#get the children off of the apps

[nyasialiveshere]

Exo Kai: Due West

heavily opinionated semi long post

Inspired by a genius post I saw on twt iykyk, I didn't wanna bother them they seemed stressed.

topic: Is Kai promoting in English and doing Western promotion activities pandering for Western validation?

(because he clearly never pandered to anyone before ever in the history of ever...it never happened... seriously. I don't believe he knows what pandering is actually.)

Simple Fact: TECHNICALLY..yes

Question: Is that a bad thing?

Opinion: It depends

Clarification : By western do you mean American? And by pandering do you actually mean worshipping Eurocentricity and it's machine of capitalism? That is a slippery topic, technically most kpop idols, such as Kai, are already modeling for European brands and not Asian or African etc. Plus they have fans constantly brag about said sponsorships that they do. Plus South Koreans and far east asians are top consumers of european luxury brands

so anti colonialism is an odd arguement to stand behind with a kpop pfp but okay.

Opinion: Look, If you have a precise plan and goal for promoting in America, creating a better bond with foreign audiences, expressing creativity, working with more diverse creatives, and touring in multiple different states and/or countries, solidify the artist's place in the realm of popular music while having a more freeing time doing it... I don't get the problem with an artist like Kai promoting in America. It cannot intensify the issue of Kpop artists seeming like they are pandering to the euro-colonial powers, because it's already looking pretty bad tbh.

The real issue: Freedom. The reality is when someone dynamic, attractive, and full of life has freedom, obviously they are going to meet new people, make friends, and develop in personality. The real issue is whether fans who have had an artist as a cute little toy for years.

Are they ready to find out what his real personality is when he is given freedom. The reality is that despite dating clauses not technically existing after a few years post-debut, people do not actually expect them to talk about crushes, who they find attractive, or publicly state their attraction towards someone. Personally, I believe what K-pop fans expect, which is virtual silence except when being cute, charming, funny, or flirtatious and/or childlike asexual behavior, except if it is for audience consumption, this teeters on a slave owner mindset and is very gross. A person who calls themself a K-pop idol cannot publicly date like a regular artist.

I mean, they can, but not in a traditional way. Kai and Krystal technically dated for 2 years, and they couldn't mention one another's name publicly during that entire time.

They didn't even go near one another in public after it was revealed not even at smtown's. But at least people had a magazine shoot as proof they even knew one another.

Jennie and Kai weren't event at the same event since the dating scandal happened years ago, not an award show, or any other public event. If anything a dating scandal just means the person will enter a crackdown and be forced to be more present with fans to make up for what they lost.

It is extremely normalized in Korean culture that males and females try not to even make eye contact lest it be thought of that they did something.

For this reason it's incredibly easy for fans to say it is nonexistent. This is a pretty good summary of what happened.

The accepted narrative anyway. Sadly to combat the 'negative press' of dating publicly, fans go harder on the shipping, the overs#xualization, and the unfunny jokes to move the conversation away from their dating news. Taking the fandom further and further away from reality.

Yet, at the same time since people don't see 99 percent of the artist they obsess over's life and the entire 1 percent is scripted, they don't know how these people truly act or behave, or really anything about them. So to overcompensate other parts of their personality and minor things are overblown and hyperfocused on. Praise and worship take the place of actual critical thought.

Regardless of the opinion of whether it matters to every individual supporter or not, it still had actual effects on his career. To this day his support is stronger overseas. I believe this is in conjunction to the 2 dating scandals and his appearance. Which is a whole nother thing, but with this in mind a western audience, especially one that is less likely to bash for a simple dating scandal would be a smart choice.

To the people who have a don't ask don't tell policy when it comes to artists, but just don't want the artists to date publicly to protect them, what do they know, do they even look into the analysis how when properly leveraged a relationship could be good for business and not bad. I hesitate to believe fans whenever they say they don't care if their fave dates or not anyway. Like of course you don't care, because they will continue to play their role of a perfect idol content with fanservice.

I would say it's fine, but it really isn't, even in japan idol culture there is room for growth and evolution inside the mold. They gradually moved their idol culture over to the acting scene so now the youth are somewhat used to seeing public figures dating openly, it may be a surprise but I wouldn't classify it as a scandal.

Personally, I believe if they can push kpop idols towards acting and movies, then similar to japan it wouldn't become this crazy thing and artists can be young and married without it being a frenzy.

(p.s weloveyoukento) It's not exactly perfect but it is changing for the better.

In japan the mold is forever being molded and shifted to where it needs to be, whereas in kpop it seems to be stuck in stasis with the conveyer belt model continuing.

With the art clearly showing what fans deny, that each idol group is contained and perfected to the fans whims and desires.

Understandably people want privacy in relationships, but the privacy is mostly due to their careers being built on the whims of the fans.

To be fair all boy bands historically have done this. Whether that means wearing outfits that only teen girls like, or dancing uniformly to upbeat tunes for hours on end. It isn't just kpop that stretched people to the limit and covered up their originality.

Regardless of the location, race, or culture/ethnicity of said boy band this was all true, but in Kpop there is a specific desire to control the entire person as a product and as a human and this is something the fans are willing to ignore to recieve whatever fanservice they want.

Nobody cares who their local restaraunt owner or store employee dates, because they don't go to the store for them they go for the product, BUT in K-pop the artists are the product, the emotional relationship with fans is apart of the deal. Therefore they feel almost a sense of surrealness when thinking about them in a public relationship. Personally, I believe even western people struggle with having an odd fascination with who a person does or does not date, but again this is because people craft an image that makes it unbelivable if they go against it.

Whether it's a fake relationship or a real one, the point is that with either you would expect something like a conversation or a small mention during an interview, but typically Kpop stars are not allowed to do such a thing, ever. That is just how it is in K-pop. Whether the fans are native Korean or foreigner fans, much of the same behavior is expected. No one can say they have seen an artist's real personality. It isn't possible. Nearly everything is scripted.

In some cases, like Taemin's, they didn't even know their actual personalities.

They can go out and do things for fun, but it is expected that whatever they do not be noticeable to fans. Everything is expected to be hidden or undercover to be respectful of the fans. Because the artists are firstly marketed as boyfriends and girlfriends for the fans. Regardless of how it is spun, this is the marketing promotion; otherwise, suggestive music videos wouldn't really be necessary, nor would high-five events of ...fansigns.

I don't want to act like K-pop invented this.

It did not

or pretend that it is even the most extreme version of marketing love to strangers out of an exotic curiosity;

because it isn't. This has been happening for ages, but I will say that kpop has this unique hold where evolution doesn't exist. Since the 1990s I think kpop has gone backwards, before it was normal for idols girlfriends to leave the performance venues with them.

Now if a girlfriend posts something on her social that even implies they are together it is cause for fans to burn merch and say rude and innapropriate things online out of vendicated anger.

Even having a boyfriend or close male friend can invoke the ire of fans who have crafted an idol's desires to their imaginations, even if they themselves have no interest in them.

So if they do something unexpected like date a man, even though they "hate men" people have full blown meltdowns and delete their accounts out of embarrassment.

I've seen it happen to so many people. They refuse to accept a possibility and when it happens they loose it.

I know that people have sensitivities about Kpop people becoming more free, and honestly I think it's for the best. I do not think people want the ownership that fans feel to grow even more. They need more open and honest interviews, less objectfication and more laying out the facts instead of fans being so bored they hyperfixate on fake gossip to the point of it being more real than reality.

But no seriously all jokes aside, please somebody explain to Kai what pandering to an audience means. Doing things specifically to appeal to others whims and desires that you as a grown adult person probably don't want to do, but you must because of dinero, guap or cash money. Cause clearly he is just a giant stuffed animal and he has no ideal how it works, how anything at all works actually, he just dresses like this on stage because..I mean like what else would he wear, duh! How could he be expected to pander to the euro-colonial-objectifying axis of evil...

He's like..never even done that before....

[allpromarlo]

can americans stay out of german politics lmao who invited you people

[gemininomen0n]

3 days until i move i need to relax actually ab this

[bitegore]

god i really forgot that every business management professor specifically is the most unpleasant human being alive for no good reason. i have two business classes with like econ and accounting professors respectively and those look fine and then oh my god if i have to go back to this class with this professor i think i might actually kill myself

[musclesandhammering]

If shippers are making you this pissed off, you need to stop interacting with them instead of being so fucking negative.

And if seeing negativity makes you pissed off enough to anonymously (lmao) send me a message about it, you need to adjust your filters accordingly to avoid posts that are specifically tagged as anti from blogs that have anti right in the name 🤷‍♀️

[littlebvtterfly]

Maybe TikTok being banned in America isn't the worst thing. Again, I raise the point, why is okay for some people to absolutely tear apart other's appearances in the comments, make death threats, or want children to "bite the curb" but when I call someone "ridiculous", my comments get banned immediatly? It's genuinely mind-boggling to me.

[talkfastcal]

Hey idk who needs to hear this but if you work in a daycare/nanny a family: you should NOT be posting videos of the kids on the internet. ESPECIALLY the clock app

[philsmeatylegss]

Feel valid with your trauma from being a glass child and not have you biggest trigger get set off by feeling not heard or search ‘glass child’ on tiktok and see half the videos of people going “poor me I made my sibling a glass child wah wah” and the other half are actual glass children with comment sections calling them ableist or dramatic when they even say they don’t blame their siblings

[thedevilprobs]

I was about to rand in a TikTok comment section but decided this was a better place to dump my opinions lmao

Ok so, there was this video of like a toddler being picked up from kindergarten for the first time like a "day 1 of pick up, day 2" and so on

At first I thought it was cute seeing how the child was so happy to see their parent and crying bcs they didn't yet understand that it wasn't being left there forever

And then I thought about the point of view of said child, missing their parent all day and finally getting to see them and it's a phone pointed at them, as they cry, every day, for like at least a week

Idk

If my child came running crying to me in one of their first experiences outside of my direct care...I wouldn't shove a phone in their face

That's just me

What do y'all think?

[arminsumi]

... hubby!Gojo with a huge breeding kink who just obsesses over you when you're ovulating and can't think about anything else but fucking a baby into your hips.

+ warnings; mdni, breeding kink, some dumbification

+ an; I literally had this idea in my drafts for a year... 😳

Maybe he's got a freaky sixth sense, maybe it's just because he's got heightened senses, or maybe there's some scientific studies to back it up; but Gojo can smell when you're ovulating. And it turns him on — of course it does. He has a bigger breeding kink than you do.

"Oh, you're ovulating." he notes after sniffing your skin... and you do a double take like he's insane. Because he is insane — you married a madman.

He pays closer attention to your cycle than you do, reminding you to mark down when you get your period, and coddling you in the days leading up to ovulation.

"Satoru, it's just an estimation." you tell him, but he's got a glow in his eyes when he sees your period tracker app telling him that today's your most fertile day — if he cums in you today, it's basically guaranteed.

He researches positions that help conception, bends and pushes you into them, and fucks you deep with his thick cock, going harder on your poor hole than he normally does — grunting more than he normally does, throbbing more than he normally does... like it just awakens something primal in him, and now he's obsessively fucking you like he has no other purpose but to breed his sweet little wife.

"Nn! Satoruuu!" you whine and paw at his torso, your walls overwhelmed by the pressure of his cock splitting you open.

"Yes babyyy?" he coos, giving you a crooked, blissed-out smile as he tilts his head.

There's sweat dripping off his abs, his pink nipples are hard, his biceps are twitching, and he's running one hand through his dampened white hair as he stills inside you for a moment.

"'s too deep! T-too big!" you moan lewdly, a bit of drool escaping the corner of your mouth.

"...aw, I know I'm just too big for ya, huh?" he coos cockily; hearing you tell him that he's 'too big' never gets old.

He's so determined to give you his baby that he tries everything to increase the chances; staying inside you for 5 minutes after shooting his load in, having you rest with a pillow under your back so your hips are raised — "Gotta help my lil' guys swim." he acts like an idiot about it, but sweetly so. Nothing excites him more than the idea of being a dad, except the idea of fathering your children.

After sex, when the two of you are cleaning up, Satoru feels over and massages your tummy with a small smile on his face. He's lost in thought, hair all messy and face tired like he's run a marathon, hopeful that this time he got you pregnant.

He'll pamper you like his queen, humming and going to the ends of the earth to get you anything you ask for. He really fawns over you when you're ovulating, and lays on the compliments thick while snuggling your neck and creeping his fingers up your thighs — pretty soon he'll sink them inside and stretch you out on them, preparing you for what he cutely calls "baby making" but is actually sweaty, nasty, kinky sex — there's a definite difference in the cute, snuggly sex and the literal breeding sessions no matter how much he plays it off.

"Satoru... my legs are still weak after this morning, give me a break, will you?"

"Aw come on, this is an innocent request... and if babymaking happens, it happens..." he mutters the last part under his breath.

"You're crazy."

But you know you're gonna fall for it after you take one look at his rock-hard, juicy pink, dummy big cock and those breeder balls.

He just beams victoriously when you hop over to him like a little bunny.

Satoru's pushes into you as deep as your pussy allows him, and then some more just to pressure your deepest spot, pinning your wrists down and whispering sultrily into your ear about how well you take him, how beautiful you look, how good it feels to fuck your fertile pussy knowing that he'll most definitely get you pregnant because his cum is perfect; thick and sticky and gooey and pungent, perfect just like he is — the cocky bastard.

When his creampies makes you cum, A-spot pressured with his pulsing tip, he grins so wide that you scold him about it.

"Stop grinning like a psychopath." you pant.

He just looks up at you, face hardly an inch away, and asks a dumb, smiley "D'you feel pregnant?" ... as if it happens so fast.

"Gee, I don't know, we should go again just to make sure — that was a joke, that was a joke! Nn! Satoru!" too late, he's flipping you over and slowly filling you up again.

And oh god Satoru loves sliding back in for round twos. The smell of sex and cum wafting up and hitting his nose just makes him plunge back into your cum-filled little hole with only one thing in mind and that is breeding you 'till you're stuffed to the max.

"Come on, y' gonna be a good wifey for me and get knocked up?" he rasps against your ear, thrusting his cock up into your sensitive spots until his creampies turn into whipped cream, frothed up and milky-white and smeared on your pussy lips.

Like the nasty boy he is (and always has been, even before marriage), Satoru forces your head down and makes you watch him fuck his dummy big cock into you.

"Yeah, watch that cock fill you up... look at all my cum leaking out..." he tuts, "... don't be so wasteful, baby... oh well, 'm gonna fuck it back into you anyways. Come on, let me in deeper — aw, what's wrong?" he coos when you claw at his meaty bicep.

"'toruuu, so deep! Y-you're so fucking deep, I can't think..."

His heart pangs when he hears you complain about being too stuffed, "Oh baby you don't need to think, just lay there and let me put a baby in your sweet pussy — gonna fuck you so dumb, the only name you'll remember is mine."

Of course, he has to get a creampie in every day. Sometimes even a few times a day. Sometimes even at 4 AM, and you swat him for being a horny idiot — but it takes five minutes to give in because you can hear the need in his voice when he whines "Please?" and starts humping against you, "I've got so much cum for you." he tells you and though it sounds so sweet in his soft, bedroom voice it's hard to take him as an innocent man, because his thick boner is grinding hard and hot between your plush lips.

You can bet you'll probably only get to sleep when the birds are chirping, 'cause your hubby's balls are too heavy and full of cum and he needs to drain himself inside you — oh, and you can also bet that afterwards he will be sleeping like a princess, clinging to you with his face snuggled into your tummy.

[favroitecrime]

posts on this app where people are like “i would’ve reblogged this important thing but the op said i had to or they said i suck if i ignore it so now i’m not gonna” are just so?? like yeah clearly you DO suck if you straight up ignore the importance of spreading vital information just because what? your feelings got hurt? you got called out for your lack of interest?

“i would’ve but you weren’t nice” i really, really, really shouldn’t have to be nice for you to maintain your morals and integrity.

[tacticalprincess]

könig: ovulating all by yourself beautiful? <3

cw breeding kink

given the poor state of sex education when he was in school and his very minor interaction with women prior to you, könig was relatively clueless about almost everything to do with a woman’s menstrual cycle, besides the obvious bleeding aspect of it all. needless to say he was mind blown to find out about all the different phases, looking like a deer caught in headlights when you explained how much it fucks with your hormones on and off your period. he was literally the epitome of “just found out about periods… i’m so sorry women.”

ovulation was what he was most intrigued by, and not just because he’s always felt an overwhelming biological inclination to have you barefoot and pregnant with his children. all he knew was that once a month for a few days, your sex drive was insatiably high, and even the slightest of things he did triggered it. just the sight of him lounging on the couch was enough to have you jumping at him, pawing at his sweats and complaining that he was making his lap look too inviting.

you would be practically glued to his cock, sometimes to the point of frenzied and feverish. he could barely get anything done around you all glossy eyed and horny; he swears it’s almost as if you wanted him to stay inside you forever. he, of course, has no objections to this. it’s always a pleasant change from the snippy mood you’re in for a few days straight just a week before.

you don’t have a problem getting wet as it is, but during these days you get so creamy, and könig never gets tired of watching the way your pussy coats his dick in thick, pearly stickiness. the sex is always the most primal and dirty during your ovulation phase. telling him that your period tracking app warned you that your fertility is especially high that day would be like foreplay for him, and nothing made his caveman brain happier than to hear you cockdrunk and babbling about how bad you wanted to make him a father, begging him to breed your fertile womb. you can’t say stuff like that unless you mean it, maus, lest he rip the condom off and put a baby in your pretty pussy for real :(

you were both chancing it, fucking like bunnies on such high risk days. but it wasn’t like könig wouldn’t be ecstatic if it so happened to take…

[peachesofteal]

Sweet little librarian who works the closing shift and is always kind to Simon.

Simon who’s realized the world has pretty much left him behind, and all he can do post retirement is sit in his flat and watch mind numbing television or work out to the point of exhaustion in the gym. He doesn’t have social media, doesn’t even have more than ten apps on his phone (thanks Soap). The only computer he’s touched in the last decade is the desktop on base that he used to complete reports and other administrative things, or the banged up laptop they used to bring on missions.

So, he starts going to the library. He sets up at a table and reads books until his eyes bleed, pouring over decades of history because he pretty much refuses to live in the present.

That’s where he meets you. Or sees you, he guesses, since he doesn’t really talk much. You’re always asking him if he needs help or needs you to find him anything. You smell like vanilla icing, ripe strawberries and his mouth waters every time you appear at his side.

Sometimes you even sit down across from him with your lunch, scooping granola and yogurt out of a glass bowl, licking it clean by the time you get to the bottom.

“Hi.” You chirp, smiling. It stretches your face a bit, plumps your cheeks and adds a sparkle to your eyes. He grunts, but it doesn’t deter you. “What is it today?” You lean over, glancing at his spread of books and laminated papers. “Axis powers?” He stares at you. Watches your mouth and tongue work the spoon. He doesn’t answer, and you sigh. “You know, we never talk but you never tell me to go away so…” You trail off like you’re hopeful he’ll say something reassuring. He doesn’t, but you take it on the chin, and smile anyway. “Alright well, see you later then.”

He doesn’t know what’d he tell you, what he would say, how he would explain he’s bad and dirty and would drag you down to the pits of hell. Doesn’t tell you he can’t talk to you because then he’d have to keep you, and he’s not sure how to do that without snuffing the flame out, the one that he sees in your smile, the bounce in the balls if your feet. Doesn’t want to tell you he’d have to lock you away and he knows you’d be miserable.

He doesn’t say anything.

The following Monday, he catches sight of you in the children’s library. You’re sitting on the floor with a toddler, turning the big, bright pages, pointing and gesturing to the little boy’s delight. You look so… happy. So content.

Tectonic plates in his brain shift, and a new reality is born.

How can he keep you and keep you happy?

Easy. He’ll just fuck a baby into you.

He’s rough with it. Bends you over one of the desks tucked in the back after closing, shoves your dress up over your ass and kicks your legs apart. You struggle and cry, trying to bite, to scratch, screaming when he fits the head of his cock against your hole.

“Fuck shortcake,” he groans as he works his way inside, forcing you to take him inch by inch as tears stream down your face. “You’ve got such a good little cunt f’me huh?”

“N-n-no,” you wheeze, short of breath, and he kisses your cheek.

“Don’t worry,” he slides all the way home, shivers snaking up your spine when you clench, trying to take more, greedy for it even though you’re trying to fight. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

“Stop- please,” you rock your hips, but it buries his cock deeper. He grips your neck, pulls back and then slams into you, covering your scream with his palm. He licks your tears and you look at him in the mirror, desperation and horror welling in your eyes.

“I’m gonna take care of you,” he grits, control hanging by a thread, hanging back for one second to make sure he holds your gaze before shoving himself against your womb, “you and the baby.”

[enigmaris]

If Lois Lane had a nickle for every time she had to help an overpowered boy from the midwest with the power of journalism, she'd have two nickles. Which isn't a lot but its weird that its happened twice.

Danny watched as Lois pulled out her phone and pulled up a recording app.

“What are you doing?”

“You came to a journalist and are surprised to get an interview?” She asked him, her tone clearly joking. “What you’ve given me here is great kid, but newspaper clippings and copies of federal laws don’t get the public’s attention. I need a story, Phantom’s the story.”

“I’m not Phantom.”

Lois looked at him, less than impressed. Slowly, she turned the screen of her computer until it was visible to both of them. There, in full clarity, was a front-page story from his hometown newspaper. ‘Danny Phantom saves Bus Full of Children!’ and there was a picture of him in his ghost form, his face crystal clear on her screen.

"Phantom’s a ghost. I’m just a dumb kid.” Danny tried again.

Lois pinched the bridge of her nose with her right hand and muttered to herself.

“Why do all you midwestern boys have the same schtick?”

“I���m sorry?” Danny said, unsure if he should be apologizing or not.

“Changing your last name from Fenton to Phantom does not a secret identity make kid. It might work for most civilians, but anyone familiar with the hero game will clock you from a mile away.”

“I’m not Phantom.”

“Sure, kid. But I’m sure you have a way for me to interview him, right? Because I want to talk to him before I do anything else about your town.”

Danny hugged himself and looked down at his knees.

“Is it really that bad?”

“Not the worst I’ve seen. Wonder Woman’s is paper thin. I'm pretty sure most people in DC know who she is outside of the cape and just don’t say anything because she scares them.”

Danny snorted involuntarily at that, looking back up at the woman.

“What’s going on in your town, Phantom? Why come to a journalist and not the Justice League?”

“The Anti-Ecto Acts got passed like a year ago. They state that only being that produces or contains ectoplasm above a certain amount is considered non-sapient and is to be turned over to the government for disposal.” Danny said. “I put the whole thing in there for you to read, but it's long. Amity Park has a lot of ectoplasm in it. It's seeped into the air and water. Normal human people have it in them now. At first, those agents were just firing at me whenever I finished a ghost fight. I could deal with that. Their aim is terrible anyway. But then they figured out that humans can become contaminated with ectoplasm. They decided that meant the entire town was under their jurisdiction. They've decided that means that no one in town counts as human anymore, that we don’t have rights, that they’re doing us a favor by not just exterminating the entire town like the law says.”

Danny leaned forward, putting his hands on the desk in front of Lois Lane. He looked right into her bright eyes and spoke seriously.

“When it was just ghosts under attack, I didn’t think anyone would care. I’ve tried calling the Justice League for help, but they’ve brushed me off. People need to know what’s happening. Anyone can become ecto-contaminated. You just have to be in the right place at the wrong time. It’s not right what’s happening to Amity, Miss Lane. I came to you because if anyone could get the world to listen, to believe, then it's got to be you.”

And Lois Lane smiled. It was a proud, eager smile. The kind of smile Danny had seen on Sam right after she convinced the school to serve a vegan lunch. He barely held back from shivering.

“Well then, Mr. Phantom.” Lois said, before tapping onto the recording app on her phone and starting a recording. “Let’s begin.”

[gaykarstaagforever]

YouTube has this thing now called YouTube Playables (great name as usual, guys; it's not a children's snack pack), that are basically in-app "Flash games"-style things that are just enough game to keep you watching ads.

The ones of these that aren't direct ripoffs of owned IP (very specifically Zuma) are barebones exercises in that bog-standard FTP addictive mobile gaming loop we all know and hate but also LOVE, minus the in-app purchases (for the time being). Like, shallow systems that are fun for exactly 30 minutes, then get stupidly hard so you'll pay to win, though you can't do that yet, so...kind of pointless.

...I still spent FOUR HOURS playing these, because they tapped into my primitive lizard brain's desire to try and master an utterly meaningless task and then feel undooly smug about it.

I didn't get any ads, because I'm a stooge that pays real money to Google every month for this, because once you go adless, you CANNOT go back. Which kind of negates the whole point of these, as addictive time-wasters that keep you glued to the platform and its commercials? But I already pay for YouTube and STILL got caught in these, so I suppose everything is going according to YouTube's plan either way, and I need meaningful human relationships.

But THAT isn't going to happen any time soon! So let me waste another evening on these by reviewing some crap garbage games for idiots that no one cares about, on Tumblr dot com!

1. Totemia: Cursed Marbles

It's Zuma. That's it. With a couple minor tweaks that make it harder and more annoying.

Just license Zuma, YouTube. I think you can afford the, what, $25 that would cost atm?

2. Sword Play

An on-rails sword slashing game (you don't control the movement, just the slashing), and you kill plastic doll guys before they kill you.

At some point they get projectiles that move really fast, that you can only destroy via specific directional QTEs that don't register properly half the time, because this is all relative finger smearing across the screen.

It was fun before that. The guys fall apart specific to how you slash them. That's something.

3. Dessert DIY

This one sucks. You're just picking from very limited options, then doing specific motions to trigger animations that create desserts that don't even look much like the promo art. People request different things, but early game all they ask for is "whatever you want to make" and "do one out of poop with bugs on it to make someone I hate throw up."

And then there's an animation of someone accepting what is obviously poop with bugs on it from their sworn enemy, they eat it anyway, then vomit.

The only fun part about this is the shameless inclusion of NPCs that look like celebrities, specifically Billie Eilish, Kanye West, and Donald Trump.

If you want to make a poop ice cream cone with bugs on it and feed it to Trump until he vomits all over his desk, this is the game for you. Otherwise, this is meh even for one of these meh games.

4. Bowmasters

Dueling Angry Birds, but you have no control of the camera and it focuses on you so you have to trial-and-error the degree of angle and throwing force to figure out how to hit and kill your opponent before they hit and kill you.

There are many colorful pop culture-inspired combatants to unlock, with a huge variety of projectiles of different weights, sizes, and behaviors. This is the most "very nearly a real, good game" one of these.

...Except that the level progression forces you to do Bonus Rounds, and one of those is "knock fruit off the head of an opponent without hitting them, and you have to do this like 5 times in a row, and we move you further away from them another 30 yards every round, and you have to use a wildly different unique projectile every round, and you get 3 chances, and that includes if you miss entirely."

It is basically impossible to do this, because your ever-changing location makes calculating arcs and force, with the ever-changing projectiles, impossible, in this limited amount of attempts. It turns into grinding it out until RNG randomly makes you win.

Which is a shame, because otherwise, this is fun. But you WILL get stuck on a stupid fruit round and stop playing this.

5. Mob Control

You have a cannon that launches blue guys. The NPC opponent does red. You both are trying to bumrush the other's base, taking advantage of buttons and switches and bonus gates that speed you up or slow you down and multiply your number of guys. Guys annihilate each-other when they run into each-other, so you need to overwhelm Red before they overwhelm you.

It's fun until it gets so fast that it becomes a chore to manage where precisely to launch guys specifically to annihilate other guys.

6. Merge Master

This goddamn game. This was 3.5 hours of my 4 hour playtime.

You have a grid board, with you at the bottom and an opponent at the top. You both have an army of warriors and dinosaurs, and a team HP bar. You click go, the warriors fire projectiles and the dinosaurs melee the nearest enemy, and last man standing wins.

Before each round, you can arrange the placement of your army, and use money you won from the last rounds to buy more warriors and dinosaurs. But the kicker is, you can combine like warriors and dinosaurs to make more powerful units, which you keep at the end of every round. They don't gain XP or anything, but as you make more money, you can buy more 1st-level units (that's all you can buy), and gradually combine them and then combine the combinations, and on and on and on, making incredibly powerful new units. And you need a mix of low-level and high-level units to have enough melee dinosaurs and projectile-throwers to overwhelm high-level enemy units, or draw fire away from your own, against the ever-changing enemy army each round.

It's a process of slowly adding more units and combining them to make stronger and stronger units, and as many of them as you can get, accounting for the limited board space. Also the price of units rises exponentially each round, so you may have 1 trillion gold, but at this point a new 1st-level dinosaur costs 245 billion.

I couldn't stop with this. It just got me. I wanted to see new exciting high-level warriors and dinosaurs, and see how fast I could take the other army down. There's more than zero strategy at work here, and battles can vary substantially from round to round, depending on what mix of units the enemy brings to the board.

It's still a rudimentary Flash-esque game, and very much akin to those shitty mobile boss rush games that raid our shadow legends. But it's not PTW yet, and the graphics are a charming and distorted replica of early 2000s 3D games, like Age of Mythology or GTA 3. It felt like something, for awhile.

It isn't, and I wasted valuable battery charge on this stupid shit. But I was having fun. And sometimes, that's enough.

...And posting about it here. It's something to talk about that isn't the world eating itself.

And we all need that sometimes.

[sureuncertainty]

and that person on that post thinking they're superior for not knowing tiktok sounds as if we didn't all quote vines religiously for years when we were younger