#i had made my favorite sim (to this day) for yet another attempt at the nsb challenge

[a-quiet-autumn]

forgot to ever post abt it but my laptop kicked the bucket and there's a decent chance when it gets fixed (IF we have the money to fix it) that it'll be factory reset which means i'll lose the new sims save i was playing in that was genuinely the most fun in a sims 4 save that i've had in years 👍 gotta love ts4 repeatedly killing my pc

[fellowstrangetownappreciator]

Playing Favorites (part 2)

Here we go again! Another 4 TS2 premades that really strange my town! (I’ll see myself out.) Anyway, I have to preface this with saying that so far I’ve only played the 3 base game hoods and although I really enjoy PV and VV, I added them to Strangetown just recently, so I’m still getting acquainted with their casts. That’s why my Playing Favorites posts are so dominated with desert-dwellers - but I definitely plan on including more non-ST Sims once I got to play with them more!

And I also low-key love everybody in Strangetown.

TOP 15 TS2 Premades (according to my personal tastes somewhere in May 2021) (not in any particular order) (and I can’t guarantee I stop at 15 either)

Tank Grunt (Strangetown)

Yes, I am one of them. I am a Tank Grunt apologist. Brace yourself!

Similarly to the Pleasant twins, I view Tank as a victim of his father (Buzz Grunt, the esteemed Strangetown's Worst Parent Award nominee). Of course, that's not to say he's innocent. He is absolutely guilty of bullying Ripp and Johnny and equally guilty of being a bigot. And, most importantly, totally guilty of casually wearing camo face-paint. (that he canonically gets tatooed on his face down the line, which is... its own kind of tragic.)

But that is exactly why I like him so much!

Let me elaborate.

Tank is a very multilayered character, albeit a bit cliché. He is very artistic a eager to always do his best, whether that is in school or home where he competes for his father's affection and approval. Buzz provides both of that but it always feels conditioned – if Tank was to stop getting A+, stop parroting his opinions, stop working out, stop following in his footsteps, would that go away? Even though the answer depends on your interpretation of Buzz and his levels of horrible, Tank definitely thinks so. Just take a look on how his father treats Ripp!

I read Tank as somebody who believes firmly in order and good but has a very twisted understanding of both given his militaristic and hyper-masculine upbringing. He has an enormous potential for character growth. Can he gain (psychological) independence of his father? Can he follow his dreams and become a dancer? Can he free himself of his father’s biases now that he’s out on his own? Can he mend his relationship with Ripp and Buck? (...or maybe even Johnny?) It makes him so fun to play.

Also, I think that it was indeed very cowardly of the developers not to set his gender preference as gay.

Conclusion: Tank is fun! (Although he would probably resent me for saying that.)

Dina Caliente (Str- wait, Pleasantview)

Finally someone who doesn't live in the desert! Both Nina and Dina are such interesting characters, with their connection to Bella’s disappearance, their alien bloodline and their opposing personalities and ambitions.

I feel like the sisters are often getting unjustly demonized. (or mixed up together, I’m looking at you, TS3 and TS4) They’re young, very attractive and in unconventional relationships, thus often labeled as predatory. They’re not.

Dina is a very nice Sim, with Nice points above the average and many Playful points and she tends to roll wants to start a family by the start of the game, although she is not a Family Sim. She’s actually a Fortune Sim, smart and business-oriented. She’s a widow who wants to remarry and has her sights set on the husband of her missing former sister-in-law.

I know that doesn’t make her sound that nice but there is nuance. First of all, the man in question is Mortimer Goth, well in his twilight years, a father of two, simply an adult. He is not a hapless trophy, the decision to start an affair with Dina not long after his first wife got pronounced missing, is his own. He knows he won’t be here for long and doesn’t want to die alone, he wants someone who can make him feel young again and loved once more. Dina, on the other hand, pursues a shotgun wedding to take an advantage of the Goth fortune that will kickstart her business ventures but she is ready to provide what Mortimer needs. She canonically loves him. (proven by the love flag in her relationship panel)

In my personal gameplay, I had Don take Dina on a date before their marriages to their respective Goths, and Dina kept rolling wants to flirt with Mortimer instead. Later down the line she also helped out the Brokes financially, and after her close friend Brandi died young in childbirth, she took in her youngest children, so that her oldest son Dustin could go to college and not worry what’s gonna become of his younger siblings in his custody while he’s gone. I figured it made sense because of Dina’s Nice points, her relationship with Brandi and her now being partially in charge of so much money it isn’t even funny.

In conclusion: I support and condone Dina! Even if it’s somehow implied that she and her sister might’ve just staged her rival’s alien abduction.

Circe Beaker (Strangetown)

Circe is yet another... unwholesome character on my list. She canonically tortures people, namely Nervous Subject, and her bio eludes to there being more in the past or the future. She's cunning, ambitious and very mean.

But she is also very fun to play! Her aspiration being Fortune (not Knowledge) puts an interesting spin on the whole evil scientist routine. She doesn't do it for the love of discovery like the Curiouses and she doesn't care about credit as her husband does. She's out for power and she may as well get it.

Her rather extreme personality would lead one to think she has to be rather disliked around the town but her default relationship panel says otherwise. She doesn't have any close friendships except her husband, though. That makes me think she is superficially charming and tends to act diplomatic to obtain people's loyalty without necessarily caring about any of them. It makes playing her unique from most other Sims.

She is also canonically bisexual! I personally have a deep appreciation for each and every Sim that Maxis sneakily preset to be LGBTQ+. I may not seem like a big deal now but it is.

Conclusion: "She could gaslight, gatekeep and girlboss me any day.” - half of Strangetown’s population

Lazlo Curious (Strangetown)

Lazlo is a ray of sunshine in the Curious household! A very sloppy ray that makes messes wherever it goes, true, but sunshine nonetheless.

I’m very fond of Lazlo because he’s the type of person that looks like he can barely count to five with his easy-going and messy nature but is in fact very clever and, by some measures, the most competent Curious brother, since he is the youngest and it seems like he’s fresh out of college, yet holds a higher career position than his older brothers. “A smart person that doesn’t necessarily seem smart on the first glance” is a trope I have a big soft spot for. (...and it shows)

In my current gameplay, Lazlo wanted to resurrect Vidcund (who died in childbirth), so he switched from Science to Paranormal to swipe a Resurrect-O-Nomitron and, like the madlad he is, succeeded before their round was over (in a span of few days). It was a combination of dumb luck and him having a compatible degree that gave him a hefty bonus but it still made me realize Lazlo could achieve whatever he sets his sights on.

Luckily, his sights are generally set on pizza and video games.

(relatable)

Anyway, I find Lazlo somehow cute, most probably for his constant and very unfruitful attempts to make Vidcund laugh, and in general, how friendly and easy to get along with he is. While he doesn’t have that many Nice points (5, which is a pretty average number), combined with his playfulness he usually tends to act very amicable.

In conclusion: I simp for Knowledge Sims and it shows.

Ok, I’ll be back with another 4 when my horrible procrastinating gruel of a brain feels like it. See ya!

[rosy-cheekx]

“You’re such a dork.” for the emotional writing prompts! I don't know anything about critical role, really, so for TMA :)

I spy, with my little eye, Bryce’s attempts to shove her own interests into her fics. Anyways, I am an American in college so I was basing this on my own experiences oops. Enjoy!

Date night was Wednesday evenings. Jon and Martin both found it preferable for a variety of reasons; it was the most likely nights for happy hours at the pubs in town, guaranteeing a cheap drink, and keeping to a weekday night minimized the chance of Jon seeing one of his students out. He hated seeing his students. Not that he hated them of course, he really rather liked them…not that they would ever know that. Being a professor, of parapsychology of all things, was rather rewarding. He knew the content inside and out (it felt good, using the mark of The Eye to actively work against it, to pass along information instead of consuming). And they didn’t seem to mind him either.

That was the thing about university students. They really didn’t care about who he was or where he came from. The fact that he was a scrawny, scarred Englishman in a lecture hall in Scotland didn’t matter to them. In the classroom, all they cared was whether he taught the material well (he did) and was kind to those with late assignments (he was. He had been a university student once too; he remembered the anxiety and depression that took him and his mates in waves). He was a good professor; Jon knew that objectively in the marks his students received. But in the subjective? His student had decided they liked him.

This had dawned on him at the end of his first semester; when he was inundated with emails of sincere thank-you for a great semester, for being such a helpful teacher, for taking the time to help review, et cetera. Martin had grinned at him, poking a tongue out his mouth and making some remark about teacher’s pets coming full circle (Jon was never a teacher’s pet though. He had always asked too many questions. He welcomed those questions with open arms now, to be the teacher he hadn’t had.)

The next semester it had been more obvious that students liked him now that he knew where to look. It was in the open “good-mornings” and questions about his weekend plans, and in the fact that he had the best attendance records of his department. It was in the way they asked genuine questions about his material and the waitlists miles long to get into his sections. Later on, it was in the gentle ribbings about his looking tired and the grey hairs even as they celebrated his fortieth birthday with him, bringing in cupcakes and sneaking in between lectures to decorate his office and the sincere questions over his scars, his life, his relationship with Martin (his introductory lecture always featured Martin and Her Regency, their thick orange tabby). To make eight wonderful semesters short, he was familiar with his students, and they weren’t afraid to be familiar back. Which was wonderful in the classroom and all, but not when he was trying have a relaxing evening with his husband.

Which brings them back to Wednesdays. Wednesdays were the days least likely to have students out in town, he had learned from Dr. Kerrigan, the positive psych professor, because Thirsty Thursdays started off the weekend’s partying and drinking for the undergraduates. Wednesday was the day students, in theory, buckled down to finish homework and give themselves a free weekend.

So here they were, Martin in a collared shirt, printed with tiny flowers, and jeans, hair bleached white from the Lonely and curling softly at his temples; Jon in a slouchy ribbed turtleneck and high-waisted pants, his own thick curls half-piled atop his head. Jon was listening intently as Martin spoke animatedly, talking about his own day as a guidance counselor at the local primary school.

“…and I swear Jon, if it wasn’t bad enough that Kimmy has decided never to speak to Lawrence again, now Lawrence has confided in me that he is positively in love with her.”

“Did he say that verbatim? In love, I mean.”

“I mean, no, but he said he was willing to give her all his Squishmallows for a playdate. Squishmallows. That’s real eight-year-old commitment, right there.”

Jon barked out a laugh and put on a puppy-eyed expression, grinning all the while. “Martin Blackwood, do you hereby take Jonathan Sim’s stuffed animals, to have and to ho-”

A gentle swat to the knee with Martin’s shoe cut Jon off. “Oi! Respect my children. They may be fools but its not their faults their brains aren’t developed yet. And yes, I know, ‘they’re not developed ‘til twenty-five and you can argue that your students’ brains aren’t developed either.’ But it’s different. They’re babies.”

“And I’m the All-Knowing One,” Jon mused thoughtfully around a forkful of food, earning him another love-filled kick.

“Speaking of,” Martin pointed to Jon with his glass, eyeing him deliberately. “Midterms next week, yeah? How do you think it’ll go?”

Jon shrugged, scratching at the back of his neck. “Alright, I hope. First exam went well but could’ve been better. I’m worried about Avonni, honestly, he’s nodded off a few times in class and I’m not confident he has someone to get the material from.”

“He has you.” A pointed, snow-white eyebrow.

“Right, but sometimes students don’t want to ask for notes because they think I’ll say no. Maybe I should email him. Speaking of email! Did I tell you what Suzanne sent out?”

“Oh no, what?”

They carried on like this through their meal and into dessert, and not for the first time Jon was struck by the sheer normalcy of it all. His greatest concerns were Suzanne’s passive-aggressive emails and his students, not the inevitable destruction of reality as they knew it to be. They were scarred, inside and out, everyone who had escaped The Magnus Institute was, but they were safe and free and happy. In defiance of everything that had happened to and because of them.

“Dr. Sims!”

Uh oh. Spoke too soon.

Bite of lava cake halfway to his mouth, Jon squeezed his eyes shut, rolling his eyes back in his head and willing there to be another professor with the surname Sims in the restaurant. When he opened his eyes, Martin was valiantly trying to suppress a smile as he eyed something, someone, over his head. Jon twisted awkwardly in his seat to see—

“Parker. What a surprise.” His voice was warm but carefully measured, and the dark-skinned boy waved, shit-eating grin on his face. “I have told you that you can call me Jon.”

“Yeah, I know, but you earned that doctorate! And “Doctor Jon” sounds awful, like you should have your own show or something.”

He hadn’t earned that doctorate, actually, but Martin’s expertise in lying and the disastrous apocalypse that had left everyone disoriented meant it had been easy to exaggerate some of Jon’s CV and manufacture a fake diploma.

“I do have my own show. Monday and Wednesday mornings, where I teach a bunch of caffeinated undergrads parapsychology,” Jon replied easily. “You’re welcome to tune in.” He liked Parker; he was a bit of a class clown, liked to ask off-topic questions or pretend to sneak a look at Jon’s answer sheets, but he was sharp and knew his stuff. Jon respected that. He reminded Jon of someone he dearly missed.

But Parker had already turned his attention to Martin, who was watching the interaction with mirth in his eyes. “Hello sir! I’m Parker McMichael, Jon’s favorite student.” Martin shook the extended hand and nodded in mock seriousness.

“Of course. Pleasure to finally meet you. Are you the one with the essay on ESP or the one on psychokinesis?”

“Neither,” Parker shook his head proudly, short dreads swaying gently with the movement. “The Validity and Continuity of Near-Death Experiences,” he made a mock marquee with his hands, arching curved fingers to indicate the title hanging in the air. “Researching any consistencies in near-death experiences stories, whether they’re legitimate, and what they mean if they are. But-” Parker shook his head and turned his attention back to Jon. “That’s not why I’m interrupting.” He took his phone out of pocket idly as he spoke. “I’m afraid I’ve come to settle a dispute among the 11 a.m. section.”

Oh no.

The Ceaseless Watcher whispered to him, unbidden, the dispute in question. Jon generally knew how to suppress the powers, and they were weaker than they had been, once upon a time, but when he’s caught off guard with the desire to know, to Know, it could still overtake him.

“This you?” A blurry screenshot of a Youtube video is shoved under his nose, a part of a text chain titled Sim’s Spoopy Spirits, captioned by many text bubbles expressing disbelief and objections and a variety of emojis. Jon took the phone and examined it, the truth already sure in his chest. Yes, that was him, dressed in his Jonny d’Ville costume, eyeliner streaked and eyes closed, mid-ballad. God, he wished he could be rid of those Youtube videos.

Jon’s gaping silence must have been enough of an answer for Parker because he whooped a little too loudly for the restaurant they were in and pumped his fist to his chest before typing very quickly on his phone. “I knew it! Take that Sabina,” he was mumbling to himself, lost in his texts for a moment.

Martin took the opportunity to clear his throat. “Sorry, uh, no one’s asked so I will. How did you know to look for him-us-here?” Jon frowned, He hadn’t thought about that.

“Oh, a couple of my mates work here and mentioned seeing Dr. Sims and his husband here a lot on Wednesdays and I dunno about you so much, but Dr. Sims is pretty habitual. Figured it was as good a guess as any. Some things can’t wait til Monday.”

“..an email. Parker. You could’ve sent me an email.” Fingers ran over scarred face, as if he could wipe the irritation (and Martin’s poorly-hidden laugh) from existence.

“But then I couldn’t do this.” His phone was back up again, level with his own face and he twisted so both his own and Jon’s faces were in the shot. “I’m here at 7:02 pm on Wednesday the 26, here to make a very important announcement,” Parker spoke to the camera with confidence. “Dr. Sims just confirmed to me that he is the one, the only, Jonny d’Ville.” Parker held the camera to Jon’s voice. “Anything to say to your adoring fans?”

Jon sighed and tugged on an errant curl. “Don’t forget, reading due Monday.” He wasn’t genuinely upset with Parker, just filled with fond embarrassment.

Parker sent the video off and clapped the back of Jon’s chair. “Well, Dr. D’Ville, its been a pleasure. Everyone’s really excited to get a confirmation on your status of coolest teacher. Any plans for the evening?”

Jon sighed through his lower lip, stray curls framing his scalp flying upward in the sudden burst of wind. “Watching a documentary and trying to forget—wait. What?”

“Oh yeah no, everyone thinks it’s badass. You’ve got a super nice voice and the stories you told were really interesting, if a little buckwild.”

Jon felt his cheeks flush and Martin grinned slyly at him from across the table. “Y-Yes. I guess we were rather good.”

Parker gave his farewells and Jon’s shoulders sagged (he had immediately righted his posture on seeing Parker, his grandmother’s voice in his ear reminding him of his manners), turning his full attention back to his husband. Martin had maintained that grin and was eyeing him intensely, like he expected Jon to say something.

“What, Martin?”

“God, you’re such a dork.” The words were soft, expression fond, and Jon could feel the radiation of unadulterated love Martin gave off in his smile, the one only ever used for Jon. “You really love your students, don’t you? You know how much they love you, right?”

Jon grumbled, but he couldn’t quite sweep the smile off his face either as their waiter made his way over with their check.

“No comment. But we are switching to Tuesday date nights.”

[voiceless-terror]

The Breaking Down of Walls (The Magnus Archives)

Whumptober 2020 Day Seven: Carrying

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Characters: Jonathan Sims, Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood

CW: Sickfic

Summary: For all his grumbling, he doesn’t think Jon actually minded it that much.

He squeaked and protested when Tim threw him over a shoulder, but he went soft and pliant after about a minute of being carted around. He’s almost gotten used to being picked up and bodily moved out of the way by Tim instead of getting a simple ‘excuse me.’ Tim once caught him smiling after he’d been perched on the break room counter while Tim cleaned up a glass he shattered. It quickly morphed into a scowl on eye contact, though.

Jon was small. Portable. Travel-sized for convenience. Jon did not like this pointed out to him.

So Tim made it his job to point it out as often as possible. 

“Hey there lil’ guy!” was his favorite greeting back in research and Jon would always return it with a furious glare and a grumbling, futile protest. See, Tim’s a tall guy. Of course everyone would seem small to him. But Jon was genuinely small. Like, he has to jog to keep up if you have a brisk pace. Watching those little legs work overtime to catch up to him in the hallway was one of Tim’s greatest joys. The man was five foot and change, if the change was pennies on the dollar. Tim particularly liked to rest his elbow on his head; the afternoon silent-treatment it got him was well worth it.

For all his grumbling, he doesn’t think Jon actually minded it that much. 

He squeaked and protested when Tim threw him over a shoulder, but he went soft and pliant after about a minute of being carted around. He’s almost gotten used to being picked up and bodily moved out of the way by Tim instead of getting a simple ‘excuse me.’ Tim once caught him smiling after he’d been perched on the break room counter while Tim cleaned up a glass he shattered. It quickly morphed into a scowl on eye contact, though.

Tim believed he protested too much. Jon liked friends and company despite his prickly exterior. No one leaned into a touch like that if they didn’t want it. So Tim took the complaints with a grain of salt.

The dynamic changed when they moved down to the archives. Jon had distanced himself, locking his office door and trying to seem like a far more serious man than he was. Tim understood- with Elias breathing down their necks, anyone would be worried about professionalism. But it was wearing on Jon both physically and mentally. He was not very pleased with Tim’s moniker of ‘lil boss’ so he cut that out right quick. He looked tired and harried every day and was prone to snapping at the slightest of inconveniences- these days the inconvenience was more often than not Martin.

Poor Martin. He was the odd man out, the only one not to come out of research. Elias assigned him to the archives which put Jon immediately on guard. But Martin was a nice kid, just trying to scrape by like the rest of him. It wasn’t his fault his Latin was terrible and Jon was exacting. Well, maybe he could work on the Latin. But he brought them tea and asked about their day which was more kindness than anyone here had experienced in quite some time. He was working very, very hard at trying to break down Jon walls. He brought him tea on the hour and tried to coax him out for lunch. He took every insult and rejection with a mask of politeness that Tim knows must have taken him some time to perfect. He let Martin do the mothering; Tim doesn’t know how to express his concern in a non-tactile fashion. 

Jon hadn’t been out of his office all morning. This was not unusual, not these days. Martin expressed his concern more than once and Tim decided to check up on him at the end of the day if he hadn’t come out- he’s knee deep in research and on a roll. Sasha’s out investigating a case and it’s only the three of them in the office. The clock neared three and Tim yawned; he really needed this weekend to come quick. 

“Tim!” he heard a strangled voice call. Martin. “Tim, can you come here please?” This couldn’t be anything good. He hurried out of his chair and made his way down the hallway to- you guessed it- Jon’s office.

“H-He won’t wake up!” Martin stuttered, hands hovering uselessly over Jon, who was currently collapsed in his office chair either snoozing or deeply unconscious. Damn. “I-I know he looked bad today but he told me to leave him alone so I did and now look at him!” 

Jon indeed didn’t look or sound well. His hair was out of its bun and in a tangled mess that hid most of his face, but what he could see was flushed a bright red. His breathing was labored, a slow and uneven wheeze. Tim immediately started making his way over. “Does he have a fever?”

“I think so,” Martin replied. “But I didn’t check. Didn’t know if he wanted me...touching him.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “I think this is an exception.” Martin clearly wasn’t comfortable enough with the man to bully him just yet (Jon seemed to do most of the bullying nowadays). He needed a firmer hand when it came to taking care of himself and Tim and Sasha were usually the ones to give it. One hand to Jon’s forehead and he knew the man had worked himself sick, again. It’d been a while since this last occurred- it used to happen with some frequency back in research, at least until Tim and Sasha convinced him to take it easy. But they had been distant and it’s clear that Jon’s fallen back into old habits. Tim sighed, brushing a lock of Jon’s hair behind his ear. “What are we gonna do with you, hm?” he murmured softly, well-aware of Martin’s eyes on his back.

“I-I can set up the cot in the back!” Martin suggested, moving over to the door as if to do it immediately. “I can sleep on the break room couch, it’s surprisingly comfy.” Tim had forgotten that Martin had been living in the archives- Christ, what has this place come to- but it was a Friday night and he didn’t want Jon here all weekend; he would likely just work himself into exhaustion yet again. So Tim made a decision.

“I’ll take him home. He’ll recover better if he’s out of here,” He looked at Martin critically. He wasn’t in the best of shape either. There were dark circles under his eyes and he couldn’t be getting great sleep cooped up in the basement like this. ‘Why don’t you come too?” Martin's eyes widened in surprise. “You could do with a good night’s sleep and my living room couch is legendary.”

“I couldn’t-”

“Nope, I’ve already decided for you,” Tim gave him an easy grin, hoping to seal the deal. “Go get us a cab, will you? I didn’t drive and we aren’t taking the tube.”

“O-Okay! If you’re s-sure.” 

“I’m always sure.” He threw in a wink for good measure and Martin was out the door. Works every time.

Getting Jon out of the chair turned out to be tougher than expected. He was contorted around his desk; he’d clearly been in this position for quite some time. As gently as possible, he wound an arm around his knees and titled Jon back until he fell against his chest and against his other arm. “There we go,” he mumbled even though he knew the man couldn’t hear. “Let’s get you home.” Jon felt incredibly warm in his arms and Tim’s worry increased; he hoped he had medicine back at his flat that hadn't expired. The man was even lighter than expected and Tim almost stumbled backward with how he overcompensated for his weight. Another thing I’ll have to talk to him about.

Martin came back downstairs, his footsteps quick and loud on the tile. “Cab’s here- oh.” He paused, staring down at Jon and blushing for some reason. Tim looked at him quizzically before gazing down to his arms- at some point Jon had nuzzled himself into his shoulder, one hand gripping his shirt in a tight little fist. He had to admit it was an adorable picture, but they didn’t have time for Martin’s crush right now. “I’ll just go and uh, grab my things then.”

They end up in the back of a cab, all three of them. It’s not particularly comfortable but they manage to sprawl Jon across the both of them, head still tucked into Tim’s shoulder and legs stretched out into Martin’s lap. Tim is only a little amused with Martin's awkward placement of his hands in an attempt to avoid touching Jon, though he ends up grabbing onto his legs to keep him in place about two minutes into the ride. They fell into a silence on the way, the only noise was Jon’s breathing which sounded more labored by the second.

“Is he- was he always like this?” Martin asked quietly, allowing himself one more glance at Jon. Martin’s face was still red, much to Tim’s amusement. “Working himself to death?”

“Never this bad,” Tim replied, running a hand through Jon’s hair. He remembered doing this back in research, back when it was okay to touch him. Was he taking advantage? Perhaps a little, but Jon looked like he needed it. “New job’s wearing him down, I think.”

“W-What was he like before?”

Tim paused. Frankly, he’s a bit unsure of what Martin’s looking for here. Jon’s always been Jon, but the promotion seems to have dialed up all of his worst habits past ten. Habits that Tim thought they’d put behind them. It’s not like Jon’s particularly changed- perhaps regressed was a better word. He’s rebuilding the walls that took him years to deconstruct. He’s scared, Tim realized. Don’t know why it took me this long to see it.

“He’s actually quite soft,” Tim stuck to the present tense. Jon’s not lost, after all. Just a little in his head. “Once you get to know him. We were- we are friends. He’ll get used to you,” Martin deserved a little reassurance. “Just gotta invest some time. Like you’re already doing.”

Martin went quiet. He didn’t seem convinced. 

“One time he sprained his ankle on the way into work,” Tim smiled, remembering the day from about a year ago. “Idiot thought it would be fine to walk around the library like nothing happened. You should’ve seen Sasha when she found out. Full of fury, that one. Never get on her bad side.” Sasha’s mother-hen instincts were even worse than Martin’s, though hers were much more intense and full of scolding. “Made a deal that if he was going to work he’d have to sit the fuck down. ‘Course Jon’s not going to do that- he may seem like he sits in his office all day, but I’m sure he’s actually pacing up a storm in there.” A fond smile down at the man in his arms. “So whenever he got up I hauled him on my back. Sasha has a picture somewhere. He was horribly embarrassed, of course, but I think he came around to the idea.” He nudged Martin in the side. “He secretly likes all of that fussing, I promise you.”

“He hides it well, then,” Martin rolled his eyes though he was smiling.

They got to Tim’s flat in a thankfully short period of time. “Make yourself at home,” he said to Martin as he opened the door with just a small adjustment of Jon. “I’m going to get this one settled in my room.”

“Alright,” Martin ducked his head shyly, standing awkwardly in the middle of Tim’s living room. He’ll warm up to it, Tim thought as he made his way to the bedroom. He’s glad he decided to clean the place a couple of nights ago- Jon deserved some freshly-laundered sheets and clean air. Better than that stuffy basement.

Jon blinked his eyes open as Tim gently laid him down on the bed. They were watery and fever-bright, his brow furrowed in confusion.”T-Tim?” he croaked. Yikes, that sounds bad. “S’at you?”

“There you are, lil’ guy,” Tim murmured, wondering if Jon could even hear him. He propped a pillow up beside him and sat on the other side of the bed, tucking Jon against his side. “Took you back to my place. You’ve done a number on yourself, y’know.” Jon groaned and leaned into his shoulder, clearly looking for comfort in his vulnerable state. Tim would give it to him. “When you’re better we're going to have a talk, young man.”

“Hate talks,” Jon whined, rubbing his face into Tim’s shoulder. Ah, so we’ve reached the brat stage of illness. Right on time. “Just gonna sleep. Gotta...got work to do.”

“No you don’t,” Tim replied and squeezed Jon’s shoulders. “You’re going to take some medicine and eat. Have a nap. And maybe if you’re good, I’ll let you watch me play video games. But only if you’re good.” He paused, remembering Martin in his living room. “Also, Martin’s here. Just so you know.”

Jon didn’t seem to have any complaints about that. Huh. Maybe he doesn’t mind him as much as I thought. “S’he gonna make tea? Want tea.” Tim couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up in his throat.

“Yeah,” he promised. “He’ll make us some tea. Maybe cook us breakfast in the morning. The whole sha-bang. Gotta earn his keep.”

“I think Martin can make good eggs.” Yeah, Jon’s not going to remember this conversation.

“How can you tell?” He humored him anyway.

“It’s his face,” Jon’s tone left no room for argument. “I can jus’ tell from his face.” Alright then, Jon.

The man was starting to doze off and Tim took this as his cue to grab some medicine while he still had the chance. He carefully maneuvered around Jon, making sure he was properly tucked in the bed and not in danger of falling off. “Be right back, okay?” No answer, but Tim hadn’t really expected one.

He took a second to look down at his friend, soft and familiar in his bed. This weekend will be good, Tim decided. For all of us. It took him years to break down Jon’s walls and he was willing to do it again. Because Jon was his friend.

And Tim couldn’t lose anyone else.

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26876779

[beholdme]

All the Many Shades of Gerry - Chapter 11

Chapters: 11/19

Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist

Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Gertrude Robinson, Elias Bouchard

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Library AU, Librarian Jon, Artist Gerry, Trans Male Character, Trans Martin Blackwood, Canon Asexual Character, Asexual Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Ace Subtype - Sex Positive, Polyamory, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romantic Fluff, Falling In Love, Boys in Skirts, Kissing, Demisexual Gerard Keay, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Canon-Typical Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Flirting, Minor Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Adventures in Hair Dying, Happy Ending, Banter, Gerry has a lot of sass, Gerard Keay is Morticia Adams, Jon is a very grumpy Librarian, Martin adores them anyway.

Summary: In which Gerry is a kaleidoscope and Jon and Martin can’t help falling in love with him.

He happens to love them back.

Find it on Ao3

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Jon has a terrible, sinking feeling about what he considers their new Mary Keay problem.

He knows Gerry feels more confident that he can deal with her now, as an adult with his own resources and a solid foundation, but Jon doesn't want her ever walking into their lives again.

He feels the threat of her existence hanging over their hard-won peace like an anvil on a lace string.

"I think we should try to find her," Jon tells Martin one evening when they’re alone in bed. Gerry is downstairs painting, and even though he almost certainly can't hear them, Jon whispers it like a dirty secret.

"You think-" Martin looks up from his book with an almost comically incredulous look on his face. "You think we should look for a murder who threatened your life?"

Utterly uninterested in secrets between the three of them, Martin does not attempt to speak quietly.

"Well, when you put it like that," Jon grumbles, returning his attention to his book and pretending to drop it.

The next day at work, he puts his researching skills to the test. It doesn't even take very long, and in less than an hour, he has an address in Morden, where she apparently owns a bookstore of all things.

The information available is fairly spartan, updated more than a year ago, but Jon can see enough. He can see that she lives less than an hour from Gerry, and it itches at him.

He knows he shouldn't go. Knows that Martin and Gerry will be furious if they ever find out that he snooped, nevermind if he goes there and unsettles old ghosts..

But still, he takes a half-day off from work and gets on a bus to Morden.

*

When Jon arrives and finds the storefront boarded up, he is half reassured, half perturbed. He had felt almost relieved when he had a concrete lead to follow, but now all he has is more questions.

"She's dead."

Jon startles at being unexpectedly spoken to and turns towards a teen girl sitting in the storefront doorway next door.

"She died, like a while ago? Apparently she lost her shit and cut herself up with a piece of glass. Bleed to death on the floor." She inclines her head towards the dilapidated bookstore. She seems quite taken with the gossip, as if it's the most interesting thing to ever intercept with her boring life. It probably is, Jon thinks, uncharitably.

"When did it happen?" He prods, hoping for as many details as possible.

"Oh, like two years ago?" She nods at herself in confirmation. "You can go in if you want. It's haunted. People are always going in to see if they can find Mary's ghost."

Jon shudders, feeling that Mary's ghost is already plenty present enough in his life. He asks how to get in anyway.

Jon doesn't find any obvious ghosts inside, only a lot of dust, a few vandalised books, and a trashed building.

There's a staircase leading upwards and he stares up at the upper landing for a moment, weighing his options. Might as well , he thinks, and proceeds up it carefully.

There's literally nothing but more dust, and Jon descends into a sneezing fit just as he is deciding to cut his losses, feeling slightly dizzy.

The sneezing turns into coughing, and Jon takes a step back to lean against a wall.

But the wall isn't there, and he falls.

And falls.

And falls.

*

Jon calls Martin from the hospital. He’s down in Brighton, meeting with a business supplier, and Jon assumes this makes it a safe bet he'll arrive without Gerry. He assumes wrong.

Gerry arrives, alone, in half the time it would take Martin to make the trip, looking flustered and scared.

"How did you get here so fast?" Jon demands incredulously, made short by his shame and physical discomfort.

"How did I-" Gerry pauses and takes a deep breath, but his next words are still slightly shrill. "I took a fucking Uber, Jonathan. How did you get here?"

Jon opens his mouth, but Gerry cuts him off as he goes on.

"You went looking for Mary, didn't you?" Jon's guilty face must tip him off, because he simply goes on, pacing angrily. "Christ, Jon! What the hell were you expecting to find? And you know what, Martin didn't even sound surprised when he called me to tell me you were here. You know, I can understand this uncommunicative bullshit from you, but not Martin."

"That's not very nice," Jon grouses.

"And do you think it was nice for me to hear from Martin that you were hurt? I'm glad to know he was your one and only phone call from an ambulance."

"Gerry-"

"Don't fucking Gerry me."

"I'm sorry," Jon says, looking down at his hands.

"Are you, Jon? Because you don't even know the worst part yet. If you had asked me, I could have told you Mary was dead, and then we wouldn't be in this mess at all."

"You knew?"

"Of course I knew! I was her next of kin!"

Gerry stops, pressing his fingers into his eyes and blowing a hard breath out. He takes several more breaths, heart-pounding, anxiety through the roof.

"Jon, how hurt are you?" Gerry asks quietly, coming closer to gently take a hand.

"Just a few bruises." Gerry raises an eyebrow in disbelief. "A mild concussion." And the other. "Maybe a few broken ribs."

"Oh, my sweet, sweet idiot. How loving you makes me want to climb the walls sometimes."

"Only sometimes?" Jon fills his voice with false levity, although it comes out rather shaky.

Gerry grunts, but leans down to kiss his forehead very gently. It's a minuscule point of contact, but Jon knows Gerry and can feel the tremble of fear (fear for him, who would have thought), and the tension of his frustration.

"I'm going to go talk to the doctor, okay? Just- just take it easy. Everything will be fine, love."

Jon doesn't believe him, not really, but he lets Gerry go. There's a lot of noise and movement after that, and Jon's head spins through most of it. Gerry is there, talking to doctors, querying the tests they want to run, and just generally making his opinion in regards to his partner's care very clear.

*

Martin knows it's bad when he arrives at the hospital and finds Gerry chain-smoking in the parking lot. His expression mostly just looks exhausted, but in his favorite black trench coat, and most intimidating combat boots, he looks ready to burn something down.

"That bad, huh?" Martin tries, but Gerry simply waves him towards the entrance, not making eye contact.

Martin almost cuts his losses, wanting to deal with one idiot at a time, but doesn't want to leave Gerry to sulk.

"How is he?" Martin asks.

"He's in one piece. They asked me to leave so they could do the x-rays. Apparently, he fell over a banister."

"A banister? How?"

"Your guess is as good as mine until we can interrogate him." Gerry takes a long, contemplative drag of his cigarette. "But apparently it's not all that bad and as long as the x-rays look clear, we can take him home in a couple of hours."

"He couldn't have chosen a worse time."

Gerry grunts in agreement. "He's going to tell us he wants to go back to his own flat, but that's only because he thinks I'm angry at him."

"And why would he think that?" Martin questions.

Gerry takes another long drag of his cigarette as if testing Martin's attention span, or patience, or both. Martin just waits, still and easy.

Gerry explains what he knows, his earlier outburst, Jon's guilty, stupid face.

When the cigarette is smoked and put out, Martin finally approaches Gerry all the way, and Gerry sinks into his arms gratefully.

"Everything will be fine."

"Hardly. This is my fault to begin with, and I yelled at him. In a hospital bed!"

"It's as good a place as any other, love. Come on, let's go get him so we can take him home."

Martin kisses him gently, before taking his hand and dragging him off to find Jon.

*

"Your partner is very loud." The blonde nurse with the buzzcut tells Jon as she wheels him to imaging.

"In his defense, I'm an idiot." He sighs, causing his battered ribs to ache.

She laughs heartily, wheeling him into an elevator. "Almost everyone I meet as an A&E nurse is. At least you seem like an interesting idiot."

Jon actually smiles, somehow pleased with the observation. "I'm Jon."

"Daisy Tonner." She offers a hand, which Jon shakes as firmly as he can manage. "You seem a bit old for trespassing in haunted houses, Jon."

The elevator dings and she wheels him out into the imaging wing. "I was looking for the woman who died there." Daisy gives him a skeptical look and he sighs dramatically. "I didn't know she was dead."

Daisy nods her understanding. "I remember when she died actually. They brought her here that night. Never seen someone with so much blood loss be so… Erratic. We had to strap her down." Daisy looks contemplative as she recalls the memory.

"She was a crazy bitch to the very end, then?" Jon asks, bitterness creeping through his tone at the woman who caused Gerry (still causes Gerry,) so much pain. Jon doesn't allow himself, yet, to dwell on the heartache of the years of Gerry she took from him.

"For sure," Daisy tells him. "What do you do for a living then?"

"I'm a librarian?" Jon tells her, but it goes up a bit at the end, like a question.

"Really?" Daisy asks wryly, "You don't sound very sure."

Jon considers laughing but remembers his ribs in time to settle on a tired smile. "I do work in a library but to be frank, most of the time I just feel like my boss's busy boy. Always running here and there and doing everything but what I thought I was supposed to be doing."

"Most professions aren't what we think they are when we sign up for them," Daisy observes. She parks his wheelchair outside a door and leans around to let them know a patient is waiting.

"Do you like being a nurse?" Jon asks her when she settles against the wall beside him, looking rather more intimidating than one would expect from the average health care worker.

"Most of the time. Sometimes it can be just exhausting and draining." She shrugs, contemplative. "Sometimes I get a patient that makes all the shit worthwhile. Mostly I just want to deck someone, though."

She cracks up at that and looks down at Jon to give him a feral grin. "Your boyfriend seems like a worthwhile candidate. Very punchable face."

"Careful, he might enjoy it," Jon warns her, deadpan.

They exchange a pointed look for a moment, before bursting into laughter. It pains Jon significantly, but he considers it worthwhile to enjoy the moment with a strange new friend.

*

By the time Daisy returns Jon to his room, both Martin and Gerry are there. Daisy looks pointedly between blue-haired, pierced, goth Gerry, and pink-haired, jumper clad, soft Martin and then eyes up 'born an 85-year old man' Jon for good measure.

Jon just shrugs at her and she nods in acknowledgment, before helping Jon into his hospital bed.

"As soon as the imaging comes through, it'll be checked by the surgeon on duty," Daisy informs them briskly, "then they'll come through and let you know what's happening. You'd best settle in for a bit of a wait. Buzz if you need me."

With a curt nod and a small smile for Jon, Daisy is off.

Martin comes over and pulls Jon into his comfortable arms, pressing his lips to Jon's forehead. He sighs out in relief to have solid reassurance that Jon is alright, alive, and relatively unscathed.

Gerry also moves over from his perch on the windowsill, and folds himself onto the bed, cross-legged in front of his errant partner.

They settle all together, Martin beside Jon, one unwavering arm around his shoulders, Gerry in front of Jon, both of his hands holding both of Jon's.

Jon opens his mouth to apologize.

"I'll go first," Gerry tells him, gently. "I am sorry that I was so upset earlier and that I raised my voice. I was fucking scared and I took it out on you when you needed me to be soft and steady. I'm also sorry that I didn't tell you Mary was dead before."

Jon tries to interrupt now, but Martin silences him with a squeeze.

"I meant to tell you, but it was all very messed up and over-wrought and I honestly forgot." Gerry looks chastised, a rare blush staining his cheeks. "I hope that we can get better at talking these things out so that this doesn't happen again."

He pauses, considering. "And I hope that if I have made you think that you can't talk to me by avoiding telling you things in the past, that you can forgive me and I will do what I need to be better."

Jon is truly floored, and utterly speechless. The words themselves had been a little bit halting and slightly awkward, as Gerry struggled to express himself, but the earnestness proves to Jon just how much Gerry loves him.

"I- I'm sorry too." Jon stutters out. "I'm an idiot but I love you. I hope we can get better at this together."

His words feel downright juvenile after Gerry's acknowledgement, but it's all he's got, pounding head and trapped emotions preventing similar declarations (oh and his total lack of social skills). Gerry beams at him regardless and he leans forwards to kiss Jon sweetly on the forehead.

Martin grabs Gerry's hand and places a kiss on his palm, sending him a significant look. It feels like approval to Jon, and he can't help but appreciate their bond just as much as his own with each of them.

They settle to wait, and they take turns reading from Martin's book to pass the time, each of their voices having a few moments to fill the air and weave around them.

Dr. Basira Hussain eventually comes in, assuring them that Jon's concussion is mild, his ribs are only bruised, and that he should make a full recovery (if he rests), in just a few weeks. They thank her profusely and she leaves them with Daisy to check out.

Gerry goes off to take care of the paperwork and in a few minutes, they're saying goodbye and walking out of the hospital together. Martin and Gerry flank Jon carefully, there to support him if he stumbles.

He also sits between them in the taxi, head on Martin's shoulder and one hand grasped between both of Gerry's. He feels exhausted and floaty from painkillers, and every jolt of the car makes it difficult to breathe.

He smiles, rather unexpectedly. Despite his current predicament, he's glad enough to know that Mary Keay is dead and that chapter of their lives is definitely closed. He does wish he had just asked Gerry, but he hopes that the strained feelings and injuries will blow over and she will finally be out of their lives for good, nothing but a sad, angry memory. A shade living only in the memories of those that didn't know her.

[danganronpasenariosuwu]

Some Danganronpa babes confessing to their long-time crushes

Holy shit, I've been very inactive! I'm super-duper sorry! I've been very, very busy, and now that summer is finally here I'll be more active, yay! So, as an apology, I'm going to post my second scenario, and I hope that at least one person actually reads through it! Hopefully, the Danganronpa community isn't dead yet!

Makoto Naegi-

♣Although he had planned for this for weeks, he was still anxiety-filled.

♣This could go two ways, assuming his luck didn't play into it as well. A simple yes or no, it wouldn't hurt him too much, right?

♣Wrong. He wasn't sure what he'd do if you said no, nor if you said yes.

♣He wanted to do it the classic way- confessing to you after school behind a cherry-tree. It had worked for all of those anime characters, why not him?

♣He was observing the tree when you arrived, so his back was to you. He turned around-

♣He tripped, abort mission

♣After a bit of laughing, you helped him back up, and asked him why he wanted to talk, although you thought you knew already.

♣After a bit of stuttering, he managed to get it out.

♣”Y/N, you've been one of my best friends for a long time. No matter what my luck manages to do, you're always there with me to help me up, quite literally! I've liked you for such a long time, and I was wondering if you'd like to go out?” He said, in a very fast pace. You could barely understand him.

♣Whether or not you said yes was up to you, but he hoped that his luck would finally work it's magic.

Byakuya Togami-

♕Honestly, he wasn't too concerned. He figured that his money could help buy you over, since his wealth was clearly one of his best attributes.

♕But, he was too aloof to just ask you in person. And, since he clearly couldn't write his feelings for himself, he asked for help.

♕Specifically, he asked Naegi for help, which in retrospect wasn't the best choice for him.

♕After successfully obtaining the note from Naegi, he sealed it up and signed his name on it.

♕The next day at school, just before class started, he slipped it into your locker, which was convieniently close to his.

♕During class, he was a bit quieter than usual, not bothering to shoo Touko, as his mind was completely focused on you, and how you'd respond.

♕Of course, he hoped you would accept, but he did also realize that he could easily replace you if you said no, though it would pain him a bit.

♕After class was over, you went to your locker to grab your books. A letter fell out.

♕You opened it, and read it through.

♕It read- ‘Dear Y/N. My heart has found its way to you with all my love. I want you and no one else because you mean everything to me. I think we should try and make this work. I hope you know you're the one and only one that I want. You're the perfect friend, and I hope we can and will grow to be more. I could never ask for better than what we already have. I hope you're feeling the same way because my heart is set on you and only you.’

♕You already knew it wasn't in his own words, but you were touched nonetheless. It took you awhile to think about it, but you soon had your answer.

Kyouko Kirigiri-

♢You two had been close for a while, and you had managed to be one of the few lucky people to get to know her.

♢She adored everything about you for quite a while, though it never showed. ♢Since she had recently found out that you both enjoyed the same book series, she figured she could confess through that. ♢You were on the second book, almost done and ready to go onto the third. ♢She had checked it out before you, though, and paid the librarian for the damages she would cause, although small.

♢She flipped through the pages until she found the last one, in which the main character confessed to the love-interest. She underlined the words the character had said, and opened to an empty page which was right after the end. She grabbed a purple ballpoint pen. ♢’Y/N, I’d greatly enjoy it if the two of us could be as close as protagonists in this book. I'm hoping you already know who I am, so you can come and speak with me.’ ♢She closed the book and went back to return it. ♢A few days later, you went to go check out that exact book, and in a week you managed to finish it.

♢However, what caught your attention was the bold underline on the confession. You flipped to the last page and read the note, which was addressed to you, surprisingly.

♢Knowing fully well who it was, you decided to go confront it about her, your answer completely clear to you now.

Hajime Hinata-

☞He was a bit afraid to tell you how he felt. What if you didn't like him back because he was too plain? What if he messed up? ☞So, he asked Chiaki to help him, and she delivered, like any good friend would. ☞After a while of her rambling about a hard dating sim she had heard about, she tried giving him advice. ☞”Well, in dating sims they usually ask them out on a date to their favorite place. Do you know Y/N’s favorite place?”

☞”Their house?” He asked. As if that was a good place to go on a first date. ☞”No, like a restaurant or something.” Chiaki sighed, already getting too tired to deal with this love-retarded boy. ☞”I mean, they like to go to that one park with all the cherry blossom trees..” He thought. ☞After talking to Chiaki for a while, he agreed on asking you out to said park. ☞So, after school one day, he pulled you aside. You looked confused. Your best friend, Mahiru, was waiting for you, since you always walked home together. ☞”Hey, Y/N, I like you a lot, and I was wondering if you'd like to go to the park with me tomorrow?” He silently prayed you said yes. ☞Though it was short, your heart warmed a bit after hearing the confession. You had to give him your decision quick, or Mahiru would get angry, so you thought for a second and spoke.

Nagito Komaeda-

♧He knew you'd say no, it's just that some kids from his class had been pressuring him into telling you. ♧He liked you a lot, and hoped you could be more, but he knew it wouldn't happen because who would love trash like him? ♧Nekomaru had given him a pep talk before he went to tell you, hilariously enough. It mainly consisted of him making Komaeda yell his (and your) name. It embarrassed him even further, his face already tinted red. ♧So, after class one day, he tapped your shoulder in an attempt to get your attention. ♧However, his luck had decided to strike, and once you turned around someone pushed you into his chest, officially making the both of you red faced.

♧He pulled back quickly, and apologized profusely. ♧”Bro, it's okay, it wasn't your fault anyways.” You giggled.

♧”Anyways, there's something I'd like to tell you.” he began, nervously fiddling with his thumbs.

♧”Y/N, I've found myself liking you with a passion that friends shouldn’t have. I know you'll say no, since it's impossible for someone to like trash, but I'd like to ask if you want to go out?” ♧You didn't hesitate to respond, since you've already been thinking about how you'd respond to something like this, and because your second class was about to start. Hopefully you don't put this boy into despair.

Chiaki Nanami-

(Some clarification in this- You're the ultimate game designer in Chiaki’s scenarios) 🎮Sure, Chiaki was good at video games. But there's one genre that's hard for her.

🎮Dating sims. And, because of this, she wasn't too sure about how well she’d be able to confess.

🎮Taking it upon herself to study a bit more, she downloaded a dating sim labeled as ‘Mildly easy’.

🎮After a day or two of attempting to beat it, she stumbled upon a character that eerily resembled you. It's name was (Your name but with some letters swapped). She decided that she had to go that route, since she figured it would help her confess.

🎮It took her about fourteen hours to finish, but the confession at the end made it all worthwhile..

🎮It read, ‘(Your name but with some letters swapped), Ever since I met you I've been endeared to you. From your looks to your personality, I like it all. You're all that I want, and I hope you feel that way too?’ 🎮And, from the way the character responded, Chiaki supposed that the exact same confession should work for you.

🎮So, Chiaki decided to tell you immediately at school tomorrow.

🎮You were walking through the halls until Chiaki walked up to you, looking determined as ever. 🎮She recited the confession, using your name instead of the character’s, and your response was a short, simple giggle. 🎮”Nanami, did you find my dating sim? I knew you'd play it someday!” You smiled, although the girl in front of you was very, very confused. 🎮After having a short laugh, you gave Chiaki your answer, either letting her down immensely or making her day even better.

Shuichi Saihara-

🔎He may or may not have cried while thinking about how you'd respond.

🔎He was obviously too shy to tell you in person, even after Kaede’s inspiring pep-talk. 🔎So, he wrote a letter that conveyed all of his emotions, though it might be a bit long.

🔎It read, ‘Dear Y/N. Every word you confide in me, every wonderful and terrible moment you share with me, melts me inside.

You let yourself be vulnerable with me and trust me beyond my comprehension. I never imagined I would truly find another who I would want to spend so much time with, who could truly touch my life the way you have, even without trying. I look forward to many more special moments together. When I see you, I see my future. This is not just talk. It truly comes from the heart. I am consumed by the desire to be with you, to talk to you and to feel you near me. I want to hold you, talk to you, laugh with you, cry with you. I want to play, walk, dance and just be one with you. I think you could become my everything. I know I want to be everything to you. I love you, Y/N L/N.’ And he signed it at the bottom. 🔎But, last second, he chickened out, leading to Kokichi stealing the letter, reading it and laughing. And Shuichi’s ego deflated even more, if possible. 🔎Kokichi ran up to your locker and put it in for the other boy. 🔎Y’see, Kokichi was a hardcore shipper of you two, and wanted to help- 🔎And so, after class you opened your locker and read it. It made your heartbeat pick up its pace, and your face turn red. 🔎You confronted Shuichi immediately. 🔎If you say yes, he’ll probably cry. If you say no, he’ll probably cry AND become depressed. Good luck. Kokichi Ouma- ♖He isn’t nervous at all. He was SURE you'd like him back. ♖But that's a lie, of course. He was scared. There's a small chance of you liking an asshole like him, so he only had a small amount of certainty. ♖He's not necessarily shy, so he decided to do it in person, since that's the most head-on way to do it. ♖So, like most of the others, he chose to tell you after class. ♖You were walking out of class when you were caught off-guard by him jumping on you. ♖And you fell over, as a result, and you ended up in a weird position in which he was straddling you, and his hands were on your stomach. ♖At this point, there's absolutely NO going back. So, in a state of rushed panic, he suddenly yells out- ♖”Y/N, I LIKE YOU A LOT” ♖And now you're both blushing a deep red. ♖Before you could answer, he gets up and runs away, which surprised you immensely. ♖Now you need to go find a flustered boy and tell him if you like him or not. Good luck with that, and don't die. Kaede Akamatsu- ♬She was DETERMINED. ♬Nothing could stop her now. She was literally on her way to your house right now to go and confess to you. ♬At 2 AM. ♬On a Sunday. ♬But she didn't even care. True love was worth it, right? ♬So, when she burst through your window, effectively breaking the glass and ripping the curtains, you were surprised, to say the least. ♬”Kaede what the FUCK are you doing in my house at 2 AM?” ♬”Y/N I’M HERE TO PROCLAIM MY LOVE FOR YOU” ♬On comes a long, and passion-filled confession. It was so early that you weren't thinking when you responded. You either made a decision that would literally keep you bound to her for life, or make her day horrible and make her gross sob to Shuichi. It all depends on how your dreary form at 2 AM responded.

[justalittlelitnerd]

The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

You deserve to be here. You deserve to exist. You deserve to take up space in this world of men

Also:  Felicity Montague, you are a cactus.

This book is the feminist anthem you didn’t know you needed. Actually, no, scratch that it’s the human rights (and sometime even animal rights) anthem you didn’t know you needed. It tackles race, religion, sexuality, gender, and probably any other slightly controversial topic under the sun. 

It is unabashed and recognizes flaws within arguments and defenses and it doesn’t try to say one way of life or being is better than another but they all simply deserve to exist.

If that isn’t enough to compel you maybe the fact that it is set in England (actually all over Europe really) back in the olden days (honest to God can’t remember what time period but the aforementioned petticoats probably gives you a clue) with pirates and sea dragons (it’s not as mystical as it sounds but still slightly magical) will be enough to compel you to pick up this book. Because you should. Like right now. 

It’s hard to be raised in a world where you’re taught to always believe what men say without doubting yourself at every step.

So I loved the first book in this series (The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue) and was super excited when I heard there would be one focusing on Felicity because I wanted more from her character. However, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t apprehensive because all too often the sequel is not as good as the original.

I’m pleased to report that, in my opinion, is not the case here. The Lady’s Guide is every bit as funny and poignant and socially relevant as The Gentleman’s Guide, in fact, it felt even more relevant to me as a woman who could identify strongly with Felicity’s character. But don’t worry there’s still plenty of Monty and Percy present in the story. 

I have learned that men respond best to nonthreatening women whose presence and space in the world does not somehow imperil their manhood, and so, as much as it pains me, I put on a smile so big it hurts my face and try to think like Monty, which is infuriating.

My favorite part of this novel is that Lee resists the urge to submit Felicity to the standard YA Romance storyline. That may have been what gave me the most apprehensive since the first novel implied that she was asexual, or at the very least more interested in her career than a marriage, and I was worried that having a story strictly about her would make Lee feel pressured to give her a romance. I will admit at times it felt like it was going to fall into that trap, but then it would turn around to show how it was just Felicity feeling the pressures of society.

When stripped of the illegalities and the Biblical condemnation, their [Monty and Percy’s] attraction is no stranger to me than anyone’s attraction to anyone.

The Lady’s Guide picks up about a year after the end of The Gentleman’s Guide with Felicity in Edinburgh working at a bakery trying to appeal to various hospitals and school to allow her entrance to no avail.

A year of men telling me I am incapable of this work only gives my pride a more savage edge, and I feel, for the first time in so many long, cold, discouraging months, that I am as clever and capable and fit for the medical profession as any of the men who have denied me a place in it.

The tipping point is when the man at the bakery who has helped her for the last year decides it is time to propose. This sends Felicity into a sort of tailspin because she’s not willing to give up on her dream yet but everyone around her is telling her she should settle down and be married and she’s starting to wonder if they are right. 

Which gave him the idea that men often get in their heads when a woman pays some kind of attention to them: that it was a sign I want him to smash his mouth -- and possibly other body parts -- against mine. Which I do not.

She makes the impulsive decision to travel to London to see Monty and Percy and appeal to medical boards there to grant her admission. However, once again she is denied and practically laughed out of the room for her ideas of becoming a doctor.

“You’re so determined to become a lady doctor then,” he says. “No, sir,” I reply, “I’m determined to become a doctor. The matter of my sex I would prefer to be incidental rather than an amendment.”

Their exclusionary policies rest entirely on the fragility of their own masculinity, but it doesn’t matter because they’re men and I’m a woman so it’s not even going to be a fight and it was never going to be a fight.

But this time one of the doctors recommends she reach out to Doctor Alexander Platt for mentorship which through a series of events leads her to befriending a Black Muslim Hijabi pirate named Sim and going off on a new adventure. Along the way, she encounters an old friend which brings to the forefront the intricacies of feminism. Because really that is what this book is all about in the end. Three women all fighting for their place in this world of men who try to tell them their only place is in the household.   

He has me apologizing for asking for the minimum that is granted to most men.

It turns out that Platt is set to wed Felicity’s childhood friend, Johanna, which she decides to use to get a meeting with him. However, it’s revealed that Felicity and Johanna had a falling out over their differing views on femininity and what it means to be a strong woman. 

You stopped taking me seriously when I stopped being the kind of woman you thought I had to be to be considered intelligent and strong. All those things you say make men take women less seriously -- I don’t think it’s men; it’s you. You’re not better than any other woman because you like philosophy better than parties and don’t give a fig about the company of gentlemen, or because you wear boots instead of heels and don’t set your hair in curls.

Johanna is still strong and intelligent and independent and she likes wearing dresses and makeup and heels and flirting with boys and those things are not incompatible, but a lot of times it’s a sticking point in feminism. Somewhere along the way there became this belief (which Felicity believes) that to be a feminist, to be strong woman standing up to men, you couldn’t also be traditionally feminine. It takes almost the whole novel for Felicity to realize that Johanna is not any less strong and intelligent because she subscribes to traditional gender roles/beauty standards and it takes her even longer to be willing to admit she is wrong.

I have spent so long building up my fortress and learning to tend it alone, because if I didn’t feel I needed anyone, then I wouldn’t miss them if they weren’t there. I couldn’t be neglected if I  was everything to myself. But now, those fortifications suddenly feel like prison walls, high and barbed and impossible to cross.

To be honest the relationships formed between and the battles waged by Sim, Felicity, and Johanna are more than enough reason to read this novel. But Lee decides to make it even better by throwing in scientific discoveries, men stealing women’s credit, danger, and a fight on the open seas reminiscent of any pirate movie. 

It’s not hopelessness, it’s just pure stubbornness. Not even so much a will to live as a refusal to die. Not yet, not now, not here, not when we have so much left to do. There isn’t a goddamned chance I’m dying on this rig.

It turns out that before she died, Johanna’s mom discovered a new species with Platt that honestly sound like sea monsters, something half dragon half snake like? And that the scales of these sea dragons can be used as drugs (both medicinally and recreationally). Platt wants to exploit the dragons while Sim’s family has sworn to protect them at all costs. The women band together to plot against both Platt’s exploitations and Sim’s father’s stubbornness against progression.

Everyone has heard stories of women like us -- cautionary tales, morality plays, warnings of what will befall you if you are a girl too wild for the world, a girl who asks too many questions or wants too much. If you set off into the world alone. Everyone has heard stories of women like us, and now we will make more of them.

Of course, they succeed in both tasks and along the way decide maybe they should get their own ship and go on their own research voyages including exploring more about the sea dragons. 

I am filled suddenly by that wanting, to know things, to understand the world, to feel myself in it.

In the company of women like this -- sharp-edged as raw diamonds but with soft hands and hearts, not strong in spite of anything but powerful because of everything -- I feel invincible. Every chink and rut and battering wind has made us tough and brave and impossible to strike down. We are mountains -- or perhaps temples, with foundations that could outlast time itself.

I know this was a long review filled with an overabundance of quotes, but I hope that just shows how good this book is. I read it a month ago and am just now writing this and still find myself remembering it vividly despite the fact that I’ve read maybe 5 books since then. So do me, and yourself, a favor and go out to read this book (I’m even okay if you skip the first one though I promise you’ll regret it if you do). 

You are Felicity Montague, I tell myself, and the darkness, and my heartbeat, in an attempt to rein it in. You have climbed through catacombs darker than this, you escaped from a second-story window with only your bedsheets, and you should not be frightened of the darkness, but instead be sure that the most frightening thing in it is you.

Bonus:

- The chairman tosses his cloak over his shoulders and gives me a smile that he likely thinks is kind, but is, in fact the smirk of a man about to explain something to a woman that she already knows.

- Humans have instincts specifically for situations like this. Everything in me is saying there is danger lurking in this forest, eyes bright and hungry through the dark.

-  Below is an unhelpful drop to the street -- no footholds, ledges, or loose bricks promised by every fiction book I have ever read. Not even a convenient hedge to drop into.

-  Charming is not a word I’d use -- or ever want used -- to describe me, but the way she says it prickles me. It’s the sort of thing I feel entitled to say disparagingly about myself, but from someone else, it feels blunt and unkind.

- Zounds, does this fool actually think he’s saving me? Another storybook hero to swoop in and rescue a girl from a dragon or a monster or herself -- they’re all the same. A woman must be protected, must be sheltered, must be kept from the winds that would batter her into the earth.

- I can do more than memorize maps of vessels and arteries and bones; I can solve the puzzle of what to do when those pieces come apart. I can write my own treaties. I am a girl of steady hands, stout heart, and every book I have ever read.

[blessuswithblogs]

2018 Game of the Year Top Ten List I guess

2018 has been an interminable mire of exhausting miasma and quite frankly I feel like it has been longer than the entire stretch of 2010-2015 combined. I also didn't play many games released this year because, like last year, I'm still poor. I'll see what I can dig up.

10. Sunset Overdrive PC edition: It's a fun open world game by insomniac. The PC Port is actually balls but like. It's a good game with a unique emphasis on how you traverse the game world, where you can grind and bounce on just about anything and indeed to do so is the only way to not get totally chewed up by the hordes of mutants and scavengers and robots you have to fight. There's also some pretty fun and out there weapons to use, like a gun that shoots vinyl records or one that deploys little auto-turrets kept aloft with propellers or one that shoots out a bowling ball at terminal velocity. The base game didn't actually come out this year (I dont... think it did...?) but it was an XBone exclusive so I didn't play it then. It's got some weird problems with narrative tone and some kind of out of the blue racism but the M rated Nickolodeon toy commercial aesthetic is charming in a weird way. I guess.

9. The Forest: I think this got an official release this year? I don't know I can't fucking keep track. Speaking of a game with weird problems with racism, if you can look past the garbage "main quest" and really deeply uncomfortable racial politics where you murder and steal from cannibal mutants, The Forest is probably the best cool treefort building simulator I've ever played. This game has a love affair with lumber and I respect that. Shouldn't you be looking for Timmy, you ask me? Shouldn't you be shutting the fuck up before I put this airplane axe in your skullmeats? Gazebos are nice. I guess.

8. Spyro: reignited trilogy: haven't actually played this yet but let's be real the spyro games were fucking dope back in the day and giving them an HD coat of paint and packaging them all together is a real standup thing for insomniac to do in between slinging webs and making questionable pc ports. Also its like Dark Souls so it has to be good, right? Everything old is new again. I guess.

7. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: haven't played this one either but like. I know that I am a smash-enjoyer. I even liked Brawl. This is the biggest, smashiest one yet and it's also on the switch which means it could also be portable if I decided I never wanted to leave my bed again. I'm probably going to find some money to get it soon. Should be fun. I guess.

6. The Quiet Man: look no game that is THIS hysterical can be all bad alright? Didn't play it. Won't play it. It's awful. But it's so fucking funny like oh my god. Still better than Fallout 76. I guess.

5. Dark Souls Remastered: was this even a good remaster? I don't fucking know. It's Dark Souls. It's better than 90% of released games by default. I miss Solaire of Astora. I guess there's Shadows Die Twice to look forward to. I guess.

4. Subnautica: I wrote a lot about this actually. Subnautica is great. Just fantastic. A wonderful, visually stunning (mostly) (when it works) journey under an alien ocean to unravel an ancient mystery behind a deadly plague. Building seabases is so much fun (when it doesn't hard crash your computer) and the peaceful playstyle you adopt where you really only kill things for food until you can grow your own, much more efficient produce is a welcome change of pace from everything else. Leviathans are scary, especially now that your cyclops is mortal and not indestructible. This game actually Came Out this year so it deserves to be on the spot. I guess.

3. Dragon Ball Fighterz: Honestly I'm hell trash garbage at fighting games that aren't smash but this was a very well put together, visually impressive as all hell fast paced tag fighter where you can have 3 gokus on the same team fight 3 other gokus on the same team. Goku density alone makes this game worth recommending. The eSports scene that has popped up around it is fun too. I guess.

2. Dead Cells: Another game that gets to be on the list by virtue of it actually coming out this year. Wait, was this on last year's list? Let me check. Ok good it wasn't. Early access is a fucking trip. It's fun, stylish, challenging, has a great deal of variety in ways to play, might have erased my entire save because it became obsolete and I'm definitely not bitter, and it has that classic rogue-lite replay value to give you some bang for your buck. There was that one review plagiarism scandal. I guess.

1. Monster Hunter World: If you really want to know what I think of this game my previous piece on it is a good place to start. In addition to everything said there, MHW is just a fun game. The loop is satisfying and, later on, quite challenging. The combat system takes some genuine getting used to and some monsters like Nergigante actually literally cheat but for the most part the game's unique fighting style, spread across several unique weapon types, is rewarding to learn because it demands some effort be put into it and the dividends of fighting well are very cool, like just knocking a flying monster on its ass with a single mighty swing of the hammer. When a game is hard in any capacity games journalists get dollar signs in their eyes and start drooling uncontrollably because they can immediately declare that Farm Sim 2020 is the next Bloodborne because they somehow managed to roll their tractor into a ditch, but MHW is actually quite similar in style and execution to deliberate Souls combat, but the comparison is made in reverse. Dark Souls is quite similar to Monster Hunter, the first game of which was popular and a couple of years old before Demon's Souls was even a twinkle in Miyazaki's eye. There's a lot of parallels between fighting a big ol' rathalos in monhun and going for the toes against a dragon in Dark Souls, but I think MHW actually does that kind of fight better.  There are a lot of modern conveniences present in MHW that are a godsend to newer players, making the game pretty easy to get into if you're willing to try. It was my favorite game of the year that actually came out in 2018. I kind of wanted to put Warframe in this list but it's been out of early access for years now. I guess.

There were a lot of games this year that I wanted to play, but couldn't. I don't think 2018 was a weak year for video games. It wasn't as strong as 2017 but it had some hits, I just couldn't afford to play them all. Maybe next year I'll be able to give a better list. I think that the whole industry is in for some hard choices and major restructuring of how things get done and how they look at the end result. Stocks continue to trend downward - not just for Bethesda but for most mainstream, prominent AAA developers like EA and Take2. Given the well documented volatility of "The Shareholders", I imagine that they would be most displeased by downward trends even if they were still making a modest profit.

The situation has been likened to an economic bubble ripe for bursting. Games as a cultural institution have come a long way since the catastrophic days of Atari's warehouses of unsold copies of E.T., and I don't believe that we're in any danger of a complete collapse of the institution, but the fact absolutely remains That Something's Gotta Give. The increasingly predatory practices that game developers put in place as they pathologically attempt to Make Every Money Ever are intrinsically unsustainable. People are willing to forgive and overlook the now ubiquitous microtransaction if a game is good enough to overlook it, or if it's the game's only real way of actually making money. Warframe's microtransactions, for instance, are reasonably priced, platinum is often heavily discounted as a login bonus, and you can make large amounts of it without ever spending money thanks to the game's surprisingly robust trading economy. So. Yeah. They get a pass. Warframe is also good on its own merits, despite being free to play. They also listen to their community about pricing. Go check out Warframe. It's free. It's free!!! Warframe is my unofficial top spot.

Sorry I got a little bit distracted. So there's only really two instances where people will tolerate microtransactions and lootboxes in the contemporary sense: either a game is good enough and polished enough and the lootboxes are unobtrusive enough that you can just sort of shrug your shoulders and say "it sucks but what are you gonna do" or it genuinely relies on those microtransactions to support itself. When these tenets are violated, people WILL get mad. People raised absolute hell about Battlefront 2's scummy monetization schemes, enough to get EA to back off. Fallout 76 is getting lambasted in no small part due to its utterly overpriced "cosmetic" shop where you pay ten real dollars to get your power armor to look blue. You can buy fullfeatured, critically acclaimed games for half that price and you already dumped $60 on this lemon of a game. Destiny 2 got into hot water for being cagey about how its exp values were calculated and how the previously free and user-friendly shaders became one-time use items you could only get from rolling the dice. The public is getting positively irate about all of this nonsense, and if Fallout 76 (and evidently battlefield V?) is any indication, we are fast approaching a breaking point where shareholder demand for profit will outpace the consumer's ability to provide it and the developer's ability to skinner box it out of us.

Of course Nintendo continues to march on to the beat of its own drum seemingly unaffected by all of this garbage. Not out of any moral superiority, I imagine. More likely it's just a consequence of that company still being in the process of being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Maybe a few years down the line when everyboy else has abandoned microtransactions Nintendo will pick them up, put a cute Mario motif on it, and we'll be back to square one. Time will tell. We're in a volatile time for games and the timebomb keeps ticking. I just hope the explosion isn't too messy. I guess.

[feckyeswriting]

Simplify - an Eris Fic

For @nimadge

Thank you for being amazing and even more so thanks for giving me a bright spot during all the hectic busy-ness of moving <3

I loved getting to cover this prompt. I hope you enjoy how it all came together. I know you just had all your exams, so I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just 100% studying anxiety all over again ^^  

How about Eric and Tris, relationship OR good working relationship with the possibility of more at least; she sees HIM studying something for once (for qualification exam or smth) and can help?  How would that go?

Made me think abt how Eric would take help/how harsh he is on himself, that sort of thing.  We never see him learning anything, after all

Simplify

“Do you need anything?”

Such a simple question. I looked up from my piles of notes and the guide book I was currently attempting to force into perfect recall. Seeing Tris there, a small smile tucked behind her lips, tempered the irritation that had been building all afternoon. There was a lot there bubbling under the surface.

“I know you work best alone, but if you need anything - a drink, something from the caf - just let me know,” she said.

I did my best to wrangle my expression into a smile. Her offer made it easy. It was well past the end of her shift. Tris didn’t need to be hanging around Leadership on her off hours. It meant all the more to me that she had.

“Thanks,” I replied simply.

Tris kissed her fingertips, pressing the two of them to my nameplate on the door. “I’m down the hall with Kyle,” she said before departing.

I felt my face fall as she turned and walked away. There was nothing I’d like more than to have gotten up and followed her. Instead, I sighed and flipped to the next blank page to take more notes. Committing to memory the new SOPs for calls had been easier than this drivel.

Qualifications - or quals - were the bane of my existence. And as Leader I was expected to stay ahead of as many of them as I could. At least we got to spread them out between Leaders. Between us, we had to understand what the Faction was capable of.

Sharp shooting and marksmanship quals were a favorite of mine and many of my fellows. They were straightforward; a combination of muscle memory and specific math formulas let you pass with flying colors usually. I’d been happy with the other quals I’d passed over the past two years.

Then the dust-up in Leadership had changed things. Not to speak ill of the very necessary changes that took place, it was a total pain in the ass to have to cover for the things that Max and the others had learned over the years. I’d fought tooth and nail to remain in place, accepting as earnestly as possible my culpability for letting… everything happen without question. That meant not complaining about covering two quals at once.

So, here I was in my office trying to convince my tired brain that learning every in and out of neurochemistry was a reasonable use of my time and efforts. I’d avoided the quals for fear testing initially because dammit I’d left Erudite to get away from reading academic texts.

Fate has a funny way of ignoring what we want in life.

I ran my hands through my hair and flipped to the next chapter. There were still a few more hours until I had time to sleep.

Every time that I blinked now I could swear I saw the diagrams from my notes on the insides of my eyelids. Fuck, that would have made things a lot easier if they were there. Instead I stared at the practice test question in front of me and fumed.

Describe the basic concepts behind the signals used to target the amygdala.

My pen tapped a staccato rhythm on my knee. I wanted to snap it in half. This was the first long form answer I was expected to answer. I had known it was going to come up.

The amygdala was only part of the brain triggered by the fear serum. There was also the thalamus and… and… Well, there were more. More that didn’t matter for this question. But all I could think about now was the damn sensory thalamus. Emotional stimulus - that was the first part of the series of triggers in the process - leading to further systemic triggers.

“That’s what it’s fucking asking, you idiot,” I growled to myself. “What are those triggers in the fuckin’ amygdala.” Still, no matter how long I stared at my measly four word reply, the less I could recall about the process. It didn’t matter how the synaptic sequence depended on a particular balance of ion channels, either, but that was what my mind decided to offer up next.

The process begins with

The process begins with

The process begins with- with what?

I flipped back to the earlier questions. I had more ‘return to answer’ arrows on each page than I’d remembered making. On the question asking to order the sequence of signals used by the serum I’d only marked off the first and last steps. Blank spaces stared at me unhelpfully, offering no insight into whether or not it was a neurotransmitter dump or an artificial channel blocker that could have been used in the amygdala.

My pen went across the room. This was absolutely ridiculous.

Next to me, Tris finally stirred. She screwed up her eyes against the light from my side lamp, but she sat up. “You’re still taking that thing?” she murmured. “What time is it?”

“Late,” I said. I ignored her first question; I’d blown way past my initial expectation of how long this stupid practice test was going to take.

She rubbed at her eyes and leaned heavily on the headboard. “You need to take a break,” Tris said simply.

I looked down at all the little black arrows on the pages and those stupid, stupid four words with nothing after them. “I can’t. I’m not done yet,” I replied.

“It’s- that can’t be right. It’s four am?” she said. She’d caught a glimpse of the alarm clock down by the foot of the bed. It was there so we couldn’t just slam the snooze button without moving. I’d been selectively ignoring it all evening. Well, morning now.

I sighed. Tris shifted again next to me, returning to rest her head on the pillow. She still faced me now. One hand emerged from the blanket again so she could run the side of her finger down my arm. She could only reach so far before starting back down again.

“You’re going to be exhausted,” Tris murmured. “Can you ask Lauren for her answers from this one? To study from?”

“Mm. Maybe.” Lauren had passed this qual the winter after her Initiation. She’d only had a few weeks to study for it. Had only needed a few weeks to. I’d been working on this every god damn night and weekend for the past three months.

And I still couldn’t answer a fucking obvious, critical question.

“Hey, hey,” Tris said. I looked down at my hands. I’d crumpled the pages in front of me between white knuckled fists. Tris’ hand wrapped around my wrist. It was the best she could manage from her angle. “It’s going to be alright,” she insisted.

“It will be when this is over,” I hissed. “If I pass.” Good fucking god, there were only three days left. Two nights of studying, really. I’d only have a few hours on the morning of to try and force any more info into recall.

I laughed bitterly. “I might not pass,” I repeated. “Wouldn’t that be rich? Paid so much attention to the fear sims, and I can’t explain them worth a damn for these stupid quals. Fear is what gets you kicked out of Dauntless. Never thought that’d be me, but here we are.”

Tris threw the blanket off. It took most of my papers with it, crumpled pages spilling everywhere at the foot of the bed. She sat up fully. Forced me to look at her instead.

“Eric,” she said, “what would you tell me if I was doing this?”

It wouldn’t work. I crossed my arms over my chest and scoffed. “Usually your problem is that you’re overreacting. And I’m not,” I insisted.

“Bullshit,” Tris retorted. I scoffed again. She wasn’t the one unable to answer a goddamn multiple choice question on what should have been a mid-level biology question.

She mirrored my crossed arms. “Bull. Shit. You’re overreacting and stressing about not knowing shit. So you’re just getting more and more stressed as you get more and more stuff not quite right,” she said.

“Not quite right is wrong. And wrong means failing quals,” I spat.

I don’t know if she heard the nerves in my voice then or if she just had to think another minute for a new plan of attack, but after a moment she said, “You have two more full days.”

Two days. My stomach flipped and I snapped my eyes shut. “Don’t remind me.”

She didn’t quit. “You have two more full days,” Tris insisted. “That’s plenty of time. You’ve got the core information down; you have to by now after all this cramming and all these weekends buried in that book. It’s just perfecting recall.”

I made a noise. I felt her prodding at my knees until I relented and stretched my legs back out on the mattress. Tris dropped onto my lap with all the grace of a newborn foal - all legs and flailing hooves, sorry, palms. I opened one eye as she wrapped her arms loosely around my neck.

“I’m not moving these,” I muttered, wiggling one arm.

“Sure you’re not,” she replied. Resting her forehead on mine, she forced me to look at her.

Her voice got soft. “I know you’re stressed. And you’ve every right to be worried about the test. They’re fucking hard,” she said. I almost laughed. Almost.

Tris continued on. One of her thumbs stroked along the skin of my neck. “But I’m here to tell you: you’re going to be okay. It’s all going to be fine. Two days is plenty of time. I know it will be,” she said quietly.

I closed my eyes again. Nodding my head, I hummed in acknowledgement. “Mkay,” I said. I pressed a kiss to her lips. Saying thank you seemed like not enough. I did it anyways.

“You don’t need to thank me. Like I said, if you need anything you just have to ask me,” she murmured. We shifted together and she moved to lay on top of me. I had to kick to get the blanket back up to us. That sleepy smile returned to her face when I pulled it over her shoulders again.

I looked one last time at the pages still down by my feet. Tris poked my side, reading my mind. “Turn off the light,” she grunted. “Sleep now. Study later.”

Kissing the top of her head, I clicked the lamp off. She snuggled tighter to my chest.

It’s the simple things.

[justasmallbloginabigklainefandom]

Old glee spoof liveblogs

Yuè [glee spoof 4] so yeah i decided to watch all of simgm's glee stuff (glee spoof, glee minisodes, gleedo) and i am at spoof 4

Yuè Oh this one has no captions Yuè MICHAEL IS HERE!!!! Yuè "THE FUCKING AUDITORIUM FINN" Yuè I've been singing the Obsession with Finn song at the top of.mylungs today cause what a jam Yuè IT IS MY BOY BLAAAAAAAAINE Yuè there were a lot of guest stars Yuè GO EMMA Yuè TATER TOTS Yuè "Nice mugshot Mercedes"

Yuè [glee spoof 5] time for rachel's nose job

Yuè ah.. no captions Yuè "but we'll pretend that never happened cause we're good at doing that with storylines" Yuè YOOO WILLIAM IS HERE FOR SAM Yuè AND ALSO SCOTT (I think that was the name of the actor before Kyle) AS PUCK Yuè glee did Wannabe in an episode but it wasn't the same because Brother's riffs weren't in there Yuè "is that all you ever do?" TRUTH Yuè I love it when Hemo smiles in the background Yuè thanks Emma for slamming Will and his "teaching" Yuè "what in the fuckity fuck fuck was that shit??" Yuè nickname one: lemon drop Yuè I love this part Yuè "where did that piano come from?" Yuè SORRY SIMGM BUT CHECK PLEASE JUST GOT UPDATED I NEED T READ IT Yuè okay okay I am going to continue cause it hasn't blown up yet so I can't blog about omgcp yet Yuè I don't like Santana faking the sexual harassment claim tho Yuè ZOOMBA Yuè thanks simgm for pointing out the double standards between male and female characters Yuè "a sad attempt of giving me a storyline" Yuè damm Sister did great job on the performances Yuè "Nice choir Mercedes"

Yuè [glee spoof 6] WHERE'S MA CROWN? Yuè "isn't that what you did" "yeah but.. I'm Finn" Yuè "THAT'S WHY YOU BETTER ROLL" Yuè "I can't believe we're stupid enough to believe that" Yuè "wow... misjudged that one" Yuè thanks simgm for pointing out so many plot holes Yuè "you can't fight the power of Brittana" Yuè I FORGOT ABOUT JESSE FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS Yuè I can't believe Michael did Jesse and Kurt's voice Yuè *voices Yuè YES YES YES THE BLAINE SONG IS STILL MY JAM WHY ISN'T IT ON THEIR SPOTIFY? ?? Yuè "yeah if you're gonna fight at least hit each other" Yuè THIS S.MY FAVORITE PART OF ALL OF GLEE SPOOFS GO FOR IT KURT Yuè nickname two: sugary plumb pie Yuè THIS ENTIRE EPISODE IS WONDERFUL Yuè "ONE MORE TIME" Yuè "Nice poem Mercedes"

Yuè [glee spoof 7] This is over 30 minutes long that's what I call dedication

Yuè " half of the stuff that happens to us makes no damn sense" Yuè I still can't believe Boss built the entire New York set herself Yuè "I HAVE BIG PLANS" fuuuuck I should wear my I have big plans t-shirt Yuè well Quinn.. Cats is back on Broadway now aka Rachel was just 6 years early Yuè "it's no time for logic Kurt" Yuè SAVE THE HORSES Yuè "I regret nothing" I love the glee spoof Artie Yuè I just love the entire glee spoof Yuè "I HAVE BIG PLANS" Yuè I am just in constant amazement of the New York set Yuè I'm now wearing the Big Plans t-shirt just around the time Quinn goes crazy about her big plans Yuè Oh god after six years I finally get the "Bootay" thing Yuè "well this could've been a lo-" Yuè "shut the fuck up Finn" Yuè I remember Boss saying Michael worked really hard on the song Yuè Boss sounds so much like Lea it's unreal maybe Boss should be on Elsie Fest this year Yuè why doesn't the Sims 4 have spiral staircases yet? Yuè "you know you're probably gonna change your mind by the end of the episode, right?" Yuè "PLANS! Big ones!" Yuè "Okay first of all: breath mints. You needs on" Yuè Brittany is the only sane one here Yuè quite frankly. . Sunshine beating Rachel up is more believable than Rachel's sudden change of heart Yuè "I'm Finn" Yuè "that might change by the end of the episode though" true true true Yuè SMACK THAT Yuè I like this song more than Pretending but honestly I just really don't like Pretending Yuè there's so many great music in this episode Yuè I actually used to have Simgm music on my phone including this song Yuè the part with Santana and Rachel is my favourite Yuè nickname 3: pancakes Yuè nickname 4: gingerbread dough sprinkled lightly toasted graham cracker bunny" Yuè "who got tad more songs than me" "WHAT?" Yuè aaaah my Brittana shipping heart Yuè "NOW MARCH MOTHERFUCKER" Yuè "oh and. ... Tater tots" Yuè woah Brianna voiced both Terri and Sunshine?

Yuè [glee spoof 8] (Jim Cantiello voice) SEASON 3. The season where we appreciate Tina.

Yuè JUDGING YOU WRITERS Yuè "I don't have any (smile)" Yuè "We appreciate you!" Yuè "cinnamon toast" "Finn!" Yuè nickname 5: Pop Tart Yuè honestly Blaine should've just fucked stayed at Dalton Yuè what happened to Dianna's dog? Yuè "... than Kurt dropped Mercedes" oH SHIT Yuè THIS IS THE START OF UNICORN Yuè nickname 6: Candy Cane Yuè GOD BLESS THE BLAINE SONG AND BOSS'S BROTHER'S VOICE Yuè "I didn't do it" Yuè ah the angry student is back Yuè Oh wait is this where Jordan started voicing Sue? Yuè "Because they don't know what else to do with my character" Yuè good thing that glee spoof continues the hair jokes Yuè "We appreciate you!" Yuè this song was also on my phone Yuè I think I had Breakout, Tonight, Blaine song, Faith, Gotta Be Love With You and another one on my phone Yuè OH THE CELL BLOCK TANGO Yuè watching this really makes me want to play the Sims 2 again but... I have a storyline on the Sims 4 aka a fifth generation family Yuè QUINN FALLING GETS ME EVERY TIME Yuè name of Beth 1: Carol Yuè "holy crap I can't believe I'm actually saying meaningful lines" Yuè nadiacreek actually made a ranking of parents in glee and she put Shelby on it twice Yuè good for Beth and bad for Rachel Yuè "IHBBP. I have big baby plans!" Yuè "Damn, you Brittana"

Yuè [glee spoof 9] and we appreciate Tina Yuè Oh I love this song Yuè "Asian" "Asian F" "stereotype" "stop doing glee club" "no" "I'm glad we talked this out" Yuè BRITT IN A MONKEY SUIT Yuè name of Beth 2 and 3: Susan, Mary Yuè name of Beth 4: Jessica Yuè THEY SAY THAT LIFE IS TATER TOT AR R Y OU FOR REAL?? Yuè RORY UM IRISH Yuè I love the cast list Yuè and I also love Mercedes's riffs Yuè was Nathan actually Irish? I don't think do cause he was in one of those chats Yuè "I was told you are too" True Yuè "We apprecia-" "Shut the fuck up" Yuè "COURAGE" Yuè I actually wanted the courage t-shirt before I got the I have big plans one Yuè Oh man I miss the old crack days of jokes of Finn telling Blainers to sit down Yuè AND THERE IS BRIANNA AS SUGAR MOTTA Yuè "what the f-" Yuè "H-" "stop you're embarrassing yourself" Yuè I LOVE THAT FINN SMILE Yuè "Told you"

Yuè [glee spoof 10] that time a parody handled Santana's coming out story better than the actual show

Yuè I love the warning Yuè "I've been working in keeping my eyebrows still" Yuè "I think I'll go wax my lasagna" is one of my favourite lines ever Yuè OH B OY SEBASTIAN Yuè nickname 7???: snuggle toes Yuè a background sim is wearing a fez I love it Yuè FUCKING HELL THE VEGAN THING Yuè "Tina what the fuck" "Bitch" Yuè Y'ALL IT IS TIME FOR THE CELL BLOCK TANGO THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST MOMENTS OF MY LIFE Yuè also who the hell did these sometimes inaccurate captions? Yuè kudos to Boss for all these dialogues Yuè "Found out he couldn't handle BIG PLANS" Yuè damm I'm still in awe bc f the Cell Block Tango Yuè "we're here to save Rachel's virginity" Yuè nickname 8: Watermelon Lips Yuè KLAINE DID WATERMELON BEFORE IT WAS COOL Yuè I've drawn so many Stop the violence things Yuè Lauren is creepin Yuè GO SIMGM GO SIMGM GO SIMGM YES YES YES THANKS FOR THIS SCENE Yuè I love the big camera and also them saying the storyline is stupid Yuè also we needed more of Brittany supporting Santana during this come on fuck off glee Yuè I HAD TOTALLY FORGOTTEN ABUT TIS SONG Yuè Quinn is just smiling while Santana is beating the living shit out of Finn Yuè "Can't say I didn't warn you" Yuè FINN SINGING WHILE DRUNK AND NAKED IS MY FAVE Hannah sebbbbb Yuè Hannah: did you watch simgm ????????

Yuè [glee spoof 11] time for simgm to do it right

Yuè it is true tho bc Santana suddenly got suspended for violence and I'm like... FIGGINS HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT THESE KIDS DO ON A DAILY BASIS? Yuè Man the actual episode was such bullshit Yuè "then we're all in the wrong club" Yuè Brittany saying the truth Yuè the entire Quick storyline is so weird Yuè "CHEESEBURGER" Yuè tbh this song is as boring as the song they actually sung on glee so congrats simgm Yuè I'll never get why Santana was so offended by Klaine singing Perfect to her in support bc they know how hard it is in a straight world Yuè whereas the straight dude who outed her sang a boring ass unnecessary song and Santana was crying because she was so ///moved/// Yuè "unions and ass????" Yuè nickname 9: Dolphin Nose? Yuè "I'M KURT BITCH" Yuè Brittana should've sung in the actual glee sigh glee this was such a disappointment Yuè BRITTANA DANCING THE SMUSSLE Yuè honestly suspending Rachel was the best that could have happened because it gave us a killer Rachel free setlist Yuè "Do you people know math???" Yuè "Not completely. I have big plans" "there she goes again" Yuè ZISES Yuè "and clap like a seal" Yuè "It's random and out of character" Yuè glee and its writers suck at romance Yuè "QUINN HEEL" Yuè THIS IS THE SONG THAT WAS ALSO ON MY PHONE Yuè "I can still remember when I was 18. and here I am at 17, a woman"

Yuè [glee spoof 12] there weren't any songs in it

Yuè NVM I WAS WATCHING EPISODE 13 THERE ARE SONGS IN EP 12 Yuè "oh you know me and my big plans" Yuè "we hold hands, ran into Kurt and Blaine, and I moved two weeks later" Yuè unfortunately the old channel doesn't have captions Yuè "allow me to show you my excitement. ..... " I actually use that quote in real life Yuè why can't Shue do anything by himself Yuè "it always freaks me out when he decides to actually teach" Yuè I love these moments Yuè "my cat will eat you alive" Yuè I just remember how uncomfortable it was to watch Finchel suck face on glee like they didn't even look like loving kisses it was full open mouth on open mouth and making out Yuè "you would know all about announcing things wouldn't you" Yuè I also liked this song Yuè "no I only do that in cars" Yuè nickname 10: chocolate turle Yuè *turtle Yuè to quote Darren Criss: "it's cool I'm back" Yuè after taking a break to help dad wth dinner I'm gonna end this episode Yuè Oh the slushie Yuè "do my eyebrows look okay?" Yuè "that building was already on fire when I got there" Yuè "what happens in the bathroom stays in the bathroom" Yuè "aren't we supposed to be rehearsing" "DO WE EVEN KNOW HOW TO DO THAT?" Yuè GAY PIRATE Yuè "oh wow we actually accomplished something" I love Quinn s snark in these spoofs Yuè so much snark Yuè "oh sh-" Yuè WAIT JORDAN ALSO VOICED GRANT?

Yuè [glee spoof 13] Finn doesn't know how to wash his balls

Yuè really.. Will and Emma suck at their jobs Yuè BLACK SUE Yuè "by the way I'm having a baby" Yuè Mercedes was actually the only one in canon that handled differently when she cheated Yuè "where do I sign to get you fired?" Yuè there were no songs in this ep... Yuè Oh yeah Boss voiced Sugar cause Brianna was ill Yuè poor Puck Yuè ZISES Yuè "sure let's go with that" Yuè "okay who the fuck is this guy?" Quinn once again spilling the truth Yuè "FINN YOU SON OF A-" Yuè "my girlfriend my girlfriend politics and Latino Brittany is my girlfriend equal rights if I wanna kiss my girlfriend I can rainbow flag" Yuè nickname 11: crayola monkey Yuè wait isn't this Scott's last episode?

Yuè [glee spoof 14] what a nice episode title

Yuè "I'm sorry we don't speak bitch" Yuè "and you make a two dollar hoe look classy" Yuè Sam is wearing simgm merch Yuè "I don't here Finchel when Finchel speaks" same Yuè respect for simgm to not make fun of the suicide storyline Yuè I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE TEY PUT A STARKID REFERENCE IN HETR Yuè "MY CAT IS PART OF THE CIA" Yuè in which the girls are fucking sensible Yuè I love the glee version of No Scrub but man what a jam is this Yuè "you suck at motivational speeches" Yuè "do you feel the 'I don't give a fuck' I'm throwing in your direction" Yuè I ASKED FOR DEVELOPMENT AND THEY GAVE ME A WHEELCHAIR Yuè "I have-" "give it a rest Quinn" Yuè "he didn't call me a nickname today" "OH SHIT SON" Yuè "since five seconds ago" Yuè THESE PARTS BETWEEN SIBLING OH GOD Yuè damn Quinn is being inspirational Yuè duck bless this song Yuè AH BRITT Yuè "If there was a chair to kick right now I would" Yuè well well well simgm Yuè nice song

Yuè [glee spoof 15] at this point Boss and Co were so done they put 4 episodes in one spoof

Yuè True about Damian and the glee project thing Yuè waot there are no captions Yuè Mr Schue is such a dick Yuè ah... Quinn's face Yuè for real tho in 4 eps Santana changed her opinion on college too many times Yuè "this got disturbing really fast" Yuè UNIQUE Yuè "knock knock" "who's there?" "go away" Yuè THE WAY RACHEL'S FACE JUST FELL Yuè ZISES IS IN THE CHOIR ROOM Yuè the Quoe boner thing was so gross Yuè I also use "and I wanna go to college" in real life to basically say WTF Yuè fuck Chandler Yuè Oh jesus Yuè btw welcome Kyle to the cast Yuè "I can do that now. I see you're dressed as Lea Michele today" Yuè SANTANA VISION Yuè "dinosaurs" "shut the fuck up Mike"

Yuè [glee spoof 16] this is the end

Yuè throwback to the first ep Yuè Rachel is a selfish as Yuè *ass Yuè and Tina is right Yuè THE BODY SWAP Yuè nickname 12 kinda: winky fairy Yuè ahhh I'm getting all emotional Yuè TATER TOOOOOOOOOOOOTS Yuè another throwback because they're all wearing the outfits they wore in the first spoof Yuè "good luck with that" Yuè EVEN ZISES WAS HERE Yuè the unicorn magic!! Yuè "my big plans are-" (title song) Yuè ... and it's over AGAIN

Yuè [glee spoof minisodes and others]

Yuè mini 1Glee Spoof Minisode 1 | Kurt's Problem with Blaine Yuè this is the video that led me to Simgm because of Michael's awesome voice work Yuè nickname 1: cutiepiedumplingsugartwinkledove Yuè I love that nickname Yuè nickname 2: kurtsie wurtsie Yuè mini 2Glee Spoof Minisode 2 | Santana Exposes All Yuè TATER TOTS YEAAAAAH Yuè "Penises and Winecoolers: a dangerous combination" Yuè "you've been a bad girl Santana" oh lord Yuè mini 3Glee Spoof Minisode 3 | Fondue for Two Yuè wait Yuè this isn't minisode 3 Yuè this is the other Fondue for Two mini Yuè okay in other words minisode 3 has disappeared so let's just move to Yuè mini 4Glee Spoof Minisode 4 |The Glee Cast Discover the Gl... Yuè this s where it gets real Yuè "SAVE THE HORSES" Yuè this is the first time the actual sim "actors" were in a video Yuè "am I really that tall?" "YES!" Yuè mini 5Glee Spoof Minisode 5 | Quinn's Summer Before Senior... Yuè I actually ripped the audio off of this one and put it on my phone so that I could listen t it Yuè "you have too many messages fr me to count" Yuè "BLAINE HOW MANY TMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOT TO SING DURING-" Yuè quinn's face when Finn tries to order a pizza Yuè "..." "that must've been Tina leaving a message" Yuè mini 6Glee Spoof Minisode 6 | The Glee Club Gets Tested Yuè "you know I'm gonna flunk" Yuè Oh Santana Yuè "cow ass no. 5?" Yuè "you're all fucking crazy" "we didn't need a test to tell us that" Yuè mini 7 for realGlee Spoof Minisode 7 | Fondue for Two Part 2 Yuè "do you enjoy being a lesbian?" Yuè nickname 3: puffy-bear Yuè again.. oh Santana Yuè "you do like tossing things" "yeah like..." "my girlfriend out of the closet" Yuè mini 8Glee Spoof Minisode 8 | Brainstorming with the Creat... Yuè RIB is at it again Yuè "is Obama available?" if only Yuè Ian does no shit Yuè hey it's a Zises Yuè I love the Sim cast Yuè "what the fuck did I just read" after the IKAG script is gold Yuè mini 9Glee Spoof Minisode 9 | The Glee Cast Auditions Yuè Sim cast is back wohoo Yuè "my name is-" "you've got the part" Yuè "no way that's HELLA cool!" Yuè mini 10Glee Spoof Minisode 10 | To Catch a Pedo Will Yuè you know that's also HELLA cool? Yuè more of Brianna as sugar Yuè "Because my boyfriend is super awesome" Yuè Sue knocking Schue down always gets me Yuè mini 11Glee Spoof Minisode 11 | Favorite Moments Yuè TIME FOR SENTIMENT Yuè I agree with Michael. "Where's ma crown?" is my favourite part as well Yuè the Christmas crap festGlee Spoof Christmas Special | Holly Jolly Crap Fest Yuè honestly I haven't seen this one in ages Yuè "this Irish dude" Yuè "????????????????" Yuè this was very weird tbh Yuè they never released that song Yuè comic conGlee Cast Comic Con Spoof Yuè I thought it was very cool that actual viewers could send in audio questions Yuè fucking mcgustin Yuè never forget mcgustin Yuè save horses and coffee 2k17 Yuè Oh shit Lea's laugh Yuè LEA Yuè go for it Darren Yuè sneak peek Behind the Scenes of Glee Spoofs Yuè this is like one minute long but it points out so many glee flaws it's hilarious Yuè "I asked for development and they gave me a wheelchair" Yuè btw I am watching all the little glee spoofs and other bts stuff but I'm not gonna live blog them

[wearejustvisiting]

Doki Doki Literature Club: Review

So I finished Doki Doki Literature club a few days ago and took some time to stew on it. And I can definitely say that the end result is...not the great, deep, powerful psychological thriller that everyone is talking about. (did I play a different game or something?) But before we go on, I need to mention that this review is going to contain a massive amount of spoilers. Doki Doki Literature club is not something I recommend wasting our time with, but it is something I recommend looking into for yourself. Also, I am gonna have to say that if you are easily disturbed, stop reading. The game gets dark, almost to a hilarious degree.Good? Let's get going.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________ Doki Doki Literature club is a dating sim which has the problems of all other dating sims. You have skinny white girls of varying heights and busts all after your body in what can be described as some sort of disturbing fantasy, where the girls are awarded to you for sitting through the proper dialogue trees and clicking the right buttons. Make no mistake, the girls in this game aren't characters. They're trophies.

Well, for the first three hours anyhow. Then, in an actually surprisingly touching scene, it is found out that your childhood friend Sayori has...depression. I just want to say as someone with bipolar, depression is hard to get right in a game. But these guys, they got it right. Way right. Like, if the player character's "i know what's best for you" dialogue wasn't so damn creepy I might actually have thought that part of the game was worth a damn. But no. No it wasn't. Turns out that this, that Sayori having depression, is a preamble. An introduction to what this game thinks is creepy: Shock value.

If I were asked what the main problems of this game are, it would be:1: Characters.The characters are not good. Hell, not even their weird post-game-gets-fucked-with versions are any good. We have Sayori the dull, Natsuki the obnoxious, Yuri the shy, and Monika. She's evil. And you'll be able to tell within the first hour of the game (don't worry about pacing, I'll get to it)

To go a little more in depth with the characters, we should look at Sayori first. SAYORI: SCAPEGOAT OF THE AGES

Sayori is a ditzy childhood friend of yours with a good heart, who ends up killing herself at the end of act 1 for nothing more than shock value. Her In game death contributes to nothing. You could have just had her disappear, or have the death happen off screen. But no. Dan Salvato, the mastermind behind this, thought it was important, it was NECESSARY to make us sit through this. To go into her room and to look at her hanging, dead body. Dan seems to be a bit of a necrophiliac, since he sure does love making us look at dead people. Like...a lot. Let's be real, Sayori's death is just shock value. The game wants to seem more important than it actually is, so it throws a dead girl at the screen and hopes it creeps us out. To the point where in the back of the literature club's classroom, whenever something spooky is about to go down, a picture of Sayori's hanging body can be seen. They use this girl's death like a silent hill siren, and it doesn't make any fucking sense. THis is some sort of revolutionary psychological thriller, and yet all it's doing is using the suicide of some girl as a shocking little extra. It's heinous.

But Sayori's disappearance, the fact that she is NO LONGER AROUND is necessary. Because it launches us into a timeline split that...well, that I need to explain.

SIDE NOTEThis game's timeline splits when Sayori dies. Weird things start happening in game in an attempt to jumpscare you. We will be referring to the events before the death of Sayori as Timeline 1, or T1 for shor, and everything after that will be referred to as Timeline 2, or T2 for short. As Sayori dies in T1 in a pre-rendered, predetermined, stupid looking NIN ripoff cutscene, we won't be talking about her in T2...but that leads us into talking about:

YURI: AIN'T CREEPY GIRLS JUST THE CUTEST?

So in T1 we're introduced to Yuri, who is shy and sad and reads books and is just the most annoyingly boring garbage. She's kinda considered the brooding member of the party, the one who doesn't really talk much. She's got a rough exterior, but inside she is just such a sad, soft, lonely little bird! Isn't this how ALL shy, reclusive women are!?

T1 Yuri is kinda boring, but she's the one I got stuck with due to arbitrary choices I made during the beginning of the game which I now kind of regret making. She's not really an interesting character, though the game definitely tries hard to make her interesting in T1.

It's revealed that she likes weird books. One book, which isn't a real book, is about humans being experimented on while they're still alive and conscious. Which, now that I think about it , is kind of symbolic for the game in and of itself. As in, you feel like the government is testing how long you can stay awake. I nearly failed the experiment. Multiple times.

This is supposed to add depth to the character. We're supposed to think she is more interesting than she actually is. This is furthered by the fact that she likes collecting knives. It's seen as this weird, horrifying thing by the game's plot, but...I mean, it's a knife collection. It's nothing to be afraid of. Unless we're talking about T2 Yuri, that is. T2 Yuri is about as threatening as a 4 year old pretending to be a police officer. Sure, she's got a brand new yandere coat of paint recklessly shellacked onto her, but it's not creepy apart from like...a jumpscare or two.

SIDENOTE: Yandere is this stupid anime trope that essentially makes a girl 'crazygonuts' for you to the point where she's willing to kill or be killed for you. It's stupid, I know. But apparently to people who don't know how obsessive personality disorder works, this is hot. Or something. It sure as shit ain't compelling.

T2 Yuri is one of this game's many failures of good character building. This character COULD have been interesting. She could have bee a character fighting with her obsession against the Monika character (She's my least favorite, we'll get to her) and had really honest, gut-wrenching scenes about fighting with her inner self.

But literally, in the game, the most disturbing thing T2 Yuri does is masturbate with a pen you dropped. That's it. That's as weird as it gets. Sure, there is stuff that's supposed to be more disturbing. She self harms, and you are forced to look at the results of that self harm. Because Dan Salvato thinks that if you're forced to look at it, you're going to somehow be really freaked out by it.

Once again, someone's mental illness and self harm is used not as character development, but as shock value. You are not supposed to feel for Yuri, you are supposed to be scared of Yuri. Anyways, she kills herself in the middle of a conversation with you and you're forced to sit through the worst paced scene in gaming history. But Pacing is a totally different section of the review. We'll get to it. Trust me.

NATSUKI: DEATH OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Due to the fact that I was arbitrarily handed over to Yuri in the first timeline of the game, I don't know too much about T1 Natsuki. I know that she's cranky and that she's got a bloodsugar problem, or something.

To be fair, she actually starts out as a great character. We're drip-fed hints through dialogue and poems about her that are giving us hints about her life at a deliciously teasing pace. It draws you in you get interested. But in T2, I can tell you EXACTLY the line that made me give up on her. The EXACT PIECE of dialogue, it will be etched into my brain for years to come. The line that told me 'wow, these writers have NO fucking clue what they're doing'

"My father would beat the shit out of m if I found out"

...Okay. Not only do we later find out that she wasn't actually the one who said this line later in the game. Not only is it disrespectful to people who have gone through that trauma. But it kills this character's good writing.

Let's take a step back and learn how to write trauma. 

SIDENOTE: Good writing of a traumatic character comes down to how the character behaves due to their trauma. For example: Nick Wilde from Zootopia is an untrustworthy kind of guy, who never puts stock in anything unless it's proven to work. He's also the victim of (what is essentially) a racially motivated hat crime. This doesn't excuse his actions, but it explains them. The trouble with Natsuki is that it's revealed too early on. If we had figured out with Nick Wilde that that stuff happened to him, say, five minutes after meeting the character, that would be total bullshit. But with T2 Natsuki, we learn too early what's going on. It kills the ability to figure out the character for yourself, and it destroys the buildup to what would have been a better reveal later in the game.

Because there are SO MANY BETTER REVEALS to Natsuki having an abusive father later in T2. But no. Once Again, Dan Salvato didn't want to let his writing about traumatic events slip past you. It tells us something when he doesn't even expect the player to pick up subtext that becomes surtext later on in the game. What I'm trying to say is that if Natsuki's abuse had been revealed later in the game, the character would have felt more compelling. But here we are, in the middle of T2, getting all these AMAZING hints to something that we already know. Because Dan Salvato does not think you're smart enough to get it yourself.  

As for T2 Natsuki's death, it's...I mean it's there. Her eyes bleed, her neck snaps, she jumpscares you...It's not creepy for more than like three minutes. But what irks me is they have the balls to NOT actually kill her. She lives. She's back five minutes later.

Her death wasn't even a real death. This entire character was just a waste of time. All because Dan Salvato REALLY wanted to get another creepy silent hills death in there.

MONIKA: FLOWEY, BUT LESS INTERESTING

They say behind every great villain is a great motive. Which is why Monika's Motive sucks. She sucks as a villain, and yet EVERYONE seems to like her for some reason. I liked her better when she was flowey and the game was undertale and we had actual goddamn GAMEPLAY.

SIDENOTE: So in Undertale, the 2015 Toby Fox masterclass in indie game making, there's this character called Flowey who is fully aware that undertale is a game. He is fully aware of it. And he is REALLY GOOD at messing with the player. Deleting saves, crashing and bricking the game, etc. But Flowey is also good because of his motive. He only wants to kill you because he has grown tired of time and time again sitting through the same thing over and over, he got tired of having no feelings. So he started Killing. Monika has a...somewhat similar makeup.

Before we go on, I want to say that Monika being the villain is haphazardly revealed in like the first hour and a half of the game or something. On the second day of T1 she starts talking about saving the game and reloading the game, but then hastily backtracks over herself. Sure. Sure you don't know what that means.

Whereas flowey got a good introduction and good development (and a neat theme song) Monika gets (along with lumbar scoliosis) a fisher price version of villainy. She's really just a cold hearted monster with no development or any REAL motive. Her actions are cowardly at best.

Monika will 'delete' characters from he game, even though she doesn't really. She also messes with the games settings to get things going her way. Why is this? What is her motive to coding herself into the game like this and taking it over?

She wants to date the Player. Not the player CHARACTER, mind you, but the player themselves.

THIS IS THE MOST STUPID SHIT I HAVE EVER HEARD WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND

Let's analyze the two big problems with this:

1: She knows she's inside a game (and insults YOU, the PLAYER, for not knowing it was a game even though you obviously do) so why would she want to date the PLAYER if she knows she can't get into the real world?

2: People have pointed this out as a joke, but if she wanted to date the player so bad, then why didn't she just code herself a playable path? She's proficient enough at manipulating the game to supposedly get to the game's command line. Can she not just...give herself a path?

We also learn that Monika is manipulating the other characters to say things to try and scare the player character off. But if she REALLY wanted the player, why even bother? Just write into a poem that that's what is going on. Don't pussyfoot around it either, just straight up tell me. Natsuki got to tell me something was wrong with Yuri, so why couldn't Monika just at the beginning of the game be like 'yo I wanna get jiggy with it'??

I've heard people describe DDLC as a game that insults the tropes of dating sims and trivializes them. But...if the villain's motive is to, in the end, date the player, that kills it as a piece of subversive narrative. It further approves the idea that every character in a dating sim wants to sleep with you and ONLY you. Even the ones you can't normally get with in the game.

There are other problems with this game; However, the second biggest problem is definitely 2: Pacing So a former developer for Maxis games and former writer for Gamepro, Soren Johnson, describe fun in games like this.

Total fun=meaningful decisions/time played

Essentially, this means that the amount of fun a player has ins equal to how many decisions the player makes over the time they play. In a fun game like Skyrim, you make a lot of meaningful decisions in a little amount of time. So even though Skyrim is longer (Hell, I've probably sank at least 800 hours into that game across two whole platforms) I have a lot of fun with this game. DDLC's crimes against pacing are egregious. This game doesn't start getting to the creepy stuff that its fans tout as groundbreaking until FIVE HOURS into the game. Imagine getting a horror game, but having to sit through a schooday's worth of just tensionless, boring nothing.

While T1 has a pacing problem with slowness, T2 has one with quickness. It seems like after that first barrier of a character death got broken, DDLC decided to blow its load all over the damn place. Creepy thing after shocking thing until you just become numb to it. It's either too slow or too fast. And then...then there's the final weekend. As mentioned earlier, Yuri kills herself in T2. Now, you would expect a normal person who just saw a woman kill herself in front of them go to the police, or scream for help, or run all over the building in terror. What do you do? What happens?

You sit there. With the corpse. For THREE. IN. GAME. DAYS. YOU'RE EXPECTED TO SIT AND CLICK A SCREEN WITH A SLOWLY DECOMPOSING BODY ON IT FOR 45 GODDAMN MINUTES.

 I legit thought my game was broken. I had to look it up and make sure, and if you have to LOOK UP a solution to a dating sim, that's just...that's just bad design. Monika writes this off, saying that the 'script of the game' is broken, but we know the deal. Once again, Dan Salvato thinks that forcing you to sit through a traumatic event is going to scare you even more. 

But after having sat through three hours of 'ooky spooky' bullshit, I didn't care. I wanted the game to be broken because I wanted to be done.

3: Was there anything good? There were two good things about this game, and both of them are easy to explain. So forgive me.

Credit where credit is due, some of the jpeg and music manipulation was good. It wasn't nearly enough to save the game, sure, and I still wouldn't reccomend it since you can find all these creepy effects the game pulls on the internet. Bu some of the manipulation techniques were legit kinda creepy.

And the file manipulation in the computer, outside of the game, blurring the line between diegetic and non-diegetic  (Diegesis referring to what is and isn't in the universe of a piece of media, e.g. background music in non-diagetic but dialogue is diagetic) was really cool. I haven't seen stuff like that since Imscared back in 2013, and that game was legitimately terrifying. I felt like a genius trying to figure some of this stuff out.

Other than that, I mean...I guess the game IS free...i doesn't take up TOO much space on my hard drive...

4: CONCLUSIONit feels like the people who wrote this game wanted to write a creepy pasta. I can imagine this being some creepy story passed around forums i 2014, being talked about. Having its own little mini fandom on tumblr, maybe a stupid living tombstone song about it. I can imagine people making fangame versions of this creepy pasta, even down to bloody eyes and hyper realistic blood and all those little creepy pasta tropes. If this had been like Sonic.exe, a fad that we all forgot about and eventually brought into the realm of parody? That would at least be more entertaining than what we got.

Instead we got a bunch of writers who can't write and artists who watch too much anime to know how real clothes and breasts work, who in all honesty probably didn't want to hang out with nerdy game programmers and Just didn't put in their all. The programmers obviously wanted this game more than the writers did.

This game isn't worth the $0.00 it's charging for the standard product.

 If you just want to play a piece of good metafiction, stop playing DDLC, get a job, and go buy a PS2 with Metal Gear Solid 2 on it.

 If you want a good 'game about games' just bite the bullet and spend $15 bucks on undertale.

 If you want a free indie horror game that really gets under your skin, go get Yume Nikki. Trust me, that one's a real ride.

I also have problems with he music of this game, but that's a rant for another time. All I want to say is that you can do better.

 You can do so much better. 

Let this be a reminder that just because a game is free and has cute anime girls and a weird premise, doesn't mean it will all be good.

No matter how much it wants you to believe it is.

[mariellewritesalot]

Turning Pages

Last night (or more accurately, at 1 in the morning) I finished reading Normal People by Sally Rooney in just about 22 hours, between my daily routine tasks. This isn’t groundbreaking or whatever, but a few months ago I noticed that I wasn’t reading or writing for leisure as much as I used to when I was younger, so it was still kind of a feat. Sure, I read my required readings and wrote when needed in college, but if you grew up finding solace in words than virtual reality, you’d know that doesn’t quite cut it.

I always guessed it was because I was so busy and that my course required so much writing that I needed escape in different ways: series, movies, music, or more commonly, the mind-numbing, anxiety-inducing act of scrolling through my social media feed. My attention span is that of a gold fish, I feel like every ten minutes I look down on my phone or my mind drifts off somewhere. Now with the overwhelming amount of time stretched for all of us with no certain end, as a coping mechanism, I went back to my old habits, rediscovered new ones, and let me tell you, it feels...good. 

It truly does. For now, at least. I’m slowly going through my reading list and writing a practice novel, plotting out the chapters of Don’t Write Me Off. I’ve also watched old Hollywood films, mainly Audrey Hepburn ones, of course (I think Sabrina might be my favorite, but the grandiose of Funny Face is just exquisite, also that plot twist in Charade), but also classics like Casablanca (1942) which made me want to look pretty in a blue dress and the more modern Celeste & Jesse Forever (2012) which is just me being a complete fan of Andy Samberg’s wit. I’ve seen Phantom of the Opera and The Last Five Years, both musicals with really good soundtracks that made me wish I was a good enough singer to star in musicals. I cried to the last season (ever!) of Modern Family and thoroughly enjoyed Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Season 7. I’m cycling to episodes of The Office, which I’m currently on Season 6. I discovered that I really like Sims 4, even when it’s not like me to play computer or video games. I workout quite regularly too, grateful for my go-to trainers on Youtube: Yoga with Adriene and the og, Cassey Ho of Blogilates. I’ve kept in touch with some friends, kept my distance from some. I’ve cooked dishes I haven’t attempted before. I’ve helped people out secretly through donations or food. 

Overall, I think I’m coping pretty well. It isn’t a linear progress though, there are days when I just can’t. I recognize that not everyone has the same experience or energy to get things done, and the turmoil we are all going through takes a toll on most of us mentally and financially. People are suffering every day and those rising numbers are more than just statistics. In another side of this story, I call for #MassTestingNow and concrete plans and updates from the government.  

 Admittedly, I’ve felt like a fraud for months because I have become a writer who only half-reads and never finishes novels anymore or finishes only one in a few months when I used to have the energy for one book a day. There were attempts, of course, to rebuild that in the past year. I started a Goodreads account, got recommendations from friends, bought books from small bookstores, and even started writing a few chapters for #NaNoWriMo2019 that I only continued now. There was always something on that felt easier to be a part of, like watching Gilmore Girls after school. I wasn’t who I was five years ago, a really eager writer who saved her work in a flash drive and worked on her stories everywhere. I guess I’m also not preoccupied with romantic relationships anymore, ironically now that I’m definitely older and could probably handle one better, but being without makes me feel good, on most days. People always said that heartbreak is good writing fuel, and with none of that going on, I tend to circle back to old wounds or go down the rabbit hole of personal issues. Both options aren’t so good, but I’ve written in a journal whenever they felt overwhelming. I’m guessing it’s still me in here, but an older version that is honed by experiences and the uneasiness of navigating through my young adult years. I can’t expect to go back to who I was then, even when she had better habits and read more books. I could only move forward and rekindle my unending (albeit sometimes absent) spark with words.

Now this book I was reading last night, Rooney’s second novel that I’ve heard is also now a Hulu series I’m yet to watch (not the one on top, that open book my copy of Lakambini Sitoy’s Jungle Planet and Other Stories which I read last month, also good!) was somewhat a thrill I was missing out on. It was recommended by one of my friends, Denise Samson, who I admire taste-wise in her knowledge of books and music. I cried during the last few chapters because it felt raw to me, a real story despite being fictitious. Not spiced up by too-good-to-be-true plot devices, just two people, Marianne and Connell, who couldn’t stray too far from each other over the years. I savored the journeys they took to grow, had my own interpretation of why it was titled Normal People, and felt that I could relate to bits and pieces. This was the first time in a really long hiatus that a book has made me feel moved. It was a story I needed to carry with me for a bit before I move onto the next one, without wasting too much time. Suddenly, I remember why I had wanted to be a writer for most years of my life: for this feeling, the power of words to make the readers a part of the journey. I can only hope that I give the same feeling back to anyone who reads my works one day, provided that the apocalypse reschedules.

Now I feel motivated more than ever to be the writer I want to be, manifesting it, so to speak. My second year as a Malikhaing Pagsulat student ended rather unceremoniously, different from what I thought was going to happen. It was supposed to be sunflowers and a Sablay adorned over a dress I designed after conquering writing requirements and the occasional one-bottle trips with friends. Next school year, I have the option to study a different course, which was the initial plan, if I’m being honest. However, right now, I’m not so sure I want to take that path if I have the option to continue studying how to write in Filipino. I feel that I want to be a storyteller all my life. The circumstances are saddening but they also made me realize how much I’ve enjoyed the past two years in UP Diliman, the culture of it all. I’ve learned so much from my writing professors, idolize them more than I did then. I regret that I wasn’t able to send myself off into the new chapter in the full capacity I had hoped to. There were so many unfinished works in classes I enjoyed, friends I feel like I want to say goodbye to properly, and techniques that would have helped me in my journey with words. 

My parents have always seen me pursuing law after my undergraduate studies (and I think I do, too) but at the core, I really am just a girl who loves to write and share stories. Like, damn, maybe I want to be a writer all my life instead of chasing a profession that’s supposed to bring me honor and financial stability. That’s just wishful thinking, though. At this standpoint, I feel myself setting that aside for a destined future, but I’m also taking my time to indulge in reading good material and trying to write better. If there’s something I learned about myself, is that there were (and are going to be) times when I feel like I’m lost, but no matter how long it takes me, I always find my way back. At the moment, as I am writing this on my laptop on our dining table (instead of watching another black and white film) like I’ve been doing more often, I feel that I am where I need to be, so far. I can only hope that you are, too. We’ll be alright. 

-

Do you have any book recommendations? Please share!

Also: I update Don’t Write Me Off at least twice a week. If you need a light quarantine read, please consider my practice novel! 

Follow me on Spotify: mariellewashere 

[madegeeky]

Giftening 2020: Obligatory Vote for These Post (spoiler version)

Want the non-spoilery version? Seriously, though, super spoilery for main plot points for a lot of these. Skip the ones you don’t want to know about.

Ones with * are my nominations, so you know where my biases lie. :P Ones in bold are my top pick for the categories. I did not include things that don’t need the boost (like Utena).

ANIME 

Aggretsuko - A tv show about an unassuming shy red panda woman who works in an office building and deals with the stress of it by going to karaoke and screaming out death metal. The show largely deals with her making friends with two women who she admires and a dude who likes her. The dude who likes her is actually a geniunely interesting storyline because at the end of the first season (which I’ve not seen beyond), he basically admits that he’s built this image of her in his head that isn’t real and he wants to know the real her. (Which, fuck yeah.)

Fushigi Yuugi* - This is a story about two teens who used to be friends fighting over a man which is literally the antithesis of everything Jet is. And yet, Jet watched the whole damn thing. Watch her squirm as she has to deal with that in a liveblog format. You can get a preview of some of that in Doc’s liveblog of it that she did for Jet.

NON-ANIME ANIMATED

Archer* - This is an animated parody of James Bond made for adults. It's offensive as fuck because Archer, the titular character, is a James Bond stand-in and that character can also be offensive as fuck. In fact, one thing to appreciate about this show is that all the characters are shitty, awful people and the show never attempts to excuse their shitty, awful behavior. Plus, it's one of the few shows where half the main characters are women. I am a tiny bit hesitant to rec this for a liveblog due to the offensivness however, as far as I can tell it's not popular on tumblr, and those are generally the ones that cause the most trouble so... 

Daria - The story of a misanthropic teenager, her family, and her best friend. The characters are specifically meant to appear to be tropes before slowly being unveiled as three dimensional people. It's got a dry sense of humor that I think Jet will enjoy. I actually didn't know until years after I watched this that it was a spin-off of Beavis and Butthead (which I hated) so don't let that dissuade you. 

LIVE ACTION

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - I haven't seen past a certain point because it starts going super deep into exploring depression and that is one of my main triggers for a depressive episode, so I cannot speak of later eps. However, this show starts out funny and silly and evolves into a show exploring how toxic the main character actually is and how unhealthy her coping mechanisms are. It's amazing to see a character type whose actions are usually excused or written off as funny instead be specifically called out as being awful and toxic. (It was a Shit Show is still one of the best songs I've ever heard and Mr. Geeky and I sing it to each other whenever shit hits the fan.) 

Hannibal* - If you know of Hannibal, you know the basics premise is that of a man who eats people and is chased by the FBI. The writing in this is some of the best writing I've ever had the pleasure of seeing in a piece of media: it's subtle, smart, and trust its audience to follow along without having their hand held. However, what's really great about the TV show is that it's not afraid to do its own thing. It constantly fucks with your expectations and deconstructs and explores tropes in ways I've never seen before. I haven't seen the ending yet but I highly doubt it's going to end in a place where Silence of the Lambs will happen. The acting is fucking great and even though Anthony Hopkins gives an amazing performance as Hannibal Lector, after seeing Mads Mikkelsen play him there's no going back to Hopkins. In general, if you're looking for something original (which is ironic considering it's based on a book and there are several movies) and smart, I cannot recommend this enough. 

Russian Doll* - (Doc, please skip this one, as in 5 years when you're done with Two Storms, this is one of the things I'm considering nominating should I ever win a liveblog again.) I don't really know how to explain this show because it's so fucking weird and is so focused on character and ideas that the plot is both super simple and extremely complicated. It's a story about a woman who starts to relive the same day over and over again except, instead of the typical thing where it starts over when she falls asleep, it's only until she dies (so sometimes she lasts for hours, other times for a couple days). However, almost immediately there are signs that something else is going on, that something outside of the main character's repeating day, something has gone horribly wrong. (Count the fish.) It's a very thoughtful, character-driven show, more about exploring ideas than plot which I, personally, didn't mind at all. Another one I highly recommend overall with much less blood and gore than Hannibal.

Xena - IT'S FUCKING XENA PEOPLE! Okay, but just in case you don't know what the show is about is through cultural osmosis, Xena is a show about a woman who used to be a truly horrible murderous bitch and her continual attempts to make up for the wrongs she has done. The main relationship in the show is between Xena and her (girl)friend, Gabriel, and although the show can be ridiculously silly (time is made up and history doesn’t matter!), it also explores deep, dark issues. One of the best things this show explores is the idea of redemption and forgiveness and that perhaps nothing Xena does will ever get her those things.

LIVESTREAM

Crank* - Jason Statham plays a man who has been given a poison that slowly cuts off his adrenaline, meaning that eventually he'll die. He has to do increasingly ludicrous things to get his adrenaline pumping overtime to make up for it slowly being cut off. It's one of the most fucking bananas thing you'll ever watch but is just a bunch of fucking fun. (CW: Public sexual assault. I only mentioned because it’s a scene that last for a bit. It's a complicated scene so I won't get into it here but send an ask if you want more details.)

Dale and Tucker vs Evil* - Dale and Tucker, two hillbilly best friends, are going into the woods to fix up their vacation home when they stumble across some college kids. Random circumstances make the college kids think D&T have kidnapped their friend and so they decide they need to attack D&T to get her back. Hijinx ensue. I don't want to say much more because there's a moment that is, to this day, still one of the funniest fucking things I've ever seen, largely because I did not see it coming.

GAMES

Doki Doki Lit Club - This is a game about games. You play a guy in a dating sim. Your first playthrough everything seems normal enough. You join the literature club, meet and talk to girls, and then one of the girls commits suicide. And then game restarts and the girl who committed suicide just... doesn't exist anymore. Your replay the exact same days but it's as though she never existed. Things only get weirder from there. This game does a great job of turning dating sim tropes on their head, as well as exploring games in general. (Content warning for a lot of things. Let me know if you want more details.)

Slime Rancher (stream) - There's really not much to spoil here. You play a woman who is in charge of a ranch full of slimes. There's some messages you'll find, left by the old owner, telling story about their romance. There also some messages between you character and a deliberately gender-ambiguous significant other. And that's about the closest to story you get. Otherwise it's just catching and ranching slimes.

Subnautica* - Fucking fuck I love this game. When this game first starts it appears to be your typical survival game with no real direction other than what you want to explore. But then you find an alien structure. And you realize that your spaceship didn't randomly crash. And you find out that there's no way get off this planet except to explore deeper and deeper and find out what the aliens were doing on this planet. A genuinely beautiful story, told mostly through entries in data pads and voice messages left behind, this ending is one of the most moving ends I've ever experienced and I never ever would have expected to be able to say that about a survival game.

We Happy Few* - In this alternate universe, the Germans invaded Britain during WW2 (although, through exploring the world, you learn that the differences started well before that). When the story starts up, the Germans have left Britain behind and Britain, for unknown reasons, appears to be cut off and/or abandoned by the rest of the world. The majority of the country is constantly hopped up on a drug called Joy, which is specifically used to help them forget something horrible that happened in the past. (I have theories.) The story starts when your character goes off his Joy and gets kicked out of society. There's a general sense of unease about everything and the more you learn the more that unease grows. The art style is great and the world building fascinating.

MISC (there’s nothing spoilery here but it feels weird to not have it)

Interactive Horror Story Livestream - Doc has talked a bit about this in at least one of her Xmas streams and it sounds amazing. Not only is Jet hilarious with horror stuff but knowing Doc’s writing skill, it will be something that we’d never want to miss.

Bean Boozle When Failing a Hard Game* - I am a sadistic bitch, I admit to this, and I love watching people eat Bean Boozle, the jelly bean of horrible flavors. One of my favorite videos content creators has done is playing an incredibly difficult game and then being forced to eat a random one every time they fail. 

[daleisgreat]

Dale’s Top 11 Videogame Experiences of 2016

Greetings! It has been awhile since I did one of these top 10 of the year lists. It felt right to place my list on my long dormant Giant Bomb blog where a few of my past lists reside and because I always enjoy the wealthy amount of game of the year content from the Giant Bomb crew each year. This is not a ‘Top 10 games of 2016,’ but more of a ‘Top 10 Experiences’ of 2016.

As you will see, a lot of my games listed will be from prior years. Also you will definitely notice I cheated on most of my entries and included multiple games on most entries. I tried to make each number on my list a theme for each experience, so I hope that suffices for you. If you take a liking my ramblings, please check out my movie blog where I recently ran down my favorite and worst movies from the past few years. I may post this on my movie blog as well since I have a ‘Top 10’ label there too, so if you are reading this blog there, greetings again! *Edit* I saw after I finished editing this I screwed up my numbering and actually had 11 items, not 10, but it is too late now to remove an item after working on this for so long, so onward with my top 11 experiences of 2016! 11) Finally acquiring current gen consoles Yes, that is right, three years they debuted I finally picked up both PS4 and Xbox One. My gaming backlog grew out of control because I do not have nearly enough time to game as I use to so I wanted a few years to get caught before I got the current systems. I first jumped on the Xbox One shortly after they released the S model in September and caught a good sale on the 2 TB version that knocked off $100. It took me six weeks though to get around to hooking it up and playing it however, but I have gamed a fair amount on it since.

The PS4 I got a couple months later on Black Friday weekend when retailers were having big sales on the Uncharted 4 500gb bundle, and I was able to stack a couple other discounts to get it for $190. An awesome friend gifted me a 2 TB hard drive for Christmas shortly thereafter. I have since hooked it up and got all my cross buy games from PS3 and Vita transferred over, but have yet to find any time to play a single game on it because of all the other games I am trying to catch up on. I think one of these weekends I should do nothing but binge on Uncharted 4 because it is one of my favorite franchises and it is a crime that I have yet to play the latest installment. I also want to squeeze in here two other platforms that kind of meet the criteria of this subject: the Retron 5 and the NES Classic. The games I have tested out on the Retron 5 have worked great on my HDTV, and results in my classic games running flawlessly in HD, with none of the fuzziness that would result from hooking up my classic systems with RCA/composite cables into an HDTV. Like everyone else, I hate the Retron 5 controller, but am thankful the Retron 5 is compatible and works well with my classic controllers. The NES Classic I lucked into getting one morning right when a retailer opened and I was not even looking for it, but happened to hear the store had them. I brought it over to play with the family after Thanksgiving dinner and it was a big hit that night. My brother-in-law kicked my ass in Tecmo Bowl that evening. Later on I let my six year-old niece, and eight year-old nephew play the system for a bit and took in their reactions to experiencing classics like Bubble Bobble and Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time. I have since busted out the NES Classic a couple more times with my nephew and we made a lot of progress in Bubble Bobble since, and have also had good times playing the original Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong with him. My nephew loves Minecraft and other tablet games, and I feared him playing these older games I grew up with would not jive with him, and I was delighted he took a liking to many of them. 10) Arcade Racers! I love me some arcade racing games! Racing and pinball games are the perfect way to start off a gaming session. I like to invest about 30-45 minutes and knock off a few races from a career mode before moving on to whatever game I am working on in my backlog. Going through my gaming journal I realized I have invested significant time into five racing games in 2016, and have completed the career modes in three of them. I first finished off Blaze Rush, an excellent downloadable racing game that is essentially the old school Micro Machines games, but with crazy weapons. The career mode is filled with a ton of variety, and while I had a few hair pulling moments trying to win certain races, I very much enjoyed my time with it.

Toybox Turbo is from Codemasters, the same people who made the aforementioned Micro Machines games and this is a contemporary follow up to them from a couple years ago. You still race in crazy environments like kitchen tables and workbenches, and the racing is still as quick and fun as the 8-bit classics. The third career mode I finished in 2016 went to Dirt Showdown, also from Codemasters. This is an arcade spinoff from the sim-heavy Dirt rally racing games, and Showdown is more of demo-derby racer in similar fashion to Destruction Derby and Flatout. I love that style of racers, and they do not make enough of them! Dirt Showdown is a welcomed addition to the genre, and I had a blast doing both races and last man standing demolition derbies! It is pretty fun, but not quite perfect, but establishes a good foundation I hope Codemasters builds on with future sequels. Road Redemption is the contemporary take on Road Rash I have wanted EA to make for many years. These guys are getting it right, but it is still in Early Access on Steam so the developers are constantly building upon it. It controls how I would imagine a Road Rash game would evolve into today, and they thankfully took out having to run out back to your cycle so you can get back into the race quicker. I had some friends over for four player couch play, and we had a blast and it convinced them to get it too. If you have played old school Road Rash give it a look! Mantis Burn Racing is another Steam game I put a decent amount of time into that offers up a similar isometric perspective and has a good arcade/sim hybrid feel to it complete with drifts and turbos. It recently hit consoles so give it a look there too. Finally, I have lately been making a lot of progress into Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed. Sega really stepped up their game with their second kart-style racer a few years back. I really dig how the karts morph into planes and hovercrafts during the race and how some tracks transform during the race to keep me on my feet. The roster features a ton of Sega favorites and the racing feels great and is right up there with Mario Kart! 9) Pinball!

Anyone who knows my gaming habits knows I am a pinball nut. Ever since Pinball FX on 360 I have spend countless hours on various pinball games. As I stated in the previous entry this is another one of my go to games to start off gaming sessions with. In 2016 I played a lot of Pinball Arcade, Zen Pinball 2 and a little known indie game on Steam called Hyperspace Pinball. I love nearly the entire Zen 2 roster of tables and spent a good chunk of the year trying to replay each table on my PS3 at least a couple of times. I am all caught up now with the exception of the recently released Bethesda pack that offers up tables based on their Doom, Skyrim and Fallout properties. Alternatively, the real life translations in Pinball Arcade are also up my alley, and I always find myself coming back to tables in attempts to best previous high scores and knock off all the preset goals for each table. I recently busted out the spinoff Stern Pinball Arcade disc on Xbox One, which offers up a couple exclusive tables that are not yet in the standalone Pinball Arcade hub and have been eating that up a lot too. Hyperspace Pinball is an under-the-radar game that got buried in the plethora of indie games on Steam and it is unfortunate that it has gone ignored for this long. It features simple-yet-groovy futuristic graphics and a very fitting soundtrack. The primary mode is like a addicting version of pinball-meets-Asteroids and every several levels there are unique boss battles to vanquish. It took several runs before I got use to the physics of this pinball game, but once I did I was glad I mixed Hyperspace Pinball into my rotation. 8) Road Trip gaming!

This past October I went on a week long road trip to hit up some attractions I have always wanted to see and hang out with some friends who have moved out of town over the years. I visited my friend, Dick in the Twin Cities. We have a history of playing many hours of our favorite wrestling game, WWF No Mercy together and we could not resist busting it out again. We had some intense matches where we teamed up against the computer on expert difficulty, and then a few more grueling one-on-one encounters. Later that day, we checked out an game shop that had an arcade machine with a ton of games built in and one of them was for a Japan-exclusive sequel to Saturday Night Slam Masters I had no idea existed until that point. Slam Masters was Capcom’s take on wrestling meets Street Fighter II, but the sequel, Ring of Destruction, is a straight up fighting game that plays as good as any Capcom fighter back in the day. After that, we traversed to a recently opened arcade in the Cities called Up/Down, which is an arcade bar loaded with arcade and pinball games and has a full service bar. All the hits from 80s and 90s I grew up with were there such as classic brawlers like TMNT, X-Men and Simpsons to the hits Midway dominated the 90s with like NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat I-4 and NFL Blitz. There was even old school Nintendo games like Excitebike, Donkey Kong and a version of Fix-It Felix straight out of Wreck-It Ralph I had no idea was a thing until I saw it with my own eyes. There was also around a dozen pinball tables there, with a good mix of classics like Funhouse, Terminator 2 and Adams Family to more recent Stern releases like Ghostbusters and Metallica. I guess this is a slowly expanding chain, so if you happen to run across one, make sure to check it out as you will be guaranteed hours of fun.

The next destination on my road trip was to visit my brother in a smaller town a couple hours outside of the Twin Cities. I had a great time hanging out with him, and like my friend in the Cities, we also have a history of beating the tar out of each other in WWF No Mercy. After telling my brother about experiencing the awesomeness of taking on expert level AI opponents in tag mode and proceeding to have another close match with the AI where we emerged victorious, we proceeded to take on each other in about 15 one-on-one matches. I consider myself a pretty darn good No Mercy player and can hold my own with any other seasoned player, but for whatever reason my brother has always had my number and is the only one I know that can outplay me (that link is a clip of us squaring off in a tournament final from several years ago for proof!). Of the roughly 15 matches we played, I only had one victory out of them all, and I made sure to savor every moment of it! 7) Awesome Local Coop! This is where I will give a shoutout to my local friends in town, Ryan, Derek and Brooke! Last few years we have had recurring couch multiplayer game nights every several weeks! I always look forward to them, and we are constantly rotating in old favorites like Mario Kart: Double Dash, Mario Party and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect with newer games for a constant fresh variety of multiplayer goodness. I will give props to some of my favorite moments I had with them this year. One awesome early multiplayer night in 2016 involved a NES theme night, and me busting out my four player adaptor which led to many hours of Gauntlet II and Super Off-Road fun.

For a couple weeks we were into slaughtering zombies and we played through a couple levels of Left 4 Dead 2. I forgot how awesome and frustrating that game is as I experienced both soaring highs when our teamwork was flawless and devastating lows when we ran into trouble a couple of times. Either way, it was still a blast re-experiencing Left 4 Dead 2 for the first time in years. That led us to a couple days of long sessions of Dying Light. I loved the first Dead Island and this game is from the same developers and plays just like it, but mixes in an awesome parkour system. That resulted in all kinds of crazy running dropkicks and being on the lookout for next great weapon that would turn up in our endless piles of loot. Just a few weeks ago we had another great session where we played Drawful and Fibbage out of the Jackbox Party Pack. Both are awesome social party/trivia games from the same people who made the also-excellent You Don’t Know Jack. These games make great use of cell phones as controllers so anyone could play, and we had way too much fun guessing at what the heck we were drawing in Drawful. It brought back classic memories of staying up all night in another similar multiplayer game on the DS, LOL!

We followed that game up with a random game I got for Xbox One since I heard so much good buzz about it online called Overcooked. This simple four player Root Beer Tapper-meets-cooking game featured some of the most fun I have ever had in a multiplayer game. When your teamwork is firing on all cylinders it is a blast, when it is not it led to us playfully shouting at each other until one point a few of us had to drop the controllers because we were uncontrollably laughing so hard. It was a moment I will never forget. There was one other multiplayer night between us that usurped these moments, but I will save it for later. 6) Extra Life 2016 Extra Life is the annual 24 hour gaming event where we game for a day straight in order to raise funds for our local children’s hospital! These last two years I traveled down to my friends, Chris and Lyzz’s house to game for 24 hours straight. I always attempt to beat WWF No Mercy’s 100-man Survival mode, and just like all previous attempts, I failed about halfway through. There were two main takeaways from Extra Life 2016. One of them was binging through Gears of War 4’s campaign from start to finish during the 24 hours. I love me some Gears, and Extra Life happened not to long after I picked up my Xbox One, so Gears 4 ended up being one of the first games I played on it. I had to take a break halfway through Gears 4 because I signed up to run a local 10k in the area, which was actually a nice breather to get out of the house and get some exercise and fresh air! I came back revitalized and had a great time playing nonstop until I finished. Chris and Lyzz were playing their own Gears 4 campaign in split-screen coop and we both did our best to look away from each other to avoid spoilers. Turns out you cannot have a split screen system team up online with another player on their own, but we found a way to get through it on our own without spoilers! Gears 4 turned out awesome as expected, and was a return to form after the experimental game in the series that was Gears Judgment.

The other game I played later on in Extra Life I want to make sure to recognize is Mega Man 2 off the Xbox One Mega Man Legacy Collection. I never gave a Mega Man game a serious chance before. I recall trying to play the first one a couple times long ago and getting frustrated many times and not beating a single stage. In the Legacy Collection however, it has save states which I made sure to exploit to the fullest. I was saving every screen or two in Mega Man 2. I decided to start on that one since I usually hear that is the best, and it had a firm, but fair challenge level to it. I died many times, but wanted to try out different techniques in order to progress and beat each boss. I did not finish the game, but did complete three stages, which will go down as the first three levels I ever finished in a Mega Man game! One day I will return to at least finish Mega Man 2, mark my words! 5) Firewatch After finishing Dear Esther and Gone Home a couple years ago, I have become a huge fan of the genre that has become known as the walking simulator! Firewatch hit out of nowhere early in 2016 and became a much talked about indie game throughout the year. I finally played it towards the end of the summer, and relished every hour of the six or seven hours it took me to finish. The graphics are superb and perfectly capture the solitude and beauty of being a fire ranger in the vast wilderness. I could get lost out there forever, and spent many moments just pausing in the game and taking in the sublime surroundings. The score is not always present, but knows when to kick in to amplify the moments that need it.

I could not help but get immersed in the narrative between the two fire rangers, and the mystery that the two found themselves in as the summer unraveled. Reading other game of the year reactions in recent weeks I found myself in the minority that liked the twist towards the end and was not thrown for a loop by it. I really loved the final days in the game, and it all culminated in an impactful moment for me when I could tell my summer with Firewatch was coming to an end. I got lucky and managed to get in on the Limited Run release of the physical copy of the game on PS4, and look forward to replaying it sooner than later with the newly added developer commentary. 4) Objection, dedicated handheld gaming is here to stay!

I try to dedicate a couple hours a week to traditional handheld gaming. I am not talking smartphone games, but good old fashioned DS/Vita/3DS gaming! I grew up playing a ton of my various versions of the GameBoy and still try to cram in a little bit of the current stuff too. I am a huge Ace Attorney fan and spent a good chunk of my 2016 handheld gaming getting caught up in the series. I finished off Ace Attorney Investigation: Miles Edgeworth early on in the year, and spent a good chunk of 2016 gradually chipping away at the first 3DS entry in the series, Dual Destinies. The last couple weeks I finally put my first few hours in the most recent release in the series, Spirits of Justice. If you have played one Ace Attorney game before you know what to expect, and that is a ton of crazy over-the-top characters you meet investigating crime scenes and cross examine on the witness stand as you try and clear innocent names from murder cases. There is a ton of reading involved in these games which is why they take forever to get through at my rate, but they are worth it in the long run to me since I find myself craving what kind of adventures the Wright Anything Agency are getting themselves into next.

There was one other non-Ace Attorney game I snuck into for a few hours at a time in-between my travels in and out of the court room. That game was the PSone version of Final Fantasy VII on the Vita. I have started FFVII a couple times before, but never made serious progress in it, and I guess I did not make a ton of progress in it this year either, but barely set a new record for time and progress! I originally was trying to keep up with Game Informer when FFVII was a part of their Game Club feature, but quickly fell behind. I came back around to FFVII in December for a few more hours, and am glad to say that I finally got out of Midgar and into the overworld for the first time in FFVII! I went on to get through the portion of the game in the village of Kalm, and then failed a few times at trying to kill off that big serpent by the Chocobo farm outside of Kalm. I think I need to grind by there for a bit in order to proceed. While I know I am nowhere close to finishing the game, I plan to periodically pick it up and eventually beat it in 10-15 years! 3) Nintendo Sixty-Fourrrrrrr!!!! If you have somehow stuck with me through this dreadfully long top 10 blog, you might recall that I stated I had one other awesome local coop gaming night I wanted to elucidate on later. That brings us here to where my brother was visiting from out of town and he joined me, Derek and Ryan for an N64 themed night of gaming. I knew Derek and Ryan had a bunch of N64 games, and I brought a bunch of my favorites to play also. I was a little taken aback when Derek asked me to bring the N64 wrestling game I loved so much because I did not associate Derek and Ryan to be much of wrestling game fans before. Turned out that WWE 2K16 was a recent Xbox Live Games for Gold free game of the month and both of them spent a bit of time suplexing and powerbombing the heck out of each other in recent weeks and wanted to give the N64 game I raved about the most a whirl as a result. Derek and Ryan picked up the controls for WWF No Mercy in no time and we spent at least a good hour tearing each other up in intense tag team and Royal Rumble matches. I am still befuddled that Derek and Ryan had a legit good time playing wrestling games that night, and it will probably be the only night that will ever happen with them, but I will forever remember it! The night did not end there because we went on to spend hours in other four-player hits like NBA Hangtime and New Tetris. I was surprised New Tetris went over as well as it did, but the timeless puzzle game was the right breather we all needed after some heated rounds of basketball and wrestling. It would not be an N64 night if we did not bust out the Giant Bomb favorite, Mario Party 2, and we proceed to complete a 20 turn game where everybody won!

The highlight of the night however was breaking out the original console FPS multiplayer hit, Goldeneye 007. I have read many times online how this game does not hold up in modern times, but I beg to differ! Play it on a big TV and play for at least 10 minutes, and trust me, you will be conditioned to like it was 1997 all over again! That is what happened to us that night. Sure the graphics are obviously last-century, and there is a bit of slowdown in four-player split screen when the explosions start rolling, but if you are on a big screen TV after about 10 minutes, you get use to it because the core gameplay is still that damn good. We played all kinds of variants including old favorites such as Grenade Launchers in the Temple, Rocket Launchers in the Complex, Proximity Mines in the Archives and a random map incarnation of Slappers Only with Golden Gun rules so that each slap meant instant sweet death! These five games for about five-to-six hours that magical night combined for nonstop greatness and hands down my favorite multiplayer game night 2016! 2) MGS 2/3/Peace Walker Since the fall of 2015 when Metal Gear Solid V released. I swore to myself I will get around to playing through all the Metal Gear Solid games in order. Up until that point I only finished MGS4 and gave up on MGS2 after just a couple hours. I somehow have found myself still determined to meet this goal as I plugged away and finished The Twin Snakes GameCube remake of the original MGS by the end of 2015. Throughout 2016 I managed to finish MGS2 and MGS3 and got through around the first 15 story missions of Peace Walker off the HD Collection on PS3. I even dabbled a bit with the first hour of Portable Ops through backwards compatibility on the Vita, but decided to stick to playing on consoles and moved on to Peace Walker instead. So what do I make of the series thusfar? I have absolutely enjoyed the core three games immensely so far. I am probably playing these games completely wrong, but I played through all three MGS games on very easy difficulty. I have no shame, but for what it is worth I try to play stealthy, and if I blow my cover and fail to retreat that is when I bust out the AK-47 and go guns blazing. That works OK most of the time for me in very easy. In Peace Walker there is no difficulty setting so that involves a bit more trial and error, but thankfully that game’s missions are shorter since it was originally designed for the PSP so failure does not mean a ton of backtracking there.

I really enjoyed my time with the first MGS, and the updated graphics on the GCN made it much more pleasant on the eyes. By the time I finished it, even all these years after its release I could tell I finished something special. Playing as Raiden did not bother me in the sequel….unless it came to saving which sometimes resulted in a few raised eyebrows. It still had the same unique, great gameplay as the original, and managed to tell another memorable chapter in the MGS universe. That said, I still rank it at the bottom of the core trilogy I liked the least, but not by as much one may think. I am probably going to give the slight edge to MGS3 to being my favorite so far. The gameplay seemed to have hit its stride there by finally giving the ability to move and shoot simultaneously, and I actually did not mind the healing/wound treatment system in MGS3 either. The Cold War-era story is probably what I will give the nudge to me liking MGS3 the most. Each MGS game got to gradually become more bonkers in nature, and wrapping the Cold War narrative around it seemed like a perfect fit. I also loved the boss battles the most in MGS3, especially the final battle with ‘The Boss’ and the beauty with how it is presented in MGS3 will easily rank as one of my favorite moments in videogames. 1) Oxenfree When it came down to it, I only finished three games in 2016 that were released that calendar year, and Oxenfree was one of them. It is a walking simulator like Firewatch, and also like that game the small development team at Night School Studios has members that worked on the critically acclaimed first season of The Walking Dead from Telltale Games. Unlike Firewatch though, Oxenfree has far simpler 2D graphics that are watercolor-esque in nature. Do not let these simple looks deceive you, because the narrative that surrounds these four coming-of-age teens out for a night of fun on an island quickly transforms into a night of sci-fi spookiness that I will never forget and left me wanting a sequel ASAP. I am heads over heels for the script and dialogue that unloads throughout Oxenfree. One moment the cast is trying to come together to figure out the grand mystery of this island, then the next they are taking quick asides to find out more about their personal lives that encapsulates the everyday life of teenage drama. Night School Studios make tremendous use of certain camera tricks and jump cuts that do not necessarily equal out to jump scares, but sure as hell something close that had my skin crawling with goosebumps as the adventure played out.

There are several pivotal decisions that will affect gameplay, so naturally I had to play the game a second time telling myself no matter what I am going to play the game differently. A lot of the dialogue choices in the game have positive, neutral and snarky response options so I spent a good chunk of my second playthrough being a snarky jerk and it was fascinating seeing the responses I would get in return. When it came down to bite the bullet in the end and make one of the big game-changing decisions, I had to pause the game and step away from it for a few minutes to think it over. Even after doing that, I could not go back on my natural instincts and I went with my original decision in one of the most frantic moments I had in playing videogames. Shortly after I finished Oxenfree a second time I was caught off guard by the developers patching in a remixed mode for people who have finished the game that offers up a slightly new gameplay experience. These changes were minor, but they did add a few new wrinkles throughout gameplay and the dialogue would unexpectedly change at random intervals to keep me constantly alert to see what tricks Oxenfree had up its sleeve next. I think it goes without saying if a game can manage to convince me to finish it three times within a year, especially at a time when I have just a fraction of the time to game than what I use to, then Oxenfree easily walks away from 2016 as my favorite videogame experience of the year! Limited Run has a physical release for PS4 set for later this month, and you can bet your booty that I will be attempting to pick up a copy and experience this game a fourth time!

[emperornune]

~XANDER - Through the Smoke of Life~

***Whatever arises as witness to the truth of my current state of mind and Being***

Thursday, March 11, 2010

~Allowing Insanity to be as it is that I may allow Sanity to Arise from within as It Is~

~I am allowing the insanity to be insane that my Sanity may be allowed to Arise as Itself, free from any attempt to control it as I had done with the madness I once totally resisted~

On a personal level I have been spending less and less invested in mind patterns that are resistant to the "Isness" of right Now. I am far more accepting of my life as a whole regardless of the parts of my egoic sense of self that find many aspects of my life situation unacceptable. I have simply chosen to ALLOW my ego to feel and believe whatever it wants about my life situation; I'm just not going to allow myself to seek my identity in these egoic perceptual interpretations of what should and shouldn't be. In this way, though I still make wrong-minded decisions over and over again, I am at peace with myself more than ever before because I have accepted that this is just what is in my current life situation and denying the truth of these deficiencies (as defined by the ego) of personal character and behavior only adds to my pain and lead to an enhancement of my "failure based sense of self".

A couple of weeks ago I wrote: 'Accept all of your unwanted feelings and conditions. Just allow them to be without any conditions as to what your mind believes should occur.

Embrace the Now completely.'

And I have been doing better at this than at any time in my past since I first had an awakening to the Divine Within the core of my Being over 15 years ago. It seems like it's been such a long journey to get where I am with acceptance as I am today but time is an illusion. I was ever denying the Presence of Being right NOW perpetually throughout each and every seemingly separate moment, until I finally had enough of the pain that was arising within my field of awareness and I once again began to awaken. And I am as only spiritually evolved as I am awake right Now, this very moment. There is a quote from A Course in miracles that goes:

"There is no compromise in salvation."

"You are either your Self or you are an illusion." ~acim

And what I allow and accept into my experience of reality right now is all that matters because All of my Eternal Being in the One Being of Infinite Spirit that we all share is All-ways Now; never to be made clear by analyzing the past or reaching for it in some mind-made goal of "realization" that is to occur in the illusory realm of future. If it is not available to me completely and perfectly right Now then it is a product of the mundane phenomenal world and holds no more true value than a ten ton pile of ashes made up of trillions of dollars in paper money. My past is a pile of ashes I carry around imagining it to be what it once was or wishing parts of it were something other than what they were; but never does the pain-body look at and accept the past as it is right Now... a useless pile of ashes that serve only the darken the pain-body's focus so that it sees no further than the ashes it claims it once to be released from. When in fact, if the ashes were to be let to blow away in the gentle wind of the Presence of Being then the pain-body would lose all energy that gives it such sway over my state of mind and behavior at those times it awakens to feed on the soot of pain that reinforces the structure it has built to protect it's ash collection in my emotional centers and the cooperative relationship it has developed with my ego as they both serve the past and future and deny the present moment and it's full embrace without judgment or labeling at all cost.

One of my favorite Lessons from A Course in Miracles is: "Everything is a lesson God would have me learn." And when I do go into any circumstance or approach any situation with a goal pre established in my mind that I WILL learn something helpful from my experience of what is arising in my current field of awareness; then I most assuredly do each and every time I am clear that that is exactly what I want to come of my current string of experiences. When I am sincerely determined (not just passively open) to learning something beneficial to my awakening and the deepening of my experience of the Now, I have always encountered either a new level of awakening or a re visitation of a previous lesson to which I had allow to stall in my experiential relationship to what I had initially come to an awareness about and began to apply that awareness as a practical learning that if not discarded becomes what I teach. And when what I am teaching is teaching me and I accept the teaching and learn from it, then I experience true freedom from the ego-trap of comparison; always seeking validation in the responses of others to reinforce or diminish the Lesson of Now that I am learning. Though we all share at our core the same Essence of Divine Oneness, most of us, most of the time are relating to each other through our egos and our ego's projections upon each other, twice removing our perceptions from the Truth of Who We really Are beneath all the smoke and mirrors that clutter this world that is as mad as a mad hatter from north to south and east to west, young and old, rich and poor, working class to ruling class, almost every human being upon this earth is mentally ill with a soul sickness so profoundly deep and denied that our entire civilization is rotates on the pure exercise of every and any means possible to cover up this fact with false salvations brought forth in all manner of distractions (if you want a good example just turn on network television for a few hours some time during the day or night and the extent of our species sickness will be quite apparent to a mind that looks upon that video-box/noise-machine with a perspective grounded in Presence of Being WHILE observing this altar to dis-ease that is the center of almost every household that can afford at least one at which to worship and receive the unholy revelations of:

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt." ~acim

And all that our society offers up as the great, wonderful "made-its" of the world are nothing more than soul-sick humans just like me and you but with material success and possibly fame to wear as a pretty covering over their ego's mental madness from which those who have "made it" are often more sick than those who have not made it in the eyes of the world and the media machine that establishes these guilt inducing, consumer based manipulations of the human psyche by which they use these rich and famous to further the illusion that there is something of value to be attained in the realm of form. That you will find yourself, become more whole and know peace... That offering is a complete and utter lie, that only a mind under the direction of the egoic sense of self or one possessed by the emotions of the pain body would ever believe as truth. For in the world of the ego and pain-body all is reversed. Truth is falsehood and lies are the truth.

Heaven is the complete and total opposite of everything the ego holds to be true and valuable.

*The following will be some favorite passages of mine from A Course in Miracles that come to my attention as of this writing this morning*

"The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it thinks it originated. This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos and try to unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength."

"If you cannot hear the Voice for God, it is because you do not choose to listen. That you do listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings and your behavior. Yet this is what you want. This is what you are fighting to keep, and what you are vigilant to save. Your mind is filled with schemes to save the face of your ego, and you do not seek the face of Christ. The glass in which the ego seeks to see its face is dark indeed. How can it maintain the trick of its existence except with mirrors? But where you look to find yourself is up to you."

"I have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior, but I have also said, and many times, that you can change your mind."

"Watch your mind for the temptations of the ego, and do not be deceived by it. It offers you nothing."

"Without your own allegiance, protection and love, the ego cannot exist."

"Learning and wanting to learn are inseparable. You learn best when you believe what you are trying to learn is of value to you."

"What you perceive in others you are strengthening in yourself."

"You forsake yourself and God if you forsake any of your brothers. You must learn to see them as they are, and understand they belong to God as you do."

"Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you. It is your acceptance of it that makes it real."

"The ego cannot oppose the laws of God any more than you can, but it can interpret them according to what it wants, just as you can. That is why the question, "What do you want?" must be answered. You are answering it every minute and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment that is anything but ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically until the decision is changed."

~ You are truly my Peace within the Presence of Being. Not the you who wears your name but the You Who Is beyond name and form, the One we are both together and as One, Forever Now ~

+ Xander +

Posted by Xander at 12:09 PM

~I have not two realities but one~

 ~I have not two realities but One~

I have noticed that when I allow my ego to drive my entire mind into deep unconsciousness empowered by the accumulated energy of the pain-body that it reaches a point where my ego exhausts itself to passivity.

In this passive state, though egoic mind patterns are still continuous, I simultaneously experience an awakening to a sense of allowing this egoic mess pit to be what it is free of the compulsive attempts at countering the results of my egoic drama with efforts, actions and perspectives born of the ego that it would correct.

A Course in Miracles says that the only way to heal a brother is by seeing the sanity in him. Shadows and darkness when used to address the shadows and darkness we see as either within our outside of ourselves only leads to a perception of shadows and darkness. The Course says something to the effect of failing to see the Light is because we have chosen to see only darkness. The Light is Within whether the external form and conditions of my life are expressing it fully or not. The temporal material world has no effect whatsoever on the Eternal, Indestructible, Incorruptible, Complete, Perfect and Forever Wholeness that is the Truth of Life in and AS the Now.

"You cannot be attacked, attack has no justification, and you are responsible for what you believe." ~acim

"You cannot make the meaningless meaningful." ~acim

"The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict. He wants you to understand that conflict cannot be understood because conflict is meaningless." ~acim

"Wrong decisions have no power, because they are not true." ~acim

"Your brother is as right as you are, and if you think he is wrong you are condemning yourself." ~acim

"To perceive errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you." ~acim

"Every response you make to everything you perceive is up to you, because your mind determines your perception of it." ~acim

"All attack is Self attack." ~acim

"The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts." ~acim

It is occurring to me that I allow my egoic sense of self to take such hold of my mind and take my life situation to an extreme of unconsciousness is because it has been the only way I have know how to dramatically put myself in the position where I either accept and allow all that is arising in the Now as I experience it and know Peace or totally fall apart in the self-enclosing insanity of the ego drowning in the density of the pain-body as it totally overwhelms my awareness of the Now as well as my mind. This means even my ego gets outdone in the measure of pain of which is the very essence of the pain-body. The ego, though built on fear, is not made of emotions. It is but a part of my belief about myself. This wrong-minded belief about myself is made up of thoughts and can trigger emotions but is not the center of emotional experience itself. So it seems now to me that my ego believes it is getting more control by providing catalysts for my pain-body to feed and grow, however; what it does not account for is it's total inability to manage the heaviness and mass density of the pain that it is rousing to the forefront of my mental experience.

Once overcome by pain itself, to a point at which not even it can bear it, that Still Small Voice Within me is heard amidst the silence of my ego's retreat. Even while the pain is still coursing through my body and my ego is still compulsively fixated on negative egoic mind-streams, the Light from the center of my Being, of All Being, reaches through the uncertain clouds of self-absorption and I begin to see the world first through the turmoil of my ego's (which is suffering from a total LOSS of control in it's attempt to acquire complete control) perspective and then from the vantage point of Being. I am feeling the pain of my wrong-minded thinking and behaving while simultaneously being free from being a slave to that pain.

I am seeing here a correlation to the Course's teaching on how a miracle is simply a change in one's mind; a shift in perspective from one founded in the ego to The One Vision of Christ which knowing only the Truth to be true, sees nothing else but this AFTER looking through the false and denying it any reality.

"Communication with God is Life." ~acim

I read this as awareness of the Total Presence of Being IS Life Itself for I am not just being aware of this Presence I am this Presence of which I am being aware. Ultimately there is no separate selves apart from Spirit. We are all merely vantage points of Being engaging with Itself through a multiplicity of expressions that I normally see as another person, place or thing. There is no other, for space is as meaningless as time.

"Call not upon the ego for anything; it is only this that you need do." ~acim

"What is not love is always fear, and nothing else." ~acim

~It is always Now~

Posted by Xander at 11:57 AM

"How lost in my ego and pain body am I right now?"

"How lost in my ego and pain body am I right now?"

Always remember there is another way to Be.

Turn Within regardless of how you feel. Your True Identity is transcending the very pain, doubt and discomfort you are feeling this very moment. It stands free of delusion and so do you when you stand within It no matter what arises in the world of form.

Accept all of your unwanted feelings and conditions. Just allow them to be without any conditions as to what your mind believes should occur.

[amberdscott2]

Mobile Giants: Please Don’t Share the Where

Your mobile phone is giving away your approximate location all day long. This isn’t exactly a secret: It has to share this data with your mobile provider constantly to provide better call quality and to route any emergency 911 calls straight to your location. But now, the major mobile providers in the United States — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — are selling this location information to third party companies — in real time — without your consent or a court order, and with apparently zero accountability for how this data will be used, stored, shared or protected.

Think about what’s at stake in a world where anyone can track your location at any time and in real-time. Right now, to be free of constant tracking the only thing you can do is remove the SIM card from your mobile device never put it back in unless you want people to know where you are.

It may be tough to put a price on one’s location privacy, but here’s something of which you can be sure: The mobile carriers are selling data about where you are at any time, without your consent, to third-parties for probably far less than you might be willing to pay to secure it.

The problem is that as long as anyone but the phone companies and law enforcement agencies with a valid court order can access this data, it is always going to be at extremely high risk of being hacked, stolen and misused.

Consider just two recent examples. Earlier this month The New York Times reported that a little-known data broker named Securus was selling local police forces around the country the ability to look up the precise location of any cell phone across all of the major U.S. mobile networks. Then it emerged that Securus had been hacked, its database of hundreds of law enforcement officer usernames and passwords plundered. We also found out that Securus’ data was ultimately obtained from a California-based location tracking firm LocationSmart.

On May 17, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news of research by Carnegie Mellon University PhD student Robert Xiao, who discovered that a LocastionSmart try-before-you-buy opt-in demo of the company’s technology was wide open — allowing real-time lookups from anyone on anyone’s mobile device — without any sort of authentication, consent or authorization.

Xiao said it took him all of about 15 minutes to discover that LocationSmart’s lookup tool could be used to track the location of virtually any mobile phone user in the United States.

Securus seems equally clueless about protecting the priceless data to which it was entrusted by LocationSmart. Over the weekend KrebsOnSecurity discovered that someone — almost certainly a security professional employed by Securus — has been uploading dozens of emails, PDFs, password lists and other files to Virustotal.com — a service owned by Google that can be used to scan any submitted file against dozens of commercial antivirus tools.

Antivirus companies willingly participate in Virustotal because it gives them early access to new, potentially malicious files being spewed by cybercriminals online. Virustotal users can submit suspicious files of all kind; in return they’ll see whether any of the 60+ antivirus tools think the file is bad or benign.

One basic rule that all Virustotal users need to understand is that any file submitted to Virustotal is also available to customers who purchase access to the service’s file repository. Nevertheless, for the past two years someone at Securus has been submitting a great deal of information about the company’s operations to Virustotal, including copies of internal emails and PDFs about visitation policies at a number of local and state prisons and jails that made up much of Securus’ business.

Some of the many, many files uploaded to Virustotal.com over the years by someone at Securus Technologies.

One of the files, submitted on April 27, 2018, is titled “38k user pass microsemi.com – joomla_production.mic_users_blockedData.txt”.  This file includes the names and what appear to be hashed/scrambled passwords of some 38,000 accounts — supposedly taken from Microsemi, a company that’s been called the largest U.S. commercial supplier of military and aerospace semiconductor equipment.

Many of the usernames in that file do map back to names of current and former employees at Microsemi. KrebsOnSecurity shared a copy of the database with Microsemi, but has not yet received a reply. Securus also has not responded to requests for comment.

These files that someone at Securus apparently submitted regularly to Virustotal also provide something of an internal roadmap of Securus’ business dealings, revealing the names and login pages for several police departments and jails across the country, such as the Travis County Jail site’s Web page to access Securus’ data.

Check out the screen shot below. Notice that forgot password link there? Clicking that prompts the visitor to enter their username and to select a “security question” to answer. There are but three questions: “What is your pet’s name? What is your favorite color? And what town were you born in?” There don’t appear to be any limits on the number of times one can attempt to answer a secret question.

Choose wisely and you, too, could gain the ability to look up anyone’s precise mobile location.

Given such robust, state-of-the-art security, how long do you think it would take for someone to figure out how to reset the password for any authorized user at Securus’ Travis County Jail portal?

Yes, companies like Securus and Location Smart have been careless with securing our prized location data, but why should they care if their paying customers are happy and the real-time data feeds from the mobile industry keep flowing?

No, the real blame for this sorry state of affairs comes down to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. T-Mobile was the only one of the four major providers that admitted providing Securus and LocationSmart with the ability to perform real-time location lookups on their customers. The other three carriers declined to confirm or deny that they did business with either company.

As noted in my story last Thursday, LocationSmart included the logos of the four carriers on their home page — in addition to those of several other major firms (that information is no longer available on the company’s site, but it can still be viewed by visiting this historic record of it over at the Internet Archive).

Now, don’t think for a second that these two tiny companies are the only ones with permission from the mobile giants to look up such sensitive information on demand. At a minimum, each one of these companies can in theory resell (or leak) this information and access to others. On 15 May, ZDNet reported that Securus was getting its data from the carriers by going through an intermediary: 3Cinteractive, which was getting it from LocationSmart.

However, it is interesting that the first insight we got that the mobile firms were being so promiscuous with our private location data came in the Times story about law enforcement officials seeking the ability to access any mobile device’s location data in real time.

All technologies are double-edged swords, which means that each can be used both for good and malicious ends. As much as police officers may wish to avoid the hassle and time constraints of having to get a warrant to determine the precise location of anyone they please whenever they wish, those same law enforcement officers should remember that this technology works both ways: It also can just as easily be abused by criminals to track the real-time movements of police and their families, informants, jurors, witnesses and even judges.

Consider the damage that organized crime syndicates — human traffickers, drug smugglers and money launderers — could inflict armed with an app that displays the precise location of every uniformed officer from within 300 ft to across the country. All because they just happened to know the cell phone number tied to each law enforcement official.

Maybe you have children or grandchildren who — like many of their peers these days — carry a mobile device at all times for safety and for quick communication with parents or guardians. Now imagine that anyone in the world has the instant capability to track where your kid is at any time of day. All they’d need is your kid’s digits.

Maybe you’re the current or former target of a stalker, jilted ex-spouse, or vengeful co-worker. Perhaps you perform sensitive work for the government. All of the above-mentioned parties and many more are put at heightened personal risk by having their real-time location data exposed to commercial third parties.

Some people might never sell their location data for any price: I suspect most of us would like this information always to be private unless and until we change the defaults (either in a binary “on/off” way or app-specific). On the other end of the spectrum there are probably plenty of people who don’t care one way or another provided that sharing their location information brings them some real or perceived financial or commercial benefit.

The point is, for many of us location privacy is priceless because, without it, almost everything else we’re doing to safeguard our privacy goes out the window.

And this sad reality will persist until the mobile providers state unequivocally that they will no longer sell or share customer location data without having received and validated some kind of legal obligation — such as a court-ordered subpoena.

But even that won’t be enough, because companies can and do change their policies all the time without warning or recourse (witness the current reality). It won’t be enough until lawmakers in this Congress step up and do their jobs — to prevent the mobile providers from selling our last remaining bastion of privacy in the free world to third party companies who simply can’t or won’t keep it secure.

The next post in this series will examine how we got here, and what Congress and federal regulators have done and might do to rectify the situation.

from Amber Scott Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/mobile-giants-please-dont-share-the-where/