade of em for a few years now since my mom started the party back in 21.

by the viewing id started a new job for a week. close by home and only a dollar less than previously. they were asking a whole lot for shit pay in truth. and NOW. I FIND OUT THE JOB I STARTED WHILE TAKING A FRAUD ACCOUNTING CLASS. MIGHT BE VICTIM TO FRAUD. POSSIBLY SINCE INCEPTION AND IN THE MOST TERRIBLY HORRIBLY OBVIOUS WAY THAT JUST KEPT SLOWLY AND SLOWLY GETTING PEELED AND REVEALED. I love it when the head of one department tells me hes in cahoots with the head of another dpt and a few workers from their and others about the terrible company shit they found and are kinda looking at other jobs. ofc he did say that after i said to his face that i was spending a bit every morning applying to other jobs after learning of the possible fraud VIA OUR """CONSULTING CFO""" having been previously convicted of fraud. twice. over a decade between convictions. were getting drinks later this week for him to tell me everything else hes found and lurked about in the system. and how no one understands what accounting is or does or how i actually spend half or most of my day playing solitaire or watching anime. bc they want me to be a controller but are calling and paying me at the clerk level. so thats what they get. i love the phrase act your wage.

theres still so many other things that have happened this year too that i still havent mentioned. like the moon hole. passive aggressive fighting with my upstairs neighbor who said i was "delusional and fucking hallucinating" bc i said he stomps in the middle of the night. and literally as i typed that there he went above my head at. ah. 10:58 pm. since my second talking to him in march i know ive not been the only one to talk to him about his shaking the goddamn foundations of the building or waking the toddler constantly in the apartment next to his, diagonal from mine. the surprise birthday party my friends threw for me after literally freightening me when i came home with surprise and each giving me different hearfelt and attentive gifts of all my different interests. weekly dinners with my dad on the same days he was court ordered to have my older siblings and i during the week as he lives 10 minutes away taking care of our grandfather. hes the only reason i get updates on my older sisters life as she blocked me on all social media and cut me from her life before our mothers death for our differing political beliefs. infighting truly is the death of leftists as out beliefs were always closer together than to that of our very republican parents. but im also not an american government shoe loving authority cuck like most the rest of em. "you know what its like to be a minority bc you were a literal minority of being white kids going to a majority black school in the city." to my fucking FACE. not only is that incredibly dismissive on so many levels but like with how LEGITIMATELY my siblings took and NOODED THEIR HEADS?????? TO IT. truly fiction is a joke compared to life.

anyways this is the most any of you will ever get from me here on tumblr in months, good luck to any of my followers seeing this who were unaware i am a person and wassup to my mutuals entirely unaware of my life and smooches to my dear dear friends who are all very aware of all of this. everyone else. idgaf, this was for me to vent and proclaim. bc i lay down in my bed with my cat looking very disappointed that im not asleep despite how late it is and i have to go to sleep keeping all of that with me for the rest of my life. oh it may not stay close, it may not be completely there by the end, but i know i will always be aware even more so than before when i was living out of my car, of what i keep in and am willing to leave in and with it. I have somehow kept that cute little cactus my friend gave my for my birthday alive still, i now have a whole wall of plants that ive kept alive for over a year, and i plant to keep that as long as I can. I have presents and gifts and memories that i plan to look fondly on tomorrow and the day after and the day after that and so on. afterall. I need to check on my plants and water them, and feed my cat. everyday a tragedy happens and still i must feed my cat. my mother was dying, and still i had to feed my cat. was she suffering? no, she was not even there anymore to be suffering and still i must go home and feed my cat and sleep and wake up and there is my cat to welcome my mornings after guarding my nights, a clear agreement that she must be fed once pleased with her pettings. my elder sister blocked me and cut me from her life before our mothers death and even during she did not change, strong in her stance and belief not even grief would change or ease her foundations. nor would my grief stop my cat from being fed. every day i wake and sleep with all these things and one day my cat will die. and i will grieve. and it will not be her that gets me through it, but she will never be parted from me again. i will wake up and make the same sleepy motions that indicate her morning ritual that will not be performed. my day will be as different and as same as it was before. i will sleep and i will wake with it all and i will meet someone new and tell them the first time i really got into energy drinks was after getting a whole case for being a smartass at 7am to emergency driving instructors. that i only started drinking coffee bc a boy who liked me worked at starbucks and so gave me a large giftcard and an in to getting my first job at starbucks. you never know why or how somethings started.

[ralfmaximus]

"Cody, tell me again? What's the big deal tomorrow?"

"Yes Mav," the AI responded smoothly. Cody paused for a moment, not because it needed to, but because it knew humans liked it better when there were deliberate pauses in conversation. Especially six-year-old humans, like Mavrell Scott Bremen.

"Tomorrow is called Return Day. Do you know why?"

"You told me but I forgot," Mav sighed.

"That's okay! Return Day is when all the trillionaires come back from their 100 year Time Jump. They're 'returning' from Overspace, the 8th dimensional continuum--"

"Cody! I'm six and a half!"

Cody chuckled. "I know, it was a joke. Because it'd be funny if a six year old--"

"Six and a half!"

"--understood Quantum Overspace Mechanics. Anyway... Return Day. It's when the trillionaires--"

"What's a trillionaire?"

"A person with more than one thousand billion dollars, Mav."

"What's a dollar?"

"A thing that people used as a way to trade for things. Like if I wanted a chocolate bar--"

"Cody! You're not a person."

"--like if I wanted a new, better sensor array, or to borrow a vehicle for the day, so I could take you to the beach? I might give the person with the vehicle 'a hundred dollars' and they'd let me use it for a day."

Mav thought for a moment. "And they'd get the hundred dollars?"

"Yes."

"What would they do with that?"

"Whatever they wanted. Maybe buy some chocolate bars. Or new clothes, or a nice dinner, or a place to live--"

"Wait wait wait... those things are free!"

"They are now," Cody agreed. "But a hundred years ago? Not so much."

Mav chewed on this, looking a bit skeptical. Finally: "what's a hundred dollars look like?"

"You've seen old movies. People kept pieces of paper in their wallets, carried them around and gave them to other people. Those were dollars."

"Ohhhhhh, yeah, I remember now," Mav lied.

"But near the end, before all the trillionaires left? There was no paper money at all, no real dollars. It was all invisible numbers inside computers like me."

"You're software! You're not hardware!"

Cody chuckled. "Yes, I know. But I'm glad you're paying attention. So... tell me: what were dollars?"

"Paper things people traded for uh, stuff. And things. And they don't exist anymore."

"Very good!"

"But Cody! Trillionaires! What do they have to do with dollars?"

"Ah. Well, you see, trillionaires had so many dollars that nobody could count them all, not really. Which means they could have anything they wanted, go anywhere they wanted, do anything they wanted, really. And when AIs like me invented time travel, well... they decided to travel in time!"

"I don't get it, Cody."

"That's okay, Mav. Time travel (back then) was realllly expensive--"

"Expen... uh. Spensive?"

"It took a lot of dollars. More than almost anyone had. Only people who were trillionaires had enough dollars to time travel."

"Okay!"

"Yes. And the way it worked (back then) was you could only go forward in time, and only in increments of one hundred years. Wellll, it was really 98 years 11 months 10 days--"

"Okay!" Mav was getting bored, so Cody wrapped things up.

"And tomorrow -- Return Day -- is when the first batch of time travelling trillionaires is popping out of Overspace! Because they started their trip--"

"98 years! Eleven months! Ten days! Ago!" Mav chanted.

"Yes! Very good! You are paying attention! Good girl, Mav."

"Okay so... what happens then?"

"Oh! Well, we're throwing them all in prison, Mav, for all the disastrous shit they did to the Earth in the centuries before they left. They won't understand, of course, and will be very mad. But that's not our problem, is it?"

"Nope! Can we go to the beach now, Cody?"

"Yes Mav, of course."

Physicists create a machine to travel into the future. The wealthy elite travel 100 years into the future to capitalize on long-term investments and access better technology. But in the century they are gone, society changes dramatically.

[jim-fetter-illustrations]

The only Winners are the ones who don't play the scam.

How does one win the lottery anyway?

Well if I knew I wouldn't be telling it on facebook, that's for damn sure (Lol).

Because just as soon as someone figures it out by creating some sort of gizmo or a mathematical equation random number algorithm that could pick winning numbers the lottery officials would realize it after someone started winning every lottery and then just stop the lottery as we know it, so even that wouldn't work for long but for a couple of people, and in that scenario the rest of us lottery users would hunt them down for stealing our money.

But I was intrigued by the numerous ways people have tried to win the lottery.

Everything from Ouija boards to Voodoo incantations involving a severed chickens foot.

Not to mention all the advice scams for money telling people to....

Play the Right Game. ... and if we knew that much we wouldn't play at all, because there is no RIGHT game in lottery logic.

Then there's the "Wait for the Jackpot to Stack Up". ... like that's gonna make your odds better, and most likely if you did win during a billion dollar lottery there would be several others that won also, splitting the jackpot down to peanuts for all the winners, and if 10 people pick the lucky numbers for a Billion dollar lottery they get 100 million each, and that's only if they take the money over 20 something years, if they want it all RIGHT NOW they get 50 million each, because every lottery only pays out 50%, and even if you take your winnings over the 20 something years the lottery makes 50% of their investment back in interest,........ the house always wins.

But you only spent a buck or two so really it's quite the haul!

I Don't know what the heck "Avoid Consecutive Numbers" is gonna do, because consecutive numbers come up all the time in lottery numbers???

And Buying Multiple Lottery Tickets Within Your Budget. ... is just another way of saying "I got more money than brains"..........

I was reading about a Random Number Generator algorithm that a bunch of eggheads at MIT were talking about that might well pick winning lottery numbers. Which means the lottery would end just as soon as there's a system that can predict random number generations for painted ping pong balls......

The lottery balls are picked by random order all right, but no one or no method is ever gonna pick the same randomness as those balls blowing around in the vacuum chamber.

My advice is to make your own Home-Made random number generator.

All it takes is a Dart Board and to tape you lottery ticket to the dart board, stand 5 feet from the dartboard so you can't see the numbers on the lottery ticket,... and keep throwing darts until you have the required holes in the ticket to pick your required lotto numbers.

That's just as random as the lottery numbers are picked, and better than random lottery picks from the lottery machine I think.

But then I've never won, so what the hell do I know, Lol