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jungxk · 4 years ago

Text

just one (viii)

summary: the only guy on campus who’s track record trumped that of your best friend’s - park jimin - was jeon jungkook. not that that was a problem…until he set his sights on you.

notes: first of all i wanna thank the people who supported me and encouraged me through one of the worst writers blocks of my life. all the messages and comments are the reason why i finally managed to post this. special thanks to @whippedforkook for helping me with the monstrous tagging process as well as giving me so much praise. and also @lonelyending for cheering me on for a literal YEAR bc thats how long i cried over this fic! this story is so special to me. we’re in the home stretch now x

warnings: mentions of illegal drug use and distribution, swearing, brief smut.

genre: drama, romance, humour, college!au

wordcount: 8k

tagging: @cutechim @benz-biarritz @gyukult @bangulin @eatersanonymous @alyssa1926 @skivv1es @a-sucker-for-them-sappy-shit @moonights @jeymuffins @juuneaux @catsukiii @andreaisaac @whatheydontunderstand @sreveles @noruls619 @henryharios @just-a-fuxked-up-kid @befriendswithj @btsbesharam @poemsandpunani @taelha @misosoup-forthesoul @jikooksmut @heart-eyedmf @the-piano-woman @angrysunshine @chaoticpaperfanhoagie @jsungshine @ci-yen @faby-montana @shinypeanutsportshero @jooniestrivia @alucards-s @cynamyngirl @jiminie-angel @myskoova @jkshoneybuns @smokintae @remmykinsff @majinbuwu @jangx2manboongx2 @potatodogs @seul-queen @alpharyth @blenxxxg @plsky @th-singularity @bapbaptothetop @hermiones-enchantment @stomachfilledwithbutterflies @euphorora @supachloe94 @jiminxjimout @ggukkieland @just-another-fic-recs-blog @jalexad

part i // part ii // part iii // part iv // part v // part vi // part vii // part viii // part ix // part x

4 years ago

jimin hated yugyeom.

well, maybe hate was a strong word. he just didn't like talking to him, being around him, hearing his name or interacting with him on any level, social or otherwise. he really tried though, since he was one of jungkook's closest friends and still respectfully referred to him as hyung above all else. and if anything, jimin would always have a soft spot for jungkook, the kid he used to coddle when his own brother wasn't around. but having said that, there wasn't really much basis for not liking yugyeom. it was just a gut feeling jimin couldn't explain, a very subtle callousness about him only jimin could pick up on. for the most part he was just like very other mild mannered boy by day and party animal by night, but jimin still ducks when he sees him enter the library.

"fuck," he hisses under his breath, scooping up his laptop to stride behind a book shelf for good measure. because sometimes, contrary to popular belief, jimin wanted to be alone. he didn't want to make small talk or listen to someone tell him about how well they scored on their last paper or complain about their annoying girlfriend. sometimes jimin wanted to have no thoughts and listen to fleetwood mac as per his human rights. which is why he shoves into the first private study room he sees.

and not an empty one at that. there's a girl inside, sitting cross-legged in her chair at a desk with an array of dried up paint tubes and brushes surrounding open sketchbooks. you don't look annoyed or even that phased, just amused as you give him a once over before going back to painting. "on the run from solji?"

jimin blinks, back still pressed against the door. "huh?" he regards you properly. "i'm sorry, have we met before?"

"not really," you admit with a sheepish smile, which is when jimin suddenly realises that you're...attractive. "solji is in my stats class. you hooked up with her last week at some party and she told me about it."

"oh," jimin takes in your plethora of art supplies. "you don't look like a stem student."

there's a glimmer of something in your eyes, and though you hide it well jimin knows he's struck a nerve. "yeah, i get that a lot."

"it's not solji by the way," jimin clarifies. for some reason. "that i'm hiding from. just a bellend i don't have the energy for right now."

you smile. "it's fine. you don't owe me your life story."

"i do when i'm about to impose on your...study time," jimin peers through the window in the door, wincing when yugyeom enters the hallway. "what would it take for you to let me stay in here for a while?"

you pause for a second. "honestly? just be quiet and leave me alone. is that okay?"

jimin perks up, a weight leaving his chest. "perfect, actually."

[jungkook 11:42pm]: why does it say wings on it

[jungkook 11:42pm] where is it flying

[you: 11:43pm] ffs kook

[you: 11:44pm] im still on the toilet can u just hurry up

[you 11:44pm] grab some tampons too pls

[jungkook 11:46pm] fine what size pussy do u wear

[you 11:46pm] i hate u

[jungkook 11:53pm] ???? ? ? well? ????

[you 11:54pm] REGULAR

jungkook giggles at his phone, already having left the women's sanitary aisle to grab some chocolate. months later and teasing you was still bundles of fun. he knew for a fact that you were sat there with that angry pout on your face, nose crinkled. he had never bought anything like this before, but jungkook had enough brain cells to know that chocolate was another necessity for that time of the month. after grabbing a large hazelnut bar, he pauses beside the oreos before grabbing a packet of those too. just for good measure. he strides to the self checkout - because even he wasn't man enough for the cashier yet - nearly dropping his array of sanitary products and confectionary when somebody calls out his name from behind the queue.

"kook!" the voice is unmistakably yugyeom's, confirmed by the hand that clamps jungkook over the shoulder and swivels him round before he could think about hiding his socially compromising shopping items. it takes a second for yugyeom to notice, doing a double take at the pads atop his small tower of goods. he holds back a laugh, balancing a bottle of gin in one hand while he waves back at some friends to continue. they were clearly making their pit stop before a night out, probably pre's if they still start as late as jungkook remembers. with his hair styled and expensive cologne lingering, jungkook almost forgets he probably looks unrecognisable in his sweats and cotton-fresh hoodie. friday nights weren't for cuddling. still, yugyeom's smile is welcoming and familiar. "got the munchies? and maybe also a uterus?"

"shut up," jungkook grumbles, averting his eyes. he shifts to his other foot uncomfortably. "my friend just needed a favour, that's all."

"uh huh," yugyeom gives him a teasing look. "is this friend the reason why i barely saw you at jin's the other week?"

jungkook blinks back at him. "wait, you were at that party? i had no idea!" a boyish smile breaks over his face. "why didn't you call me? i haven't seen you since-"

"minseok-hyung's new years eve party," yugyeom throws his head back with a laugh. "remember how we ended up on a boat after the ball dropped and-"

"spent all of new years day detained by the coast guard!" jungkook finishes with a mischievous cackle of his own, nearly dropping the tampons in the process. "fuck, that was so much fun! we need to meet up again, i haven't been out with the guys in so long."

"well no wonder," he quips a brow at jungkook's shopping again. "word got out you're a family man but i didn't believe it. until now, that is."

jungkook's smile falls. "what do you mean?"

yugyeom looks at him for a second, confused by jungkook's surprise. yugyeom was never quite as diplomatic as namjoon or yoongi, to put it lightly. and definitely nowhere near as accomodating as jimin. which is why his next words make jungkook's back stiffen. "bro, look at yourself. you got dairy milk in one hand and tampax in the other. on a friday night. the next time i see you i wouldn't be shocked if you had a baby buggy and a mortgage." still, yugyeom throws him an apologetic look. like a mouse caught in a trap. "face it, kook. you're old news."

"what? that's not true," his brows furrow unhappily. "i don't know what you're talking about. it's not like she's my..."

he can't say the word, but it hangs between them like a dead weight.

"yeah, right," the condescending look on yugyeom's face was starting to agitate him. "you totally blanked us at jin's after she showed up. not even just jin's..." he thinks twice about holding his tongue, but as always, decides against it. "i don't know you, jungkook. whoever this new jungkook is. it's been months. you used to hit us up and be independent and spontaneous and wild and now you're just...someone's boyfriend.

"stop fucking saying that," jungkook snaps, all visible signs of friendliness gone.

"why?" a beat. "do you even use a wrap with her anymore?"

jungkook splutters, heat rushing to his ears and hands in a stinging combination of anger and embarrassment. "how is that any of your business? the fuck are you asking me something like that, as if you-"

"thought so," yugyeom looks away from him with a sigh. if anything, yugyeom knew never to overstay his welcome but that clearly backfired tonight. "whatever, jungkook," he looks over his shoulder at him. "guess you're the last one to find out you're officially married."

"you're ridiculous," jungkook scoffs. "all this over condoms? grow up, yugyeom."

"only couples do it raw," yugyeom turns away from him, alcohol in tow as he waves a hand over his shoulder to join his friends like jungkook was nothing but a lost cause. "you would remember that if you still had game."

jungkook stands there, dumbfounded while the group of boys exit the store noisily but he can't hear a thing. the siren that had been itching the back of his mind all this time was suddenly there at full force, right between his eyes. the glaring truth that yugyeom might be right makes his knees buckle. all those rules jungkook once had, all those measures he kept in place to protect his liberty, to prevent this very occurence - where were they? what happened to them? as the sweet and accommodating counterpart to jimin, why had you never complied? though, the blame wasn't on your hands alone. he got complacent, comfortable. lenient. and now without even realising he was here, a scene from a romcom in the middle of the night, with nothing to say for himself but fuck. the realisations wouldn't stop racing, one after another on the conveyer belt of his anxiety.

the photos on his phone; mostly you. time spent, usually with you. the portfolio for his latest photography module also had some resemblance to your interests. charcoal pencils, night drives, orchids. like the ones you always drew on any scrap of paper lying around. now that he thinks about it, he's seen nothing but your orchids for months. and not just that - you wore his clothes sometimes too. his bathroom had your toothbrush, contraceptive pills and coconut shampoo. his closest friends, his hyungs...not one of them was devoid of affection for you. he wasn't even confident that if the choice was presented, they would still pick him over you.

by the time jungkook finishes paying and practically sprints to his truck in a daze, he can hardly keep himself from shaking. he palms the wheel compulsively, he could feel the sweat in his sideburns, hoodie suddenly suffocating him. it smelled of you.

and then, like a final curtain call: was he just your latest fixer-upper project? some good girl wet dream to play out in the wake of your emotionally traumatic past? a slap in the face to seokjin, maybe, and nothing more? when you were done, when he was out of your system, when you knew his taste by heart and had nothing new left to try - would you stay? did you even know how to?

did he?

jungkook starts the engine. he drives to your door, drops your bag of snacks and pads on the porch, and texts you before leaving. he does not go inside.

"you sure you'll be okay with just the boys?"

you scoff at seulgi when she pins you with a worrying look, taking some of her clothes out of her bag to re-fold them just so you had something to do with your hands. jisoo had already left for the long weekend with her family, so there was no one there to fill up the empty space between your awakward reply. you didn't know how to tell the girls that jungkook hadn't contacted you in nearly a month. and even though he was a notable flight risk from the beginning, you couldn't help but feel like there was hostility there. every now and again he'd at least send a nude or have a quick phone call when he was drunk or high at three in the morning, but you hadn't heard a peep from him. you couldn't stand the idea of someone you cared about harbouring comtempt for you, but the fear of reaching out and somehow making the situation worse outweighed it tenfold.

you look up to see seulgi still staring at you with concern. "of course i'll be fine! they're boys, not piranhas."

"at least piranhas contribute our ecosystem. boys just cause problems for the hell of it," seulgi lays a hand on the crown of your head like a berating big sister, swivelling you to look at her in your fit of giggles. the urge to nestle you under blankets like a baby bird made her chest heave, and you could tell. "i'm serious. if jimin tries anything, call me immediately okay?"

"jimin?" you snort. "out of a room full of delinquents, my ex, and taehyung, you're worried about jimin of all people?"

seulgi wrinkles her nose. "god, when you say it like that its like i'm throwing you to the dogs." she pauses. "something's up with jimin. i don't know what it is, but he's...off."

you tilt your head innocently, remembering the brief interaction you had with hobi at seokjin's party. you had been so caught up in jungkook - or lack thereof - you hadn't thought to press him about it afterwards. in truth, jimin remained as...jimin as ever. if he was acting differently you certainly couldn't tell. "you think so?"

"mmm," she leans on the lip of the open suitcase thoughtfully. "but maybe with jungkook there, he'll behave himself."

you gulp, fiddling with his watch on your wrist anxiously. "maybe."

you nearly yelp when you feel a big hand swivel around your waist, bucking into the kitchen counter reflexively. jungkook always did this before rubbing his boner against your ass, but the light scent of citrus and short squeeze lets you know immediately that its taehyung. hoseok, jimin, namjoon and yoongi were still in the living room playing video games, giving taehyung the perfect opening to intercept you. namjoon and yoongi had insisted that you come over to their place after finding out you'd be alone for the weekend, and you had completely refused before taehyung's coaxing. and of course, jimin's persuasive nudging. even though you felt safe and relaxed here, it felt wrong to be in jungkook's friends' place without him. almost like a breaching of an unspoken boundary.

and clearly, taehyung picked up on your discomfort by the way he stared at you so softly. his back was to the sink, his sillhouette particularly long and lean this evening. "you need to lighten up, princess. you keep looking over your shoulder so much it's making me nervous!"

your visibly droop with a sigh. "i'm sorry tae. i've had a lot on my mind lately, and..."

he claps his hands on your shoulders, teeth peeking through his grin. "you're not doing anything illegal by being here without jungkook."

you wince at his name. "have you always been able to read my mind like this?"

"absolutely," taehyung's brown eyes look so rich up close. "you're allowed to have friends that are also his friends, because - and try to stick with me on this - relationships between people are allowed to be independant from the primary circles they met in. mind boggling concept, i know."

you wack him on the chest until he laughs. "stop making fun of my anxious thought processes! its called mental illness, sherlock! i can't help it!"

his nose scrunches cutely, enjoying your first fiery outburst of the day. "whatever. i call it not getting laid for a month and losing critical thinking abilities from it."

you gape at him indignantly while taehyung roars with laughter. "you're such a dickhead," you hiss through gritted teeth, yanking his hair and jabbing your fingers in his sides the way you would with jimin during a tickle fight. "whores have feelings too, taehyung! whores have feelings too!"

you both fall about with laughter, knocking over half the snacks on the counter in the process which only makes the pair of you laugh even more. it's such childish chaos trying to clean up the mess on the tiny kitchen floor that neither of you notice the front door open, or the gust of metaphorical and literal wind that follows. watching taehyung trying to salvage a bag of broken crisps is just so funny that the presence of an another voice in the living room goes unregistered, as do the footsteps leading up the hallway to the kitchen, so you have no time to brace yourself or properly pull yourself together with you see-

"...jungkook."

yours and taehyung's heads snap to the doorway. jungkook stands there with almost complete lack of emotion on his face to the pair of you kneeling in crumbs and napkins. there's a brief pause where the tension in your eye contact alone was so strong that it felt wrong to breathe. but it is shortlived. jungkook tiptoes over you like spilled milk, reaching for a glass of water. you and taehyung lock eyes while the tap runs in the awkward silence. "hey. you okay?"

"um," you're not sure whether to stand up, hug him, look at him, or even face him. "yeah! yeah, i'm fine."

he nods politely. "hyung?"

even taehyung looks visibly uncomfortable. "i'm good."

"cool. see you later," he says, downing the glass impressively fast before leaving the room just as fast as he entered it.

you and taehyung stare at each other again, not understanding why you both feel like kids caught eating cake before dinner. you could feel the sweat pricking at your back from the realisation. jungkook had no idea you'd be here, and given that interaction he'd probably want to leave now. there was always the inkling woven between his radio silence that he was done with you, but you never let yourself take it seriously out of logic. because how could months of passion and tenderness and honesty be undone so irrevocably like that? it didn't make sense. you hadn't changed. you were the same girl he hit on relentlessly and chased against all odds. so what was different now?

"____," taehyung calls your name gently, and it's only then you realise you're already up and trailing after jungkook into the living room. when you walk in he's already putting his shoes on to leave again, barely making eye contact with you while he chats absently to his hyungs so he can look busy. the four boys on the large sofa can only reply wearily, eyes darting between the pair of you like a firework was about to blow to soon. and it was.

you could feel it in your throat, under your breast bone, bubbling up your stomach. "wait, jungkook. um...h-how have you been? i haven't heard from you in-"

"i've been good," he keeps tying and re-tying his laces without looking up. "super busy. you know how it is."

his curtness makes you flinch. this same time last month jungkook used to kiss you senseless before he had both feet in the door. he'd ring the doorbell incessantly like a child and greet you with the biggest, toothiest grin you had ever seen. he'd make fun of your bed head and squeeze your cheeks until you'd snap at him. and now when he looked at you he hated every second of it. your mother had the same look. your eyes start to burn involuntarily. "yeah, i do. how is uni? your final project is due soon, right? what theme did you pick in the end?"

"the one i told you about," he stands up abruptly. "sorry, noona. something came up. i'll see you arou-"

"something came up?" you step closer to him. "something came up the second you saw my face? or did you really just trek all the way to your hyungs' place for a glass of water, jungkook?"

jungkook stiffens, but is determined not to lose face. and it's difficult to do under your big, accusatory eyes and jimin's death stare at his back. the whole room was waiting for his response, so he just shoves his hands in his pockets resolutely. "i needed to see yoongi hyung, but i can come another time."

you fold your arms. "well it's clearly important, and you're here now. so don't let me stop you."

"but you will stop me," jungkook snaps. "that's the problem."

"kook-ah," yoongi warns quietly, but he took one look at your face and knew the damage was done. jimin was already standing up, circling around the back of the sofa towards you. the red lights were all there; your watery eyes, your trembling hands. every breath you took looked difficult for you to complete and only jimin noticed.

"what are you talking about?" you squint. it takes you a second to understand; yoongi's guilty expression, jungkook's indifference. "oh, you're fucking kidding me." your resolve breaks for a second turning away only to glare back at jungkook with so much fire you can hardly stand it. "you're selling again? are you insane, jungkook?"

"see," jungkook's eyes are stony. "i knew you'd get this way."

"what other way am i supposed to get?" his lack of response only infuriates you more. it felt disrespectful. "jungkook, you're not a kid anymore. if you get caught with drugs the consequences are serious! forget the potential jail time, you could get kicked out of university, it would go on your record forever and-"

"stop talking to me like i'm a kid!"

"then stop acting like one!" you hate raising your voice, but it keeps climbing without your approval. "did you think about this for even five minutes? this isn't like just going to juvie like before and being done with it jungkook. your hyungs can't bail you out of everything."

"this is a lot of talk for someone who lapped up those fancy paints without a second thought," jungkook says darkly. his eyes aren't like you remember, his face solemn and near unrecognisable. "or did you think that getting that kind of money overnight is only something that's possible through daddy's credit card?"

dread blooms like a garden inside you. "that's...that's how you bought the paint set?"

"welcome to the real world," he quips. "as if selling overpriced weed to a bunch of pick-me-freshmans is considered a crime against humanity to anyone but you."

"you think that's why i'm yelling at you right now?" your voice was growing hoarse, desperate. "you think that's the problem i have with you being literal drug dealer, jungkook?"

he hates it. the sweltering silence, the judgmental eyes digging into his back, the slow realisation that the tears in your eyes were not at him but for him. jungkook's ears ring enough to make him sway on the spot if his feet weren't planted so firmly on the dingy carpet, this metaphorical ground. he couldn't shake the feeling that his lifestyle was only an issue now because of you, how he never felt a shred of guilt about any of this shit until he met you. and if there was anything that jungkook never responded well to, it was pity. and he could feel it from every person in the room, all people that that once cherished and coddled him until you came along. he swallows, throat dry from the way he couldn't look at you knowing what he was going to say next.

"you're embarrassing yourself, noona. you're not my girlfriend and you never were, so stop acting like it."

cotton. it's very faint, under the layers of conflicting cologne and beer and smoke, but jungkook still smelled of cotton while he spat acid. nobody could speak, even though jungkook never raised his voice let alone a hand to you, it still hit like a slap in the face. it sunk into the walls, your clothes, suddenly every hair on your body felt heavy with it. dirty. the shame came first, the humiliation next. and then the sorrow, the dread, and finally the defeat. you knew the stages well by now, and they were cycling through you like clockwork. how foolish you were, to make the same mistake again. nobody dared to move, everyone but jungkook staring at you in denial and horror. they couldn't believe their eyes when you nod steadily, bowing your head to the floor.

jimin is already slotting himself between you, his jaw tight. "that's enough, kook. just leave already."

"no," you stop him, unnervingly resigned. that single word cuts through all six men with ease. "he's right." you step around jimin, closing the space between you and jungkook. for a brief moment he wonders if you'll actually hit him, but somehow watching you unclasp his watch from your wrist and drop it on the coffee table in front of him is far worse. the sound seems to ring like church bells, definitive and umistakable. "you're right, i'm not your girlfriend. you win jungkook."

they all watch you leave in dismay, listen to the door closing softly behind you. within a second jimin sprints after you, calling your name, leaving everyone else dumbfounded. jungkook's stare could bore a hole into the abandoned watch on the table, still ticking away like nothing changed. like his eyes weren't burning, lightheaded at the realisation that he would never wear a watch again let alone the one he put on you.

to an outsider, you looked like you were coping well considering you just got dumped in front of all your friends. but jimin knew that face. your stony eyes, lips pulled thin as if to seal inside the collapse of a monument. you took the tea he offered, and then his arms, your face finding his chest with ease. muscle memory. his torso was a tad shorter than jungkook's, his heart closer to your mouth as if the steady thumps were asking for a kiss of acknowledgement. every time you close your eyes you could see jungkooks face, hard and unforgiving and nothing like the man you trusted all this time. but it wasn't a new expression; you parents looked at you similarly the last time you saw them. it was the look of someone who had no regrets cutting all ties. and now, jungkook was behind them in a lost list of people who chose to be strangers over loving you.

jimin sighs when you cry into his chest, brushing the back of your head gently. he had been ready for this for months, but he still hated to see you this way. again. it made his bones itch, his skin crawl uncomfortably every time you weeped. the only time he considered violence was when you were crying. but he knew what to do, laying down across the sofa so you could curl up into a ball next him, head on his bicep and face smushed into the crook of his shoulder. you used to cry like this for hours and hours, his arm familiar with the prickle of pins and needles. but it was the only place you felt safe. tucked into jimin's side is where you would always belong, and that truth was more glaringly obvious than ever now.

"lets get something to eat," he offers eventually, hand craddling the crown of your head like a child. jimin's other hand on your hip is warm and heavy when he pats you soothingly. in your episodes, you responded well to touch. "what about thai food?"

"not hungry," you grumble against him.

"we could make something together?" he peers down at your lack of response. "come on, babe. you gotta eat something. you didn't even have breakfast-"

"why am i so stupid?" you whisper, a fresh bout of tears welling up.

jimin rubs your thigh. "it's not your fault."

"yes it is. jungkook gave me plenty of red flags, and i ignored all of them-"

"oh, i meant you being stupid."

you scoff. "cheers."

"what?" jimin cocks a brow when you lift your head to look up at him. he wets his lips and you follow the swipe of his tongue thoughtlessly, distracted enough by his touch and proximity that you take a second to digest his words. "it's not like any of this exactly came as a surprise. you ignored me, remember? wanted to flex your big girl pants."

you pull away from him and sit up, forcibly shutting out the daze that jimin routinely puts you under. "what's wrong with you? can't you be polite and wait for a couple hours before laying into me like a normal person? jesus, jimin."

"so let me get this straight," jimin sits up, watching your back as you sit away from him. "you're mad because i'm not telling you what you want to hear?"

"no," you say, head shaking. "i'm not mad. i'm upset because i came here to be comforted by my friend and you're just making me feel worse."

"what do you want me to say, ____? that i had high hopes from the start?" jimin pushes his hair back, brows now at a sharp incline from frustration. "i told you starting something with jungkook was trouble but you didn't listen. why should i feed your victim complex when all i've done is try to help you?"

"victim complex?" you repeat, standing up slowly. the sudden steadiness of your voice causes jimin to panic.

"not like that. don't take it like that, it's just," he's suddenly before you, his warm hands palming up your arms warmly. "i didn't wanna see you get like this and it happened anyway, is all i'm saying." he sighs when your scowl doesn't let up. "if hobi hyung hadn't have given up so easy, then maybe…maybe this would never have happened. maybe if i had been harsher with him then you would have-"

"what are you talking about?" you ask quietly, searching jimin's face. "give up so easy? what's that supposed to mean?"

he looks away, hands slipping off you. "it's nothing."

"jimin."

he struggles to look at you, tongue in cheek. his lips purse for a moment, pink like roses. he's wearing that navy jumper you like. "look, it's not a big deal. he wasn't supposed to fuck you or anything, just take you out for a while. get your mind off kookie, show you a nice time."

your blood runs cold. "what?"

jimin's expression softens. "it's not as bad as it sounds-"

"really?" your voice is sharp, sharper than he's ever heard it. you recoil as if you had been struck for the second time today. "because it sounds like you asked some guy to keep me occupied like i'm a fucking dog. all because you can't stand the idea of me being within a meter of jungkook-"

he steps in, but you step back. "you know that's not true, _."

"don't i?" you scoff, covering your face in disbelief. "jimin, you've been hellbent against me even looking at the guy since day fucking one."

"because i didn't want you to get hurt!" jimin counters, eyes downcast. "i know, okay? i know how much of a dick it makes me sound, but its not like it hurt you when you had no idea! hoseok broke it off before you even knew about it so why-"

"because it's worse," you turn away from him. "you tried to control me. choose what's best for me because you think you know better than i do. sound familiar?"

his jaw sets, and it's like you can hear the twine snap in his head, the percussion of his heartbeat above yours even though he doesn't close the space between you. jimin stares at you for a long minute before drawing in a thin breath. "fine," he steps in, and you can't look away. "you want me to say it? fine. i'll say it."

suddenly the air is lace thin around you as you stare at him, waiting. jimin looks off somewhere else, somewhere you can't reach. "don't tell me you haven't thought about it, because i know you have. if i have you must have too. and lately its all i can think about - being with you, holding you, being the one who gets to touch you. and yeah, maybe it took having to see you with jungkook for me to realise how much i want all that, i put my hands up. but you have no idea what's it like to watch the person you love most get toyed around with by a time bomb like that. i've seen jungkook go through girls like underwear and i love him, god i love him, but even the idea of you being one of those wasted girls sitting outside a party crying over his sorry ass makes my fucking ears ring."

"j-jimin…" you whisper, but you have nothing to say. your hands shake.

"you deserve more than that, ____. you deserve more than waiting around for booty calls or living up to what the next guy wants. from jungkook, hoseok, anyone. you deserve someone's devotion and yeah, maybe all this time i've been too much of a pussy to give it. maybe all this time i was tiptoeing around my feelings for you because i knew if i admitted to myself that i loved you - if i admitted i was just like every other guy - i'd actually set the bar for something other than disappointment. id actually have to step up, and i didn't know if i could do it. i still don't. but if it has to be someone…it should be me."

suddenly he's holding your hands, calming the tremble that rattles them. his words bunch up together in your ears, the meaning lost amidst your awe. "jimin….jimin what are you saying? where is all this coming from, i don't...i don't understand wh-"

"i'm saying," he cups your face. "choose me." he pulls you in. so, so close. "choose me, not jungkook. not anyone else. me."

and there's a part of you that has already caved. that's already kissing him, melting into his arms like you've wanted to for so, so long. you're falling back onto the couch with him in a fit of giggles, curling back into his chest to hide your watery eyes, asking him why the fuck he took so long. you chat together between teasing kisses, pour your hearts out, maybe cry a little. later you would make tea and order pad thai and watch the office all night and fall asleep together in the living room well past dawn and then-

you close your eyes. "i can't."

"you can," jimin says, so passionately you shudder. his brown eyes are teaming with too much determination and ardour for his own good, and you both know it. its difficult to grapple with how huge a risk he's taking, because jimin never takes risks. it made the whole situation seem dire. "you know you can, ____. it's us. there's no one like us."

you don't know how you're not crying yet. you only have jimin to hold onto, hands balled in his shirt without knowing if you're about to push him away or pull him in forever. "maybe back then. maybe if you'd have said all this before," you feel empty, the beat of your pulse suddenly strong in your fingertips. "but it doesn't matter anymore."

he shakes his head in denial, his determination palpable. "of course it does-"

"i'm in love with him," you say. to jimin. to yourself. to the world, finally. "i'm in love with jungkook." holding jimin's stare isn't as difficult as you thought it'd be. "you know if you'd have done all this a few months ago…if you'd have just...i was always yours without question, jimin. and you knew it." it's his turn to bristle under the strain of your voice. "jungkook isn't perfect. i'll be the first one to admit that. he's made me cry, he fucks up, he makes mistakes. but he's never lied to me. he never made decisions for me. he never passed judgement on what i should or shouldn't do with my life. something that i never thought i wouldn't able to say about you, too."

there's a brief moment where everything stops. neither of you can believe what you just said. jimin watches you, frozen in his place as you take your bag, eyes glittering with tears when he calls for you. suddenly he's the time bomb he feared becoming, the panic in his eyes lighting them up like fire crackers. for the first time in his life, he stumbles over his words, and then his feet when you reach for the door, all composure lost. he was unravelling like a tapestry in front of you, never to be repaired, and he could feel it. "____. ____, please," jimin chokes, his cheeks blotchy. "i wanted to protect you, i was just trying to help. don't go. please don't go. i was trying to help you."

"no. you were trying to have me." you say, closing the door behind you.

you have no idea what time it is when you hear the bell ring incessantly.

it had been hours since you'd returned home from jimin's, but there was no way for you to keep track when your only priority was just keeping yourself afloat. you turned your phone off, drew the curtains, and resolved to alternate between sitting in seulgi and jisoo's rooms until they came back. you didn't know what else to do. when you weren't crying you were hyperventilating, and when that stopped the absence of emotion was so powerful you could barely keep your eyes open. you were exhausted but could not sleep. starving but could not eat. it was a miracle you even made it down the stairs, using what little strength you had to yank it open without even thinking about who could be on the other side in the middle of the fucking night. but at this point, you would gladly take a serial killer over jimin or jungkook.

"taehyung," you breathe when you take in his face, relieved. you must look like absolute shit because he scans your face and winces.

"jimin told me," he says, the apology in his voice and expression was almost painful to register. "he told me everything. ____, i'm so sorry. i should have told you about the hoseok thing, i just thought it would be worse coming from me, and then i tried to force jimin into confessing but then he didn't because he's jimin, and now-"

"you're only allowed to come inside if you stop apologising," you say weakly, voice haggered from the hours of crying.

taehyung's pouty expression almost makes you smile with how cute he looks, gingerly stepping over the threshhold. "i really am sorry though."

"for what," you say monotonously, closing the door behind him while he takes off his shoes. "my inexplicably terrible taste in men? my uncanny ability to get manipulated by literally anyone who shows me a scrap of affection? or my absolutey shredded-to-shit attachment style thats barely intact let alone functioning healthily? after hoppping between the first two for a few hours i'd personally go for the latter. but whatever."

"please shut up," taehyung sighs, bringing you into his arms before you could have a second thought about it. "you need to amp up the misandry in this context. a lot of this had nothing to do with you and everything to do jimin and jungkook."

you're too tired to open your eyes, snuggling into the softness of taehyung's chest. you’re too exhausted to argue. "where did you learn the word misandry? have you been reading?"

"yeah," you can hear his big, pleased grin. "i know you and the girls have been calling me a himbo behind my back."

"affectionately," you add, peering up at him. he wipes the wetness off your cheeks, moving upstairs to your room with your hand in his. he fetches you a glass of water before putting you into bed like he's paid to do it. taehyung was the cuddliest person you had ever met, but you had rarely seen him dote on anyone. "girls love himbos. it's a compliment."

"not all girls," he mutters when he returns from the bathroom with a glass of water. "drink this, would you? you look so dry it's making me itchy."

you do as he says with a roll of your eyes. "what do you mean?" you finish your water with a big gulp. "jisoo loves dumb guys, what are you talking about?"

taehyung looks away from you, bottom lip rolling up under his teeth so fast you barely catch it. he pulls up your desk chair next to your bed, thinking long and hard before meeting your eyes again. "i don't mean jisoo."

you don't understand at first, but after staring at his face for a long minute your stomach drops. "don't. don't you fucking dare," another beat of silence. you rip the covers off you to scamble to your knees, grab your pillow and hurl it at taehyung's head. "taehyung, please don't tell me that the one remaining, healthy relationship i have with a man has also been shot to shit because i swear to god i'm gonna-"

"it's not a big deal," he says firmly, and he really does mean it. taehyung catches your wrists when you lunge at him, effectively ending your outburst before it can begin. he keeps hold of them while he stares into your eyes, watching the way they fill up with a fresh bout of tears. "i've had a crush on you for a while, so what? it's not anyone's business but mine so don't worry about it."

you try not to scream at him. "how long?"

"...since the start." he shrugs. "it's not like i could have done anything anyway. with jimin around. he’d never have it."

"but...! but..." you splutter, the highlight reel of your friendship suddenly marred before your eyes. "but you let me talk to you about boys! you gave me advice with hobi and jimin and jungkook and...! you encouraged jimin to confess to me. and the whole thing with jisoo?"

he wets his lips guiltily. "jisoo is a nice girl. i like her, but...not like you. i've always liked you."

you shake your head in horror, your face crumpling. bile rose in your throat. "so all of that...playing with my friend like that. was just to get to me?"

"listen to me," taehyung says firmly, gripping your wrists to make you look at him again. he's so close you can feel the warmth of his breath on yours, and you never realised how large taehyung's torso was compared to yours before. he could have smothered you, but he didn't. in all senses. "the way jimin and jungkook handled their feelings is on them, just like how this is on me. it doesn't matter if i'm fucking you or not, you're my friend and i'll always want people to do right by you. and that includes me."

there was nothing else to say, so taehyung wordlessly wipes your face again and fetches you more water before retreating to sleep on the couch downstairs. all the while you sat there in your bed, confused and bewildered and thoughtful. the same bed jungkook fucked you on. the same bed jimin held you in. out of all the men in your life, taehyung was the only one who treated his feelings for you with reverence. there wasn't one interaction you could think of where he made his feelings clear, where he even hinted towards wanting something more. if he hadn't have said anything tonight, in the wake of one of the most emotionally tumultuous days of your life, you would still be in the dark about it all. and that was the scariest part. you didn't know anyone else who hadn't let their feelings for you effect how they treated you. so ultimately, it was possible.

and jimin and jungkook chose not to do that. but taehyung did.

taehyung did.

when you finally pad downstairs after hours of ruminating, jisoo's bedroom door is wide open. and that's who you should be thinking about now - your friend and sister jisoo - as the sky begins to lighten with the signs of morning. you hadn't slept for over twenty four hours, you were hungry and thirsty, delirious from the whirlwind of losing the two most important men in your life in one day. but still, you are drawn to taehyung. taehyung, who never asked anything of you. taehyung, who was as silent as he was selfless this whole time. taehyung who routinely put what he wanted aside in favour of what was best for you. taehyung, who protected you without needing credit or recognition for it. taehyung, taehyung, taehyung, taehyung, taehyung-

"taehyung," you whisper scraping your nails through his hair. his eyes fluttered open, twisting his head to face you as you hovered above him. he could barely see you in the darkness. "taehyung, wake up."

"what is it?" he croaks, sitting up with half-lidded eyes and a yawn. he doesn't know how to read the expression on your face. he swings his legs off the sofa in a sitting position, wearing nothing but his boxers and tee, visibly alarmed. "what happened? are you okay?"

you take his face in your hands and kiss him.

taehyung stiffens against you, breath drawn thin. you pull away to gauge his expression, desperately searching his eyes in the darkness. for discomfort, disapproval, anything negative at all. the absolute ardour you find instead could knock you down if taehyung didn't reach for your neck, kissing you again. you whine at the feel of his tongue, having no idea where such sudden and intense arousal was coming from. when you pull away with shaky limbs, you climb onto his thick thighs so he can feel your wetness through his boxers. taehyung grunts at the sensation, and again when you kiss him passionately and without abandon. the sweet girl every guy he knew was agonising over, suddenly in his lap. he's barely had his tongue down your throat for ten minutes and you're already rocking into him, his erection betraying his resolve.

it's better than he dreamed.

"taehyung," you gasp, palming him now. he groans when he pulls away to look at your mouth, glistening with his saliva when you take his hand and guide it down to your arousal. "please."

#jungkook x reader #jungkook x you #jungkook au #bts x reader #bts au #jungkook scenario #bts scenario #jimin x reader #jimin x you #jimin au #bts fic #jungkook fic #jimin fic #jungkook college au #jimin college au #bts college au #myfic

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pbandjesse · 3 years ago

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Today felt weird. I dont even know why. I was mostly in a good mood but also I was overheated in the afternoon and I didn't feel as productive as I was hoping. But I did do a lot.

I slept okay last night. I woke up around 8 and just. Laid there for a long time. I would get up and I was in a good mood. I got washed and dressed. I felt okay. James made me a little sandwich for breakfast and I would do some work on the computer. I did not do styling today, but I had a little backlog I will attack tomorrow. I have requested to have a few more clients to keep me on my 50 per month goal. Its not much money but its something towards the budget.

I would do more organizing though. I had James help me bring everything out of the bathroom closet and I got rid of empty things like bottles and such. Thankfully we had done the big clean in there when we had that ceiling leak, so I didn't have to do a ton of work. But we have lots of room in there now.

Once that was done I did a little tidying and decided to go out into the world. James helped me bring down the baskets full of donatable stuff. I wouldn't actually drop that off today but its alright.

I had a nice drive out to Columbia but I was frustrated that there was no gas in the car. I had enough to get there and back but I knew I would have to go put gas in the car and I hate doing it. It makes me so nervous.

So I went to the thrift store first. I had a nice time walking around but I didn't actually get much. I found a few candle sticks and tey are bronze. I have had almost no luck with bronze ones so I was pretty excited. I left there and did get gas and it was fine but also I got gas on my hand somehow and thats what I'm always worried about so I was really upset about it. I washed my hands with my waterbottle and tried to not let it bother me.

I went to the shitty goodwill. It continues to be one of the worst Ive been too. Its always a mess with multiple carts of stuff blocking the aisles. There was an old man shuffling around and he was having issue getting around all the stuff on the ground. And its all so overpriced its wild. I got one candle stick there for the same price I got 4 at the second ave. I did get a very cute little flannel fleece coat, but then I had to wait in line for almost 10 minutes because the cashieer had to make a comment about every single item in the women in front of me's cart. Which was full. It was bizarre.

I was glad to be out of there.

I went next door to the staples to buy paper for printmaking. They apparently just had a flood and so they had a lot of clutter too. But the man that worked there went and got me my paper and was very sweet.

I paid and headed out. I drove across the shopping center to the homedepot. I broguth my table leg with me and gouhgt the 8 bolts I needed. I got a little overheated and confused about the registers but they were very helpful and I paid my $2.

I went to the Marshalls next. They didn't have as much cute fall stuff as I hoped but I did get James a pumpkin shirt. I got myself some conditioner for my hair. I was hungry though and went to find lunch next.

I went to the taco bell but the drive through line was literally out of th parking lot. So I googled the next cosest one and went there. I had my tacos in the parking lot. I honestly wasn't as hungy as I thought was. But I ate and then went home.

I got back here and unpacked my things. Gave James the things I got for them. It started getting hot this afternoon. So doing anything felt very hard. I would lay down for a bit. But I couldn't sleep. I just watched videos. Eventually I did get up and sorted through all my jewelry and was happy with that task. James made pasta for dinner. And I took a bath.

Now I am in bed. Ready to sleep. I am going to work hard on styling and art tomorrow. Wish me luck to have energy. I hope you all sleep good tonight. Take care of yourself!

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abyss-mal-blog1 · 6 years ago

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current mind-space//word vomit

it’s amazing how much can change in a few days, but it hasn’t been a week since my finals ended and i already felt so different. i have been doing f45 everyday this week (if not then some kind of workout, but i’ve really been into that recently). i am feeling so much better now without deadlines, sometimes i don’t know if i function better under pressure or not. i guess not, but then it’s amazing how much i can do and achieve under pressure. i need the right amount of pressure, and this semester it has been a little difficult for me to get around that.

last friday was kinda my last day of finals, i just had an essay to submit, and i am disappointed in myself and my work ethic because i submitted it at 9pm, went to my cousin’s (disappointing) party, and then professor emailed me to say that she cannot read Pages format (seriously smh @ my tardiness!!!), only got back at 1am that night and sent my mediocre essay. i am a little sad about it because i know that is not my 100%. idk why but college so far has just been a series of 80% effort. this paper was an interesting one, on airbnb, on the sharing economy, it’s a performance studies paper where i analyze the hospitality platform in terms of host-user relationship, parasitism and (attempted) to talk about free online labor. it is a little too late now but i kinda want to work on it again and like, submit for feedback. maybe ill ask taylor.

last saturday was kinda meh, i agreed to go to a *social* kinda event at a bar/club at chelsea, held for Asian-ivy-alumni-people that yanlin invited me too. it was at up&up and honestly a little...i didn’t enjoy it at all. the music sucked, the people were either too dorky or gross or old or weird, and the whole time i just kept saying to myself, “never again”. they said it was open bar but they only served absolut, which was shit. and then my friend’s two friends were...i feel sorry that this was their first clubbing experience. at the beginning my reaction was look at all these ivy alumni! get hitched with one of them for ~da connectsx~ (and nothing else) but no kidding i was actually interested in talking to them just to get to know what people who graduated from ivies are up to, and what are they doing at such events...and are they actually enjoying themselves because it was really kinda gross. met my friend’s friend who seemed like a really smart engineer (he asked for my number the next day lol), and a german dude at the bar who didn’t want to get me a drink. all i needed that night was a drink.....(i’m glad i didn’t drink tho because recently drinking has made me feel all kinds of bad) we had ramen after at ramen-ya (most probably the worst ramen and charsiew i’ve had but what can we do at 3am and my friend wanted noodle and soup...)

on sunday i KNow i should have left my house earlier to workout but i didn’t. i was angry at myself that i didn’t. instead, i stayed at home and emotion-ate. i must have eaten more green bean soup than my stomach would have liked. what else...avocado? i remember..two bananas? god. this was the day i felt like i was n’s boyfriend because i had to do what she wanted to do. i know i had agreed on going, but at that point i really wanted to go thrifting or something. i mean when i got to central park it was fine and things were good but the whole day just felt like i was kinda pulled into doing something that wasn’t my first choice of plans, not that i didn’t enjoy myself lying under the sun at the park. it just felt like i was accompanying someone. i was half an hour late to meet her as well, and half heartedly got a burrito-wrap at newsbar. if you think about it it is really kinda funny, we’re just buying food and taking the subway to this grass patch 50 blocks away. we didn’t walk much, we literally only stayed at a little grassy slope overlooking the baseball pitch. anyway we went to a dance class after (the class was an hour long but i felt like n had asked me about when and what time we should book the classes for more than an hour by text so i just got really sick of it) i rushed home and got dinner with my uncle who’s in town for my cousin’s graduation. i was surprised that he chose the same japanese restaurant again, after dissing it half a year ago we ate here. the omakase was crazy and it cost 230 per person. (for the most expensive set) it was also kinda dumb because you aren’t allowed to order a different omakase set from anyone else - everyone on the table has to order the same - because of “timing”. i wonder if this is how it is in japanese omakase etiquette, but in any case it really earned them a hefty amount because my uncle decided to get 230 for all of us. qiyang didn’t like and said qiqi had bad taste, hahaha. the food wasn’t bad, i mean it’s japanese fusion, but the prices were way too steep for the taste. anyway enough about the food, during the dinner i think we talked about many things though. i kinda wanted to talk to my uncle individually because i think he is the only one who knows about ah gong, but he was sick, and i could tell he was exhausted. my aunt got a little impatient because i didn’t arrange plans to take their furniture and they were going to throw all of them away and it was actually the first time i’ve seen her get so worked up - but at the same time trying to control her emotions - because she was talking to me. i could tell she was annoyed though but i tried not to take it personally, and arranged it tomorrow.

arranging the moving stuff was kinda last minute, i was walking to the library for work one day and i saw a truck that said MakeSpace. i assumed it was a kind of moving company and so i looked them up. they seemed to be pretty okay in terms of their services and so i decided to try them out. confirmation and setting up an appointment went pretty smoothly, except for the part where the guy i think his name was joseph, asked me to give my credit card details over the phone. idk why i did that! i stopped though, and asked him why, to which he replied he wanted to key in with the coupon code. this service has so much gimmicks within the first 2-3 minutes on the phone he was already telling me about how the first pick up is free, and that he will deduct 100$ off the first month...when people give you discounts too easily it just feels like a ploy and a thing they give to everyone, it’s not anything special and it’s probably calculated inside whatever we have to pay. anyway, i was just thinking it would be cheaper (assuming the maximum that i would have to pay is ~$500, as i confirmed with them on the phone yesterday), it’d still be cheaper than starting an apartment lease now and going through the trouble of finding two subletters.

well. idk, it’s also easy to have things all moved in, i have to find a place to store my perishables!

moving is so much work, and storing things. this reminds me of my paper on airbnb and about the digital nomad lifestyle. it is interesting though, that this is what it has become. but the homogenized aesthetic is something i really cannot stand, in airbnb, in coffeeshops around the world..i am sure you know what i’m talking about. a new york times writer did something about this - he termed it “Airspace” - and apparently it originated from Brooklyn. I guess that’s where the art/avant-garde stuff started. well. keep a look out im gonna write a blogpost about that

moving on

nat came to sleepover on sunday night and a few days after because the school kicks you out of the dorms you pay so much for right after your final ends. i forgot if we did something fun but i probably just fell asleep.

on monday i think i went to f45 and did cardio at Dumbo with Gi. he seems like a pretty nice trainer, the first time i went it was him and another girl Bertha (i think my first f45 was last tuesday) and i felt like i had two personal trainers with me - Gi was cheering me on and Bertha was doing it with me. it felt like such a good workout, one of the best ive had in a while. then work, where i arranged the movers stuff. i also realized i bought the wrong date for my flight ticket as my friends and had to buy one more...............

tuesday was the same f45 in the morning, and the bobst after. didn’t really get much work done at bobst. oh i also viewed a 3BR flex at 160. hella expensive and small, and dates didn’t work out anyway. also the broker who brought us to view the apartment was a very nice tall french man and his name was jean-francois which i couldn’t pronounce and asked nat but still called him jean as in jeen instead of john. this is why i have to learn french. you’re embarrassing. i also went to the itp/ima spring show with shubham which was super cool. there were many cool ideas, and i just wonder if i could create something like that. i didn’t get to see all of the exhibits which i regret, but i remember a few notable projects. one was an installation made with keyboards that randomly clicks, but when you hold your phone up it’ll stop. it’s made using 3d gestures. there’s also one at a gallery for surveillance, this team had a thing they call facebox, and it’s literally a box, that when you open it has a webcam that would capture your face, find you on facebook, and print out an invoice/receipt on how much you have earned for this giant tech company. what else...an AR project that when you scan a food, it shows you where the food comes from. nat said that she would love it if menus have something they could scan and then have pictures appear in ~holographic~ format, or maybe in the nearer future something on your phone that shows you a picture of the picture of the food. but isn’t it a surprise tho? sometimes the fun’s in the surprise, you read the description, you know what are the foods you’ll eat, leaving room to imagine or be surprised by how the chef puts it together! anyway, went for dinner with nat and jenny - got vegan shwarma (definitely wasn’t worth $14) and went to get crepes with will after.

wednesday we were gonna go to the dmv but we weren’t prepared. nat also needed to get her passport and she was lazy. wow the number of times i mentioned her, it feels like she’s my boyfriend at this point. talked to famz, sister, and beatrix. am currently considering if i should even go to beijing or just go straight home. fuck. went to bobst for work but no one was there i was just really sleepy. viewed an apartment at 55 morton (it’s a nice quiet residential street that seems to be tucked away from the loud cars and bars and people) then i went to f45 again-varsity!!! cardio!!!, walked across brooklyn bridge (a little regret although i wanted to walk, but my bag was heavy and there were too many tourists to brisk walk)

also the reason for this is that after my soba/miso/salad/shrimp dinner last night i was just watching a bunch of netflix shows and it was probably the caffeine from puerto rican roasting company - the barista made me a chai cappuccino with almond milk (3 SHOTS!!!)

me and nat couldn’t sleep, i really think i slept for an hour. i watched so many different shows, yoko and john’s documentary, while we were young, anthony bourdain, i was seriously flipping through all the shows and alternating between amazonprme and youtube and netflix and i even tried watching peaceful cuisine and making the brightness lower and had the sleep mode on and wow i just couldn’t sleep

so yeah the birth of this word vomit

i am going to create more things

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whiskeyandwildfire · 5 years ago

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Diving off the Mackinaw Bridge at 2am

(Please excuse the tardiness of this entry, I hope the content will serve as an explanation. However, first, I hope you will join me for a little afternoon poetry. If you would like, please listen to this track while reading the following poem aloud at a medium pace)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXvi1-gjI4A&list=PLkLGtfv9wqNKKRIY95QMUZqFwe_cl3orB&index=6

Getting closer to the edge A gust of wind comes off the straights And seems to push and pull you simultaneously.

And if you are the push I am the pull.

Different paths to the same town Square in the middle of nothing Open past nine and closed on Sundays.

And if you are a paddle boat On old Kitchi-Gummi I am a raft floating too far from shore And long past my bedtime.

Crashing waves wake Us at night and no campfire story Or prescription strength anything Will bring us back down before the sun comes up.

And if you are the sun I am the burn that comes later Unexpected, unwanted, and staying for months

Un-welcomed like a cousin from upstate Who borrows and never returns all of your best dress socks.

Or a song overplayed that you change Or try to change before realizing Music’s all the same today And tomorrow, and next week too.

And if you are the oboe concerto Rising and falling like a lost bird in flight I am the sound of a radio played too high

On a passing car swerving to avoid a chipmunk That’s thinking the same thought at that moment As I am, “How the fuck did I get here?”

And where will I be tomorrow, and tomorrow, and next week too?

But if you are mine I am your’s And that’s all there is.

After the push and the pull After the fall After the water wakes And the sun rises The bird takes flight And the song ends.

After tomorrow, and tomorrow.

ENTRY - Part 1

I’m writing this as I sit next to my father, six hours in to an eight hour trip from Michigan to Pennsylvania. He’s only driven a fourth of the way and already seems tired. The road wobbles and waves beneath the car as he changes lanes without signaling. The mirror I’ve reclaimed from my Grandparents house crashes against the wheel well of the back tire. Surely it’s shattered.

We pull off into the closest rest stop to stretch our legs, switch jobs, and check on the cargo.

“Okay son, don’t make me nervous” he says as I adjust the mirrors and seat back from the hunched over locked in position they’re kept in for his short frame. This is also something he comments on when it’s his turn to move them back.

My dad got into a small accident May 4th of 2019 in the car we drive in. I remember the date because it was the day after my 30th birthday. I got the call that he had slid the car into a rock pile about a block from his house. It had been raining and the brakes needed replacing anyway.

The brake pads and rotors had been gone since winter. In Michigan, the road salt eats away at...well, everything. Down to your spirit and definitely through 4 pieces of cheap foam.

The rain on the day of the accident wasn’t any worse than usual, and were it not for the fact that my dad was also drunk when he crashed it probably could have been avoided all together. Honestly though, when I see him sober it’s hard to tell which is better.

All of these mitigating factors aside, as someone who was voted “Worst Driver in High School” there must be some truth to the expressed concern. Three tickets in six months earned me the title and the almost immediate three month suspension of my license backed up the claim. We won’t mention the fact that two of these tickets were thrown out and the only reason that my license was suspended was because no one would listen to what I had to say, in a large part because I didn’t know how to say it. How to defend myself in matters of the law. Looking back, and with his experiences, you would think Dad being in the court room would have helped.

I change lanes and press down on the gas to no avail. The accelerator misses and the engine revs.

“Don’t make me nervous, Son”

You need to know that not only haven’t I driven in the better part of a year, but also that when I do I’m used to driving at least semi new rental cars. Cars with at least basic capability and safety measures.

“This is not a me, problem.” I respond. “You need new brakes. You need a new car” I stop there, he’s already not listening.

The road wobbles. The mirror crashes.

ENTRY - Part 2

I’m in my apartment now. Bags and luggage unpacked, father gone as quickly as possibly; never one for standing still. Mirror scratched, but in tact. Much like everything else. Little scratches that aren’t my stories to tell. Going through boxes that I collected and transported, mostly from my Mom’s. A special deck of cards, a stack of papers from school, and a present perfectly wrapped.

My Grandpa died in 2009. It was a week before my 21st birthday, I remember this because two weeks before he said to me “ If you don’t tell your Grandma I’ll have a beer with you” Of course I had been a pretty regular consumer since I was 15, but I couldn’t stand to break his heart.

Now, yesterday. Over 10 years later. My Grandpa had one last gift to give me. I’m opening it now. The wrapping paper is for a birthday. There’s no words written and no card. There’s a post-it already removed that says my name and that was the same for my brother and sister. I rip open the first layer and the trapped air inside is freed, blown around my entire body by the overhead fan. I can smell him in the wind. This is not just my mind either, I notice bringing the paper closer to my nose. He must have sprayed his Old Spice on the wrappings before sealing it shut. A gift inside a gift. A part of what made him back on the earth if only for a moment. Inside, a toy truck. An army transport of impressive detail. The kind of truck my Grandpa serviced in WW2. The kind of truck he fixed over and over again, under heavy fire, in a foreign country away from his wife so that he could defend all that was coming to him. Fighting for me without even knowing who I am.

Research - Thesis

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychoanalyst who wanted an answer to the question: “Why do seemingly good people do obviously bad things?”

Jung finally devised an answer in the formulation of the shadow self, the dark side – the side that’s hidden from conscious awareness AND the side that’s metaphorically dark.

Jung’s model of the shadow arises from the human subconscious/unconscious.

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.” – Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion

You see…in childhood, we are socialized to behave a certain way, to follow a certain set of rules.

As a child, you know nothing about the world, so it is the responsibility of your caretakers to teach you about the world and its written and unwritten rules. Following these allow us to “fit in” with society and operate as productive citizens and achieve some standard of worldly success. This is the socialization process.

Some of these rules are actually good because they allow a society to function, for many people to enjoy a good standard of living, and lead reasonable lives.

However, “life happens” and many people in Western society (or even the world at large) have not been trained or socialized to face discomforting things that happen in life.

SOURCE

I began this entry with the two contrasting stories to illustrate this point. In my very basic, beginning stages of trying to understand Shadow Work and the Shadow Self that it is important to recognize what behaviors or actions are that of another person, what thoughts or actions are that of you...and more deeply, it is important to recognize what thoughts or actions are yours that cause you discomfort BECAUSE you see them in others.

Example - I don’t like when my father drinks too much because he becomes dismissive and hard to talk to.

Shadow Talk - I don’t like when I drink too much, because of the same reasons.

Example - I don’t like when my father comments on my bad driving that is really the fault of his broken vehicle, which is the result of his poor decisions and lack of accountability.

Shadow Talk - I don’t like when I don’t deal with problems as they arise.

Example - I don’t like that my father can’t communicate with me.

Shadow Talk - I don’t like that I can’t find a way to connect with him.

I also began this entry to illustrate that there are different “gifts” we can receive from people in our lives. Some positive both in the act and the outward appearance of receiving the gift and the actual gift itself, and some negative in appearance, but possibly positive in an unconsidered way. Example, being so uncomfortable and unhappy in a job that you lose interest, get fired, and only months later find your dream job because you were available to apply to it.

Arts Education - Research and updates

I’ve been picking through a report of collected data to help prove efficacy of the Young Playwrights Lab to potential granters, specifically under the new ESSA (Every Single Student Achieves) Act that explicitly details what funding is available, what types of Arts Education programs are eligible, what kind of research or efficacy you must be able to prove, and how much money is available in that section. There are currently 10 different sections of funding. 6 of those require Title III - Title IV level research proof to apply for funding. Here are the definitions from the report.

 Strong evidence (Tier I) comes from study reports that :

Show statistically significant positive

intervention effects on relevant outcomes (without any statistically significant negative effects);

Meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards without reservations. (What’s this thing?)

Were conducted using a large, multisite sample (i.e., more than 350 students and more than a single school district).

 Moderate evidence (Tier II) comes from study reports that

(a) show statistically significant positive intervention effects on relevant outcomes (without any statistically significant negative effects);

(b) studies that meet WWC evidence standards with reservations;

(c) studies that were conducted using a large, multisite sample (i.e., more than 350 students and more than a single school district). (What’s different between I and II)

 Promising evidence (Tier III) comes from study reports that (a) show statistically significant positive intervention effects on relevant outcomes (without any statistically significant negative effects), and (b) describe correlational studies with statistical controls for selection bias.

 Research-based rationale (Tier IV) evidence comes from study reports that

(a) feature a well specified logic model informed by research or evaluation,

(b) describe interventions that are undergoing additional research regarding their effects

Here is an example from this same report that details an acceptable logic model.

It is my recommendation that for YPL to best take advantage of possible funding opportunities from ESSA that a new logic model should be developed from existing research that is “evidence based” as opposed to “rationale based” (Example, pre and post surveys, attendance statistics of kids participating in YPL, general test scores of those same students V. rationale based research that has more to do with facts we already know but aren’t tracking in the classrooms I.E. Art makes kids happy)

It is also my recommendation that one or more YPL programs for this next school year be chosen as control groups to either follow, or purposefully ignore the current model to test efficacy. Having the contrast to our goal will help illustrate to possible funders the actual impact of the program. This is especially imperative as programs continue online as there might be an opportunity to raise money for a TBD in person set of classes AS WELL as writing for grants to continue the work being done online.

(Thank you for your continued patience and attention during this hefty post)

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punkcherries · 7 years ago

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get ready to rrrrrumble

jesus christ this is a long ass submission so uh puts it in a read more also puts my txt in bold so its easier to read 👍

Right, so I’ve just read everything that happened in the last few asks you got and I’m just gonna sit down and tell you this right now. You better strap the fuck in because this is long and if you’re not gonna read it, shame on you, because all of this is specifically about YOU and the problems people have with you (the people Blu mentioned). First off, I’m not Blu, so don’t go and start calling him names in your server because you’re finally, FINALLY, being called out on all the bullshit you do. I used to be your friend, I left on semi-good terms, and this entire thing is going to explain WHY I left + why you need to square the fuck up.

sounds like fun whoever u are

You need to get your shit together and seriously change yourself, but of course you’re not gonna do that, because you’re an incompetent piece of shit who has your head so far up your ass you can’t see all the things you do wrong. You act like you’re the person who suffers the most, and that anytime anyone is rude to you it’s THEIR fault, not the fact that you did something terrible to someone or that you started some drama. I’ve been fed up with this shit for months, and have been hesitant to say anything directly to your face, because you don’t even know me that well and we hardly talked. We did interact a few times, but those few times were absolute hell to me, because I must have literally retracted some kind of disease just from being near you. You are the fucking EMBODIMENT of tumblrina, and it’s so fucking sad because you weren’t like this before (based on what a few others have told me).

the use of tumblrina here is jus makin me laugh ur a funny guy buddy but i feel like my past self is worse thn my current self like past me participated in cringe culture so like ew

The way you talk? Absolutely fucking horrid. Sit the fuck up and talk like a normal goddamn human being. I’m here to talk to you, not to decipher some 57 commas and abhorrid shortening of words. Jesus fucking Christ Sombre, I can understand Internet slang and cutting some words up, but you fucking butcher the English language so bad it literally sounds like a toddler having a stroke while mashing at their keyboard. It’s “that” not “tht”, it’s “thing” not “thng”, it’s “something” not “smth”, and for GOD FUCKING SAKES IT’S “THE” NOT “TH”. ARE YOU LITERALLY SO FUCKING LAZY THAT YOU CAN’T EVEN TYPE “THE”, A THREE LETTER WORD. I don’t give a shit if you’re talking like this to sound like an anxious uwu tumblr piece of SHIT, it sounds fucking IDIOTIC and it’s an ABSO-FUCKING-LUTE PAIN TO READ.

language is fake and is mostly just sounds we give meaning, im very sorry if you have trouble reading the way i type and id be more than happy to try and not speak to you like i usually do to everyone else if you just asked politely and talked it out with me (tho the idiotic part is accurate im not very smart lmao)

SPEAKING OF YOUR TUMBLR, LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR UPSET.TXT TAG. If you think anyone is gonna pity you, SPOILER ALERT! THEY’RE FUCKING NOT. Unless they’re your shitty “friends”, NOBODY fucking gives a shit, alrighty? Speaking from my perspective and a few others, nobody’s gonna see this venting on their dashboard and give two shits. Unless they’re your mutuals, they won’t care and it just leaves a bad impression. It’s pathetic how when ANYTHING negative happens to you, you decide to take to Tumblr to boo hoo crypost about it. You wanna vent? You wanna cry yourself to sleep? Cool, talk about it on your server, NOT FUCKING TUMBLR, WHERE LITERALLY ANYONE CAN SEE IT. This is just like how Facebook used to be, you see these posts of people posting personal shit and getting bit in the ass for it later, YEAH WELL THAT’S WHAT’S HAPPENING TO YOU RIGHT NOW BUDDY. DON’T LIKE IT? DON’T FUCKING VENT ON TUMBLR.

i rarely vent on here dude like?? do you see the time gaps between the posts in my vent tag? its also my blog so i can post whatever i like as long as im not hurting anyone yo, plus the point of venting for me at least isnt to like get attention or sympathy its to let off some steam not to mention most to all of my vent posts are vague as hell so like…. why do you even care though?? if i get bit in the ass then thats my problem not yours

Right, so let’s talk about your “im gay” tag too! You identify as male, correct? That’s cool! Congrats. But you’re not gay if you clearly show an interest in girls. Doesn’t matter if they’re fictional or not. Your “im gay” tag is filled with girls (Bismuth, some anime girl, pinup girls). NEWSFLASH ASSHOLE! You’re male, those are females! Opposite genders! That means you’re NOT GAY! WOAAAAAH! So who are you to be reblogging and posting all this shit about how hetero people are the devil, hetero people are the worst wah wah, when you yourself identify as a guy and clearly seem to be interested in girls, even if just a little?

dude i used to identify as nonbinary i only recently started identifying as male, hell i used to identify as female ages back so like? the posts in that tag are most to all old and i do realize my attraction to girls isnt gay, hence why ive only been referring to my attraction to dudes as me being gay post-male identification i guess

Speaking of all the heterophobic shit you reblog, have you not considered it could make some of your followers feel absolutely terrible? I’m bi myself, I like both guys and girls, but holy FUCK when I see that shit on your blog it makes me feel guilty for liking guys at all! Is that how you want people to feel? Whether they’re pan, bi, or straight, that shit’s literally so fucking damaging and it sure as hell hurts to see! And don’t throw that “some of those posts are jokes” bullshit at me, because guess the fuck what! They may be jokes to people who aren’t hetero, but they sure as hell don’t seem like jokes to those who are! How would you feel if I made a joke that was even SLIGHTLY negative towards homosexuals? Wait, no, don’t answer that, because I already know how you’d feel. You’d get pissy, you’d stomp your little baby feet over to Tumblr, and then crypost about it, saying you’re facing homophobia and being harassed blah blah blah.

HETEROPHOBIC IM LAUGHING…. buddy…. pal…. heterophobia is fake and im very sorry if those post make you feel bad as a bisexual person (im also bi so) but heterophobia isnt actually a thing, comparing jokes directed at straight people to lgbtphobia is inherently lgbtphobic as it compares little jokes most to all directed at bigoted/ignorant straights to something that can often result in the actual literal death of hundreds of people for their gender/orientation- that doesnt happen to straight people dude

Also: you don’t have autism. Were you officially diagnosed? Because I’m gonna be real fuckin’ honest, it doesn’t sound like you have autism. You sure have something, hoh yeah, but it’s sure as hell not autism. You put your “autism” up on a pedestal and act like it’s one of the only things about you, like no hunty, your mental illness doesn’t define you. Nobody gives a shit, okay? Your mental illness isn’t an excuse to act like a literal fuckface, it’s not an excuse to treat people like shit, and it sure as hell isn’t an excuse to blame everything on others and make yourself out to be the good guy because “my autism made me anxious or forget things ;w;”. This is the exact kind of tumblrina thing I’m talking about, people on this goddamn website act like their mental illness is the only quality about them and that not being neurotypical makes them special. NEWS-FUCKIN-FLASH, it doesn’t. It really doesn’t. You don’t see me using my mental illness as an excuse for my actions, because I actually step the fuck up and take responsibility for shit I’ve caused. My mental illness does not define me. There’s more to me than that. You need to realize that your fake-ass autism isn’t an excuse for you to be a fucking asshole to the people around you, and that your actions do have consequences. Stop blaming others for shit you’ve caused, stop calling people jackasses when it’s YOU who’s insulting people and twisting the truth, and for the love of God tell your white knights of friends to shut the FUCK up if they don’t know all the details of a situation.

i was technically diagnosed albeit in a nontraditional fashion (a psych at our middleschool was the one who diagnosed me) and i have never defined myself solely by my autism nor have i used it as an excuse for my fuck ups, ive literally apologized and stopped doing the things i did since the blu incident, i recognize i fucked up there and i apologized and i havent done the whole lying out of anxiety thing since, also my white knights of friends??? YOURE the one coming into MY inbox to tell me how shit i am after i blocked blu i literally just want this to be over leave me alone dude

Alright, so now that we’re done talking about YOU, let’s talk about your fandoms. You like Osomatsu-San. Okay, that’s fine. What’s not fine is how FUCKING obsessive you are about it. There’s nothing wrong with liking something and being attached to characters, making art of it, having a blog, reblogging it, talking about it, that’s okay. That’s okay! But you? You fucking hold the characters so close and act like they’re your own characters. You get upset when something doesn’t go your way in the show. This was evidenced by how many times you’ve complained about episodes (guess where? upset.txt) after they’ve come out. That anon about the straight joke? You got so heated over that, didn’t you? Saying Chibita was “out of character”, BITCH, what do you fucking know? He’s not your goddamn character! The writers will write him however the fuck they want. It’s THEIR fucking show, it’s THEIR fucking characters, and it’s THEIR decision of who does what and who acts like what. There’s a VERY thick line between canon and fanon, and you can’t seem to distinguish that AT ALL. You merge your shitty headcanons with the canon universe, and when something doesn’t go your way, you FREAK THE FUCK OUT and go crying about it in your server or on your tags.

youre blowing that ONE FUCKING POST so out of proportion ive never complained abt ososan in upset.txt outside of MAYBE episode 4 and that would be because of the NONCONSENSUAL SEX SCENE i KNOW my headcanons arent canon i KNOW that the chibita/snowtoko complaint was MINOR and i fucking LIKED THAT EPISODE A LOT!! i didnt cry i just felt that based on how the staff have characterized chibita up until that point it was a little jarring to see him react like he did THAT IS ALL! what the fuck!! how would you even know what i talk about in my servers!! youre obviously misinformed my guy!!!

Lemme tell you something, Sombre: Karabita isn’t canon. OH SHIT! I SAID IT BOYS! THAT’S A FUCKING CURSE ISN’T IT!! No, sorry, sit the fuck down and suck those tears up, because it’s true. It’s not canon. It isn’t. You grasp at straws to say it is, but it isn’t. Chibita wore somehing blue? Oh shit, it’s Karamatsu! He’s clearly in love with him! No, sorry honey, that’s not how it works. Of course Chibita would feel pity on him and let him stay with him (ep 24), because who wouldn’t? That doesn’t mean they’re dating. Karamatsu may be the most bisexual person ever, but he sure as hell isn’t dating Chibita (at least, not canonly). Speaking of Chibita, you need to stop acting like any other Matsu x Chibita ship is literal hell. They’re not. There are some decent ones out there, and although they’re rarepairs by now, they’re a lot better quality than the Karabita bullshit you spew out.

me saying karabita is canon is a joke, and my disdain for non karabita matsubita ships is based half in coping reasons and half in chibita has literally no chemistry with the other matsus and seems to not like any of the other bros at all whereas hes actually shown some level of tolerance or interest in karamatsu

While we’re on the subject of non-canon ships, Atsutodo isn’t canon either. Fuck’s sake, they were on screen together for 10 damn seconds. Yes, I’m aware there’s card art of Atsushi and Todomatsu having a meal together, but they’re very clearly not dating if Todomatsu is still going out with girls and holding their hands etc. Oh, speaking of Todomatsu: Your trans hc of him? Generic as fuck. He’s not trans. Call me a transphobe, I don’t give a shit, but he’s not trans. Look at the -kun animes. He’s a guy. Where in his life would he have magically been a girl and then go right back to a guy? The time span between a 12 year old and a 21 year old isn’t long enough to allow you time to transition. In that day and age, it wasn’t even acceptable to be transgender. So none of the Matsus are trans, get that out of your head. Get those “autism hcs” out of your head too, because I KNOW you hc Kara and Jyushi as autistic (and I’m aware you used to headcanon Ichimatsu as autistic too, but we’ll get to that later).

i know atsutodo isnt canon i never said it was all the “x ship is canon” jokes are about karabita and theyre jokes dude, i just think atsutodo would be cute. why the fuck do you even care about my trans hcs?? theyre HEADCANONS they dont HURT ANYONE and like dude there are trans children out there….. stop being a fuckface about simple headcanons what the fuck.

Lemme tell ya something. Karamatsu sure as hell isn’t autistic. Literally the only reason you headcanon him as such is because you yourself claim to be autistic and because “uwu he’s m fav,,,, i relate to him,,,”. Also, I realize “jyushi is autistic xD” headcanons are common, but JESUS FUCK it’s time for them to die. Jyushimatsu is just bizarre in and out, it’s his personality and his way of life. If you’re gonna hc him as autistic for his personality, you’re obviously ignoring his physical abilities. What about that time he cloned himself? Grew different sizes? What about how he seemingly has no bones (tentacle arms)? But oh, let’s ignore that, because he’s always got a smile on his face and he has a childish personality so DURR HE’S OBVIOUSLY AUTISTIC. Also, you used to headcanon Ichimatsu as autistic, but as soon as you started hating him you threw that headcanon out the window. This is PROOF you only headcanon your favorite characters as autistic, and that’s some of the STUPIDEST shit ever.

literally just let people headcanon what they want if it doesnt hurt anyone, im sure in canon theyre not autistic but this is HEADCANON. and is this also to imply that just because a character can do bizarre thing with theyre body they cant also be autistic?? what the fuck does that have to do with anything??? and i didnt throw my autistic ichi hc out the window because “i hate him” i dont even hate him im indifferent to him i hate his fanon incarnation because its stupidly out of character and one note, i also didnt even drop the autism hc for him i feel like he definitely 100% could be autistic but i just dont think about it as much because i think about other characters more than i think about him

Oh yeah, I’d love to hear why you hate Ichimatsu so much? Shut up, I know it’s because “hhhh he abuses kara” but that’s fucking wrong. Listen, Ichimatsu isn’t exactly my favorite either but at least I don’t make him out to be a fucking asshole to Karamatsu. All of the brothers have treated Karamatsu like shit at one point or another. They’ve thrown things at him, ditched him, called him names, ignored him, it’s a fucking trope in the anime that Karamatsu was the one to get hurt. Sure, season 2 has kinda turned that around, but the whole “Ichimatsu is bitter to Karamatsu” thing is the dynamic between them. They DO have moments where they’re not onto each other, though. See how Ichimatsu followed Karamatsu into the woods? Remember the episode where they switched clothes? They didn’t kill each other neither of those times, did they? And yes, I’m aware Ichimatsu has hurt Karamatsu at times (the bazooka, I think smacking?) but he doesn’t LITERALLY ABUSE HIM. You don’t see him kicking him around, PUNCHING HIM, HITTING HIM, EVERY SECOND OF HIS LIFE. Yes, he calls him names. Yes, he’s threatened to hurt him (“I’ll kill you, Shittymatsu.”) but he’s been stopped or HAS stopped every time. If he really was so intent on hurting Karamatsu, don’t you think he wouldn’t ignore his brothers and hurt Karamatsu anyway? But no, he didn’t, and he stopped each time he grabbed Kara. That’s because the entire “Ichimatsu despises Karamatsu” thing is a GAG in the show. It’s meant to be funny. It’s not meant for your negative ass to label it as abuse and then boohoo about it every time Ichimatsu is mentioned. That’s not a valid reason to hate a character, hell, even Karamatsu’s seiyuu said in a Doramatsu CD that Karamatsu was just comic relief. And if you’re gonna look for a reason why Ichimatsu dislikes Karamatsu, consider the hinted and well-supported reason: Ichimatsu “hates” Karamatsu because of how confident he is and how he can always be himself. Ichi is insecure. Ichi is antisocial. Kara, on the other hand, can express himself and show how “cool” he is. Consider that Ichimatsu wants to be more like him, hence why he said he’s the “number one Karamatsu boy” in that one episode.

okay this is just ridiculous i DONT HATE ICHIMATSU and i KNOW its a GAG, i KNOW they get along sometimes i KNOW all the brothers have shat on kara I KNOW THIS abuse takes many forms though and in a more serious anime the way the bros treat kara would probably be depicted as abusive, but it isnt a serious anime so its a gag and i understand that thats FINE, did you even watch the ichimatsu incident? ichimatsu got plenty fucking pissed off at karamatsu and stuff and the “number one karamatsu boy” nonsense was him being concerned about how karamatsu might think of him as such not him calling himself a karamatsu boy, and yes i know the whole ichi wants to be cool and confident like kara thing i understand that but even so that wouldnt logically excuse his bitterness toward kara but again, its a gag anime so its whatever, youre also ignoring the facet of his disdain towards kara being in part because kara is also vain and ichi finds this annoying and thinks kara is fake as hell because of it there was something in i think a magazine where the bros are all asked what they think of eachother i think and i THINK ichi said something along the lines of him not liking kara because he fakes being nice for the sake of his own ego or something (which is likely ichi just having a negative image of kara rather than that actually being the case because i dont think karas that smart but who knows i dont!!) so like y’know

In conclusion, I would like to say you need to shut the fuck up and chill with your fandoms and headcanons, realize headcanons aren’t canon, and also get your head out of your ass. You’ve done so many wrong things and need to stop blaming them on others. You’ve lied, insulted, and put the blame on so many of your old friends, you’ve avoided people who you deem “toxic” (simply because they have different opinions than you), you think people can’t form their own opinions, and you don’t back up your friends when they’re getting shittalked. You act like an assoholic brat and cannot, for the life of you, open up your eyes and see this. You’re lucky the dicktwats on your server are there for you, because if they weren’t, you’d be all alone, and honestly? That seems pretty good at this point. Fits you perfectly.

i know headcanons arent canon, i know ive lied (though ive really only insulted people who were dicks to my friends and maybe blu which probably not a good thing but i mean hes also insulted me so?? even i guess??) and i regret that, im more honest now and try my best to show kindness to people who have done me and my friends no wrong, ive only ever put blame on blu i literally dont blame anyone else for anything, i dont avoid people i deem “toxic” i avoid people i dont get along with because if i dont get along with them then theres no reason to talk to them im gonna let them live their lives, of course i think people can form their own opinions what on earth are you talking about???? when did i not back up a friend when they got shit talked?? i dont remember that but id like to deeply apologize if i ever did, unless youre talking about when someone in my server insults blu over ykno… him not leaving me alone and harassing me when ive done nothing but mind my own business since the incident, then while it was kind of uncomfortable for me because i felt it was the wrong thing to do i couldnt exactly muster the words to protest it. im very sorry you feel that way im always trying to improve and i like to think that im making some level of progress in being more sensitive and kind to those around me. but also dont insult my friends they didnt do shit weve been minding our own goddamn business this entire time blu is the one who started it back up again.

Now, go back to crying in your server and soaking in self-deprication, fuckass.

yknow i get the feeling i know who this is but i dont want to jump to any conclusions so, uh, okay! see ya my dude :0c

#shut up sombre #drama /#heres to hoping this is the last thing i get abt this bc this is jus really dumb and im tryna move on over here #ask to tag /#submission

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arplis · 5 years ago

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Arplis - News: My 22 Goals for 2019 Week 49 of 52

My 22 Goals for 2019

Goal #1 Spend More Time Doing What I Love

Red alert people, RED ALERT. It was 6 degrees this morning when I woke up. SIX!!! That.Is.Chilly. The Girl and I were going to walk Lucy on the beach this morning but those plans have been scraped. Gaaaa. I think if its 6 degrees outside, all bets are off and you can most certainly declare it a pajama day. Whos with me on this?

Goal #2 Garden, Garden, Garden

Garden are done for the year. Yipee!

Goal #3 Plant an Orchard {Calling it Quits on this one.}

Lemon baby #3 is on the way and we are patiently awaiting her arrival.

Goal #4 Gussy Up the Potting Shed Done!

I gussied up the potting shed at our old house, but I would like to add some sort of potting station to the backyard here somewhere, but Im not sure where I would put it yet.

I did come across this photo on Author Susan Branchs Instagram page though of a picture she tooth at Colonial Williamsburg. Isnt it cute? I think I need one of those.

Goal #5 Grow Enough Extra Vegetables, Eggs and Flowers to Earn $1500 at my little roadside vegetable stand.

It was totally my intention to grow a ton of fruits and vegetables to sell at the farm-stand when I made my list of goals for 2019 last winter, but then we moved. So, that whole goal was sort of a bust. I do miss it though.

Goal #6 Finish Every Single Unfinished Rug Hooking Project in My Pattern Bin + 10 Things from back Issues of Magazines/Books Ive Been Meaning to Make.

While I didnt add any new finished hooked rug pieces in my Etsy shop this past week, I did hook 4 totally new rugs {1 of which will become a kit and 2 will be offered as patterns} as well as hand dyed a bunch of wool {that I was able to get listed in my Etsy shop}.

I have decided to go back to my old schedule of only listing new hooked rugs items on the first Friday of every month for next year as it seems less stressful to me. It allows me more time to hook, rather than stopping every few days to take photo, write up description and then post a single piece online. Doing it all in one big swoop seems less chaotic to me.

73 rugs in my pattern bin {now down to 16} < SO CLOSE!

183 hooked flowers {finished 150, now down to 33}

10 things from back issues of magazines {finished 0}

Goal #7 Create 12 New Rug Hooking Patterns {with at least half of them being large ones} DONE!

So far this year Ive added 12 new rug hooking patterns and 14 beginner rug hooking kits to my Etsy shop. I just added Santa and Rudy 1892 yesterday and am hoping to squeeze one more kit in before the end of the year.

New rug hooking patterns Ive created and added to My Etsy Shop this year:

Santa and Rudy 1892

Tullia and Thomas Turkey

Double Nantucket Whale Runner

Miss Henny and Penny

Miss Penny

Simple Kitty

Primitive Flowers

2 Fat Cats

Annabells Big Day

Old Fashioned Double Tulip

Fat Brown Hen

Busy Little Bee

Queen Bee

Rug Hooking Kits

Busy Little Bee {in 2 different colors}

Folk Art Heart

Small Nantucket Whale

Primitive Crow

Miss Robin {in 2 different colors}

Simple Kitty

Primitive Flowers

Sunflowers

A Basket of Spring Posies

Fat Brown Hen

Chickys Garden

Goal #8 Split and Stack 2 Cords of Wood for Next Winter

All that firewood! We sold it.

Goal #9 Do Something with the 5,002 Photos on My Phone

Currently at 2415 Back up to 2565.

Goal #10 -Lose the Muffin Top Done!

Sweet digity!

Goal #11 Run, Walk or Crawl a 5k, 10k, Half Marathon and Marathon

As long as its not pouring rain tomorrow. The Girl and I are on for the Half Marathon. Wish us luck!

Goal #12 Read or Listen to 26 New Books {21 down, 5 to go}

No new books this week but we are planning a trip to the library later this week.

Books Ive Read or Listened to So Far This Year:

Marilla of Green Gables #1 Still my favorite

The Great Alone #2

The Aviators Wife #3

Before We Were Yours #4

Secrets of a Charmed Life #5

Whered You Go, Bernadette #6

Carnegies Maid #7

The Gown #8

Unbroken #9

Drama#10

The Alice Network #11

The Shape of Mercy #12

Wills Red Coat #13

Big Little Lies #14

Mr. Churchills Secretary

Born to Run

I Feel Bad About My Neck

Bunny Mellon {Doesnt count because it was my second time}

On Writing {Doesnt count because it was my third time}

Walden

Finders Keepers

Delicious!

50 Things to Do in Maine Before You Die

Following Atticus

Goal #13 Try 52 New Recipes.

39 down, 13 recipes to go. We tried 2 new recipes this week. 1 was a dud and the other I will share on Tuesday. And its a good one!

Goal #14 Clean Up 52 Old Recipes on the Blog

9 down, 44 to go. Why did I make this goal? Note to self: Make fewer goals for next year.

Goal #15 Fill 100 Canning Jars 72 down, 28 to go.

I made a batch of Christmas Jam for gift giving PLUS I tried a new recipe {that was inspired by Mrs. HB} this past week and the HH and I loved it so much, that Ill be making another batch {or maybe 2} of it today {Ill share the recipe on Tuesday}.

So far this year Ive I canned:

9 Jars of..

6 jars Christmas Jam

7 jars Spiced Pomegranate Jelly

7 jars Peach Jam

7 jars of Strawberry Jam

15 jars of Carrot Cake Jam

15 jars of Spiced Pear Jam

4 jars of Almond Pears.

Goal #16 Finish Furnishing Our House

We finished the roman shades for the kitchen nook and kitchen window. I plan on taking a break from making roman shades for the next month so I can finish making kits for my Etsy shop and paint out the entire kitchen area as well as finish a couple of art projects for the walls.

Goal #17 52 Dates with the HH {44 down, 8 to go}

The HH and I went on 2 date days this past week and one of them was to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village for their Shaker Christmas Fair and it was so overwhelming, we left after 5 minutes.

Overwhelming in the sense that although we could tell there was going to be a lot of people at the event by the distance we had to walk to the village, what we werent expecting was that once we walked in the doors of the trustees office {where the craft fair was being held}, it was SHOULDER to SHOULDER.

Like, being at a rock concert crowded. The HH didnt even make it 2 feet in before walking out and it took me nearly 5 minutes to get from the entrance and through 3 rooms and back out the door again without even being able to look or pick up anything it was so crowded. It was nuts. And totally not in the calm, welcoming Shaker spirit and all we wanted to do was leave. And so we did.

I do want to go back though at some point to visit the museum, but it will have to be an ordinary weekday with nothing on the event calendar, thats for sure.

Goal #18 Take One Adult Education Class Done {Ive taken 3!}

Block Printing Class with my neighbor.

Spoon Carving Classwith Heather.

Mini pottery lesson {I loved it! and now I want to sign up for a full class}

Goal #19 Secret Holiday Project{s}

Block print towels

Seed packet wreaths

Tea Bag Trees

Goal #20 Create 12 Wowie Zowie Party Platters

8 down, 4 to go. We are planning on making #9 tonight!

Goal #21 Visit 12 General Stores

10 down 2 to go. We visited a new country store yesterday!! The kind that offers human made {and local} baskets to customers to do their shopping with. Ill tell you all about it next week.

H.B. Provisions in Kennebunk, Maine

Chases Daily {I think it should count}

Squam Lake Marketplace

Harrisville General Store

Dodges Store in New Boston, New Hampshire

Zebs General Store in North Conway, New Hampshire

Dan and Whits in Norwich, Vermont

Husseys General Store in Windsor, Maine

Goal #22 Compete with Carole.. Get on My Front Door Game On

Would you believe not a single person walking by {or even a neighbor} has made a comment about the leg lamp in the window? I think theyre showing restraint, while my husband keeps telling me that they are in such awe of it, they just dont know what to say.

Ummmm Okay.

Front Door Bling Ive Made So Far This Year to Compete with Carole:

Late January : Valentine Heart

Late February : Shamrock

Late March : Giant Carrot

May: White wave petunia hanging basket

June/July: Tin Star and Flag Bunting

August : Sunflower

September: Indian corn and pumpkins

October: Pumpkins and spinner do hickeys

November: Indian corn and big pumpkins

December: Leg lamp and nutcrackers in the window and giant Christmas balls on the porch

**************

How about YOU? What are your goals for 2019? If you told us about them HERE, check in! We want to know how you are doing. Because seriously, its so much easier to get those goals checked off your list when you have people rooting for you!

Have a great day everyone,

Mavis

P.S. If you are looking for a last minute gift for neighbor or a friend, I still have a few ornaments left in my Etsy shop and you can find them all HERE. UPDATE: The barred rock chicken is sold out but there are a few more chicken ornaments HERE.

You can read more about my 22 goals for 2019 HERE.

Have a Great Day!

The post My 22 Goals for 2019 Week 49 of 52 appeared first on One Hundred Dollars a Month.

This content was original published at One Hundred Dollars a Month and is copyrighted material. If you are reading this on another website it is being published without consent.

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houseofvans · 8 years ago

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ART SCHOOL | Jack Graydon (OR) | Vans US Open of Surfing 2017

Our next featured artist and participant in this year’s 2017 Vans US Open of Surfing is out of Portland, OR, artist Jack Graydon aka Tolietsnake. This traveling, skating, and painting talent has been creating his works for some time now–from walls to trucks and hidden places in Thailand. Graydon’s style is never stagnant or stiff, but rather ever-changing, adapting and exploring its boundaries, much like the artist himself. We’re stoked to feature Graydon’s work and find out his approach to large scale murals, how he started painting, and what event he’s looking forward to seeing at this year’s 2017 Vans US Open of Surfing.

Photographs courtesy of the artist | Portrait by Tobias Lee

Introduce yourself I am 28 years old, from Santa Rosa California, and Ive been living in Portland Oregon for the past 6 years. I enjoy skateboarding, petting dogs, drinking tea, painting on walls, painting in my studio, riding motorcycles, and traveling.

What’s your art background like? Self taught or art schooled? I’d say both. I didnt start going to art school until I was 24, but before that I had been making work steadily my entire life.

This year you’ll be painting inside the Van Doren bowl for the Vans US Open of Surfing! What are you looking forward to the most? Did you have any favorite art in the bowl from previous years? Getting to skate it! Im excited to get to hang out with the rest of the artists and get sunburnt. Nathaniel Russell always kills it and is one of my favorite artists. Jay Howell and Travis Millard are cool too.

How do you approach a mural project and painting large scale work? What about this particular part of the process do you enjoy the most? I like to do some rough sketches and have a concept down before I paint. Once I start painting I have to adapt the design to the wall. When I try to paint a sketch exactly it never works out quite the way I want it to. Sketching is probably the most boring part. The act of painting is my favorite, laying down big blocks of color and using spray paint. Hanging out with the community around where Im painting is always funny too, everyone has something to say.

How did start out painting murals? What was the first mural you can remember doing? What was the last mural? I started off by painting graffiti as a teenager. That's how I learned how to use spray paint and to paint large scale. The first mural I can remember painting was on a door in a classroom in middle school. I have no idea what it was of, probably birds and alligators. In April I went to Thailand with some friends and painted more in a month than I usually do in a year. It got me really stoked to paint walls and thats pretty much all Ive been doing since I got back. Most recenty I painted a friends box truck in Portland.

What are some of your favorite mediums and materials to work with and why? Spray paint, bucket paint, enamel, cel-vinyl, streakers. I am really into the opaqueness of all of those mediums. Spray paint is the funnest one for sure.

What are some of your top 5 things you're sure to bring along for the Vans US Open of Surfing? My skateboard, shorts, sunscreen, water, a big painting hat.

What event at this year’s Vans US Open of Surfing are you most looking forward to checking out? Men and women’s skateboarding! There should be a less serious contest too, like a relay race or something. I like when Tampa Am makes kids run through that sewer for stickers or whatever, thats fun.

Favorite Vans? And how would you describe your personal style? Suede Era Pro's! Probably the worst pair of vans I've had were brown and orange Trujillo "Dr. T's." I was in high school and they were too big so I had the laces fully tightened so they look like footballs.

My style? Clothes that are too tight make me anxious. Someone told me I look like I'm from the Bay Area recently. So whatever that means.

Personal words to live by? I don't have any, my friend Klutch has some good ones. "New Plan F**k It"

For folks who wanna follow in your path, what advice would you give them? If you want to make art for a living pick what you really want to do, even if its the one that pays the least. Don't get caught up in branding your self or sticking to one specific style. ONLY paint for free for people you like and want to support. Don't call your self a street artist. :(

What do you have planned for the rest of 2017? Traveling, painting, eating, and skating as much as I possibly can.

Follow Jack Graydon Instagram | @tolietsnake Website | www.jackgraydon.com

#Art #Vansusopen #jackgraydon #tolietsnake #graffiti #painting #interview #vansart #houseofvans

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pinwhale · 8 years ago

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@geeselord tagged me in this so i feel obliged to do it lol

1) Put your iTunes on shuffle. Give me the first 6 songs that pop up.

eek uh centuries - fall out boy, D.A.N.C.E - Justice, Emperors new clothes - p!atd, Patron Saint - Regina Spektor, Animal - Neon Trees, Gasoline - Halsey

2) If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

a mcelroy tbh

3) Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.

“Excellent adhesion and great for renovation work” - some builders guide lol

4) What do you think about most?

Friends and random story ideas

5) Ever had a poem or song written about you?

Yep

6) Do you have any strange phobias?

Not really? I mean, heights arent great but thats just rational.

7) What’s your religion?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I dunno probably none

8) If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?

Walking somewhere/lying in the sun with friends

9) Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?

ive never had one tbh

10) What was the last lie you told?

“ im not a actual homestuck anymore “ but hey i can dream

11) Do you believe in karma?

I try to

12) What does your URL mean?

it was.. meant to be a pun. like pinwheel but pinwhale. idek i just want whale in my url

13) What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?

greatest strength is action under pressure, greatest weakness is like not being able to function when it is slightly loud around me

14) Who is your celebrity crush?

i dont get crushes that easy so ive never had them on celebrities.

15) How do you vent your anger?

Crying music/singing exercise ranting. if its at a certain person im likely to let them know why i am angry lol.

16) Do you have a collection of anything?

dirt rocks leaves and cool paper for art stuff

17) Are you happy with the person you’ve become?

i mean, there is always room to improve. but compared to who i used to be? hell yeah.

18) What’s a sound you hate; sound you love?

I hate so many sounds omg. pencils writing comes to mind tho. sound i love is piano/good violin.

19) What’s your biggest “what if”?

what if i could undo the stuff i did when i was younger

20) Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

Yes.

21) Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.

Left: Water bottle, Right: Vapodrops

22) Smell the air. What do you smell?

Nothing my nose is so blocked rn

23) What’s the worst place you have ever been to?

uhh place i hated most was this country house where i was isolated with nothing to do for days.

24) Most attractive singer/s of your opposite gender?

What the hell is an opposite gender

25) To you, what is the meaning of life?

Just, experience? If that makes sense?

26) Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?

I have been avoiding it

27) What was the last movie you saw?

i dunno what the name of it was it was a Tarantino movie my brother was watching

28) What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?

i like, skinned my face off when i was 11 when i faceplanted off my scooter going full speed down a hill.

29) Do you have any obsessions right now?

coding is my forever obsession. nerd wise i love taz and su atm.

30) Ever had a rumor spread about you?

SO many, mostly hilarious tho

31) Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?

Probably? I dont let it effect my relationships with them tho

32) What is your astrological sign?

Capricorn

33) What’s the last thing you purchased?

Icecream for Neil

34) Love or lust?

Love

35) In a relationship?

Nothing romantic

36) How many relationships have you had?

Like, one?

37) What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?

Kill em with kindness/trying to remember they are 99% likely to be just as awkward as i am

38) Where is your best friend?

who fucking knows the boy is never where he is meant to be and its great

39) What were you doing last night at 12 AM?

dying due to sick

40) Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?

i hope so

41) You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?

Save the dog??

42) You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?

a) maybe? id probably do it but in theory i wouldnt want to. b) spend them with friends having adventures and writing messages c) yeaup.

43) What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?

I dont really have a song like that? im on top of the world by imagine dragons can or best day of my life can get me in a happy mood but i kinda have to be in a positive mood before hand anyway.

44) In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?

Trust, Honesty and communcation

45) How can I win your heart?

good fucking luck. if its in a friendship way then just talk to me and you probably already have it lol.

47) What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?

To change who i was and strive to help others.

48) What would you want to be written on your tombstone?

“ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ welp”

49) Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “heart.”

like, souls and bravery and stuff like that.

50) Basic question; what’s your favorite color/colors?

The orange/pink sunset cloud colour and bluey green.

51) What is your current desktop picture?

My brother has it set to a car thing

52) If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?

Trump.

53) What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?

hmmmm probably cliche middle schooler garbage like who do you like lmao

55) You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?

i have this memory of being at the top of the hill with gilda and a few others like, yelling into the wind? Id want to do that again.

56) You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

My main bad experiences have shaped who i am. But i guess id want to erase memories of transphobic shit that has happened to me so i dont have to think about it

57) You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?

no thanks

58) You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?

Europe

59) Ever been on a plane?

yep! when i was like 4/5 i got my face painted on one it was the best

60) Give me your top 5 hottest celebrities.

i?? dont understand attraction that much??

there i fucking did it i got there hell yeah

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daleisgreat · 6 years ago

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Dale’s Top 36 Gaming Experiences of 2018

Greetings dear readers and welcome to my annual top gaming experiences/moments/favorite games I played in 2018 that may or may not have released in 2018 round-up!!! Consider this my personal greatest hits compilation of my year in videogames that was 2018! Buckle up buck-a-roos because I am going to take you on a several thousand word journey as I count you down my handpicked top 33 gaming ‘experiences’ of the year! This is not going to be any other ordinary quick scroll through of listed top games of the year because almost anything I did gaming related qualifies for a ‘experience’ in 2018. That experience could be my overall time I invested into a certain game or series of games I decided to lump into one list item, or it could be a certain other piece of gaming memorabilia, news item that really struck me or a memorable gaming session with friends and family that makes it perfectly eligible for the list! So if you have not by now then use your favorite bookmark app (I recommend Pocket) or ‘control + d’ to manually bookmark this page to revisit this feast of words because it is going to take some time to consume! For optimal experience I highly recommend a big cup of coffee and blaring one of those 10-hour YouTube videos of ambient rain because that is exactly what I did to craft this beast! Speaking of YouTube videos I linked to a whole boatload of them throughout the rankings from trailers for most games I discuss and moments that really popped for me if you so desire to click them for a reference to the corresponding footage. If you managed to finish this monster and dare to seek out my similar takes on previous years of gaming experiences then I triple-dog-dare you to check out my write-ups for my best of 2017 and best of 2016 gaming spectaculars. Enough with this intro, to the list we go! ---Recommended – This is Bonkers Long So Please Read This in the Suggested Installments--- Part 1 - Rankings 36 through 31 Part 2 - Rankings 30 through 24 Part 3 - Rankings 23 through 18 Part 4 - Rankings 17 through 14 Part 5 - Rankings 13 through 10 Part 6 - Rankings 9 through 4 Part 7 - Rankings 3 through 1 PART 1 - RANKINGS 36 THROUGH 31 36) Telltale & Prima RIP I hate to kickoff this list with a downer, but that is why this is at the bottom of the list. The saga of Telltale announcing its closing in 2018 was quite the affair with all the misguided reactionary hoopla. It initially leaned towards fan outcry of Telltale now being unable to finish the final season of its acclaimed Walking Dead line of episodic games it was in the middle of releasing getting more attention over the developers who lost their jobs and benefit plans. Things were getting heated in the wrong ways real quick, but there was a modicum of redemption with fellow videogame developers reaching out and picking up many of the laid off and publisher Skybound Studios picking up the rights for the remaining episodes of the final season of The Walking Dead and following up that announcement with good news of Skybound being able to re-hire most of the original developers who did not already land jobs elsewhere.

I feel I wronged Telltale this year by having 2018 be the first year in several years where I did not complete a season of a Telltale game. Tales of the Borderlands and both seasons of Batman are in my massive ‘want to play’ stack, and now with The Walking Dead being on its way to being concluded I now feel obligated to pick up where I left off after finishing season two a few years ago. Prima closing up surprisingly resonated with me. They have been the constant major publisher of videogame strategy guides for what seems like an eternity. Part of me is surprised Prima hung around this long with how easy it is to reference GameFAQs and other online guides, wikis and YouTube playthroughs for free in an instant. I prefer to go that route too, but I would occasionally pick up a Prima guide and would prefer their more detailed layouts and maps when playing Fallout 3 and Skyrim than compared to what an average text GameFAQs guide can offer. I will also give a shoutout to their supplementary NES & SNES Now You’re Playing Power/Super Power guides/nostalgia books that launched alongside the NES & SNES Classic. Both feature lots of vintage scans from Nintendo Power alongside new interviews with developers, pro speedrunners and creators of fan art, music and website communities. When I heard of their closure I went out and ordered Prima guides for other Bethesda games like Fallout 4 and New Vegas. When I went to file them away I hung my head in shame to see I already procured the Fallout 4 guide awhile back, so now I have two copies of that one. Backup copy! There will still be other specialty strategy guide publishers (major props to FanGamer’s guides!), but none with the presence or outreach of Prima established. 35) Non Virtual Boy VR Last year in the round-up I stated how I have too many reservations about getting on board with the VR craze that has swept up a segment of the gaming world and that I will stick with my Virtual Boy for my VR needs. My Extra Life friends Chris and Lyzz have a Playstation VR headset and had me try it out at their place in 2018 and after trying out a couple games in PSVR…..I was impressed, but still not sold on it overall. I played one or two of the mini-games on the PSVR Worlds mini-game collection that came with the peripheral. I then played about a half hour of London Heist. That experience was a memorable one as I got to admit it was cool looking around the gangster hideouts while being tied up and taking in the unique 360 camera of my surroundings that is only possible in a VR experience. The gameplay was on the money too in some shooting gallery segments and eventually a car chase portion that was the highlight of my time with London Heist.

I was relieved I did not suffer from any of the motion sickness I heard wide varieties of minor and severe reports of from VR players. Then again I only played PSVR for only an hour. I have kept up with the games hitting PSVR since its launch and in its first couple years it has built a library of several games that appear to hold their own as premiere VG single player experiences with bonafide hits such as Moss, Astrobot and Farpoint. After some legit hands-on time with PSVR I will maintain my reservations on VR in general. The price entry point is way too high and I would rather spend the money needed for starting off a proper PSVR experience in upgrading my PC instead. It requires a lot of cumbersome setup, it is a safety hazard by completely blocking off your surroundings and finally after playing for a mere hour my face felt like it was sat on for many more hours after removing the headset. I may try out VR down the line at friend’s places or wherever I run into it at and will likely enjoy my time with it, but as far as owning VR goes I will continue to be happy with my Virtual Boy and reliving the complete Virtual Boy experience in 2019 with Jeremy Parish’s Vitual Boy Works line of videos. 34) Hadoken 2018

If you do not have it already on last-gen systems, I still would recommend Ultra Street Fighter IV as it collects nearly all the DLC characters and costumes and goes on sale digitally frequently. It was a hit revisiting with Chris, but the surprise SF hit among us online was Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection. Aside from collecting 12 of the earliest SF games, it made four of them online and Capcom had a slick online lobby system to make it quick and seamless to jump from playing one version of SF to another. Chris and I got lots of fights in throughout the year and I also did about 20 fights in online ranked lobbies against random opponents in hopes of getting just one win to get a trophy. That proved to be a brutal endeavor as my assumptions of my meek hadoken skills hoping to get lucky once were foolish as I lost every time (thought a couple of times I won once out of three…yay?). The worst was when higher skilled opponents would sit there and wait for me to come at them before schooling me with counter attacks. That happened even worse in Mortal Kombat X online against randoms, but as they say, practice makes perfect. 33)Mass Effect Andromeda Novels I have seen nobody talking about these…probably because of how lackluster Mass Effect Andromeda was received. I was a huge fan of all four novels published concurrently alongside the original Mass Effect Trilogy and they helped fleshed out the story between games and gave a ton of back story to characters I was thrilled to see finally appear in the third game. I had no idea publisher Titan Books were releasing novels set in the Andromeda universe until about a year after the first one hit. Just a few months ago they released the third of the planned four books set in the Andromeda timeline.

I finished the first two books and enjoyed both of them. I gave more thorough reviews on my GoodReads account and will link to them here. For the quick breakdown though Nexus Uprising deals with a crisis of the Nexus mothership arriving at Andromeda attacked by a mysterious ‘scourge’ and the hysteria that results with its limited crew in charge of a ship barely hanging onto survival. Nexus Uprising leads right into the start of the Andromeda game. Initiation has a new Andromeda recruit fresh off her seven years of Asari training traveling for one last mission before journeying to Andromeda where the new recruit encounters a hostile VI/AI in a facility she must now survive and rescue as many survivors along with her. The latest book, Annihilation, I am only halfway through and I regret to report that I am just not feeling this one. Annihilation explains why about a third of the original Mass Effect races are not in the Andromeda game as it goes into detail why they all took a separate ship there that wound up having a disastrous journey. I enjoyed the peripheral races in the original games in nice little spurts, but having a book focusing entirely on the volus, elcor, drell and a couple other races so far has been a slog to get through. I will keep my fingers crossed it picks up in the second half. 32) HDMI Cables for Retro Consoles The past couple of years have seen an emerging trend of either having deluxe HDMI conversion kits for older systems to display at their proper resolutions on newer TVs or having third parties re-release older systems like the NES and SNES with new HD capabilities. Those are great options to have if you want a pristine picture on your HDTV for retro gaming goodness, but they cost a premium and 2018 saw manufacturer Pound release their HDMI cables for SNES, Dreamcast, Xbox and PS2 all for around $30 each. I picked up the Dreamcast and PS2 cables, but have only had time to test out the DC cables so far. I dug out the Dreamcast and tested out several games with regular cables and then the Pound cables and noticed a definite improvement in the graphics! They no longer have that washed out ‘muddiness’ look when I would ordinarily run a SD system on a HDTV with composite/RCA cables. There was a minor caveat where I noticed a minor background graphical effect in menus and only when I took the time to squint and stare during gameplay, but other than that this was a much affordable alternative. I found out about these from YouTuber, MetalJesus and you can see his coverage of it by clicking here with plenty of before and after comparisons to see if they may be what you are looking for. 31) Father’s Day Gaming I have nostalgic memories of the many long gaming sessions I had with my dad and siblings while spending weekend visitations with him. We went all the way back to the original Pong and Atari 2600 in my childhood years through the NES, SNES and finally N64 during my high school years. While I have wonderful moments of many games with the family in each era the N64 years were the ones I cherished the most because of the ease of four player multiplayer with its four controller ports which was perfect for my dad, my brother Joe and either my sister Ann or another friend that would be over to helm the fourth player spot. Almost a couple hours of every visitation during that time we played countless hours of competitive N64 multiplayer.

That was many years ago though since we regularly played, and while thinking of ideas for what to do for Father’s Day this past year instead of going out for dinner and catching a movie like we would usually do I threw out the idea of staying in and having pizza and doing an N64 gaming day. I was delighted to hear my dad and brother were both up for it and thank goodness the games still held up and were just as much fun to play as they were around 20 years ago. My dad loved New Tetris and was a total pro and would be in a trance when he used to play it all the time so I was mighty curious to see how well he remembered it all these years later. We were all a little rusty, but we all got back into the rhythm of things after a few minutes and it was like we did not miss a beat. I am always disheartened to hear New Tetris get overlooked when I was hearing multiple discussions of past great Tetris games when Tetris Effect took the gaming community by storm in 2018. New Tetris was the first 3-4 player console Tetris game and also the first home console game to debut the incredibly handy ‘hold piece’ which is why New Tetris ranked right up there with Tengen Tetris, OG GameBoy Tetris and Tetris DS for my favorite versions of the legendary puzzle game. We also played a hefty amount of Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye 007. I have heard the countless debates over the years, and I will forever contest the N64 Mario Kart as the pinnacle of the series. I have also heard the many people proclaim that GoldenEye is an outdated mess all these years later. Every two or three years I bust out GoldenEye and the same thing happened here as before, after a few minutes of adjusting to the graphics and controls the game had its hooks in us again and we were having intense rounds of deathmatch with muscle memories suddenly kicking in of our favorite map and weapon presets. The three of us went on to have many rounds of fun blowing the crap out of each other! I have been watching Giant Bomb’s line of recent Die Another Friday videos where they try and run through the campaign in Perfect Agent difficulty. Instead of the expected jokes about how dated the graphics were I was relieved to see that most of the GB crew eventually were legit surprised at how fun GoldenEye still is. ---YouTube Break From This Already Way Too Long List--- A semi-decent laugh should be had at this point for a breather. Behold, the greatest Family Feud moment of all time! Now witness Always Sunny’s blatant ripoff tribute to that legendary game show when the cast competes on the exact same style of show they call Family Fight! PART 2 - RANKINGS 30 THROUGH 24 30) Videogames in Theatrical Form Longtime followers of my work may recall my podcasting days where my co-hosts and I would go out of our way to track down and cover almost every major and obscure videogame licensed film that hit theaters or direct-to-video. Minus a few exceptions, they were usually painful experiences. Even though my podcasting days are behind me I still like to keep up the tradition of catching any new film that hits the theater or video that is based on or around videogames. 2018 I managed to catch four new films that fit the criteria. The new Tomb Raider featuring Alicia Vikander as the one and only Lara Croft was solid, but nothing spectacular. It had a handful of memorable stunts and captured a few of the moments I recall from the acclaimed self-titled reboot game in 2013 so on the videogame film curve I would categorize that as a ‘win.’ Rampage featuring The Rock totally surprised me how they were able to get a fun movie out of a straightforward arcade smash-em-up from the 80s. Within a half hour I was feeling for the monsters and Rock’s connection for them was surprisingly powerful. Really good stuff that you should not dismiss!

Looking back on Ready Player One several months after its release I can safely recommend it. I loved the book when I read it shortly after its release several years ago and I was somewhat conflicted coming out of the film. This is because of how far it strayed from the book yet essentially maintained a similar over-arching plot on how a world full of gamers playing the same VR game are tracking down the creator’s hidden ‘easter egg’ in order to inherit his riches and become his heir. Avid game player I am I could not help but keep my eyes peeled for as many as ‘blink-and-you-will-miss-it’ cameos from the beloved mascots of videogames and pop culture from over the years. After hearing how the author wrote the screenplay and gave his seal of approval for the changes I eventually was won over by them especially since the changes were entertaining and since the film came out only four or five years after the book it could have been a slog to see the movie play out 100% the same. To close off 2018 a few weeks ago I took two of my many nieces and nephews to see Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet. That was a unique experience because my middle-school aged niece and nephew were ecstatic to point out a couple of YouTubers they follow that have cameos in the film. The sequel had a similar structure to the first where the first 20-ish minutes circle around Ralph and Vanellope loving life in their arcade they reside and visiting other arcade classics of gaming lore. I love how Tapper got a lot of love in the film with Ralph and Vanellope making that game setting their late-night watering hole of choice! Eventually though their arcade gets hooked up to WiFi and it was fun seeing Ralph and Vanellope take a journey in Disney’s CG version of the Internet with lots of real-life companies like Google, Amazon, etc. having their own fun representations in the film. This sequel was a big hit with me and once I got past the welcomed videogame references in the first 20 minutes I enjoyed Wreck-It Ralph 2’s overall plot exponentially more than the first film. 29) Yippee-Kay-Yay-Mutha….. For readers of this blog who may or may not also keep up with my film reviews here, I recently reviewed Die Hard in honor of it being a Christmas film classic (yes, I am one of those people). It should go without saying that Die Hard is one the all-time greatest action films, and after watching it again a few weeks ago I recalled how there were a few PSone and GameCube games I had vague memories of fairly decent receptions at the time and after discovering how low they were priced on eBay I decided to take a chance on them. I loved the arcade game, but do not own a Saturn so I did not hunt down that version, but got the two PSone Die Hard Trilogy games and Die Hard: Vendetta on GameCube. I have not had a chance to play them yet, but I have since watched a few entertaining Game Informer Replay videos on them revisiting these ‘gems’ to varying degrees of quality all these years later that will suffice for now until I get around to them. Here are a few links so you can check them out and do the same! 28) ….And Raging Justice….For All

I referenced in these round-ups before how every few years my friend Matt and I would marathon several random beat-em-up classics usually consisting of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men variety. The last time we did that was around 2015, and the current gen systems have been flooded with a quality amount of re-releases of classics and obscure releases and all-new installments in the genre that we have been neglecting for far too long. Just a couple weeks ago Matt and I finally got around to playing through one of them on the PS4 called Raging Justice. It had a similar look and feel to Final Fight, but with a slightly pastel-esque touch to the graphics that made the late ‘80s punk ooze right out of the game! The story had all kinds of goofy street punk gang warfare that we both ate up and we were really gelling in our playthrough and we were surprisingly not eating up that many lives. As a matter of fact we only went through one continue between both of us! After plowing through it within two hours we made a list of other similar new beat-em-ups that hit PS4/XB1 over the years so hopefully we will do better at sticking with this genre in 2019. 27) Now You’re Playing With a Power……ed Up NES/SNES Classic

If you do not want to go down the route listed above by hunting down HDMI cables for a system you do not own or a pricey HD-capable 3rd party version of a NES/SNES than there are a couple of grey-area alternatives. I talked about the RetroPie in last year’s round-up, so this year I want to focus on what people are calling ‘modding’ your NES/SNES Classic. I am not going to give you a step-by-step breakdown, but a quick Google/YouTube search will point you in the right direction. Once it is done you can add up to as many games that will fit in the Classic’s internal memory. If you stick with just NES games you can fit a majority of the NES’s library on the internal memory, SNES game sizes are noticeably bigger and if only going that route with ROMs you can fit roughly 200 of them on there…..that is if you in good faith own the original copies. There is a nice benefit to the NES/SNES Classic compared to the RetroPie and that is a friendlier user interface complete with upbeat background music and the ability to upload your own box art which ostensibly delivers the nostalgic sensation of browsing the shelves at a videogame rental store and thus is more appealing than scrolling through a large text box of games on a RetroPie. Since the NES/SNES Classic is HDMI it provides an excellent HD picture for these classic 8 and 16-bit games. This resulted in busting out both the NES & SNES Classic several times throughout 2018 for some free spirited gaming nights. 26) Tabletop/Pen and Paper Madness

I referenced last year how I started to get into semi-routinely board game nights with my friends Derek, Ryan and Brooke and we managed to keep the board game nights churning throughout 2018. Derek & Brooke have amassed a hearty collection of board games and we were able to rotate a fair amount of games from last year and new ones to try out this year. One of the board games we revisited often was Betrayal at House on Haunted Hill, and they release a spin-off called Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate we were all eager to try throughout the year. We finally busted it out on a day where my brother was able to join us and it was a great medieval themed take on the original game that did not disappoint. Another new board game we tried out was Elder Signs. Thank goodness Derek, Ryan and Brooke are awesome tutors because the game had an elaborate setup with many pieces and by about halfway through our session I was familiar enough with the play style that yielded a fantastic end to that round when all of us were able to mount an insurmountable comeback that resulted in an unlikely, thrilling win for us all! Shifting from tabletop gaming to pen and paper gaming, I have always been a fan of the SNES/GEN versions of Shadowrun. I always knew a group of friends that have been roleplaying the pen and paper RPG it is based on for quite a few years now and they reached out before to get me to play, but with my gonzo work/sleep schedule I knew it would be impossible to routinely play with them every week. I still had that itch to want to at least give it a honest try all these years later so I reached out to them and asked if I was able to commit to playing at least once a month with them and if they would they find a way to squeeze me in? Thank goodness they found a way to create random characters and place me into their campaign for the three times I made it out there to play with them. Mike is an awesome storyteller and ran a fun campaign, and I will also give props to Justine, Ron & Robb for being very welcoming and tolerant of my noob-ness and by being quite gracious sharing their infinite Shadowrun wisdom unto me. Unfortunately I fell out of the routine of playing with them after a few times, but I am glad to finally tried it out after all these years and would be down to make random cameos in their future sessions. 25) Kicking that Early Access Bug

I am going to cheat a smidge on this one because in December of 2017 through 2018 several games I invested lots of time into and/or have been majorly anticipating finally left Steam Early Access (SEA) and got official releases. Some went onto have official releases on console of well. Gang Beasts has always been silly goofy wrestling/brawling fun with creatures made of a silly puddy-esque substance and it was fascinating watching that game evolve over the several years Gang Beasts was in SEA until its official December 2017 release. I had fun times with friends in that game, and especially witnessing countless Giant Bomb sessions of its madness. FirePro World was another wrestling game that came out of SEA in December of 2017, but it was only in SEA for several months…not years. I have loved previous FirePro games for their faithful representation of a wrestling match and endless customization options, and was thrilled to see it get a physical PS4 release which wound up being the first physical wrestling game I picked up since…..wow…WWE 2K14. Road Redemption was another game that spent a few years in SEA and I was stoked that it finally got an official release in 2018, with later digital versions that hit PS4 and XB1 in the following months. I raved about it before in previous year-end round-ups, and it is long overdue to finally have a motorcycle combat racer that is finally worthy of being deemed a successor to the heralded Road Rash series. There is a lot more to Road Redemption than being a Road Rash clone, so stick with it as its bizarre rogue-lite nature of its career mode and bonkers weather and weaponry will unleash mayhem you likely did not anticipate coming in. Distance is another driving game that was in SEA for far too long, but after four years Distance emerged a fleshed out release. It is a driving game like nothing else, and the best way I can sum it up is a ‘trippy neon platforming Trials-esque’ driving experience. Its standout feature is a platforming ‘adventure’ mode which was rebuilt for the official release and went on to add so much other tracks and customization features since I last played Distance in SEA that I hope my meek PC can still handle it when I eventually revisit it!

Not done yet because two more driving games trapped for years in SEA also fully released in 2018. Jalopy is another adventure-esque driving game where you take your uncle on a trek across Eastern Europe in the family’s run-down lemon of a vehicle that needs constant attention and repairs and not to mention other tomfoolery the duo stumbles into amidst their travels. I have had my eye on Jalopy for awhile and was relieved to hear when its long SEA cycle also concluded. Finally, Bugbear’s project formerly known as Next Car Game released in 2018 as Wreckfest. It is the spiritual successor to Bugbear’s FlatOut line of demolition derby racing games that I have so many fond memories of. Wreckfest looks and feels like a current-gen FlatOut and I was glad to see it retain its excellent physics engine the series was known for. I was bummed to see the console release get a delay into the second half of 2019, but for those with capable PCs, Wreckfest is fully out now to consume in all its destructive glory! I do have two quick honorable mentions for this category. Super Indie Karts is an adorable Mario Kart-clone featuring mascots from many hit indie games as drivers that has also been in SEA forever. The developer keeps regularly adding content though and it just released a fresh batch of tracks and drivers (featuring the not-so-indie ToeJam & Earl) to the build a few days ago. I have nothing but super-fun memories of my time with Super Indie Karts so I hope it gets its long-awaited official release in 2019! Finally, while Shaq-Fu 2: A Legend Reborn never was officially in SEA when Shaq accidentally leaked it out in an offhanded interview four years ago shortly before its Kickstarter campaign premiere, it feels like it never left there once the game released to worst game of the year-caliber reception. I own two copies of the 1994 original Shaq-Fu, so I felt obligated to purchase the sequel when I recently stumbled upon it in the clearance bins for $6 just a few months after its release. 24) Good ‘ol Fashioned Videogame Couch Multiplayer

I will also give a quick mention to the videogame nights I was glad to be a part of with Derek, Brooke and Ryan! While 2018 saw us hit up more board game nights we managed to sneak in a few couch videogame multiplayer nights of some old favorites like Sony’s take on the JackBox Party Pack that is called That’s You where the four of us chuckled away the night at its irreverent trivia and doodling nonsense on each other’s faces. We also mixed in a couple other games into the rotation throughout the year. I heard great things about Towerfall before, but finally playing it was a rush and a half with its fast intense bouts of bow-and-arrow deathmatches with sudden death animations that left us in stitches! Derek introduced us to the bonkers four player game called Ultimate Chicken Horse where users play several quick rounds trying to reach a goal but insert random objects of torture between each round that makes getting to the goal near impossible by the end of the game. It was a big hit with our group. Finally it will behoove me to include the crazy night we had with the 360 game, Cloudberry Kingdom. It is an absurd runner game filled with all kinds of deathtraps just waiting to obliterate our adorable avatars. Cloudberry Kingdom has literally hundreds of levels, and as expected each one got procedurally more nuts but was still a blast to attempt to complete! After a couple hours of the madness and many attempts on one particularly troublesome stage we all had this priceless defeated look on our faces after we finally finished it and we all knew in that instant that we were DONE with it for the night! What a fantastic runner I hope we get to revisit again one day! ---YouTube Break #2--- Time for another breather! You do not have to be a fan of wrestling to enjoy these! ‘Bawdy Bawdy, We Like to Party’ legendary ECW tag team Public Enemy elucidates to rookie Mikey Whipwreck how championship wrestlers train in the mid-1990s. While we are here reminiscing about the Public Enemy, click here for their EPIC WCW theme song that was unavoidably catchy to sing-a-long with! PART 3 - RANKINGS 23 THROUGH 18 23) Wanting More Time to Dedicate to 2018’s Top Indie Games

There are a few websites and podcasts I follow that have tons of game of the year coverage, and it is a great place to get a reminder of those indie games that slipped through the cracks and I completely forgot about or neglected throughout the year. I heard enough praise about three of them that seemed up my alley and before the end of the year I was able to put in a 20-30 minute session with each of these. I wish I had more time for each, but my initial impressions were high for all three and I know I will put more time into them throughout 2019. Yoku’s Island Express is a hybrid of a pinball game and a MetroidVania that somehow delivered on both fronts as I unlocked more paths through an island by flipping my character and ball through a variety of colorful environments. My love for both genres makes me want to return to it ASAP. Minit is a roguelite RPG with an dastardly hook where each session has a one minute timer, but you retain all the items collected on each session that unlocks other paths on the map. I did about 20 sessions and as I got familiar with the game world I already was starting to plan my next steps ahead for my next minute run. Many jovial curses to the developers who intentionally programmed the NPC W-H-O-T-A-L-K-S-T-H-I-S-S-L-O-W to keep me in a nail-biter of a moment to hit the next checkpoint with literally a single second to spare! The last indie game I snuck in some time with was the Super Meat Boy-esque platformer, Celeste. This comes from the same developers who made Towerfall that I just got done shedding some love for above. The instant restarts and checkpoints make its fair-yet-punishing platforming worth the challenge to get through and I can already see its addicting ‘just-one-more-try’ instant respawns reminding me of the longer-than-intended sessions I had with the Trials games and I look forward to them in Celeste! I am only about a half hour in, but have heard nothing but the best of acclaim for its narrative about overcoming personal struggles to make it to the top of a mountain! 22) Fans of Gamers Who Crave Limited Runs

I imagine you have heard of them before, but if not then both Limited Run Games and FanGamer have both been great sites I have been persistently coming back to for primarily physical copies of smaller indie games and top-tier quality gaming memorabilia. I am happy to see Limited Run expanding in 2018 by finally starting to publish games on Switch and landing their more anticipated games in a limited window preorder program so everyone has a shot at getting a copy. It was also encouraging to hear that some of their games will be shipping in smaller quantities to Best Buys across the country so people who do not order their games online have a shot at getting some of their titles the traditional way. Some of the titles I ordered this year from them that I was stoked to get physical copies of include Late Shift, Read Only Memories and Golf Story. That is right, I do not own a Switch yet but ordered Golf Story because I loved the GBC/GBA RPG takes on Mario Golf that Golf Story is the spiritual successor of and I kept hearing how it hits all the right notes for fans of those handheld classics. I anticipate I will get a Switch within the next year pending the inevitable smaller redesign of the system. My only qualm with Limited Run now is with their growth their shipping times have significantly increased. I recall my first few Limited Run games I ordered taking 2-4 weeks to ship, now the last several I got all took 3-5 MONTHS each. Step it up guys! I will also tip my hat to FanGamer for their plethora of must-have merchandise. I loved their meticulously detailed strategy/companion guides for Earthbound and Mother 3. It is awesome they are collaborating with Jeremy Perish to publish deluxe hardcover books of his transcripts for his excellent Works line of anthology retro gaming videos. FanGamer has a ton of artistic shirts, posters and other memorabilia for many top-rated indie games. I ordered my first shirt from them recently with this design that perfectly captures the spirit of WindJammers. I am also perplexed with their sudden infatuation to the classic run-and-gunner, Sunset Riders, FanGamer recently obtained the merchandising rights for. They celebrated the occasion with a unique cosplay promotional video that almost convinced me to order their Sunset Riders branded wallet….almost! 21) 25 Years of the Real-est Interactive Multiplayer in the Room!

Guys, the 3DO is a pretty neat system! Seriously! Of course I did not spend the obscene $700 when it first launched 25 years ago, but I got it for a bargain in 2007 and went on to hunt down many games that I always wanted to try for the platform. Not all of them were winners, but there were several that wound up as worthy inclusions in my library. My recommended games for the 3DO include the awesome party game Twisted, its mascot platformer Gex and the original Need for Speed. 3DO also has excellent versions of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Family Feud, Madden and arguably the best version of the classic motorcycle racer, Road Rash! Nearing its 25th anniversary and just in time for Halloween, the good people at Your Parents Basement Podcast invited me on to guest host and commemorate one of the 3DO’s spooooop-iest games, the Tia Carrere FMV thriller, The Daedalus Encounter! I busted out my 3DO from the closet and booted up my old save and came pretty darn close to finishing it before the puzzles got to be too much of a brainbuster for me! Riveting times were had breaking down and dissecting the game with the YPB crew which you can check out and download here. 20) Shmuppreciation 2018

One of my favorite podcasts I have been a listener to for over 13 years now is Super-the-Hardest. They use to be primarily videogame-centric, but have since evolved over the years to focus on whatever topics pique their interest such as craft brews, board games and jamming out to vinyl records! One of their longest traditions has always been dedicating March to shmup/space shooter games. I am not a pro shump player by any means, but always am down to pump in a few credits and blast away for as long as I can survive. They have a small, but tight-knit forum community I have always been a part of and when March hit the hosts were asking there if anyone was playing any shmups yet. A couple days went by with little response, and knowing how big shmup-month was for that community in previous years I was suddenly inspired to start up weekly high score chases on the forums there with the focus this year being on three random NES shmups each week. I tried to have a consistent rotation of the three games being one common/popular shmup such as Gradius & 1943, another lesser known domestic release like Alpha Mission & Zombie Nation and finally a imported Famicom game that never saw a stateside release with picks this year including Parodius Da & Gradius II. At least a few us participated each week posting our scores and exchanging tips and breaking down how good/awful that week’s selections were. It was a heck of a month and somehow I managed to keep up posting selections each week and got in time with every game! No idea if I will do it again for 2019, but if I do I think it may be time to upgrade to 16-bits! 19) The 3DS Soul Still Burns!!

I somehow managed to sneak in an hour of time into my 3DS each week. I was ecstatic to track down an English translation for Ace Attorney Investigation 2 that never saw an American release. I loved the first game and always wanted to play the follow-up and got most of the way through the first case. I finally played my first Fire Emblem game by putting in several hours into Fire Emblem Echoes. Hearing that Echoes was a good entry point for the series having played Advance Wars many years ago the gameplay was not that difficult to pick up. It has that same addicting strategy gameplay as Advance Wars, but with a medieval theme and a far richer narrative than what I recalled from my Advance Wars days. Just the couple of sessions I had with Echoes I was already starting to get attached to the cast. Hotel Dusk and its sequel, Last Window are my favorite DS games. They are mystery visual novels, and when I found out earlier in 2018 that some of the developers at Cing who worked on those games went on to make a bite-sized spiritual successor to it on the 3DS eShop called Chase: Cold Case Investigations - Distant Memories I knew I had to get it. I bought this around when it released in 2016 and neglected it until John from the Super the Hardest podcast recapped it earlier in 2018 and inspired me to pick it up. It is essentially a more stripped down version of Cing’s earlier games as it revolves around two detectives interviewing suspects for a hospital blast. Graphics and style remind me of Hotel Dusk and the lead detective in Distant Memories looks quite similar to one Kyle Hyde. It was a decent little visual novel that can be finished in less than three hours, and I hope it gets a follow-up, but it appears this one came and went because I have heard nothing since. I finally started up Theatrhythm 2: Curtain Call. In case you missed out on it before it assembles the protagonists from past Final Fantasy games and makes a fun battle system/rhythm game of over 100 songs from the rich history of Final Fantasy soundtracks while somehow fitting in a intricate narrative too. Wish I had more time to get into it and I think I will have to restart it I manage to deep dive into it because I spent the bulk of my 3DS time once again this year with Dragon Quest VIII. My save file is currently approaching 110 hours in DQVIII. However, the last 15-ish hours have been spent grinding from levels 40-65 for most of my party members for the final boss. To say the boss is a pain is an understatement. I failed multiple times at vanquishing him, thus the hours at grinding away. I will never forget my time with DQVIII, but am looking forward to finishing it on one of my next sessions so I can finally put more time into other games. The 3DS still had a strong 2018 from Nintendo published games and I wound up picking up Captain Toad, Detective Pikachu and WarioWare Gold which I desperately want to dive into! 18) ‘Get Ready for a Cruise Missile!’

I use to play a ton of sports games until several years ago. I took a long hiatus from them to focus on more narrative-driven games. Madden NFL ‘18 premiering its story mode dubbed ‘Longshot’ got me curious at giving the acclaimed football series another go for the first time in five years. I surprisingly dug Madden’s take on a story mode and loved playing as the fictional Devin Wade working his way through the reality show challenges and playing in flashback high school games with lighthearted local announcers providing the unintentional best sports commentary out there. Longshot also had a well-rounded cast filled with some surprising moments I never thought I would get invested in such as getting them sports feels flowing for the Longshot acoustic sing-a-long! The story mode only took a few hours to play through and even if you are not a fan of football games I would recommend giving it a shot as the football parts are few and far between and the story mode is primarily QTE/mini-game focused. Story mode aside, I managed to play a few rounds online against my friend Steve I use to play countless sports games with over the years and it felt good to reignite that rivalry. Madden still plays as good as I remember, and one thing I want to point out from the core game is the new NFL commentators they brought in for ’18 & ’19 with Brandon Gaudin & Charles Davis easily being the best announce team in Madden history that added a ton to the presentation unlike any Madden announce team before them! I did pick up Madden NFL ‘19 recently because it has ‘Longshot Part 2’ which promises to conclude the storyline for Devin Wade and his buddy Colt Cruise, but other than a couple rounds online with Steve again I have yet to dive into it. After catching a couple scenes online I am psyched to see how Longshot concludes and plan on blitzing through it around Super Bowl time like I did with part one in 2018.

If you are not a fan of sim-football and prefer arcade style action in the vein of NFL Blitz than I will instead point you towards Mutant Football League which I played nearly a full season of off-and-on throughout 2018. It is the spiritual successor to EA’s awesome Mutant League Football on the Genesis, and part of me is still surprised how the team did not get a cease-and-desist from EA with a slightly altered name change and bring over so much of the look and feel of the original game. It modernized all the things I loved from the first game with a game engine that plays like a amped up version of Blitz, and retains classic elements of the Genesis game like being able to kill your adversaries in all types of gruesome ways and introducing awesome powered up attacks that can be used once per half to up the brutality. And yes, you can still bribe and kill refs! I was a little bummed Mutant Football League did not get that much of a buzz when it finally released because it had a successful Kickstarter campaign and a follow-up to the Genesis game has been long demanded in the sports gaming circles I follow. A physical copy released later in the year with a new Franchise mode included so hopefully that will bring some new eyes onto the game. If you want more over-the-top arcade-like gameplay out of your football games then by all means give Mutant Football League a try! I also got really into my first basketball-sim in many years. I dabbled with a couple arcade-hoops games over past couple years and really dug the Neo-Geo Arcade Archives re-release of Street Hoop on Xbox One, while the free-to-play Xbox One hoops game, 3-on-3 Freestyle…..not so much. I always stuck with NBA 2K games as my NBA sim of choice since their debut on Dreamcast and picked one up every couple years and played them regularly through 2K11. Early in 2018 however a super cheap digital sale on NBA Live ‘18 convinced me to give it a shot. I have solely been playing its create-a-player story/career mode ‘The One.’ I have been digging it and loved the first several games I played in ‘The One’ proving my worth in street games of 21. Every few games there would be these hilarious FMV updates from a First Take set with Stephen A Smith and Max Kellerman being over-the-top versions of their already over-the-top personalities which convinced me that my created player was going to dominate the street leagues and become the #1 draftee in the NBA….it did not turn out that way, but I am having a blast so far proudly representing the Timberwolves while dishing out far too many three-point attempts than I should be. ---YouTube Break #3--- Re-watching that NBA Live ’18 clip of Stephen A. Smith got me to dig up this compilation of clips of Mr. Smith at his zaniest. Here is the final version of the full Longshot song of which I have no shame having it in my running playlist! PART 4 - RANKINGS 17 THROUGH 14 17) The End Day is a Lie!

I was going to say a couple entries earlier when covering all those NES shmups that I have not played that much NES in years, but that statement would have been false because mere weeks before that I played through the entirety of the post-apocalyptic, action-RPG Crystalis on NES! It was the featured game on the first of two Your Parents Basement podcast episodes I guest hosted on for 2018. I picked up both the NES and GBC versions a couple years ago after hearing countless years of love from the staff at GameCola about it. I managed to play through most of it by the time we recorded that YPB episode and finished it off a few days after that. All these years after its original release, Crystalis is still a fun action-RPG to plow through. I loved the accessibility of the combat, and while the options to choose from to level up seem quaint now, I can imagine how they were top of their league at the time. After beating the NES version I put an hour into the GBC port to see how it held up. I heard the GBC version get a fair amount of slack over the years, but from my initial time with the handheld port it seemed noticeably cleaner and had some useful tips at the opening town that would have benefitted my first time through. I had a great time sharing my experience with the YPB crew and if you are interested in hearing our takes on SNK’s 8-bit RPG then click here to check out that episode. It seemed only fitting that the NES original got its first retro re-release later on in 2018 on the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection on Switch. 16) Pinball Quest 2018

Welcome to my yearly blurb all about feeding my addiction to videogame pinball. In case you skipped around this year-end round-up (I do not blame you!) I will refer you to entry #23 for some quick thoughts on Yoku’s Island Express. I only got a few rounds of my favorite PC-exclusive pinball game, Hyperspace Pinball in 2018, and the last time I played it a couple weeks ago I had a great run and was briefly ecstatic until the leaderboard indicated I missed my personal high-score by a smidge! I also gave a couple runs to what appears to be a mobile pinball game ported to Xbox One in Quantic Pinball. It is a fine little pinball game, but its mobile roots are too apparent and not many upgrades are present to make the console release feel warranted. 2018 was a strange year for Pinball Arcade. I wanted to make the switch to primarily playing it on PS4 in 2017, but that proved difficult upon discovery of my dozens of tables I purchased on PS3/Vita not being import-able to the PS4 version like I was able to for the dozens of tables I acquired for Zen Pinball 2 to work on Pinball FX3. So that meant I would have to buy the tables all over again. I held off for a long time, but I wound up spending roughly $200 on all of the DLC for it upon hearing midway in 2018 all of Pinball Arcade’s collection of tables under license from Williams/Bally would no longer be supported for purchase with only a few weeks notice to be able to buy them and add them to your Pinball Arcade library. Plopping down around $200 all at once for that DLC was a punch in the gut, but ultimately I do not regret it because there are some minor, but noticeable enhancements to the visuals on the PS4 version of Pinball Arcade and it has a slightly cleaner feel to the gameplay too. Additionally the developers at Farsight now have a separate game called Stern Pinball Arcade so the newer Stern tables have a flashier place to reside. I perfectly understand the idea to make the Stern tables pop more on their own platform. The Stern tables purchased theoretically work in both Pinball Arcade and Stern Pinball Arcade, but doing so requires reactivating the purchased license in the clunky Playstation Store interface and it once lead to me to inadvertently purchasing the same table twice.

A couple months later I was stunned to find out that Zen Studios gained the license for the Williams tables and by the end of the year would have their first seven tables from the Williams/Bally collection available for download to Pinball FX3 (PFX3). I have mixed feelings about this. I do like Zen’s optional upgraded graphical enhancements to the tables, but the overall physics for the ball movement does not feel like the authentic movement that Pinball Arcade faithfully represented. There is an option in Pinball Arcade for ‘classic mode’ which kind of slows down the speed of play and leans the gameplay to marginally feel like an authentic pinball experience, but it simply does not cut it overall. Hopefully Zen can take the feedback and continue to improve in future DLC tables. Gripes on the Williams tables aside, I enjoyed the rest of my time in 2018 with PFX3. I have heard the criticism for Zen Studios’ unrealistic style of pinball, but I have always been a fan of theirs and feel there is room for both authentic digital pinball from Pinball Arcade and faster physics with the more fantastical tables from Zen. I finally started to grasp PFX3’s initially intimidating ‘mastery’ system of each table. The mastery system is topping off essentially an experience meter for each table by achieving score goals in each gameplay option available and maxing out several stat meters. I did this for The Infinity Gauntlet, Back to the Future and almost all the way for Medieval Madness. I also got into the weekly online scoring ‘matchup’ league play where PFX3 randomly picks four tables and scores posted by three random players in three skill levels for three minutes of play each week. By toying around with trying to master tables and online score chasing in matchup play it lead to a lot more time invested in Pinball FX3 compared to 2017. 15) Sega Channel 2018

In the summer of 1996 I spent about five or six afternoons a week at my friend’s place playing Sega Channel. No memories of it? Here is some vintage archival footage of its menus of the Sega Channel experience. It was Sega’s sweet-at-the-time service where in coordination with cable companies from 1994-98 you would pay $15/month to have a rotating monthly selection of 40 games playable from a special cartridge that hooked up to the household cable line. Games would download to a temporary internal memory on the cartridge from the cable line over a minute or two and save states were also available. It was the current Netflix streaming of gaming and was way ahead of its time. It was also how I discovered countless Genesis favorites I hunted down at local shops and online after I got my first job a few years later. It took 20 years after Sega Channel shutdown to get a faithful reincarnation of it, but only far better in every way. GameTap sort of brought it back to the PC for the few years it was around in the 2000s. However, Xbox brought it back in full force with its excellent Game Pass service for Xbox One it introduced in 2018. Instead of 40 games available to play each month there are 100+ rotating games for Xbox. Add on Microsoft’s bold move of making all their first party games available on Game Pass on day one of their release and it would be insane not to recommend it, especially for new Xbox One owners. I actually am that insane though and do not have it because of my massive backlog and lack of time to commit. However for new Xbox One owners and/or game players on a budget like students or parents looking to save lots of money getting games for their kids they would be in an ideal position going with Game Pass and a Games for Gold subscription which additionally nets ownership of four games each month to their Xbox games library. 14) Ride or Die

Like pinball games, I also have a yearly blurb on my experiences with racing/driving games for the year. I felt my year in driving titles slightly nudged out my pinball times, thus it being a couple notches higher ranked. If you dear reader are randomly bouncing around this list then I will refer you to entry #25 where I touch on driving games coming out of Steam Early Access such as Road Redemption, Wreckfest, Distance, Jalopy & Super Indie Kart. There were a few driving titles I dabbled this year in that I wish I had more time to plug away at. As you will see later in this round-up, I am a nut for the Sega 80s arcade driving titles like Hang-On & OutRun, and the PS4/Switch release of Horizon Chase Turbo is the best spiritual successor to that type of racer I have seen over the years. They brought on the same composer from those games and the visuals have a nice modern HD look to them that capture the spirit of those 80s greats. It has been a great while since I played a snowmobile racing game and Ski-Doo Snowmobile Challenge was a limited, but fun budget title racer on PS3 that reminded me of a fond time when all I wanted was a no-thrills career mode with a few dozen races and simple stat upgrades to deal with in a career mode. Drive!Drive!Drive! was the final racer I put some minor time into, and that was an extraordinary title where I would have to bounce around multiple cameras to control simultaneous races. At the beginning of the year I was wrapping up the last dozen or so races/events in the 360 version of Forza Horizon 2. I had another good time with it like its open-world predecessor and took advantage of that rewind button to avoid retrying the same track over and over, but looking back I preferred the experience of the first FH more as the sequel seemed more of the same, but in a less spectacular backdrop. Friends are telling me to skip three and jump to the new fourth game in the series getting a lot of buzz online now, but the third game has that tempting Australian outback setting I froth to explore and on top of that the unique Hot Wheels DLC pack I heard nothing but superb things about. So I will continue to be extremely behind on that series and plan to jump into FH3 later this year.

I went on an odd Monster Truck binge in 2018. The Xbox One digital store had Monster Jam: Crush-It available for dirt cheap one week, and having a modicum of nostalgic memories of past entries in the long running budget title series I wound up taking a chance on it. After spending far more time than I should have with it, ‘budget’ is a generous description for Crush-It, because this racer is full of absurd physics, bizarre collision detection and endless other bugs. After a ton of bugs causing too many rage-inducing moments I beat enough tracks and finished all the challenges to make Crush-It of all games to have the dubious honor of being the first Xbox One game I unlocked the full 1000 gamerscore in. After wrapping up my time with Crush-It I stumbled into picking up a copy of Monster Truck Madness 64. Microsoft was developing the series at that point on PC for awhile, but ported it to N64 and had a pre-GTA Rockstar Games publish it for them. Unfortunately the Rockstar branding could not have saved MM64 as it too was also rough around the edges with terribly loose steering that had me dreading every corner. It did feature the nWo muscle trucks at the time though that brought back memories of the old WCW Motorsports advertising. The racing game I put the most time into in 2018 was The Crew. Not the sequel that came out later in the year, but the original game. I got around halfway in it via staggered play over the previous year or two, but with the release of the sequel approaching I grinded away in the couple of months leading up to its release to finish the avenge your brother’s death storyline which I actually kind of dug. There was a surprisingly gripping cinema building up to campaign’s final race where I was legit getting behind protagonist Alex Taylor. I had fun just messing around and cruising around UbiSoft’s condensed open-world of the continental United States and tracking down their take on iconic landmarks. I messed around a little here and there with their instantaneous online coop/versus multiplayer reminiscent of Test Drive Unlimited, and had a few fun online moments but I enjoyed most of my time in the single player. Gameplay wise it is not five stars by any means, and I would prefer Forza Horizon any day, but there was something about the gritty underground nature of The Crew and its car-culture-gang-warfare story that kept me sticking with it. I eventually picked up the sequel recently on a bargain bin digital sale for the ultimate season pass edition being 60% off so who knows, I likely see myself in 2019 playing The Crew 2 and Forza Horizon 3 concurrently at my regular on-and-off pace. ---YouTube Break #4--- I am always a sucker for when a racing game injects a storyline to its single player campaign, especially if it is completely ridiculous! Hey, you know what other racing game had super-cheesy-yet-awesome cutscenes? The original Need for Speed: Most Wanted in 2005. Here is a link to its entire half hour of cutscenes. Eat your heart out Tokyo Drift! They came a long way from EA’s DIY live-action cinemas from the original 3DO game that you can see right here. EA tried to recapture the glory days of their cornball cutscenes with 2015’s Need for Speed. It has some moments like first person fist-bumping and energy drink chugging that you see in their entire bro-ness right here, but 2005’s Most Wanted will always reign supreme in my book! PART 5 - RANKINGS 13 THROUGH 10 13) Spoooooky Gaming For Halloween I brought up to my board game/videogame night friends Derek, Brooke & Ryan about doing a spooky gaming marathon. They did me one better and recommend I bring over my copy of Hidden Agenda on PS4 to binge through that I have been occasionally throwing out for an option over the previous months. Hidden Agenda kind of snuck under-the-radar towards the end of 2017 as it came from the same team that made the critically acclaimed teenage spooky thriller, Until Dawn. This is another spooky-thriller, but designed to be played with your friends and finished in one session within three hours. It is a game that requires a smartphone app to play, and luckily it came close, but did not deplete our entire charge by the time the credits rolled. The app had some clever functionality that kept tabs on case notes and presented us with options to vote on which way to take the story next like having to choose which part of the case to investigate, or which path to split off into. While the story was a little all over the place it managed to get us riled up and jumpy a few times, and was still a blast to play through in its entirety in a single night on Halloween weekend. Now I need to replay it on my own to have complete control over the story so on my calendar this October I am going to write a big reminder to replay Hidden Agenda and finally bust open and plow through Until Dawn. 12) Back-to-Back!!!

I have been avoiding most co-op gaming that cannot be finished in a single session like Hidden Agenda for a few years now due to lack of time to finish lengthier co-op games. I made one exception this year where my same friend Matt and I met up twice to persevere through A Way Out. It is a coop game clocking in at around a whopping six hours. That is a lot for me nowadays. Matt and I absolutely loved our time with A Way Out. Spending the first couple of hours getting to know the prison system and plan our escape was a rush and it reminded me of the equally awesome first few hours of Xbox’s Chronicles of Riddick. Crawling up the air shaft with that back-to-back mini-game will go down as one of my favorite moments in co-op gameplay. The plot I found myself getting into where two would-be fugitives found themselves teaming up to escape prison and get back to their loved ones. It kind of disappointingly unravels in the final moments with some bold narrative choices the developers made that I am still processing in my mind on how I feel about the final hour of play. The ‘must talk to everyone’ extremist in me was addicted to talking to nearly all NPCs and have brief choice-based conversations with all of them. The developers at Hazelight Studios cram in diverse gameplay throughout with plenty of exploring, interrogating, QTE segments, platforming, gunfights, intense car chase sequences and a big highlight being a hospital chase sequence where A Way Out seamlessly bounces back and forth between the two characters as they get split up and must evade the police. If you are looking for something fresh and different than the infinite amount of co-op shooters available, then give A Way Out a chance. 11) ‘This is a No-Smoking Flight!’

If you do not recognize that quote it is from the adorable master of cooking eggs, Sunny, at the close of one of the numerous lengthy cutscenes that Metal Gear Solid 4 was known for. The ending cutscene is literally the length of a movie, and the cinemas between each of MGS4’s acts are right around an hour each and I would not want it any other way! MGS4 was the first MGS game I finished nearly 10 years ago and I decided it was only appropriate to revisit it after finishing the first three MGS games in the past couple of years. I got so much more out of MGS4 this way by actually getting the countless past references to the core trilogy of games this time around. I loved that MG4 also had memorable debuting characters like the aforementioned Sunny and the soda-chugging gun-runner, Drebin! Since I last played MGS4 Konami has also patched in trophies so it was worthwhile to hunt down those and look into some that swayed me to approach gameplay in a different fashion which yielded a refreshing second go-around. After finishing MGS4, I continued my ritual of view that installment’s complete gameplay commentary from Dan and Drew at GiantBomb to get essentially a third playthrough experience out of MGS4. I did not make major progress in the rest of my Metal Gear quest otherwise throughout the year. I did get a little ways into MGS5 at the beginning of the year, but then felt compelled to drop it and play through MGS4 before it instead. That was probably a wrong decision in hindsight, but at least it gives me an excuse to restart it and experience one of gaming’s grandest opening missions yet again. I did pick up the GBC version of Metal Gear Solid last year for a decent price at a local retro shop, so if I ever do finish MGS5 I would like to play the GBC title along with the MSX versions of the original two games. 10) Better Late than Never

I have no idea why I held off seven years on getting around to the highly-touted Saints Row the Third, especially after loving the first two games and finishing them in quick fashion right around their release. The third game in the open-world crime action series upped the zany factor the series debuted in the second game with some of its activities by introducing all kinds of over-the-top elements in the story missions and into the weapons, upgrades, you name it. Here are a few examples so you can see for yourself. Saints Row the Third gave the franchise its own satirical identity when before it was only a pretty solid GTA-clone. Waiting seven years to get to this classic made certain parts of the graphics seem a little long in the tooth, but for the most part the visuals and core gameplay held up nicely. Experimenting with the huge variety of weapons and vehicles available made cruising through the open world a lot of fun. Same goes for the series trademark offering of mini-game ‘activities.’ The developers at Volition pushed every button to get the most out of that M rating to make its missions standout like no other as they go in places you will not believe. I went on to play both pieces of the story-based DLC content which take the Saints in filming their own Gangstas in Space movie and chasing down an evil mutant clone of series mascot, Johnny Gat. If you missed out on this landmark achievement in open-world gameplay then consider this synopsis somewhat timely since THQ Nordic will be releasing Saints Row the Third later this year on switch. ---YouTube Break #5--- Grab a glass of water dear reader for still sticking with me through this unbelievable amount of words! If you stuck with last year’s round-up to the very end, then you will remember this video I will treat you to a little early. That is right it is time for the epic John Cena animated prank call of doom! Speaking of Mr. ‘You Can’t See Me’ here is a fun clip I recently ran into John promoting his recent BumbleBee film where he chats up Matt McConaughey about old school Texas wrestling. What is that? You want a non wrestling-related video, fine I get it, then enjoy this take from James Rolfe as he breaks down two childhood favorite video game themed game shows I grew up with in the early 90s, Video Power & Nick Arcade. PART 6 - RANKINGS 9 THROUGH 4 9)Discovering my Favorite Gaming Blog

Early in 2018 I was scouring the webs digging up info on the must-have import games for the Super Famicom/SNES. I came across this top 50 list ranking the most obscure SNES imports from a blog called RVGFanatic. It is a blog primarily dedicated to covering SNES/Super Famicom games, but also has the occasional feature covering a game on another system or a random personal life story. The site has been around for over a decade and RVGFanatic continues to publish a few new entries a month. His writing and coverage reminds me of the writing style dominant in gaming magazines from the 90s and RVGFanatic stated in various articles that was his intention with the design in the blog. I spent a good chunk of the year revisiting his site and perusing the archives there because there is an earnest quality to his writing that captures the sheer joy of growing up with those games. He manages to be both reflective and current with his writing recognizing pros and cons the games have been known for, while also recapturing the experience of playing that game for the first time. A prime example of this is his recent review of Clay Fighter. It perfectly encapsulated my memories of the much hyped fighter looking wicked cool with its revolutionary graphics which helped hide its haphazard gameplay. His occasional personal blogs were metaphorical page-turners too as I related with him perfectly to his excellent write-up of rental store memories as well with his piece on wrestling nostalgia of the Hulk-a-Mania years of the then-WWF. I can recommend so many more of his articles and reviews, but instead I recommend you dive in and get lost in RVGFanatic’s archives like I did! 8) My Handpicked Top Gaming Videos of 2018 I have been scouring the YouTubes and GiantBombs throughout the year and have some of my highest recommendations of my favorite videos to add to your watch later q! Without further ado, here are my top picks of 2018… GiantBomb - Die Another Friday| Winter Games 2018 | Gaiden the Ring & Get in the Ring| Mario Party Party 11 | Quiet Man Quick Look | Wreckfest Quick Look | Detective Pikachu Quick Look Jeremy Parish ‘Works’ Videos - Too hard to pick just one all of them are so informative and comprehensive. Pick a system of Works videos from the playlists indexed here MetalJesus - Game Pickups with Reggie | Vinyl Record Pickups | Wii and PSP Hidden Gems |PS2 Hidden Gems Gaming Historian – Story of Punchout | Story of Tetris Game Sack – Star Trek Games Up Up Down Down - E3 Live – Elite vs New Day Street Fighter V Challenge | Edge and Christian NHL 95 Faceoff No Clip – History of Bethesda AVGN - Earthbound | Home Alone games with MaCauly Caulkin Same Name, Different Game – FirePro Wrestling | Punisher | Street Fighter Alpha Classic Gaming Quarterly - Let’s Read TurboPlay | Nintendo Power | Game Pro | Official DreamCast Magazine Scott the Woz - Wii Ware Chronicles | Devils Third | Madden NFL 08 That list there is days full of quality videos to last you throughout 2019, I hope you dig them as much as I did! 7) Videogame Vinyl

How the hell did I go down this whole!? I recall first getting clued into the world of emerging videogame soundtracks on vinyl from this music primer episode of Retronauts. Later in 2017 a friend gifted me his old record player since he recently upgrade along with a couple records. Since I had the record player in my possession I figured I had to had to track down a just a few records for it and I heard good things about soundtrack vinyls from Mondo and I went and ordered several records from them. That was the first domino tumbling right there, and from that point it was inevitable to prevent the rest tumbling after them. Throughout 2018 other websites I follow like Limited Run, Data Disc and FanGamer started to offer videogame OSTs on vinyl and I made several more purchases throughout the year. I do not have hundreds of vinyls mind you, but I finished the year with around 15. I made sure to track down some iconic videogame soundtracks like a few from the Castlevania series, Earthbound and Snatcher. There were also a few oddballs that still boggle my mind why they got a vinyl release like Windjammers and Mortal Kombat I & II that I convinced myself I had to have. I am not buying these to sit on the shelf though as I have been getting some quality use out of my record player jamming out to soundtracks while cleaning the house and doing DDP Yoga three times a week. 6) Hey-a Fellers

It was practically impossible to avoid getting sucked up by the whirlwind of hype in the months leading up to Red Dead Redemption 2’s release. I also loved its predecessor so much that I knew I had to be there day one to be in on the conversation going around the gaming press zeitgeist about RDR2’s opening acts. South Park got in on the RDR2 hype train too with a couple episodes where the whole town is addicted to it. Rockstar does not disappoint with their narrative and audio/visual presentation. I will not bore you with the details you have likely read elsewhere by now, but rest assured the open-world, cast, narrative, visuals and especially the score and voice acting is aces all around! Not all is aces though as RDR2’s multi-faceted control scheme has been divisive among many in the gaming media. Bottom line, there are too many functions for every button on the controller, and at points I completely forgot certain controls and had to do a quick online search for a refresher on how to do specific abilities like dual wielding and changing coats. Those gripes quickly washed away after extended sessions with RDR2 where I cannot help but get immersed and lose myself in the world. I spent so much time looking forward to getting distracted by whatever quick instant side mission or event that popped up traversing to my next checkpoint. According to my progress I am 36% the way through RDR2 after what seems roughly that many hours in the game, however I am only in chapter two because I keep having so much fun clearing out whatever side missions get accumulated in my checklist. I easily see many more hours to come in RDR2 throughout 2019. 5) The Hidden Beauty of Shield Snow-Surfing!

2017’s #1 pick, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild took up so much of my playtime in 2018 that it managed to eeek its way into my top five of 2018! There is simply so much to explore, see and do and I am insane at refusing to take advantage of fast travel due to fear of missing out on seeing cool stuff. The photo I attached here showing my 133 hours of total play time was taken shortly before Halloween and I have put at least several more hours in since then. I will give a shoutout to my co-worker Mike who has been awesome to trade tips and stories with since Breath of the Wild’s launch. He gave me a ton of great pointers and his advice has made my experience with BotW a better one! Mike filled me in all about the wondrous technique that is shield surfing! I later discovered more about it when my random traversing lead me to a corner of the wintry mountainous region of the map where I was taught shield surfing and how that lead to the thrills surfing through the snow blanketed mountains of Hyrule. I have made so much progress this year! I am down to needing to unlock only two more parts of the map where my one last divine beast to conquer lies before finally taking on Hyrule Castle and Ganon! I loved my time in the Lost Woods and Lomei Labyrinth Island that was a hoot to find my way out of. I finally got the Master Sword. I took some stabs at the DLC trials for the Master Sword which is reminiscent of the extremely tough-but-fair challenge that is Eventide Island. I failed after several attempts, but would like to conquer them to increase the Master Sword’s power! Speaking of DLC I waded around with a handful of the DLC quests available and unlocked the Korok mask from the DLC quests which looks funky as hell, but it has helped me amass at least triple the amount of Korok Seeds I would have found on my own. I want to jump into the DLC quest that unlocks the ‘Master Cycle Zero’ (aka Hyrule Motorcycle) as footage I have seen so far looks straight-up rad cruising through Hyrule in their trippy looking hot-rod. Mark my words, Breath of the Wild, in 2019 I will finally finish the core quest and vanquish Ganon and unlock the Master Cycle Zero! 4) Eeeeeeelsss Oxenfree was my game of the year in 2016. I loved its art style, mysterious narrative and especially its script where the teenagers would one second be trying to solve this multi-layered mystery on an island and the next have a heart-to-heart chat about stereotypical teenage drama. Night in the Woods was receiving a lot of the same buzz over it also being a Narrative Exploration game with a relatable 2D art style and similar plot hooks to the point that among the gaming press it was generating buzz of being 2017’s top Narrative Exploration title. After looking into Night in the Woods I could not help but be reeled in by its plot where a failed college student drops out of college two years in and returns to her small podunk town of Possum Springs to try and recapture her days of chilling with her high school friends but only for them all to be later caught up in local town superstitions proving not to be so superstitious.

As attractive as the plot was I could not help but, I would not say be turned off, but rather mystified about the decision to go with humanoid-structured animals representing all the characters. First impressions watching initial gameplay of Night in the Woods made that choice in character style difficult to suspend my disbelief and maintain my focus on checking out the game. I am not saying that is a bad thing, I am simply stating that is what was perplexing my mind. There must have been others who felt similar to me because there was also a harsher vocal contingent who was upset with people avoiding the game due to the art style who wrote a few articles stating that if you were avoiding playing this because of animals as characters than to F off. That led to me not wanting to get caught up in all that hoopla so I decided it was best to avoid that controversy. It was only around game of the year time at the end of 2017 where I heard friendlier supporters of the game rally behind it with high praise that convinced me to give it a chance and start it up at the beginning of 2018. I am relieved I did because Night in the Woods is a kickass Narrative Exploration game! The writing is right up there with Oxenfree as all the characters captured that local post-high school angst and rebellion of trying to make it in the real world and things not quite working out. I settled into a convenient routine of daily life gameplay where the player character Mae would check in with her parents and of course with me being me, make sure to talk to every local I would come across because they had something different to say every day! The dialogue for every major and minor character was so spot on that it made going out of my way to talk to everyone worthwhile and random spots in town had special one-time moments going in with periphery characters that if I did not check out I would have completely missed out on such as a poetry reading contest, breaking light bulbs behind a corner store and checking out the stars with your old teacher.

There are a lot of singular moments that really stuck with me in Night in the Woods. Every day in the game you are presented with the option of going out on a side-adventure with one of Mae’s two best friends Gregg or Bae. I chose to do all mine with Bae so if I do get around to playing through this again I will do Gregg’s side stories on my replay to have at least a little bit of new content playable in each day of gameplay. Bae has some priceless moments with Mae where the two have serious chats about their most personal feelings that few other games I have seen dared, and they also have some priceless lighthearted moments where the two get mischievous in a dilapidated mall, complete with a mini-game on trying to steal from a Hot Topic-esque store. The most hard-hitting moment that I vividly recall was when Mae’s mom has a bad day and does a 180 heel turn on her daughter! It hurt so much! Mommmmm!!!! I was thinking once Night in the Woods was going to focus more on the supernatural mystery it would take away from Mae’s personal drama that was so irresistible to get caught up in. Thankfully, that was not the case as it was doubly entertaining to watch Mae’s crew come together and discover the truth behind the superstitions plaguing Possum Springs. As you can tell I got so into Night in the Woods’ page-turning narrative that within about a half hour of starting the thought of the characters being animals did not cross my mind, and looking back on it the designs of the animals corresponded appropriately to the personalities they were representing. Minus the handful of over-ambitious dream sequences that were a little bit of a chore to get through and I might have given this a nod over Oxenfree. That split hair aside, Night in the Woods is a spectacular Narrative Exploration game and hangs in the upper elite tier of them with Oxenfree, Firewatch and Gone Home so if these games are up your alley make sure you do not make the same mistake I did and hold off on Night in the Woods for this long. ---YouTube Break #6--- Holy hell, I did not intend to turn my listing for Night in the Woods into a full-on review, but I could not help myself! Good news though dear reader, we are finally at the last YouTube break as we approach the final three entries of my Top 36 Gaming Experiences of the Year!!! So let us cleanse our palates from games for a moment and grab a Yoo-Hoo from the fridge and mix it with a shot of Rumchata as we watch my last YouTube recommendations. Cinemassacre started a new line of videos on their channel in 2018 that I got into called Rental Reviews. Those reviews are four guys gathering around and breaking down a new or classic movie they watched earlier that week and it reminded me of going to films with a few friends and hanging outside the theater for awhile rambling on about how much we loved or hated that movie. The Cinemassacre crew has some fun with the episodes with mini sketches introducing the episodes and random mid-episode gags. My favorite episodes from their first year that I recommend the most are for Star Trek V, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Rental Store Memories, Street Fighter, Die Hard & Commando. Now that we got all that movie criticism out of the way, let us proceed with the final three entries for the year. Thank you all to have hung in with me so far on this one-of-a-kind game of the year journey! PART 7 - RANKINGS 3 THROUGH 1 3) Returning to the Midwest Gaming Classic

From 2007-2013 one of my favorite times of the year was attending a local retro game expo, The Midwest Gaming Classic. Many great times were had there hunting down retro games, hanging out with an awesome forum community I once frequented, classic sessions of late-night karaoke and checking out tons of arcade machines and game consoles set up on free play. Unfortunately the timing of it always fell in a rough time of the year for me and it grew increasingly difficult to make time for it each year until it came down to where I had to stop going for four years. I was not going to make it this year again until a couple of my online gaming friends who I hung out with at MGC before and still keep in touch with asked if I was making it and that convinced me to pull some strings at work and manage to split up some vacation days I had coming so I was able to make the 12-hour drive out to Milwaukee and back home with a couple hours to spare before my first shift back at work. Bear with me as I give yet another shoutout to Glenn and Jeff for reaching out and asking me about MGC because it resulted in an awesome weekend with some wicked weather to dance around to make it there and back. Wound up hanging out and touching base again with tons of great people I had not seen in four or five years. We had a blast hanging out late night after the show playing SNES games on a projector until we were zombies and watching the spiritual successor to King of Kong in Man vs. Snake. It also helped that MGC has moved to a bigger and nicer venue from the last time I went with room to grow. It was like MGC got revitalized by having adequate room for the mammoth vendor halls, game museum, free play arcade and conference rooms for speakers and panels. I caught a few panels on retro gaming and hung out with On the Stick’s Joe Drilling talking wrasslin’ and retro gaming after his panel. I succeeded in my game hunting quest in the vendor hall to hunt down the last couple of NES PowerPad games I did not own, and accidentally came across a homebrew bag toss game I never heard of before called Tailgate Party that I picked up to complete the collection. It proved to be a epic time that I was barely able to pull off at the last minute, but I do not regret it because it was yet another classic MGC weekend for the ages! 2) Forklift Races

It is kind of hard to place how much I love both Shenmue I & II. I got a theory from 1997-2000 for people who played either Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid or Shenmue fresh off their release. For those three games, people would be so blown away by their then-groundbreaking new standards set for their cinematic cutscenes and ambitious narratives that they would remain forever loyal to that particular game and swear by it forever no matter how credible the negative criticism is out there for those games. That is exactly what happened to me with Shenmue as it was the first of those three games I played, and I have seen people react in near-identical fashion to the other two games. I am aware of the criticism for Shenmue and I will not deny it, but there is so much else going for it that won me over that it made me overlook it and enabled me to have one of the best single player experiences in a game ever. These last few years I was getting the itch to replay the original Shenmue when the Kickstarter was announced and funded in record time for Shenmue III. I was pleasantly surprised Sega quietly announced they were releasing a HD remaster of the first two games for current platforms to cash in on the upcoming sequel. As soon as the remaster collection hit in the summer of 2018 I dropped all other gaming and cruised through the first Shenmue within a month. I was initially trepid that the unique controls would be so outdated that Shenmue would be near unplayable. It was indeed a clumsy control scheme to get reacquainted with for my first 10-15 minutes, but after that I was whisked away back to 2000 again when I first experienced Shenmue and I was reminded how much I loved the setting of Dobuita. There are plenty of cheesy characters filled with so-awful-its-great voice acting that it was a treat reliving it all over again.

Like Night in the Woods I developed a regular daily routine while in the process of hunting down clues to find out more on who killed Ryo’s father so he could avenge his death. I would start off the day going to the local corner vending machines and grabbing an iced coffee and capsule toy. Ryo has got to have his morning coffee with the absurdly drawn-out drinking animation every morning like any other ordinary person! I would talk to as many regular shopkeepers I would about finding the latest clue and occasionally would have to battle off some street thugs for information or chase them down in a QTE sequence that Shenmue helped institutionalize among games. A guilty pleasure was visiting You Arcade nearly every in-game day for a round of a perfectly emulated version of Hang-On that I kind of was starting to ‘get gud’ at the checkpoint-based racer by the end of Shenmue. Eventually I got Ryo his infamous job driving forklifts as the plot came to a boil with Ryo hot on the tail of his father’s killer! Every day at work started off with a forklift race that had a catchy theme song I made up lyrics to nod along with for momentum. There was an achievement for winning a race…..it was the only achievement I failed to achieve! The penultimate 70-man mega-battle leading up to the final boss fight was a rush and a half to experience all over. Again, there was some outdated controls and other quirkiness that was noticeable, but it did not get in the way from my unabashed love for the series resulting in my replay of the orginal Shenmue being my second best gaming experience of 2018! I cannot recommend it for everyone as I have seen the nature of that game rub some people the wrong way and my only answer for that is Shenmue is not for everybody. My spirits were riding high after finishing it that I started watching GiantBomb’s endurance run of it recently, and I went out and tracked down the vinyl OST for Shenmue and additionally the vinyl OST for Hang-On as well. Yup, I am kind of into Shenmue just a hair or two. I did not start up Shenmue II yet off the remaster set and plan to plow through it before Shenmue III’s currently planned August 2019 release. 1) Oh my God, You Killed Connor!

After 16,000 words we are finally here at #1! I know Detroit: Become Human has some hot-button controversies around it and if you decided to avoid the game I totally get it and respect that. Now that I got that out of the way let me start by saying I have been a huge fan of Quantic Dreams going back to Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. I even dug Beyond: Two Souls regardless of that title getting messy at a few points. I know each game has their fair share of nitpicks, but the thing Quantic Dreams nails is how they branch out their stories with its multitude of choice-based gameplay having actual impactful results in the narrative. This is not like most Telltale games where the greater arc stays the same, but the journey is slightly altered. No, characters can abruptly die when presented with a sudden major decision or major paths can be altered to skip entire levels. That is what I loved about Quantic Dreams’ games is these major chances they take on their games and Detroit absolutely kills it in these departments. Quantic also lives up to their past precedents set by moving the bar for Detroit being a true technical marvel and one of the best looking games this generation of consoles. This is coming from a person playing on a slim PS4 and not a 4K Pro system so I can only imagine the improvements if I were to play on a 4K setup. Like Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy, Detroit follows the story arcs of several characters. All four are androids at different states of becoming ‘deviant’ and thinking for themselves. Each character path has major moments where I had to pause the game and think over the imperative decision I was presented with. Quantic Dreams is clever at masking some choices as right or wrong that created some moments that I will never forget. Android Detective Connor and his human partner Detective Anderson were my favorite characters to follow throughout the game. Connor can get killed off like other characters in the game, but unlike other characters he is always instantly replaceable from the agency. I did not know that when my Connor perished in a jaw-dropping way I did not see coming. I instantly debated on rewinding my last save to play it differently, but I sternly stuck to my decisions the whole game no matter how they played out. I was relieved to see Connor come back and continue his love/hate relationship with Anderson, and eventually became amused by the inadvertent ways my decision making kept getting my Connor killed.

The other characters all had nearly equal major moments to get behind with a few examples such as saving a daughter from her abusive father in one of the most intense escape sequences in Detroit, rescuing a bunch of experimented androids from a psychopath, leading a android-rights revolution to trying to stealthily escape from the madness to the Canadian border. Quantic Dreams always has had Quick Time Events (QTE) button prompts handle the majority of their gameplay, and they have evolved it with each of their games to have the best implementation of QTE in gaming. Minus a few key moments they almost never result in a instant game over if one QTE prompt is missed and there usually is a few chances to correct a mistake in order to recover and win the scene…or you can intentionally fail and flub through a fight or chase scene like a dummy to hilariously disastrous results. Depending on how you succeed through the prompts and the narrative based decisions made results in an ostensibly infinite amount of endings for each character. Quantic Dreams introduced a remarkable new feature at the end of each scene where a branching tree of decision options is displayed showing the choices made and blank boxes representing other options available and the percentage of the connected PS4 users that picked each option. From this same dialogue tree box checkpoints can be selected to pick up right from there in the gameplay scene to change a decision you were unsatisfied with. After finishing Detroit within two days I took advantage of this and hopped into one key part of the plot where Connor is presented with a choice that essentially gets the ball rolling for the final two-to-three hours of gameplay. I replayed that final chunk of scenes three more times within a week to see big differences in the endings for each character. Some did not survive, others endings all my characters made it to the end while others wound up skipping out on some of the most pivotal scenes in the entire game based on earlier decisions. I knew two other coworkers who were on the fence on picking up Detroit who were fans of Quantic’s previous games and I insisted on borrowing out my copy and we later went on to thoroughly breakdown how we handled key decisions and our various endings. It is insanely rare for a game to cause me to replay it multiple times that soon and that is saying something special about Detroit: Become Human and why it is my #1 gaming experience of 2018. ---The End?---

My word tally count is now tipping over 17,000 words so I think I better end this. It took me nearly 10 days to write this, and I do not blame you if it took that long to read it. That said I hope this proved to be a best of the year list/round-up like no other you experienced! Once again, if you liked what you read and want more of my end of the year ramblings then I will refer you to my best of 2017 and best of 2016 top gaming experiences features. So until next year…..oh wait I almost forgot it would be inappropriate of me to suddenly end this without rewarding you with a few more YouTube recommendations! I failed in unearthing my all-time favorite SNL sketch of Sports Center with Ray Ramono and Tim Meadows, so this sketch on the origins of the iconic NBA on NBC Theme will have to suffice. Need a refreshing beverage after getting through this list; Dusty Rhodes has the answer for you! These sparring kickboxers needed some beverages after getting bombarded in their training session by a acapella group. Mr. Worf wants to drain his sorrows in other beverages after witnessing this montage of his fails. Finally, here is a nice compilation of background music for your home with the top 100 ranked N64 songs of all time. Ok that is seriously it for 2018, thank you again everyone for riding this out with me! If you want to send any feedback my way I would love to hear it so reach out to me on my Twitter @Gruel or email dkulas @ hotmail.com.

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