#but I'd probably play anime endings lmao

[bluebunnysart]

Thank you!!!! 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺💖💖💖💖💖💖

Fanart of my own fanfiction (Chimera Teto x Android Miku)

Good news! When I woke up and looked at my art again today, I liked it, so here's the uncolored version! I trust you tumblr people, so here you go! You may view. This technically means I've drawn UTAU Teto (here) and SynthV Teto, but I really want to color this and take my time doing so, so here are the lines before it turns into something else hahaha 😂😂😂 Read More for the stuff I wanted to write last night but was too tired to (also the art time lapse)

I showed like two WIPs of different ideas on Twitter but none of them were this LOL (just goes to show how much I wanna draw and see of these two specifically) but the reason I decided to go with this is 'cuz that fanfic I wrote in like one day really got me excited and it made me really want to draw them as I was imagining more stuff about them. Here I'll talk about what I had in mind

I love chimera Teto, especially her majestic wings, and what I drew here is basically inspired by that! Teto's basically the only "living, sentient" thing around Miku so far (I dunno how to approach adding more creatures just yet), which makes Miku extra interested in her. But basically Miku likes Teto's wings and tail too and is very fascinated by them.

I had an idea where Miku is just holding or playing with Teto's tail out of nowhere and complimenting the heck out of her, and that was condensed into this piece. It was too crowded on Miku's side to have Teto's tail there as well, but the reason Teto's embarrassed (tsundere is nice, aint it xD) is 'cuz Miku is indeed praising the heck out of her. Calling her cute and saying how cool her wings are and whatnot.

The dialogue kinda goes like, "Your wings are so cool! And I really like how expressive your tail is! I wonder what I would do with a tail. It's so cute! Actually, now that I think about it, all of you is really cute!!" (Teto, embarrassed: "Stop talking now.") wwww

Miku does have a kinda tail actually! It's the chain on top of her skirt. As an android, I was thinking it works as sort of a battery plug or USB or something. I can show off more of that later (since it's really small here lol) but she can use it to receive electricity and recharge herself, I guess~. (Note to self: make it bigger?)

I haven't shown off much of my art style, but most (normal) characters usually don't have pupils. (See: this Teto, who's a living breathing creature.) As a result, I decided to give Miku pupils (kinda robot-like) to make her seem like more of a robot. She also wears the thing (headphones) over her ears, of course, which I can also use to make her seem more robot-like. There's no green flashing of code in her eyes right now but I might draw that sometime too, after my loads of other ideas...

Teto's wings aren't fragile. They're probably firm, hard, and could even be scaly/rough (up to my own whims or the reader's own preference). Her letting Miku touch her (wings) is probably a huge display of trust/confidence. Teto's wings are strong enough to carry her far distances and even allow her to fly in bad weather, I think. It's up to Teto herself how much energy/desire she has to do things like that though.

This is mentioned in the fic too, but Teto probably folds her wings a lot so they don't get in the way. She's kinda like a bird. I think her silhouette against the sun or moon, with full wingspan, is probably majestic (I'm imagining the Batman symbol for some reason lol). I know some people color Teto's wings as purple, but I specified black in my fic to match her tail. ^^

In order for her wings to breathe, there are probably holes in the back of her outfit to accommodate them, but they're only big enough for the wings (ellipses/ovals probably): she either tears/cuts holes into the shirts she wears for her wings or they already fit her wings so there's no problem. I wonder if Teto made her UTAU outfit herself in this setting. xD (A girl has to pass the time SOMEHOW plus she's probably at least a little bit handy when it comes to clothes and stuff (survival).)

If, while I'm coloring, I need to make adjustments to the seating and lineart and all that, I will, but I figured I'd show off what made me stay up 'til 5 AM last night and then get embarrassed to post 'cuz I thought I wasn't finished yet. I woke up and I liked it, so I'm just gonna put it in this here blog. c:

I don't know how to color, so coloring will be a trip 😂

[ponett]

Bobby's 2023 Media Wrap-Up

So! Like I said before, this past year I kept a running list of everything I watched, every game I finished, every new album I listened to, etc., and wrote one-paragraph blurbs with my thoughts on every single one. Please enjoy this journey through everything I liked, or didn't like, in 2023, with my favorites of the year listed at the bottom.

(Yes! This is long!!)

Some notes:

I mainly only included things I finished. Exceptions are marked with an asterisk.

I included some YouTube stuff as "TV shows" - mostly particularly long, high effort video essays and documentaries.

I was a bit less adventurous than I'd like to have been this year. Part of this was just that I felt like I was constantly playing catch-up with Big Releases I felt obligated to check out, and part of this was just executive dysfunction from burnout. Wait until you see how long it took me to beat Mario Wonder lmao

Yes, I need to read more books. I don't read a lot of books these days. I need to get back to Discworld.

COLOR KEY

Video Games • TV / Web Video  •  Movies  •  Comics  •  Music

January

1/15: Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (MSQ) - Very slow at times, the Primal shit is generally extremely lame to me outside of the boss fights themselves, but god if the quality of life improvements over WoW, the JRPG energy, and the fact that it Actually Has A Story carry it pretty hard.

1/18: Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island miniseries - One of the most creative and compelling uses of the Sonic IP… ever? Fantastic little self-contained arc about the struggles of Eggman’s abandoned creations that gracefully weaves between heartfelt optimism and moody horror with some of the best art ever seen in a Sonic comic.

1/18: Mega Man X4 - Glad I finally actually beat this after never even beating any of the Mavericks as a kid! I can see why it’s a lot of peoples’ favorites. The gameplay has very little of that X series bloat and is just fun, especially after getting X’s armor upgrades. (But the story really is a long series of missed opportunities.)

February

2/2: Donks - Felix Colgrave continues to be an exceptional artist. The sound design on this is fantastic and really sells this short as something unique. Had to go back and watch his older stuff again after this.

2/4: Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward (3.0 - 3.3 MSQ) - I get it now. I get why people say this is just a proper mainline Final Fantasy game built into the framework of an MMO. That shit ruled. Not even walking back the drama in Ul’Dah from the end of ARR can sour me on it because the main storyline was so strong.

2/8: Disneyland's Forgotten Sci-Fi Rock Band - Live From the Space Stage - A nice and honest tribute to a group of artists who could have easily been forgotten. In hindsight this feels like a precursor to Kevin’s Disney Channel jingle video, a tribute to the unsung artists pouring their hearts into “lesser” art for a megacorporation, art that was designed to be transient but sticks with people nonetheless.

2/9: Metroid Prime Remastered* - Not gonna finish because I just played through the Wii version in 2021, but still. Very, very pretty remaster.

2/16: Theatrhythm Final Bar Line - It’s more Theatrhythm. What more could I want

2/17: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean (anime) - Probably the best part of the anime so far (assuming they continue on to SBR). A near perfect mix of the more structured plot of part 5 with the goofiness of parts 3 and 4 that crescendos into a fantastic, bombastic, emotional, bittersweet ending. The use of footage from the original opening and the new ending set to Roundabout in the finale were perfect, and made me intensely nostalgic for the early days of my JoJo fandom between seasons 1 and 2 of the anime.

2/22: Aggretsuko Season 5 - I don’t really know what to make of this one. Once you get past the agonizing initial arc all about Haida where Retsuko has to be his overbearing mommy GF who flips out and starts spying on him when she’s left on read and chides him when he misbehaves, it feels like an improvement over the previous seasons. But I don’t know how much of that is due to the extremely low bar set by season 4. And then the ending is extremely rushed and anticlimactic. They got legally married and the only acknowledgement was a shot of them signing the paperwork in a montage partway through the final episode?????????

2/24: Double Fine PsychOdyssey - God, what a journey the making of this game was. I already loved 2 Player’s past efforts at documenting Double Fine’s process, but this takes it to a whole new level. This feels culturally significant. The depth and honesty with which they depict not just the nitty gritty of making a game, but also the inherent struggles of working on a collaborative creative work for years at a time, is astounding. Not to mention that they were there to capture the shift from office life to remote work as COVID hit. So much of this would have been nightmarishly stressful to watch if I didn’t already know how successful the game was, but that’s just because they really didn’t sugarcoat it. And yet even after all that, it leaves me feeling optimistic about video games as an art form in a way that the constant headlines about cynical live service games don’t. There are still people out there pouring their hearts into making real art, and this is their story. Everyone who plays video games should watch this.

2/25: Cracker Island (Gorillaz) - New Gorillaz albums feel like less of an event these days, but after Humanz it feels like they’re just more chill with the project and their ambitions with it. Every couple years we get some more laid back jams from Damon along with some fun new collabs. Hard to complain. Favorite track: New Gold

2/25: Pool Kids (Pool Kids) - I discovered this band because Derek knows them and was excited when they got a song added to Fortnite through the Bandcamp collab. Always down to find more cool indie rock bands I can vibe with. The mix of dreamy vocals and energetic riffs on some of the tracks here almost fill the Crying-shaped hole in my heart. Almost… Favorite track: Conscious Uncoupling

2/25: Insane in the Rain (insaneintherainmusic) - I thought it was really funny timing when Carlos announced that his first original project would be a jazz fusion album inspired by acts like T-Square and Casiopea right as I was getting into those two specific bands. The final product does not disappoint. Favorite track: Insane in the Rain

2/26: Get Up Sequences Part Two (The Go! Team) - I’ve never been one to believe that a band’s sound has to remain exactly the same forever, but it really does hit you hard that the first two tracks here sound like classic The Go! Team. Their more recent cleaner sound is still here too, though, for a nice mix of old and new. Favorite track: Divebomb

2/28: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (Season 1) - Oh my god. Oh my god. I got distracted around the time I was finishing SLARPG, but finally catching up now, wow. My assumption that the seemingly lighter tone of the series compared to the prologue was there to lull us into a false sense of security before twisting the knife when war finally breaks out was spot on. This is peak Gundam.

March

3/4: Pizza Tower - One of the best platformers I’ve played in a long time. It transcends its blatant Wario Land inspirations with the sheer speed at which Peppino can move and the way things like the level design, his wall running, and even the hidden ability to do a second lap around the level reward getting into a flow state where you’re just constantly moving. This is the type of game that wants to turn you into a speedrunner. My only real complaint is a few iffy enemy designs that I wish would get patched.

3/6: Bloons TD 6 * - I bought this before bed one night on a nostalgic whim and then the next morning woke up and saw the Steam receipt email on my phone in one of the most “what did I do last night” moments of my life. I like when the monkeys pop the balloons.

3/7: The Book of Boba Fett - I put off finishing this show for a very long time but finally caved upon the release of The Mandalorian season 3. This show spends four episodes failing to make me give a shit about Boba Fett trying to be “the daimyo” and drive the drug trade off of Tatooine, then just gives up and becomes season 2.5 of Mando, which in turn feels like it undercuts the main series. It fails as both its own story and as a spinoff. I know that finishing this after Andor did it no favors, but WHOOF.

3/12: Obi-Wan Kenobi - Some interesting ideas in the first half hinting at a more introspective show, but it’s mostly swept aside in the back half so it can become a generic Star Wars adventure remixing things from A New Hope and Rebels (and apparently Jedi: Fallen Order). Action scenes have zero stakes because you know nothing can happen to any of the returning characters and none of the new ones are particularly interesting. Why there’s a second climax hinging on a Luke Skywalker death fakeout eludes me. Obi-Wan throwing the rocks at Vader is one of the funniest things in Star Wars history. But it was still better than Book of Boba Fett, I guess.

3/19: The King of Braves GaoGaiGar - Wow, cool robot indeed… GaoGaiGar isn’t going to blow anyone away with its writing, but sometimes you just need a really fun monster of the week mecha show with great action and lovably goofy characters. This is a show where like 20% of every episode consists of recycled transformation, combination, and signature attack sequences and I ate it up every time because they look fucking cool as hell. I don’t care. I’d watch Final Fusion another 49 times.

3/21: The Last of Us (HBO) * - Watched the first two episodes out of curiosity, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue because I don’t give a shit about The Last of Us. It’s definitely a well done adaptation, though, even if I know it’s inevitably going to devolve into miserable torture porn with questionable politics if they adapt Part II faithfully. The ending of episode 2 also lines up perfectly with where I stopped in the game in 2013 lmao

3/27: The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse (Folding Ideas) - Another banger from Dan Olson. This time the premise inherently gives him more time to just show off a bunch of stupid ugly bullshit made by crypto guys, which is fun. My main complaint was that I wished he would’ve brought up Second Life more as a point of comparison (a thing I basically always want out of discussion of “the metaverse”), but he at least did touch on it in the last section.

3/31: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog - I can’t believe after years of begging for the supporting cast to get more and better material in a Sonic game I got my wish in the form of a freeware murder mystery VN released for April Fools. This kicked ass.

April

4/7: Berserk - Completed Miura’s run and caught up on the chapters that have been released posthumously. It’s hard to say anything that hasn’t been said about Berserk, universally agreed upon as one of the greats of manga and fantasy fiction as a whole. What begins in its first few volumes as a nihilistic and edgy action comic built to facilitate as much sex and gore as possible quickly evolves into something deeply human and vulnerable and beautiful, both figuratively and in terms of its lavish art. The world sucks and is immeasurably cruel, and you will see that cruelty illustrated in graphic, sickening detail repeatedly throughout the series. (Perhaps a little too often throughout the Golden Age, where it feels like Miura never misses an opportunity to threaten Casca with sexual assault mid-battle.) But the point isn’t to wallow in that misery. It’s the story of a victim of horrific abuse learning to slowly open up to others, having those people he cares about torn away from him in the worst night of his life, hardening himself into a cold killing machine, and then slowly learning to open back up again, even if it means leaving himself vulnerable to more hurt. Anyone who says that the series peaked with the eclipse and went downhill in the “Guts’ JRPG Party” era is missing the point. Guts needed to find new people in his life to care about, to begin to find happiness again. Because no matter what unspeakable things Guts has gone through, it’s still possible for him to heal and to be loved. It takes time, but eventually you stop and realize that life has moved on.

4/8: Dedede’s Drum Dash Deluxe - Skipped it upon release because I didn’t particularly care for the minigame in Triple Deluxe, and I didn’t miss much. It’s fine as a little distraction, but not as a standalone rhythm game with only seven songs. If you don’t bother with the hard modes or chase after high scores this game is 15 minutes long. Oh how I yearn for Kirby to get the Theatrhythm treatment.

4/10: The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar FINAL - Eh… It was okay. Lots of cool robot fights, but said fights are stitched together with a mediocre plot that tries too hard to be more “mature” than its unabashedly schlocky kids’ show predecessor. Not crazy about the ending, either, which tries to be a bittersweet farewell closing off the series once and for all while also teasing that maybe there’ll be ANOTHER sequel after the OVA series they literally called “FINAL.” Ah well.

4/11: The Owl House - Sad to see this one go, but it’s hard to imagine them doing a better finale than this, even if they had gotten the six seasons they deserved. I’m not as obsessed with The Owl House as I probably would’ve been had it come out when I was, like, 20, but it’s a really fantastic show for all the reasons people always say. Great characters, great world, great story. I love that this starry-eyed fantasy story about a teenager finding love and a place where she belongs is also set on the rotting corpse of a titan with Hieronymous Bosch-inspired scenery and freaky monsters everywhere. What a great mix. If anything, I just wish I would’ve watched the first season as it aired so I could’ve had more time with it.

4/29: Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue Version - FINALLY beat this via the new collection, 20 years after playing it as my first Mega Man game. (Technically my first was White, not Blue, but whatever.) There are more annoyances than I remember - lots of really really bad forced backtracking sections where you have to revisit every previous part of the internet, low chip drop rates, some really aggravating bosses like BubbleMan and KingMan, etc. But it’s still a great time overall. It’s Battle Network. In the back half the story gets surprisingly emotional, too. I was always under the assumption that the Hub stuff never came back up much in the story after 1, so I was pleasantly surprised with how relevant it was to the emotional arc of 3.

4/30: Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun * - Yeah I’m not playing through the whole thing lmao. I just wanted to play the first couple hours for nostalgia’s sake, and as a baseline for how much better the rest are. Even before getting deep in the game and having to deal with all the shit gated between doing two new game+ playthroughs, it’s immediately obvious how much of a downgrade this one is. Tons of glaring errors and typos all over the script, blander music, a way more boring aesthetic for the internet, and a premise that mostly just recycles the tournament idea from 3.

May

5/14: The Venture Bros. - Glad I finally sat down and watched all of this with Anthony after having seen one (1) episode as a teenager and a bunch of random clips in the years since. Great show. Some jokes in the early seasons haven’t aged gracefully, but what the show grows into over time... man. Hank and Dean go from being the butt of the joke to being characters you actually sympathize with - while still also being funny little goofballs. And the journey Henchman 21 goes on throughout the show. Man. Amazing that a comedy like this could run for 20 years and maintain its level of quality. Can’t wait for the movie.

5/18: Future Me Hates Me (The Beths) - Okay yeah I’m now just discovering bands through Fortnite lmao. I can’t complain really, they pick some really great indie artists for the in-game radio stations. Anyway: It’s very easy to win me over with a combination of energetic power pop, catchy guitar riffs, and earnest lyrics like this. One of those albums where three or four tracks in I know I have to buy it. Favorite track: Not Running

5/18: Jump Rope Gazers (The Beths) - Ditto. Favorite track: Dying to Believe

5/18: Expert In A Dying Field (The Beths) - Another good album. (I’m listening to these in release order.) I’ve been a bit slower to warm up to this one, initially thinking it was a little too mellow overall, but it might be my favorite after a few listens. Some real high highs. Interestingly, the lead singer’s New Zealand accent is also coming out more in her singing? Favorite track: Your Side (or maybe Head in the Clouds)

5/19: The Super Mario Bros. Movie - As a Mario fan, I think I enjoyed it? As a movie, less so? It was decent, in spite of feeling like they came up with a list of fun action setpieces first and then wrote the absolute bare minimum possible for the story scenes tying it all together. Full thoughts here. (This is the first movie I’ve seen this year, huh? I really don’t watch a lot of movies.)

5/23: Don't Know What You're In Until You're Out (Gladie) - I feel like I don’t like Gladie as much as I should. Their style of noisy indie rock is very much in my wheelhouse, and I do enjoy listening to them, but I dunno. Maybe it’s that the particular style of vocals makes it more monotonous to me. A good album nonetheless, if not 100% my thing. Favorite track: Nothing

5/24: City Slicker (Ginger Root) - Yes I am still making my way through Bandcamp artists I heard on Fortnite don’t @ me. Any excuse to get me to listen to some cool city pop-inspired funk like this is a good excuse. Favorite track: Loretta

5/24: Rikki (Ginger Root) - Favorite track: Why Try

5/25: Spotlight People (Ginger Root) - Favorite track: The Classic

5/29: Succession - A good dramedy series that increasingly focuses more on the drama than the comedy as it progresses, but it’s hard to complain about that since the drama is so compellingly produced. I enjoyed it. That being said, I kind of rankle at the claims that it’s The Greatest TV Show Of All Time. It’s great, don’t get me wrong. Amazing performances all around. But the show LOVES to spin its wheels, to repeat itself, and to let most of its interesting dramatic developments fizzle out before anything really comes of them, almost as if the show is constantly getting bored with its own ideas. To some extent this is intentional - Logan Roy is the untouchable billionaire, his kids fail at everything (but will nonetheless remain billionaires), and in the long run none of them really give a shit about anything other than their own status. But it’s not like things tend to visibly impact anyone else, either, be they supporting characters or the world at large. Even the Big Scary Election, where the Roy siblings are directly responsible for plunging the nation into chaos, ultimately has zero impact on the finale a mere two episodes later. Certain Other Things do have an impact in the last season, though, allowing things to meaningfully change for the cast and for the show to sit with the ensuing drama, which has stopped me from souring on Succession more. There was finally a payoff for something. But it does still kind of feel like a show that goes in circles until it’s ready to call it quits, even if those circles did contain a lot of great acting and music along the way.

5/29: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts - I’d watched the first 12 episodes when they originally released, but I guess the Netflix binge release and the fact that all three “seasons” came out in one year led to me waiting until it finished… and then I just never got around to finishing it. Glad I fixed that! Really fun and stylish cartoon with an art style reminiscent of Teen Titans, a hip hop-filled soundtrack, dynamic fight scenes, and a colorful post-apocalyptic world filled with mutant (mostly anthropomorphic) animals. I’ll admit that at times I do kinda roll my eyes at Kipo’s unshakeable belief that everyone can be friends in a way that I don’t necessarily with similar shows like Steven Universe, and not every joke lands, but I dunno. It’s a kids’ show. That’s to be expected. It doesn’t detract from the overall package for me.

June

6/1: Craig of the Creek (Season 4) - It’s been years and I’m still processing the fact that kids can turn on Cartoon Network and hear Jeff Rosenstock. Anyway! Craig continues to be one of the best cartoons on TV, consistently funny and creative and way more engaging than a show about a bunch of kids LARPing in the woods has any right to be. This season turned into One Piece with the gang effectively hunting down the Poneglyphs in search of a legendary treasure. The kids think it’ll be magic. It isn't. An increasing number of cartoon logic gags aside, this show is firmly set in the real world. Does that make it any less interesting? Hell no. Season 3 turned a game of capture the flag into an all-out five episode war between the heroes and villains, filled with dramatic turnabouts and a climactic guest appearance from Del the Funky Homosapien. I’m sure however they wrap things up in the (sadly shortened) final season, it’ll be great. (Also? I would watch a whole show based on that “what if” episode that jumped forward to everyone’s 20s.)

6/6: Barry - Holy shit, what a show. I ended up binging it in less than a week in a cycle of “okay, just one more episode.” The way this show is able to swing between tones and genres while still feeling like a cohesive whole is truly masterful. It’s a layered character drama, a tragic crime thriller, a farcical comedy, an understated action series, a surrealist morality play, and a scathing satire of Hollywood, all in one. Even within the criminal underworld subplots the show ranges in tone from Breaking Bad to Paddington 2. And it works! While the show naturally gets bleaker over time as it confronts the repercussions of Barry’s murders, it never completely loses sight of its comedic roots. My favorite episode was easily season 2’s “ronny/lily,” a mostly self-contained episode that somehow manages to keep throwing the perfect curveballs to escalate its dark comedy.

6/12: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition) - Y’all heard of this movie? Pretty good, it turns out. (I’d seen the theatrical cut before, but this was my first time watching the extended edition. I’ve also only seen parts of the other two movies, so it’s time I finally watch all the extended cuts. The Gollum game pushed me to this.)

6/13: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition) - give it to us RAW and WRIGGLING

6/17: The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Extended Edition) - I’m not crying YOU’RE crying

6/22: Clone High (Season 2) - While the first episode being about “cancel culture” (or, more accurately, a teenager from 2003 being transported to 2023 and putting his foot in his mouth a lot) put a lot of people off, I ended up enjoying the new season of Clone High. The new clones grew on me as the season went on and their roles in the web of teen romance melodrama crystalized, and it made me laugh a lot, and Cleo/Frida is galaxy brained. Also they played one of my favorite Antarctigo Vespucci songs like a minute into the first episode. I don’t think I could really ask for much more.

6/28: The Mandalorian (Season 3) - I'd been watching this weekly but put off the last episode for no real reason. Responses to this season have been all over the place, but my blistering hot take is… it was fine. Is it as good as the first season? Probably not. But Mando no longer needs to carry the whole franchise on its shoulders and set the bar for how good the live action Disney Star Wars shows can be, because Andor exists, and it’s never gonna top Andor. The Mandalorian is free to just be a pulpy space adventure show where Giancarlo Esposito plays a scenery-chewing cartoon villain and a little puppet does wire stunts. These are things Andor cannot and should not do, but that’s Star Wars, baby. It’s delightful. I could watch Grogu get underhand tossed like a sack of flour all day.

July

7/2: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (Season 2) - LOVE WINS. (More nuanced take from way later: It definitely feels like a lot of the more messy political conflicts in this show got swept aside by the big final battle where some more easily resolved family conflicts take center stage. I’m not sure the ending is the most satisfying. But also this show only got half the episode count that damn near every other Gundam show ever made got, so that might be a factor here. Idk. Still one of my favorite Gundams.)

7/4: Final Fantasy XVI (watched Anthony play) - I had to write my longest Medium article ever about this one because I was so frustrated

7/10: Home Movies - “Things I like that I’ve never seen in full” has certainly been a recurring theme this year. Home Movies remains an all-time classic of animated comedy that went out on a high note before things got stale or the characters became parodies of themselves. While it’s mostly known for its funny improvised banter, throughout the last season you can really see the arc where Brendon no longer enjoys making movies, yet he feels obligated to keep using them to escape from the real world. In that light, the ending where the nature of their dysfunctional makeshift family is cemented, Brendon’s camera suddenly breaks, and life moves on really does feel like the perfect note to end on. Truly one of the best to ever do it.

7/15: The Legend of Zelda - Tears of the Kingdom - Wow. Just… wow. I had serious doubts about TotK in the months leading up to release due to how close Nintendo was playing their cards to their chest. I didn’t want this to be a Saints Row IV, where the game is fun enough but the recycled map makes it feel like a rehash. Instead, I found a game that made me look at BotW’s map in a whole new light, brimming with so many more things to do and people to meet. Add on a better, more versatile set of tools, more varied dungeons and bosses, and a story that I felt was told somewhat better and we’ve got a real contender for my new favorite Zelda game. It was hard to tear myself away, but as this list shows, it’s been basically the only game I’ve played since it came out.

7/16: Sonic Prime (Season 2) - I liked the parts with Shadow and Chaos Sonic, but I’ve come to the sad conclusion that most of this show is just mediocre. More thoughts here.

7/18: We ♥ Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie - “I’m a dog, but I love Katamari Damacy.” Truer words have never been spoken.

7/19: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - Pretty good! It didn’t blow me away, but after how bad the Bay movies got I’m just thankful to have a decently cohesive Transformers movie where the human story is okay and I like the bots (although half of them needed more screen time), even if it is just another Hollywood blockbuster about two sides fighting over a macguffin that devolves into a big CGI battle against an army of nameless monsters in the third act. This is basically a mid-tier MCU movie but with Transformers, which won’t do much for most people, but again: the bar was underground.

7/22: The Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart - God DAMN. A phenomenal ending for the series. While I would have loved to see a full final season to get some more one-off episodes in there, this doesn’t feel creatively compromised in any way–either due to the time constraints, or due to a desire to make it more marketable as a movie. It really does feel like they just took their outlines for the canceled final season and gently massaged them into the shape of an 84-minute movie, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s completely on par with the previous seasons. A hilarious and fitting sendoff for one of the greats of adult animation.

7/23: Beautiful Katamari - This was one of my first Xbox 360 games, but a frustrating temperature-based level made me put it down for 16 years. “Maybe it won’t be as bad now that I’ve beaten the first two games and am better at Katamari,” I thought. Nope! Still an absolutely dogshit level. But also, turns out the whole game is only like two hours long lmao. It’s still Katamari, so it’s still fun - the final level in particular, which seamlessly takes you from ground level all the way to space, feels like a logical endpoint for the series - but beyond that it just doesn't have the same soul without Keita Takahashi's input.

August

8/4: Doom Singer (Chris Farren) - I’ve been waiting so long for Chris and Jeff to do another Antarctigo Vespucci album, but god damn. This is the best of Chris’s solo work, and a contender for his best record, period. Every track’s a banger, with more energy than some of his previous solo work but also a good deal of variety. Favorite tracks: First Place, Cosmic Leash

8/4: Transformers Earthspark (Season 1) - This show had a bit of an uneven start, unsure if it wanted to have the emotional maturity of a more serious action cartoon or a preschool cartoon where the characters have little kid mood swings and outbursts and learn basic lessons. It also felt like it was speedrunning its Wholesome Found Family Dynamic with characters who just met, which didn’t feel earned. While these problems never completely go away (see: the cheap and corny way the otherwise very dark season finale suddenly resolves), the show improves quickly, and the positives outweigh the negatives. It’s so great to have a Transformers cartoon that feels fresh, giving us a post-war setting with a bunch of new characters and new dynamics between the Cybertronians and the humans. The returning characters are also uniformly great as the old veterans overseeing the new generation. (Reformed Megatron! Danny Pudi as Bumblebee! Steve Blum returning as Starscream! Keith David as Grimlock!!!) And those super dynamic action scenes! I can nitpick, but Earthspark’s a ton of fun, and easily the best new Transformers cartoon since Prime and Animated.

8/5: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (remaster) - Everyone who told me this game was a masterpiece was right. I had played the first chapter when it dropped as the demo for the iOS version years ago, but never went further than that until now. What a game. Absolutely incredible through and through. Great story, great twists, great characters, great puzzles, great art direction. Everything comes together so perfectly to form a totally unique, unforgettable package, a top tier video game murder mystery. Everyone should play this, preferably going in as blind as possible.

8/15: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Season 16) - Wow! Recent seasons of Sunny have been kind of up and down, with some interesting experiments (Mac Finds His Pride, the Ireland arc, etc.) paired with some comedic duds. Most of this latest season is standard fare for the series with fewer big creative swings, but it’s just hit after hit in terms of comedy. Not a single dud, whether we’re seeing Mac and Dennis try to start a rental business for inflatable furniture or watching the gang meet Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, believing the entire time that the latter is Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle. Even the attempts at topical comedy landed better. Easily the funniest season in years.

8/16: One Piece Film Gold - It’s easy to see why this one has kind of been forgotten in the wake of Stampede and Film Red, which revolve around established fan favorite characters, but this was still pretty fun. Perhaps a little too long, but it’s fun to see the Straw Hats fool around in a giant casino and do a heist. They definitely cranked the fanservice up even more than usual in this one, though, as I probably should have expected for a movie made alongside the anime’s adaptation of Dressrosa.

8/17: One Piece: Stampede - This one goes for a different kind of fanservice. While most One Piece movies are isolated from the ongoing plot and its expanded cast of characters, Stampede instead asks “What if we just put damn near every active character on the same island and had them fight?” The answer: a fun time! It would get old if all of the movies were like this, but after a bunch of movies that are just like “the Straw Hats are gonna land on another new island and fight some more weird guys” it’s fun to see characters like Law and Buggy and Smoker get in on the fun. It’s also nice to get a movie with the Wano era art style, and Usopp surprisingly gets some really good character moments in here.

8/18: One Piece Film Red - This really is the best of the One Piece movies, huh? (Baron Omatsuri is a close second.) It really feels like a change of pace after the last four with the most interesting and emotionally engaging story out of any of them. And even if the events of these movies are never canon, it still feels significant in my understanding of Shanks as a character as we move into the final phase of the manga.

8/21: Pikmin 4 - The opening hour of the game made me really question if they’d changed too much, with all the focus on your new dog unit over your Pikmin and the extremely dull, drawn out dialogue scenes with your new companions back at the base. But once I got into the swing of things I had a blast. This is probably my new favorite Pikmin game. There’s a great mix of activities here to keep things fresh. I also really ended up liking Oatchi’s role as basically your second captain who can also serve as your tank or a rideable mount. The Dandori stuff and nighttime missions in particular show off how useful Oatchi is for your multitasking without necessarily overshadowing the Pikmin.

8/22: Never Get Tired: The Bomb the Music Industry! Story - I literally backed this on Kickstarter eight years ago (my name is in the credits!) and then never got around to watching it for no reason. It’s on YouTube now, and Jeff’s got a new album out next week, so now feels like the perfect time to watch it. And man… what a great documentary. Obviously I’m just a fan of the band, but this also really spoke to me as an artist. Jeff wanting to stick to his principles and give out his music for free and play cheap all ages shows, his discomfort over the idea of selling merch, and the struggles that come with not playing the game like that… It's hard. They readily admit that Jeff is an idealist, that people fight him on this stuff, that he’s missed out on some big opportunities because of these stances, and that he’s had to compromise a bit on some of these things over time. But that incredible climax with their final show, including a full opening performance of the slowly building “Campaign for a Better Next Weekend” and the closing performance of “Future 86” where the whole audience is singing along as the members of the band are hugging and crying… it’s beautiful. This may have been a band where the members had to go back to their shitty day jobs after every tour because they weren’t selling out arenas, but their art meant something to people, and that makes it all worth it.

8/25: Nimona - I haven’t read the original comic (yet), so I can’t compare them too much, but it’s nonetheless pretty apparent that some things were softened and easy kids’ movie jokes were added by the studio to squeeze this graphic novel for teens into a PG animated movie. Regardless, the emotional throughline hits REALLY hard, particularly the very blatant trans allegory and the climax. (It’s no wonder Disney was afraid of this movie seeing the light of day lmao.) The animation is also very squishy and fun to watch throughout. Great movie.

8/26: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish - Spider-Verse really has done so much for animation, huh? This one was as good as everyone said. Beautiful use of stylized color and lighting throughout, and every time this movie very conspicuously shifted to different framerates for a flashy fight scene it owned. Very cute and heartwarming story, too, which thankfully gave its second act plenty of time to explore the cast and let them go on their journey, unlike a certain plumber movie that came out a few months later. Also I would let Death [redacted]

8/28: Holocure: Save the Fans! - This isn't really something I can beat, but I've been addicted to Holocure lately. I don't even watch VTubers aside from maybe seeing a funny Korone animation every now and then, this is just a really, really good freeware Vampire Survivors clone with a huge roster of varied characters to pick from.

8/31: HELLMODE (Jeff Rosenstock) - A new album from Jeff is always a major event for me. If there were any worries that he was starting to go soft at 40 (because one of the three singles off this album was a gentle acoustic piece), the frantic opening of this album put those worries to rest. The first two tracks are Jeff screaming out for help as he’s pulled in a million directions by the chaotic state of the world, a theme that becomes the thesis of the album. I’d say it lags slightly in the middle, but overall this is another extremely well-rounded record full of bangers that’s unapologetically Jeff, with possibly my favorite closing track he’s ever done. Favorite tracks: I WANNA BE WRONG, 3 SUMMERS

September

9/3: One Piece (live action, Season 1) - They did it. I can’t believe it, but they did it. While I have my nitpicks (Usopp and Sanji don’t get enough big moments to shine), this is an extremely solid and faithful adaptation of the first few arcs of One Piece with a great cast. For the most part the changes feel smart and logical, and the big emotional beats of the story are all there and executed very well. I doubted it a little in episodes 2-4, where the Orange Town and Syrup Village arcs saw some major changes to shift the action indoors, and the increased focus on the drama in favor of repeating every gag and battle from the manga 1:1 took a bit of getting used to, but by the end I was having a blast. It’s a different take on One Piece, but it still feels like One Piece. Genuinely very excited for season 2.

9/4: Pseudoregalia - A great little N64-style 3D Metroidvania focused on platforming and very satisfying movement. I always love entries in the genre that are less prescriptive in what order you have to tackle areas in, a la Symphony of the Night or Hollow Knight, and this one’s great in that regard. While there are a number of new moves to find, most of the map is open to you very early in the game, and smart use of your moveset can allow you to “sequence break” without even realizing it. (You would not believe how long I went without getting the wall run.) I do wish it had a map, but that’s already being patched in.

9/6: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk * - Not a bad game at all, but I quickly remembered how bad I am at skating games, so like… eh? Not sure I have much desire to play past chapter 2. Also the soundtrack is sadly kinda hit or miss for me outside of the obvious Naganuma tunes.

9/9: The History of the Minnesota Vikings (Dorktown) - Jon Bois never misses. Even as someone who doesn’t actively follow sports, Jon Bois is a master storyteller, using graphs and statistics and funny anecdotes to explore these deeply human stories. He can convey why people care so much about these teams, these people, and sports in general, and how our popular sports reflect on American culture. He could tell the story of just about any team or player in any sport and I just know I’ll come out the other side a misty-eyed fan. And what a fascinating cast of characters we have this time, with origin stories for everything from the Hail Mary pass to a Minnesota state supreme court judge to the Griddy. Nine hours well spent.

9/10: Timespinner - A fun and highly polished Metroidvania that maybe doesn’t quite have enough of its own identity in its quest to replicate Symphony of the Night…but also, like, this was pitched as a Symphony throwback on KickStarter in a pre-Bloodstained, pre-Hollow Knight world, so I can��t really blame ‘em! Stopping time to avoid boss attacks is fun, the pixel art is gorgeous, and I liked the dark science fantasy story about warring empires and meddling with time a lot more than I thought I would - lore journal text dumps and all.

9/14: The Decay of Sam & Cat (Quinton Reviews) - All the stuff at the end with Matt Bennett (the actor who played Robbie on Victorious and Sam & Cat) in this was really good and sweet. It’s that kind of thing that makes these videos feel like they’re still worthwhile on some level. But the padding and the things Quinton chooses to spend the colossal runtime on does drive me more and more insane with each passing Nick sitcom video. I don’t know how much longer he can keep this schtick up. I hope he’s able to move on to other things before too terribly long instead of continuing to extend this “miniseries.”

9/19: Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales - AKA Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 1.5. It’s fun for the same reasons Peter’s first game was fun. I had a good time swinging around New York again in preparation for the sequel, and there’s a lot of cute stuff with Miles becoming Harlem’s neighborhood hero, but WOW did the Underground v. Roxxon conflict fall flat for me.

9/20: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson - I understand so many posts now.

9/25: Spider-Man (2002) (rewatch) - It’s you who’s out, Gobby! OUT OF YOUR MIND!

9/25: Futurama (Season 8) - I was ready to be a hater, recalling the fact that Futurama has already had three “perfect endings” with the show getting a little weaker with every revival. Then I watched the first new episode on a whim and thought it wasn’t bad, so I was like, eh, sure, I’ll watch the rest. Overall Hulurama is hit or miss. There are chuckles to be had, and it sure as hell beats modern Simpsons, but almost every episode is either a belated take on an overplayed Topical Issue (the pandemic, Amazon, cancel culture, etc.) or a direct sequel to an old episode people liked. Or both! It’s also really noticeable that certain voice actors sound way older - Billy West is struggling with the Fry voice in particular, and it hurts his comedic timing. But just when all hope seemed lost after the nigh-incomprehensible toy-themed anthology episode, possibly the worst episode of the entire series… the last episode, where the Planet Express crew explores whether or not the universe could be a simulation, was really, really solid. Great note to end on to make me not regret my time with this season as a whole.

9/26: Spider-Man 2 (2004) (rewatch) - Once the GOAT, always the GOAT.

9/27: Spider-Man 3 (rewatch) - Revisiting this movie for the first time since I saw it in theaters… it’s not bad. It’s fine! It continues to have the heart and sincerity that make the first two movies work. It’s just not as concise with three villains vying for the spotlight, but I also wouldn’t cut any of them, necessarily. I guess Eddie/Venom would be the easiest, but Peter getting the black suit and giving in to his resentment feels too central to cut. (Yes, even with Emo Peter becoming a meme.)

9/28: Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake - I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this one, especially since I was never really a fan of the genderbend episodes in the original show. (At the time they mostly just felt like an excuse to crank up the teen romance stuff to 11.) But MAN. This was a fantastic coda to the original series. It made me care about Fionna and Cake and their friends as their own characters separate from their original counterparts, it gave the Simon/Betty arc a much more satisfying (if no less bittersweet) resolution than the original finale had time to do, and it even managed to be a multiverse story that didn’t make me roll my eyes in 2023. A+ all around. Makes me wanna rewatch the original show again. [spoiler: I did]

9/29: Meanwhile (aivi & surasshu) - It’s been a whole decade–they were busy with, you know, all the music in Steven Universe, among other things–but we finally have a new aivi & surasshu album! Their chiptune/piano fusion style is familiar, but they’ve definitely grown as composers in subtle ways. Favorite track: Time Travel

October

10/1: This is Financial Advice (Folding Ideas) - A lot of the nitty gritty finance law stuff turned into white noise for me, but still, great video. I had no idea that the GameStop stock craze devolved into this bizarre cult that thinks they’re going to crash the global economy and rise from the ashes as the new kings with the value of their GME stocks. Glad this video exists to try and balance out the narrative.

10/5: Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon DLC - Good ideas, absurdly frustrating and tedious execution. Full thoughts here.

10/10: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (rewatch) - I didn’t plan this, but very fitting that I would end up rewatching this on 10/10.

10/12: Half-Life Alyx but the Gnome is Self-Aware (wayneradiotv) - ha he! (Seriously though, that finale was a fucking masterpiece. The RTVS crew has an incredible knack for using the framing device of video game livestreams to blur the lines between comedy and horror, or ironic anti-humor and complete sincerity. I’ve never seen anything else like this.)

10/15: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Not sure how much I can say that hasn’t already been said. The most visually creative movie I’ve ever seen, grounded by some really excellent storytelling about Miles (and now Gwen) that’s probably better than his actual comics. But it also does feel like it’s about to end and then the movie just keeps going like ten times over lmao. Can’t wait to watch this a second time on a better TV.

10/20: Sonic Superstars - A mostly really solid and fun 2D Sonic game that’s unfortunately dragged down by an extremely hodgepodge soundtrack and some overly drawn out boss fights. I spent HOURS trying to beat the final boss of the bonus scenario (which is required for the true ending in this one) before giving up. Really a shame that that’s the note I’m leaving the game on, because I otherwise enjoyed it, but ah well. More thoughts here.

10/27: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 - Another good Spider-Man game from Insomniac. Liked the story more than the one in Miles Morales, but maybe not as much as the first game. Extensive thoughts here.

10/28: Venom - Was in the mood for more Venom after the game. As expected this was not a very good movie, but the dynamic between Eddie and Venom made it a fun watch. Tom Hardy is constantly about to shit his pants in this movie. It’s great.

10/28: Venom: Let There Be Carnage - I had a way better time with this one. Is this a good movie? No. But it cranks the insanity of the first movie up to 11. Goofy as fuck in an extremely watchable way.

November

11/5: Pluto - An absolutely masterful series that anyone interested in sci-fi needs to watch. The anime adaptation was great, and I immediately understand why people who’ve read the manga speak so highly of it. Really makes me want to get into Astro Boy more, and also read some of Urasawa’s other works.

11/18: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off - Wow, just wow. When news of a Scott Pilgrim anime broke I was cautiously curious to see if we’d get a more direct adaptation of the comics, and instead it veered off in the exact opposite direction in the best way possible. This is almost entirely a different story, one that’s in conversation with the previous versions (sometimes in very meta ways), and I think it’s really valuable to see O’Malley revisiting these characters with new things to say about them. The major story divergence gives us a chance to examine the characters from a new angle - particularly Ramona, who’s the real protagonist of this version, and the evil exes, who completely steal the show. This was a great reminder of why I fell in love with this series as a teenager. I now genuinely hope we get more Scott Pilgrim.

11/22: Void Rivals (Issues #1 - #6) - The first arc of the new Robert Kirkman series that kicked off Skybound’s new “Energon Universe” is now complete, and I’m left thinking Void Rivals is… okay? I thought the first issue was a decent (if not particularly original) sci-fi comic with an appealing art style, which just so happens to also briefly have a Transformer in it so there can be a Big Surprise. And the series still hasn’t quite shaken that feeling to me. It’s an okay sci-fi series that arbitrarily dedicates a couple of pages of every issue to something from Transformers, but I’m not really sure what the shared universe stuff adds to Void Rivals, or what Void Rivals adds to Transformers and GI Joe. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

11/22: Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History (Defunctland) - Yeah, gotta be honest, I only got halfway through this one. It seems like Kevin just 1) really wanted to push himself creatively and 2) make a love letter to Epcot, and while I respect that, I think it suffers as a historical documentary. It’s Fantasia but for the creation of Epcot. That might be very impressive on a technical level, but it feels more like a piece of Disney propaganda than prior Defunctland videos due to a lack of context and nuance. 

11/24: Aperture Desk Job - A short, sweet, and funny little tech demo for my new Steam Deck set in the Portal universe. More effort was definitely put into this than was strictly necessary.

11/26: ESCHATOS - I am not good at bullet hell games, but I enjoy them from time to time and I really love this one’s FM synth soundtrack, so I picked it up on a whim in the Steam sale. I only beat it on Easy, but still, I had a lot of fun with it! It’s straightforward but very flashy, with the camera dynamically zooming around from set piece to set piece at ridiculous speeds and each level segueing directly into the next. The lack of a powerup system on the main mode in favor of just needing to know when to use your different shot types makes it feel very approachable.

11/27: Lunistice - A great little 3D platformer with a good soundtrack that I had fun hunting down all the secrets in. This is an easy recommendation for fans of games like Kirby or Klonoa - whimsical games set in colorful dream worlds where the underlying story can get a bit more somber. (Although the story in this one is mostly told through mildly cryptic lore dumps, so your mileage there may vary.)

11/28: Spark the Electric Jester 2 - The leap from 2D to 3D here is impressive, but this is very clearly a rough draft for Spark 3. Very, very fun Sonic-style 3D platforming, but the combat is lacking and the storytelling is just kinda bad. More extensive thoughts on this and the above two games here.

December

12/2: Fortnite (Chapter 4) - This was my first full chapter of Fortnite, after having been roped into the game by the siren songs of Zero Build mode and Goku during Chapter 3. This means it’s harder for me to compare this chapter to previous ones, but still, Fortnite remains a genuinely very well made Battle Royale shooter that’s a blast with friends. If I have any complaint about this Chapter, it’s that they would regularly introduce zany ideas and then slowly reel them back in, whether it was the Augment system or the increasingly mundane movement items. It also felt like it was a little too easy to get the perfect loadout in every match, meaning the final showdown would almost always be against players with Slurp Juice and gold shotguns. And I missed the smaller mid-season map updates of Chapter 3. But overall I still had a really good time, and look forward to playing more for the foreseeable future.

12/4: Plagiarism and You(Tube) (HBomberguy) - This will get written off by many as “YouTuber drama,” but this really is an excellent video essay that feels like the kick in the pants that YouTube needs. If video essayists are gonna be a major source of information for so many, then they gotta have standards. I also think it does a good job of highlighting the people that have been plagiarized and trying to drive more attention their way in an attempt to right those wrongs.

12/6: Transformers (Skybound comic) - We only got the first three issues of this in 2023, but I just HAVE to say something about how incredible this series is here. Daniel Warren Johnson is knocking it out of the park. This is the new bar for Transformers. The hand-inked art is extremely dynamic and full of character, and the story is using the familiar beats of G1 Transformers but doing very new things with them. You can tell this from the very first page, but the emotional scene of Optimus accidentally crushing a deer in the forest and realizing how fragile life is on Earth sealed the deal for me. And yet in the very same comics Optimus can do suplexes and clotheslines and lord knows how many other wrestling moves on Decepticons, and it doesn’t feel like tonal whiplash? These comics just fucking rule, and anyone with even the slightest interest in Transformers should be reading them.

12/8: What We Do in the Shadows (Season 5) - [spoilers] WWDITS has very much settled into being a status quo show. Every season has its own little arc where one or two things change to keep things interesting, but then everything returns to normal by the end. Guillermo finally becoming a vampire, only to become a human again in the end, might just be the most egregious example of this yet. But also… the show’s still really funny? And I continue to be happy that Kristen Schaal has stuck around as a series regular as the Guide. So it’s hard to complain. I could see the show running out of steam over the next few seasons, but it’s still hitting for me right now.

12/12: Pony Island - Finally got around to this since the trailer for the sequel dropped. I feel like playing this years later in a post-Inscryption world where Pony Island is a known quantity kind of lessens its impact, but still, it’s a fun and funny puzzle game where you try to hack your way out of a possessed arcade machine. I’m not sure I found it particularly scary, but I’m not sure it’s supposed to be? The way the game messes with you during the Asmodeus “boss fight” was probably the highlight for me. I also like being able to say things like “The part where you have to not kill Jesus was so hard. I kept getting terrible butterfly patterns.”

12/16: Breaking Bad VR but the AI is Self-Aware (wayneradiotv) - As always, Wayne and co.’s commitment to the bit is unrivaled. This kind of got interpreted as just a way to troll HLVRAI fans, but so many moments in this genuinely made me laugh out loud.

12/18: Soul of Sovereignty Prelude - As someone who would list Cucumber Quest as a big creative influence, I was naturally very excited for this first chapter of GGDG’s new visual novel. Their mentality of both scaling things back in terms of labor while also going more shamelessly self-indulgent in terms of storytelling after burning out on making webcomics has really spoken to me, and WOW, the end result of that new process of theirs is shaping up to be something really special. The art and music are sparse but extremely evocative, giving you the rough sketch of the world and letting your mind fill in the rest. The story blends literary high fantasy vibes with the style of fantasy seen in ‘90s JRPGs (you can definitely tell this came from an idea for an RPG), but rather than constantly winking at the audience and making self-aware video game references it plays these storytelling ideas extremely sincerely, giving them real dramatic weight while still indulging in fun tropes to their fullest extent. While it’s a far cry from their most famous work with much more mature content, GGDG always excels at creating characters and worlds that immediately grab me. I can’t wait for the rest.

12/18: Barbie - I’m only… what, five months late for the whole Barbenheimer thing? Perfect timing. Anyway! On the one hand, I get the critiques saying that this movie is just a major corporation funding a self-aware feminist critique of their own product as a marketing ploy. And I kinda agree with that. And the movie is a little too long, and I don’t really know what to think of the way the Barbie/Ken conflict plays out. Anthony asked me to summarize what the story ended up being about, and I had no idea what to even say. But also… I did still like the movie? We don’t get a lot of cartoonish, absurdist, fourth wall breaking comedies like this anymore, and this is a good one of those. Also the whole cast is great, the set design is kind of stunning, and the cinematography is consistently appealing. I wouldn’t say it’s a revolutionary work of feminist filmmaking by any stretch, but it’s a good comedy movie.

12/21: Dr. Stone: New World - Man, Dr. Stone is great. I’ve said this many times, but I just love that this series uses all the trappings of shounen that would normally be used to hype up the protagonist learning a new move to instead hype up things like the protagonist building a loom or a hot air balloon. It’s shounen Bill Nye. I didn’t completely love everything about the Treasure Island arc this season, but it all built towards a really fun climax with a lot of satisfying turnabouts where the heroes use their ingenuity to just barely win.

12/23: The History of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out World Records (Summoning Salt) - Truly one of my favorite Summoning Salt videos ever, even with how repetitive Punch-Out can get to watch. It’s just so hard to beat “and that runner… was me.”

12/24: Super Mario Bros. Wonder - What more can be said that hasn’t already been said? It’s the best and most creative 2D Mario game since the ‘90s. The only real flaws are that it’s a little easy, the Search Party stages are annoying in singleplayer, and I wish that every boss prior to the final boss wasn’t just some form of Bowser Jr. fight. But those aren’t nearly enough to drag the whole experience down. It was a blast.

12/24: Do a Powerbomb! - Got this from Anthony as a birthday present. This is the previous series by the creative team currently doing the new Transformers comics I was gushing about a few entries ago. Even with the high bar set by those comics, Do a Powerbomb! exceeded my expectations. Holy shit. An absolutely entrancing fantasy wrestling miniseries full of dynamic, energetic action and tons of heart. These comics where a guy wrestles a giant talking orangutan almost made me cry. Twice. An instant favorite.

12/25: Adventure Time (rewatch) - We ended up finishing our rewatch of Adventure Time (the main series, anyway) on my 30th birthday, which feels appropriate. I already kinda knew this, but this rewatch has truly confirmed that Adventure Time is my favorite TV series of all time. The entire show is even better on a full series rewatch. In hindsight, even parts that annoyed me when they aired end up being important parts of the beautiful tapestry that is this series. The many low points of Finn’s adolescent love life are important stepping stones in his growth as a person, which leaves him in an extremely satisfying place by the end. Jake having kids didn’t get to be a huge status quo change because they grew up instantly, but then they did a bunch of fun episodes about Jake’s relationships with his adult children that deepened him as a character. And most of the big lore questions they kept teasing over the years (“Where’d the humans go?” “Who are Finn’s parents?” “When’s Finn gonna get a robot arm?” etc.) ended up getting satisfying and creative answers, because the show left itself the room to figure those things out later. This is a truly special, one-of-a-kind series, one that lasted nearly 300 episodes and yet still seems like it was over too soon. And yes, I did in fact cry during the final montage, like I knew I would. I will always cherish this show with all of my heart.

12/25: Olive the Other Reindeer (rewatch) - Haven’t seen this one since I was a kid! It was a favorite of mine back then, and while it might not be quite as funny as I remember it’s still very cute, with a 2D/3D hybrid art style that remains very unique and appealing. As an adult I can also appreciate the cast they got for this, with like half the cast of Futurama bolstered by guests like Michael Stipe from REM and The Sopranos’ Joe Pantoliano.

12/26: Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio - Anthony and I capped off our Christmas with the most jolly and festive stop motion movie of all! Jokes aside, man, what a beautiful movie. The animation is immaculate, and we really just don’t get children’s animated films like this anymore. Ones that overtly feature real world politics and religion and so many other dark themes in a way that doesn’t talk down to kids or sugarcoat things. This one hits hard. We need more movies like this.

12/31: Oppenheimer - This was an interesting one. Despite being three hours, the way that first hour jumps around in time makes it feel like Oppenheimer is constantly being propelled forward through life at a breakneck pace, swept up by the rising tide of nationalism in spite of his personal left wing politics, never really reflecting on what he’s doing until it’s too late. Then when he’s no longer useful to the empire, he’s chewed up and spat out, only to eventually be honored as a national hero as a symbolic gesture. It’s a compelling story. However, I’m a little torn on how certain aspects of history were framed. Does the abstraction of the bombings detract from the true weight of those events, in favor of sympathizing with the man who built the bomb? Or is it clever a way to show how the realities of the war were compartmentalized away by people who were complicit in its most heinous acts of violence? One minute a bunch of physicists are talking theory, thousands of miles away from the theaters of war, and the next they’ve killed 200,000 people. So which is it? Eh, probably somewhere in the middle, I guess. But I liked it overall.

12/31: Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe - I’ve been really surprised by how good this rerelease is. It kind of flew under the radar for me. I liked the original game, but at the time it also almost felt like the New Super Mario Bros. of Kirby. It was a straightforward throwback game where you went through a grass world, then a desert world, then a water world, etc., and also they added four player co-op. But returning to this one after the kinda mid Star Allies has made me appreciate just how solid RtDL is as a Kirby game. I really like the updated graphics, too - yes, even the new cel shaded outlines around the characters - even though I didn’t think it looked that great in screenshots. Also the two new copy abilities (Sand and Mecha) are fun, the minigame collection is shockingly fleshed out to the point that they could’ve sold it as a standalone eShop game, the collectible character masks are fun, and the new epilogue mode where you play as Magolor is one of the coolest bonus modes they’ve ever done. This is a top tier Kirby remake any fan of the series should check out.

Ongoing things I followed in 2023 that don't have a blurb:

Halo Infinite multiplayer

IDW Sonic the Hedgehog (main series + specials)

One Piece

Chainsaw Man

My Hero Academia (not caught up)

The JOJOlands (not caught up)

Things I started in 2023 that I still need to finish:

Freedom Planet 2

Hi-Fi Rush

Live A Live

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Picross 3D Round 2

Rhythm Heaven MegaMix

Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team ProtoMan

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Spark the Electric Jester 3

Sonic Dream Team

One Piece (Wano arc, anime)

Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 (I’ve already read the Shibuya arc already in the manga, though)

Astro Boy (2003 anime)

Futurama (original run rewatch)

One Piece (manga reread)

The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee/Ditko era)

Scott Pilgrim series (reread)

And finally... my favorites of 2023!!!

Overall favorite game: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Favorite indie game: Pseudoregalia

Games remastered in 2023 that are now among my all-time faves: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, We Love Katamari

Most pleasant surprise in gaming: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Favorite film: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Favorite live action show: Barry

Favorite anime: Pluto

Favorite anime written by a Canadian guy and an American guy based on the Canadian guy's old graphic novel series: Scott PIlgrim Takes Off

Favorite live action adaptation of an anime that I still can't believe they didn't fuck up: One Piece

Favorite Western cartoon: Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake

Favorite older cartoon I only got around to watching in its entirety this year: The Venture Bros.

Favorite documentary: Double Fine PsychOdyssey

Favorite semi-improvised semi-scripted absurdist comedy/horror/tragedy Twitch livestream performance art thing: Half-Life Alyx but the Gnome is Self-Aware finale (wayneradiotv)

Favorite manga: Chainsaw Man

Favorite older manga that I only read this year: Berserk

Favorite Western comic book: Daniel Warren Johnson's Transformers

Favorite album: HELLMODE (Jeff Rosenstock)

And that's a wrap!!!!! Happy new year, everyone! Here's to me maybe actually reading a goddamn book this year

[beatcroc]

a year!!! as of today i have now been drawing these funny little pizza freaks, to the exclusion of almost everything else, for!!! an entire year!!! i wanted to do a nice group shot/lineup of everybody to compare to when i first started trying to draw them because oh boy were they bad. i never even posted most of them anywhere because they were so bad. but im posting them here, now, to see how everything's changed/evolved.

this is probably the hardest time i've ever had trying to figure out how to work with a style, but we got there eventually; i'm pretty happy with the handle i've got on everybody now...dont let ur memes be dreams. lots of unimportant journaling and idle thoughts abt it below.

older pics

the first one is the VERY first time i drew them, before i thought i was going to actually have any interest in drawing them [lmao]; it was just the one isolated image, for my friendserver, to illustrate the funney message, so there was no attempt to make it Good or actually understand anything going on w/ the designs or style.

second is the original run of practices sketches to start trying to figure them out for real; done after i started having ideas for the comics and such and realized oh god maybe i am actually gonna draw fanart for this. [again, lol, and lmao.]

third one is the first pt art thing i posted on here. there were a couple weeks of sprite studies between this one and the previous image. the one on the top right wasn't part of that post i just threw it on as space filler; i'd intended to shift to doing Sprite Redraws But Stylized to explore tings more, but that was the only one i did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

individual characters

peppino: by far the hardest dear god. bro what ARE your shapes how DOES your face work. jesus christ. everything i have trouble with this style for, peppino has it in excess. i draw in polygons! i need consistency! and that is the last thing this kind of style is concerned with. they are made of squarshy clay and i do not understand how to mold them. i was really hoping trying to learn this game's style would GIVE me that kind of flexibility for fun exaggerated facial expression but i don't think much came of it in the end 😔. anyway on the bright side all this means once i got peppino figured out a little bit everybody else clicked way easier.

fake peppino: honestly i never did anything with him on purpose except for how his eyes work + the perma-smile thing. i figured ok hes supposed to look weird and off model so whatever happens with him happens. and it did. and it kept happening. it is still, in fact, happening.

noise/ette: somehow, for every bit that peppino was the least natural thing i've ever tried, these two worked pretty much right off the bat. i still don't understand it, seeing as pretty much all the things at play for peppino are also at work for them. i think the new sketches are actually a little worse than older ones but not enough that i care.

gustavo: really funny bc i drew him on model twice and just went 'okay, cool nice, easy, um. he doesn't have any fucking legs?' fortunately he was the only one i had a strong idea for how to stylize him [square] and it worked exactly as i was hoping so wahoo.

brick: is an animal and therefore 5000x easier and more natural for me to draw/stylize than anything else in the cast. that is Just a rat bro. i can draw a rat.

gerome: i think the funniest one here. the most drastic and least necessary change imo. i was gonna have him be really small at first, like smaller than the noises, but then i just... didn't. he's just peppino-sized now. also i gave him like. actual human facial structure, which is funny bc in most cases i'd do anything to avoid, but it works well for his being A Rock to give him some angles and definition like that+ to differentiate his vibe from the rest of the cast who are all very squishy. also since he is essentially Just A Head it's good to emphasize that too ig.

john: i only drew john a couple times but he gets to be here because i like him. and because most of the stuff i applied to gerome was readily applicable to john, though i did try to keep him a little more uncanny because he is a Huge And Lanky Freak. i hate that he is barefoot btw but idk how to make his color balance look right with shoes.

pizzahead: i did not want to put him on here honestly but i Have drawn him a handful of times and more importantly i didn't know what i was gonna do with john's pose if i didn't have him there to be glared at. the only thing that's different with him is giving him wider-bottomed pants, which i got from when i tried to draw these guys in clone high style [i never posted that one either][i will eventually]

snick: he gets to be here because 1. he's like 6 lines 2. i like him and 3. ive scribbled him a few times offhand and it went pretty well

misc

there are some guys missing because those are guys i didn't draw enough [or at all] to have gotten comfortable with them. sorry

i would have Liked to shade these but for the time being i have accepted that my grasp of light/shadow has decayed to the point im not going to be happy with anything i try there, so For Now i am working on my presentation with flats i guess. gerome has a shadow only because he's shaded like that ingame and looks naked without it

anyway if you are still reading [hi?] i get to shamelessly plug now. i'm over the hill of my pizza run now, and while i still have plenty of things i want to make here, most of the bigger more in-depth ones have passed. pizza tower was the first thing in THREE YEARS to get me out of my oc groove to doing fanart, and once i am done with my ideas here i will be going right back to it. if you like my art or how i write characters/interactions you should check out my oc/webcomic blog @jamverse . i can't promise people who like pizza stuff will be terribly into my designs, but i can guarantee i treat my guys with the exact same sort of tone i handle the pt guys with. and hell, i've mentioned it a few times before, but like 70% of my characterization for fake pep is just copied off one of my characters, so if u are going to miss him... he will still be there in spirit >;p

and if you dont care about any of that and are still reading thank you anyway. actually making these comics + seeing how shockingly well-received they've been has done a lot for my confidence, and for seeing that my kind of stuff IS something people enjoy :')

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

hi! I wanted to ask questions about how you proceed to write:

Do you have a general idea with plot twits and such figured out? like general guidelines and then go crazy and write these amazing fics or you just go with the flow?

How do you establish world building? Like, all the fics I've read from you (which are more than great) got lots of info in the world building though strangely enough (in a good way) I wasn't lost on it? Like Cyanide Narwhal has crazy lore to it with lots of characters and stuff going on but as you read you get what happens even though hundreds of stuff happen at once. HOW DO YOU DO IT :0

How do you write so smooth also? Like going from one scene to another makes total sense without there being a cut? (idk if i make any sense sorry ^^').

Finally, how do you explain feelings so well? Well not explaining directly but making us FEEL *looking at cyanide narwhal and i think you're so good (and i'm nothing like you)*. I think that the description of them interacting helps w it (like the way Zhongli looks at Ajax (i am melting please thats so cute-) but even the interaction between Ajax and the kids (big brother behavior)

oh god

i do always have a general idea on how the story is going to go, like what plotbeats i want to hit and what i want to happen. but since it's not a good idea to marry to one path, the details for how things happen or how we get from point a to point b specifically i usually come up with on-the-go, and i do leave room for modifications. like i have a million fic ideas and scenes i want to write but i never actually write any if i cannot picture two things: 1, what the point of it is (the main climax, the main mystery, etc), and 2, how it ends. (the reason why most wips don't make it past a couple chapters is bc i struggle to picture the ending accurately, or how to get there)

i genuinely have no idea how to explain the world building, i'm sorry lmao. if i really had to think about it, no joke, i think i'd say this was stardew valley's fault. yes you read that correctly. more specifically, the earmuffs item. now- it might not be evident as it is rn w the way i write, since it's been a while since i've started doing my worldbuilding like this and obviously it's evolved and gotten more complex w time, but- for those unaware, stardew isn't a game you play for the worldbuilding per se. for the deep world lore. especially pre-ginger island update (1.6?). but there IS worldbuilding, it's just you don't really see it, it's not the point of the game. you're there to grow crops tend to animals suffer in the mines and get a partner. that's it. but you know there's more outside the town and the valley. you know the biggest city nearby is called zuzu, you know what the sea is called, you know there is a war going on in the background, you know there is an empire involved, you know lewis might be the mayor of the town but he's still under the governor of the region. you know there's witches and spirits and elemental beings and aliens n shit. the fucking earmuffs were sort of like my epiphany years back bc their description says they're lined w artisanal velvet from castle village. what the fuck is castle village?? were you ever going to tell me about it outside of those fucking earmuffs? does it even matter? no. it doesn't matter. but just because it doesn't matter doesn't mean the earmuffs stop being an artisanal item from castle village. just because it doesn't matter what the sea is called doesn't stop it from being the gem sea specifically. the fact that you only care, gameplay-wise, about your farm and pelican town- it doesn't stop your country from being at war, from being called the ferngill republic. the world of the game exists outside of what matters to you for the plot. and so even if you're never going to find out some of these things if you don't look, they're going to be there anyway.

i don't know if that makes any sense. it probably doesn't LMAO a probably better way to explain it is like- write stuff the same way you hear our own world being talked about irl. does it matter for the 'plot' of your day if your mother says she's going to one specific supermarket? no. does she still call it by name? most likely. that's just how it works. you know it exists because this is the world you live in, regardless as to how much it matters to the actual 'plot'. it's not there exclusively to serve the purpose of aiding the plot, but because it's a part of your world and therefore must be connected to the world beyond you. the world will only read like it's lived in if the characters speak about it like they actually live in it.

i'm not actually sure that answers the question now that i think about it. it's just- i trully don't know how to answer it. i don't know what i'm doing that makes it interesting and not a complete mess to read even if it IS a complete mess. the only explanation i can think of is that: that i write the characters interacting with their world as though they actually live there. the plot is just something that happens to an already existing, already established world.

also i think you might be merging lore and worldbuilding with plot. yes, the worldbuilding and lore in my fics are absurd, but that alone i don't think would be hard to keep up with. it's the plot also being absurd what makes it seem like there's a lot going on at once (there is, just- in two different fronts). like there's not a million things happening at once in the worldbuilding - there's a million things happening at once in the plot. you're finding out a lot of stuff about the world at the same time, is the thing. anyway,

scene transition without the cuts being smooth i also am not sure how to explain. that's probably on me for not following scene structures properly tbh. so uh- no clue here chief, i'm sorry. i don't even have a guess as with the worldbuilding.

with the writing feelings i do have somewhat of a guess- it genuinely might be some undiagnosed brain fuckery i have. kinda like how the inside joke of asexuals being shockingly good at writing sex scenes goes. if you have a different-than-intended perspective on the stuff, it would probably lead to a different approach to writing it. but other than that i also am not sure

i think the main takeaway is i don't know shit LMAOOOOO

[cannibalhellhound]

Hello :3 To continue @thatmexisaurusrex's new ask game: please recommend at least three of your favorite BuckTommy or BuddieTommy fic authors, artists, meta writers, gif makers, or edit makers. Maybe sing their praises a bit if you'd like. And if you want to, send this to a few other people and spread the good vibes 🥰

AIGHT SO I DIDN'T FORGET ABOUT THIS

I just needed time to actually think about people and remember their usernames shhhh👍🏼

Fistly calling you @screaming-universe and @buffaluff out because it doesn't matter if it's BuckTommy or BET you are just amazing with it like

The Art!!! The Writing!!!!!! Just 🤌🏼✨

We are crazy au buddies and I love that to the core, besides you deal with me throwing my WIPs at you like a proud toddler :D

@bigfootsmom SAPPHIC POLYFIRE!!! Molly I love your art so much I could cry looking at it. It's that nice. Go look at their stuff (づ ᴗ _ᴗ)づ♡

@inawickedlittletown hehehe werewolf au my beloved. Also DRAGONS and so much more I'm just losing it reading your stuff on ao3 rn. You are also responsible for making me go back to my wolf drawing roots, take responsibility smh (affectionate)

@bucksbignaturals beloved mutual your BuddieTommy meme is in my gallery to this day just so you know (top tier writing too go check it out👌🏼)

@kinardsboy PUMKIN!!!! Talking to you about wild animal dad tommy is a delight and your BuckTommy art is funny and amazing

Btw I love how we just end up sharing lfj titty pics, possums and otters because that's just how my brain works at this point. ALSO Punisher au because that's a thing I needed apparently

Now the BET trifecta because they're open in a separate google tab to locate them when they update

@prettyboybuckley I am hitting you with a pillow full of love because your writing has me cackling and screaming while reading "This can't be love" like, probably the first BET fic I started reading and I can't sing enough praises about it (づ ᴗ _ᴗ)づ♡

@xunandran again sharing with anyone that asks for recs because You're the two has me kicking my feet and wanting to throttle those three with love 👍🏼

@callofthecurlew This love is ours had me screaming at the screen but I love it and I'm hugging you too

^ this is to say go read their stuff because it's great 😌

Last but not least @sunglassesmish you are the lfj content mastermind and THIS post specifically lives rent free in my brain, I'd play it at my funeral 👍🏼 thank you for doing all that hard work (and giving me so many references for drawings) you're amazing ( ◕◡◕)っ ♡

Anyway this is the max amount of love and kindness I can spread in a single word vomit idk how coherent it is lmao but seriously ily keep being great

[perfectfangirl]

notes after rewatching fallout s1 ep1

so once again like a crazy person [i've done this with star wars sequels before] i've decided to take three and half pages of notes over the course of an hour. i've been a fan of the games for at least a decade and i'm actually always watching lore content between the installments though so while i do know some minute details, within the show, there was some things i was interested in and curious about that i just decided to jot down. some of this may be things discussed already and some of it might be something i wasn't sure if anyone brought up before but anyways! maybe i'll do the whole season, but here's my ramblings • them titling the episode "the end" was when i knew i'd love the show • ok but i really wonder if cooper can still do those party tricks? he was really good at them and lucy would probably love them too 🥺 • thinking back, the radio in the first scene mentions not knowing where the president is--- beginning to wonder if he was the guy sitting in on the vault tec meeting • just realized they introduced the mr. handy robot in some of the first scenes • ten years of nuclear threat according to anchor but the show is careful not to give away all the cards because why does the weather anchor make it seem like they know when the bomb will drop? idk but birthday boy mother turns off tv real "head in the sand" like • the nat king cole song that's playing though [wondering if the song is mirroring specifically cooper's feelings about barb despite everything hmm] • horse's name is sugarfoot 🥹 • him having to pay alimony... wonder what the prenup? was like... [still think he probably loves barb 😞]

• them calling him a pinko despite him being an architect of vault boy's persona, a quintessential presentation of a "man's man" acting as a cowboy, a real cowboy, a former marine--- wondering if there was a smear campaign after his situation with barb and vault tec, him working children's parties leads me to believe... • did the kid's say the birthday boy's name was boyd? [if so, there's another character in the games with this name and this is also the name of a character walton has played in another series, funny] • weather man show's up again distressed, wondering if we'll get more info about that day • everyone ignoring, cognitive dissonancing their own nuclear annihilation is so prescient if not disturbing and damning

• him teaching janey the thumb thing ☹️ • cooper's voice when he says "let me see if i can't rustle you up a piece" 😩 • janey being the only one to notice the first bomb • the fear in cooper's eyes • cooper being in denial one last time before realization sets in • people becoming animals the moment they realize what's happening--- one guy punches his friend not letting his family into the fallout shelter • people getting into their cars and cooper onto his horse to escape--- wonder how fast they could be since it doesn't seem you could outrun nuclear annihilation

• lucy being raised so well under the circumstances 😔 [hope she never becomes her father] • i haven't trusted steph since episode one • lucy being a teacher [amongst other things] and asking maximus about what happened after the bombs fell makes so much sense [and also much like another person suggested is an interesting juxtaposition to cooper's pre war knowledge] • lucy showing how skilled she is for being a marriage candidate when in reality we are seeing someone fit for the wasteland is crazy on second watch • is lucy not watching a cooper howard movie with her dad? hello??

• them reading "war and peace" in the family book club is rich • lucy [thinking] she's not good at guns, ironic • steph having to step in like a sisterly type because lucy's mom isn't there 😞 • the wedding dress on lucy being ill fitting, tight as symbolism for lucy not truly "fitting in there" and being constrained [foreshadowing] oof • the vault boy sign in the back saying "don't lose your head" lmao • didn't catch the "cousin stuff" until someone mentioned it on tumblr and twitter 💀

• the flashback we see of lucy ending up being almost a false memory, a misrepresentation of her actual memories, that she has been on the surface, in the sun • norm taunting lucy about her future husband being "anybody" and a "cannibal, crammed full of tumours" 😭 unfortunately for ghoulcy, this was some of the heaviest foreshadowing [the raider also could have been one too] • why didn't hank recognize moldaver? • so many things i still don't understand about vaults 31, 32, 33 • the growing realization they are raiders was pretty funny to me lmao

• moldaver having to sit through the disingenuous lies of hank ugh • norm going into vault 32 like they wanted them to know what was up? or is that just how vault doors work? they used lucy's mom's pip boy [that hank lied about burying] • lucy putting norm in a storage vault, she really is so strong • the handed down wedding dress getting messed up • i am curious if the raiders [shady sands survivors?] only mostly harmed vault tec aligners but maybe not • the way hank and steph retaliating a little too well • hank acting like he doesn't know moldaver when everyone really does know moldaver • moldaver telling lucy she looks like her mother is really such a tipoff

• realizing maximus is getting bullied 😭 • dane... might love maximus a little idk • from latrine duty to basically ruling over the brotherhood of steel • they really showed some dude jacking it lmao it's just normal i guess 💀 • maximus being defeated and having a rightful outburst of emotion, poor guy • the poster saying "the outside world can never harm you"--- funny • chet would've died up there 😭 • them not opening the vault back up for her, wondering if the vapourized bodies are from the initial bomb drop or the subsequent shady sands ones • dane almost gets maximus killed three times tbh • maximus joined the brotherhood of steel to get back at what vault tec did, essentially hank's doing, hank has many enemies • knowing the enclave, it makes sense why siggi is hunted • cooper the ghoul's introduction though • the bounty hunter saying his captors dig cooper up every once in a while to cut pieces of flesh off him 😞 no wonder cooper acts the way he does 😔 he's been taken advantage of, no wonder he doesn't trust anybody and is horrible to everyone • "why is this an amish production of "the count of monte cristo" or the weirdest circle jerk i've ever been invited to?" why would he say this 😭 • cooper's... been invited to circle jerks 👀 • does the bounty hunter know the ghoul is cooper howard?

• him not harming the chicken, him healing dogmeat, there's something there, folks • people only digging him up to use him again 😞 • what a coincidence he's dug up just as lucy leaves the vault • "i do this shit for the love of the game" he's a character, he's playing a character, real theatre kid • hence why cooper is introduced as "the ghoul", cooper is long gone • "us cowpokes, we take it as it comes" something about this lineee

[candiid-caniine]

im sorry this is a silly question, but what does it mean to be clicker trained? i haven’t been able to find a good answer but it seems hot (although i think everything’s hot tbh)

okie so pls prepare for autistic infodumping on psych and hypnokink below/

so. clicker training is often used for dogs and sometimes cats; basically, you're clicking the clicker every time you give them a treat. eventually, the animal becomes conditioned to associate the clicker with the dopamine rush of being rewarded! that's how it's used on animals. but the overarching concept is (afaik) a form of Pavlovian conditioning.

Pavlov (at least partly) got famous for an experiment where he conditioned dogs to associate the sound of a bell with getting food. eventually, anytime they heard the bell, they started to salivate.

why am i talking about animals? that's weird right? well the truth is that humans work basically the same (tho ofc our minds are more complex): over time, we are trained to associate certain stimuli with certain things. if you listen to the same song every time you go to sleep, eventually that song will always make you sleepy; our brains love repetition. it makes things predictable and orderly, giving us clear signals that help us navigate the world.

now...obviously...conditioning also has its applications to kink ;)

im a simple creature: im *stupidly* easy to condition, esp if i'm being intentional about it. most of the time it happens accidentally tho. here are some examples in my life:

i'm so conditioned to associate a collar with subspace that even touching my neck gets me wet. having the side of my neck sucked on immediately makes me go limp. when i noticed it happening passively, i vocalized it, strengthening the connection by intentionally "noticing" it every time it happened. it has only gotten stronger with time >.>

i also ended up accidentally being able to cum on command. once (i repeat: once) i was super worked up in between changing positions and i blurted out, "if you told me to cum right now i think i could" and owner said "cum for me" and...just like that, i fkn cum on command now. it's been that way for 4-ish years.

now...conditioning, esp when it's accidental, is an inexact science lol. i started getting more into denial. that fact, combined with the fact that i cum on command, eventually turned into *only* cumming on command. this was mostly coincidental: when owner and i moved in together, the only times i'd ever cum were when they were home, usually having sex/playing with me, and would command me. my brain turned that into an inability to cum *without* command. again, once i noticed it, i vocalized it, got intentional about recognizing it mentally, and it has only strengthened over time.

now: clicker training. theoretically, any effect you want (within reason) can be conditioned with enough consistent training. you could clicker train a person to feel sleepy at the sound of the clicker by using it when they're going to sleep. you could tie it to basically anything that isn't too complex, probably.

in my case, the goal is for me to hit the edge every time the clicker's pressed, so i've been clicking the clicker every time i hit the edge.

theory: eventually, my body will be so conditioned to think "click = edge" that i won't need to be touching when it happens.

theory: to really make this stronger, i need to get close to the edge, then use the clicker to get "there." stepping back further and further from the edge until, even if i'm idle, not turned on, or doing something else, clicker = edge, instantly.

here are the effects so far:

i'm not at the point where click = edge when i'm idle, yet, but the clicker does = a powerful clench of my cunt lmao...body's still getting on board.

*imagining* the clicker sound also prompts this effect, but a little less strong. HOWEVER...

suddenly, mysteriously, if i imagine and concentrate really hard on the way my body feels at the edge, i edge mentally.

this takes some concentration. curiously, it also makes me feel like i'm about to squirt; don't know what that's about.

why is this happening? because conditioning a human being is an inexact science. it's messy; the brain is very involved. so, in theory:

because i concentrate intentionally on the idea that click = edge, every time i edge and use the clicker, i'm also concentrating on my body.

concentrating on the feeling as i get closer to the edge. thinking, intentionally, "this is how i'll feel whenever i click this button."

so consequently, in the background, my body/brain is learning that "concentrate on how edging feels = you're edging now, fucko."

in conclusion: ymmv. my theory is that this kind of conscious conditioning method would be less messy and more precise if used with well-practiced, methodical, and specific hypnotism to strengthen and simplify the connections...but for the moment, i'm enjoying the chaos. i do like feeling powerless lol.

[richierambles]

More to the plural cartman batshit theory because I'm still thinking about it

I know it's not normal to have my brain so consumed by something that started as a fucking shitpost but pls bear with me

Disclaimer this is still a batshit theory and not rly that serious even tho I'm lowkey obsessing with it lmao

The Cartman System (i need to give them a name 💀): Alters List

Hitler: LMAO WAYS TO START IG- but listen up. It's one of the most obvious alters ever. Like, if they're a system, I'm 100% sure they have a Hitler factive. Probably he gets front triggered when he's gotta act more commanding and stuff - like in The Passion episode (extremely obvious), or when they "become a ginger". He also hates Kyle more than anyone in their system, for obvious reasons 💀 (I don't support antisemitism in any way!!)

Hosts: yes, I mean hosts, in plural. I feel like in the first few seasons they only had 1 host, but he was also slowly splitting, until in Kenny Dies he finally split in 2 to cope with it. One of the hosts (calling him A) is more emotional, kinda like a normal(ish?) 8-9yo, meanwhile the other one (B) is the manipulative asshole we know Cartman as. Moments in which I think A fronted would be when Kenny was in the hospital, saying he was his best friend and crying on Kyle's shoulder - B most likely had 0 control over it. Also, I'd like to believe A did want to use the fetuses to save Kenny, but seeing he was too late, B switched in to not be seen as emotionally weak. Usually they're both fronting together, but B definitely has much more control than A most of the time.

Jenniffer Lopez: another alter whose existence I'm pretty sure about. One of the first times she fronted was in s7 e5, and it started by her cofronting with both A and B (mainly B). But eventually B left front, leaving A alone with her. A is kinda a wreck so he was sincere when asking their friends for help, but as the end of the episode arrived, B fronted again triggering A and Jenniffer out, and acted like it all was an act and not serious. Jenniffer is also the one who wears drag confidently af- such as in the Make Bullying Kill Itself song.

Little(s): I'm 99% sure cartman's system has at least 1 little, if not more. I feel like one of the times in which we see them front is in Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut, when Cartman's doing a tea party with his stuffed animals. They're also the ones who play most with said stuffies - when most of the others are playing, they're actually communicating with each other in a more socially acceptable way (because cmon it's more normal to talk to your stuffies out loud than to yourself, mainly if you're 8-9yo)

By the way, I'm still by the beginning s10 so this will be improved as I watch more episodes :)

[zenjestrr]

tagged by @crepsley blame them

Xabaal Thorne Age: 32 1. Where in Thedas is your Rook from? The Anderfels 2. What is your character's alignment? Chaotic good (all Rooks are chaotic good, we don't have options to deviate from that) 3. Race & Class? Qunari Mage (Evoker) 4. If your Rook was a companion, where would they be found? probably Hossberg Wetlands 5. What emotion did they usually pick? almost always picked the bottom-right serious option 6. What companion are they platonically close with? Davrin & Emmrich 7. Romantically close with? Neve 8. Who are they suspicious of? the Trevisan mayor cuz you can see his betrayal from a million miles away. a victim of this game's bad writing tbh because in any other context he'd be 100% correct. the Crows should not be in charge of a nation but because Veilguard's writing quality is....not great he got turned into a Saturday morning cartoon villain 9. Does your Rook get along with their chosen Faction? with the average grunts? yes with leadership? lmao no 10. Are they proficient in playing any instruments? yes, the horn (mainly because I can play the french horn but also for haha funny funny big horned man can play horn) 11. Weapon of choice? staff. I thought I'd be using the knife + orb before the game came out cuz it was the new option but the staff was more consistent for my playstyle. I only ever used the knife vs qunari since my most powerful orb was necrotic and for some reason the Antaam are weak to necrotic (which doesn't make sense since necrotic is treated like poison in this game and qunari are naturally resistant to poison. it's how they can wear literal poison paint as armor) 12. What is their orientation? straight 13. What are their thoughts on killing? Is it a necessary evil or do they enjoy it? Last resort tool but doesn't feel bad about it if it gets to that point. 14. What hobbies does your Rook have? Rook is framed as the foil to Solas and Solas likes to paint so fuck it we paint now 15. What NPCs do they like? Which ones do they dislike? Like - Vorgoth, Evka & Antoine Dislike - the obvious NPCs that are designed to be hated like Avenci, the Venatori nepo baby, the Dragon King cuz he's such a nothingburger, etc. 16. Do they have a favorite creature in Thedas? those weird alligator things that hide underground when you get close 17. Do they enjoy life as an adventurer? yes because any excuse to use magic is great 18. What would your Rook be doing if they weren't recruited by Varric? doing Warden stuff 19. How do you think they'll meet their end? pre-AMA I would've said the Calling but apparently Epler said that the blight is no longer lethal now that the Evanuris are dead and the Veil is completely fixed so...yea 20. Would they side with Solas or fight him? I mean...we're always forced to go against him. we just pick the flavor of opposition but we literally cannot side with him 21. What is your Rook's favorite ability? Entropic Sphere.

22. What languages is your character fluent in? Common + whatever they speak in The Anderfels (you'd imagine it'd be fantasy German like how Orlesian is fantasy French but Veilguard did a shit job of depicting accents and language) + can understand Qunlat perfectly but is very very clearly not a native speaker since they learned it from their parents and not from living in Seheron or Par Vollen 23. What do they do after an absolute crisis? Same tactic I employ for myself in real life: bottle it up, put it away and ignore it, try to solve the issue or accept the situation. eventually the bottle gets stuffed too much it breaks and then there's a catastrophic emotional explosion which burns 14 bridges and ends 3 friendships permanently (this is totally a healthy and intelligent way to handle things) 24. Does your character believe in an afterlife? No 25. What specialization best represents your Rook? Evoker. if this game ran like Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2, I would've dual specc'd into Evoker and Death Caller 26. What animal best represents your Rook? honestly, a gorilla. fucking huge and intimidating, incredibly athletic, can tear your face off but is very gentle and very intelligent 27. What was their life like before the events of Veilguard? born to a Tal-Vashoth father and a Vashoth mother. magic manifested in his mid-teens and I headcanon that the Grey Wardens of The Anderfels is similar to the US military in the sense that they bait conscripts by paying for people's education and giving them a stipend to send home. So to avoid going to a Circle, he signed up with the Wardens to get magical training that way. 28. Is your character the de facto leader of the party? Or do they consider someone else as the leader? every Rook is the de facto leader but honestly Harding should be the leader. she has a decade more experience than Rook and already has leadership experience (she's squad leader to the Inquisition scouts). they wrote Harding in this game to be this naive little church girl but that's not what she gave off in Inquisition. 29. If you could choose a different faction for your Rook, which would they have joined and why? Mourn Watch. meta reason, it's the only other faction that has content and reactivity on par with the Wardens (rip Lords of Fortune enjoyers you got crumbs). but as a character, my dude is genuinely fascinated by Nevarran culture and the undead 30. What's your favorite thing about your Rook? I'm gonna be so for real, Rook is my least favorite Dragon Age protagonist (not worst BioWare protag tho, rip Ryder). I don't hate Rook but I dislike how limited we are in how we can choose who they are as a character: we're always forced to be a kind junior manager that watched too many therapy tiktoks. but my favorite thing about my Rook is honestly his looks. I think this guy is, aesthetically, my favorite PC I've ever made in an RPG.

-------------------- tagging @shepardcommander and @bellaralutare. no pressure if you don't want to. anyone else is free to join in

[lincolndjarin]

The BKS Screen Adaptation ˖⁺‧₊˚✦

(aka the really fucking dorky thing i've wanted to do for ages.)

if you like Best Kept Secret and you've wanted to know what i imagine in my mind when i write this is the post for you. i put way too much time into this if i'm being honest, but it was so much fun i hope others enjoy it!!

includes fun things like hypothetical casting and soundtrack !!

SPOILERS FOR BEST KEPT SECRET CHAPTERS 1-25

ever since i started writing Best Kept Secret it's helped me tremendously to imagine it in more of a cinematic sense. i love movies. i love all of it, the cinematography, the soundtracks, the casting, all of it has always greatly interested me. so that's how i've always pictured bks in my head, as a movie, or more appropriately a single season of television lmao. anyhow, i've been feeling real fucking fried lately and i just started a proper schedule with my meds so i'm exhausted and i wanted to take a short break from writing to put this together, (more writing) this is long and self indulgent but i had a lot of fun with it so who cares i guess.

The Media Source :

in all honesty i think bks probably wouldn't work as a movie? this might just be the entitled author in me speaking but there is just like, so much stuff? i feel like it wouldn't be properly represented in the 90-150 minute format because there's just too much shit happening. ALSO i write my chapters the way i write my DND sessions, meaning they typically have a prominent ending point that i think translates best in a show format so i'll be presenting this as more of an Max original type beat, 13 episodes ranging from like 50 minutes to 90 in length. (pretty hefty but this is my hypothetical world where i get whatever i want lmao)

The Casting :

bks has a fair amount of original characters that all exist in my brain and in said brain i visually know what they look like and in y'alls brains you have an idea what they look like. like lowkey if i'm being real in my brain space bks is sort of animated? like in the style of arcane sort of lmao, so i don't really have physical manifestations of them but i have always had actors in mind of who i imagine would play them so here's that.

Leodall :

i mean if this is my dream hypothetical and i can do whatever i want i think it would be hilarious but also relevant to cast someone sort of silly as leo.

i think that it's important that leo is a little rat bitch by the end but also like he should be just sort of a clumsy disarming guy to start. i get a couple different vibes but like lowkey hear me out.

Jack Quaid??

like he's sort of just a lanky silly guy but also is capable of doing terrible things, i think he'd be a great leo and would also he'd be able to be disarming and likable at the start. just sort of harmless and nervous (until he isn't)

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Lysa :

honestly the hardest person to cast. i love her dearly because in my brain she's done way more than she's done in bks lmao and it's hard for me to seperate that sometimes but i thought about it for a while and i settled on someone who i think would capture Lysa as i imagine her in my mind.

Stephanie Beatriz :

she's visually how i imagine Lysa but also i love her so i think she'd be great.

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Elaine :

this one has always been a no brainer to me. i'd want an actress who is instantly likable and capable of bringing a character that i've grown very fond of to life. there has only ever been one person that comes to mind when i picture someone playing Elaine.

the mother herself : T'Nia Miller

Elaine & Lysa have been sort of wishy washy in description for two reasons, one being that as the story has progressed and they've developed they've become clearer in my mind, two being that there is so much bks and posting something this big chapter by chapter means sometimes i forget what i've previously said (nobodies perfect lmao) but personally T'Nia Miller is one of my favorite actresses and i think she would 100% do Elaine justice.

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Kodo :

this has always been a tough one for me. this is kind of wild but when i started bks i never intended to kodo to be downright evil (idk if i've ever said that before but it's true lmao) i originally intended for him to be more of a harmless idiot? the plot was going to revolve more so around how princess had a lot of internal battles about cheating on a husband who was neglectful at the worst of times but still absolutely harmless.

i realized pretty quickly how much of a fucking bummer that was LMAO. it's hard to write a hot sex scene when the main characters internal monologue is full of guilt, so i VERY quickly made the switch, and it was definitely the right choice, the story needed a villain and i needed to give Kodo some sort of depth so it fell into place pretty quickly. i was also rewatching game of thrones around this time so, surprise surprise, i bet you can guess who i was inspired by. that being said, i don't think Jack Gleeson is the right choice for this role, first off bc that guy should never play a villain again lmao, get him a fucking romcom or something, but also because if i could pick anyone in this hypothetical situation i would pick an actor that is relatively beloved.

kodo is supposed to be really fucking hot (unfortunately) princess isn't interested in him because he's an ass but he's supposed to be pretty attractive, but also at the end of the say he's a prince. like we know he sucks but i would want to cast someone that lowers an audiences expectations and makes them think that he's gonna be chill at first. if you've seen the movie Promising Young Woman (if you haven't drop everything and watch it rn) they do something that i fucking adore, which is casting men that are liked, Bo Burnham, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Max Greenfield, etc. to lower the audiences guards. that movie is jarring for several reasons but i myself fell prey to the casting, i was comforted by actors who i loved and felt a personal pang of betrayal. (great fucking movie, cannot stress this enough)

two actors come to mind for this role, one more than the other but i'm still fond of both.

one choice being : Nicholas Hoult

the only thing that i don't love about this is that it would be a bit repetitive, we've already seen him in the terrible husband role lmao, but it would be fun to see him be far less redeemable than his character in The Great lol. but also he's fucking phenomenal, there's no doubt in my mind that he would be able to capture the character.

my second choice is gonna be a huge hear me out. like some of y'all are about to be real mad at me but fucking- just give me a second to explain i swear there's a vision here.

my second and preferred choice would be : Josh Hutcherson

listen listen listen. i adore him. actually my pookie bear ^^

which is exactly why he's fucking perfect??

people who don't know the source material are lulled into a false sense of safety bc he's just a little guy, he's just a silly little guy. and if you do know the source material you're like is that fucking peeta?? did they make kodo cool as hell?? no they did not. they just wrapped him up in a pretty package.

i'm saying lets get this man back to blonde and let him let his acting chops loose, i think he's perfectly capable of playing the nightmare that is kodo harand and i think he's the best choice like let him be evil.

pretty boys can be evil as a treat.

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Din Djarin :

i mean, come on, we all know who's being put in this role.

Pedrito :

he's din djarin don't tell me otherwise. this era pedro ^^ is bks din like i didn't make starwars but i did make bks and this is canon bks din lmao.

but also like whatever they put in his pedro juice when he was doing plays? i'd get him some of that for this.

˖⁺‧₊˚✦

Princess :

this is all in my self indulgent fantasy right? then yeah i suppose i'll play the princess, pull a lin manuel miranda and step up, i was in into the woods in highschool so i've got plenty of experience.

in all seriousness i would cast someone who sort of reminds me of myself, i would be lying if i didn't write her as a vague reflection of myself. i haven't really written a reader like that other than her, she's special to me so in a screen adaptation i would want to be sure that she's done justice.

the obvious choice to me is Stephanie Hsu :

she's a princess, idc. absolutely fucking phenomenal actress (robbed of her oscar btw) and i think that she would be perfect also cause like please cast asian women in things where their entire character isn't built around the fact that they're asian, let them have a character unrelated to that fact PLEASE. she's gorgeous, talented, and charming like she's my bks princess, always has been, anytime i've fancasted bks in my head she's my leading lady.

but also there is a second option that comes to mind which would be the lovely : Simone Ashley

i haven't been shy about how bridgerton inspired bks. she's the love of my life, another actress where i see her and i'm just like yeah she's a princess, it's a no brainer like that could very well be bks princess.

The Plot ( things i'd add, keep, or remove ) :

i'd keep most things the same, obviously i'd cut certain things to properly fill the available time

i would go full hbo max privilege, i want steamy fucking sex scenes, the sex is important to the story like let's be real. some of dins growth is shown through sex, the way he goes from being completely in control of things to being more willing to be vulnerable?? that shits important.

i would def add a lysa and elaine plot, they would have a side plot

there isn't really much i'd cut, if anything i'd cut the blowjob in chapter seven lmaoo, just bc that's the only thing i've ever considered changing in the story just bc it's always felt unnatural to me.

The Episodes :

this section is gonna cover how i would present each episode and also what chapters would be featured in each episode.

also just as a general creative choice i think princess would lowkey be fleabag lmao. like she def talks to the audience cause she's a little silly but also bc her internal monologue is written to be a little funny

Episode One :

chapter one

chapter two

i think this episode would follow the source material well. i actually really like the first couple of chapters of bks, i think they were a good hook for the story so i would keep things similar to how they're written.

Episode Two :

chapter three

chapter four

same as episode one ^

Episode Three :

chapter five

this would be the din episode, instead of princess talking to the audience i like to think just for this episode he would instead. also i have sort of a specific vision for this.

it's canon that bks din is relatively hard of hearing so i would want this episode to open on him getting ready in his cabin before doing all the flashbacks of his point of view of everything. he's not wearing his helmet for the first few minutes while a song plays and he cuts his own hair, his face is never visible in the shot.

everything else stays the same

this is where i get dorky.

dins internal monologue will convey something that i'm not sure i've properly gotten across in bks LMAO but i've always written a din who feels naked in front of princess and not in a sexy way but in an emotional way. he always feels as if she can see through his helmet and it makes him real fucking nervous around her lmao.

so like lowkey hypothetical ending shot is from out in the hall, princess inviting him in and from behind he isn't wearing his helmet bc metaphors.

Episode Four :

chapter six

chapter seven

chapter eight

i think the focus here would be six and eight tbh, if i'm being honest the rules were supposed to be way more important than they ended up being lmaooo, i just went in a different direction with it so i would maybe change that to something else. the book is still important for chapter 25 so maybe like a contract or something that they both sign.

Episode Five :

chapter nine

chapter ten

chapter eleven

yeah i mean this is me being unoriginal but like if it aint broke don't fix it so like i'd keep a lot of stuff relatively the same

Episode Six :

chapter twelve

chapter thirteen

chapter fourteen

^^ same here

Episode Seven :

chapter fifteen

chapter sixteen

i think that the ending spot would be different here than in the source material, the chapter ends with din asking her to come to the cabin but i think instead i would just end with the kiss and open the next one with the cabin convo

Episode Eight :

chapter seventeen

chapter eighteen

chapter nineteen

this is like the anti angst episode, these chapters should be all relationship building up until the chapter nineteen sex scene which i would want rather tastefully done but still filthy. that's sort of the tagline of this hypothetical show, tasteful and filthy

Episode Nine :

chapter twenty

chapter twenty one

another anti angst chapter except this one has a big bad ending so yknow, big dramatic ending, i honestly think there is no need for 'tasteful' violence. like this should be extremely jarring, like din has been protective to a fault but this is like straight up mandalorian possessive rage like fr get his ass yknow? lets see that blood

Episode Ten :

chapter twenty two

chapter twenty three

chapter twenty four

this would probably be the longest ep in my opinion. twenty two is real fucking hefty but also the lunar markets is gonna be the big surprise set piece i want that shit to be gorgeous like i imagine it being so fucking twinkly and delightful

Episode Eleven :

chapter twenty five

lets keep this one straight from the source material, like just use the chapter as a script yknow?

Episode Twelve :

chapter twenty six

chapter twenty seven

i can't say anything about this because it's not technically written yet lmao

Episode Thirteen :

chapter twenty eight

chapter twenty nine

same here ^

The Soundtrack :

music is important. we wouldn't have bks at all without music because it was music that inspired me to write in the first place and it's helped the story along since then, every time i get stuck on something plot wise i play music until something clicks. it's always been the secret ingredient for my writing so it would be extremely important to a screen adaptation.

i think it would be fun to have each episode end with a smash cut to the credits with music, i've always been a big fan of that so this section contains music that i'd use for specific scenes but also what song i would want playing at the end.

Episode One :

end this ep with :

I Can See You (Taylor's Version)

i mean it's a little on the nose but this is lowkey bks anthem so i think it's a solid choice for the ep one ending also it's always fun to end on a pop song yknow?

˖⁺‧₊˚✦

Episode Two :

end this ep with :

Honeymoon - Lana Del Rey

another bks anthem, like listen to the lyrics it's crazy, and i think based on the ending of chapter four this would be an appropriate ending song

˖⁺‧₊˚✦

Episode Three :

Losing My Religion - R.E.M.

this would be the opening of the episode. din never facing the camera and he would get ready for his day while this plays

end this ep with :

Not Strong Enough - boygenius

this is def his ending song like bks din would cry if he heard this song.

˖⁺‧₊˚✦

Episode Four :

end this ep with :

See You Again (feat. Kali Uchis) - Tyler, The Creator

this is one of those ones where i'm just sort of like hell yeah. in my minds eye this works, there is a visual here like trust.

˖⁺‧₊˚✦

Episode Five :

end this ep with :

I'm Your Man - Mitski

mitski is another artist that bks!din would listen to in his cabin while he cries like this is def how he's feeling at the end of chapter eleven

˖⁺‧₊˚✦

Episode Six :

end this ep with :

Saturn - Sleeping At Last

with where this one ends i think that something sort of soft is important, a solid instrumental works well here

˖⁺‧₊˚✦

Episode Seven :

end this ep with :

Starboy - Vitamin String Quartet

i wanted something a little more upbeat but also sort of on theme and i think this is extremely accurate.

˖⁺‧₊˚✦

Episode Eight :

Religion - Lana Del Rey

this is the sex song.

like this is and always has been the song that plays when they have sex without his helmet one for the first time, i consider that to be the first time he's really din with her during sex and this song is straight heat so of course this is what plays during that scene.

end this ep with :

Electric Love - BØRNS

i mean it's a little cheesy but i think it's fun and this episode ends in a happy place so it's neat to have a happy song refecting that yknow?

˖⁺‧₊˚✦

Episode Nine :

Like Real People Do - Hozier

i mean, this is the song that inspired the chapters featured in this episode, it's an important song because a lot of bks later on revolves around the need for normalcy, these two just want to love each other like real people

end this ep with :

I Fought the Law - The Clash

i mean like, this is a bit silly but also like i love when a show ends in a dark spot and a hilarious upbeat song plays, like, i eat it up every time and i think this is just so fun lmao like he fr fought the law (im hilarious)

˖⁺‧₊˚✦

Episode Ten :

end this ep with :

Lover - Taylor Swift

sort of a calm before the storm song, relaxing ass song before all hell breaks lose in the next episode yknow?

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Episode Eleven :

The Secret History - Kerry Muzzey, The Chamber Orchestra of London

this is our searching for din song. long ass sequence, def longer than it is in the chapter lmao

end this ep with :

Borderline - Tame Impala

god i fucking love this song

but also i feel as though this song has a sense of dread to it that i think is perfect for the way chapter twenty five ends

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Episode Twelve :

this is a hard one to pick definitive music to, there's a lot of music that is relevant to the chapters featured in this episode so here's just like, a cluster of music that i think would be relevant

Skyfall - Adele

The Night We Met - Lord Huron

Eleanor Rigby - Cody Fry

Fourth of July - Sufjan Stevens

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Episode Thirteen :

My Love Mine All Mine - Mitski

i obviously can't say what this would be in reference to but the last technical scene of bks would end with this song. i think the epilouge would have different music

Flightless Bird, American Mouth - Iron & Wine

i kinda sorta think that the epilogue could be crammed into a montage that could just be a post credit scene to this song.

that's all, if anyone actually read all of this i will kiss you fr like you're crazy for that and i love you.

if you write fic this was so fun?? like i really do recommend doing this or like a less extreme version of this lol i've been trying to force myself to take a little break from writing but i couldn't think of anything else to do so i did this haha

[cy-cyborg]

Ok so the saga with my old PC continues and is only fueling my desire to get back into fanfiction lol because I found all of the files from my attempt at making a legend of spyro fan-game! I honestly thought they were lost, I'm so excited to see all this stuff again! This was the "logo" for the game (I know its nearly unreadable lol, so it says "The Legend of Cynder, Shadows of The Past". 14/15 year old me didn't seem to care much for readability, I think I'd just discovered photoshop's layer effects lol)

Here's a bunch of random stuff I found.

I'm defiantly going to do a redraw of that last one at some point. That was like, THE thing I remember being super proud of when I first did it. I think it was going to be part of the trailer my now-partner was putting together for the game lol.

Actually, a lot of these were actually just frames from animations, but either the files are either just corrupted, or high school me didn't know how to set fps and resolution properly in the output so I got a headache trying to watch them lol. It's probably the second one honestly. Also I remember my old laptop wasn't able to play back the animation because it would lag so much, so I just had to kind of...guess at timing, and that went about as well as you'd expect. It didn't help that blender used to have this bug where your audio would move around your timeline so it really was just random guessing. I'm amazed anything got done at all, let alone how far we actually got (that is to say, not far at all but we had something playable at least).

I also found the demo files and footage of the "game" running (running at 12fps but running)! I'm curious if they still work, I'll have to download an older version of blender to test them out!

There's actually a lot more but actually finding it is proving to be quite a challenge since this laptop seems to be the digital equivalent of an ADHD "doom box" - meaning nothing is sorted into folders that make even a remote lick of sense to me, it's all just kind of thrown in together lmao.

I wanted to post these though because even though I don't really do 3D stuff anymore, It still made me really happy to see how much progress I've made over the years and how far I've come. Also a few folks who worked on this project with me back on Deviantart have started finding me lol, so in case there's anyone else out there, hello! I'm not dead, I'm still around, I'm just a lot more (openly) queer now lmao.

Image descriptions:

[ID 1: A game title that reads "The Legend of Cynder, Shadows of the Past". The two lines, "the legend of" and "shadows of the past" are written in dark purple text. The purple material is supposed to look like liquid, but instead just looks hard to read. "Cynder" is writen in black, 3D text with red outlines, with the exception of the C. The "c" is modeled as a black tube instead of in a blocky style like the rest of the letters. The inside of the C has a red underbelly, and the bottom of the C ends in a tail, resembling Cynder's from the Legend of Spyro Series. There are 3 white spikes at the top of the C. /end ID]

[ID 2: a 3d render of 4 dragons around a christmas tree. A black dragon at the front, Cynder, is using her tail to hang tinsel, a pruple dragon, Spyro, on the left is reaching up into the branches of the tree. A blue dragon, Ignitus, is hovering behind the tree, his paws outstretched, implying he is placing the glowing star at the top. On his head is a silver dragon, Zerali, balancing on his horns. behind them is a series of floating islands. /End ID]

[ID 3: A render of Cynder with a darker colour pallet than the previous image and glowing yellow eyes, snarling at the camera, guarding a black gem. The sky in the background is blood red and the terrain is flat and barren. /End ID]

[ID 4: A render of an incomplete model of Terrador, a green dragon with brown horns and rocky shoulder decorations. He has no underbelly or wings. /end ID]

[ID 5: A render of a fan character named ekkosel, a blue, anthropomorphic dragonfly with an unsettling, uncanny face and green wings, T-posing. Her green wings are a blur /End ID]

[ID 6: two sketches of a anthropomorphic cheetah heads. One has long ears like a lynx and is labeled DotD design, the other has small, rounded ears like a cheetah usually has, labled TLoC design. /end ID]

[ID 7: A render of Zerali, the silver dragon from the second image, and ekkosel, from the 5th, playing together. In this image, we can see Zerali has a pinky-purple underbelly and shiny gold horns.]

[ID 8: A rendered scene showing a close up of blue ignitus with his eyes closed. He appears to be talking to Cynder, who is in the background, but blurry. The game's logo is visible in the bottom left of the image. /end ID]

[makeste]

Friday Update Post

I said I'd post updates on Fridays and I'm sticking to that, goddammit. even if there aren't any actual updates to report on! as is the case today. haven't read any new chapters since 385, but I'll probably do another mini marathon tonight, and then hopefully read some more over the weekend. I want to get as caught up as possible before the manga resumes next week, especially since it feels like we're getting closer and closer to endgame-for-reals territory.

also I did watch the new season 7 teaser trailer that just dropped, and was thoroughly whelmed, lol. not that it looks bad or anything! they just seem to be playing their cards really close to their chest in terms of not showing too much ahead of time. just a bunch of shots of characters standing around and looking really grim lmao. it was great to see S&S though. and I enjoyed the LOV focus of the trailer. I think it does a good job of setting the stage for everything to come.

still very curious how they're going to approach this season! I genuinely don't think there's enough content for a full 25-episode season, so I'm wondering if they'll maybe do a half season this time around. in which case I assume they'll want to end things on a cliffhanger in lieu of a more natural stopping point, but that doesn't really narrow things down a whole lot because basically every single chapter in the final war arc is a cliffhanger lol. so yeah, very curious. definitely hyped to see all this stuff finally get animated though. gonna be hard to wait till May.

[wolverinedoctorwho]

Gonna ramble about my thoughts on Ghost Trick below the cut, spoiler warning if you decide to read!

I really love the animations in this game, and how some of them are really thought-out. The one that comes to mind first is Lynne carrying Kamilla in the submarine, where you can see how Lynne adjusts her grip to carry the kid one handed while holding out the flashlight. There's so much personality visible in each character and it brings them to life really well.

I also really liked how everyone in this game owns up to their mistakes and calls out their own recklessness, particularly Cabanela and Jowd. They acknowledge that the incident with Yomiel was caused by their inexperience and carelessness, and that was really cool to see two police officer characters do.

The 3D-esque artstyle was interesting, especially for a DS title. There were a few places where it fell (pardon the pun) kind of flat, like in the scene with Jowd in the submarine. Because the scenes are 2D it's hard to convey distance, so when characters stand in front of one another it piles up and looks awkward. Also you could see the textures on Jowd's prison jacket swap around when he turns, so that was odd.

The only character whose vibe I didn't quite understand was Cabanela's - is he supposed to be in a relationship with Lynne? Sometimes it felt like the game was implying they were a couple and sometimes it just felt like a mentorship. It was weird.

The controls... I played the Switch port, so everything was joysticks and buttons, and moving from place to place stopped feeling fun and fluid about half way through the game. It felt like once Missile showed up they artificially limited Sissel's movement. Even with Missile's increased range, moving got sticky sometimes because you can't move between objects that are the same shape, you can only swap them. I also found things like people got in the way a lot. Getting used to using Missile's powers was also tricky, and I really wish it hadn't been implemented during that park mission where there's a lot of quick things you gotta do. The number of times I fucked that level up because I hit the wrong button in the moment...

I also found some of the puzzles sort of convoluted, but that's probably just me. There were some puzzles where I had the right idea and if I'd pushed a little farther I could have figured it out, there were some puzzles where I was thinking in the right direction but was missing a step, and then there were puzzles where I looked at the walkthrough and went "and how the HELL was I supposed to figure THAT out?"

Speaking of, the twist ending felt unnecessary. I don't think we gained anything from Ray being Missile, and Sissel being a cat felt really cheap. I would have been happier with some bullshit "oh it's Yomiel from another universe" explanation. The second that kitten appeared in the flashback I said "oh, we're the fucking cat?". I think if there had been hints at the twist throughout the game other than just repeating over and over that Sissel isn't the man in red, or if we had seen the cat more often, it would have felt less random and thrown in. I would have been satisfied with Ray just being a mysterious spirit, too.

There were some questions the ending left me with that I think the game tried to answer but I didn't quite get. The biggest one is, are Yomiel and Sissel the only ones who remember the events of the game? Do the others keep their memories as well? If so, when do they kick in? Was Kamilla born knowing about her death in another timeline?

One other small thing I liked, to cap off - in the new future epilogue, the two spies from the restaurant just straight up die lmao

Overall a fun game! I originally played the demo on the DS back when the Wii still offered freebie demos like that and I'm glad I was finally able to play it. For a game of its age it held up quite well!

[bonecaffeine]

hullo! I hope you're doing good <3 i've never usually cared much for matchups but i've fallen in love with the Touchstarved characters. i think the wait is far too long and so i decided to indulge myself heh my description: Pronouns: she/her Name: Lillian (Nickname: Lily) Romantic matchup Physical features: shoulder-length wavy, dark hair that always looks like a mess and deep brown eyes, tan skin, 5'2 (unfortunately) Hobbies: reading, writing, art, video games, working out, cooking, building stuff, collecting random things, Likes: animals, music, films, photography, travelling, architecture, martial arts, sports (mainly football), spicy foods, sweets!! (its an obsession), anything horror and sci-fi, playing in the rain/snow, playfighting, nature, the beach, tattoos, piercings, jackets. i'm a HUGE science nerd, esp when it comes to physics and bio. i love math and history too. also i've had this obsession with the colour blue since i could remember. Dislikes: insects, country music, silence, hot weather, bad listeners, constant lying, geography Random facts: My top love languages are definitely physical affection, quality time and acts of service. I've always been a stubborn picky eater despite my family trying to kill that habit. My music preferences are a mix of metal, rock, indie and pop. it really varies based on my mood. i love listening to classical music as well. I can be quite clumsy most of the time but it helped me develop quick reflexes, i don't actually end up causing a mess often (thank god or i'd be dead). i do get a ton of small injuries though. My recklessness is usually calculated, so don't be worried if i jump off the roof :) (i'm an adrenaline junkie, i can't help it) I do a bit of calisthenics because i'm trying to improve on my core strength and parkour skills. I can be really directionless most of the time because my memory is frankly embarrassingly poor, which means i get lost easily. I'm an ambivert who fluctuates between loving people with my bleeding heart and hating (almost) everyone. i tend to yap a lot. i love intense discussions about anything and everything. it's fun to bicker and tease. I'm overly dramatic and sassy. I like being in charge but wouldn't mind someone else having the reigns for a change. I'm really protective and loyal once i become fond of someone. I'm used to being the one to take care of others, i like to spoil my people. I have this habit of giving a personalized nickname to anyone i'm close to. Once i get attached, i'm real clingy. I try to help out whenever i can, even at my own expense, but i'm working on it. It's really hard for me to open up about my issues and talk about my feelings; i prefer cracking jokes or distractions. I tend to feel cold often, esp my hands and feet. Most of the time my muscles are usually sore. I struggle with sleep and my appetite is kind of inconsistent. I don't get unnerved easily by blood, gore, etc and can watch literally anything with a straight face. My top aesthetic is grunge or dark academia probably.

Thank you for reading all of this lmao <3 I'm so excited to see what you come up with!

Hii, I'm doing well, thanks!^^ here's your matchup!

☆ romantic matchup

☆ tw - none!

...

*Drum roll please* I match you with Ais!

The similiarities between your life styles are so so apparent! Just like you, Ais also lives for a fun challenge and for the feeling of an adrenaline rush. It's fairly obvious by Ais's body type that he's athletic, so he would have no trouble keeping up with your need for adventure, whether that be via sports or doing something daring. I see Ais enjoying martial arts and calisthenics too, and he'd be absolutely down to learn those skills with you!

Additionally, I think that Ais has a high tolerance for spicy food so he'll challenge you to eat a bunch of very spicy food with him as a fun game.

You two also share a liking for animals! He'll be so happy if you share the same interest in keeping soulless as pets, and he'll gladly let you petsit his own soulless when he is busy.

While Ais is an avid yapper himself, sometimes it feels nice to sit back and listen to someone else talk instead. He'll listen to you as intently as he can and if that turns into a fiery debate, then so be it! As stated earlier, Ais loves a good challenge, and he'll try using his wit to win the upperhand in a discussion like the smartass he is. Ais does it because he just loves watching your dramatic reactions! This type of playful teasing appears very often in your relationship.

If you ask about his tattoo, he'll gladly tell you the meaning or the reason he got it. He'll even encourage you to touch it and will use his tattooed arm as an excuse to get closer to you, if only that's what you're comfortable with, of course!

Speaking about physical touch, it's definetly one of his top love languages! He's just not too big on PDA though, but he'll put an arm over your shoulders when you're sitting/walking somewhere. Other than that, he likes cuddling with you in private! He's definetly a big spoon and a comfortable one at that since he has quite a bit of mass.

I think that Ais has acts of service as his love language too, though it's a type of love language reserved for people closest to him, like you. He'll always have a favorite snack of yours somewhere in his pocket, will actively plan dates for you two to go on and will sometimes pick up peculiar trinkets for you to add to your random stuff collection.

Ais doesn't mind that you're a picky eater and won't try to get you to eat things that you really don't want. But if you want to try to eat something new, he'll try it with you!

When you joke about your own struggles and trauma Ais will humor you, but will also briefly remind you that you can talk to him about anything. Ais may not be a very serious guy, but he'll get serious when life calls for it!

...

I hope you enjoy it, Lily!! It may be a bit ooc, so I'm sorry about that!!

[melonteee]

Hi!! I've a question I've been wondering about and I thought I'd ask you because I think you're very smart...

It's a moment towards the end of Thriller Bark — Brook witnessed the entirety of "nothing happened" incident. Later, when he was playing the piano, he talked to Sanji about it for a little bit (ch 486). But then when he and Zoro sat together in the graveyard (ch 489), Brook thought about bringing that up, but ultimately decided against it... why do you think he kept quiet?

I thought he might have been eavesdropping on Sanji's convo with the 2 zombie dudes, but all I got is this small silhouette at the right edge of a panel (ch 486) that I can't even identify. The anime does not show it at all...!

Hello!

That's because Brook saw everything himself! He even says to Sanji that he saw it, and he was very moved by it! He tells Sanji because he wants to let Sanji know he thought what Sanji did was just as moving as what Zoro did, but Zoro HIMSELF hasn't told anyone what's actually happened. Brook probably picked up that, while he can talk to Sanji about it, Zoro would probably speak to Brook like 'nothing happened'. Because both Zoro and Sanji don't want the crew - specifically Luffy - to know what really happened.

In that moment Brook simply understood Zoro's feelings, and allowed Zoro to not have to worry about Brook maybe blabbing to everyone because he knows what really happened lmao. Brook is a very good friend!

[wolfwrenbrainrot]

i'm torn.

a few of the problems I had with the ahsoka show (vfx, too many cuts during fight scenes and in general, a rushed season finale) would be fixed if it was animated, but on the other hand we wouldn't have ivanna and natasha!!! if it was animated and they had the same dynamic, i'd probably still ship them 'cause im a sucker for sapphic enemies to lovers and i've always seen sabine as either lesbian or bisexual (nowadays im more inclined towards lesbian!sabine, but it makes no difference to me), buuut ivanna and natasha are the reason why I'm so obssessed with wolfwren. they played them soo well. also, eman esfandi and ray stevenson were great and seeing live action anakin is always a pleasure!! at the end, i'm satisfied.

another cool thing is that with live action more people can get to know the ghost crew and maybe some of them will get to experience the magic of wstching the clone wars and rebels for the first time. this is always a good thing, 'cause honestly both shows are the best star wars out there. even if i sometimes feel the urge to gatekeep lmao

and to my fellow wolfwrens, the set up for next season is promising!!! I don't know if Disney and Lucasfilm would allow it to happen happen but if it gets popular enough, we could at least get crumbles of a reluctant allies to friends to something implied!! (obviously I want them to be canon and get a happy ending, but lucasfilm isn't as progressive as it likes to paint itself and romance in star wars never end well, so I'm not optimistic)