#i used to play it on my dads ps4 but that thing fucking died in 2019 so i havent been able to play it since UNTIL NOW

[boxowo]

bought the switch port of no mans sky today :)

[maintitle]

Weird long rant incoming, but this is only to be expected by you following my account.

I remember when I bought a PS5 with my stim check I had a friend that was absolutely flabberghasted that I was getting a playstation console. I tried to explain to him that I hadn't had a playstation system (with the exception of a PS3 I bought in 2011 that broke nearly immediately after the warranty ended) since the PS2, and there were a ton of exclusives I'd missed out on for years I wanted.

When I mentioned these exclusives, he looked at me like I was stupid and asked 'what games?' This flabberghasted me as I'd just explained the games I wanted to play.

The core of his argument was that Game Pass offered such a wide array of games that he couldn't imagine a few solo adventures that admittedly had similar game design could pry me away from it. To some extent he was right, Game Pass is a really fantastic service, but I've never felt that it offered me such fantastic exclusives that it would keep me with an X-Box console. I never would've gotten the X-Box One if it wasn't gifted to me second hand at a time where I hadn't really been gaming for a few years. I always wanted the PS4, because the game library looked far more interesting to me. Game Pass didn't really factor into my decision.

We debated a bit about exclusives, and the argument lead to him saying he couldn't imagine going to another console when Bethesda had settled down with Microsoft. I, very honestly, said 'I really don't give a shit about Bethesda anymore', and that ended the argument.

I liked the Elder Scrolls as a kid, and I still like the lore of it. I bought Morrowind and Oblivion on the same day, and Oblivion is very special to me. I bought Skyrim at launch at midnight, and while I didn't love it like I did Oblivion, I liked it a lot. Hell, for a very short period of time I tried to write for Beyond Skyrim because I believed/believe in that project, but real life got in the way of me ever doing much. But I never bought and rebought Skyrim like others did. I had my 360 copy, and then I played the remaster on Game Pass and never beat it. I've tried to beat Morrowind for the first time a bunch of times, so that's the game I go back to more, and inevitably put down because I'm bad at it. I love Oblivion but it's the only game I've ever 100% beat so I don't have a reason to go back.

Combine that with Fallout, a series I never really had an attachment to. I liked Fallout 3, I never got into New Vegas, I tried the originals and found they weren't for me, and I've never played more than a handful of hours of Fallout 4. The reason honestly is that I'm not hooked by the worldbuilding, I find it odd and clunky and it's just not for me. My Dad actually plays the games a lot, I gave him my copies because he enjoyed them more, but even he admits that he's extremely frustrated with these games he plays over and over again because of how riddled with bugs they are.

I haven't played Starfield. I have no interest in it. Any interest I might've had in it died on the vine with a combination of Bethesda's tanking approval, the knowledge that they were STILL using that fucking engine, and them not being interested in any of the things that would excite me about a sci-fi game.

The aforementioned conversation, by the by, happened before the release of Starfield. He was shocked I didn't really care about it. He still seems kind of shocked.

I think I just don't believe in the myth of Bethesda anymore. I don't think their games are these magical properties where you can do things no other games can offer, I never did, and that whole argument has been used to hold up a company so against any sense of change and self-reflection that it actively makes every entry they put out suffer more and more. I just can't fathom caring about a studio that seems entirely uninterested in moving on from what makes them comfortable in order to save the weight of their games from it's ever-snapping support structures. Worse, I can't understand repeatedly giving your faith to a company that lies to you about it, over and over again.

Bethesda is an anomaly to me. Everything I just said has been said a thousand times, and even the companies starkest defenders agree with these points... and yet they still are one of the most successful companies in the world. I find that fact deeply difficult to accept, and find it even more frustrating to watch the Bethesda release cycle clog along like a rollercoaster that needs to be decomissioned, yet has hundreds of fans seemingly ignoring the rotting wooden foundation excitedly climbing on to experience something that could so easily be duplicated by someone else who cares just a little more about their experience.

[setsuntamew]

So, Persona 5 Royal, huh?

Full disclosure: I had gotten about halfway through November on Wednesday and finished it out Saturday night, which took uhhh about 65-70 hours? Some of that was sitting there waiting for the PS4 controller to recharge or listening to music in the Thieves Den while eating, but I still feel like I need to own up to how extremely bad I am at making good decisions with my life XD

MOVING ON, THOUGH, HOLY SHIT. P5 was a very good game, but Royal’s additions & changes made it incredible. I like the ending way more; I think it’s more emotionally fulfilling and meaningful, especially with everyone’s more defined future plans. Definitely felt like everyone had more growth in the end!! Which is something I’d always thought P5 was lacking.

Snip snip for spoilers and the fact that this post ended up being too damn long, oops! the last third is basically Akechi feels and analyzing his ending, so......yeah XD

Part of why I plowed through SO much of Royal in so little time is....Akechi XD Like okay, this is my stupid fandom blog, I can be excited about him all I want!!! I got to Sae’s Palace and just....I couldn’t put it down. @dragonofeternal​ and I ordered an embarrassing amount of takeout instead of cooking because we just had to see how everything with Maruki and the third semester was gonna go down. I’d already been dying along the way because Akechi’s confidant dates are so good, I just. Fuck!!!

Also, look, for the entirity of Shido’s boss fight and the depths of Mementos/Yaldabaoth/etc, we’d look at each other every few minutes and just be like AKECHI SHOULD BE HERE WITH US, HE DESERVES TO GET HIS VENGEANCE ON HIS SHITTY DAD AND FORCED DESTINY!!!!!

December 24th had to be the longest god damn day in Akira’s life because like. Final exam grades are posted in the morning! He goes to school and then dives into hell, crawls his way back out, briefly dies by fading from human cognition, fights an actual fucking god, and then....ends up dissociating in Shibuya until Sae shows up and is like “oh hey thanks for everything you did, please sign up for being arrested now.” And while he’s still reeling from that, Akechi walks up to take his place, like some kind of bullshit knight in shining armor schtick, and leaves no room for conversation.

AND THEN WE HAVE TO GO ON A DATE

I romanced Hifumi this time around, because I wanted Akria to bang a girl who is just so incredibly out of his league, but....it’s not necessarily that I forgot I was dating someone, more that it had been *so many hours of plot* that I was emotionally exhausted. Like, Hifumi texted me and I was just like. Right. RIGHT. It’s still Christmas Eve, somehow. I was at *school* this morning. The whole world merged with Mementos briefly in the middle of this, Akechi is somehow alive, and I guess I’m going on a date now????

I do appreciate how many “god I’m just dissociating my way through this” conversation options there were for the date, tbh. I feel bad though, I really like Hifumi, but I feel like Akira is not giving a date his full emotional attention at that specific time. It feels a bit like emotional whiplash, more so than I remember it being in P5? Maybe it’s because I played it 4 years ago and there wasn’t the added emotional weight of Akechi’s reappearance, but it was just like....a lot, in Royal.

AND THEN THE NEW YEAR HAPPENED. I’d been spoiled on large parts of the third semester, mostly because Royal’s been out for a year already and I’m too curious for my own good. I’d also somehow lied to myself, saying I didn’t have time to play another Persona game right now, and yet here I am, 171 hours of game play within exactly a month, kicking myself for not knowing how deep in Persona hell I would get XD

Which is to say, as soon as the new year started, it felt I was drowning in anxiety. I knew something was wrong, I knew they were in a false reality, but knowing that sure as fuck didn’t make it easier to go through. If anything, it was somehow worse, knowing that it was all gonna come crumbling down, but I didn’t yet know the exact details, only the broad strokes of it. Just. Every time someone talked about something that was wrong, my heart would clench.

God, I’m so fucking tired, I pulled an all-nighter on Friday so I could get through Royal before having to work on Sunday, and I am feeling it right now. Life tips: don’t do what I do XD

Every moment with Akechi felt like borrowed time, at least for me, because I knew what was coming. I spent so much time in Mementos with him; I ended up putting just him and Akira in my party and plowing through everything, including trouncing the Reaper over and over just for the hell of it. I got his ultimate weapons, I spent so many nights in the jazz club with him that he ran out of dialogue options, and I still took him back for more. I accidentally failed to EVER trigger Sumire’s Showtime because every fight was just Akira and Akechi against the world, because fuck it, I’m playing this for fun!! If I want to play with them in stupid costumes and no one else in the party, I’m gonna. Royal did such an incredible job giving Akechi more depth and development: it was all I could hope for, and it made it that much fucking worse to know what was in store for him.

Somehow, I thought it would be harder for me to make the decision to refuse Maruki’s deal, since fuck, fuck what I wouldn’t give for Akechi to be alive???? But I barely hesitated, only really stopping because I had to emotionally brace myself for it, because a reality where he can’t carve out his own fate would be a disrespect to everything their relationship is built on.

I have a whole shit ton of feelings about post-beating Maruki but they’re basically all Akechi related meta so somehow they ended up at the end of this post, I’m sorry XD

I understand that they had to keep the going to jail bit because 1) Akechi didn’t turn himself in, Akira did and 2) it leads to the final events of the game, but let me just say....the emotional roller coaster of fighting Maruki, almost failing multiple times, waking up in jail, the Phantom Thieves & friends getting Akira out of jail, celebrating that, and then getting thrown into Valentines Day was a LOT for my heart to take. Once again, didn’t forget I had a girlfriend, just got too invested in the plot to really be thinking about her. It’s less than two weeks after the fight with Maruki and somehow, everything is supposed to be okay????

The scene with everyone talking about their future plans is such good character growth, though. Everyone feels like they’ve truly grown and are making decisions that, even though they might be painful or hard at times, are ultimately very important to them. It’s a really good contrast to the “almost everyone goes to Shujin and they all stay in Tokyo forever without doing anything for themselves” Maruki’s perfect reality bad end.

Standing in the Underground Mall on White Day, being told I had to get flowers but finally being able to have control of Akira again was....so bittersweet. The fact that the location of the date is the aquarium is a low fucking blow, and I almost threw the controller across the room I was so upset. Like. THE AQUARIUM IS UNLOCKED BECAUSE AKECHI HAS TICKETS HOW FUCKING DARE SOJIRO SUGGEST IT LIKE MY HEART ISN’T STILL ACHING????? God, speaking of that: The fucking god damn Featherman video game tore my heart out because I ended up playing it WHILE WORKING ON SHIDO’S PALACE and I cried a ton about Gray Pigeon because of course they had to dig the emotional knife in even deeper!! Just fuck me up, it’s fine, I’m just dying!!!!!!!!!!!!

I ended up scrolling through his texts to find the group chats that still had Akechi in them, and fuck, it was a LOT. Like. Maybe it’s because I’m too invested in the two of them, but it was probably the worst emotional whiplash of the whole game. Like, how am I supposed to go play happy with anyone while staring at texts from a reality built of lies? It wasn’t real but the proof lives on in his phone and his heart, and I’m still fucked up over it.

HOWEVER. FUCKING. I SPENT LIKE HALF AN HOUR BEING EMOTIONALLY COMPROMISED ABOUT ALL THIS AND THEN DISCOVERED THE BASTARD STILL HAD ALL HIS EQUIPMENT, INCLUDING THE ULTIMATE MALE ARMOR!!! He returned his shit after Sae’s Palace even though he thought Akira was dead, but this time it didn’t get fucking returned to my inventory, so he must have fucking run off with all his shit!!!!!!! Why the hell did none of it get returned if he was never alive in the true reality? Like I know it'll be returned for a new game+ but I like to nitpick game mechanics for story reasons, because one of the things I love most about video games is the experience of them as another layer to the story. The texts from the third semester shouldn’t exist anymore, since they never really existed, but there they are. Akechi insisted that he has a gap in his memory after Shido’s Palace up until seeing Akira on Christmas Eve, but who can say that wasn’t related to Maruki tampering with reality or some other Persona-related reason?

I mean. I got the full and complete True Ending; I saw him in the train station. If that’s not Akechi, then who the fuck is it? Atlus made sure to put the work in to make him a part of not just the main story but also, especially, the third semester, and for what....to have his final time on screen be as the butt of the joke, squished underneath everyone in the Mona-copter? As much as it hurts, his end in Shido’s Palace matters; it fits his character and he gets to go out fighting- carving his own path, really. In Royal, barring the tiny glimpse of someone who’s probably him in the train station, the last we see of him is when he watches Joker let go of the rope to finish off Maruki. I know we got the heart to heart where Akira agrees to reject Maruki’s deal and Akechi insists that he’d rather be dead than live in a false reality, but.....no one even says goodbye to him. It’s tragic, it’s painfully lonely, but it doesn’t feel right for such a major character.

Also, as undignified as it is, for the first time ever, Akechi looks like he actually belongs in the Phantom Thieves in that final moment. He’s never been the butt of their jokes before; they always kept him at arms’ reach and he took himself too seriously to be included, but for that brief moment, it really felt like he was part of their group. He stopped lying about himself for their last month together, and so even if they don’t all like him, they can make that decision based on the truth, instead of layers of lies. His death is all the more tragic for this; a life cut short just when he’s finally finding a place he belongs. But his death was already painful; why make it so, so much worse?

Final thing: I’m gonna be spending a ton of time in the Thieves Den trying to find Akechi’s opinions on everything, but also....hey. HEY. What do those six stars that Jose (probably?) painted on the wall mean? Is it just a reference to Persona 6???? LIKE????? I HAVE QUESTIONS. SO, SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!!

Anyway, I’ve gotta go cry into my Starbucks and desperately try to focus on actually doing my job at work, but I loved Royal deeply and cannot wait to drown in it ;w;

[riseofnightwing]

Me and U

pairing: D. Grayson x Reader

warnings: none

The day woke up with a grey sky, it wasn’t only about the rain but i could feel something was coming. Dick was a ghost these days, he couldn’t think about anything but what happened to Jerichó, because he says that he is blamed.

Ever since Slade’s back, Dick couldn’t have a decent night of sleep. Days and nights working about deathstroke and planning over and over how to finally beat him for once. He didn’t have peace because it wouldn’t be out of his mind until he did what he had to do. To say the truth.

The truth that only me and him knew, and because of it, i was the only one who could see his nightmares in his sleeps, the sweating and almost-crying man waking up scared by my side. Dick is the strongest person i know, and i’ve spent my life around heros. No one has his strenght.

[8:40 A.M / San Francisco, Titans Tower]

When i woke up, Dick was no more by my side.He left me a note saying he’d be back soon. That’s fine, let’s rise and shine then.

I took my coffee in the kitchen, with Hank and Gar playing in their PS4, these guys are really nerd. And i laugh to myself. I couldn’t imagine what was about to come. The day wouldn’t be that calm, and that..I could tell. My powers isn’t exactly to see the future, but my intuitions? they’re never wrong.

[2 P.M / San Francisco, Titans Tower]

I took my bath and left mine and Dick’s bedroom, in my way to the living room I could hear some noise coming from there, so i went there.

“Don’t fucking walk away from me, Jason” Rachel comes yelling, and Jason following to the door.”

“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” I ask, pretty worried to be true because they fight everyday, but not like this.

“Jason did put crucifixes in my mirror, Y/N”  Rachel answers me

“Jason, it’s okay to be mad..” Dawn says

“I don’t know what happened but it wasn’t me” Jason says like he was about to cry.

“Jaybird, that’s fine, come here, i believe you..” I try to calm him down because he’s like my little brother and dick cares a lot about that kid, I can’t even finish my phrase because Dick appears in the elevator.

“Love” he says

“Hey, baby, are you okay?” I ask him, looking at the gun at his hand. He kiss me and then tell us “He’s here. Deathstroke is here in the tower. He took photos of us. Asleep.”

“Dick, talk to me. What’s up with the gun?” Hank ask him.

Dick’s acting strange. He’s tired, looking worried. He realize someone is missing.

“Jason” He says and run to the rooftop.

“I didn’t understand what just happened here, can anyone tell me?” Gar, who had just woke up.

“Long drama, Gar, but something is going on.” I tell him

After like 15 minutes, Dick and Jason come back from the rooftop.

“I lied.” Dick says. “I lied to you guys because i was afraid you’d leave in the first place. And leave me. And if that happen, titans would be done.”

We were all listening carefully to him. He was saying the truth. At least, what he believed it was the truth, what was killing him inside. I was right behind him, sitting down in a chair. Waiting for their reaction.

“He died trying to save me from his Dad.” He says about what happened to Jericho in the Church. “I’m sorry, you all deserve more.”

Hank gets up from the seat he was and it seems like he is going to hug Dick. I breath in releaf. but when we less expect, Hank punch Dick in the face. “You lying sack of shit.” Dawn holds him.

“WHAT THE FUCK HANK!” i yell but in disbleaf to what just happened. Dick had blood going through his nose. He held my shoulders so he could have some support. I sat him down in the couch.

“How dare you? How the fuck dare you?” I say to Hank

“You knew?” He aks “All this time, you knew? And you could forgive him?”

“Forgive from what? from a plan that we all did together? That we did to make justice to Garth?” I say, directly to the old titans. “Or you can’t remember, Dawn, when you asked him to be Batman?” She looks down.

Dick was cleaning the blood in his face.

“How you dare to treat someone like this when he’s telling you the truth? I’m sorry but this is not a court where you are all the victims and Dick is the bad guy. He does not deserve to be put in this place. He went until the end to make justice for Garth, he never meant to hurt Jerichó, you all know it already. Dick had it on his shoulders since the first day you all were gone and only both of us were still here.You didn’t see him non-sleep for days, and when he could finally sleep, he’d heave bad dreams about it. I won’t let you all break his mind again if you won’t help him to take the pieces.” I finish with no more energy to keep doing that.

Everyone was in silence, Dick told them we were going to our bedroom so he could clean his face and be in peace for a while.

Silence remains. Everything was going to be fine. Things would get in their way again. But now, they know Dick didn’t had all the blame on this but everyone of us did.

When we got to our bedroom. Dick has a break down “I told them the truth, Y/N, i couldn’t have done this without your support from everyday, i wouldn’t do this without you. It was too much to handle but you shared this with me.” he hugs me

“It will be me and you forever, remember?” I ask him “Never go away from each other”.  And we lay down in our bed, knowing that now, beating deathstroke for once was our main job. Leaving all the drama behind us.

“You deserve better, Dick Grayson, never let anyone make you think that you don’t” i told him.”I’ll make sure you’re alright, i’ll take care of you and everything will be fine.”

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #361

“the world is a vampire, sent to drain”

Have you ever been through a phase of thinking emo guys were hot? A phase? Hunny, they're still hot lmao. Have you ever dated someone that could play an instrument? Yeah. Juan could play guitar, and Girt played I think the tuba in band. What’s so horrible about wearing leggings like pants? I've actually never understood why people freak about this. Like so long as they're not sheer and fit you fine, why exactly is this a problem...? Weirdest picture you’ve ever taken of yourself? Oh dear. When someone claims to be suicidal, do you take them seriously? FUCK you if you don't. Honest to god, fuck you. This is NOT something you just don't even blink at. Even if it's surprising to hear from that person, you take that shit seriously and try to talk to them about it. Ever been kicked out of anywhere? Colleen's house. Ever had Skittles vodka? No, but that shit sounds good. Ever punched someone in the face? No. If you haven’t, do you want to now? Uh, I'll pass. Do you truly HATE anyone? No one I know personally, but people like rapists, pedophiles, etc., I sure as hell do hate them. Most historical/famous landmark/building you’ve been to in your country? No clue. Favorite flavor for most things? Strawberry, watermelon, or blue raspberry, depending on what the thing is. Ever taken pictures in a photobooth? Who with? Yeah: Summer, Jason, and I'm pretty sure Sara and I did? What is the closest book to you? It's a full collection of Poe's poetry that Mom got me. Are you reading it or someone else? I'm not right now. I may eventually. Milkshakes or Sundaes? Hm, I gotta go with milkshakes. Do you like watermelons more or cherries? I'm not a fan of either, but I'd definitely pick watermelons over cherries. Who was the last person you ate with? My family and I went to Ichiban (a Japanese steakhouse that we have here where they cook directly in front of you) yesterday to celebrate Nicole's graduation. Do you prefer broccoli or asparagus? Broccoli. I hate asparagus. Do you have any bug bites? No. Do you have any flowers in your room? No. Do you know anyone that owns horses? Loosely, anyway. It's a family I took pictures for, and I still have the mother on Facebook. When you were little, did you ever go to feed the ducks? Yes, I LOVED doing that. Don't feed ducks bread, by the way. Have you seen any of the seven wonders of the world in person? No. Have you ever won anything out of one of those crane machines? Yeah. Can you remember being taught how to ride a bike? Was it hard for you? Yeah. I don't THINK it was too hard. Did you get carded the last time you ordered an alcoholic drink? No. Do you know anyone who uses medical marijuana? No, it's not legal here. Do you know anyone who’s died in childbirth? No. Which was the worst phase in your life? 2016 was. Towards the end of '15 was the breakup, and through aaaaaaall of 2016, I was just dead inside and totally useless. Every day I wanted to be dead. Can you remember your last dream? I had a nightmare some stupid kids were fucking with my snake Venus, so I was trying to protect her. Do you ever use Snapchat? No, I don't have one. What’s your favorite musical? I don't like musicals. What happened at the last party you went to? Summer prepared some little Halloween treat bags for us guests, we watched a horror movie, and everyone but me smoked some weed. Are you more comfortable sitting or lying down? I would assume everyone is more comfortable lying down... Have you ever been a fan of N*Sync? Yeah, as a kiddo. Favorite kind of cake: Red velvet, yum yum. What is your middle name? Marie. TV shows and anime you watch regularly: None. Do you want to have a big family in the future? Just a big family of pets with a spouse. What was the last thing you did that gave you a rush? Oh boy, I couldn't tell ya. Is Vegas one of your must-see places? No. Pet rat: yay or nay? YAY!! I've had many, but I don't think I'll get any more. I've just had bad luck with them, save for one that died of cancer at an old age. Would you call yourself a writer? Written any stories lately? Yeah. I haven't really written any big RP posts of the late, but I did recently write a poem. Are needles something that you’re afraid of? Okay, so this is super weird. Tattoos and piercings? No problem. Little prick, getting blood drawn, that sorta little stuff, no problem. I am, however, NOT a fan of big needles, which used to not be an issue. It's actually kinda recent, and it's why I'm nervous about my second Covid shot coming up, aha... What was the last unexpected hug you gave/received? I really haven't had an unexpected hug since Jason asked for one before he left my house after our final talk. Who was the last person you held hands with? Either my niece or nephew. Have you ever been in a parade before? If so, was it on TV? No. Do you have a fear of rollercoasters? If so, were you ever forced to go on one? If you don’t, what is your favorite rollercoaster? I have a big fear of them, yeah. Post a picture of you from a recent time. Don't feel like it. Who was the last person to give you some of their food? Miss Tobey let me try one of her dumplings yesterday when we were at Ichiban for dinner. The last person you met, what was your first impression of them? I actually didn't quite like her. Have you ever been to a football game? Yeah, because my sister was a cheerleader. Do you like the snow or rain better? Snowwww. Have you ever faked sick? Yeah. What is your blood-type? A-. Have you ever eaten a bug? Not knowingly. The last time you were in the fridge, what were you looking for? Salsa. Mom got these veggie chips at the store and they apparently taste better with salsa, which it did. They weren't great, though. Are you listening to anything at the moment? It's Gab Smolders' turn for me to watch her Resident Evil 8 upload, haha. I'm literally watching three different people (Mark, John Wolfe, and her) play it. Can you take a bra off with one hand? I haven't tried, I think? I doubt I could, given that I'm not exactly small. Do you have an innie or an outie bellybutton? Innie. Can you crack your neck? NOOOOO AND DO NOT DO IT AROUND ME YOURSELF. Are you donating your organs? Yeah; what am I gonna use 'em for? It just seems like a waste otherwise. They're just gonna decay. When was the last time you talked to you mom? Before she left with Tobey to go to the store. Do you like pumpkin pie? NO. I don't like pie, and I hate pumpkin. Do you own your own computer? Yeah. Did you ever have to share a room with one of your siblings? Yeah; growing up, my little sister and I did. Is there any piece of technology you want to buy? I REALLY want a PS4. Did you ever have a night light when you were a kid? Yeah. What TV show had you hooked from the very first episode? Meerkat Manor, 100%. I had to know that Shakespeare was okay. What is your least favorite Sour Patch Kids color? Orange or red, can't pick. Have you ever seen the movie Matilda? YES! I love that movie. What is the weirdest chant you have ever heard? Uh, idk. How are you feeling? Annoyed and hurt as fuck because shit Miss Tobey says without thinking for a single goddamn second. I'm honestly beyond sick of this woman. Do you know anyone with a unibrow? I don't think so. Doughy or saucy pizza? Doughy. Do you have anything that’s limited edition? Yeah. Do you have an air freshener in your bathroom? If so, what scent? I... think we do? If so though, I just don't notice it. The bathroom doesn't smell like anything in particular. Do you like Jalapeno Cheetos? Oh man, I forgot about those! Love 'em. Are you a fan of salads? Yeah, they're fine. I have to be in the mood for one, though. What’s one random thing that you don’t like? Uhhh carrots. What’s one random thing that you like? Shrimp. Do you like chicken noodle soup? I don't. Is it easy for you to accept loss? NOPE. I'm the absolute worst with it. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go? I really wanna see Sara, so take me to Illinois. Do you know anyone with the same birthday as you? No, but a former best friend had her birthday the day before mine. Is there someone you just can’t imagine your life without? Not anymore, honestly. After Jason, I stopped that "I can't live without you" mindset. Truth is I'm going to lose people through life, and I'm not attaching my ability to happily exist to anyone. Are you wearing a ring? Two. Have your friends ever stopped by your house just to say hi? In the past, yeah. Do you like Chinese food? Not really. I only ever get pork fried rice and eggrolls from Chinese restaurants. Have you done any shopping for something in specific recently? No. Do you still live in your hometown? No. What was the reason behind the last time you stayed up all night? I don't recall, honestly. I haven't done that in a very long time. Have you ever had a UFO sighting or a sighting of strange lights in the sky? A very strange light, yes. Have you ever seen your mom or dad drunk? Yes to both. Seeing Mom drunk is very, very rare though. My dad was an alcoholic when I was growing up, so I saw him drunk plenty. Do your parents vote? Mom does, idk about Dad. Who’s the most romantic person you ever went out with? Jason. What restaurant has the best fries? Nowhere has anything on Bojangle's, y'all. Have you ever had a surprise party thrown for you? No.

[like-twilight]

The Last of Us 2 thoughts eyyy longgg and spoilers

This is my opinion before hearing anybody else’s opinion about it.

I only want to discuss the story as it is the only thing I can really speak of since I didn’t play it for myself. All I can say is I wish I could’ve and I’ll always regret not being able to because I really wish that could’ve been my experience as it was with the first game that I could play myself. It’s also probably noteworthy that the first game was the first video game I’ve played in my life so I’m probably biased.

So I’ll go all over the place because why not.

The false advertisement is extremely scummy and I don’t really know what to do with it, I blame it all on the No Spoilers Culture we currently have going. I don’t think anybody would’ve watched any of the promotional stuff a better marketing team could’ve put together and said “ah you can’t see old Joel in action, I bet he dies early in the game, I won’t fucking play this”. There was plenty of buzz around the game and there was no reason whatsoever to falsely market it. That part’s bullshit and I condemn the company for this.

From the story side though, Joel dying was honestly not that huge of a surprise or shock to me. TLOU is a game that has you watch a kid die in the first section of it then does more than enough to establish itself as a game without taboos. Now whether that’s something you like or not is not important, what cannot be said about the game is that it didn’t establish itself as a game that would do this.

I also think arguments like “Joel wouldn’t go out like a bitch” are silly. The beginning told me Joel, the badass and smart survivor he is, was very quick to adjust back to a small town life with a now pretty much surrogate daughter. I’m not saying that excuses the unceremonious death but to me Joel is not a gun-blazing badass hero, not even an anti-hero. He’s just a dude. He got overpowered and then he died.

See this is where the game could never win. If you leave Joel alive and he’s in the story then it’s just a repetition of the first game. If you leave him alive but he’s not in the game much then you underutilise him and people miss him. Also if you leave him alive then people will just say you’re a little bitch because it’s fanservice that Joel is technically invincible because he’s the face of the game. But if he dies, people riot. The creators couldn’t win either way and so I’m glad they made up their mind and stuck to it. It’s also very useful to get people talking.

Before I tie that into the rest of the story, I also have to mention that one of the few things I heard about the game was the expression “torture porn” and maybe I’m just desansitised but I didn’t feel like it was that overwhelming or unjustified. I didn’t watch too much of the promotional material but I saw what I think was the gameplay reveal where the devs said in this game enemies would call each other by name when you kill someone or they find someone dead. And I think that’s a neat detail but I think it also has a lot to do with what the game is... about.

That the hundreds of faceless people you slaughter during the game all have a video game or more worth of story behind them. They are people with their own twenty plus years of survival in a world gone to hell whose story ends the way Joel’s did. By meeting a person who just... wins the fight over them.

So that the deaths are really personal and intimate in that way feels justified. You also have this crazy technology that allows them to animate people very realistically. This is the last big game for the PS4 and they really just brought the technology to its limits, I feel. For them to then say “oh a sledgehammer to the face doesn’t look that bad” or “we just won’t add more types of weapons and have one type of death animation just cause we don’t want to overdo it” is just. It’s not gonna happen.

I never felt like those were glorified, I think they all added to that feeling that bubbled to the surface towards the end of Ellie’s first stretch of the story where I just couldn’t stop shaking my head, going Ellie... Ellie, what are you doing, look at yourself... look at what you’re doing. So to me that wasn’t really an issue.

I can imagine some people, maybe even most people would play the first stretch of the game in revenge mode. You know, let’s get this bitch. But in the same time, I also couldn’t really deny that Abby was like... kinda right to want revenge. I’m not saying I’m glad she killed Joel I’m just saying she had a reason to. (On that sidenote, Abby being that surgeon’s daughter did nothing to enhance this feeling. I could’ve imagined Abby in a settlement much like Jacksonville where they’re all hopeful because they found a surgeon who’s leading research about the cordyceps, maybe he’s a super good leader, inspires the Fireflies to keep up their spirits, all that. Maybe Abby’s group could’ve been his super close-knit group of soldiers taking care of him and running errands for him, even then the rage would’ve been justified.

I get they wanted to draw the parallel between Joel-Ellie, surgeon-Abby, dad-daughter relationships but that added nothing to the story for me. It didn’t take anything away either, I just kinda rolled my eyes like okay, whatever.)

So when Ellie was on her revenge quest, I liked that she and Dina were in Tommy’s footsteps, I thought that was a nice touch and kinda foreshadowed another section of the story where we would meet up with Tommy eventually. 

Now, Dina and Jesse, I found nothing wrong with Dina or her being pregnant (except that it reminded me of Aniara and I hate that movie with my whole being). I thought it was a good enough source of conflict and I really liked Jesse being around. When he shows up and they’re just saying they’ll get Tommy and then get the fuck outta there you can already tell Ellie is obsessed but you’re still holding out hope that Dina will be enough to get her mind off of it but she’s just too far gone.

So the shift to Abby and the scars.

Jacksepticeye said it while he was playing that Abby’s part should’ve been like a DLC or something but I honestly don’t agree. I mean I don’t disagree but I think it worked the way it was. I definitely think most problems people have with this switch that doesn’t stem from the fact that people disliked Abby or that they can’t admit to themselves that they were caught off guard by the changed narrative style, could’ve been solved with different pacing. Now I don’t know if they would’ve had to constantly switch between Ellie and Abby for it to work or figure some other way out because I’m no expert but still. 

I liked the beginning when it switched to Abby, the whole atmosphere was so eerie like you could tell they were on a collision course and it was going to get ugly. Maybe something like that could’ve worked but it could’ve just been either too suspenseful and tense the whole way through that it draws the attention from the gameplay or it would’ve been even more on the nose than it already was with the parallels between Abby’s group and Ellie’s group.

Now I honestly really liked that Abby’s story was so different because when she returns to the stadium, the part of her story that involved Joel is over. She got her revenge then she goes on with her life. She had a life before Joel entered it, she has one after she killed him. And it just so happens to be a good opportunity for the game to showcase some of the shit that goes on outside of what we’ve known so far and what Ellie knows.

I didn’t mind the religious aspect, I think it makes sense, like enough time passed since the apocalypse that the then grown up generation is distant enough from their old lives, and the generations after them are growing up in the ruins of the old society, that a messiah figure like that lady could emerge. That it just had to be transphobic and shit sucks of course and I do understand the frustration with it. I can imagine better writers coming up with a way to make the Scars despicable without them having our current society’s problems. They could still have the trans and the Asian characters still of course, but without them having to face the struggles trans characters do in our current world.

So that Abby only realises Ellie’s just one step behind her when she still has the climax of her individual story to get through was just. To me it worked so well. Like here we play as Ellie for half the game, this girl is consumed with rage and then Abby’s just fucking off and doing something entirely different because that’s... how little... it affected her. Or at least she personally got her closure and is ready to move on.

I personally liked the conflicts she had in her group, it was believable, it felt reasonable for the kind of life they lived. Of course we already spent one full game with Ellie so Abby was never going to catch up, but if you’re thinking like me then by less than half of Abby’s story you already don’t want Ellie to kill her.

The confrontation in the theatre was messy but since it’s not the end of the story I sort of don’t mind. I know some people don’t like how Jesse died or how little time we have to process certain deaths and story beats and of course it can just be bad pacing but that was again something that to me just brought the player’s world on the same level as an NPC’s world. That for one enhanced the experience for me.

Okay. Let’s talk about the last part that starts with Dina almost dying at Abby’s hands, especially after she says “good” when Ellie tells her she’s pregnant. Of course there’s the callback to dead Mel. But I liked that Lev was there and his presence sort of switched Abby’s role. Up to that point Abby had been Ellie. But then when she has Lev, and she acknowledges him as “her people”, she becomes Joel. And then she becomes a better version of him. Or at least a version of Joel that has mercy.

And you’d think being this close to losing Dina is where Ellie would snap back to it. And she does, for a while.

Here’s when I admit the pacing definitely needed some work regardless of anything. Up until that point we go through three days, albeit twice, but three days. Then suddenly we’re nine plus months later and the setting is different and we don’t get enough time here before Tommy shows up with the end of the story...rope... we got cut in half in the theatre.

I’ll take some time here to genuinely express my what the fuck at Tommy here.

My memory is a little fuzzy here but wasn’t Tommy on board with returning to Jacksonville when they return to the theatre? I actually just checked, Tommy says “they got what they deserved” to which Ellie says “but she (Abby) gets to live” and Tommy says “yeah”. And then when he visits Ellie and Dina suddenly he’s a dick about it saying Ellie made a promise? Is that something that was supposed to happen off-screen or a plot hole? Did that conversation in the theatre have more versions they went through and the wrong reaction got included? Maybe I just didn’t pay enough attention but it felt out of the blue for me and I can safely say that’s the character moment I’m disappointed in the most, especially because we never see Tommy again.

One could argue that the choppiness of time is supposed to symbolise the dissociation and out-of-body experience you can have when you’re living with trauma but I truly just have it down to bad pacing here. I get that they wanted to show the baby but I truly believe with enough polishing they could’ve come up with a scenario that works better and flows better.

I truly could’ve had Ellie maybe leave with Dina and Tommy and then have her turn back before they leave Seattle and then they have the conversation with Dina and then Ellie starts tracking Abby. Here we could’ve had more of what was in the beginning of the story, sort of switching between the two, maybe slightly altered gameplay, etc. Even though the last level as Ellie was really cool and once again I liked how we just barely got a glimpse of how other people live, you know. Those prisoners in those cells have a hell of a 25 years behind them and being freed by this stranger might be the best thing that will have ever happened to them, but to Ellie they’re just a background noise to her mission.

I truly liked those parts.

I could imagine Ellie being kidnapped similarly to Abby but they are treated differently and somehow still end up escaping together, maybe even helping each other the way Ellie almost did with cutting Abby down and letting her get Lev to the boat. And then you’d have Ellie still be consumed by her rage.

The whole time I wanted her so much to just scream everything at Abby. Because look, life for these people is a whole ass trauma. Some people like Dina might handle it differently, or it’s easier with a community around you, but Ellie’s life has been very strange, with her immunity, with the realisation that Joel killed and lied for her, all that. She would need a fucking good therapist. I wanted that catharsis, for her to scream at Abby, to sob until she can’t even breathe, for Abby to do the same, except she realises she got her closure while Ellie never did, and then maybe for Abby to give some sort of... forgiveness to Ellie. For her life not having meant anything in the end.

I don’t know, I wanted that for her.

If there never is a last fight, if Ellie never so much as punches Abby, that would’ve been fine for me.

Two more things that I liked were that Ellie actually started down a path of forgiveness before Joel died. You know, when we see the scene where Ellie tells Joel off you’re like “oh that’s the last thing she said to him, no wonder she feels so guilty” and then you realise, oh no wait, they were actually eventually going to be alright. They just never got the time. To me that hit so much, that was a good scene.

The other thing I liked is Dina leaving. Once again this could’ve been something like, Ellie goes back to Jacksonville and there they tell her Dina left or sum shit idk how that could’ve worked, I’m just saying that losing that farm life didn’t really make me feel anything because we didn’t get the time to grow attached to it.

So Dina leaves, and suddenly you’re back in the room with Sam in the first game when this bitten boy asks Ellie what she’s most afraid of, and she says she’s scared of ending up alone. And this immune girl Joel killed and lied and died for, eventually ends up alone.

So I understand that a lot of TLOU’s fanbase that belongs to a marginalised group, especially those part of the LGBT+ community would be hurt by this ending. By this interpretation. The LGBT+ community, as far as I know, at least a huge part of it, seeks to heal. We use fiction as escapism in a way people who don’t know, who can’t know our struggles will never be able to sympathise with. And as such, we as a community in a large part, have moved on from stories of pain. Not necessarily in that we turn a blind eye on it or anything, but I think it’s a mostly universally agreed thing that after so much suffering we’re ready to see ourselves, and people like us end up happy. And as such the demand from this community towards creators have shifted to not necessarily fully happy endings, but some sort of relief. And as such, this ending is cruel.

It is heartbreaking. My heart breaks for Ellie because I can practically feel the weight in my chest that she carries around when she walks away. She lost everything and she never got the closure. She never got that relief and neither did we.

Once again, if you personally have a problem with this ending and it ruined the game for you, I understand it completely. That’s your own experience with the story, and even though I feel much of the same things, I’m once again left here thinking this is the way the creators wanted to do this and that they did it like this makes sense. It makes sense for the story, the characters, it just does. If it had happened differently in a way that also makes sense, I would not think “oh this should’ve had a heartbreaking ending, this is bullshit” but I do think the ending makes sense.

Overall, I’m pretty much pleased with most everything, except fuck false advertising, fuck Tommy, and fuck uhhh, I’m pretty sure I mentioned something else too. Oh yeah, pacing. Jack actually offered a really great alternative to the beginning, where the museum scene of Ellie’s birthday should’ve been the first scene, and then you could’ve had Ellie wake up four years later at the end of the countdown. That Joel told Tommy about the hospital could’ve been implied through dialogue and interactions.

I also don’t think Joseph Anderson’s theory is hurt by this, he said personal decisions and morality aside, the Fireflies were fucking idiots and they couldn’t have come up with a cure even if they had given Ellie the chance to say yes, because of how unprofessional they’d been and how much they rushed into the surgery. Just because Abby’s dad was a good dude and a good surgeon doesn’t mean shit when you’re dealing with something you’ve not seen before, such as Ellie’s immunity. And I think knowing that wouldn’t have mattered to Ellie either to change her mind about forgiving Joel. And this is what I’ve always said. Like the Fireflies or not, believe in them or not, taking a choice like this away from Ellie because you can’t stand losing your daughter again (and that is why Joel kills the Fireflies, not because he shares Joseph’s opinion) is objectively wrong and borders on the same obsession we see consume Ellie. Joel is just as unhinged by that point as Ellie is, he’s just more... mature about it, I guess.

That could’ve been even more painful, sort of, to not have Abby be the surgeon’s daughter but just for her and her group believe in this doctor that might just be talking out of his ass so much that them avenging his death sets off this terrible cycle of vengeance. I think that could’Ve been very “gritty” and shit, that would’ve hurt because it’s even more pointless. People killing over lost hope.

So, pacing, Tommy, false advertising, bad points, everything else, yeah alright. 7/10 sounds good to me. I will play this one day >)

[skiasurveys]

494

Name: skia

Country: Canada

Age: 23

Gender(s): female

Height: 5’1

weight: 145

eye color: brown

skin color: white

Heritage: French, Swedish and Ukrainian

Relationship status: taken

Are you physically healthy? Yes and no

Are you mentally healthy? Nope

Job?: none atm

school: Rdc

Favs:

Animal: wolf

Flower: don’t have one

Movie: the lion king

TV show: this is us

Music: classic rock

Band: queen

Video Game: animal crossing

Gaming Console: ps4 or switch

Name: don’t have one

Person: jennifer

Love life:

1: Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Yeah

2: Do you love them? Of course

3: Are you still in love with an ex?no

4: How many people have you dated? Like 4

5: Do you think you’ll get married? I’m not sure

6: Have you ever been emotionally/physically abused in a relationship? -

7: Have you ever hurt your partner by accident without knowing it? Yeah I always apologize after

8: Whats important to you in a relationship? Communication and loyality

9: Do you have to see them everyday? ( or hear from them) before we lived together , yes but since we live together now he doesn’t need to text me every day cus we see each other daily but if he’s gone away then yeah lol

10: Do you think you can love someone within 2 weeks? I mean maybe but also no..

Friendship and Family:

1: How many friends do you have? Like 5

2: What type of friend are you? I’m not sure. The one who makes jokes

3: Have you ever been friends with someone for longer than 7 years? Yeah I think the longest js 13 years

4: Do you have one best friend, more or none? I have 2

5: Have you ever had a friend just stop being your friend and you never knew why? Yeah

6: Do you get along with family? Yes

7: Do you have a family member you hate? A few lol

8: Does your family accept who you are? Yeah

9: Are you an only child or have siblings? Sister

10: Do you have parents that still live together? My dad died so

School:

1:What grade are you in? Not in school

2: Are you in Middle, High, or college? ( or neither)? College technically

3: Whats your favorite class? Art

4: Do you have a fav school year? Prob grade 12 was the best lol

5: Are you a good student? I was

6: Do you think homework is good or bad? I think it’s stupid. I think kids should only do homework if they don’t finish in class. But it’s not fair to them.

7: Have you ever had a teacher who was really funny but had poor teaching skills? Yeah

8: Is your GPA high or low? Middle

9: Do you like to particpate in conversations in the class room or are you the listener? I rather listen

10: Do you take part in extra school events? (eg. Plays, sports, leadership,clubs) nah

Health

1: Do you need to lose or gain weight? Lose

2: Have you ever had the swine flu? (H1n1) yeah lmaoo

3: Do you like to go to the doctors? No I get anxious

4: Have you ever puked in school or at work? Nope I don’t think so

5: Have you ever been extremely sick where you couldnt even leave your bed? Yeah a few times I think I had covid lol

6: Do you hate puking or does it make you feel better? I hate it but it always makes me feel better after

7: Have you ever coughed up blood? No

8: Should you be eating healthier ? Yeah

9: Do you lie to your doctor? No

10: Have you ever taken too much advils? Yup

Mental Health:

1: Do you have a mental illness? I have A few

2: Do you take anti-depressants yes

3: Are you mentally stable? No lmao

4: Have you ever been misdiagnosed? No

5: Do you think you have an disorder but havent been properly diagnosed yet? Maybe

6: Is self diagnosing good or bad? Bad but I get why ppl do it bc they don’t have access

7: Should we give more money to mental health research? Yes!!

8: Do you think everyone has a chance to over come their mental disorders? Some maybe like anxiety possibly but most are jsut cus your brain is fucked

9: Would you ever not date someone if they had a severe disorder? ( Schizophrenia,BPD, mood disorders) Nope. Only wouldn’t date someone who had a mental health condition if it affected me very negatively

10: Does mental illness run in your family? Yeah

SEX

1: Virgin? No

2: what age did you lose it? 19

3: Did you take sex ed? Yeah from 4-12 grade

4: Does size matter? Sometimes....

5: Whats your favorite poistions? I like doggy or cowgirl

6: Does virginity exist? I mean I guess

7: Do you think sex is overated? Ehh no i

8: Is making love and fucking different? Yeah one is romantic other can be just for pleasure and to cum

9: Is it important for both genders to understand eachothers bodies? Yes

10: If someone was a virgin and was raped, did they lose their virginity? I mean technically yeah but I also think no I think virginity should be a consent thing

Check the box:

1.My hair color is: [x] Brown [] Black [] Blonde []Red [] Funky colors [] Auburn [] more than one color

2.Eye color: []Blue []Grey [x]Brown []Light brown []dark brown []green []amber [] I have two different colors of eyes

3.I am a : []Male [x] Female []Trans Male [] Trans Female []Gender Fluid [] I dont have a gender []Non Binary [] other

4: I am: []Fit [x] Average []Skinny []Fat

5: I love my : []Hair [x]Eyes []Smile []Teeth []Skin []everything about myself []None of these

6: I hate my: [x]Hair []eyes []smile [x]teeth []skin [] everything about myself [] I dont hate anything about myself

7: My feet are: [x]Small []Wide []Narrow []long []large []Ugly [x]Pretty

8: I have a hard time: [x]Finding something to wear []Making Friends [] making food []staying focused

9: I am: []Employed [x]Not employed []retired []I can’t work []Self employed [x]Looking for a job

10: I love: [x]the moon [c]the sun [x]the stars [x]our galaxy [x]planets

Bold what is true:

I am Funny

I am a girl

I have no hair

I have curly hair

^ I hate it

I have straight hair

I have a dog

I have a cat

I have both

I love to get drunk

I don’t drink

I love to smoke weed but i hate smoking cigarettes

I love both

I rather have one best friend than 20 friends who i am not close with

My dad died

My mom died

My parents are both dead

My parents are alive

I like to touch my bruises

I have funny teeth

I love Mcdonalds fries

Sometimes when Im alone I sing as loud as I can

even if i cant sing

I believe in God

I believe in the butterfly affect

I hate video games

I wish I was taller

I can’t understand math

I am very good at writing an essay

I never had sex before

I love Mac N Cheese

I love Disney Movies

I prefer Dreamswork over Walt Disney

I am going to College

I finished college

I wish I went to college

I hate my job

I am the boss at my job

I have a feelings for a friend but i cant tell them because it would ruin our friendship

^ I have feelings and i told them

I wish soda was healthy

I sleep with the window opened

This survey was too long

[tidesborn-archived]

Since I’ve had a few people checking on me after that particular Ask, I kinda wanna air stuff out about me and this last 12 months, and It will be put under a read more for convenience and since there’s too many things to tag in it.  TL:DR it’s been an extremely rough 2019-2020 for me, and i’m stable, and I joke about things with a very dark sense of humor cause that’s just what feels natural. 

So, it started in May of 2019. My mom was re-diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, two days before I went on my first ever vacation for myself, ya know, not with family and what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to go but I was told to go, so I did. The Vacation was a Fighting Game Tournament (Combo Breaker for those curious) and within that time, I couldn’t focus at all, I was having to constantly leave the venue to take phone calls and get updates. I had shit stolen from me cause I was so distracted, so I had to try and play in pools, with a brand new pad (Which isn’t easy) and The weekend was a complete mess that I only remember in blurs cause I drank so much throughout it. Mom started back in on treatment and what not. 

June, My aunt Judy died who I wasn’t super close with, but Fairly close, but I didn’t go to the funeral, cause I wanted to be with mom cause they already made it pretty clear that we didn’t have any for sure time. Which got me its own grief, and what not. My dad took that really hard, so there was that. 

July, My Uncle Rick (Who I was extremely close with, and who actually got me into Gaming, starting with an old Mortal Kombat Cabinet in his basement) died later, I did go to that funeral which was immensely heavy as well. After ward, I just went to a friends house since i didn’t want to be alone (And Mom at the time, was staying with someone closer to her doctors) 

Day after that funeral I get a call at 9 in the morning, to learn that my house burnt down, Electrical fire. Mom had a great number of her things out, since She was living with her friend (It had been about 2 weeks at the time.) Meanwhile, Out of Character for me, I didn’t have anything with me besides my Phone, a charger, and the clothes on my back. and a set of clothes I had accidentally left at a friends house. Typically i’d bring a laptop or PS4 with me, but, this time I didn’t, I just wanted to sleep at a friends house, and then go get my headshaved for my mom (As she was doing that, again.) 

So, in a three month span, I had lost two family members, was told I was gonna lose a third, just unsure of when, then I lost like, literally all my stuff. I recovered about 10 games that I could find, A Case for my PS4 Controller with some stickers on it. (The Only thing I still have from Combo Breaker, besides the Jigglypuff I got for my mom, which now gives me extremely bittersweet feelings) some movies, half of which don’t work. 

Mid August, me and Mom moved into the apartment which I reside in now, and she started to get worse. And I didn’t really have that much help in caring for her. My sister could come by when she could, but she had a full time job in a place that’s about 2 hours away. So I was on my own a lot. Which was its own toll because I could rarely get mom to eat, I hardly ever got to sleep anymore, or spend time with my friends, or leave the apartment. Unless mom was in the hospital, then I would feel guilty because, it takes my mom being in the hospital for me to do things with my friends. Throughout that, I drank heavily, Smoked more than I ever have, and I have 6 Scars on my hand from where I tore into it with my knife, cause I couldn’t think of anything better to do. And I feel like a fucking idiot for doing so. 

So, that was mid august with my mom progressively getting worse day by day, and when her Oncologist finally told her there was nothing left at all, My mom just gave up. She knew it, I knew it, she had no Joy, no, anything. So, Mid August to Mid March before my mom finally passed. And Due to Covid-19 she could only have one visitor at a time, and by the time that had happened, my sister was already there, and all the fighting we did just got us, nice worded, but statements of “Sorry nothing we can do” (Which I do not blame health care professionals for. I’m just, telling the story) 

So, within all of that, We can’t have a funeral, We can’t put her ashes in the Crypt she has set aside for her, we can’t get life insurance money to help with the bills since I wasn’t working since I was taking care of mom, and my sister can’t work during this cause there’s no work for her. I can’t see my friends cause of quarantine, I can’t do the things I want to. I haven’t seen any of my friends in like 3 months. So all of that is still kinda weighing on me pretty hard. And that’s just, what’s been happening with me. So like, A lot of the time if you ask ‘Am i okay” The answer is gonna be no, but I’m not gonna do anything terrible, and I do appreciate your concern, but I just kinda wanted to air this out, so anyone who didn’t know, can know and kinda, get where I’m at i guess. 

[noccalula-writes]

What are your favorite games and franchises? Top 5?

OH BOY have I got feelings on this subject. 

Please keep in mind - I’m a storyteller and a writer. I fucking /love/ a good story. I DM a DnD game and my biggest weakness is that I don’t often include enough combat because I am so much more interested in telling a story. So for me, there’s got to be an emotional investment for a game to really land. I also hyperfixate like a motherfucker so I often refuse to pick up new things purely because there’s not enough space in my head for them at the time, so I’m slow getting to things as they come out. 

So, I’m first and foremost a survival horror bitch. I cut my teeth on Parasite Eve before I played any others - my mother scrimped and saved and fought her way through Wal-mart back in like 1998 to get me the original Playstation gaming console and Tekken 2 (which was my first PS game, I played it in an arcade near her barber shop as a child - Tomb Raider 2 was my second). The old Playstation discs at that time came with demos for different games, including Metal Gear Solid, which I replayed until I could have done it in my sleep because poverty meant I wasn’t likely to get another game anytime soon. I mention this because the Parasite Eve trailer used to give me nightmares but I was super, super hooked. 

I am a huge Silent Hill fan. Huge. That is a tragedy I could write a whole ‘nother post about, because as excited as I am to finally get my hands on Death Stranding (again, poverty, so it’ll be another minute before we can get a PS4), we’ll never get another SH game again unless some major reconciliation happens with Kojima and Konami, which is unlikely (and also hard to hope for - I’m happy Kojima now has the creative freedom to go as balls to the wall as he wants). 

I am an equally huge Resident Evil fan. I’ve always maintained that my first fandom was The X Files, but my wife pointed out a few nights ago that my RE love started around the same time in the late 90′s, so now it’s a chicken and egg kind of thing. Point being, it’s either The or One Of my longest lasting fandoms/interests. RE and Silent Hill get compared to one another a lot - RE7 did nothing to help that - but they really are apples and oranges to me. Fruit, sure, but two totally different tones and experiences. 

I’ve been a huge Tomb Raider fan for forever - my first high school boyfriend was loaded and bought me Angel of Darkness to come play at his house and while it was def critically panned, I do recall enjoying it - so that’s been fun to get those games remade with updated graphics. I’ve only played the one but the others are def on The List. 

So now that I’ve talked for an hour, my Top 5 fave games ever - 

#1 - Resident Evil 3 I am beyond jazzed for this remake, and a lot of people in the 90′s complained about RE3′s lack of clear cut boss battles, but I don’t know what they’re talking about. The entire fucking game is a boss battle - Jill vs. Raccoon City, and of course, Nemesis, who used to give my mother nightmares and caused me to sleep with a leaf-stabber by my bed for years. Jill is far and away my favorite protagonist in RE; she’s got a resilience of the spirit that somehow isn’t conflated with naivety, which is uncommon in ‘nice’ female protags. She’s savvy but she’s still kind, and she’s committed as fuck to survival - not to mention, as zealotous a Chris and Jill shipper as I am, she and Carlos had hella chemistry and I’m excited to see where that goes (JD Pardo would have made a fuck of a Carlos Oliviera, btw). It was An Experience and it’s forever at my #1. 

#2 - The Last of Us 

There is no comparison for emotional weight in video games, as far as I’m concerned. SPOILERS if you don’t already know the ending (this game came out in what, 2014?) but to me one of the biggest thing in the game’s favor is that the protagonist made the wrong choice. He had an option to potentially eradicate the cordyceps fungus and maybe save the world, turn the tides back for humanity, and with the weight of the world in the balance, he chose to save Ellie instead. It was, on a global scale, the wrong choice - but it was the human choice. It was the thing that a dad who never properly grieved his dead daughter would do for the surrogate daughter he inherited by accident. As for Ellie, there is no other character quite like her in games, and she’s fucking quality LGBT representation, especially considering how little we see queer children in media. I still cry every time, we play this game twice a year like clockwork and every single time, I still cry. 

#3 - Silent Hill 3 

All of SH’s games will have a special place in my heart - and if you wanna talk shit about Downpour, I’ll meet you in the Denny’s parking lot at 11, you better square the fuck up because I will defend Murphy with fists - but 3 is the best, hands down. I felt like it did the best job of streamlining the series’ ... uhm... somewhat complicated lore into something more understandable. SPOILERS: The villains are horrific - the Missionaries strike fear into my heart every time I play, and Claudia eating a miscarried god fetus to become god herself? Fucked up on a level you rarely see. I suppose if you didn’t catch it in the last sentence - your protag Heather vomits up a fetal god late in the game. Yes, you read that right. The best thing about this game though? Heather. I could climb up my feminist soapbox and talk about Heather as a subversion to video game tropes all fucking day - she’s a nonsexualized teenage girl whose father is killed for her character development. She’s self-sufficient, tough but still vulnerable, and hard as nails in a fight. As I might have mentioned a time or six, she also voluntarily aborts a god because Fuck Your Plans, She’s Got Her Own. 

#4 - Final Fantasy X 

Listen. I don’t know how much of this is because of actually enjoying playing the game and how much of it is emotional attachment. As most of you who follow me know, my mother died when I was sixteen. When I was about fourteen, I dated a rich kid who used to bring his PS2 to our very not-rich house and play games for us to watch - the sort of neophyte version of Watching Guys Play Videogames, if you will, which is another rant for another time. He got a Gamecube specifically so I could play RE Zero and Hunter The Reckoning. He was a neckbeard but he was also desperate to keep me from ditching so he did the smart thing and plied my very poor ass with money and food. The #1 game in the watching roster, though, was FFX - and if you know anything about the game, you know how heavily spirituality features into the story. My mother, very caught up in a very Eastern Philosphy Meets Quantum Physics internal seeking about the nature of things, was hooked from the word Go. She used to sit and watch Trey play for hours - we all did, but having her join us and love it that much? Wonderful. Half my memories of this game are both of us crying - crying when Yuna dances to send the souls, crying when Yuna reveals she’s on a suicide mission, crying when she and Tidus fall in love anyway, crying when she sends her Aeons to die in the final fight, crying over ‘the fayts are waking up’, crying when the big reveal about Auron comes up, crying crying crying. My wife bought it in 2011 and I watched her play through it again and while it suffers from the same issue as all FF games - too much filler and weird battle scenarios - it was cathartic. I miss my mom. 

#5 - Resident Evil 6 

Eat my entire ass. You already knew this was coming. I will defend this game to my grave for the fact that we have complex, interesting narratives surrounding female characters who have actual personalities. Was it perfect? No. Did it take RE out of horror territory and move it more into action? Woefully, yes. Is this series deeply problematic for where it chooses to set down your mostly-white protags and have them kill their way through? Big time. Don’t gloss those facts. But it’s got emotional punch in spades and a few weird character breaks that ended up being kind of brilliant - Chris has been so resiliently relentless in his fight against bioterrorism that a major PTSD break was inevitable. Leon would of course risk life and limb to help Helena, even though she implicated herself in something terrible. The icing on the cake to me was a grown up Sherry Birkin, wide eyed and believing like hell in the fight she thought she was on the right side of and getting knocked down only to get back up. Ada’s entire side campaign was brilliant. I hate some of the control choices they made in this game - the running from the Haos scenes near the end of Chris and Piers’ campaign makes me want to eat my own fist - but so it goes with most RE games (until RE4, moving your protag was like driving a tank). Jake and Sherry are My Unsinkable Ship. There are at least six scenes across this game that never get easier to watch - when the bomb hits the city and the cut scene of the mass infections begin, I still get sick to my stomach - and that, to me, is the mark that this game struck a hell of a chord in terms of storytelling. 

This was long. 

[m-is-for-mungo]

So, I think it's time.

Personal time, scroll past if you aren't interested. I wish I could say I made any of this up.

TW: emotional, verbal, and sexual abuse, homelessness, depression, incest, dog death

Some of y'all may remember that I moved to Montana and basically kept the blog updated with my journey. Some of my mutuals know why I moved. But I'm ready to talk about it.

I moved to Pennsylvania in 2016 to live with my then fiance. I was pressured into moving much sooner than I wanted, to a place me and him had never discussed prior to his dad getting him a state job in Mansfield, Pennsylvania. I had to drop out of college, I left all my friends and family. I gave up musical theatre, and missed out on a big part that had my name on it because my fiance and his mother had been badgering me and pressuring me to move early.

So I did.

One memory that is burned into my mind is my mom standing in my grandmother's kitchen asking me one last time if I was sure I wanted to do this, and that it wasn't too late for us to just drive back home. I wish I had gone home.

But I drove alone to an apartment I had never seen before. While I was in those four walls, I was subjected to verbal abuse, emotional abuse and neglect, the deepest bout of depression I had ever had and am still recovering from, and that was just from my fiance. That doesn't include the abuse from his mother, the constant "You aren't good enough for my son," "when are you giving us grandchildren, we were your age when we had [ex-fiance]." I was 22. He was 24. We were barely making it with us two and a dog, and they expected me to get pregnant and have a grandchild for them.

This went on for a year, in person. We had been on the bad end of the relationship before I ever moved but I thought it would fix things. I threatened to leave multiple times, but how could I leave with not enough money to get home, care for my dog on the trip, fuck myself I could make it but I was worried for her. So I stayed.

I stayed even though I was being abused. Emotionally, verbally, and sexually. I overheard him every night on the PS4 talking to his friends how much of a cunt I was, if sex hurt, it wasn't his problem, how I don't do anything for him.

I cooked, I cleaned, I took care of him. I wasn't his partner, i was his second mother.

A year and some change in, I finally had it. I sat him down and I gave him his ring back and I told him I could no longer be with him. I would start working and save up money and get out, but until then, he had to work with me and be a roommate and just make the best of it.

A month later, he lost his job and began to pull unemployment. He would stay up nights on end, playing games with his friends until he would pass out where he laid, stay there for 16-20 hours, wake up, and repeat. During this time, I reached 245 pounds because I was emotionally eating and no longer cared for myself.

He and I spoke briefly about him considering moving back with his parents, as during this time, my parents sold the house in Mississippi and moved to Montana. It was no longer an easy drive for me to leave. 2 days of travel turned into 4. He said he would think about it. He left to see his parents for Christmas of 2017. On January 2nd, 2018, I got a message from him that he would be coming up on the 4th to get his stuff.

He had not involved me in any decisions.

I had $1.14 in my account.

I had no phone as he hadn't bothered to pay any bills for months.

I had no food.

My tires were going bad in my car.

And I had a sick dog.

That night, or early in the morning of the 3rd, my sweet Lily died. She had started to have seizures and I had nothing to help her. I couldn't get a hold of my ex to have him call an emergency vet. My mom couldn't get a hold of him, and she did her best for being across the country. I still hear Lily's last breath in my head. I remember the scream ripping through my chest and the absolute despair I felt.

And all he had to say to me was "I knew she was sick but I didn't do anything about it."

So I cut contact with him. I paid 4 and 5 months backed bills on a part time minimum wage job, leaving me pennies to live off of. My parents did the best they could, they paid my rent so I could still have a roof.

I went months alone. I lost 40 pounds that first month he was gone. Whether it was not eating, not eating the shitty junk food he ordered every night, or the stress, I don't know why I lost so much so fast.

And then my ex boyfriend came into the picture. I had worked with him for months at goodwill. Harmless flirting, he had a girlfriend after all. Just a joke here or there, and then we'd get back to our tasks. Until one day he came in, looking rough as hell, and only said "I don't have a girlfriend anymore."

So I reached out to him. He had been cheated on once again by the girl, and was hurting a lot more than he was showing. So I gave him a hand up. I didn't want to see him sad. And as we talked, he got deeper and deeper and he cried. I offered him a place to stay, since he had nowhere that was safe. And we started dating.

My lease would be up by the end of this month, and so we worked and worked on my place, we both quit goodwill and got much better jobs. He was able to start his much sooner than I did. Things were honestly looking up. He reconnected with his dad, who offered us a home. So slowly, we moved my stuff over there.

And then it happened.

On a Tuesday night in May, we moved the last bit of my stuff to his dad's. We had a great night, and he asked me if I regretted anything. I told him I didn't.

Wednesday morning, we had a small spat and he left. Walked back to his ex girlfriend and reconciled.

Thursday, my dad flew out and we got my affairs in order.

Friday, I no longer had a place that I could say I lived. My parents shelled over money to get a uhaul and my ex' s dad was a good man who took the day off so I could get my stuff, and I wrangled up some friends to help me pack the uhaul. Me and his dad were talking when his phone, my phone, and his step mothers phone all went off at the same time. His aunt had been keeping an eye on the situation and sent out a screenshot of his Facebook where he announced that he asked his ex to marry him.

They're step siblings.

By Sunday morning, they were married and me and my dad were in Illinois.

And the rest has been... blessedly boring since I've moved to Montana. I stayed with my parents for two months. I got my head on straight and then moved an hour away and have been providing for myself. I met some great friends, both irl and online. I've met an incredible guy, Matt, or as Oz calls him, Rangar the Red.

I'm happy. I don't feel the need to run away to Tumblr for an escape nearly as much as I did when I originally made this blog. It has finally moved into a "I'm doing this because I enjoy this community and content", not "I spend my every waking moment on Tumblr because if I stay in reality too long, it'll be the end of me."

And I know this was long, and I promise, I left a lot out, but I needed to get it out. I've talked about it here and there to friends, but it's finally become my story to tell and I'm at peace with what I have left in the past.

I appreciate every single one of y'all. For a while, this blog was my only purpose. And each and every one of y'all were my reason to get up for another day and provide what little content I had to share.

I will never be able to properly convey how much you all mean to me, but I can keep trying.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

No Comicstorian, Marvel DOESN’T need a reboot Part 2: Miles Morales isn’t the whole Marvel Universe

I continue to debunk the BS of this video about Spider-Man/Marvel needing a reboot as proven by Spidey PS4.

 This time out we handle the bulk of his points and learn that really this is all about how he feels about Miles Morales.

What is Comicstorian’s next point.

 “In Marvel’s rolling timeline they move the events of the pas forward in time and update stuff to it like how Flash Thompson was a bully like in the 1960s stories but it was now because of his Dad”

 That isn’t an update and that has nothing to do with a rolling timeline. That’s a flashback, a character reveal, a retcon, character development, whatever you want to call it.

 Claiming this is an example of how Marvel’s ‘timeline’ works is like saying that about Harry Osborn being revealed as having Daddy issues like the year after he was introduced.

 “Flash’s Daddy issues got turned into him becoming Agent Venom”

 No, Flash becoming Agent Venom was due to his history as a solider and his adoration of Spider-Man. his Daddy issues played into it kinda sorta yeah but that’s not an issue related to a rolling timeline, that’s just making use of a character’s established history.

  “Adding stuff into the Marvel timeline without removing stuff or rebooting makes it more convoluted because now everything happened even though it doesn’t make sense in the modern day’

 That isn’t how Marvel’s timeline works.

 Marvel’s timeline works off the premise everything happened and you just ignore anachronisms and/or generalize them.

 Flash Thompson being drafted into Vietnam where he met Vietnamese woman Sha Shan became Flash Thompson went into the military during college and over seas met Sha Shan.

 We don’t confirm he went to Vietnam but we do not contradict it either.

 And this has worked for *checks watch* over 55 years. Comiscstorian claims that it’s confusing and convoluted to have such a big history but...clearly it isn’t because they still make money and make a lot more money  than DC does with it’s frequent reboots.*

 Meanwhile DC has removed stuff in their history and replaced it with other stuff or rebooted it wholesale and whatever to modernize things and wound up with an even more convoluted fucked up mess than Marvel ever had because there are literally 9 different versions of Superman.

 And even specific versions of him ran into the exact same ‘problem’ Marvel had because the superman of 2002 who’d been around since 1986 would’ve still had anachronisms in his history from those 1980s stories.

 “DC have never done a true reboot outside of the Nu52”

 Yes they have. You can debate the meaning of ‘true reboot’ to an extent but if you are going to codify the Nu52 as an example of one then 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths would DEFINITELY be a true reboot.

 “Batman has never truly been rebooted”

 This is not true at all.

 Whilst it is accurate to say of all DC characters and franchises, Batman has changed the least from reboot to reboot, to say he’s not changed at all is ignorant.

 When originally conceived Bruce Wayne had no Butler or father figure. Alfred was introduced as a gag character who got in his way but morphed into a loyal butler.

 Then when Batman was rebooted in the 1980s Alfred and his history drastically altered. Now Bruce had a perennial father figure in Alfred who’d been there his whole life and helped him on his quest to becoming Batman from the outset.

 Whether Batman carried fire arms or not in his early career is also something that has altered from version to version.

 The circumstances under which he met Jason Todd have changed.

 How and when he revealed his identity to Catwoman has changed.

 Selinia’s entire backstory has been all over the place.

 Two-Face’s origin and Batman’s role within it has changed.

 The role of Jim Gordon and Batman’s relationship to him has radically changed, as he was originally not a father figure to the Dark Knight.

 There is so much more but I’ll stop here. Batman’s history is not AS fraught with contradictions as Superman’s or Wonder Woman’s but those major alterations still exist.

  “With rebooted characters (like in DC’s case) in terms of needing to understand what is currently happening in modern comics, like the Flash you only need to go back to 2011”

 Marvel still outsells DC most of the time in spite of their long continuity.

 Marvel for the longest time wrote their comics with the belief that every comic is someone’s first and should be accessible, meaning you never needed to go back at all if you didn’t want to, any issue was a jumping on point.

 I am a personal testament to this. My first Spider-Man comic was part 4 of a 4 part story wrapping up 28 months worth of incredibly convoluted plot lines. But because it was a good story in that issue and written accessibly I still loved it and became hooked.

 This mentality also gives no shits towards story integrity.

 If eventually any story is just going to be rebooted why bother emotionally investing at all?

 Why does any story matter if they can all just be changed or thrown out the window whenever for the sake of a new version.

  “Marvel tried to fix their continuity problem in 2000 when they did the Ultimate universe which allowed for fresh takes on the characters and a chance to remove the problematic elements and make them work better in this current timeline.”

 Yeah and then that universe lasted just 15 years and then died on it’s ass after hobbling along since 2008, with Ultimate Spider-Man itself becoming creatively impoverished before Miles Morales showed up.

 Also ‘removing the problematic elements’? You mean like Venom and Carnage having personalities? Because...having personalities was an idea that was dated in the 2000s?

  “The Ultimate universe needed to be shut down because things had gotten too convoluted like the main universe”

 If the Ult Universe was too convoluted to be allowed to continue why was the even more convoluted 616 universe continued and in fact selling more than it?

 It’s almost like the Ultimate Universe fell into decline not because of too much convoluted history but because the stories sucked shit and no one gave a damn because they weren’t the original characters anyway.

  “In modern continuity Steve Rogers is back to normal but he’s still HYDRA Steve Rogers, still Old man Rogers, still  so convoluted”

 That isn’t convoluted.

 That’s just a lot of stuff happening. It’d be convoluted if he was all those things at the same time, but in reality he was just one thing after the other.

 And whilst that does kinda suck because a lot of those things were trash, the idea of events occurring like that isn’t being convoluted. It’s just storytelling.

 All those things occurred within the last 10 years of Captain America meaning that had Cap been rebooted 10 years ago by Comicstorian’s logic he’d need a reboot by now.

 By his logic the Flash should be rebooted again soon because too much shit has happened.

 I’d love for this guy to like check out long running manga like One Piece or Sailor Moon which has even wackier stuff in even shorter spaces of time and all within the same continuity.

 “It’s all just a mess!!!!!!”

 Translation: Comicstorian, the guy who you would think would know and appreciate comic book history and is able to roll with it, is pissed off that things are too hard to follow.

 Like Jesus fucking Christ this loser is a weaksauce fan. MOST comic book fans know and can roll with the weird histories, even learning to love them.

 This guy’s name is literally riding against his fucking attitudes.

 “Spider-Man history is convoluted because he was married but then he sold it to the devil so now he isn’t”

 This is the most damning example of Comicstorian knowing jack shit.

 Because of all things in Marvel One More Day is the closest thing to a continuity reboot akin to DC’s.

 He is literally pointing at a continuity reboot and saying it makes things a confusing effed up mess and then tries to use that to justify us...doing more of the same???????????????????

 “its so convoluted because he keeps going back to collage”

 You mean like....real life people do?

  “Spider-Man history is so convoluted because there is a whole series of venom lethal protector”

Okay so first of all Lethal protector was a mini-series not a whole series.

 Second of all that is VENOM HISTORY not SPIDER-MAN history.

 What? EVERY SPIN OFF counts towards making a character more convoluted?

 “Miles morales in the 616 universe only works if you don’t question his origin”

 I mean that is true but whilst not strictly speaking a reboot Miles’ migration from one universe to the next is storywise more similar to the types of convoluted messes that occur when continuity reboots happen.

 Case in point Power Girl being taken from Earth 2 and incorporated into the newly rebooted post-crisis DC universe or the deal with all the Milestone comics characters.

 Miles however is UNIQUE in these problems among Marvel characters whereas it’s more similar to the deal with DC characters.

 And Comicstorian is so blind he can’t even see that.

 *Comicstorian explains Miles is already a part of PS4 Spider-Man’s universe thus avoiding the problems of him being convoluted and by extention proving Marvel needs to reboot stuff*

 Basically this whole mess of a video exists off the back of how this one video game fixed the story problems of this one character in the Marvel universe who’s situation is actually unique among Marvel characters and more comparable to DC ones.

 THAT is why Comicstorian thinks ALL OF MARVEL should be rebooted.

 “we need a linear timeline for these sueprheroes now!”

 Most of the marvel heroes alreadyhave a linear timeline and always did in the pre-internet age when marvel fans just picked up the latest issue and winged it.

  “I have a nephew and it’s so hard to just give him a comic book”

 Then maybe Comicstorian’s nephew just won’t find comic books to his taste because that’s literally how every comic book fan got indoctrinated.

 Just fucking give him ASM vol 5 #1 by Spencer and if the story is good enough for him he’s in. It’s incredibly accessible for the most part.

 “It’s so hard explaining Miles morales to my nephew”

 Yeah because Miles is UNIQUE in having that convoluted a backstory.

 “Marvel history is too convoluted for younger audience members”

 Again I jumped onboard literally at the end of the most convulted Spider-Man era of all time, I dealt with divergences from the cartoon Spider-Man I knew, I purchased info books detailing his long crazy history.

 I was fine.

 In fact those info books are still sold on the mass market so they clearly have an audience for that convoluted history.

 “We don’t want kids to be intimidated by the confusing history like we adults are”

 Kids don’t view that stuff the way adults to, they’re more accepting of shit and roll with it.

 “It’s a lot to try and get into Spider-Man”

 If only there were jumping on points peppered throughout Spider-Man’s history which are ways for you to get invested without going through everything before hand?

  “The PS4 game is the best version of Spider-Man ever!”

 Better in some respects not as great in others.

 “It’s the best version because it’s one straight path”

 Pretty sure it’s more to do with the characetrization and stuff.

[marculees]

Tag

85 questions tag thingy

Rules: When you get tagged answer the 80- something questions. After that you’re supposed to tag 25 people

Tagged by my cutiepie @kachuwritings, thank you!

What was your:

1. Last beverage: Water

2. Last phone call: On the Luas with a friend I was meeting in town

3. Last text: My kpopsistar <3 @jaexmins

4. Last song: Egyptian Pools - Jinsang

5. Last time you cried: Last night when I thought it would be a good idea to listen to emotional piano music while reading fluffy scenarios

Have you ever:

6. Dated someone twice: Nope. It ends for a reason.

7. Been cheated on: Thankfully not. It doesn’t really count as cheating but a mutual crush asked if he could date my friend (literally after we made plans to start dating the next month after our exams). I never got with him in the end and he then began dating another friend of mine while flirting with the other so...

8. Kissed anyone and regretted it: Lmao yes because it was only one person and I never enjoyed any of the kisses. Here’s tip for ppl: don’t go straight for tongue or pressure someone into it T-T

9. Lost someone special: Of course

10. Been depressed: I’ve been sad but I wouldn’t call it depression

11. Been drunk and threw up: Nope! I don’t drink >.<

List your three favourite colours:

12. Purple

13. Pink

14. Blue

In the last year have you:

15. Made a new friend: Soooo many and I’m really happy with them ^-^

16. Fallen out of love: I wasn’t ‘in love’ but I did lose feelings for a crush after he started ghosting me and being a dick for no reason lol

17. Laughed so hard that I cried: Yes XD

18. Met someone who changed you: My new friends, I suppose. They made me feel more confident and welcomed :)

19. Found out who your true friends are: Yup

20. Found out someone was talking about you: Probably but I obviously didn’t care enough to remember lol

21. Kissed anyone on your FB list: Nope

22. How many people do you know on your FB list: I don’t have that many friends on my list so I’d say like 95% of them since I don’t really add randos

Randoms:

23. Do you have any pets: A cat and a dog now too ;-; <3

24. Do you want to change your name: No, I love it! I don’t even want to change my surname if I get married tbh. Its really uncommon and no one has ever heard of it before :o

25. What did you do for your last birthday party: My mum insisted I dress up really fancy (and while I do normally do go fancy, this was like princess dress fancy) and she even put a tiara on me lmao. I thought we were just going for dinner with the four of us and then suddenly all my other relatives (including my dad’s side who are just horrible and don’t care about us!) were there to surprise me ;-; They even made me wear this fancy 18th birthday banner and because it was a buffet, I had to constantly walk down past everyone in my little prom dress and tiara lol. I kept making eye contact with this one girl in particular and we ended up making friends later in college before even realising we had seen each other before :O

26. What time did you wake up this morning: at: Around half ten?

27. What were you doing at midnight last night: Talking about ice cream and aggressively sending each other heart memes with @kikitsaaa ^-^

28. Something you can’t wait for: To adopt our little doggo <3

29. Last time you saw your mother: Like twenty minutes when I went downstairs to make myself a bowl of cereal

30. One thing you wish you could change about your life: My health so that I wouldn’t have to worry so much and could have more freedom

31. What are you listening to right now: Try Me - The Weeknd

32. Have you ever talked to a Tom: Yeah, I worked with a Tom for a group assignment. There was also one in another one of my classes and we’d have some banter together

33. What’s getting on your nerves right now: The amount of bugs and shit that keep flying right in my face anytime I open the window for fresh air

34. Most viewed webpage: Tumblr, Youtube and WordHippo (because I’m a writing nerd and that shit is amazing)

35. Nickname: Niamho, Niamhie, another one but that includes my surname so I won’t say it here...

36. Relationship status: Single and I’m kinda indifferent about it?

37. Zodiac sign: Leo

40. College: I won’t give out the name but its amazing ^-^

41. Hair colour: Blonde

42. Long or short: Medium, I guess? Like its just past my shoulders

43. Height: 161cm/5′3″

44. Do you have a crush on someone: Unless idols count, then no haha

45. What do you like about yourself: A lot actually, it just took me a while to do so. Physically, I like my lips the most? Personality, I like my hardworking nature and the passion I put into my work.

46. Tattoos: None

47. Right or left handed: Leftie!

48. First piercing: My ears but they aren’t anymore because I had to take them out for hospital scans and had such pain putting them back in that I was just like “Fuck this nope”

49. First best friend: Daniel. He was my childhood sweetheart. We don’t talk anymore and we’ve both grown up and found different people. Our mums are still friends though!

50. First sport you joined: Karate when I was 6 and did it right up until last year >.<

51. First vacation: Lanzarote

53. Eating: Well, I just finished my cereal a few minutes ago?

54. Drinking: Water

55. About to: Continue working on a song I started writing last night

57. Listening to: Somebody Else - Vérité

58. Waiting for: “a brand new day” jk jk but go listen to that bop (Kodaline need to pay me for me promoting them all the time istg) I’m actually waiting for my sister to wake up so I can ask her if we can play her ps4 together haha ^-^

Your future:

59. Want kids: No thanks!!!!

60. Get married: Yeah, I think so? I’m not in any rush to do so though.

61: Career: Would love to be an author but I doubt that will happen realistically. Probably a marketing executive. Not that its shit, but I’d just rather be doing what I love XD

Which is better:

62. Lips or eyes: I love both but I’m a sucker for puppy eyes c:

63. Hugs or kisses: Neither lmao but I’ll go with hugs since I’ve grown to tolerate them more. My hugs are like 0.4 seconds long or I just kinda stand there and be like “can we pls just stay like this for another minute k thx” T-T

64. Shorter or taller: Taller but not too tall because then I actually feel kinda scared XD

65. Older or younger: Older or maybe my age, but not younger because boys my age are immature enough as it is T-T

66. Romantic or spontaneous: Define romantic...? Because my idea of romance is like going to Build A Bear and getting ice creams ^^’

67. Nice stomach or arms: Certified arm enthusiast oops >.<

68. Loud or sensitive: I’m a mix of both so finding someone who has a healthy balance would be nice lol. Too loud and I feel overwhelmed and frustrated if I can’t get a word in, too sensitive and I’ll feel overwhelmed again because kdfljmdsb I’m not good with dealing with other’s emotions

69. Hook-up or relationship: Realtionship 1000%. Hookups are a big nonononono for me. I can’t even kiss someone if I’m not in a relationship with them tbh. Call me a prude, its just who I am ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

70. Trouble maker or hesitant: Hesitant because same bro lets just chill together

71. Kissed a stranger: Never

72. Drank hard liquor: Never

73. Lost glasses/contacts: Don’t wear them so no

74. Had sex on a first date: Noooo I’m pure >.<

75. Broken someone’s heart: Yes, but you can’t force yourself to like someone and vice versa

76. Been arrested: Nope

77. Turned someone down: Yep and then he bullied me even though I actually stopped the bullies from picking on him in the first place? XD

78. Cried when someone died: Yes

79. Fallen for a friend: Yep, that’s how most of my crushes begin

Do you believe in:

80. Yourself: Deep down, yes. I just that little bit from someone else though ^^’

81. Miracles: I’m more a fate person?

83. Heaven: I’m not religious so...

84. Santa Claus: I wish T-T

85. Kisses on first dates: I don’t do them personally but I wouldn’t judge others if they did :S

Okay, I’m not sure if I have 25 people to tag so I’m gonna go with these lovelies: @kikitsaaa @staarchild @happysmilebtr @kpopismyasethic @jungkooks-bunny @cosmicrailwaybisexual @thefroghyungwon @ltaeyonqs @jaexmins @plaisirgrief @jacksonsdeer @marcus-lee9 @oppafeels @lamptastical

[setsuntamew]

Kingdom Hearts 3 Liveblog: Part 1

As promised, all spoilers will be under a cut! My understanding of Japanese is very limited, but even with that in mind, there will be plenty of gameplay spoilers and some plot summaries. For now, all "screencaps" are taken with my phone, since I don't wanna spam my PSN friends with spoilers >< Sorry for the low quality shots!

So, for some context: I'm the one doing all the actual playing while Liz (dragonofeternal) and Pat (arahith) watch and provide commentary. I know very minimal Japanese, but the two of them know enough bits and pieces to translate the menus and get the gist of cut scenes. So while we're obv missing a lot of details, we've got a general idea of what's going on! However, this also means that I only have so many pics, because I was doing the gaming. Liz has a more detailed liveblogging experience going on over on their journal, and Pat is just dying of emotions (tho we're pretty much all doing that). 

oh my god oh my god oh my god I honestly lost my mind just over the download. I didn't plan this is advance btw; I only realized I could buy digital games on the Japanese PSN a few hours after the game released in Japan, because I have no common sense I guess lmao.

IT'S REALLY HAPPENING!!!!! AHHHHHHHHH!!!! The opening was super gorgeous which like, yeah, I knew it would be from trailers...but seeing it actually happening on my TV??? SO GOOD. It's an extended version of the trailer too; it's got more scenes in it!! Also the only thing (so far at least) that blocks sharing of screenshots/video. The stained glass beginning is done differently than previous games, with floating screens showing clips from past games as your way of choose what to value versus what to give up. It is SLICK as fuck!! And then the big fuckin shadow that you fight (because there's always one....allways) is mirrored and different and it's in a world of pure sky. It's beautiful. It's enough to make me wish I had a 4K TV and PS4 Pro, tbh.

.........uhhhh excuse me? Fuck you Nomura I wanna play the god damn fucking video game please just let me into the fun fucking part of the game!! XD Anyway, the first world was Olympus and I spent most of it figuring out the controls, aka fucking everything up because X and O are reversed in Japanese. I knew this even, from play Final Mixes 1 and 2 back in the day, and yet? Still fuckin it up hardcore XD It's so much fun to play though, which is something I'm probably gonna say a ton of times, but it's true. Since it's the first world, it is technically the "tutorial" world but it doesn't feel like one. Learning all the new play styles comes organically, and it's all very intuitive- especially considering I can only understand about 30% of the instructions they game is giving me. I love Hercules; it's my favorite Disney movie. I nearly burst into tears of joy when I got to explore Thebes because holy shit it felt like walking through my favorite Disney movie??? It felt like it was crafted with such love and care...There was a lot of thought put into KH3, and it shines for it. I wish it hadn't been such a long wait but also? It's done so well, it was worth it. Also, controlling a giant magical pirate ship is the dopest thing ever and I would like to kill basically all heartless with that now. The magical Disney rides as an attack system works even better than I had hoped :D It's my favorite new addition so far. Going to Mt. Olympus was fantastic as well!!!! The whole time, Liz, and I were making jokes about how Sora was gonna have to apologize to Hercules for breaking all of the stuff in his dad's house, and I think Pat almost had a hernia when I started breaking things in Hephaestus's forge.

Finishing up Olympus rewarded me with my boy Riku!!!! He's been my fave since KH1 and just...hello Riku :D I fucking hate demon towers but playing as Riku was slick. It definitely reminded me of Aqua in 0.2, and it reflects the growth he's had versus Sora having to start all over again.

......why are your pants so awkward lookin though??? Like that's an......interesting bulge :T Please...please wear your pants differently in the future...

Aaaaaand my other boy, Ienzo!!!! I just about screamed and jumped out of my seat in excitement; I somehow didn't expect to see him quite so early!! I'm a little disappointed that we haven't gone to Radiant Garden so far, but cell phone Ienzo is more than enough to keep me satisfied. I loved him asking Aeleus if he wanted to talk to Roxas, too, because fuck that's adorable?? Too cute. Too good. If anyone makes Ienzo cry I will fight them. FUCKING TWILIGHT TOWN IS GORGEOUS I DIED FIFTY TIMES FROM JOY (but not during the massively overpowered demon tower fight because I'm good at video games). It was so fucking good to get to go back and see it lovingly rendered in high def. I almost immediately went to find the crack in the wall, got upset that someone had apparently fixed the glaring hole in the wall, and found a back way to the forest through the sewers :D

Remy is adorable??? Like I didn't get good enough shots because I was just too into the cut scene, okay, it was cute. I was very sad that they left him behind (and pleased when apparently Scrooge decided to employ him later, because he knows what's up).

Hi sorry I have to go cry??? Forever????????? Because apparently I wasn't ready to see the Twilight Town mansion without being a big fucking baby! I just...it breaks my heart. These kids and their tragedies hurt me deeply and just. It hurts so good.

R O X A S!!!!!!!!!!!! sobs sobs please help him Sora ;w;

Pence has hacked into the mainframe :D

NOT.

Real talk though, getting to see Hayner, Pence, and Olette again was so fucking good, and watching Pence be a useful nerd was A+ for sure. And just basically everyone being like yeah Sora can't work technology please keep him away from it forever, thanks. It's good. It's good shit!!!!

Something about this shot feels very melancholy, and I while I don't think it was what the end of this cut scene was supposed to feel like, it feels a bit like foreshadowing.

Speaking of problems...I know they were talking about something serious in this scene, but Liz and I kept re-dubbing it with cracky bullshit and so now it makes me giggle. Oops!! Seriously though, it's like "Hey Ansem, maybe stop checking out teenagers? It's getting kinda creepy, even for us villains." "But they're so cute..."

I'm so sorry I'm like this.

Aaaaaaand I'm gonna cut it here, with this fantastic Xemnas face! See y'all next time with Toybox, Kingdom of Corona, and potentially Monstropolis, depending on how much time I have to write at work today :D

[tumblunni]

OH FUCK U GUYS SHOULD I BUY ALL THE KINDGOM HEARTS IN A ONCENESS???

Holy jesus i knew they did hd ps4 ports of the playstation games but they ALSO added all the final mix content that engkishspeaking fans never got during my childhood? And they ALSO remade chain of memories entireky in 3d with Very Animated Ice Dad?? And they ALSO remade BBS despite it not needing it nearly as much as the old games and thet ALSO remade friggin dream drop distance which came out on a goddamn current gen console?? Like they seriously just made a non portable version?? Now all the spinoffs are on the same console at last?? Why did you not just do this in the first place?? I mean the psp and 3ds games were basically ps2 equivelant graphics and disc space anyway...

Oh and fuckin ALLLLSOOOOO

Also the final mixes of all of those! Also a movie version of the plot of khux! And also Coded and Days, which is a really big shame cos Coded is indeed sparse enough on content to deserve it but Days was my FAVOURITE GAME and it sucks its the only one that didnt get remade! I mean its in the same spinoff category as bbs and com, its not a cheapo mess like coded. Nothing else in the series deserves to be shoved in the Coded bin, even khux at least has better plot even if the backtracking and lootbox shit makes it harder to get to it...

Anyway ALSO a random new sidestory with Aqua going thru like one dungeon or somethin?? I dunno?? Its like a glorified tech demo for kh3, its just 'hey fuckin look what we can do visually on a proper ps4 game' and wow how have i never fuckin heard of this it looks so pretty!! I mean i dont know if its even more than 5 hours or somethin but.. Pretty!! And apparantly you get unlockable costumes for her or somethin? I hope they keep that feature in kh3! Itd rock if it wasnt just the main character too, and we could dress up riku and kairi and goofy and donald and roxas and axel and every the friends :3 new secret to how they defeat xehanort: slap a bow on his damn head

ALSO ALSO

All of this is available in one big bundle pack for £90 which ALSO contains literally kh3. THIS IS HOW THEYRE HANDLING PREORDERS?? THATS SUCH A GOOD WAY TO HANDLE PREORDERS!! Get a discounted price on this new game but while youre waiting for it you get to enjoy an (also discounted) giant fuckin 300 hours memory lane compilation of every damn thing from the last 15 years in one beautiful updated package. Holy fuck its like they made this for ME SPECIFICALLY!this is the perfect way to get people back into the franchise who dropped off in The Great KH3 Wait cos they couldnt afford all the damn million portables needed to gather that Dank Lore. God fuckin hell it cost more than the price of this bundle just to play any one of those games individually on some stupid retro machine i bought exclusively for that one damn game. THAT PSP STILL ROTS IN MY KITCHEN CUPBOARD YO

So

So so so so so

Guys

Please give me permission to buy this

Or like please convince me not to waste my money if you think i'd waste my money??

I really just DONT KNOW! ive been out of the fandom for so long and my last experience was really hatting BBS and feeling horribly out of place as everyone else raved about it being the best thing ever. And i know NOTHING about what kh3 is gonna be or whether its even possible for me to get back into the fandom and like.. Care about it at all again. I just got fuckin fatigued with it and my teenage years were like me clinging on to the edge of a cliff by my fingernails begging everyone to believe me that Its Still Good, Honestly, Its Worth It while square enix is up there all LONG LIVE THE KING and they push me off. Into a stampede of PSPs. Somehow.

And then aaargh i know i literally only came back to the fandom because organization xiii fuckin eternally holds my heart in their lil grabby hands. It was indeed a good nostalgic moment remembering how i loved them! And getting a new appreciation for Vexen and being blown away by how much he should have been my favourite but i just never got to play COM as a kid and then when i played it as an adult all the way after bbs i ended up quitting before even getting to meet half the org cos this one stupid 'defeat 99 shadows jn 99 seconds' mission kicked my ass. I'M JUST NOT GOOD AT ACTION RPGS OKAY!

Aaaagh thats another Big Worry, yknow? Like asa kid i was Bad, as an adult i'm Barely Better , and as a both i never enjoyed beat em up thingies of any kind at all. And on top of that i was never big into disney, i never saw them as any sort of 'childhood magic' but just some naff cliche shit retelling public domain fairy tales in the safest way possible with a bunch of obnoxious celebrity cameos. Also lion king and snow white terrified me as a kid. Also i associated robin hood with my dead grandma. Also as a kid i couldnt appreciate good artistic ability or voiceacting, i was all about the story, yknow? And most of kh's adaptations are really rushed and barebones versions of an already shoddy story, without any of the visual splendor. ALSO i never saw any of the darker or more emotionally focused stuff like Hunchback and Beauty and the Beast until way after i quit playing kingdom hearts, oddly enough. Wtf beauty and thebeast is actually real good and looks so far beyond its time!! Wtf hunchback has my goddamn evil dad in it!! Why did i miss the only good didneys!! Why did snow white traumatize me and those didnt!!

ANYWAY the point im getting at is that im not inherantly predisposed to like.. Any of kingdom hearts's appeal at all. I didnt know half the disneys and i didnt have any hype for the others. None of my fave final fantasy games made it into it until the sequel and then never again after that. CMON I CANT JUST DEAL WITH ONE VIVI CAMEO Y'ALL! And i haaaate the genre and its an uphill struggle to play a game like that with my stupid inelegant sausage hands. So i just came for the story and then everything after the first game has been conspiring to ruin it for me, sheesh! I felt so much for that short concise self contained first episode and then i fall more and more out of love as they establish this status quo of everything being retconnable so dont bother get attatched to it. Blablabla the entire worldbuilding is different now and everyone was secretly someone else and please memorize a bunch of shit from fifty fuckin spinoffs and also time travel and cloning suddenly exist and ALSO Grandpa Onlyblackmanintheworld is generic motiveless evil and everything was him even of it looked like it was actually a sympathetic villain. *insert dio meme face*

So yeah now im just.. In it for the characters?? And the cute art style and monsters and lovely animations and big fanfic oc potentials stuff. But man even tho i had Big Feel for those things i was able to completely drop it all and forget about the series for years, that was just HOW BAD the kh3 drought was. Steven universe hiatus eat your heart out...

So ffff i dont even KNOW if i'll be able to get feels'd for these characters again or if they actually hold up to modern bunni standards of huggable. And i know all the ones i want to hug the most got like zero sympathy and all died horribly and were also retroactively revealed to be clone oldmanvirus somethingy and aaaaaagh. But also something something people say they all came back and got cured?? And this is why?? I am here?? Again?? And buying?? The thing??

Like man fuck i am already building it up so much in my head aaaa what if i dont actually love axel as much as i used to love axel and i dont love Grumply Science as much as i always love That Character Archetype seriously MAN how was he like THE ONLY ONE I DIDNT GET TO SEE AS A KID

Aaauuuuaggh gahhh like maybe this will reignite my passion for the series or maybe i'll just be all critical and dumb and waste all my moneys

Guys... What do??

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #252

my personal laptop has to be fixed, so therefore i don’t have games to play, so expect plenty of these to pass the time lmao.

Have you ever said something just to see what kind of reaction you’d get? No, not that I remember. Have you ever confronted someone about using too much chat-speak? ??? No??? Have you ever revealed someone’s secret, after promising not to tell? No. Secrets are one thing I'm very serious about respecting. What is one emotion that you experience regularly? STRESS, MOTHERFUCKER. Describe the last major change you made concerning your hairstyle? Lopped it all off, lmao. It's been like, two years now though. Who was the last person to walk out of your life, and why? It feels like my friend Alex. She's kinda just... left me hanging for months. I think she's active online, but not with me, despite reaching out. She's also deleted her b.net account or just removed me from her friends list, idk. Absolutely nothing seems like it would've prompted that, though. Are you less likely to approach people that look/dress a certain way? I was going to say no, but the last person's answer inspired mine to yes; like, I'm not going to go talk to people with some crazy or offensive shit on their shirts, nor am I going to just go walk up to someone covered in blood. Name one embarrassing activity that you take part in? I don't know. Like I say enough I'm VERY self-conscious of revealing I RP, but only because I'm sensitive to how the person will respond. I'm in no way like, ashamed I do it. I'm just terrified of judgment over something "unusual." Ever been told that you can’t understand love due to your age? Not that I remember. I only claimed to "get it" (to my recollection) at a point in mine and Jason's relationship, and I very legitimately would've guffawed at and honestly nearly slapped you if you claimed I "didn't understand" love. What is your favorite Starburst candy flavor? THE PINK ONES. Do you think that you act like yourself while online? I act more like myself online. Have you ever lied about something to get someone to like you? No. Who is the fakest person in your life right now? I don't keep those people in my life. Have you ever laid down in the grass, and made shapes out of the clouds? As a kiddo. When someone’s constantly negative, how do you deal with it? It depends on the person, but ALMOST in all cases, I really really try to support the person as best I can. It may start to bring me a bit down, but I feel I'm just like... hardwired to help those I love. I think it's what my relationship with Jason did, as he left because he couldn't handle my depression anymore, and with how that absolutely and utterly annihilated me, I don't want anyone else to feel that pain. Now, for people I don't have much of a bond with, it's easier for me to say "I'm sorry, but I can't handle this right now," but even then, I prefer to help. Does Christmas make you feel like a kid again? No. I'm really most excited for aunt reasons, lol. Do you have any artistic talent? Some. Would you ever shoplift from a store if you knew you wouldn’t be caught? Absolutely not. When one of your pets dies, how do you react? Usually cry. I've only ever not done so if I hadn't at all formed a bond with the animal. When you go to the movies, where in the theater do you sit? Close to the front, in the middle. When was the last time you lost your appetite? I don’t know. Have you ever neglected to take care of yourself? Er. Quite badly during '16, in the depth of my depression. I'll just say my teeth are kinda yellow because of it. I want to whiten my teeth at some point if I can afford that kind of luxury. The last song/poem/story you wrote - what was it about? In RP, the most recent section being written now is my main protagonists receiving a visit from their allies before getting their asses torn up the next day lmao. After a fight, who apologizes first - you, or the other person? Usually me, but it does depend. If I genuinely feel I didn't do jackshit wrong, no, I'm not apologizing. When you’re feeling creative, what do you do? Write. Do you mind being in your house alone overnight? Not really by now. Done so a number of times. Are there any dreams you remember from childhood? Nightmares, yes, and one very realistic dream. What worries you most about death? Not knowing what happens afterwards. Do you watch really old tv shows or movies from the 1970s or earlier? I love The Munsters, I Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Addams Family. I'm sure there's more, considering I liked to watch stuff with my mom as a kid. Who’s your celebrity crush(es)? HHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG Ever been to a rave? No. Are you afraid to name the person you talk the most shit about? I don't really do that. Like I'll vent about people occasionally, but "talk shit" seems like the wrong word. I don't like gossiping. Are you a jealous person? Envious, rather, sometimes. I get VERY envious when it comes to photography, but otherwise, I don't feel it much. Who do you text the most out of your friends? Sara is like the only friend I text, lol. What would you do if you saw a complete stranger dealing drugs in public?
 Honestly, call an authority. I don't fuck with that. I'm not watching it happen. How often do you play video games? What are some of your favourites?
 I played World of Warcraft daily until my laptop took a shit. Need to get that fixed. Now I play actual video games very rarely... but mostly just because you can only replay the same ole game so many times before you've had enough of it for like a year. There are a great number of new games I want to play, though. I want a PS4 soooo badly. What are a few things that get on your nerves when it comes to Facebook (or your social networking site of choice)?
 More than anything, posting something that's crying for attention only for the person to be like "ugh I don't wanna talk about it." Then don't fucking post it. What are three things you’ve started to like lately? I feel like I haven't found new interests in a long time... Wait! I do feel The Handmaid's Tale and the Wings of Fire book Sara lent me have revived my love of reading! :') I want to go to the book store when I can and get both the new sequel to THT and the next WoF book. What was the last reason for having butterflies in your stomach?
 *shrug* Do you need a lot of space in relationships, or are you happy to spend a lot of time with your SO?
 I need SOME alone time, but for the most part I love being together. Once we're really close, anyway. What was the last thing you cooked from scratch? Scrambled eggs. Have you ever won anything from those games in arcades?
 Yeah. Funny story, there was this one time my sister won a stuffed duck from a claw machine, and it was the one I wanted after trying many times, and I cried so hard that one of the employees literally got one out for me lmfao. I probably still have it in the attic. When was the last time you went out to a fair?
 Not since right before the breakup. How far is the nearest zoo or wildlife park from your house? Do you go often?
 Like, two hours. We almost never go because of the distance. Are either one of your parents retired? If not, what do they do for a living?
 No. My dad's been a mailman all my life, and Mom is currently on disability because she has cancer and obviously can't work because of chemotherapy and all that. She was a pharmacy tech, though. If you could change one physical trait about yourself, what would it be?
 Can all this weight like vanish please. Have you ever gone out with someone you didn’t like?
 ????? Why would I do that???? Well, I didn't yet like-like Tyler because we hadn't been reunited as friends long enough; dating was kinda like... a dumb way to re-get to know each other? Thank fuck that was only two weeks. Would you ever take a bullet for your significant other? I'm single. Would you ever work at a fast food restaurant?
 No. History shows I can't work with people. Are you good at haunted houses, or do you scream your head off?
 AHHHHHHHHHHH I LOVE!!!!!!!!!!! If you’ve seen it, what did you think of the Twilight movie?
 I never watched them. Have you ever gotten your tongue stuck on a frozen pole?
 No. Are you a cat or a dog person?
 Cat. Does the movie Titanic make you cry?
 Ha ha, yes. I watched it on movie day while at the psych hospital and all of us were lil bitches almost sobbing, lol. Because it's a long movie, it went past our allotted time, but the nurses decided to let us finish it because we were so into it. I do have some good memories from those times... Do you think that fat people should wear skinny jeans? I think people can wear whatever the fuck they want without fear of judgment. Do you prefer game systems like Xbox, or older ones like Super Nintendo? The former. Do you enjoy indie music? Yep! What is the most strange piercing you’ve ever seen? Those ones people were getting on their fingers instead of rings... just huh. What do you do when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store? Look around, I guess. Think. What is your favourite beach to go to? I haven't been to enough to know. Have you ever been to a country club? No. Have you ever seen an animal die in real life? Too many times. Animals have been euthanized in my arms, and a kitten slowly died in my hands once. One of the most heartbreaking things I have ever experienced. Teddy accidentally punctured its lungs or broke ribs, I think, or something like that. I'm pretty sure he was trying to bring it back to its siblings because it wandered off, but he held it too tightly. I was home alone, too. It was fucking awful. Do you live on a Rd, St, Blvd, Ln, Way, or Ave? Road. Do you have naked pictures of someone saved on your phone? No. Would you ever go see an opera? Bitch I played Parasite Eve, I don't trust that shit. But seriously, no, not my scene. Do you own anything John Deere? No. Do you have a push mower or a mower that you ride on? Neither. A friend mows for us; he has the latter. What is the longest amount of time you’ve been stuck in traffic for? No clue. I think during a trip to New York. Would you consider joining the air force, army, etc? No. Who was your first crush and what made them special? This kid named Dylan. I thought he was super cute and cool. What is one thing nobody knows about you because nobody ever cared to ask? I dunno. Who did you idolize growing up? Steve Irwin. Do you believe that we are all here for a reason? What might the reason be? No. Have you ever carved your name or initials into a tree or stone? No. What were your best and worst subjects in school or college? Best: English. Worst: math. Name something you would like to devote more time to seeing or doing. Writing poetry. Drawing. Do you like to get your nails done? No. Do you remember the last movie you saw while on a date? Yeah, IT. Do you like to wear dresses? Hell no with my current body. Do you like any ‘manly’ activities like hunting, fishing, or camping? I find fishing to be fun and relaxing, but because of morals, I can't stomach doing it anymore. What was the name of your first boyfriend? First with the title, Aaron. First *real* boyfriend, Jason. Your first kiss? Jason. Are you still with either of those people from the last 2 questions? No. Have you ever used your bra to hold things like you would a pocket? Ha ha no. I think. What is your longest relationship to date? Three years, 7-8 months. I don't remember if the breakup was in August or September. Who ended the last relationship you were in? It was kinda like... mutual-ish, but moreso her. Have you ever gotten back with an ex? No. Who was your first prom date? Jason. Do you cry during romantic movies? Sometimes. Who was the last person to see you cry? Mom. Have you ever been used? I don't think so romantically, but in other ways, I know I have been. Have you ever felt violated? Yes. Do you like when a guy takes you by surprise and kisses you? Not everyone likes guys, so what an assumption. But anyway, only if we're very serious and have heavy trust in one another. Do you ever leave the house without makeup? Pretty much always. When was the last time someone gave you flowers? Been a few years. What kind of gift can win you over? BITCH buy me something Mark-related and you earn like 20 points. Has anyone ever sung to you? Yes. Do you like massages? Depends on who you are. In almost any case, no. They're awkward. Have you ever been skinny dipping? No. Do you sleep naked? No. Is smoking a turn-off? Yes. Is there a certain tv show you get upset if you miss? No. When was the last time you spent the night at someone else’s house? When I was at Sara's a year or so back. What is one food you always crave? Ice cream. Are you an exercise freak? Hunny- What scares you more, spiders or snakes? Snakes don't scare me, so spooders. Do you expect to be married in the next two years? No. Would you ever get implants? Nah. Have you ever had a crush on a sibling’s friend? No. Have you ever had a crush on a friend’s sibling? No. Are you more of a 'girly girl’ or a 'tomboy’? A tomboy. Have you ever dated someone with a child? No. Are you addicted to texting? No.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

If Violence Doesn’t Work, Magic Will (God of War Trilogy Review)

WARNING: This turned out too long to proofread properly this morning, so there are one or two egregious grammatical cock-ups that I’ll have to edit at a later date.

Oh, Kratos, you loveable, mass-murdering hunk o’ Grecian man-flesh, what would we do without you? Probably die of old age instead of a chain-blade to the fizzog, that’s what.

That’s right, folks! I’ve been playing the classic God of War games- specifically, the original trilogy. There’s a new one out, which apparently has much more dad-angst and much less gratuitous nudity (and I will play it eventually), but for now I’m all about those first three games. By golly did they ever set a gold standard in the hack-and-slash genre. Let’s have a quick reviewski, shall we?

Well, first off, it’s worth noting that the games are actually slightly misnamed. Kratos does become the god of war at one point, but he only spends like, fifteen minutes of playable time being the god of war before Zeus decides that giving an obvious nutter like him deity-level power miiiiiight have been a mistake and smacks him right back down to mortal status. Really, he’s just a very angry bastard who commits genocide on a semi-regular basis, but I guess Bastard of Genocide didn’t have the same ring as God of War and you know what the marketing department is like.

Anyway, comic-effect nitpicking aside, I love the God of War games. Partly, it’s the sheer scope of the plot. Yes, each game is technically a separate entity in its own right, but they’re really telling one coherent story… which I will now spoil with carefree elan. Kratos was once the leader of a Spartan army, until he faced defeat. Then he called on Ares for help and offered him his services as a murderous psychopath in return. Ares took the deal, but eventually tricked Kratos into killing his own family (like you do) in the belief it would make him a better warrior. Kratos broke his service to Ares and, years later, Ares went even more bananas and attacked Athens. The other Greek deities decided that Kratos was the best guy to kill Ares, so they gave him his chance for revenge. He killed the former god of war using the power trapped in Pandora’s box and Zeus et al made him the new god of war. That’s the first game. The second game picks up with Zeus and company realising that Kratos might be a tad unstable, what with being a naturally violent man who’s perpetually trapped inside the trauma of having killed his own wife and child. Zeus tricks him into relinquishing his godlike power and casts him into Hades… which doesn’t pan out well, because apparently dying just doesn’t take if you’re sufficiently irate. Thus, Kratos claws his way out of Hades and recruits an army of Titans to wage war on Olympus. Building this army takes up the second game. The third game begins and, with all the pieces in place from Game 2, the war kicks off. Kratos gets a hint that he’ll need Pandora’s box again and sets off through through the war to retrieve it and Pandora herself- the living key to the box. In the process, he basically has to kill everyone on Mount Olympus. Pandora very nearly helps Kratos achieve a sense of inner peace and redemption, but then dies unlocking the box, which turns out to already be empty, because the secret weapon- hope- was already absorbed into Kratos the last time he used it. Kratos- always angry- is now also broken, and after he exacts his final revenge on Zeus, he also kills himself (obviously it doesn’t work, ‘cause there’s a new game set after these events… but the thought was there). In doing so, he unleashes the power of hope and bestows it on mankind. Now that’s a plot! It does a great job of affecting the scale and feel of an actual Greek epic and there’s something very awe-inspiring about that.

God of War has always been praised for its combat, and it’s certainly satisfying to kill a whole army’s worth of overconfident dipshits with a blur of blades and the occasionally ludicrous bit of magic. However, when it comes to gameplay, it’s the puzzles that I really like. Yeah- it’s a game series called God of War and it’s got surprisingly cerebral environmental puzzles in it. That’s a pretty ballsy choice on the game developers’ part and I wholeheartedly applaud it. The puzzles themselves play fair, for the most part, and the solution is never completely ridiculous. There were times when I had to call up a strategy guide on my laptop, but I always knew it was because I was having a brain-fart and overlooking something obvious. I never got the sense that the games were dicking with me (well- there’s one bit that isn’t really a puzzle where you have to climb a spinning cylinder covered in swords that can fuck right off, but we’ll let that pass). Mostly, though, the appeal of the puzzles is that they force you to slow down and look at the world you’re in properly. A lot of effort went in the art direction in the God of War series and the end results are some of the best-looking and most breathtaking vistas in any games. It’s nice that you get to do something in that environment other than repainting it with other people’s lovely vermillion viscera.

Ultimately, however, the appeal of God of War lies in how resolutely over-the-top and truculently immature it is. Kratos himself has basically no ego or superego: he’s pure, enraged id, driven by a deepseated sense of betrayal and loss combined with an obvious addiction to sex and violence, and the gameworld is the perfect place for him. Beyond the combat, there’s also lashings of nudity and very specific acts of wholly unnecessary brutalisation that Kratos will carry out on helpless opponents outside of combat regardless of what you the player think of it. There’s a bit where he rips of Helios’ head so he can use it as a flashlight, and another bit where he saws off Hermes legs just to steal his fancy go-faster shoes. He even bumps off one of his own allies- Gaia- because she let him fall off Mount Olympus and went into battle without him (the game actually makes you do this bit yourself- you have to hack her arm off while she’s trying to pull herself onto level ground so she falls of the mountain. Later, when she comes back, mortally wounded, you have to dive into her giant body through an open wound and punch her heart until she has a heart attack. No, really). Oh, and there’s sex, too. Not with Gaia- which would probably be too logistically challenging to animate. After Kratos has murderised about half the pantheon, you can choose to take a break and celebrate a rampage well done by boinking Aphrodite. Most games would have their lead character take the object of his desires in his arms then cut tastefully away. Not God of War III. The camera moves away from the act itself… but not in a tasteful way. While you play a button-prompt based mini-game in order to bring Aphrodite to orgasm, the camera watches her two handmaidens, who look on and provide sports-commentator style analysis of how its going… until they get so excited that they start fucking one another. You can play that minigame as many times as you want. Then you can go right back to ripping people’s heads off with a sword tied to a rusty chain as though nothing happened. I can’t imagine that happening in any other game series. Well, maybe Saints Row, but that’s a thought experiment for another day.

Fundamentally, most games of the last couple of console generations demonstrate a degree of restraint. No matter how dark and fucked up their subject matter is, they want to portray relateable characters and tell a story that doesn’t alienate potential players. The original God of War trilogy doesn’t give a tuppeny fuck if the things that happen in it make you uncomfortable and as a result, it’s probably the weirdest, freshest thing I’ve played since… well, since Saints Rows 2, 3 and 4. It approaches its gameplay segments like a B-movie director approaches each scene of his films. It looks at the characters, props and setting on hand and asks “OK- what’s the most extreme and shocking thing that could happen using all these?” Then it just does that thing.

The new God of War is supposedly a lot more mature, portraying Kratos as an old man, trying to be a better person for the sake of a new son. From a narrative perspective, that’s probably the right move, since there’s only so many times Kratos can murder and fuck his way through an entire civilisation without learning a single cocking thing before it starts to seem silly. I’m not sure if the series will flourish under such a tonal shift, though. After all, the originals were good because Kratos was a psychopath with a sublimated deathwish and the sexual contenance of a meerkat with access to viagra. Once my PS4 is fixed/replaced and I’ve had a chance to play it for myself, I’ll let you know. For now, I’ll be focusing on God of War: Ascension (the prequel). I suggest you get yourself the original trilogy and see what I’m raving about for yourself. Until then, my vengeance (by which I mean blog entry) ends here.