#i got the video version which has some extra bits

[piovascosimo]

int: did you always recognize the potential in each other, i always think that is kind of one of the key parts of a friendship, when you can recognize different strengths in each other that you admire? damon: he was basically one of the only people who would like, fuck with me, - to use a... i'd have not really used that sort of word - yeah, i was just a real oddball of a sort. bullied a lot, for doing things slightly differently and graham was much more sort of conventional, in the context that his parents lived just behind the school, he actually lived there, he'd gone to primary school there, which makes a big difference when you go to secondary school, when you just come out of nowhere into that, and all of these sort of relationships were kind of formed already. and the first summer i got to essex for some reason, i did that one year at primary school there, and i did this thing the 1st or 2nd day that i was there, i kind of ate a ladybird at break and then it was like, 'oi! new boy, eat another ladybird!'. that was the beginning of it, things might have been very different if i hadn't eaten that ladybird, i imagine. i've never eaten a ladybird since... i was just showing off, i had a problem, i used to show off a lot, it jarred with people, understandably. because i came from leytonstone, i was an urban kid i wasn't a country kid. ...and i had a violin, my dad drove a lada. int: right. but graham saw these as strengths, i think, and thought 'this is my kind of guy...'

damon: we just got on brilliantly, you know, best friends. for the whole time we were in school. and there was this portakabin outside the music and art block, and we were allowed to go in there and play, it had a piano and keyboard, and graham had a saxophone and drums, we used to play music.

damon talking to the tape notes podcast.

[shigayokagayama]

What are the biggest losses between the manga and anime? I just finished watching mp100 and I'm curious what the manga has!

ok biggest losses are kind of hard to define because like. anime and manga are two inherently different mediums and there are a good amount of cuts that improve pacing and then a good amount of cuts that people sort of argue over the merit of so im just going to go for biggest differences. i would also highly recommend reading the manga just because it is a pretty different experience tonally along with the minor plot differences and cut scenes + theres a bunch of omakes that both flesh out characters that dont get too much focus and have some really good bits in them. putting the rest of this post under a cut bc i ramble

mogami arc

this one is kind of inescapable i feel like but the anime version of the mogami arc had a LOT of things trimmed for a couple different reasons. season 2 already got an extra episode in order to do the fire scene as a cliffhanger so with the way things shook out the director had to choose between a. cutting a bunch of stuff out of separation arc to make it one episode so mogami arc couid stay three episode or b. cutting a bunch of stuff out of mogami arc so separation arc could stay two episodes. imo they made the right choice, whats even the point of adapting mob psycho if you dont get confession arc right, but some of the cuts to mogami arc will be dearly missed and others will be fought over to the end of time. cuts include:

minori being established as a brat in a video everyones shown and the video being part of how reigen deduces shes possessed (reigen deducing her possession in the manga is generally just a lot better done and after you read the manga the scene in the anime feels so awkward because you know whats missing

the psychics deciding to band together to beat this little girl to death to save themselves and shinra stepping between them to protect her and getting utterly thrashed, not by mogami, but his fellow psychics

reigen trying to convince mob to leave without him and call for help while he distracts him which leads to this

the general mogamiland section lasting a lot longer and being more brutal (notably the stray cat mob feeds getting killed in front of him)

mob getting fucking torn to pieces by spirits during the fight instead of ambiguously dying offscreen

generally would recommend if nothing else reading the manga version of this arc and confession arc because i feel like these are the only two where you lose like. a significant amount of the story and themes from the cuts. speaking of....

2. WHY THE FUCK DID THEY CUT THIS I WILL BE MAD UNTIL I DIE

maybe its just because i reread this arc on its own probably 50 times before the anime came out but this is the only arc where the cuts actively piss me off because there is absolutely no reason they had to do it. they cut a bunch of important shit, left in things that didnt need to be there, and added scenes that contribute literally nothing to the overall point. if they just did any one of those things or combo of two of those things i wouldnt be as mad but it feels like they put a bunch of filler in then speedran the actual story

cut #1 that pisses me off: HOMOPHOBIA?????

THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A HEART IN HIS EYE. WHY DID THEY NOT INCLUDE THIS. THIS IS THE CULMINATION OF TERUS ARC. THIS IS HIM SEEING THE PERSON HE HAS IDOLIZED AND DEIFIED IN HIS HEAD AT THEIR LOWEST AND STILL CHOOSING TO LOVE HIM, AND THROUGH THIS HE IS CAPABLE OF BEING LOVED EVEN THOUGH HES NOT PERFECT BECAUSE NO ONE IS. WHY WOULD YOU CUT THIS?

cut #2 I NEED WHOEVER CUT THE DIALOGUE FROM THE FIRST PANEL IN PRISON

the lack of inclusion of the first panels dialogue along with the cuts to the mob and shigeo conversation (WHICH WE WILL GET TO) make me think the person who adapted this arc fundamentally misunderstood what was happening. this line. is. THE POINT. THIS ISNT SOME SEPARATE SCARY THING. THIS IS MOB. HE IS CHOOSING TO DO THIS BECAUSE HE IS SCARED AND ANGRY AND HURT BUT HE IS IN CONTROL OF HIS ACTIONS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN.

cut #3 HE DOESNT WANT TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR HIS ACTIONS

this entire conversation is so good and i was looking forward to watching it voice acted for so long and its just. gone. for me the "i am shigeo kageyama who are you" reveal felt like a gut punch because the opening being "i knew i would be needed" made me go "oh hes like possessed or his powers are sentient or something" and this conversation was the slow unraveling of my view of these as two separate people and instead as a scared, traumatized teenager who has convinced himself that the parts of himself he hates are something else outside of his control instead of an intrinsic part of who he is because if he's convinced that the parts of him that are able to feel desire and frustration and anger and malice are him then he'll lose all these relationships he's worked so hard to cultivate as his perfect, non confrontational self. and of course that isnt true. all his friends and loved ones are making their way to the center of a damn hurricane because they see he's in distress and want to help him. but he cant see that so he pushes them away. ugh. mob. protagonist of all time.

cut #4 WHY WOULD YOU CHANGE THE COMPOSITION OF THIS I CAN LITERALLY SEE HOW THIS WOULD BE ANIMATED IN MY MINDS EYE W

can you imagine how beautiful this would be in motion. just. god.

cut #5 HE WAS TALKING OUT LOUD. REIGEN HEARD ALL THIS

:(

cut #6 the bowling arc

so the scene where reigen takes his shoes off is supposed to be a lot more solemn bc like. taking your shoes off before killing yourself is a trope in japanese media (ive heard it started in media and bled over into real life but i might have it backwards?). reigen knew he was probably going to die. anyway i cant take this scene seriously because of this edit

the bowling arc.

cut #7 WAAAAAAAAAAAA

WAAAAAAAAAAAA *sniff* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

cut #8 homophobia again

rip pensive fruity tea sip

cut #9 mob threw the cake directly in reigens face on purpose

i literally experienced every stage of grief realizing this got changed. why. its so perfect. why would you change this.

3. World Domination arc

so WD arc is in a very interesting place where it had a lot of scenes cut but unlike the other two most of the cut content youre like. yea probably best not to include that. ill start with the good content that got cut then go into the weird content

serizawa got his power drained by toichiro. i am quite sad this scene didnt make it in because its sorta heartbreaking

teru fighting off the claw assassin is shown and we see that teru can both make shadow clones AND hold a barrier while attacking, he seems to be the only esper with this ability!

the reason dimple could tell mob's family was alive is that there was no sense of grudge at the house which would have been left behind by people passing in a violent manner

mob briefly goes unconscious during the start of the toichiro fight and dimple possesses him and says "shit"

dimple possessing mob shoots shibata with a gun

we get mukai lore.

it doesnt make any sense and just raises more questions but we get it.

toichiro has a team of telepaths to recap where everyone is because this arc took an entire calender year to update

literally everyone shows up to fight shimazaki. i cannot stress enough how many people show up to fight shimazaki. it would be faster to list espers who dont show up to fight shimazaki

the middle school delinquents show up and start fighting the claw grunts literally completely out of no where and this is never brought up or referenced ever again

when mob and ritsu get home ritsu says all their stuff is in boxes and they need to hurry and redecorate the house before their parents get home which implies that shou packed the entire households worth of belongings into boxes and hid it somewhere before lighting their house on fire which is such a funny mental image that i cant even be mad at it. loony toons ass plot point.

4. other random interesting cut things

takenaka is just generally more of a bitch during alien arc. "ah i think they took him" remains one of the funniest goddamn panels in the manga

peak

alien arc overall is a lot funnier in the manga, i have a slight preference for the manga version just bc theres a lot of really good bits that didnt make it to anime but the anime version is so heartfelt and nostalgic it makes me happy

between omakes and small things that got cut or changed for the anime teru just feels way more fleshed out in the manga. like. anime teru is a completely different person. its hard to explain if youve never read it.

the all girls school part originally went right before the ghost family stuff and was the beginning of mob's existential crisis about why spirits and people get different treatment but tbh it works well where it is i just wish it werent. like that.

the scene where ritsu and teru shake hands was teru draining ritsus power which he seems to have learned to do from encountering ???%

teru.

ow

thats all i can think of off the top of my head, im sure ill realize i forgot something some time after posting this but. yeah. read the manga its good

[azmstea]

[COSMO - RARE TWISTED]

Okey, I KNOW some people already made this idea (found out while I was working on this), but I really wanted to make my version of it so let's go!!

Well, I decided to rework a bit Twisted Cosmo because I personally never understood why he is a common one to begin with. And also explain how his ability would work!

This will be a PRETTY long blog with a lot of yapping, so if you're actually interested in the "AU", keep reading!!

ASKS ABOUT HIM ARE HIGHLY APPRECIATED!!

Alright, let's start by explaining a bit about him.

"He believes he's helping others, but his healing method doesn't work like before. This twisted, separated from his best friend, walks around looking for people to heal with hearts that block any healing items and causing random effects for a few seconds. Be sure to never be spotted without full health!" - Research description.

During a blackout, Cosmo got lost and was forced to separate from his best friend Sprout and had only one heart left by the end of the process. When arriving at the elevator, he noticed Sprout having a hard time with a twisted, and he also had one heart. Knowing that his stamina was low at the moment, Cosmo does something he never did before: He used all his strength to remove his last heart and give it to Sprout, saving him from a fatal attack. Sprout made it to the elevator, but Cosmo couldn't say the same. (I want my Fruitcake angst y'all, or else I'll cook it)

We aren't sure how exactly toons became Twisteds, but for the sake of this "AU", Dandy decided to use Cosmo as a way to test something new: An ichor heart in a non main character toon. This heart made Cosmo stop from dying, but it causes him A LOT of pain, since his chest is opened and the ichor causes physical pain. He still has some conscience inside of him, but the ichor stops him from acting like how he used to and makes it more difficult to talk. His body and head are full of bites, like the twisted that was haunting Sprout tried to eat him before. His arm is way bigger and heavier than before, but he doesn't mind much because he is pretty strong around his arms, but it surely brings some extra pain for his right side.

Deep down, he just wants to help other toons, but he can't realize how he isn't capable of doing it in a positive way anymore thanks to the ichor.

Yes, I know, only main characters have sounds to show that they're nearby, but I want to add that if Cosmo is extremely close of you (in the same room or in the next room), you're capable of hearing his ichor heart beats, which are fast and loud. Like this, players can escape from him in case they are in a dangerous situation.

ABILITY:

(I saw a video called "swap au" on YouTube and took a bit of inspiration from it, but I changed it to make it a little more interesting!)

Twisted Cosmo's ability is inspired in his Toon's active: Heal others, but with a reverse effect.

If you have all your hearts, Cosmo won't follow you or harm you, he will keep walking because he doesn't want to hurt anyone (something like Glisten) and because he knows you won't need any heals. At first, it's like he won't even do anything at all.

However, if he sees you with 2 hearts or only 1 heart, he will grab his ichor heart from his chest and start chasing you, with the intention of throwing a heart at you and "help". His attention spam is a little longer (3.5 s) and his speed increases from his canon twisted form, but his eye vision isn't the best since he doesn't have one of his eyes, so he can't see you from extreme distances like Shrimpo.

If he catches you, your empty heart slots will be filled with a weird "ichor heart", similar to main characters. As his description says, the heart will block any kind of healing, so things like Teagan's active, medkits and bandaids won't work at all. Along with that, you'll get a random effect for 10 seconds from the I category (like "Confused I", "Slow I", "Tired I"). After the attack, Cosmo will no longer follow you because he thinks he finished his job there. (Distractors you're all screwed🔥)

And plus, you can avoid his attack if you heal yourself BEFORE he can heal you.

Another ability of his is being able to know when and where a player got hurt. Let's say you have 3 hearts, but you got a hit from Shelly in "x" spot. In this scenario, Cosmo will immediately go to "x" spot no matter how far he is from the place. If you manage to leave where you were before he arrives, good! If not, Cosmo will chase you to give you an ichor heart. Sounds "inoffensive" at first, but depending of the situation, it can make your life pure hell.

If you have 1 regular heart and 2 ichor hearts, Cosmo will no longer care about you during that floor because it's impossible to get another hit without dying, leaving you in a vulnerable situation for any complicated twisteds like Pebble or Goob. That's why I like to call him the very first twisted that won't kill you directly! I wanted to play with the fact that he's a supporter as a toon, so why not make a "supporter" twisted whose job is make your gameplay harder?? Maybe a new type of twisted?

"Will Cosmo also follow you if all machines are done like Glisten?" I'm still unsure of it, but to keep his "support" role, I suppose he would just accept his fate of being alone, because at least he can "help" others. (I WANT FRUITCAKE ANGST!!!)

How do you remove the ichor hearts? Again, still thinking about it, but just like Shelly's "Confused" ability, the effect should be gone once you reach the elevator. I thought about leaving the effect for 2 floors, but I dunno if this would be too OP or anything, so you can decide on this!

Now congratulations! You know who is twisted Cosmo and how to survive to one of the most annoying Twisteds ever!! /jk

I suppose that's all for now about him! He's still in development, but this is the main idea of him and his abilities!

And don't worry, I will be sure to cook some good old angst with this concept. Hope everyone enjoys it!!

ASKS ABOUT HIM ARE HIGHLY APPRECIATED!!

[grapehyasynth]

when i picture you

Picture You by Chappell Roan won the poll for this fun fic challenge by @saynomorefic, and that actually slid really easily into place with a little fic idea I'd had a while ago, and so I am almost embarrassed with how quickly I wrote this 🙈

rated M - nsfw - set after s1

Simon’s heart may be broken, and his logical brain may be fully onboard with the break-up with Wille, but his body seems to be determined to not get the message.��

For the fourth time since school let out for their winter break, he wakes up with an erection and a half-dozen fleeting dreams. Dreams of Wille, patched together by the traitorous lizard part of his brain - Wille rowing while wearing a suit; Wille giving a speech to the nation in just his boxers; Wille sucking Simon off on a piano bench, the tie from his school uniform holding back his bangs. 

Simon huffs with frustration and heads for the bathroom. His mom keeps promising they’ll get a door for his bedroom - they’re all a little extra touchy about privacy since the video came out - but it hasn’t happened yet, and there is no way he’ll be able to get himself off when he can hear Sara singing along to the radio in the kitchen, and he doesn’t trust one of them to not just come barging through the towel that shields his room. 

He wastes no time turning on the shower once the bathroom door is locked. For a second he wishes he’d brought his phone, for some music, or inspiration -- but that’s another thing that makes him paranoid now, wondering whether his mom can see his searches on their internet, wondering if someone would try to hack their family, to see what the boy from The Video gets up to. He’s put tape over the camera lenses on his phone and his computer but he just doesn’t really trust anything at this point. 

So, when he sits on the ground with his back to the tub and tugs down his boxers, he has nothing but his own imagination. Which, unfortunately, still very much means Wille. 

He wonders, as he gives himself a first gentle ghost of a stroke, shuffling down a bit so his head is tipped back against the side of the tub and his feet press into the wall (this bathroom, this house, is fucking small), if Wille thinks of Simon when he touches himself. He wonders if there’s a masturbatory version of him haunting the castle. What does Wille picture? He never got to ask him. 

He bites his lip and closes his eyes and goes for one of the disjointed fantasy images from last night. They’d been in the library at Hillerska, and Wille had had Simon pressed against one of the shelves. They were both wearing the white robes from Lucia night, something Simon hadn’t previously clocked as sexy, but he squeezes himself now at the thought, his chest lifting a little with the sensation. His own robe was rucked up to his waist, his knees bent and tight around Wille’s hips so that Wille could fuck into him, pushing him against the shelf behind him with each thrust. Simon grasped a shelf behind him with one hand while the other strove to keep Wille’s own gown out of the way, so that he could see. 

He doesn’t have the time to finger himself, but his ass clenches anyway. They never had that kind of sex, and now Simon is both grateful and aggrieved -- it would be another thing to regret, or mourn, but then again, it already feels like Wille is inside him, irretrievably, all the time, so what would have been the harm? 

He imagines one of Wille’s hands on him, on his cock; a ripple of warmth spreads over his skin as he works himself. He’s losing track of whose hands and arms are where and if they even have enough limbs for this but he doesn’t care. He wants Wille to flatten him like a book he can’t get enough of, to crack his spine, to hold him open as he devours him. He presses a heel to the cleft of Wille’s ass to urge him closer; Wille is panting into his neck; the tub is hard and unforgiving behind Simon’s head but he imagines it’s the shelf supporting him as Wille fucks him. And then, in his imagining, the shelf supporting him keels over, catching the next one which also falls, and now Wille is fucking him on the tilted shelves, and the candles of his Lucia crown (had he been wearing that the whole time?) catch on the books and everything is burning around them, the school is burning to the ground, and Wille gasps I love you with every thrust, and all Simon can say is God Jul, God Jul, God Jul... 

It’s such a ridiculous image that he’s laughing as he comes, the twin sensations tugging deliciously at his core, and he falls sideways so that his cheek is pressed to the bath mat. For a moment, before the high clears, he wishes he could tell Wille about this, that they could laugh about it, that Wille would tease him about the silly fantasy until they realized they were both half-hard-- 

“SIMON!” Sara is rapping on the bathroom door. “I need to pee!” 

“Just a minute,” he grumbles, and he turns the shower, which has been running this whole time, to its coldest setting; he will need the jolt before he can go out there and face his life. 

[yumeka-sxf]

It's been a while since I made a merch post 🙂First items I want to share are these adorable pin+acrylic stand sets featuring the Forgers in their resort island outfits from the cruise arc ❤️

Next is some merch from the Anime Extra Mission event from June. I got a clear file (which I scanned in a previous post), a fan, and a copy of the pamphlet.

The pamphlet has some nice content, including interviews with all the voice actors, transcriptions of the live reading scripts they did at the event, and a cool chart of all the current anime episodes. Here's a few pages:

Not sure if I'll ever get around to translating all of it, but detailed summaries of the live reading stories are available on the Spy x Family Fan Wiki.

Next is some goods I got from the Nijigen no Mori collab that's been going on in Japan. I got a hat, an umbrella, a mug, a water bottle, and a clear file (which I also recently scanned).

I was thankful that the hat just about fit my fat head/thick hair!

The umbrella is really nice too! I'll definitely use it during the three days a year it rains here 😅 I could use it for sunny days too I suppose, lol.

Next is the CODE: White home video release! I liked the bonus merch that came with both the Toho deluxe version (left photo) and the Amazon JP deluxe version (right photo). So I got both.

Unfortunately, I had a mishap with my copy of the Amazon version where FedEx delivered it to the wrong house! I got the notification that it was delivered, but it wasn't at my front doorstep, plus the photo they shared was of a completely different front door, so I started freaking out. I drove around the block trying to find any neighboring houses that looked like the one in the photo. After I couldn't find it, I submitted an issue report to FedEx. They said they would try to track down the driver and figure out what happened. I wasn't too hopeful and was debating ordering it again, but decided to wait a bit. And much to my surprise, the next morning the driver found the missing package...but unfortunately the house he delivered it to had kids who opened it already. So he brought it to me in a different box with all the pieces loose. Luckily everything was in good shape and accounted for...or so I thought. The deluxe version came with a lot of extras and I didn't realize until later that day that I was actually missing a couple of things, notably the nice slipcover box for the discs and the art booklet. I was of course really mad about this, but I was able to find someone on Mercari selling a copy of the movie with these items for a good price, so I bought it.

The booklet is really cool - it has concept art, key frame sketches, and other neat info~ Here's a few pages:

By this point I had three copies of the movie on blu-ray (one of which had fingerprints on the discs from the grubby hands of the kids who opened my package 😑 At least the discs still worked) So I gave the extras away to friends.

I threw in the below little lenticular bookmark with one of my Mercari orders. It was given out at this past NatsuComi expo in Japan.

And lastly, some smaller items: postcards (which I also scanned) and a Twiyor pin~

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo Devlog #9 | 02.29.24

What is this?! Two devlogs in one month?! More likely than you think! This February has been very productive for me and the team, so let's dive right into it!

Ooooh boy, Raquel keeps knocking it out of the park! She managed to get done every expression for every LI, and I coded them all! Now we have our wonderful characters ready for their debut. We have been using the wonderful Image Tools for Ren'py made by the talented and hard-working Feniks, whose tutorials and resources save a lot of dev's lives every day! This tool has made everything a bit easier for newbies like me, hehe.

Here's a taste of our edgelord's expressions! 💜 They're kind of a cutie when they put some effort into it!

We also had our second valentine's day celebration art piece thanks to Kayden! Sadly with the reworked version of the demo, you won't meet Vycar yet, so we thought we could ask for his forgiveness by giving him a beautiful bouquet and reminding him how much of a sweetheart he is! 💜

Also, Raeya got a hair update!

So, we weren't completely satisfied with the way we portrayed Raeya's hair, so this has been a rework we were sure we wanted to make. At first we were just going to render it again, but we ended up working on it from scratch to better represent what we envisioned for her. We hope you like it as much as we do! ; v ;💜

As always, we are open to any critique or advice; we are white people who have the luck to be able to ask POC friends for their advice as we work, but the more the merrier! Don't hesitate to send us your opinion to our ask box or even our email, gamesravenstar@gmail.com!

When it comes to the background department, we have been making great progress thanks to Airyn, who is honestly leaving us with our mouths hanging open every time! Thanks to her, another background has been finished and another one is in the making, leaving only two backgrounds to be revised and approved!

I personally can't stop looking at this WIP! She understood perfectly what we wanted to portray just by looking at an old WIP we had, and this is what we have so far—and it's already amazing!

Allie has been OBLITERATING the script. As of today, I think we have almost gone through everything that needed to be corrected and discussing, and lord if the script doesn't look a 100% better after we put it in Allie's hands. The way she writes, the way she understands everything I want to say even when sometimes I don't even know myself—what a talented, inspiring and amazing writer they are. I know I may sound annoying at this point singing her praises endlessly, but if the script is in the state where it is now, it's thanks to her!

My programming adventure of the month has been a success, if I say so myself! I've coded the characters with aaaaall their layers, their expressions, the blinking animations, made some videos, and started coding the script. Step by step as they say; I've coded 18 pages, and there's, uh...142 more to go. Haha! *sobs*

BUT WE ARE GETTING THERE! We can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I can finally click 'new game' and read the script and see the stuff going on! YAY!

Some extras of the month—we are preparing a Casting Call to choose the voice acting talent that will hopefully give voice to our characters. The demo won't be fully voiced (it's impossible with the funds we have, which are...zero), but if we are lucky we'll use some of our personal savings to pay for at least a few lines for each character so you can get an idea of how they'll sound if we get funded! Raquel is preparing an art piece for the announcement, and I'm getting the document ready and asking fellow VA friends for advice :3.

Also, we have a new member here at Ravenstar Games! Some weeks ago Astro and I formally adopted our first kitty, 8 month old Riki, fulfilling one of our dreams. We got him from a feline association that works with volunteers and fosters cats who have been abandoned, cats they find on the street, and so on. Riki has been living with me since January, and he's a happy, long big boy who loves playing, cuddles, and sitting on my desk while I try to work!

Say hi to the Ravenstar family, Riki! 💜

A productive month full of accomplished milestones, excitement and new challenges! The team has worked so hard, and I've done my part too! We still don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but we have done a lot of stuff we were sure we wouldn't finish yet, and look at that! We are doing so well!

As you can probably tell, my batteries are starting to run low, so I'm going to leave this devlog here. Thank you all like always for cheering us on, for being here in this journey with us, and for all the love you send our way. Let's hope March is as amazing as February has been, for us and for all of you! 💜

[slowcatsworld]

Julian Loki acts like an older sibling. PART 3

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Last part where it all makes sense I swear. Headcanons at the end!!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Maturity, responsibility, politeness, adaptability, flexibility, patience, restraint, and confidence.

Julian has exhibited these characteristics each time we see him in the manga. All of this makes me believe that he’s an older sibling. It makes so much sense, from the way he handle’s Charles’ interesting personality to how he experimented to create two distinct PXGs with Shidou’s play style and Rin’s play style.

(Now onto the actual headcanon and not analysis part hehehehehe)

I think due to his calm personality I see him having a younger sister. However, he’s still a competitive teenager that I could see totally dominating his little brother in a video game or a friendly match of soccer. (Not that he couldn’t do this with a sister)

Older brother! Loki is someone his little siblings turn to whenever they have a bad day. They know that he’ll listen quietly to their words and assess the situation accordingly. He knows how to cheer them up; whether that be with a sweet that he’ll buy them without telling their mother, talking them through their feelings so they feel more at peace with themselves, or offering an assuring shoulder squeeze to let them know their older brother is here for them.

Older brother! Loki is someone who travels a lot because of soccer. Sure, he rather enjoyed the different quality of independence he got being away from home, but he grows to miss it when the nights drag on a little too long and the air is a little bit more crisp than it ever has been. His little sibling would miss him too, pushing their head into their mama’s stomach and mumbling a small, “I miss Julian.” Their mother can only stroke their head while they wait for the elder boy to finish practice so that the three of them can reunite on call.

Older brother! Loki who is actually very good at cooking. He doesn’t do it as often now, when he’s away from home he tends to buy French foods in foreign countries rather than make it himself. Besides, with all the money he has been able to make for him and his family, he doubts that they would ever have to cook with their own hands again. Not that his parents would ever agree to the thought of a personal chef or maid, the couple probably every bit as humble and kind as their son. He would often cook breakfast for his little sibling before walking the two of them to school.

Older brother! Loki that would play soccer with his little sibling when he found the time. Even though it wasn’t that intense, at least to him, the shrieks of laughter and face splitting grin that adored his little sibling were far more precious than some extra practice. After all, it is healthy to know when to take it easy and have some fun.

Older brother! Loki that tries his best to teach his little sibling about the importance of patience. Of course, little kids generally don’t have much of that, which is why Loki isn’t surprised to feel the tug of his sleeve when his little sibling decides they want to play with their big brother instead of letting him study for his upcoming exam. Loki can’t bring himself to be that annoyed though, looking into the same brown eyes as his own, he feels a strong sense of love flourishing from those stubborn and impatient pools of brown.

Older brother! Loki that helps his mother out with chores when he finishes practice and she finishes work. It gives the two of them time to rekindle and catch up on life.

Older brother! Loki that was always so happy to spend the holidays goofing off with his sibling. The sweet days off of school and soccer practice were made to be spent with his mini me beside him.

Older brother! Loki that was filled with shock when he saw his little sibling wearing a smaller version of his France national team jersey. His heart fluttered and soared out of his chest as a chuckle escaped from his smile. It suited them, of course it did. Because it was his little sibling. The bond between them was ever so strong, even if he would be on the field and his smaller version of himself would be either in the stands or watching through the television screen at home.

[peppermintmagicianlynn]

TimBer Week 2024: Lazy Days

TimBer Week 2024 Day #4: Lazy Days

Bernard was never one for ‘cozy’ video games, but he’d gotten as a birthday present from his little cousin so he was making an effort to get into it. At the very least it was a cooking game and it flet appropriate for how his day had turned around.

At midmorning, Bernard had been up in his room, bored put of his gourd, when he’d gotten a text from Tim Drake. His classmate had asked about his plans for the day and given they were in a mutual state of ennui, they decided it would be more profitable to hang out. Bernard invited the other over to his house with a warning that he had better commit to a quiet day of nothing at all productive. Drake agreed and rolled up before noon.

What Bernard had not warned him of was that they wouldn’t be lazing around inside of the Dowd house. Instead, they would be in the camping tent Bernard has set up in the backyard which had also been a gift from his extended family. He’d practically been living out there and was excited to show it off to someone who could appreciate his efforts to make a comfy spot.

Drake had given him an appropriate amount of praise and after a few minutes to restock the space for the extra company, they’d both settled into their chosen activities. With the game volume turned off, Bernard was content by the sounds of clicking buttons, Drake’s occasional page flipping, and the whir of the portable heater that tirelessly defended them from hypothermia.

“How can you even see what you’re reading?” Bernard asked when he noticed how far Drake was from the heater. He was tucked so far into the beanbag chair that none of the red-hot coil’s light should have reached the pages of his book.

“It’s in braille,” was his response. “I’m teaching myself to read it, trial-by-fire.”

Which seemed sort of random and yet so very Tim Drake, just quietly picking up a new skill set like it was no big deal.

“Kudos to you, then.” Bernard went back to his game, stirring the pot of stew and tossing in another clove of garlic even though it made the overseeing chef yell about ‘waste’. It needed more garlic, okay?

The wind picked up outside, rattling the tent but not enough to upset anything on the inside. Bernard had been sure to secure the extension cord outside, so as long as it was still powering their heater, they were still safe to stay put. It was like living in a micro-world, away from the rest of the human population and free from everything about it. Just the two of them.

Bernard felt a bit of pride when the food critic showed him his final score – ten out of ten! - and decided that was enough for now. He set the system aside, stretched out his hunched back, and turned his attention to the other occupant of his micro-world.

Drake had his eye closed, giving all his focus to the ridged pages under his hands and whatever information he was getting from them. He was so immersed in his task, Bernard almost felt bad by his own compulsion to bring the boy back into the realm where they were still aware of each other’s presence.

Almost. “What are your reading?”

“The Odyssey. We analyzed it to death at my last school, so i know it by heart. I figured if I flubbed it trying to decipher the braille, I’d still understand most of what was going on and just guess my way through.”

“How much of it are you actually ‘reading’, then?”

“About 70%.”

“That’s pretty impressive. By our school’s standards, that’s practically a B+.”

Drake smirked. “Thank God for that.” Still with his eyes closed, he reached out his ‘reading’ hand in a fist for Bernard to bump.

The blonde laughed. Then on a wild impulse, asked “Read it to me.”

Drake cracked open one bright eye. “Have you never read The Odyssey before?”

“We got the abridged version back in middle school. They made us do so many book reports and even had us act out some of the scenes. It’s one of the only things we read that year that I that actually enjoyed.”

Drake had both eyes opened now and squinted them across the space at Bernard, humming in thought. “Only if you give me more chips. Barbecue-shrimp flavored, please.”

Bernard sighed like it was a great inconvenience, but he dug out one of the fun-sized bag he’d kept in his Bear-Den just for when Drake came over. “How can you stand these things? They’re gross.”

“You’re gross,” Drake retaliated before upending he bag and shaking a healthy amount into his mouth. Bernard watched him do so, amazed that neither loose chips nor crumbs landed on the open book pages. Once Drake got his fill, he set the bag aside but also bookmarked his page to set the volume down, too. The red blanket he’d stolen from Bernard’ lap was pushed aside so he could lean close to the heater, rotating his thin fingers in front of it with an obvious greed.

“Were your hands cold this whole time?”

“Yeah, it’s genetic. My mom hated the winter because her hands would freeze just from passing by an opened door.”

Bernard thought that over for a moment. Then he pushed off his own blankets and with a call of “Hold on to the book, I’ll be right back” he opened the tent flap and slipped out into the cold. He had something up in his room that could work well.

When he got back to the tent, Drake looked almost asleep in his chair, though the sudden blast of December chill brought him around immediately. Bernard did feel bad about that; Drake looked so wiped out when he showed up at their door. “Here, try these.”

The raven-haired boy must still have been a little groggy because he stared at the gloves in Bernard’s hands with a dazed look. “I can’t read braille with those on, Bern. The fabric gets in the way.”

“These ones won’t.” Bernard tossed them into the other’s lap. Once they were at touching radius, the other could finally realized why Bernard had been gone so long.

“Did you cut the fingers off?” he asked, holding up one black leather glove to see the tips had been removed. “Why would you do that? These look like an expensive brand!”

They likely were, but that meant very little to Bernard. The blond returned to his seat and once the blankets were tucked around him again, he shrugged. “I figured you could put them to better use than I would.” Then, with a smirk, “Plus, you’ve always had that ‘sickly orphan’ vibe going on. Fingerless gloves would work well for- hey!”

Bernard laughed as the balled-up chips bag was chucked at his head, bouncing of his temple because his hands were wrapped in his blankets.

“Ass.” But even as he said that, Drake slipped the gloves on with a smile. “Last chance to back out on my read-along. It’s going to be stilted and clunky the entire time.”

“Entertain me,” Bernard said. He made a big display of bringing the blankets up to his chin and sinking deeper into her beanbag chair. The picture of comfort and patience.

Drake laughed softly, then the sound of flipping pages as he returned to her previous spot. Bernard felt his heart pick up a little as Drake’s voice took on the same orating tone he slipped into when he had to read a passage in used in English Lit.

“The sun rose on the flawless brimming sea into a sky all brazen-all one brightening for gods immortal and for mortal men on plowlands kind with grain.”

Water and wheat danced behind Bernard’s eyelids, sweeping him away to the town of Pylos where he would follow Telemachus and Athena on their search for Odysseus. But while he did love this story, it was less the words that captivated him so much as the voice that brought them to life.

Drake had been correct about his recitation being clunky; he stumbled through every other sentence. But there was such beautiful honesty in how hard he was trying. He’d hesitate at complicated words, double-back when he used the wrong pronunciation, but that just made it all the sweeter when he did succeed. Bernard could hear the touch of pride that coated his voice whenever he made it to the end of a stanza without stopping.

With blankets and snacks and a familiar voice to fill the space, there was no better way to spend an afternoon in December.

[im-sew-curious]

There’s something wrong with me. I was so excited to see this photo. Yeah, of course, for the obvious reasons. But also because it confirmed and showcased an alteration that has been done to Taemin’s clothes so he’s less likely to split his trousers.

Taemin in his pleather pants at his Metamorph concert, 2023.

He’s got crotch gussets. Such a sexy term, I know. Basically, it’s a long triangular piece of fabric that’s stitched from the crotch down into the trouser legs. This provides some extra depth to allow for a fuller range of movement during squats, lunges, etc.

The gusset is that piece of pleather, pieced inside those red lines.

Sometimes it’s made of matching stretch fabric, and sometimes it’s the same fabric as the trousers. The width and length of the triangle can vary based on the amount of extra ease required for the specific movements. In this specific pair, the gusset is truncated at the zippered knee so there’s no point.

Jinki during the Your Number Performance Video (Black Version) showcasing a beautiful example of a gusset

During a fitting, it’s important to have the performer do all of their most extreme moves to make sure things don’t bunch or bind. Since we don’t normally get…excellent crotch shots…of Taemin, like that one, I can’t tell how common it is for him to get these gussets.

If it’s a shopped garment and not custom built (I’m assuming the Metamorph pair is custom) and they have the money, it’s possible they could purchase two pairs. They could then cannibalize one pair simply to make perfectly matching gussets.

If the trouser hem is taken up quite a bit, it may also be possible to use that fabric to make some.

It's also notable that the seams in these trousers are “flat felled.” That’s the type you typically see on jeans. It’s topstitched twice so it’s a very strong seam, which also helps to prevent split crotches.

You can see the beautifully done flat felled seams at this intersection of center front seam, front and back leg, and gussets. It's so pleasing to me!

Here's what a flat felled seam looks like. Hefty jeans seam. Big, beefy jeans seam.

Perhaps his most famous “blowout” was during the 2012 performance of Sherlock at the KBS year end music show. But he’s pretty famous for them in general.

That's just impressive

I’m not quite sure when Taemin’s styling team started incorporating crotch gussets into his costumes…my research is pretty spotty.

There is one instance during his Danger era in 2014 where he had a sort of gusset installed, however, it lacked a center front seam. This, along with the fact that his trousers were riding low, didn’t provide the correct…body geometry, to broadly explain it, to really help. It was also very wide and not tapered, which widened his whole trouser leg. It was also not stitched securely enough to keep from popping open at the center front. But this is the first attempt I've seen trying to accommodate his issues.

You can see how it lacks the refinement and finesse of the future "generations" of gussets.

There were at least two instances of Taemin splitting his trousers in 2016 at a DxDxD concert and a Drip Drop live performance. His striped DxDxD suit definitely did not have gusset, and I’m unsure about the latter. I think it’s interesting that they tried a gusset on him two years prior, then didn’t again. Except….

Taemin's gusset-less suit which he wore during Shinee's DxDxD concert in 2016, which split during the show.

All of SHINee had crotch gussets in their Your Number suits in 2016. I wrote a whole thread about that here.

So basically, I’m confused. It seems like the usage of gussets in Taemin’s trousers was very sporadic.

I haven’t seen more recent examples of either gussets or split trousers, other than the Metamorph trousers. But I haven't been able to get good views of most of the things he's worn over the last 7 years. This could mean that his team has begun to incorporate gussets into more of them, or we just don’t know about the blow-outs. Or I haven't done enough research. I got a good view of the inner legs of his blue satin suit in the Idea MV and I didn’t see anything. Same with his black Criminal trousers.

Nope?

Wearing trousers high on one’s waist and very close to their body helps a great deal. You can see that in the blue satin Idea trousers. That way, the loose fabric doesn’t stretch more than it should as the legs splay apart and cause ripping. The styling team may have made sure to do that more. It’s possible that they could have also made sure to incorporate more stretch into the trousers they buy (or possibly, occasionally, make) for him.

Taemin's Kcon look. You can see how the trousers go nearly all the way up to his "natural waist" (which is where you crease when you bend to your side.) That helps keep them up to where they need to be, preventing a saggy crotch, which, in turn, prevents rips.

Working with performers for many years, one gets to know the idiosyncrasies and patterns of the way they move in their clothing. I worked with one performer in musical theatre who was infamous for splitting his trousers. We searched for matching fabric before we even tried on his trousers for the first time, knowing he would be getting gussets.

All this is to say, I applaud the stylist team for making these accommodations for Taemin. He, more than anyone, needs these alterations to give him peace of mind to perform "full out" and stay rip free!

Here’s a bonus 9 minute compilation of Taemin ripping his trousers. Serial Pants Ripper Taemin. (Cw: The last bit is uncomfortable, featuring some prompting from hosts for Minho to touch Taemin’s butt to see if it was pointy, which was preferable to the host doing so.)

[joyce-stick]

An Essay About Slash Review of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, A Video Game Which is Very Good

(and also: has prompted many quite wrong rather bad takes)

An essay by Audrey of the joystick system

The very bad discourse and drama around The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has served to obscure the simple fact that it is quite a very good video game and this video essay is here to tell you about that.

Video version:

Previous video essay: Lost Judgment's Lost Plot

If you enjoy this essay, please consider following us here or on any other platforms, and/or donating to support future works via our Patreon or Ko-fi.

Patreon • Ko-fi • YouTube • Twitter • Cohost • Tumblr • Bluesky

Transcript:

Hi everyone. So. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is really, really fucking good.

If you’ve heard of this game, you’ve probably heard of it in the context of memes, screenshots divorced from context, and/or capricious moral outrage. If you’ve not heard of this game, well, you’re hearing of it now! And good thing, too, because much of the coverage and discussion around this game that already exists has… been, let’s just say, not particularly earnest. I hope to remedy that at least somewhat with this video.

If you’ve heard about this game because of discourse, and come here expecting drama and hot takes, then, this may not be your video. Or your YouTube channel, even. Or maybe it is, if you’d like the delicious comments section. If you’re that sort of clicker, though— welcome! I’m Audrey of the joystick system, and this is the place where I (and my headmates) talk honestly about things we care about, and I hope you’ll hear me out a little and maybe consider staying and improving our viewer retention. Thanks, if you do.

So, to writ: My purpose today is to gush. I will be gushing here. For most of it. And as for what I will be gushing about, some of it will be gushing BLOOD, GUTS, AND DELICIOUS DEATH. I am entirely serious. The subject of today’s presentation contains mature content, including copious foul language and themes slash depictions of death, cannibalism, cultism, demon summoning rituals, parricide, dystopian social decay, and heterosexuality. Oh, and also a little bit of incest as a treat, I guess, but the incest is heterosexual, and that’s worse.

[long pause]

Excellent. You’re still here. So. This morbidly beautiful video game may not be for everyone, but that’s good, because it is instead for exactly me! A short plot synopsis of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley might go as follows:

if you're not watching the video listen to this for extra effect

Siblings Andrew and Ashley Graves are forcibly quarantined inside their apartment by the local authorities, with no food and even less hope for rescue. Their parents have abandoned them. Absolutely no one is coming to save them. In order to survive and escape this awful situation, they butcher and consume the fresh flesh of some guy who got himself soul vored by a demon that he summoned without a plan.

This conspicuously carnivorous crime, and their effort to cover their tracks, puts them in a fair bit of a deeper shithole than they are already in. So naturally they keep digging themselves deeper by committing even more crimes, AND in the process, also dig themselves deeper into their toxic codependent sibling relationship, which is going just great, thank you. Sure, Andrew almost killed his sister, but he didn’t, and that’s what matters! And she still loves him, so it’s all good!

This is of course a joke.

First thing I absolutely love about this game is the writing. It’s witty, intelligent, uncompromising, and just generally delicious. It holds nothing back in depicting the toxicity of the two leads and their relationship, resulting in two compelling characters whose flaws and few virtues perfectly complement slash exacerbate one another, resulting in a beautiful train wreck of a relationship dynamic that proves equal parts disturbing, mesmerizing, and hilarious.

The charming darkly comedic bite of the writing style also lends a lot of great character to the setting. This sardonically presented dystopian world is both richly detailed and fleetingly elaborated on, a commendable balance to have achieved, in my opinion. The first chapter of this game is hilarious not just because of the banter between Ashley and Andrew (which is terrific), but because it presents such a sharp satire of current year bullshit.

As just an example, I give you, one of my favorite jokes in the game:

I probably don’t need to explain the thing this is making fun of to you, but I will anyway.

The situation presented in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’s first episode is very easily readable as an allegory for how disasters that are a direct result of ongoing 2020s late capitalist decay continuously fuck people over. In particular, this scenario feels like a direct commentary on both the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Flint, Michigan water crisis. The former obviously has affected way more people but what both have in common is that they are crises created and exacerbated by malfeasance and/or negligence committed in the name of for-profit interests, and that the “response,” to them, such as there was one, has amounted to dehumanizing and marginalizing the victims while minimizing the issue, forcing the victims out of society’s wider view, and being reticent to punish the individuals responsible. 

Just as the authorities responded to the water crisis and the worst excesses of the pandemic in real life, the authorities in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley impose half-measures designed to further restrict the freedom of the dirty undesirables who bear the worst damages, while merely shielding the upper echelons of society from the disaster rather than actually addressing or attempting to solve the issue. Most of you who lived through 2020 in the United States probably have experienced the frustration of being on the receiving end of this kind of policy.

During the pandemic, the quarantine was supposed to protect us, but for a lot of people it ended up doing quite the opposite. A lot of folks didn’t have any savings, and couldn’t get any since the employment market wasn’t exactly on fire, and our representatives had to be bothered way too much just to put out a pithy economic stimulus just to save face. Not to say that this all has stopped, exactly, as all that’s changed now is that we’re just, living with this situation, but.

It wasn’t literally a cop outside everyone’s door preventing them from going outside to not die, but for a lot of people, it might as well have been that! Never mind those who, y’know, had no inside to retreat to. Or were imprisoned during the pandemic and left even more unprotected! Or thrown out by their landlords! And so on. And, y’know, the big chain grocery stores keep throwing out all the perfectly good unsold food, so they’re already sending this message in all but, well… these exact words.

So, that’s why I think this joke lands. It’s exaggerated, but familiarly rooted, and that’s just good satire! It’s a joke which feels lifted right out of Invader Zim, which, I would put The Coffin of Andy and Leyley right about on the level of as far as both the tone it’s going for and the quality of its execution. Which of course, brings us to the extremes that these circumstances push its characters, and its plot, to.

Okay, so, also like Invader Zim, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is hardly a polemic, nor is it a morality tale. Sure, there’s social commentary in it, but that’s just a nice side thing. It’s not a story about the otherwise innocent victims of an unjust society who are pushed to do terrible things by circumstances outside their control— it is, rather a story of terrible people, who, both because of their character failings, and the desperate situations they find themselves in, find themselves doing even worse things.

Andrew and Ashley commit the cannibalism the first time in large part because they kind of have to do it. No food! Cop outside their door actively deterring them from getting food! Out of options! So they do it. They could probably be excused, if only they were given a fair trial. Which they realize they’re not going to get. So yeah. It’s understandable that they do it. And that they kill this one cop, who very much has it coming.

But they do not have to keep doing it! And gosh grief, do they keep fucking doing it— so many its. They really do not stop digging that hole that they are in. Even the first time that they do the cannibalism, when they kind of really have to do the cannibalism, Ashley is just a little bit more excited about doing the cannibalism than she probably should be.

I love this kind of delicious edgy dark humor. I love stories that go for it, imagine the worst possible people they can, and also try to make that funny. I love this about Invader Zim, that it presents a character who is unquestionably a monster, but also has relatable human desires like wanting to fit in and being concerned about looking weird or abnormal, but has those feelings for very different reasons and acts on them by committing some very despicable crimes. It really gets at a deep-seated darkness that I and a lot of other fucked up traumatized queer people who were little kids when this show aired have, the catharsis of visualizing some of our worst intrusive thoughts while evoking the emotions that pushed us to imagine this kind of fucked up shit.

I’ve loved this kind of thing since we saw Heathers when we were 14. Heathers is an absolutely incredible film that you should check out, by the way, and about which we failed to properly or interestingly articulate our thoughts a few years back. Its lead protagonists, Jason “J.D.” Dean and Veronica Sawyer, are similarly relatable characters who have familiar feeling flaws and emotionally resonant trauma hangups, and also function as very toxic enablers of each other’s worst traits, leading them to work through those feelings by, y’know, murdering their classmates!

Heathers made us realize just how exactly mentally ill of a 14 year old we really were when we were 14, and I love it for that. So. So fucking much.

That was ten years and change ago.

We are still a mentally ill 24 year old.

And Andrew and Ashley Graves, if I had to sum them up, are basically J.D. and Veronica, if they were in their twenties, siblings, and also way, way, way worse.

And I love them.

So, obviously. Ashley and Andrew are hilarious. At least, I find them to be such. They’re terrible, and awful, and amazing, and Ashley is such a girlboss. She is one of the most God Forbid Women Do Anything characters ever.

Anyway! I’ve talked about the cannibalism, and the dystopia, and the characters, and why all of that’s good. I’ve also forgotten to talk about the part where they evade an assassin, and, also a host of other things.

I love that this game has so many fun little optional interactions with NPCs, objects, and items, that you can totally miss. I love how the narration hints at the solutions to puzzles by snarkily referring to things you can interact with as what their purpose is to the characters rather than what they are, this quip about the mop that you clean up a murder scene with, the interactions that Andrew has with these cultists who suck at demon summoning, the excellent in-game art and the brilliant visual duality of Andrew and Ashley’s character designs, this line where Andrew is upset that life is so hard for them as fugitives from the law because they can only find this one shitty motel that takes cash and doesn’t ask them for their ID, and also the music, which is royalty free music made by people unassociated with the developer but is nonetheless perfectly suited for the game.

So much about this game is stuff I find so completely brilliant, and I have so little to criticize, that I think we’d probably be here all day if I kept going. So.

Let’s spend a thousand ish more words talking about the parents.

When The Coffin of Andy and Leyley begins, the protagonists’ parents are absent. You can optionally find two early references to them early on— one, if you interact with the bed in their bedroom, and encounter the shocking revelation that “Your parents have FUCKED on this bed.”

The second, is if you interact with the phone, the game dutifully informs you that,

You’re probably less than five minutes into the game at this point, barely begun solving the first puzzle, which prompted you to “find nutrients to not die.” And of course, this says about all you need to know. These children have been abandoned. But if it needed to be any clearer, the game later delivers unto you a flashback to prior in the story, when Ashley desperately calls Mrs. Graves for help after they leave and go move to a hotel, and later a new house, to which the kids are of course not invited. And this specific scene, specific line, here, fucking hit me:

“And I don’t want to hear these lies about starving anymore.”

Emphasis mine.

Even as Ashley and Andrew escalate the severity of their crimes which gradually come to have less and less to do with their need to survive as the story goes on, I find it very hard to not be on their side at least a little bit, and this is easily the biggest reason why.

I have had this phone call.

Not this exact specific phone call, of course. Obviously, I’ve never been locked up in an apartment with an armed patrol outside my door whose job it was to gaslight me while ensuring that I starved to death. Obviously, my mom has never said those exact words.

But gosh grief and fuck me if it’s never felt like she has. She may as well have fucking told me that, with all the things she told me I was lying about. And who fucking knows, maybe she did say those exact words to us, and we repressed them. I don’t know. I am very not done working through all the bullshit that she gaslit us over.

*sighs, preparing to vent*

I have called our mother and had to beg her to pay for food. I have called her and had to beg to pay for our rent, while our parents were supposed to be supporting us studying abroad. I have called her and begged her to forgive me for daring to use just a few of the thirty dollars our parents used to send us to live with every month back then, to buy a drink or a movie ticket or something. I have had to concede to our parents financially holding us hostage, had to go the last week of the month on a shoestring diet while waiting for them to graciously deposit another thirty dollars into our bank account... so that we could continue eating. I used to relish February, the shortest month, for being the one part of the year in which I had to stretch out that thirty dollars the least. And once, I pleaded with our mother to pay for us to move to another apartment when the landlord suddenly kicked us out of the current one, abruptly and obligatorily switching gears from arguing with her to kissing her ass through our gritted teeth, under threat of our parents cutting off their financial support of us completely, abandoning us in a foreign country where we had no money, no job, and barely spoke the language.

And one day, after I stopped dancing to their tune, they just stopped listening, stopped even pretending to want to help. After nineteen years of escalating emotional and physical abuse and neglect, they abandoned us. And one day, after I spent months working 10 hour days every week Ubering food around for tips, sending my resume, filling applications, making calls, stopping into places to ask for work, all to no avail, for months, and desperately plugging the Patreon page of this very YouTube channel praying that some generous soul with money to burn would solve all our problems. All of this still wasn’t enough, and wasn’t going anywhere, and I’d run out of money and was short on rent on the one sublet room we could get that cost exactly three hundred dollars…

And I called her, and I asked her for help. I really didn’t want to. I wanted to hear nothing of her again. And she said to stop lying. To stop bullshitting her that I couldn’t get enough money, or find a job.

Not too long after, I swore off all contact with her, and eventually also with our father. And every time I have spoken to either of them since, I have made no secret of how I feel. Because if I get nothing out of kissing their ass, why fucking pretend.

My family is not poor. They own their house. They own, and leased out, a second house. Their house is full of fancy IKEA furniture and various other niceties, they’ve renovated the place at least twice, they live in a nice, safe neighborhood, they have an attic and a basement, they at one point paid for multiple plane tickets for us per year while still refusing to let us eat on any more than thirty five dollars, an extra five dollars we also had to beg them for. Our dad has a lucrative tech job. All of this, and they insisted, while refusing to answer questions about their finances in any detail, that they couldn’t afford to help us go to where we wanted to go for college, that they had no place for us in their house, that they couldn’t afford three hundred dollars of rent to help us have a roof over our head for one more month.

So when I read this delightful jaunt of a chapter of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, where Andrew and Ashley break into their parents’ new huge house to steal all their shit, and Ashley says “This is some rich people stuff!” about their fireplace,

And when their mom says, “there’s no room to keep housing you here indefinitely,” and the internal monologue says, “even though it’s way bigger than the old house.” It’s both an entertaining mockery of the attitude of the typical American family, how first you’re your parents’ property for eighteen years and then you’re turned out on your own to face the world without their support, and how the fuck are you supposed to live like that, to figure out how to live your life in the face of that, to meaningfully be a fulfilled person in that situation, especially in a time, when, no, mom, I can’t pay a college tuition on a waitress salary like you did back in the fucking nineties, you c--t,

Even though they have an extra bed in their basement and a perfectly good couch and plenty of space for another bed besides, and a vegetable garden, and a kitchen, and all these other middle-class petty bougie niceties, the Graves mom says, “sorry, we can’t keep helping you,” and. And. I read all this, and I think,

“I understand why Ashley wants to fucking flay these people. I understand why she wants to K1!L them.”

I cannot tell you how much catharsis the ending of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley episode 2 gave me. I cannot convey the weight of my gratitude that someone out there validated my anger and my specific fucked up power fantasy with their art. I didn’t even ask them to. I probably would’ve eventually done it on my own. But I’m so glad that someone did it for me.

If I ever hypothetically meet Nemlei, somehow, and have some cash, I will happily buy them a drink. Hopefully, by paying this excellent game’s ten dollar cover price, I already have!

I know you’re not watching this, but on the off chance this reaches your ears, I just wanna say thanks. For giving me a safe, legal, regret-free, socially acceptable, non-violent outlet for the rage I feel towards my parents.

Well.

Mostly socially acceptable.

Meow.

This game is not finished, as you may have noticed if you’ve gone to check it out on Steam. It ends on an ambiguous and open note, but in my opinion, a perfectly satisfying one. Nemlei could disappear absolutely, never release the proper ending of this game, and never make another game again, and I would not be mad. I've already got more than my money’s worth and then some. So. Yeah. I’m happy. Count me as happy!

I kinda wanna start talking a bit more about the branches of the second episode. I wanna say how it’s a brilliant idea to have two separate story arcs for the two variations of this episode’s ending, and how I hope that that’s executed on as beautifully as the rest of the game already is. I wanna talk about the ways in which Andrew and Ashley’s mom is ambiguously humanized despite being so obviously terrible. I wanna talk about the dialogue Andrew does when his parents offer him a chance to make amends, and he has doubts, if you choose to let him have them, and how I would probably also have doubts in his position, and not be able to follow through without my lovely evil cannibal sister pushing me towards… the thing. I wanna talk about this line, where Ashley talks about why she likes eating people, and how it’s so equal parts poetic and macabre and edgy bullshit and that that’s such a beautifully balanced cocktail of emotion to nail and Nemlei totally fucking nails it

I WANT TO GUSH FOREVER. ABOUT THIS GAME. AND I WANT NO ONE TO STOP ME.

Alas, I will stop myself.

And move on to the elephant in the room!

THE FUCKING.

Mom: “But that-.... That doesn’t make any sense.” Mom: “Why would you not-......” Mom: “Ah, I get it.” Andrew: “..........??” Mom: “You fuck her.” Andrew: “Wha— HUUUUH?!?!!?” Mom: “Oh that is disgusting! Andrew, she’s your sister for god’s sake!” Andrew: “I haven’t done anything!? What the hell, mom!?” Mom: “Then what does she give you that makes it worth all this?” Andrew: “W-well that’s none of your business, is it??” Mom: “I knew something was off… How did I fuck up so bad? I’m the worst mother ever..!” Andrew: “No! I mean yes you are, but I have never—!” Ashley: “I’m baaaa-ack!!!” Andrew: “Now of all times!?” Ashley: “I got the money! Did you miss me, handsome?? Did you? Did you??” Mom: “...........................” Andrew: “(I WANT TO DIE!!!!!!)”

Okay. So. I said I didn’t want to talk about this. But I’m talking about this game. I can’t not talk about it.

Yep, it’s hot takes and drama time!

So, not too long ago, Nemlei deleted their Twitter, their Itch.io, their everything, their entire online presence. The Steam page for The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, which used to list Nemlei as the developer and publisher, now lists “Kit9 Studio.” It is the only game to their name on the platform. A community forum post from said entity known as Kit9 announces that “the developer” (no name given) “has decided to permanently and completely terminate their activities online from here on.”

I don’t know exactly what happened, or why they did this. There’s a lot of people around who sure think they know. But in brief, as neutrally as possible: Nemlei, or someone close to them, was doxxed, or at least sought out as a doxxing target, by one or multiple users of an online forum. Their supposed crime? Making a video game “for degenerates.”

I don’t know who did the doxxing. I don’t know what their motive was, and for my own sanity, I am not going to look. I am choosing not to care. The most important and most obvious fact at hand here is that Nemlei’s creation has been met with controversy amongst social media users, and about one or two hack video game outrage journalists, who seem to have nothing better to do or say. And it seems clear that the doxxing wouldn’t have happened had they not been met with this negative attention. And all because of this.

Not the cannibalism, not the parricide, not the demon sacrifices. No, um, the one implied sex scene.

And it doesn’t even actually happen! It’s just a premonition of a possible future event that Ashley and Andrew supernaturally receive. It’s not particularly graphic, it doesn’t yet go anywhere, and it’s a short scene on an optional route that the game actively forewarns you about. You have to be trying to see it on purpose.

Well, that’s all true. It is indeed a minor and avoidable scene, and the discourse about it has absolutely poisoned the well when it comes to the conversation about the game. But also, “uhh, it’s optional and not a big thing,” is inadequate as a defense. This is still content in the game that Nemlei actively chose to put in the game, and even discounting this, the themes of incest are all over the game. Ashley speaks flirtatiously to Andrew at basically every turn. Even if you avoid this specific scene, the incest themes are not something you’re going to just not notice, if you’re paying attention to the text.

All that being said, it’s not like this content comes as a surprise. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’s Steam store page accurately represents the product! A brother and sister. Codependency and cannibalism. It’s not as if you don’t know what you’re paying for and choosing to play. You came here for this! Most of the people playing this are here for this! You have to figure that if they are fine with killing and eating people, they’re probably fine with fucking each other, or, eventually possibly eventually going to be, at least.

So you’d think, except that many people seem to unironically believe that the cannibalism is more moral than the incest.

Oh, god, I’m doing this right now, aren’t I.

So, I get it. While I’m pretty skeptical of the notion that cannibalism is not as bad as incest, I do realize that incest is, at the very least, the more taboo of these things, and that a lot of people are more uncomfortable with it than they are with the cannibalism and the murder. To quote the one positive and in-depth review available in any media outlet at the time of this writing, from Destructoid:

“This aspect is undoubtedly the most controversial element about The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, and I understand why. While cannibalism is a taboo subject, it’s present in mainstream games like Fallout as an option for players. Having incestuous themes crosses over into Drakengard territory, and even then, no option allows Caim to reciprocate Furiae’s feelings for him.”

"The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is horrifying and I can’t get enough of it" Andrea Gonzalez, Destructoid, November 12 2023

So, yeah, I. y’know. Get it. I know why. However.

I can point to a lot of things that Andrew and Ashley do wrong in this game. They are, as per the game’s premise, very not okay, not as individuals, and not together. Andrew is way too attached to Ashley, and Ashley is generally an awful person who is way too attached herself, and also, all too quick on the draw to take advantage of Andrew’s attachment to her to make him do what she wants. This is not a healthy relationship. And we’re here for it! It’s compelling!

But, I think it’s worth asking why it’s such a toxic dynamic. Is it because they’re siblings? Well, not really. It’s a dynamic that’s specifically possible with them being siblings, but it’s not because of their sibling connection.

The actual reason why Andrew and Ashley’s relationship turns abusive isn’t because their relationship is abusive by necessity or nature, but because Ashley abuses their relationship. And she is doing this for basically the whole game. Like, it is abusive the whole time. It doesn’t become abusive when their relationship takes its romantic turn. Does it become more abusive? I mean. Maybe. Maybe the romance exacerbates the abuse. I dunno, we’ll have to wait and see what the next episode says.

So, then, why is the notion of them possibly in the future having sex the elephant in the room here, when before that, they do so many objectively worse things that cause much more harm both to themselves and others? Is that really so much more of a bigger deal than the murder and the people eating?

Or. To phrase it Ashley’s way. You played a game about mutilating and eating your parents’ corpses, and getting laid is what you’re freaking out about?

Is the incest really that much more extreme, or are you just more disgusted with it?

And even if you are more disgusted with it. Even if we grant that it is, actually, somehow, more harmful for siblings to have sex with each other, than to do murder and cannibalism. Is this the hill you’re dying on? What you’ve decided is of such utmost importance and injustice that you decide to go harass some random indie dev who just wants to make a silly video game about a couple of siblings eating people?

Does it truly make sense to let your kneejerk moral disgust guide you to the conclusion that the creator of this game deserves to be persecuted for merely writing about and drawing a thing you don’t like?

Well, to answer that, we have to get into the question of whether or not “immoral fiction” is harmful, or “normalizing” things that are wrong. Does fictionally depicting an immoral action actually cause harm?

I could dance around in circles for a little while about the edge cases, and certain writers who are publishing bad or hateful material in bad faith, or fascist propaganda, which is of course always bad, or whatever other example I could use to qualify my point or list out an exception to appease the people who disagree with me, but, I’ll just cut right to the chase, and tell you the answer

No!

The answer is NO!

The thing about taboos is that they don’t make us more safe. They don’t protect us from bad things. All they do is protect people’s comfort by silencing people they don’t want to understand, and enable bad actors by keeping their victims in the dark, and denying them the ability to talk about it.

The only thing we end up doing by censoring stories about these uncomfortable topics, and making it socially unacceptable to talk about them, is make it harder to know. We deny ourselves knowledge. We deny ourselves a conversation about these subjects, we deny ourselves the ability to meaningfully understand them. We deny ourselves power, what little we have, as readers, to understand, and to critique, to reason.

There’s a tumblr post I really like. Well, a number of them, I really like, on this topic, but I’m picking this one, because it’s got a quote I really like. It talks about Lolita. That Lolita. And, now, I’ve never read Lolita, at least not yet. Lolita is a novel about child sexual abuse, told from the perspective of an abuser. It’s an uncomfortable book with an uncomfortable topic, and it’s not wrong to be uncomfortable with it. The author of this post acknowledges that.

But they talk about it. They talk about how it shines a light on its subject matter. The why and the how of abusers and their actions. The ways in which their victims suffer. How it shows all of this in a way that it only could from the perspective it takes. And, I’m just going to quote them. I can’t do anything else. They said it better than I could, right now.

“Embrace disgusting fiction and then fucking talk about why it’s nasty. Now YOU have the power over reality.” - tumblr user legsdemandias

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has been ridiculed, joked about, hot taked on, made a target, drama-ed over, and so on, but it’s hardly been criticized. No one I’ve seen admitting to not liking it talks critically about why it’s disgusting to them, or tries to understand why it exists, or what it’s for. And this is most people’s reaction to most media that deals seriously with anything taboo. “I don’t get it. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t exist. Get it away from me.”

I’m annoyed that the medium, the art form, of video games, is valued so little by so many that this is the wide reaction when something like this gets popular. That the mainstream games journalism media ridicules it, and the creator gets threatened by an internet mob, and it falls on the weirdos and the freaks and the no-name YouTube uwu girls, to give it the serious consideration and recognition it deserves.

To summarize, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is, in my opinion, a very good video game, and on its behalf, I am mad at video games.

Now, go on. You made it through this video. I told you the plot! You can probably stomach the plot! So go, go. Shoo. Go buy Nemlei a drink. If you want to.

Or, buy us, the joystick system, a drink! You can do that at patreon dot com slash joycestick, or, ko-fi dot com slash joycestick. You can buy us drinks in both of those places.

I’ve been Audrey. Thank you for listening.

Thank you to our Patreon supporters:

Ada. Just Ada • Anime Omelette • ASabitsukiFlow • Azu • ColorfulCast • DameDiadora • deeso • Duskpixie • Elvenoob • Emma and Pals • Femboy Bebop • Gwen Starlight • hev • Kaylee Smerbeck • Korin • L Tantivy • LaLaLacuna • Lilly • M • Mira Yeuden • Nik Gothic • Pigeon • Roger C Walker • RukaCollie • Sally • Saoirse Russell • Scimitar • SimplyAero • SleepySlug • Spiderrebelnews • Thijs • Trucy • Unknowable Entity of Darkness • Vile Lasagna

A reminder to consider following or supporting us if you enjoyed this essay:

Patreon • Ko-fi • YouTube • Twitter • Cohost • Tumblr • Mastodon

[thatdeadaquarius]

I have so many ideas but none of them can be put into words, all I can do is just wheeze as they come along🤣

Also remember how wordy and flowery Teyvat speech/dialogue is? ADD THAT TO THE FACT THAT TEYVAT HAS ITS OWN LANGUAGE---

Reader can understand the basic speech which is why they are so blunt (I love this idea so much 🤣) and can piece together an idea what the person is talking about.

*insert random person talking about a commission with a long ass backstory*

Traveller & Co.: *understands completely and making plans to retrieve said commission*

C!Reader: (They said they had a cart.... a bunch of hilichurls appeared... dancing?.... they want us to dance fight the hilichurls???? Dance off???)

Actual story->The person's cart got ambushed by a group of hilichurls and taunted them by dancing around it.

....... it doesnt always translate well

Also imagine Reader heaeing random names and overthinks it as a word instead of a name.

Example: Pantalone means pants in Philippine English (sorry not sorry Pantalone)

Tsaritsa??? Oh do they speak russian there??? - reader

Capitano -> captain in some countries

(I once mistake Sandrone as Sandalone and I just went "... ehh??? Standalone? Sandalone as in Sand Alone???? Sandal (Flip flops)????

Oh wait its Sandrone" ".... as in Sand and Drone??--)

-Vine Boom

VINE BOOM ANON MY BELOVED 💖❤🧡💛💚💙💜✨️✨️

Gif is me writing u anything ever:

AHFLALA FERRRALLL I STG I ALSO THOUGHT ABT THIS!! WHY U COULD ALSO BE BLUNT BC U ONLY GOT THE BASICS 💀 RIP

Man theyre written language looks so scary to learn, kinda like when I looked into trying to learn Mandarin/Japanese (and even Korean), the letters r just inherently so different i was so intimidated

And u dont even read it like left -> right like English

Omg i tried to reply to a arabic comment on my art post once, and i felt so acommplished when i finally was able to type "اشكرك (thanks)" but like, i had to put it on the OTHER SIDE OF THE TEXT BOX, LIKE ALIGN IT TO THE RIGHT INSTEAD OF HOW U KNOW ENGLISH IS INHERENTLY ALIGNED LEFT, IT WAS SO TRIPPY-

Going thru genshin life only understanding minimal words of anything anyone says is honestly how i feel like ive been playing Genshin LMAO

Those analysis videos/lore are saving a bitch's life out here

PANTALONE IS ALSO RLLY CLOSE TO SPANISH FOR PANTS I KNOW WHAT U MEANNN LOL

UR ENDLESS CONFUSION FOR SANDRONE PLEASE ANON U DIDNT EVEN GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST CORRECTION IT JUST KEPT GETTING WORSEEE 😂😭 SAME THO

That would literally be you in genshin tho, like i could easily see it being like, back to back misunderstandings 😭😭

Like u think u got it right (Oh so his name is Rex Lapis, wait what? Morax? Ok his name is Morax...?? What??? Zhongli??? WHO IS THIS MAN-)

.

JFC first they gotta have a whole different language (like u saw in game)

And ON TOP OF THAT THEY CAN TALK FOR 10 MIN STRAIGHT ABT THE WEATHER OR SOME SHIT??

No... just, no.

U quickly decide u like what little bits of language u could pick up so far, which just results in,

U guessed it, simple speech and short fragmented sentences (or broken Teyvatian)

U cant even bring urself to care when u give half the characters a heart attack and send the rest into laughing fits

No fucks given, they wanna make this extra hard on u by being wordy on top of a new language,

Yeah u dont care what comes out of ur mouth anymore

Also, since everybody is raised in Teyvat very few ppl dont know the language, which once again brings us back to ancient/older deities/creatures who have a more simplistic version/outdated version of modern language

.

Omg getting stuff mistranslated bc u cant understand it all/only keywords sounds like hell but also rlly funny

Traveler/Paimon: "Alright, yes, all is well. We will accept this comission, and depart soon."

You: "...they want us to?? Dance fight?? Hilichurls...???"

Traveler just stares at u half in pity, half trying to hide their amused smile, Paimon is giggling

The commissioner is shook bc a supposed ancient creature?? Just accepted?? Their simple commission?? And u think they want u to dance battle???

.

PLEASE U MISTRANSLATE THE HARBINGERS NAMES RIGHT TO THEIR FACES

Signora: "You shall rue the day you crossed the Fatui mortals!"

You: "Lady we don't care, just fight us."

(Signora just means 'Lady')

Signora: *offended gasp*

Traveler/Paimon trying to stifle laughter

Raiden Shogun jaw dropped a little

.

Pantalone: "What a pleasure to finally meet you traveler, and thine wonderful companions!" *little bastard smile*

You: "And it was awful to meet you, Pants."

Pantalone: 😶😧😡 "Pants?! HOW DARE YOU NOT EVEN GIVE ME THE MOST BASE RESPECT, AFTER I GREETED THEE SO KINDLY-"

.

Oh its so funny, everytime you talk about Childe you always phrase it like he's an actual child bc u thought everyone was just calling him a little kid for some reason (u dont know how Teyvat ages work, he could be for all you know!)

Not very long, but Vine Boom anon your brain >>>>

Ur ideas r so on point, i love them sm

That makes perfect sense why u could be talking blunt too, like an in world explanation really

For you, all the desserts🥰 🤲🍪🍨🍰🍮🧋🍦🍡

Cheers,

🌒🌊🌧Aquarius♒️🌌🌘

[anim-ttrpgs]

I heard y'all got elf kissing rules

Well, we’ve got elves in the form of the Fairy Monster Trait, and technically we have the tiniest little mechanic for determining if a curse placed by a fairy or witch can break a curse. That’s a pretty rare occurrence though. For kissing rules that are more likely to come up, a Comfort Skill check or Seduce Skill check could also involve a little kiss.

And I’m gonna use this as a jumping off point to talk about how Skill checks work in Eureka, something i know that @vixensdungeon will appreciate, hahaha.

There’s some exceptions, such as sometimes with Skills in the Knowledge category, but for the most part, if a character is going to do something in Eureka, they just do it, and it that thing they’re trying to do is something that would be difficult to accomplish, that’s when the most relevant Skill is rolled. The habit of doing it the other way around is one of those things from the D&D5e Oral Tradition that you have to unlearn to play Eureka right.

It still isn’t an absolute rule, though, and this is addressed in the rulebook too. Sometimes when we play Eureka, we play it a bit more by ear. For instance, one of my characters, Yvette Preux, has almost all really bad negatives in her Skills for the Interpersonal category. If I know that a Charm, Comfort, Manipulate, etc. roll is probably coming up, sometimes I’ll go ahead and roll the dice first, then determine how out-of-pocket what she says is based on how badly the dice roll went. Other times, she’ll just start talking and Interpersonal Skill checks just come as they come.

So anyway if a kiss is just a kiss, there’s probably no roll, but if a kiss is intended to cheer up a character and restore some of their Composure, then there would be a Comfort Skill check along with it. If a kiss is intended to get the recipient to come home with the character or otherwise leverage sexual attraction, then there would be a Seduce Skill check. (This reminds me of a time in a Eureka adventure where Yvette and Benedetta were trying to get this meathead guy, who was also a high-ranking member of an organization they were investigating, to take them home from a bar so they could search his house. A Seduce roll wasn’t necessary because everyone around the table agreed that there’s no world in which this guy would pass up two beautiful women trying to go home with him, no matter how weak their game. We rolled the dice anyway just because it was funny and of course they both would have failed if it had actually counted.)

If a kiss is meant to wake someone from an eternal slumber or turn a frog back into a human, that’s not a regular Skill check it’s just a 1D6 roll with modifiers added based on a few factors.

Ironically, Yvette would probably have the best possible chance to break a curse this way because she’s a woman of actual historical noble birth, and she has a lot of love in her cold, unbeating heart.

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but you can still check out the public beta on itch.io to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, etc.!

You can also follow updates on our Kickstarter page where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more, you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy earlier, plus extra content such as adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[notenuffbees]

I have many responsibilities in my personal and professional life, so naturally I used my valuable time to create this rating of every single one of Dick Knubbler's outfits. I know next to nothing about fashion, so naturally I'm the most qualified person to make this list. Bold fashion choices and wrong opinions under the cut. Let me know what you think!

"Pre-Accident" Outfit. Appears in Dethwater. What an iconic look to start the series with. Songgu Kwon's concept art that's available online has Knubbler in a traditional suit, so I wonder when they made the switch to this style jacket. It's a shame he never wore this exact outfit ever again. Maybe it doesn't go with his robotic eyes? Do you think Dick had to get a whole new wardrobe after his eyes exploded since he stopped being blue eyed? And what do you think happened to his collection of different shaded glasses? 9/10

"Award Show " Outfit. Appears in Dethwater. It's a suit. Boring. And it's just the same color scheme as the first outfit? Extra points for the bowtie and the pocket square. I just realized while making this list that he's not wearing shades in this outfit. 6/10

"Prison" Outfit. Appears in Dethwater If there was any justice in the Metalocalypse universe, Knubbler would have spent the rest of the series in this outfit in a jail cell. Not much else to say about this one. I like the red-rimmed glasses. 3/10

"Disco" Outfit. Appears in Dethwater.

Hideous. The bell bottoms, the clashing colors, the star patterns, whatever the hell kind of dance moves he's trying to pull off. Absolutely iconic. I would rank this outfit higher if it didn't physically hurt my eyes to look at it. 6/10

"Magazine" Outfit. Appears in Dethwater.

It's the same as the "Pre-Accident" Outfit, just with a green turtleneck. For some reason I don't like this outfit nearly as much. Maybe because the green matches the eyes? But aren't you supposed to match colors in fashion? I don't know. Again, I'm probably the last person in the world that should be judging clothes.

5/10

"Court" Outfit. Appears in Dethkomedy. Interesting color choices. This is why Knubbler's outfits are so great. You've got a basic suit-and-tie that becomes a fashion win/disaster with the lilac coat, black shirt, and pink striped tie. The stripes on the tie make it a little too busy for me though. 7/10

"The Knubbler" Outfit. Appears in Dethkids, Dethrecord, Dethrelease/Black Fire Upon Us, Dethhealth, Doublebookedklok. Step away from your phone/computer for a second. Close your eyes. Take a few breaths. Then picture Dick Knubbler. What outfit is he wearing? I bet you pictured him in this. If you didn't, well then it's what Murderface pictured him wearing in his gay crisis fantasy. So yeah. There's a reason this outfit is the one they put him in over three seasons. Knubbler wore this style jacket before and since these episodes, but the plum really makes this version of the outfit shine. Absolutely perfect. No notes. 10/10

"Recording on Water" Outfit. Appears in Dethvengeance, the cancelled Metalocalypse video game. Again, I love how Knubbler spices up a classic suit and tie with wild color choices. My personal preference for warm colors has me wishing the colors were a bit bolder than forest green and purple. But I gotta give love to any outfit with a pocket square. 7/10

"White Dethmas" Outfit. Appears in Dethmas, Fertilityklok, and in issue 3 of the Dethklok comic book. This one's great. It takes a brave man to wear an all white outfit, and he pulls it off. My only issue is that it's kind of weird that he also wore it to Toki's birthday party which, according to the calendar in Fertilityklok, is late summer or early autumn. I assume they made this Dethmas outfit all white to go with the snow/winter/Christmas theme, but apparently Dick will just wear it whenever. 8/10

"Christmas Special Host" Outfit. Appears in Dethmas. Perfectly average. Just a tuxedo. The red bowtie/pocket square with the green vest is a nice Christmas-y touch. Loses points for being so boring otherwise. 6/10

"Nativity" Outfit. Appears in Dethmas. I don't know if I've ever been able to watch this clip all the way through without having to pause due to the secondhand embarrassment. Sometimes I think about how there exists a 30 second clip of this man screaming in agony as the blood vessels in his face swell and his eyeballs eventually explode, but this is the clip that makes me cringe myself inside out. I can barely look at this outfit long enough to rank it. The necklace is pretty cool though, even if I can't tell what the charm is supposed to be. It kind of looks like Facebones? Or the old DeviantArt mascot? I don't know. Let's just get the hell away from this picture. 2/10

"Dealing with a Murderface Tantrum" Outfit. Appears in Dethsiduals The first of two suit-without-a-tie outfits. The purple and black go well together, and the pocket square makes another excellent appearance, although it pairs with the dress shirt this time rather than the ascot. Heh. Ascot. That's a funny word. 7/10

"Season 4" Outfit. Appears in Writersklok, Goingdownklok, Breakupklok. I'm disappointed that he had so few outfits in season 4. That sours my opinion on this suit a little. But I love that there are three completely different colors with this outfit. Someone teach me how color coordination is done so I can understand why this outfit works.

And we've got another pocket square paired with the ascot! So I get to think about the word "ascot" again! 8/10

"Flawless Disguise" Outfit. Appears in Writersklok. I love the running joke of a tracksuit and a baseball cap being the ultimate disguise in the Metalocalypse universe. Leave it to Knubbler to turn a tracksuit outfit into a capital L Look. I like that his baseball cap has a blue star on it like the pink shirt from the "Disco" Outfit, and that the suit itself is lavender like the "Court" Outfit. 8/10

"Clergy" Outfit. Appears in Army of the Doomstar Another boring outfit compared to what he wears for most of the series. I wonder why they picked green for the color. Because that was the color of his robot pupils for most of the series? Because it's the same color as the nuclear seahorse from Dethwater? Because it makes him look more like Yoda? I'll give bonus points to this outfit since he was probably free-balling under that thing. Or should I take away points for that? Honestly my least favorite part of these robes is that Dick didn't get to die in a zazzier outfit. Hopefully in the Metalocalypse universe, ghosts can pick what outfit they wear when they haunt the shit out of the band. 6/10 And that's that! Please tell me how wrong my ratings are and where you would rate them instead. I need fashion lessons!

[aemiron-main]

Henry Is 7 vs 007

So, @bobokahn just pointed out to me in this reblog of my post that the kid behind Henward/001 in that shot is the same scared boy from one of the “good morning” NINA scenes:

But yknow who else that kid is?

He’s 007.

Which, now I’m staring at what I talked about re: that kid (007) being behind Henward during the chess scene vs Henward being subtitled as boy even MORE- because of the really specific wording during TFS.

So, in TFS, when we see a flashback to Henry’s 7th birthday/footage of his birthday, there’s a title card/label that we see right before that- and it says “Henry is 7”:

Which immediately caught my eye & has been driving me insane ever since because of the specific wording of “Henry Is 7” rather than “Henry is 7 years old” or “Henry’s 7th birthday” and the ensuing double meaning re: Henry somehow being Number 7/connected to Number 7 somehow.

This also reminds me of The Fly 2- because like I talked about in that post I linked, Martin Brundle is only 5 years old even though he’s an adult/he ages rapidly- and TFS Henry’s 7th birthday really reminds me of Martin Brundle’s 5th birthday:

Which, this connection to The Fly 2/Martin Brundle’s birthday party is also extra interesting because it takes place in a lab (Martin Brundle was raised in a lab)- versus the girl who looks quite a bit like Young Kali at 7 year old Henry’s birthday (she’s even got the same double braids as Young Kali, and even though her skin looks lighter in the bday vid, the bday vid a.) has much brighter lighting than the lab flashback scene and b.) it’s hard to see unless you watch the video, but there’s this bright white effect over the whole bday video that washes everyone out quite a bit)

And something about “Henry is 7” and this birthday party Henry seemingly being the same age as the Kali-looking girl that’s there and Kali being number 008….. And something about Kali being from London initially vs TFS being shown in London… and Kali’s scene with the spiders/the fact that her powers are the most similar to Henward’s powers because she has the vision/illusion abilities that other lab kids seem to lack…

Was this some sort of simulated birthday party for one of the Henries in the lab or something?? After all, we assume it’s from the early 50s in Nevada, but there’s never any definite proof of that/any date shown.

I’m insane!! What is going on?? Because clearly, that dark haired little 7 year old TFS Henry boy is not the same kid as 007, but the connection is THERE for some odd reason.

And something about all of this vs the shadow being referred to as “it” in TFS vs that S1 “it was a seven” scene- a seven? As in more than one version of 007 maybe? As in some sort of connection between 007 and the shadow/whatever’s tormenting TFS Henry?

What the hell is going on???

[averageartistamber]

Corn Godzilla Corn Godzilla.

And here comes Red King with the steel chair! This meathead probably doesn’t even need a reason to beef with Ultraman. He’s just Like This. Maybe he’s got a kid now (I think there is an actual episode plot with Red King having a child, but it ends tragically. NOTE-It’s in Z, and I’ve watched it.), it’d be funny if the kid (we’ll call her Junior) was the polar opposite, maybe a typical meek nerd? But worry not, Dad is gonna show her how to be a real monster by beating up Ultraman! Also he’s hiding that dweeb Pigmon somewhere!

Red King still isn’t gonna be red, it’s series tradition by now. He’s already a tiny-headed behemoth, but maybe I could try giving him a more muscular physique (which is gonna exaggerate his pinhead-ness even further.). There’s this one specific iteration, EX forms I think they’re called? From Fighting Evolution I think. Where he’s got these big arms. I kinda like it, since it gives him a more distinct silhouette (could also facilitate crawling or gorilla-like knuckle walking. This dude running at you would be scary as fuk). His current day design has some new scars, maybe including a pretty severe one he got from the fight with Stellar. (Insert “Man literally too angry to die” joke here).

Red King’s episode is probably very close to his original debut, with him stomping around Tatara Island like he owns the place (Note-He does, in fact, own the place). So, every now and then the Pigmons are supposed to perform a spell that seals him away again. However, the current Pigmon is inexperienced and has noticed that the time period that Red Kind stays down for is getting shorter and shorter. Seeking a different solution, he summoned Ultraman to put a permanent stop to the Skull King’s…Skulking. It involved shunting him even further underground. Didn’t work, but it was worth a try, right?

In the Pigmon language, the words for “red” and “skull” are homophones, making the in-universe oddity of Red King’s commonly referred name being a result of a Good Bad Translation that stuck.

He’s almost like a jerk jock version of Scar from Lion King, having dug himself back up to the surface to “rule” the island almost form the shadows again. He’s mellowed out a teeny bit since then though, having come across a mate in the interim. I like the idea of Chandlar and Guigass being his put-upon and hapless “minions” (The former maybe even having some Starscream like tendencies.)

Naturally his wife/mate is even bigger and scarier than he is. She also might be in possession of some braincells.

Yeah, a lot of the notes are rough ideas, once I get to the actual video these pieces are for I'll probably explain things more clearly and refine the "lore", as it were.

Junior is probably gonna get her own concept art. Dunno if I went a bit overboard with the extra characters in this one. Red King's one of them where a lot of his characterisation is shown through how he plays off everyone else, I think.

[mousyjay]

A Date with Death

This is a game I found on TikTok through the developer of the game. I was very intrigued because it has a fully customizable MC both physically and with names and pronouns which I thought was really cool. You can also customize MCs room, and the game is free to play! There were also some other fun aspects about the game they posted on TikTok that really interested me. Of course I originally saw videos about the game months ago before it came out, but luckily I did see the post from the developer when it came out a few days ago and I couldn’t wait to play.

About the Boy

In this game you romance a grim reaper who’s after you (technically your soul, but still). And although he is smart, confident, and a literal vessel for death, he is also absolutely adorable! He’s not very knowledgeable about humans, can be easily flustered, and is super fun to tease!

Truly such a cutie!

So he’s a classic long while hair, red eyes anime boy and we love to see it. It’s not my ideal type, but he is in fact adorable, and has a great outfit so I can’t complain. I love how many facial expressions they give him, often I feel like visual novels don’t change them enough so it was really refreshing to see.

I really liked his character! He really is babygirl.

First Run

My first try I went in and tried to only do the non-DLC responses (I bought the DLC so I had some extra options) since I wanted to see what the free versions were like. It was soooo fun!!! I was kicking my feet and giggling so much! I got Ending 3 my first time for reference. I don’t want to spoil too much, but oml it’s such a fun and cute game! You should definitely check it out especially because it is free, so what is there to loose!

Definitely super fun if you enjoy sarcasm, witty banter, teasing, and being a bit of a brat. I loved it so much! It took me about 4 hours to play it once through.

Second Run

This time I used the DLC choices, and it was super fun. It just adds more fun ways to tease him in addition to an extra ending which I got (Ending 4).

Very fun! I recommend getting it if you can afford it and want to support the developers! But also I think you can have a lot of fun just playing the free endings too.

Third Run

I originally planned on playing for a third time after posting my thoughts on here, but I was so excited that I caved and played again immediately because after looking at the achievements I realized my first time playing I was right between two endings, so I had to get Ending 5. So I played using my first run answers, changed a one on day 6 and got Ending 5! It was so cute! I love this game!!!

Overall Thoughts

I loved this game. It’s pretty fast for a dating sim/visual novel, but the pacing is really good. It has 17 achievements for you to unlock, and 5 possible endings(?). So far I’ve done 3 endings, and 14 achievements. I definitely would play it again sometime! The only endings I didn’t do are the mini bad ending (no CG), and the real bad end (CG), because I don’t like playing bad endings. These two ending would give you another two achievements, and the last achievement is also easy to get but it made me sad so I didn’t. I know I’m being pretty vague, because I like to avoid spoilers, but especially because this game literally came out like 4 days ago I really want to keep what happens a surprise.

But it was so fun. It really feels like your choices matter because things you say affect things you can or can’t say later, it’s way more dynamic than any other otome game. I really loved that about the game, because it really feels like you’re there and what you say and do matter.

It’s literally free to play on Steam and I really can’t recommend it enough! Especially if you like cute flustered guys and lots of flirting and teasing you will for sure love this game! I loved it so much and genuinely it made me laugh and smile so much!