#may 2024 continue to be the year of the bear for me

[turbulenthandholding]

This utter indulgence of brain-rotted fluff is my love letter to many things: the Sydcarmy fandom; Jason Isbell’s song Stockholm, for its inspiration; my adopted hometown of Chicago (and its largest airport); and the lovely city of Copenhagen, where I spent three beautiful days back in June of 2017.

[cirqosmos]

yandere simulator; xo (only if you say yes). yjw

interactive roleplaying game: where instead of a yandere winning over your heart, you win theirs. by getting them to say 'yes', only then you will unlock the key to their heart where psychotic love resides.

currently playing. . . xo (only if you say yes)

warning: yandere, slight profanity, some grammar errors (i'm doing my best to study it >_<)

runtime: 3k.

director's cut, — jungwon boo u never fail to prove me that you're legit my muse in writing </3 this is just a fun fun interactive yandere game i randomly thought of, whatever you choose (majority of the votes) decides what happens to you with yandere jungwon :3

character visual: jw

"i'm sorry, but no. you're just not my type—"

you slammed yourself your face on your pillow, burying it so tight it sent you to heaven itself. however you'd rather die this way than pressing the 'continue' button to read the yandere's next words for his darling—which is you.

but you're not even his darling yet, much less being his close friend. maybe just a friend from school?

yeah, definitely.

well, as a twenty-nine years old office lady with her average monotonous schedule with the same routine over and over again for the past eight years, nearing her thirties yet never being able to find a qualified partner that fits her overly high standards—you're left with a game titled 'xo (only if you say yes) you've found somehow on the devil's hours; a game that was immensely difficult to pass, where you would do your best to win over a yandere's heart.

the game's description was too daring, almost too challenging, you are afraid to admit.

"wanna have your sweet affectionate yandere fawning all over you? no worries! however, as the old sayings goes; without efforts, you may never achieve anything—nothing is free in this world. therefore, why don't you sweat a little, get upset a little, cry a little, break a little—like your beloved yandere would once they fall for you? do your very best to get them to say yes to your love confession just once, and all of them—they will give to you.

blood, sweat, and tears; all of them shall be yours as long as you can make them say yes."

© 2024. all rights reserved xo, (only if you say yes)

and now you found yourself on the final level spending atleast, or disappointingly a huge sum of bucks on the game with currency of gems just to speed up the process, with your eyes bearing a newfound dark eyebags as an extra package of consequences.

you swore by your life and on god himself that you're only playing this for fun out of pure boredom and insomnia, however as you thumb through the game's introduction of yandere as it's dominant themes paired with a comprehensive summary of them; you questioned yourself with sheer shock as to why you've never find an ounce of existence about yanderes for the past eighteen years of your life despite being chronically online.

since yanderes are the exact definition of your overly high standards for men, ever since. no wonder you've never found a men like this before, turns out they only exists in fiction—you scoffed at yourself, filled with disbelief as you roll your eyes.

but! who cares if they don't exist in real life? they're now on the tips of your finger, waiting earnestly and eagerly for your love. a giggle so obnoxious escapes your lips, you feel like you are once a schoolgirl again, but without the experiences of one, actually.

but again who cares!

the game flashes a new pop-up, telling you the next step—choose your yandere character to play with. it shows you a list of seven yanderes illustrated on their respective cards, clad in coquettish-sort-of highschool uniforms; pink ties, beige vest over a dark blue shirt and pants paired with their set of flirty gestures as your thumb glided through each character—reading their descriptions; interests & dislikes, hobbies & talents, a little trivia about them, and of course—their strengths and weaknesses.

surprisingly, they had a range of informations so complete it felt like they were real humans. the developers did quite a spectacular job on it, don't they? and even the fact of how their weaknesses remains the same although with differences in how they would act on it or how far they would go; obsession, possession, and damn psychotic—willing to kill for you.

how romantic. . . in a psychotic way, of course. you hummed unconsciously, letting out a sigh after at the disappointing fact of how you still find it strangely attractive in your late twenties.

are you really that of a single pringle? pfft!

as you giddily spend your time trying to choose one of all characters. they're just all too good, looking too good for your heart to take. but one particular character catches your eye, intrigues you even with those pair of eyes—goosebumps ran down your spine as you could feel him gazing back at you.

like at you, literally.

or was it just the game's tactic to make the players like you fall deeper? hm, probably! it definitely was, unless a random ghost must've possessed your phone but that can't be right?

right?! you yelled the same word out loud, snapping your head around your room—looking for any potential jumpscares, but to your relief—thank god. now you can play your little new obsession in peace!

snapping your head back at your phone, eyes lit up in immense stars as you've made up your mind, heart thumping loudly as you scanned his unique features—tapping the "play with me?" soft pink button below the name 'yang jungwon' aka the mischievous leader kitty of the group.

in yandere academy, this group is called enhypen—and they have a bunch of fangirls, and it's not even a 'bunch', the size of their fandom is almost half of the female population in the academy and even outside of its territories—there is this ridiculously long line of female students from other academies. a feat that cannot be totally underestimated, and it's not even surprising as they are packed with dazzling visuals, and a set of numerous talents of their own.

they catch hearts everywhere, left and right, back and forth with their grand entrance to the school. each of them has their own separate fandoms too, and yang jungwon's taekwondo club practices are always filled with hearty eyes paired nerve-wracking screams that his coach spends half an hour yeeting them out.

"huh?" you let that out a tad bit too loud, almost exaggerated even. the game surely didn't turn out the way you thought, as you had the initial assumption that the yandere you chose already fell for you, and that you just had to spend those lovey-dovey levels roleplaying with them with a one or a few more predetermined routes to choose from.

the rules was pretty simple; try to get his heart—make him fall for you in the set duration of thirty days. in other words, there are ninety-nine percent possibility that he might reject your confession out of pure lack of interest. get that three row of bars; friendship, love, and yandereness as high as you can because if you were unable to do so then there will be no second chances of playing the yandere of your choice without paying an excessive sum of bucks, so you just had to do it once and make sure to do it right.

quite a challenging mission, huh? no it really is challenging but you were determined as your nostrils flared out a puff of air, straightening your posture as

the adorable motion logo of the game plays out, loading in a bunch of texts meant to help you along the way;

'yandere has each of their own unique love languages, pay attention!'

'little misfortunes are often a blessing in disguise, sometimes redirecting you away from what we call a 'disaster.'

'completing side tasks will increase your yandere's love bar by two percent!'

it soon pops up a bunch of pinky hearts and sparkling stars after all those introductions and guides before switching to a scene of him, jungwon—standing before you, and as expected, you were instructed to approach him.

the location in his taekwondo club, all while sandwiched in between his die-hard fangirls with those screams that you had to turn down your volume to zero. talk about in starting a cool first impression—well never mind, two choices popped up on your screen.

choice one: wait for him after his taekwondo practices (20% of working out)

choice two: act like a damsel in distress (5% of working out)

"uh," your thumb hovered over the two choices, is this a trap? act like a damsel in distress—what in the actual fuck? who would even do that in 2024?! you begrudgingly tapped on the first choice, and the scene switches to a pop up message:

try again, jungwon left a couple minutes earlier for a dinner with jay!

[ retry? ] [ exit? ]

your eyebrow twitches, what the fuck? just like that . . .? there's even barely a progress and you just have to fucking retry?

and jokes on you as your jaw dropped on the floor with the new set of choices presented before you, four choices—actually.

"what is this?!" you yelled so loud you immediately covered your mouth, peeking outside the window.

day three.

the love bar ain't going the fuck up, it's still there glaring at your face with it's zero percent. well that's fine, atleast the friendship bar goes up a tad bit—by five percent. a progress is still a progress!

but the game is just so greedy! you can't skip a day? sure then! but you only had three gems a day, one is to play the major mission, second to power up your aesthetics, skills, and status. third, to complete your side tasks such as running errands for your home or completing school assignments!

that even takes a whole day to refill back up, and it's not even enough with these thirty days you got and with this slow ass rate of getting jungwon to fall for you! you threw your phone on the bed, huffing like a madman—contemplating whether to spend a few bucks on it or just drop the game altogether. surely, you can't be that too attached with a yandere character, right?

right?!

jokes on you, your fingers find itself on the payment method against your will. ultimately cashing out a few bucks from your bank account with a single tear trailing down from your eye, all of this would be complete waste of money and effort if you fail to reign over his heart.

you let out an almost animalistic growl—filled with downright spite, actually. is this game even for real?! the choices they gave you are almost like deliberately setting you up for failure, definitely is! you were almost sure that is—to the point of contacting the developers themselves but you held yourself in sheer strength of self-control at last-minute, at the last digit of contacting them.

"it's okay, pampering myself isn't a sin." you pat yourself on the back, comforting yourself with a huge pout reaching the floor. it's okay! with a newfound determination, you're sure you'll make it!

day ten.

hopeless! utterly hopeless even the god of romance and cupid's themselves would laugh at you. you would, too. due to the fact that you went as far as googling on how to 'win over a man's heart" or "list of dialogues and actions that makes a man gain interest in you".

one of them even says food, that it is the way to a man's heart. but how the heck are you even going to feed a fictional game character? it would be easier if there was a food dialogue!

right, when is your character—or the game itself deciding to send a heart shaped box of chocolates? that would atleast give you a few percent to his love bar!

throwing yourself at your bed like a ragdoll, groaning and kicking your feet in the air. why do you even bother? for what? your search history is so hopelessly embarrassing, and even more embarrassing was when your co-worker had their eyes ogling at it. your mistake for letting your phone screen lit up for everyone to see, thank god she was the only one. patting you on the back that it was okay, and that she too had her fair share of struggles on fictional men.

truly a fellow comrade, you almost shed a tear.

day seventeen.

is this damn game trying to get on your nerves?

deciding to show a new bunch of rules that they didn't bother to show at the first day—set of rules you mustn't do while proceeding with the act of winning a yandere's heart, that is—you were not to skip a single day of playing—in other words, not spending a time with your yandere as in the game's words itself; they will be lonely and might end up throwing tantrums—loathing you for doing so, ignoring you for a short period or even longer depending on how long you were gone, thus risking the amount of effort you've spent so far down the drain.

and you actually skipped not one but two days because of your hectic work piling up after a fellow coworker's taking a sick leave for a week. . . and that was also after finally getting his love bar up to two percent and friendship bar reaching whopping sixteen percent.

yeah, it's sadly a 'whopping' one for you.

and now it's back at zero, with his friendship bar down to crashing down to nine digit and just as exactly the rules stated; every choice, dialogues, and routes you picked ended up him ignoring you with that furrowed eyebrows and slight pout on his lips, or responding to you in a flat out cold tone.

he's not even in love with you, so what are you even throwing a tantrum for?! you screamed that question at the animated game character on your phone's screen.

day twenty-four.

nah, this won't do. it definitely won't so why are you still trying? you bit your lower lip as you look for cheats, hacks, and tutorials online, praying to atleast find some miracle that could miraculously rocket you to ninety percent of love bar atleast!

since all you have left is six days.

you've spent an embarrassing amount of hours and days on this shit, even more dedicated and focused than you do back in your days as a student. you were so sure by this point that you could actually become a relationship therapist with all these accumulated knowledge!

day thirty.

eyebrows and lips twitching, it is.

level thirty, it is—ending on quite a horrible note, or actually, a total doomsday glaring back at you with all your nonexistent experience combined into a recipe with the title "never been in a relationship before".

a helpless laughter escapes your throat, of course—how can you catch a yandere's heart? much less make him your lover? you've never even caught a human's interest over the past twenty years of your life!

how cruel, how utterly cruel! god truly has it's ways of playing jokes. tears, laughter, giggles, sweat, money and effort—all gone down the drain.

all because of that one sentence ending it all, each word literally jumping out from his animated lips in a bold ass pink letters,

"i'm sorry but i can't accept it. i only see you as a friend, (name). i hope you could understand. . i'm sorry, but no—you're just not my type."

huh?! seriously?! a compelling urge, or a really tremendous one so colossal you can break your table into two parts—all that set of routes you've chosen so far with a careful decision and thoughts just for him to say this? just for the love bar to be at total ten percent?

jungwon, how could you? only ten percent? there's no hint of romantic affections found in his eyes or gestures, his friendship bar only by forty percent (a low score of only being his 'school' friend), heck you didn't even trigger his yandereness. like look at him! his yandere bar is at zero looming percent!

a trace of the pink love bar and red yandere bar nowhere to be seen, this is a pure scam! a love scam in the form of a game! meant to target single old ladies like you, fucking hell!

out of pure rage and disappointment, you slammed your phone on the bed—burying your face on your pillows as you let out a long drawn out, muffled scream. downright mad at yourself for even being so triggered by this whole shit, and at the fact of you acting like teenage girl imbued with hormonal changes,

"can't even get a fictional men to fall for me, i'm totally screwed for life!—"

you're so going to uninstall that shitty game, there's no point in playing anyways when you can't have the same character of your choice.

a notification 'tings' up, interrupting your bursts of tantrums—you look over at your phone with the game still up, a big pink heart-shaped bubble pops up on the screen—slowly draining into a pathetic colour of white, ultimately shredding it apart into a broken heart, mocking at your misery.

however the next message pulls outs a gasp from your throat, appearing in its usual glossy pink heart but a little redder at the bottom.

💌 2:09AM

hey there, our precious darling!

we totally get how you feel, there's no need to fret anymore! here we present to you an exclusive package where you will be given a final chance to retry for jungwon! this is a one in a lifetime chance for you—our dear player!

tempting almost, yet you're definitely not falling for that anymore.

and it's all free, let yourself fall deeper and deeper into this world of obsession. you can't really give up that quickly, right?

yanderes never knows when to give up, anyways ♡

free? there's nothing free in this world, even the game itself stated the same words. you've wasted your time, money, and effort on this dumb game and now it's giving a package that is exclusive only for you?

what dirty trick is this game trying to pull off once again?

© pieroulette on tumblr , 2024.

[fishfooddude]

No Phone Policy 3.0

Baby girl Berzatto needed a metal name, and this felt like the choice, ya know?

The Bear MasterList

Directory

Part 2

“Hi, beautiful… oh, this is hella trippy buggies. I remember holding you for the first time, and now I’m holding my granddaughter for the first time…” your Dad laughed as he stared down at the tiny pink bundle in his arms. You smiled as you watched him pace beside your bed. “Where’s Carmy? I have a present for this little princess—I’m surprised he isn’t glued to her, or you, for that matter.” 

You grinned as you adjusted yourself in the incredibly uncomfortable hospital bed you’d been in for the past 48 hours. “He went home to grab me some stuff I forgot.” you lied, hoping he wouldn’t see through your bluff. With a narrow stare, your Dad nodded. He could tell you weren’t telling him something, but he didn’t want to upset you by pushing the topic. 

“Well, what did you two name this perfect little angel?” your Dad questioned as he handed you your daughter. You shrugged, “Haven’t decided yet… the papers are over there on the table, but we can’t decide.” 

“What were you two thinkin’? I’m team something unique and magical, especially since that lil girl was born on one of the most magical days of the year.” he smiled, putting a hand over his chest. You chuckled and adjusted the infant in your arms.

“July 23. Best day of your life.” you answered, “You know, I know the story by heart… but she hasn’t heard it yet.” the sing-song nature of your comment made your Dad lean forward in his chair. “Baby’s first Grandpa story! May I?” he asked, offering his hands to you. You laughed as you handed the baby back to him.

“I better get my daughter back, Dad,” you playfully scolded as he held her close to his chest. He shrugged and responded, “No promises. She’s my new favorite person in the world—your Ma and sisters, and the boys are a very close second, but right now—it’s all her.” 

“You hear that gorgeous? Grandpa has known you for 30 minutes, and your greatness has already superseded your Mommy’s. You’re my perfect lil angel.” he cooed. As he babbled at her, you rolled your eyes, “Tell the story, Grandpa.” 

He scoffed in your direction before turning on the story-telling voice he would use when telling your nephews' stories. “The year was 1986. Your Grandpa was traveling with one of the greatest bands mankind will ever know, Van Halen. Metallica is also a pretty fuckin’ awesome choice for music- don’t let your Daddy ruin your taste in music, princess. You will be my little metalhead.” 

“Dad.” you scolded. He shot you an exasperated look, “He’s not even here bonding with his daughter. I’m GOING to shit on his shitty taste in music.” he challenged. He noticed your subtle wince when he brought up Carmy for a second time. Something was going on, but he didn’t dare bring it up, “Ok, ok, I’ll stop shittin’ on Carmy. Back to baby’s first Grandpa story.” he chuckled, leaning back in his chair and adjusting the baby in his arms. 

“Grandpa was in St. Louis. I’d followed Van Halen for 12 weeks across the continental United States. I was broke as shit, hungry as hell, and I STANK. I’m at the truck stop right- there’s this little diner called Olivette. I ordered the cheapest breakfast I could, and at the end of my meal- this GORGEOUS waitress brought me a piece of gooey butter cake- a Missouri delicacy, in time you’ll have your fair share, princess.” he assured the gurgling bundle in his arms, “The waitress goes, ‘it’s on the house sugar’ in this cute ass little twang and I about died. That was your Grandma Dottie.” 

You smiled as he continued the story. He went in to explain how he’d worked up the courage to ask her if she was going to the Van Halen show that night, and when she said ‘yes,’ he knew she was the one. You laughed as he explained that his mutual love of music had brought him an amazing life. 

“I met Dottie on July 23, 1986, so the fact you were born on July 23, 2024, is a sign. I think I can convince your Mommy to give you a metal ass name. Auntie Pamala was named after Panama- the best Van Halen song. Your Mommy’s middle name is Olivette because that’s where I met your Grandma. Then Auntie Mars is Mars because Grandma wouldn’t let me name her after Lars Ulrich, but Mars was acceptable.” you laughed as your Dad explained the Y/L/N family lure. “Your Auntie Pam is my favorite, though- she named her boys after Eddie and Alex Van Halen.” 

You rolled your eyes. “I love you, Daddy, but I’m not naming my daughter after Van Halen or Metalica.” He scoffed in response. What about Pantera or Megadeath? I’m just sayin’ with a last name like Bearzatto. She needs a metal-ass name.” 

You laughed as you collected your daughter back from him, “Okay, buggies, I love you, and I’m really proud of you. Not just for procreating but for everything you’ve done. Your Ma would be real proud, too.” 

~

“What do you mean she doesn’t have a name yet?” your sister Pam laughed as she cradled your daughter in her arms. You shrugged, “We just can’t decide.” 

“Didn’t he insist on some Van Halen reference?” Mason, Pam’s husband, laughed as he entered the room with a brown paper bag. You shook your head, “He gave her three band onesies, but I think I got out of the Van Halen references.” 

Mason shook his head as he placed the bag on the end of your bed, “I wasn’t sure what you’d be cravin’, but I figured a sub and chips was a safe bet.” he grinned. “Thanks, Mason.”

“What about Jade Van? Dad would freak over the reference.” your baby sister Mars laughed as she put her head on your shoulder, and she snuggled closer to you, craning her neck to get a better look at your still-unnamed daughter. You shook your head, “I don’t know how Carmy would feel about that one.”

“Bitch. He isn’t even here. Name her whatever the fuck you want.” she said with an overly dramatic eye roll. Mars was the only one who knew about the issues you and Carmy had been going through, but you couldn’t stomach telling her that Carmy missed the birth. 

“How about Blade? Blade Berzatto—fuckin’ metal, right?” you joked, trying to brush Carmy out of your mind. Mars erupted into laughter,, which startled the baby in your arms. You cradled the baby and nudged Mars to shut up. “I love it. But let’s go more norm-core,” Mars said as she ran her thumb against the baby’s chubby cheek.

~

“Are you an Erin? Jasper? Kali? Luna?” you listed off baby names as you did skin-to-skin after the baby’s afternoon feeding. You were finally done with visitors for the day, and you’d turned your phone off to avoid dealing with Carmy. You’d inevitably have to talk to him at one point, but having at least one more day of peace was a priority right now. You didn’t know where he was or what he was doing, but it was a safe assumption that he was probably working himself to the bone at The Bear. The Bear… Bear… “Wolf.” the name came to you. “Wolf Berzatto… Daddy goes by Bear. We were calling cub while I was pregnant… you don’t call baby wolves cubs, but I like it. You do need a middle name, though. I know Daddy liked the name Bonnie.” you rattled off before leaning over to kiss the baby’s hat-covered head. 

“What if you hate the name Wolf? I mean, you could go by your middle name or a nickname… Daddy’s name is Carmen, but he goes by Carmy. Okay, Wolf Bonnie Berzatto. I like it, and if Daddy doesn’t, he can suck my dick. Am I swearing too much around you? I feel like I am.” you laughed, “Okay… also, you’re only getting your Daddy’s last name because I changed my last name when I married him.” 

“Wolf… that’s quite a name,” Natalie awkwardly complimented, trying not to pass too much judgment on her niece. She can go by Bonnie if she hates it.” You defended your name choice for the hundredth time in the short eight hours since announcing her name to your family group chat. Turning your phone back on had been anxiety-inducing. Carmy had left you hundreds of texts and voicemails begging to be allowed in the hospital room and apologizing for anything and everything he could think of. It was endearing, but you were still pissed off. 

“Does Carmy know about the name choice?” Natalie carefully prodded as she watched you shove stuff into your bag. You shook your head, “I haven’t talked to him yet.” 

Natalie knew you hadn’t talked to him and knew about you barring him from the hospital. He came back to the restaurant. Natalie had seen Carmy upset in the past, but this was a different kind of upset. He went off on Richie about the ‘no phone policy’ he’d enforced on all staff. Carmy was never a fighter, but Marcus and Sweeps had to hold him back after Carmy had punched Richie in the side of the head.  Richie, visibly disorientated, screamed a ‘what the fuck’ alerting the kitchen staff of the fight going on in the thankfully empty front of house. It took a while for Carmy to calm down enough to tell anyone what had happened. Richie apologized but said Carmy missed the birth, which wasn’t his fault. It was Carmy’s fault. Richie went off about Carmy knowing your due date and how he should’ve planned better and asked for an exception to the rule. 

Natalie sighed, remembering how that comment had riled Carmy up again. She drove him home while he called you repeatedly, getting progressively more upset each time his call went to voicemail. “She can’t do this to me, Sugar- I know I fucked up, but-but she can’t-” Carmy stopped midsentence and began rocking himself forward and backward in his seat. “Carmy, wh-wh-what can I do? How can I help you?” Natalie begged as she parked in the driveway of the house you two owned. “Do you have a fuckin’ time machine so I can go back and not miss the birth of my fuckin’ daughter!” he screamed, making Natalie freeze in her seat.

Natalie stayed with Carmy the entire time you were in the hospital. He was a mess. He flipped between extreme rage and full-blown panic. He ranted about how you were going to leave him and prevent him from seeing his daughter. He cried so hard he threw up multiple times. He wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t eating. Natalie had never seen her brother like this before and was at a loss for what to do. 

When you called her to come pick you and the baby up from the hospital, she didn’t know what to say. You’d asked her not to tell or bring Carmy, which she understood, but it still conflicted her. You hadn’t filled her in on Carmy’s minimal involvement with your pregnancy the past weeks, but Natalie could put two and two together. After enlisting the help of Syd and Richie, Natalie felt as if she could leave Carmy and come pick you up. 

“Are you okay, Nat?” you questioned as you strapped Wolf into her car seat. It’s nothin’. I just feel really guilty that I’m meeting my niece before Carmy had the chance to…” Natalie explained as she crossed her arms over her stomach. You knew Natalie had a point. You felt that same guilt. You wanted nothing more than to cuddle with your husband and daughter. 

You sighed, “Well, I guess I have to talk to Carmy at one point, so let’s go.”

Part 4

[lynzishell]

My 𝐓𝐨𝐩 24 30 𝐒𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬 from 2024🎉 (because rules were made to be broken)

TYSM for tagging me @herecirmsims, @elderwisp, and @changingplumbob 💖 As per usual, I went overboard... oops!

Before I forget -- I am going to tag @honeyjars-sims, @raiiny-bay, @havenroyals, @likelyamused, and @dandylion240 (ofc, feel free to ignore me if you've already done it, or if you just don't wanna)

JANUARY

We started the year in Sulani where Phoenix and Dawn got engaged! Let us all take a moment to remember the glory that was Phoenix with a tan 😍

I call this - My Love Affair with Brindleton Bay (Part 1)

I love them. This isn't even the greatest screenshot, but it will forever be one of my favorites. One day I will put together a collage of forehead kisses for these two.

FEBRUARY

My Love Affair with Brindleton Bay (Part 2)

Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi were always happy to steal focus when I needed to blur things happening in the background... 😏

Atlas forever being the best uncle in the world... and fascinated with his niece having his eyes

MARCH

Me peeking through the foliage while Phoenix introduces his wife and child to his mom... the only way he knows how 🥺🤍

APRIL

😂 Ok so March and April are pretty sparse... I took a break in the Spring because I was going through a breakup and a move. I spent that time focusing on things that made me happy - like writing The Past arc for the boys and laughing at Dawn's ridiculous in-game expressions 😂

MAY

I'm so glad I took that break because I was able to come back and give Phoenix and Dawn the wedding they deserved! I also LOVE these last two shots... After the party ended, those three were goofing off and having so much fun... and then giving Phoenix the MOST thoughtful gift... it still makes me tear up! 🥹

JUNE

And so it begins... This nightmare sequence was so much fun to put together! And this shot is by far my favorite... it was totally by accident, but oh so perfect

The Past my beloved... I love this shot sm... the morning light, the fall colors, Ash and Lex being Ash and Lex while Atlas tags along behind them (he'd only known Ash for 24 hours and was already crushing... poor boy didn't stand a chance)

Oh yeah! Remember Chestnut Ridge?! The way I jumped around in this part istg... You're all incredible for putting up with me this summer 😂 Okay but I love this one because of how all the animals are turned to look at Danny... again, a total accident, but perfectly foreshadows what I have in mind for his future!

Back the The Past - What's perfect about this one is how the only thing in focus is where they are touching.

I’m acutely aware that his leg is resting against me now, and he’s rolling the fabric of my sleeve between his thumb and middle finger. Normally, I would have already scooted away from the sofa. Pivoted my body so the conversation could continue, but so that I could not be touched. But I don’t feel any need to do that. Not with him. His affection is so subtle and absent-minded; I can tell he’s just feeling comfortable with me. Something about that makes me feel comfortable with him too.

JULY

AHHHHHH!!! I still lose my mind over this moment!!! Like... the way physical touch plays such a big role throughout this arc, and getting to see Atlas evolve from someone who always kept his distance from people to being the affectionate teddy bear he is today... and the way Ash is so sweet and mindful and considerate through it all...

And then I look down, down to where I feel his hand come to rest on my leg, the heat of it warming my thigh. “Is that okay?” He asks, “Do you want me to move my hand?” I look up into his eyes and shake my head slightly, “No. No, it’s okay.”

THEIR FIRST KISS!!!!! The tippy toes pls!!! 😭 I'm not gonna lie.... I forgot the entire purpose of this post and am now lost to reminiscing... I already miss this arc so much!!!

Taking my time, I brush my lips lightly against his before kissing him softly. Holding myself back, not because I’m unsure, but because I’ve never been more certain of anything. I want to savor this moment, commit it to memory so I can revisit it tomorrow, and every day after.

A brief look into The Present as these two make plans for the future that I will inevitably ruin for them because I felt compelled to go into CAS and play around with genetics and rewrite the entire ending to this arc. Sorry not sorry boys!

aaaand back to The Past for our first peek at Ash's POV as he realizes he may be falling for Atlas

Y’know, my biggest fear is drowning, especially in the ocean, and yet, my favorite place is the beach near my parents’ house, sitting right at the water’s edge. Being with Atlas, it reminds me of this place. The bright blue of his eyes, the sandy color of his hair, and the dusting of freckles across his nose. And the way being near him makes me feel just a little nervous, like at any moment I could get swept away and lose myself completely.

AUGUST

Oh yeah! Chestnut Ridge and Joey's cliche dad-logic moment! Seriously guys... thank you for putting up with my nonsense... But OMG! Did you know you can set the horses to buck riders off every time they try to get on? 10/10 recommend if you need a laugh! I had so much fun with this scene... Phoenix, on the other hand, did not 🫣

This one. You have no idea. I struggled SO MUCH with trying to figure this scene out... and only those in our discord writing group will know how I lost my mind when these poses were released and gave me the inspiration I needed... I'm pretty sure I shot this scene a month before I even started this arc because I couldn't get it out of my head... I should also add that these two died in process of making it, and I fucked up this lot while trying to place all the lights and decos via TOOL and had to start all over in another save (which worked out because the Romance Festival spawned in the new one making it all so much better and more lively)... I went through a lot for this shot, and I will hold it near and dear to my heart forever as a result.

SEPTEMBER

Just them. Holding hands. In The Present. 🥹 I just like this one a lot... it's actually the desktop background on my PC lol

A hazy dream in neon pink

Don't worry... they're JUST FRIENDS (who are clearly in love with each other and on mdma and suddenly can't keep their hands off each other)

As he backs himself against the wall, pulling me into him, I finally understand. “Is this okay?” he asks. I lean in so fast that I practically breathe the answer into his mouth, “Yeah,” and before I know it, we’re making out again. But this time is far more intense, our kisses deeper, our breathing ragged, our hands grabbing fistfuls of hair and clothing and clawing at skin as though our desire for each other has grown into some kind of wild animal. Finally free from its cage, there’s no going back now.

💛🩵💛🩵 What am I doing again? I think I've lost the plot...

OCTOBER

Oh yeah... fave screenshots of 2024! We're so back! San Myshuno my beloved

The Proposal 😭 Spoiler alert... they were never "just friends" ajsdkakljs Also, I had to exit and go back in game three times to keep those bright red/orange skies for this scene... worth it!

NOVEMBER

A glimpse of The Future... and bb is confused af

DECEMBER

Things are different now in ways they don't quite understand, but they have each other 🥹🩵💛

For the rest of our lives, we're in this together.

[coochiequeens]

There's something satisfying about when an abusive man is called out by other men. Or at least one man.

Rest In Infamy, You Haunted Castle

Why I believe the Neil Gaiman accusations

By GRAHAM LINEHAN JUL 19, 2024

I only met Neil Gaiman once, at an upscale dinner party where Derren Brown had been hired to do magic tricks like in the old-timey days. Between astonishments, Gaiman and I withdrew to a quiet corner where I pretended to be pleased that he was giving me a signed copy of ‘Sandman’. One of the unexpected advantages of being cancelled is telling people who took part in my harassment what I really think about their work, but this was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, so I said the right things and we went back to being bamboozled by Brown’s invisible craft.

To give credit where it’s due, I later read Gaiman’s ‘Coraline’ to my kids which had them simultaneously terrified and hooked, and thanked him for it. Whatever my feelings about his earlier work, he was a real writer, practising his own invisible craft. From the evidence of that book, I thought he was probably a decent person too, an impression that continued until 2022, when we started to get into it over The Issue.

I may have asked why he wasn’t speaking out on behalf of JK Rowling, who was undergoing one of her regular cancellations for refusing to pander to the spoilt brats who loved her books but missed their meaning. A big name like his might have shifted the conversation and given her some much-needed support. He might perhaps have persuaded some of his fans to give the matter another look. This was when I assumed people like him acknowledged biological reality but worried about ‘coming out of the closet’, as it were. It took me years to realise that almost every celebrity mate of mine believed, or was pretending to believe, in the fashionable, American mind-cancer of ’gender’.

But back then, I was still astonished to find that he was a carrier of the virus, the mass delusion that by sheer coincidence, turned up after the arrival of the Internet. Whether it was Bill Bailey or Neil Hannon, Robin Ince or Matt Lucas, Arthur Mathews or Jimmy Mulville, it was always the same story. A sudden cloud of amnesia would form around my celebrity mates, a real peasouper, from which they suddenly could not see why we need female-only spaces, or why unhappy teenage girls will not find a miraculous cure for their woes in a double mastectomy. Far from sharing any of my urgency in the need to stop children from being irreversibly harmed in gender clinics, they instead downplayed, deflected and dismissed. “I never ask you to join in with my animal activism” grumbled Neil Hannon on one of the occasions I begged for his support.

“Couldn’t you pretend women and children are animals?” I thought.

My usual trajectory during these conversations saw me shifting from gobsmacked disbelief to fury and despair. The disloyalty made me angry, but knowing my friends did not care about their own daughters, wives, sisters and mothers was, and continues to be, destabilising in the extreme.

Gaiman went one step further. I can’t find the tweet, so I may be paraphrasing, but he said

"I hope you're kinder if your daughter ever hopes to transition."

I can think of no uglier thing to say to a parent. For girls, ‘transition’ means double mastectomies in their teens, hysterectomies in their mid-twenties, early menopause and a four times greater chance of having a heart attack than males of the same age. To have this decaying goth wish that horror on my daughter was more than I could bear. I wanted to rip his throat out.

Like a pair of grappling cowboys falling off a rooftop, our fight spilled into email. I sent Gaiman this article about the Tavistock. It was clear when he wrote back that he hadn’t absorbed it Like most celebrities in this fight, he appeared to have lost the ability to read.

“As I said before Graham, I hope that you'd be kinder if it was one of your kids who wanted to transition. “

He actually said it again. The piece was right there, detailing exactly what was happening to the children unlucky enough to wander through the Tavistock’s doors, and he chose to repeat that disgusting thing. Why?

That same year, just months before Gaiman was advising me on the value of kindness, a 22-year-old woman (‘Scarlett’ in the podcast) arrived at his Waiheke Island home in New Zealand for a babysitting job. Upon her arrival, she discovered that Gaiman’s wife of the time, Amanda Palmer, had suddenly remembered a sleepover, an appointment the child was apparently eager to attend.

So she and junior drove out of view, leaving the 23 -year-old Scarlett alone with Gaiman for the night. Within a few hours the 61-year-old man, without warning or invitation, appeared fully naked and slipped into the other end of her bath. Scarlett alleges that over the next three weeks, they embarked on a semi-consensual relationship, where Gaiman routinely ignored the boundaries she set. She alleges that he became angry when she would refuse these demands, used a belt to beat her, insisted she call him ‘Master’ and once sexually assaulted her so violently that she lost consciousness.

“… (the sex) was so painful and so violent that I fainted. I passed out, lost consciousness, ringing in the ears, black vision, the pain was celestial, you know, which is a strange word to use, but I couldn't even describe it in language. And when I regained consciousness and I was on the ground, I looked up and he was watching the rehearsals from Scotland of whatever they were filming, I don't fucking know. And he didn't even notice that I was passed out. And you know…there was blood. It was so so, so traumatic, and I asked him to stop. I said it was too much.”

Scarlett is a compelling witness despite, or because of, her contradictions. Certain things paint a picture of consent—she sexted Gaiman, to which he would send careful replies—and she laughs nervously when she talks about the alleged abuse. But when Gaiman’s side of the story is put to her, she turns cold as a knife and shows flashes of fury that she—in her telling—young, inexperienced and dazzled by Palmer and Gaiman’s fame and lifestyle, was used so casually and so brutally.

A few years back, I wrote about becoming a sort of Jessica Fletcher figure on Twitter. ‘Murder, She Wrote” but with paedophiles and predators. “Just as murderers seemed drawn to any location Jessica presented herself, “ I said. “My opining about women's rights and safety on Twitter appeared to attract the kind of men who can't sit still during a spelling bee.”

Among my adversaries was Peter Bright, the Ars Technica writer now doing twelve years for trying to buy two children to abuse. Luckily the children didn’t exist and the parents were actually FBI agents. Our exchange was brief and concerned safeguarding. I’m sure you’re all astonished to discover that he was against it.

Then there was ex-Labour MP Eric Joyce, who argued with me about the safety of mixed-sex loos in schools and was done for possessing the worst kind of child abuse images. More recently, I tangled with ‘Lexi’, who is now serving time for rape.

They all had one thing in common. They couldn’t leave alone those of us who were actively opposing the trans movement's assault on safeguarding, an assault that chimed nicely with their plans for the future. Each was returning to the scene of a crime not yet committed, each picking at a scab on their own character.

In 2018, at the height of #MeToo, Gaiman tweeted “On a day like today it’s worth saying, I believe survivors. Men must not close their eyes and minds to what happens to women in this world. We must fight, alongside them, for them to be believed, at the ballot box, and with art, and by listening, and change this world for the better.”

Well said. I certainly believe the women in ‘Master’. During my Jessica Fletcher period (a period which continues) no-one except Gaiman ever mentioned my kids. I think he knew it would cause me distress, and the second time he said it was just a twisting of the knife. Many of my colleagues in the media joined in with the trashing of my reputation, but Gaiman went that extra mile. I believe this is because he is a sadist. I think he is a man who finds pleasure in the suffering of others, and a man who does not see women and girls as fully human.

This was my final letter to him.

Dear Neil

I notice you’re still pretending you can’t read the Tavistock story. If you ever try and lay that curse on my kids again I will certainly share our exchange. Your privileged beliefs are harming children so to paraphrase Will Smith, keep their names out of your fucking mouth.

Thank you for giving me one last chance to say that JK Rowling will be remembered as a hero and you as a traitor to the kids who loved your books.

Rest in infamy, you haunted castle.

All the best,

Graham.

[argumentl]

Kaoru Interview - Burrn! Japan Vol.23 (Feb 2024)

Interview by You Masuda

FAN TRANSLATION

(Note: This interview was held mid-way through the Phalaris Final tour)

The next person to interview was Kaoru, straight after Die. When I asked Kyo about new material going forward, he simply said, 'Ask Kaoru about that', but to be sure, if there is any member creating the blueprints for future new material, there is no doubt that its Kaoru. Of course, I'm aware that its slightly too soon to be asking such things, but I started the interview hoping to at least pick up a few hints.

ーYou are currently mid-tour, but after finishing both days at Zepp Haneda, how are you feeling about it?

Hmm. Its quite.....exhausting (lol). It consumes a lot of energy, much more than we usually use for live shows. Phalaris has a lot of power packed into it, and you really feel it bearing down on you. I'm not even trying to be that active on stage, but still....its tiring (lol)

ーBy that you mean its something different from physical tiredness?

Yeah, the tone, the content of the show, there is a heaviness to it, its something that you just can't approach half-heartedly.

ーKyo said that the songs are all hard work to sing this time. As for performing, there seems to be a lot of songs that you just can't relax through.

Yeah, its the same when playing. It really questions the type of person who is stood there playing on stage...this isnt the type of stage I can just stand around carelessly on. I mean, not that I'm like that anyway (lol). But there is something about it where I just can't express myself unless I fully throw myself into that world. It feels like a heavy weight crashing down on me for this tour.

ーThis is the third tour in the Phalaris cycle, but I get the feeling the first two rounds were not as heavy as this?

They weren't. The first round was quite tasteful, and in the second round we emphasised the 'live' element of it more, it was like a lighter version. If its too heavy from the beginning, its kinda tough on the audience too.

ーWould you say this is an album with such a heaviness that it requires this kind of considered moderation?

Yeah, but we did think we need to moderate this tour too. If for example, we were to do a single limited live show in a big venue to close Phalaris, that would be even more intense. In the shape of a tour, there are times when we are reaching our absolute limits. Thats how tough it is (lol) It didn't seem right unless each show of the tour encompassed that sense of weight and culmination.

ーIn other words you are almost right at your tipping point?

Yes. If we were to increase the intensity further, there is no doubt that the shows would collapse into chaos...which may be ok in some sense, but then we would be unable to continue touring properly.

ーYou touched on this earlier, but don't you have any plans to do a seperate finale for Phalaris in a big venue at any point?

No, we aren't thinking about that, not for now at least. It doesn't mean there is a zero percent chance, but recently there just isnt the venue availability for that kind of thing. This has been going on for a few years now. If we had been able to find a big venue before announcing the tour, then this tour wouldn't have been seen as the 'Final'. So in a sense, ending Phalaris in this way is very rooted in actuality. It probably still would have been this heavy though, even if it wasn't labeled as the final.

ーFor Uroboros, you held a finale live in Osaka jo Hall after a bit of time had passed. Is there no possibility of such a thing happening for Phalaris?

Well, I don't know. Its a timing issue. If we found the perfect venue at the perfect time, and if we were all mentally in that space....I mean, it will be easier to know as time passes, but if we are mentally for it, there may be a possibility.

ーYour answer has raised my expectations somewhat, but I'm not going to get too carried away for the time being. Have you discovered any new feelings towards this album during the current tour?

Hmm....I've been thinking its a good album (lol)

ーIts not like you to sing your own praises (lol)

Well, I mean, after this, if we realease a new single, there will probably be Phalaris-like elements to it, but even putting that to one side, so many of our past songs just fit really well alongside Phalaris. So I think we have been very true to ourselves with this album. Although it sounds a bit odd for me to say that myself (lol). I'm not entirely sure about the overall balance of the album as a piece of work, but it fits so well with our other songs, there is a mysterious feel to it.

ーFitting with your other songs may have something to do with it, but at the time you completed the album, you also said that it contains every part of Dir en grey. I'm sure you werent consciously thinking that while you were making it though.

No, I think I was at times. Of course, this isn't the end for us, but I was thinking that IF the band were to end now, I would want this to be seen as our best work. So as for consciously putting all of Dir en grey into it, no, I don't think thats wrong.

ーMaking the album with that much conscious effort means its not all new. There are links to the past, as well as that link to pull you forward onto your next step.

Yeah, and I've been feeling this even more so on the current tour. That's why I've been thinking this is a good album (lol)

ーI love hearing this kind of thing from the artists themselves. Hearing about the songs fitting well reminded me...With all these songs from Phalaris in the setlist, certain other songs might also come to mind, but to hear songs like Different Sense and Downfall in there, its like they were meant to be. That may be an odd way to describe it...

Heh, I understand. They wouldn't be out of place even if they were on Phalaris. We didn't choose to include specific types of songs while we were making it, but if you search through our past music there are some things that do just roll into place. Its probably going too far to say I was realising this when completing the album, but I feel like I can see Phalaris more clearly now. With this tour, I really do feel that sense of completion.

ーThat may be what a sense of completion actually means. You finally reach that point after realising for yourself what the flow of your past work has created.

Yes.

ーIn that sense, I think this is a very interesting outcome. But with such an intensity to the show from the outset, there is the possibilty of the audience being left behind at somepoint, if you don't get it exactly right.

Hm, I wonder. Some people might have felt that way about Phalaris 2, but this is just us being us. Its just not blowing up with excitement at the end this time, its kind of a different feeling from what we've done previously. The heaviness of the mid-section of the show is due to us being thorough, but I don't feel like its exceptional (lol)

ーAs you just said about the end of the show, closing with Kamuy is a bit different from the feeling we usually get at the end. Did you choose to play this song last, in line with bringing Phalaris to a close?

Well, it was also the first tour to play Kamuy. If we had played it at previous tours, it might have ended up in a different spot in the setlist. But for sure, to play it for the first time at the final, it could go in no other spot. Even if we were to do a seperate final in a big venue, I think it would still come at the end of the encore, not the end of the main.

ーEnding the live with the disquieting tone of Kamuy in the air, then raising the lights and bidding farewell to the audience...even with this familiar parting scene, its quite different from past tours.

With that we simply just want to say thank you to the people who came. Its a way to express thanks at the end of each show. We could just disappear off stage after Kamuy if we wanted to, but as I was saying before about 'the type of person who is stood on the stage', I want to keep this time that I have to express my thanks to the peole who come to see us. I mean, the 5 of us could all gather together in the centre for a farewell or something too, but that kind of structure somehow doesn't seem very 'us' (lol)

ー Yeah, lets save that for another occasion (lol) By the way, it must have been a difficult transition to go from finishing this phase of Phalaris, to confronting the new single 19990120.

Well, it wasnt easy. We did the 25th anniversary tour last year, so from there it was like, 'Should we do some old stuff?'. We would usually be looking at doing new material at this kinda time, but we talked about it, and what with covid and such, we thought there might be a few people out there who hadn't been to see a live show for a while. So we thought we could use some kind of tool to get more people coming back as we move forward. Not in the sense of making an album of self covers or anything, but since the 25th anniversary of our debut is in Jan 2024, we thought we might as well try something. We just wanna try out what we can, because of course there is always loads that we can't.

ーYeah. Self covers or remakes can give the impression of being backwards looking, but as we talked about how past songs have fit so well in the current tour and helped you realise how far you've come, it could be said that looking afresh at these songs from 25 years ago might be the link to future discoveries.

Whether or not this links to new things is hard to tell untill we do it, that wasn't really in my mind. But for now its more like a tool to stir up the 'Lets go and see Dir en grey again' feeling. I can say this, back in the day there were a lot of so-called heavy bands I used to go and see. I admired them and started my own band, I'm that kind of person too (lol) But I think a lot of people like that eventually start to think 'Ah, I havnt listened to that kind of music for a while', they even stop listening to music at all sometimes. Or if they do listen, its the same stuff they listened to back in the day. I wanted to strike a chord with those kind of people and get them thinking about coming to see a show. As well as letting them connect with Phalaris, its just a good starting point to get back in. So these new remakes are part of a plan, as opposed to something we just really wanted to do.

ーDir en grey have rerecored old songs in the past, but those past remakes have been more about updating old songs to match the contemporary sound of the band. Was there no such intention this time?

Its not like there was NO intention, of course, we wanted to put some of our current selves into them while making them. But we didn't want to change them outright. So in that sense, they are different from our past remakes.

ー Without trying to make any big intentional changes, you wanted the natural differences between then and now to shine through?

Yeah, that kind of thing. I think in that sense, we achieved our aim.

ー I see. I actually dug up an old interview from 25 years ago, and have been re-reading it. In it you were speaking about the background to each song and such, but Kaoru, how did you feel back then about releasing 3 songs at once for your major debut?

I though it was a great talking point, but it was hard work (lol) We had first talked about releasing two songs. So we went to LA with this idea and got to work in the studio, but then it somehow got suggested to do three songs. I honestly didn't even know how we were gonna get even two songs recorded, so I was rather skeptical that we could manage three. (lol)

ーWhat song was number 3?

That was Yurameki. We had started pre-production on all three at first, and sent them to Yoshiki. After that we chose the diametrically opposed Zan and Akuro no oka as the two songs to record. But when we went to LA, it was like, 'Ok, lets just do all three'.

ーI can hear the voice of your producer when you say that (lol). Back then, it wasn't that unusual for two songs to be released as a single at once in this category, but three had a big impact. What kind of things made a big impression on your memory back then?

Firstly, there were a lot of people around. Also, it was non-stop photoshoots and interviews. I was always writing music within this kind of bustling situation. It was really easy to lose focus of where we were heading with it all, so I tried to keep a tight hold on only that. But there were still a lot of days where I just had no idea what I was supposed to be doing.

ーYou were having like, 10 interviews at day, right? Wasn't it a bit like those artists who come to Japan for promotion, but like every day?

Yeah, even for photoshoots we would have 3 different studios booked, going here, going there, interviews in between, every time.

ーI'd like to ask about the three songs. On the new release, Yurameki is song number one. Was there any meaning behind recording them in this order?

After finishing the arangements, when we were starting the recording stage, we thought this order would be good based on how the song starts and ends. Its only for this reason.

ーI was going to ask more about the song order, but as for Yurameki, it was a bit of a curve ball for Dir en grey back in the day, wasn't it?

No, not really. We had melodious songs even then, I didn't think it was that much of a curve ball. Its Shinya's song, but he had been writIng songs during the indies era too. It was a recognition of our Shinya-esque songs.

ーAt the time, you said, 'Its a pop song, but we wanted to change up the style'. Does that mean you thought a lot about how to put it out there?

In the end, if we kept it ordinary, it would end up sounding like a totally ordinary song. I actually paid a lot of attention to parts that you wouldn't notice even if you listened to the song (lol). For example, the chord work. Yoshiki would tell me to do impossible things like, 'How about we try this?'

ーWhat do you mean by 'impossible'?

To put it simply, impossible chords and stuff. (lol) But he would say, 'Its only for the recording, so its ok, right?' So we changed our plans, and recorded all the chords one string at a time, then layered them up to make the sound. Not like playing every string simultaneously, but recording phrases one string at a time. So in the end the texture of the sound came out with more of a bang. I was spending a lot of time on those parts that no-one would probably notice.

ーIn other words, you deconstructed the song during recording.

Yes, I took advantage of the fact that they were chords that couldn't be played normally, and recorded them in a way which was unique to the studio.

ーI see. And about the songs Akuro no Oka and Zan, Yoshiki's opposite comments about both songs are in this old article. You said that for the former, he said he was concerned about the collision of sounds, and for the latter, he said 'I don't care about the collision of sounds'.

Heh, that sounds about right.

ー The collision of sounds. These are words I sometimes hear. In short, its where sounds are mixing at a place and a time where they shouldn't, right?

Yes. Maybe its because I'm a guitarist, but I tend to like adding more and more sounds and layering them up. I would suggest something like, 'I want to add this kind of phrase here', and Yoshiki would say, 'No, that gets in the way of the other sounds, change it'. So I would add something different, and he would say, 'No, thats no good either. Do you really need to add something here?'. For me it was like, 'well, I may not need to, but I want to'. It might be a guitarist thing. I say this, because Yoshiki did tell me, 'HIDE was like that, always wanting to add extra stuff in'. (lol)

ーIt must have sent shivers down your spine to hear that. In addition to this, you also said about Akuro no oka, that 'Including the guitar solo, the developments in this song are really satisfying to play'. Is it these chord progressions and such that feel pleasant to guitarists as a rule?

That is part of it. I've always felt comfortable playing this song. But when we were doing the remake, I did wonder whether I should try to go even further with it. Like, could I make it feel even more satisfying? I did actually try it, but it ended up feeling so good, it didn't line up with the original song anymore (lol). So I gave that up. It wasn't Akuro no oka anymore, it had a kind of palacial feel to it. I thought this wouldn't work (lol)

ーI feel like I also want to hear the palacial version, but we do need to preserve the foundations of the song, right? (lol) Okay, so next, the complete opposite of Akuro no oka, Zan. The song itself had been around from the beginning, and it seems like it went through many minor changes to get to where it was?

Well, because we had played it a bit live. But originally, we made it in the studio with me just telling everyone stuff like, 'Im gonna play this part like this, so you play the drums like this' etc etc. And then for the CD release, I actually remade the arrangement, so we could do it properly.

ーGenerally speaking, this is the least fitting of the three songs to be a single. Did you ever question or doubt putting this out as a single?

No, I definitely wanted to release it. So much so as to even say 'I want Zan as the first song' (lol). But it would be tough with only Zan, so thats how we came around to the idea of releasing two songs. Like, 'It has impact, but we need something with a different feel to it too'.

ーI see. It might have been a lot different if not for this decision. The three songs were recorded at the studio 'ONE ON ONE' in LA. (Note: This later became 'EXTASY STUDIO' when Yoshiki bought it, and is now in the hands of a different owner under the name '17 HERZ STUDIO'). This place was well-known for being used by Metallica, but how was it, recording overseas so suddenly?

Well, it was super luxurious. I've never had such a cushty recording experience since (lol)

ーDid you feel like, 'We made it!'?

No, I didn't. Not that long before that I had being doing home recordings, or usIng super tiny studios etc up until our indies era. So no, even being placed in that situation didn't make me feel like we'd made it. It was more like, 'Okay, what do we do now?' (lol) Being in that unfamiliar environment, there was a lot of pressure to make something lasting. We had unlimited use of equipment, but at that stage in our growth, we had limited knowledge, and undeveloped ears. So even if we heard something, we were unable to tell whether or not it really sounded good. It was me, who listened to nothing but heavy music, being told, 'Maybe this sounds better?', but then just responding, ' Nah, I just wanna make it sound more distorted'(lol) I only ever had this kind of exchange back then. But of course, my knowledge, brain, and ears were not fit for that environment. It was a bit of a waste in some sense. But it could be quite interesting if we were to do that kind of thing now. I didnt understand how the sound of a studio works back then, but if it was now, as well as having understanding, I would be able to really experiment with different things. I'd understand about mic positioning, about creating ambience, and all sorts. But back then I knew nothing. (lol)

ー Its seems almost pointless to be in that environment with such a lack of understanding and appreciation, but I think the experience itself probably meant a great deal to you, right?

Yes. I learned the importance of taking time to make something. Looking at a song from different angles, trying to dig into it in different ways. Before that things were never really much deeper than, 'Ok guys, lets make something'. I learned how to put great care into my work for the duration.

ーIts a very valuable thing to learn early on that its not all easy. Ok, so in January you will hold the FC limited live shows in Kawasaki and Osaka. You'll be in 25th debut anniversary mode in mid-Jan, right?

Well, yeah. And after that is the European tour, which will be a bit different from a regular tour. And the after that, a domestic tour entitled PSYCHONNECT. This time its 25 years since Gauze (lol).

ーIt's one anniversary after another, right?

Yeah (lol) The timing was just right to fit a tour in this Spring, and when we talked about what kind of thing to do, a Gauze themed hall tour was suggested.

ーJust to make things clear, this doesn't mean you are going to re-record the whole of Gauze, does it?

No no no (lol). If we did that people would be like, 'Enough of this already, record some new material!' (lol)

ーOf course. But at same time, I'm still kinda curious about hearing something like that.

Even if we were to do that, now isn't the time for it. People would end up thinking, 'What, are you gonna rerecord your entire catalogue??' (lol) That wouldn't be much fun.

ーYeah, interest would drop if it was nothing but rewriting history.

If I was a fan, I'd probably be thinking, 'Is this all they're doing from now on?'

ーRight. The thing we are really all waiting for is some new material after fully digesting Phalaris. Have you begun anything in that direction?

Nope, not yet (lol). I don't even know whether its ok to say this, but I haven't started yet. But actually, I was thinking about getting started today (lol).

ーYou might start writing new music straight after this interview?

Yeah, the interview just came into my schedule at exactly this time.

ーI can't wait to hear what you come up with. When I interviewed you just after the completion of Phalaris, you said that with no regular touring during covid, it had been difficult to communicate and exchange ideas with the other members. Does this mean that normality has returned to the bands' interactions. Are you able to make new music whilst interating with the other members on tour again?

Yes, we had already got back to a sense of normality by the tour before this. but now we are actually discussing next moves and stuff, and we are ready to get started. Straight after this interview, to be exact (lol).

ーLet me ask you one more thing. We touched earlier on the European tour which will be held in March. Its the first overseas tour to have past albums as a theme. What were you thinking about when deciding this?

We had originally talked about doing it in 2022 as part of the 25th anniversary run. But with the pandemic, and also trying to balance it out with the Phalaris tour, we were unable to make it happen then, so we slided it over to 2024 just as it was. People might be wondering why we are doing it at this time, but we had planned to do it from before, and now we just finally have the chance to.

ーWould you like to return to overseas touring as it used to happen previously?

Well, yeah, but its not easy. The reality is a lot different now than how it used to be. Its really not as simple as to just say, 'Let's go' now. In this case, we managed to make it work by seeing if we could do it at this particular time, but I can't be sure about future overseas tours. So to the fans in Europe, I want them to come and see us this time. Don't wait for next tme.

ーIts really interesting that the themes for this European tour are Uroboros and Withering to death. Your first ever tour of Europe was with Withering to death. These two albums have been influential in Dir en grey's overseas activities.

Yeah, we were overseas the most with those albums, and with The Marrow Of A Bone. I had thought about digging a little deeper, era-wise. Like maybe taking Vulgar overseas or something. Maybe if we have a chance in the future.

ー There are still many paths open to you. What about a Gauze world tour?

Heh, that would require a lot of motivation (lol) It would be impossible otherwise (lol)

ーWhether or not you ever manage that, there are still a lot of other things you need to do, and things you can do. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of year 2024 is for you.

Thank you. Hopefully it won't be long before we have something new to put out.

[midnightbears]

✿ tell 'em how the crowds went wild! tell 'em how i hope they shine!

⎯ in which you look back on how grateful you are for the opportunity bestowed upon you. aka: you joined the opla's cast!

#STARRING. iñaki godoy, mackenyu, jacob romero, taz skylar, emily rudd ft. fem!reader [elle fanning 4 faceclaim but u can imagine y/n anyway u wish!].

#TAGS. sfw, kind of context, a bit of smau but its tiny. mentions of covid just in case it's triggering?

#NOTE. pardon my rusty writing but i really wanted to get this out!!! i added an oc from one piece for the sake of the story but she's barely mentioned so uuuh yuh! timeline may be wrong but i work with what i'm given please bear with me. let me know if you would like more fics of this y/n??? ALSO IGNORE THE WATERMARKS ON THE PHOTOS I NEEDED TO MAKE THEM NEATER

© midnightbears on tumblr, apr 2024. please do not repost to another platform, plagiarize, translate, use for AI-related purposes or claim as your own.

In the past, if someone were to come up to you and tell you that you’d be a part of the One Piece Live Action main cast in the future, you would’ve probably laughed in their faces despite your wishful thinking.

At that time, you were content with your work, doing short theatre plays with companies or gaining minor roles in musicals. Everything changed when you landed the role for the one-woman show Fleabag for a limited time on London’s West End after the leading actress underwent emergency surgery for an appendectomy. You only acted as the sex-obsessed mess of a woman for about three weeks, but it was enough time for people to notice you, to really see you.

You believed your career had reached its pinnacle when you were cast as Katherine Howard in Six: The Musical in London. Your name had become somehow well-known in the musical theatre world, and you had a small but dedicated fan base who liked uploading edits of you being a dork during the Megasix on YouTube and TikTok. 

Months later, you were bound to play as Fantine for Les Miserables when COVID abruptly struck, and you were dismayed that your job was ripped from you so abruptly. Your best friend, the sweetest person on earth, insisted on you moving in with her in fear that you’d be evicted from your apartment.

Months passed, and you eventually found a small way to help your friend pay rent by offering singing and acting lessons online to musical-aspiring teenagers. Since you had gained many followers from your earlier work on social media, it didn’t surprise you when the classes became sold out.

Your friend also convinced you to create a YouTube channel for you to upload videos of yourself (sometimes joined by her) where you watched and commented shitty movies, followed DIY tutorials just for the fun of it, performed covers of your favorite songs, and just generally vlogged your life (along with reactions to Taylor Swift’s (From The Vault) songs).

At first, you thought it was pretty stupid, but you were delightfully proved wrong when your videos harbored over 200k-300k views on a bad day, so you found no reason to stop as COVID-19 continued, growing to gain a little over five hundred thousand followers. Your reactions were often used for TikTok audios or clips, so you found your popularity growing and evolving during that year.

You believed yourself to be a general, simple woman. People liked you because you were elegant and levelheaded, although you could sometimes be chaotic. You also had a subtle sense of humor that many found charming. But mostly, you grew a steady fan base because your videos and presence comforted countless young adults and teenagers.

You were an optimist and a reassuring one, so during the times when COVID was so prominent, people sought refuge from the monstrosities of the world in your videos, where you seemed to connect with them even though you were on the other side of the screen.

However, everything changed somewhere in 2020-2021. That evening, your best friend got home from work with excitement practically oozing out of her every pore. You and your best friend were avid anime watchers and manga readers, so you couldn’t help the face you made when she told you that One Piece was getting a live-action.

Although you were skeptical, your friend practically insisted you send an audition tape. You grimaced at that. It was well-known that live anime actions were almost always corny and cringeworthy compared to the original work, and people never liked them. You had learned that much from Death Note and a couple of others. However, your best friend convinced you with this argument:

“If it’s that bad, then at least you’ll gain more followers out of the memes that people will make, and if it’s good, you’ll still get famous anyway!”

Eventually, you sent a video of you performing one of the lengthy monologues from Fleabag to your agency and simply hoped for the best. Your friend was practically rooting for you to get the role of Anastasia, one of the first integrants of the Straw Hat crew, joining before Sanji and after Usopp. You adored her as she greatly reminded you of your late mother, although you would be happy with any role.

Somewhere in November 2021, you remember a lot of screaming and crying. When you try to look back on it, all you remember is the happiness you felt when you received confirmation of the role of Anastasia. You were practically over the moon, and you and your friend celebrated inside your small apartment. You were entirely alone, just two drunk girls dancing and cheering, until one of the neighbors knocked on the ceiling with a broom.

liked by inakigo, emilyrudd and 574,949 others

yourusername actually lost for words and filled to the brim with gratitude...... i cannot express how excited i am to play my girl anastasia and bring her to life. from the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who has supported me. your faith in me means everything. congrats to iñaki, emily, jacob, mackenyu and taz, thank you to onepiecenetflix, thank you to my best friend for convincing me to audition for the role, and thank you, oda sensei, for putting anastasia's heart in my hands. love u all <3

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November 10, 2021

y/nsfanclub.02, AAAAAAAA SO EXCITED FOR THIS I ACTUALLY CANT BELIEVE IT

⤷ starl6ighwnb, LIKE FR IM GNAWING AT THE BARS OF MY ENCLOSURE THIS IS INSANE

user8392y3r927y, HELLO YOUR GRACE ANASTASIA

inakigo, Congrats!!!!!!!!

taz_skylar, 🔥🔥🔥

The One Piece fan base dearly loved the character of Anastasia, a well-mannered, bubbly, upbeat, fashion-loving duchess who always spoke in a Transatlantic accent but also had a quick wit and a bit of a sweet tooth. Anastasia’s dream was to become the most dangerous pirate to ever grace the seas and prove everyone who doubted her wrong.

Of course, with a big character came a big responsibility.

Sometimes, insecurity nearly got the better of you. You had to fill huge shoes, and there were many people to convince and impress. However, your love for this project was bigger than the gnawing uncertainty on the back of your neck, so you continued strongly until the end of Season One, finding comfort in your cast mates and the countless people who counted on you and, most importantly, believed in you.

Oda handpicked you, and that argument alone was enough to shoot any insecurities away.

Well, needless to say, people loved you!

Critics acclaimed your portrayal of the character, as well as the commendable chemistry you shared with the rest of the cast. The fans found it incredibly funny that your character was the complete opposite of how you actually acted in real life, and you often found yourself blissfully immersed in the fan base's love and praise.

Your channel and social media suddenly grew tenfold. Although you had stopped uploading videos every week due to the recording of season one, your followers were more than happy to wait for your return, and as one would expect, they were thrilled to have you back once you did upload a vlog explaining everything.

Over the course of the six months, you had been recording from time to time for a YouTube video in the set. Previously, you had asked the producers for permission to record some behind-the-scenes for your channel and your usual interactions with the rest of the cast with your personal Sony camera, as you felt it would be a nice way to bring the fans and the cast closer.

The producers gave the okay on the condition that you would wait until the first season aired on Netflix. You happily agreed and carefully began recording some scenes of your dressers and hairdressers as they prepared you, a few shots of your instructor showing you how you were supposed to use the guns that Anastasia employed... simple things.

Back in the day, you were still getting acquainted with the other cast members, and you didn't want to seem rude by forcibly making them appear on your videos, so you waited for a few weeks until you could properly call yourself companions. Then, you invited them to appear in the videos.

Iñaki, Taz, and Jacob liked to take advantage of the little free time they had between scenes they didn't appear in to innocently steal your camera and use it to their heart's content. One day, you got home only to find the memory card was completely full. It was an extensive video of them walking around the set, with Taz recording while Kiki and Jacob pointed out random stuff to the people who lived inside your camera, as Jacob liked to call them.

Mackenyu, being more reserved and introverted, mostly liked to act as a cameraman for you as you showed the props you used and other things, often making comments or turning the camera around whenever you referred to something.

Meanwhile, Emily had a natural knack for being in front of the camera. Whenever you asked her to join in, she effortlessly slipped into the co-host role, bantering with you and adding her own insights into the behind-the-scenes world of the show.

With the first season out of the way, you took the time to carefully pick what videos you wanted to use in the final tape, and it took you a little over a month and a half to properly edit it and turn it into a wonderful thirty-minute-long behind-the-scenes. You even sent it to the producers and your co-stars in case there was a scene they wanted deleted. Fortunately, they all gave you the okay.

You teased the video a bit on your Instagram before uploading it a few days later, and the support it received was out of this world. It gained over two million views and hundreds of thousands of likes.

You were kind of expecting this. While some BTS had already been uploaded on YouTube, yours was different because you were showing it from your perspective. The fans loved every second of it, and even started asking for a second or third part. You even saw new videos on YouTube of recompilations from your video with the titles being silly things like The One Piece Cast Being Chaotic for Seven Minutes.

At that moment, your life felt so full. You were getting contacted by industries who wanted you to appear on their videos and their stages, thousands of fans who loved you, and a feeling so peculiar that this would be eternal.

liked by taz_skylar, morganlogoff and 1,523,199 others

yourusername missing my wig and my gang hours ☹️

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November 10, 2023

morganlogoff, love love love you💗💗💗

curlikaqy, NO ONE KNOWS I'M YOUR BIGGEST FAN

emilyrudd, GIRL I WANT TO SEE YOU COME BACK TO AMERICA

bookofjacob, missing your camera hours💔

[honeyjars-sims]

My 𝐓𝐨𝐩 24 𝐒𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬 from 2024🎉

Thank you @lynzishell for tagging me! This was very hard--so much happened in my story this year! I will tag @tipsy-clouds, @beachyserasims, @feroshgirlsims, and @miss-may-i if you'd like to participate!

January

Chapter 2 started off on a high note. Love was in the air...certainly nothing could go wrong 😬 Chantal, Johnny, and Cece were all experiencing the thrill of new romances, but only one couple would survive the year.

February

While Nico's mask was starting to slip, Johnny and Lexie also hit a bump in the road on their trip to GraNITE Falls (which I totally know the name of and didn't make a bunch of graphics with the completely wrong name on them...nope, not me). At least Johnny and Lexie ended the month on a high note, right? RIGHT?

March

I really put poor Johnny through it in March, didn't I? Not long after unexpectedly coming face to face with the man who made his childhood a living hell, Johnny ended up in tears again when Lexie revealed she was a lesbian and ended their relationship.

April

Revenge is delicious and Chantal was ready to eat! And eat she did. She turned the tables on Nico and Ambrose after agreeing to testify on their behalf in court, only to show up on the stand in support of the prosecution. Later, David prepared to leave for Drag Superstar, feeling uncertain about how his family would fare without him as Chapter 2 drew to a close.

May

I took a break as I prepared for Chapter 3.

June

I took a chance and started off Chapter 3 with a flash-forward to Johnny's future wedding day with a mystery spouse. Followed by going back to the present day where Carina and Skyla finally reached him about his car's extended warranty entertained him after a night at the club.

July

Johnny continued to make questionable life choices until David finally laid down the law, leading Johnny to a new job as a Production Assistant at Rainy Day Entertainment. He met his new boss, Lucy, and they became fast friends. Also, he got the cutest cat ever named Taco.

August

I built a motherfuckin mountain. I sent everyone to the mountain, then I photoshopped the shit out of the view from the mountain. Actually I finished the mountain earlier in the year...I spent many hours building and demolishing and rebuilding it while my personal life fell apart around me. And, like this mountain, I will build it back up. This is where Johnny met Lucy's brother Paul, which turned out to be a pretty big deal. Also, bonus pics of the moment PJ met in the game (in this timeline at least):

Wow they're in love

Later, Johnny was in for a surprise when he discovered the students joining the team for a new program were none other than Lexie and her friends. Awkward!

September

While things continued to be awkward between Johnny and Lexie, he got closer to his red herring co-worker Lacey. Meanwhile, Cece and Ben made time for each other the best that the could while he was on the road.

October

October was all about Drag Superstar! We followed David, aka Valerie Galloway, on his journey as a contestant. From the highs of winning the girl group challenge ("Guess I'll C-U-N-Tartosa!") to the lows of being eliminated when the stress became too much to bear, it was a wild ride!

November

November was the month of big reveals. In Drag Superstar, Lady Astrid was crowned the winner! Cece and Ben got engaged and Chantal quit school to pursue her dreams. Things began looking up for Johnny, who finally mended his friendship with Lexie and was thriving at work. After his dads decided to move to a smaller house, Johnny started on a journey of his own as he moved to a new community with a roommate, Paul...oh, and I revealed that Paul is the one who Johnny will eventually marry! Sorry, Lacey.

December

While I set up for Chapter 4, I've been having fun doing some gameplay. Johnny and Paul are getting closer and Taco is letting the world know that she will not be ignored.

This year has honestly been one of the hardest in my life, but I don't think I could have gotten through it without this hobby and this community. It means more than you'll ever know. I've been more quiet this year but my goal for 2025 is to be more interactive.

I'm so excited for another year of sharing this story and seeing everything that this community has to offer. Also I'm super pumped thinking about what the top 25 screenshots for 2025 will be like, because I have a feeling they're going to be some of the most fun yet!

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By Lisa Jarvis

We’re still asking people with COVID to jump through far too many hoops to get their hands on Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid.

I experienced the barriers first-hand this month after my mother texted to say that this summer’s COVID wave had finally caught up with her. My first thought was to make sure she quickly started taking the antiviral. You’d think she would be an ideal candidate, because she is in her 70s with an underlying health condition. But it took a daylong effort to get her the medicine, one that involved multiple emails, phone calls with three different doctor’s offices, a telehealth visit and a bit of pharmacy-hopping to find one that had the pills in stock.

“That’s not an uncommon story,” says Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “There are a lot of misconceptions out there that have undermined the use [of antivirals] from the very beginning.”

The data bear this out. One small study published in early 2024 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 4 out of 5 high-risk patients were not offered an antiviral by their doctors. Worse, one large, community-based study found that Black and Latino patients were far less likely to receive the drug than White patients.

It shouldn’t be that way. And the delay matters: Pfizer’s antiviral only helps if taken within the first five days of symptoms. My mom, feverish and exhausted, told me that if I hadn’t stepped in as her advocate, she would have given up.

Doctors must do better, especially as we continue to live through a wave of infections.

Some health care providers may be worried about managing the interactions between Paxlovid and other medicines (my mom, for example, had to pause her Lipitor while on the antiviral). Others have been dissuaded by reports of rebound infections occurring in people who take Paxlovid — despite evidence that the drug’s benefits outweigh those risks in the most vulnerable patients. And some doctors might be operating under perverse incentives that make it more lucrative to have a sick patient make an appointment to confirm their infection instead of simply calling the prescription into a pharmacy after an at-home test.

There’s also lingering confusion about the right candidates for the drug. Paxlovid was authorized in 2021 based on compelling data showing it could keep high-risk unvaccinated people out of the hospital. Yet some doctors don’t seem aware that vaccinated patients can also benefit from it, particularly if they are higher risk. That’s everyone over age 65, or those who are immunocompromised, pregnant or with an underlying condition. Those groups still are at risk of hospitalization and even of dying, especially if their last exposure or booster is in the distant past.

And that’s a lot of people. Only 1 out of every 3 retirement-age adults got last year’s booster. “From my experience as well as others, pretty much everybody I’ve taken care of hasn’t received a vaccine in the last year or so, even though they might have had them originally,” says Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. Since mid-August, COVID deaths in the U.S. have been hovering near 1,000 per week, according to CDC data. Shouldn’t we better deploy the tools that might prevent such losses?

Cost shouldn’t be a barrier. When antivirals transitioned to the commercial market last year, the U.S. government partnered with Pfizer to ensure people with public health insurance or without insurance could still get the drugs for free, and minimize the cost for people with private insurance. Yet infectious disease doctors tell me that months into the rollout, too few patients, prescribers and pharmacists seem aware of the program.

True, Paxlovid isn’t perfect. In people who aren’t high-risk, the data are mixed as to whether it helps much (though anecdotes abound for people who say they have felt better faster after taking it). And while there had been much hope that Paxlovid could prevent long COVID, so far the data supporting that hypothesis are inconclusive.

So there’s a clear need for better anti-COVID drugs. Even for young, healthy people who have been jabbed and infected multiple times, an infection can be extremely disruptive, sidelining us from work or school and ruining our best-laid plans. A drug more akin to Tamiflu — a very safe and tolerable treatment for the flu that allows people to bounce back faster, even if only by a day or two — would be a welcome invention.

Yet better antivirals have been slow to arrive. Pfizer is studying a treatment that works similarly to Paxlovid, but doesn’t interact with other medications. And hopes were dashed last spring when Shionogi’s Ensitrelvir, an antiviral approved in Japan, failed to prove it could alleviate symptoms faster than a placebo.

But even if a drug for the masses eventually made it to market, would it be used? When doctors can’t get it right for the most vulnerable, the prospects seem dim.

[richincolor]

K. Imani's 2024 Favorites

What a year for book lovers! There were so many excellent and moving and fun books that it was hard to narrow down the list to a few. The four that made the cut really stuck with me this year and are books that I would love to read again and again. In a year that had so much going on, these books were the perfect escape. 

Unbecoming by Seema Yasmin

Two Muslim teens in Texas fight for access to abortion while one harbors a painful secret in this funny and heartfelt near-future speculative novel perfect for fans of Unpregnant . In a not-too-distant America, abortions are prosecuted and the right to choose is no longer an option. But best friends Laylah and Noor want to change the world. After graduating high school, they’ll become an OBGYN and a journalist, but in the meantime, they’re working on an illegal guide to abortion in Texas. In response to the unfair laws, underground networks of clinics have sprung up, but the good fight has gotten even more precarious as it becomes harder to secure safe medication and supplies. Both Layla and Noor are passionate about getting their guide completed so it can help those in need, but Laylah treats their project with an urgency Noor doesn’t understand—that may have something to do with the strange goings-on between their mosque and a local politician. Fighting for what they believe in may involve even more obstacles than they bargained for, but the two best friends will continue as they always together.

This Ravenous Fate by Hayley Dennings

It's 1926 and reapers, the once-human vampires with a terrifying affliction, are on the rise in New York. But the Saint family's thriving reaper-hunting enterprise holds reign over the city, giving them more power than even the organized criminals who run the nightclubs. Eighteen year-old Elise Saint, home after five years in Paris, is the reluctant heir to the empire. Only one thing weighs heavier on Elise's mind than her family obligations: the knowledge that the Harlem reapers want her dead. Layla Quinn is a young reaper haunted by her past. Though reapers have existed in America for three centuries, created by New World atrocities and cruel experiments, Layla became one just five years ago. The night she was turned, she lost her parents, the protection of the Saints, and her humanity, and she'll never forget how Elise Saint betrayed her. But some reapers are inexplicably turning part human again, leaving a wake of mysterious and brutal killings. When Layla is framed for one of these attacks, the Saint patriarch offers her a deal she can't refuse: to work with Elise to investigate how these murders might be linked to shocking rumors of a reaper cure. Once close friends, now bitter enemies, Elise and Layla explore the city's underworld, confronting their intense feelings for one another and uncovering the sinister truths about a growing threat to reapers and humans alike.

Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa London, 1812 . Oliver Bennet feels trapped—not just by the endless corsets, petticoats, and skirts he's forced to wear on a daily basis, but also by society's expectations. The world, and the vast majority of his family and friends, think Oliver is a girl named Elizabeth. He is therefore expected to mingle at balls wearing a pretty dress, entertain suitors regardless of his interest in them, and ultimately become someone's wife. But Oliver can't bear the thought of such a fate. He finds solace in the few times he can sneak out of his family's home and explore the city rightfully dressed as a young gentleman. It's during one such excursion when Oliver becomes acquainted with Darcy, a sulky young man who had been rude to "Elizabeth" at a recent social function. But in the comfort of being out of the public eye, Oliver comes to find that Darcy is actually a sweet, intelligent boy with a warm heart, not to mention attractive. As Oliver spends more time as his true self, often with Darcy, part of him dares to hope that his dream of love and life as a man can be possible. But suitors are growing bolder―and even threatening―and his mother is growing more desperate to see him settled into an engagement. Oliver will have to choose: settle for safety, security, and a life of pretending to be something he's not, or risk it all for a slim chance at freedom, love, and a life that can be truly his own.

Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang, LeUyen Pham  Valentina Tran was named after Valentine's Day, which used to be her favorite holiday. But when Val learns the truth behind what happened with her parents and why she's being raised by a single father, she realizes true love is a lie. This is reinforced when she meets the spirit of Saint Valentine, who tells her she and her family are cursed to always be unlucky in love. Val is ready to give into her fate, until one Lunar New Year festival, where a mysterious lion dancer hands her a paper heart, and ZING. Val becomes determined to change her destiny, prove Saint Valentine wrong, and give her heart to the right person. Meanwhile, lion dancing is the only thing that has given Jae peace after his dad passed away. It's also what keeps him connected to his father's side of the family. Both Jae and his cousin Leslie notice Val at the Lunar New Year festival, and for some inexplicable reason, Jae hands Val a paper heart. But it's Leslie, with his K-Pop good looks, who starts to date Val. Jae still feels this connection with Val and feels it's somehow tied to how he feels about losing his father. Both Val and Jae struggle with the spirits who haunt them as they are inextricably brought together in a love story that is satisfying, sweet, and moving.

[eldritch-nightmare]

the rules.

— > by default, considering the nature of this blog, there will more than likely be dark content such as yandere behavior, kidnapping, toxic behavior and relationships, and things like that. if that makes you uncomfortable, then this blog probably isn’t for you. 

— > you're free to send smut requests but i don't write it often bc it's not something i'm personally interested in. do not send non-con requests or anything in relation to incest. i’m okay with kinks but certain ones make me uncomfortable so if you request one of those, i most likely won’t write it. 

— > as of feb of 2024, im only just starting to write for slashers and dbd so bear w me as i get used to writing all these new characters!!

— > please send yandere requests to @unearthly-doting, please and thank you.

— > do not rush me into writing requests! i am a human being and i write on three separate platforms so it may take a bit for me to get around to your request.

— > i reserve the right to ignore and delete any requests sent in if they make me uncomfortable.

— > this blog is a safe space! if you are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, etc then i highly implore that you leave my blog. you are not welcome here.

— > you can request platonic stuff if you don’t want to read anything romantic!

— > given the potential nsfw content of this blog, coupled with other factors, i would prefer if minors didn’t interact with any nsfw posts. they're free to interact with this blog and any of my other posts so long as it's not nsfw.

— > be as descriptive in your request as you want! if you request an x reader, then please make sure to send in the pronouns of the reader or i will default and make them gn. 

— > i also write for the marble hornets character! i do not write for the creepypasta adaptation of masky or hoodie; i only write for tim and brian.

— > i write for just about any and all creepypastas, excluding pokepastas and offenderman. i will not write ben or sally in romantic scenarios. platonic is fully fine, but if you request something romantic for them then i will delete your request.

— > continuing on, i write both janes. and finally, if a character has a canon sexuality [jane richardson; lesbian. jessica locke; lesbian. jay merrick; gay] then i will only accept requests that are nblw/wlw or nblm/mlm for them. this also applies to amanda young and susie from legion.

— > you can request for ships, i don’t mind!

— >  i do not have DID, CIPA, or tourette’s syndrome. i will do my best to accurately portray all of this in my writing, but if my portrayal is incorrect or offensive then please do not hesitate to let me know!

— > i haven’t been in the [creepypasta] fandom in years so my knowledge may be a bit outdated and i more than likely don’t know any new creepypastas or anything like that so like… feel free to educate me or something if you want. i love learning new things. 

— > my inbox is always open if you want to chat or share your thoughts about certain characters! but please refrain from venting in my inbox.

— > i do try my best to be realistic with my writing but sometimes a girl just has to be a little delulu y'know, and that’s okay. i’m embracing that. 

WHAT I WRITE.

— > creepypasta/slasher/dbd x reader. [request ex: can i request eyeless jack w a male!reader who has trouble sleeping?]

— > creepypasta x creepypasta. [request ex: can i request ticcihomicidal going on a cute little cemetery date?]

— > headcanons.

— > matchups. [i.e: you describe yourself to me, physical appearance or personality or both, and i assign you with a creepypasta or mh character that i personally think would look cute with you.] [indefinitely closed bc people keep sending them in even when i ask them to stop lol]

WHO I WRITE.

creepypasta/mh: — > slenderman, jeff the killer, jane the killer [richardson + arkensaw], nina the killer [og], homicidal liu [and sully, together or separately], the bloody painter, nurse ann, eyeless jack, laughing jack, hobo heart, ticci toby, clockwork, jason the toymaker, the puppeteer, zalgo, x-vrius, tim wright, brian thomas, alex kralie, jay merrick, jessica locke, uh. others. like i said, i write for like any and all, these are just a few off the top of my head.

slashers: — > amanda young, michael myers, bo sinclair, vincent sinclair, lester sinclair, bubba sawyer, thomas hewitt, jason voorhees, sissy [tcmg], johnny [tcmg], brahms heelshire, billy loomis, stu macher, tiffany valentine, billy lenz, charles lee ray, asa emory, jesse cromeans, xenomorphs, baby firefly, otis driftwood, mary mason, candyman, mark hoffman, leslie vernon, pinhead, corey cunningham, quinn bailey, ethan landry, and probably more once i watch more movies nd stuff :thumbs up:

dead by daylight: — > every killer minus freddy and every survivor.

[hoonieyun]

happy new years everyone!!!

im going to get sappy for a second so please bear with me lol. 2024 was sooo crazy for me and truly this blog has become my safe space. thank you for supporting me and my work, i grew my blog in such a short time and i sometimes got in my head thinking that i wouldn't be able to keep up and that my work wouldn't be good enough for the amount of people who were supporting me but knowing that all of you enjoy my work is enough to make my year and continue to keep going.

i truly get so excited to write and even though sometimes it gets hard irl i can look back at all of the interactions i have with you guys and it puts a smile on my face.

thank you for supporting little old me and my silly (and sometimes sad) fics and i can't wait to write more for all of you and myself next year.

thank you again and may 2025 bring all of us nothing but happiness, good health, and healing!!!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 11, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 12, 2024

If you google the history of Mother’s Day, the internet will tell you that Mother’s Day began in 1908 when Anna Jarvis decided to honor her mother. But “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced writer and reformer Julia Ward Howe that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change society.

The Civil War years taught naïve Americans what mass death meant in the modern era. Soldiers who had marched off to war with fantasies of heroism discovered that newly invented long-range weapons turned death into tortured anonymity. Men were trampled into blood-soaked mud, piled like cordwood in ditches, or withered into emaciated corpses after dysentery drained their lives away.

The women who had watched their hale and healthy men march off to war were haunted by its results. They lost fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers. The men who did come home were scarred in both body and mind.

Modern war, it seemed, was not a game.

But out of the war also came a new sense of empowerment. Women had bought bonds, paid taxes, raised money for the war effort, managed farms, harvested fields, worked in war industries, reared children, and nursed soldiers. When the war ended, they had every expectation that they would continue to be considered valuable participants in national affairs, and had every intention of continuing to take part in them. 

But the Fourteenth Amendment, which established that Black men were citizens, did not explicitly include women in that right. Worse, it introduced the word “male” into the Constitution when it warned states against preventing “male inhabitants” from voting. In 1869, the year after the Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution, women organized two organizations—the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association—to promote women’s right to have a say in American government.

From her home in Boston, Julia Ward Howe was a key figure in the American Woman Suffrage Association. She was an enormously talented writer who in the early years of the Civil War had penned “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a hymn whose lyrics made it a point to note that Christ was “born of woman.”

Howe was drawn to women’s rights because the laws of her time meant that her children belonged to her abusive husband. If she broke free of him, she would lose any right to see her children, a fact he threw at her whenever she threatened to leave him. She was not at first a radical in the mold of reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who believed that women had a human right to equality with men. Rather, she believed strongly that women, as mothers, had a special role to perform in the world.

For Howe, the Civil War had been traumatic, but that it led to emancipation might justify its terrible bloodshed. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 was another story. She remembered:

“I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, ‘Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone know and bear the cost?’”

Howe had a new vision, she said, of “the august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities.” She sat down immediately and wrote an “Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World.” Men always had and always would decide questions by resorting to “mutual murder,” she wrote, but women did not have to accept “proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror.” Mothers could command their sons, “who owe their life to her suffering,” to stop the madness.

"Arise, women!” Howe commanded. “Say firmly: ‘We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.’”

Howe had her document translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish and distributed it as widely as her extensive contacts made possible. She believed that her Women’s Peace Movement would be the next great development in human history, ending war just as the antislavery movement had ended human bondage. She called for a “festival which should be observed as mothers’ day, and which should be devoted to the advocacy of peace doctrines” to be held around the world on June 2 of every year, a date that would permit open-air meetings.

Howe organized international peace conferences, and American states developed their own Mothers’ Day festivals. But Howe quickly realized that there was much to be done before women could come together on a global scale. She turned her attention to women’s clubs “to constitute a working and united womanhood.”

As Howe worked to unite women, she came to realize that a woman did not have to center her life around a man, but rather should be “a free agent, fully sharing with man every human right and every human responsibility.” “This discovery was like the addition of a new continent to the map of the world,” she later recalled, “or of a new testament to the old ordinances.” She threw herself into the struggle for women’s suffrage, understanding that in order to create a more just and peaceful society, women must take up their rightful place as equal participants in American politics.

While we celebrate the modern version of Mother’s Day on May 12, in this momentous year of 2024 it’s worth remembering the original Mothers’ Day and Julia Ward Howe’s conviction that women must have the same rights as men, and that they must make their voices heard.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[frogbearwhatever]

The Postcard

It was a Sunday morning, and Geoffrey was enjoying a terrible reality television show. This was his weekly routine. Tomorrow he’d be back to researching and lecturing at the university, so he devoted his weekends to lighter, more relaxing matters.

An argument between two obscenely rich and surgically enhanced housewives was interrupted by a knock at the door.

Standing there, somewhat nervously, was an older gent of around seventy, clutching a brown envelope to his chest.

“Hello?”

“Are…are you Professor Geoffrey Wells?”

“That’s me.”

“Oh, my God.”

The man looked about to faint, so Geoffrey ushered and sat him down, setting about making a cup of tea, which everyone knows is the natural response to any distress or crisis.

“Are you alright?” He asked the old timer after a few sips of tea had done their work.

“Yes…it’s, well, very bizarre.” The old man sighed. “Sorry, I’m Clive Jameson. I'm the mayor.”

They shook hands.

“As you know it’s Oswerton’s tricentennial this year, and yesterday we opened the time capsule that we’d buried back in 1974, for the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary.”

Geoffrey sipped his tea, not sure what the man was talking about.

“Back in ‘74 I was just a council worker, in the press office. I was responsible for organising what we put in.” Jameson continued. “Running competitions at the local schools and so on. The usual stuff went in- a local paper, some photographs, an Oswerston Town jersey and then some sillier items- the number one record that week, some toys and letters from the kids predicting what 2024 would be like.”

“I wasn’t there for the sealing, it was done by some council workers.” He took a sip of the tea. “We opened it and all the things were there, along with this. Addressed to you.”

Jameson set the envelope down, it was a brown manilla envelope and written on it in marker was Geoffrey’s name and address.

“I’m sure it’s just a silly joke, but still, a little unsettling. These houses only went up in the early ‘90s.” Jameson said. “Do you recognise the writing? A friend or one of your students?”

“It’s mine.”

Jameson gaped at him.

“You’re putting me on, right?”

Geoffrey picked up a pen and wrote the details on a scrap of paper on the kitchen table. Setting it beside the brown envelope they were a perfect match.

“My God.” Jameson whispered. “But it was still sealed…how the hell?”

“No idea, I’m afraid.” Geoffrey said, intrigued himself now.

“Have you opened it?”

“Isn’t addressed to me.” Jameson gave a nervous smile.

Geoffrey opened the envelope and upended it. A postcard fell out.

It showed a photograph of an impressive skyscraper. Geoffrey gaped at it.

“Where’s that?”

“Nowhere.” Geoffrey said shakily, his intrigue becoming amazement. “Yet. It’s the new building they’re putting up in London, they only started this summer. Not due to be ready until 2026.”

He exchanged a look with Jameson, who looked startled but excited now.

“What does the card say?”

They flipped it.

In the top right corner was a stamp bearing the profile of a man who wasn’t Charles. William?

The message, in Geoffrey’s own hand, was short and simple-

25th of May, 2035.

To me, then,

Keep going, Geoff my boy! We’re gonna crack it soon!

From me, now.

PS Accrington Stanley won the 2029 FA Cup. Bet the farm on it.

[edupunkn00b]

Progression: Chapter 7, Traitor

Photo by edupunkn00b

Prev - Traitor - Next - Masterpost - [ AO3 ]

The Muse (and his twin) turn twenty-one. Written for @imnotgrimimjustagrumpyreaper's @dukeceit-week-2024, Day 7: Dive Bar. WC: 3287

The Muse paced the length of his room, a heavy tome gripped in both hands as he forced his eyes to follow the hand-lettered text. Since the Purge, volumes like these were a treasure and though the edges of his pants were ragged and frayed, his hair shorn short at the back of his neck to stop himself from yanking it out, he cradled the book like the precious rarity it was.

"’A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then. It is something to—’” he muttered aloud, shaking his head. He closed the book, slowly, carefully, just like Jannie had showed him and he stroked the woven cover. His feet stopped in front of the shelf and he scanned the other spines before swapping one for the other.

“‘And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick,’” he read as he paced, gaze fixed on the book as his body led him over the well-worn path. The carpet had begun to fade in long meandering strips, marking off the longest contiguous trails around the room.

The words wobbled with each step, or maybe it was Orwell’s text.

“‘And that you just said it to make them stop and didn't mean it. But that isn't true.’” His voice fell away as he continued to read for three more laps before making a gagging sound at the back of his throat and changing that book for the next on the shelf.

His mouth twitched as his fingers trailed over the embossed title of the next book. A hundred years, huh? "’El mundo era tan reciente que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para nombrarlas había que señalarlas con el dedo…’” The words flowed off his tongue, falling into little drops of honey along his path. Perhaps you only had to point at things to name them, but The Muse could name a thing to make it. “‘"Saca esos malos pensamientos de tu cabeza", le dijo. "Vas a ser feliz".’”

The Muse frowned and closed the book, not as gently as the first. “No, you won’t.”

The next book was no better. “‘She used to give me a thrashing every morning—’” 

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope…

This one he slammed shut and shoved back onto the shelf, whispering a quiet apology before selecting one last volume. He started at the end, eyes dancing over the page. “‘This funeral wasn't about honoring truth, but about honoring a memory.’” 

He mouthed the words again and tried to imagine what the author might’ve sounded like. Sinking to the floor, he sat with the book cradled in his lap and continued to read. “‘‘It was about honoring the friend they had lost, whether they had lost that friend a day ago, or five years ago.’” A slow smile spread over his face as he flipped the slim book to the beginning to start at the start.

The Muse was on his third re-read when warmth rippled toward him from the hall, soft and wispy, smoke after you blow out a flame. He hugged the book to his chest and leapt to his feet. He’d nearly reached the door controls when Jannie spoke.

-”May we come in, Muse?”- The warm trickle turned into the comforting blast of the furnace, opening the oven on a frosty day. The scent of fire and vanilla, burnt sugar and those tart winter berries Papa Bear like to pick. Jannie was in a good mood, which meant the ‘we’ was him and Lucas.

“Fuck, yes, you can come in!” The Muse shouted and stepped back from the door, ready to fling himself at Jannie’s arms. The door panel lit up and, as Jannie stepped inside, he remembered the book just in time and laid it on the little table by the door before he threw himself at Jannie. “You’re here!”

A bubble of heat enveloped them, pushing away the sticky cold sadness just under the surface of Jannie’s skin. “Of course I’m here, Muse…” His voice was shaky, like he hadn’t spoken aloud in a while. He had to tell Jannie his trick, reading out loud to keep his throat limber and smooth and—

“It’s your birthday,” Jannie continued, one gloved hand carding through his hair. He wished Jannie would take them off. Maybe later. Maybe that was the plan, especially with Lucas here. Lucas always helped them both stay calm when, wait, it was his birthday already?

“It’s not my birthday, Jannie,” he argued, laughing, and pulled back, only a little, only enough to look into Jannie’s eyes. “My birthday’s not for another week, it’s…” 

His smile froze in place as Jannie’s hand slid down and over his cheek, the soft material of his gloves—his good ones, the old cotton ones he used to keep in that box in his dresser he and Ro had found—his gloves, they were soft but they caught on the thick growth on his jaw.

He’d shaved this morning. Hadn’t he?

“It’s… it’s been a week?” Jannie looked down and their little warm bubble shrank, ice fizzling on the edges.

“It has, Re.” Lucas stroked Jannie’s cheek, his bare cheek, the skin soft at the touch and glowing white hot so bright The Muse had to close his eyes. Static brushed his mind. When he opened his eyes, he was sitting on the floor, Jannie and Lucas in front of him.

Lucas’ eyes glowed softly.

“Where’s Ro?” he asked, eyeballs bouncing between the elder Mad Lads, waiting for one of them to speak. Jannie’s shield was strong and The Muse danced around the border, the tingle of static tickling his fingers with each little poke. “Can I see him, maybe just for…”

He couldn’t see past Jannie’s shield but his silence spoke for him.

“He’s not ready,” Lucas answered instead and gripped Jannie’s hand. Slowly the static eased and Jannie smiled up at him. Sad and small but a soft smile. A good smile. A strong one that wouldn’t break if he pushed at it.

The Muse nodded. “Yeah, I… I figured. Is he… is he having a good birthday?” The room grew brighter, daffodils and honeysuckle sprouting in the corners. “I… I was gonna make him something, I…” He blinked and looked around the room, a large box covered in red cloth he’d stitched together sat by the door. “Oh, I did make him something. Will you give it to him?”

Jannie reached for him, patting his arm through gloves and his shirt, too, too much between them to really feel it. “Of course we will, Muse,” he spoke and said, the words flooding his mind and raising it up, wind under wings.

He floated, a feather on the breeze. “But first, Muse, we wanted to do something for your birthday. Even if…”

Even if he couldn’t be with his brother.

“I’d like that. I’d really, really like that!” The Muse leapt to his feet, swaying slightly. If he hadn’t really shaved this morning, had breakfast not been this morning, either? His sink was empty, the stove cold and spotless. Maybe not. “Can…” What if they said no? A little lump of ice grew just above his stomach. “Can you both stay? I’ll make us something yummy and—”

“Actually, Muse,” Jannie caught Lucas’ gaze, eyebrows high in a question The Muse couldn’t help but hear. Not that he tried very hard not to listen in. -”Do you think he’s ready?”-

Lucas nodded and Jannie’s smile grew, just a bit. “We thought we might try something different.”

~

Luc's gentle touch still tingled against his skin, long after he'd turned his attention—and the focus of his power—to The Muse. Janus knew he'd been concerned, remembered the tight twist in his chest as they'd taken the elevator down to The Muse's rooms, remembered the icy spike in his gut when the Muse admitted he had lost an entire week. The warmth of Luc's touch spread through his skin, a whisper of reassurance.

He watched Luc's hands glow where he touched The Muse's temples, the deep amber bleeding out from between his eyelashes. After a long while, Luc lowered his hands and smiled at The Muse. “How do you feel, Re?”

“I feel great,” he smiled back and held out both hands, soft gaillardia blooming in his palms. They grew slowly, waving gently in a breeze none of them felt. He closed his fingers around them, gently and when he opened them, the flowers were gone. “I’m in control,” he grinned. “Look at that!”

Luc’s eyes glowed next to him. “You are,” Janus smiled. “Ready?”

“Ready!”

~

The trio flew the smaller transport north. Not far, just looking to get a little further from the hubbub of the migrated seaports and cities sprouting up around the new Federated Capitol Building. The Muse sat buckled in his seat, face pressed to the window as he watched the sun set over the lakes. Luc laughed from the pilot seat. “ still there, love!” He pointed at a flickering blip on the main navigation screen and grinned. “Still transmitting! I can’t believe they’re still open! Do you remember?”

Lucas shared a flash from their first visit to The Inn. Younger then, they’d danced together long into the night. In the dim light of the bar, surrounded by Powered and Traditionals alike, couples and constellations had drawn together and celebrated all they shared instead of clashing over all the distinctions carved between them in final throes of The Purge. 

Over”hearing” the shared vision, The Muse hummed in his seat. Under the heavy dose Lucas had used, The Muse’s eyes moved a little slower, his smile a little… Janus’ mind supplied the word dull but it was merely less sharp than it usually was. Less jagged. Softer. Like his face moved through water to change with the thoughts racing through his mind.

They landed smoothly, The Inn’s old system recognizing Luc’s old stolen—borrowed—transport beacon. “Where everybody knows your name…” Muse sang quietly, where he’d heard that melody was beyond Janus’ understanding. He barely remembered the old passphrase.

Luc grinned and lowered the ramp. “After you, ma cheri,” he murmured, offering an arm to The Muse in turn. “Ready to dance?”

The bar’s exterior hadn’t changed much. The faded, sagging awning was still there, though a closer look underneath revealed the old metal frame had been replaced by cheaper plexisteel. Bartered for scrap during the worst of it, Janus guessed. Same for the old glass window panes. He’d be nearly anything they’d been bartered in exchange for the licensing board looking the other way when the tumult had ended.

A rumble of heavy bass rattled the chipped sign above the door, beckoning them in with a simple, Welcome, All.

The Muse’s gaze went far away, seeing through the bar’s façade, seeing through his own façade. He grinned, broad and… spacey. “I like it here, Jannie.”

“I thought you might,” he nodded, the tightness in his throat and his chest easy to ignore. He opened the door and ushered them both inside.

“Hey! Haven’t seen you all in a long while,” Andrew called from behind the bar. “‘Fraid you’d… Y'know—” He made a cutting motion across his throat and pulled a face.

“Nah, we’re too bitchy to kill,” Luc laughed, leaning over the bar to hug the wizened owner. “You know that.”

“Glad to see it. You brought some young blood with you, too,” he said, coming around the bar to accept a long hug from Janus. “Well, even younger than you two,” he added with another laugh.

The Muse stiffened, eyes locked on Andrew’s face, reading him. He shuddered, knees twitching in the darkened club. Andrew didn’t catch it, but Luc did.

“This is Re,” he said and wrapped an arm over The Muse’ shoulders, fingers grazing the back of his neck. His fidget disappeared, the spiky energy pouring off him smoothing out at the edges.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, palm outstretched with a tiny green orchid blossom nestled at the center.

Andrew’s eyes widened and he took a half-step back. “Oh, he’s—” Features carefully schooled, Traditionals wouldn’t’ve noticed his fear.

But Janus wasn't a Traditional. “He’s with us,” he said, voice low. 

Andrew nodded slowly, looking between the three of them as he wrestled the flurry of thoughts spilling from his mind. Finally, he smiled, nearly genuine, and returned to the taps behind the bar. “First round on the house, then.”

“Water for me,” Luc smiled.

“How 'bout the D.D. special then,” Andrew laughed, and poured Luc a purple fizzing beverage before passing two glasses of beer to Janus.

The Muse grabbed his arm, spilling a bit of foam from one of the steins. “Can we dance first?” he asked, eyes bright.

“I was hoping you came here to dance,” a low voice behind them rumbled.

A cold itch crawled up Janus’ spine and he moved between the interloper and Muse. He was a Powered, a strong man like Pat, as far as Janus could tell. Very low Esper, which made it easy for Janus to prod, to see what beyond the typical ick of a bar pick up was hidden in the man’s intentions.

Looking just over Janus’ head, he smiled at The Muse. “Unless you’re otherwise occupied tonight?”

“Nah, I’m not with them,” The Muse laughed, taking the other man’s hand. “They’ve got each other to keep them company. Right?” he added with hopeful eyes at both Janus and Luc.

“Enjoy yourself, Re,” Luc said, threading his fingers through Janus’. -”He can handle himself, love,”- he added silently. -”Besides, we’re right here.”-

-”Yeah, Jannie,”- The Muse jumped in with a little dance of his shoulders and absolutely zero decorum. He blew them both a kiss and followed the man out onto the patch of carpet that served as a dance floor. “Happy Birthday to me!” he cheered when the song transitioned to a faster tempo.

Janus pointed to a table as far from the speakers as he could manage without putting any other tables between them and the dance floor. He sat facing the dancing couples and Luc settled into the seat closest to him. “He’s having a good time,” he said, nudging Janus’ knee under the table. “We're in a safe space. You can relax a little while."

"Perhaps," Janus nodded, a golden bubble wrapped around his worries. He sipped at his beer before the bubble popped. Setting aside all pretense or propriety, Janus locked in on the thoughts swirling around the dancing pair. He just needed to know.

The Muse was… nervous, but giddily so. Happy. Happier than Janus had seen him in years. Not since he’d been a child, playing with his brother or pranking teenage Virgil. Janus watched The Muse dance before nodding and taking another sip.

“He’s having fun,” Luc whispered behind his glass, nursing the purple concoction. “And look—” As the music slowed, The Muse took one of the man’s hands and traced colorful shapes against his skin. “He’s in full control.”

“Thanks to you,” Janus said, focusing on the man’s expression. He looked unsurprised. He'd probably clocked Muse as a Powered before he’d even approached them. The implications twisted in his stomach, cold and prickly. Luc’s hand on his forearm was warm, though, and after a moment he sighed, all but a spot of worry leaving him with his breath. “You’re right, he’s having fun.”

“He is,” Luc murmured, leaning closer to kiss his cheek. “Now,” he grinned and slid his now-empty glass into Janus’ hands. “Why don’t you get us a refill while I keep watch. We can take turns.”

Janus laughed and took Luc’s glass. “I see Andrew’s mixology skills haven’t faded with time.” He stood, then leaned over to swipe his own small kiss. “Either that or you’re just as cheap of a date as you ever were.”

“Bah!” Luc scoffed, one lovely hand pressed to his chest. “I resemble that remark!”

Still chuckling, Janus sauntered over to the bar, eyes forward but his thoughts stretched out toward the other patrons, the other dancers. To The Muse and his dance partner. The music had slowed, a steady, undulating beat that traveled up from the floor and through Janus’ shoes. He hummed, following the cover-of-a-cover-of a song that had been an oldie when he was still a child, young enough his Powers had not yet been discovered.

Look at the way… We’ve got an eye on what we’re doing Cause what would they say If they ever knew and so we’re—

“Lucas likes this mix, yes?” Andrew grinned from behind the bar, sliding over a full glass before Janus had even asked. Something itched at the base of his skull, fighting past the calm Luc had given him.

‘Re’s completely keyed in to your moods, love. If he can feel you scared, if he can feel you worried, he’ll feel like you don’t trust him and he won’t trust himself.’ 

Luc’s words had been soft. Certain. He shook his head and the itch grew. Luc’s refill cradled in his hands, he looked over his shoulder. Luc was blinking slowly, a crooked tipsy smile on his face. Janus whipped around and stared at Andrew. “What’s in this?” he demanded.

But Andrew wasn’t looking at him. No, he was staring past Janus’ shoulder at something on the other side of the bar. He followed the bartender’s gaze.

Just in time to see Muse slip outside with his dance partner.

“Luc!” he cried over the music and ran toward the door, sidling past the sudden surge of patrons crowding his path. -”Luc! Luc, let’s go!”- 

-”What’s wrong, love?”- The fuzziness in Luc’s response shattered his calm. He was closer to the door than to Luc, though, and he pushed through just in time to be hit with a wave of fear.

Muse’s fear. 

-”Muse! I’m coming!”- He stepped out into the muggy night air. The landing pad was lifeless, a few airskiffs and smaller transports like theirs dark and idle. He closed his eyes and a light bloomed from the dark alley next to the waste bins. Muse!

Janus ran, following the faint scuffling sound and the overpowering sense of panic. He staggered under the weight of it, heavy ropes tightening around his chest, squeezing his heart. His pulse pounded in his ears, a syncopated thud, his own layered with Muse’s. The bar door slammed open just as he reached the alley. 

“Jan! Jan, wait!” Luc called after him, heavier footfalls catching up fast.

A cry more animal than human pierced his mind and Janus dropped to his knees, both hands over his ears. Strong hands—Luc’s?—helped him up and together they followed the shadows in the alley. Leaning heavily against Luc’s side, Janus fumbled in his jacket for a light. Finally activating it, the beam bounced wildly until it landed on the man from the bar, doubled over and gripping his own head.

Muse towered over him, shirt ripped and eyes closed. He didn’t speak and when Janus reached for him, pain ripped through his mind until he pulled back, wrapping his mind in his own strongest shield.

“Please, Muse, no!” he shouted, fighting to be heard over the cacophony in his own mind. The man’s cries intensified and he began to bang his forehead against the dirty pavement. “Stop it! Stop, Muse, you’ll—”

And in the next breath it was over. Suddenly silent, the man slumped over. Deadweight. His head struck the pavement with a loud, wet thwack and Janus’ light trembled, illuminating dark blood seeping from his eyes in its shaky beam. Muse knelt before the man's body, shoulders shaking and a horrible high-pitched sound spilling from his lips.

Muse laughed.

[c7thetumbler]

Quick Game Reviews: September - December 2024

This is the game review post for the remaining 4 months I got too lazy to keep up with during the year! I'm going to skip my favorite game I played this year part for now, but I hope this provides some insight to someone somewhere.

Let's get it going!

Screenshot from my Gameplay

Colossal Caverns (Pikmin 2 mod)

^link to PikHacker's download site with all their mods.

Hot off my Super Mario Eclipse playthrough, I finally decided to give this a go! For those unaware, this is a Pikmin 2 hack that puts every boss, enemy, and treasure in a single, gigantic cave level and the challenge is to escape. The REAL challenge is to get all the treasure, and the REALLY INTENSE challenge it to defeat all the enemies. There are a number of customization options such as including the Onions underground, max Pikmin limit increase to 200, and some enemy health adjustment, but I would recommend you do those for one playthrough and then really try it without those changes so you really have to learn enemy behavior and feel how intense it can get.

This is a really fun hack, and I'd recommend it for Pikmin 2 vets. this isn't something you hop into if you've only played 4 though.

image stolen from a redditor

DOOM Eternal (Steam)

I'm a big OG Doom/Doom II fan, and Doom 2016 was pretty good, so I figured it was about time I played this single-player game.

Then I launched it in steam, already a layer of DRM that requires a login, and was immediately greeted with another login screen!

I uninstalled, may ask for a refund. Is it petty? Idk. The game may have a multiplayer component or online features, but there's 0 reason why I need to do that for a single player game. Hell, I feel like I have a pretty low bar given I've hooked up my Ubisoft account to Mario V Rabbids and Rayman, but that's also optional and the games work independent of it. I suspect if I looked for a pirated version, I could play this game without giving them my email address and logging in, so why are we doing this. The game doesn't even let me adjust options or take a screenshot without logging in

Splatoon 3: Grand Festival (Switch)

The final splatfest!

But not really!

This was actually a really cool in-game event. Not only did they extend the "finale" to the full 3 days and bring all 3 idol groups into play, they made an entirely new overworld map that adjusted and actively changed over the course of the three days.

The amount of love and polish that went into a very short, non-repeated in-game experience that fans from the past 10 years would absolutely enjoy is just unparalleled. In the first 2 days you could visit one of three stadiums which rotated which group was playing, but in the final day all three groups were performing together on the main stage with pyrotechnics and flying platforms and it was nuts. Over the course of the evening, the other venues actually caught fire and burned down while it continued, making it a more clear reference to Burning Man than it already was.

It did however fall to the typical downsides of a Splatfest in terms of gameplay. Even with three teams it was quite easy to get paired against your own team and have that entire battle not count towards your clout or your team score, and even though I played like 20 triple battles only 3 of them were against other teams. This is something of a long-running bug bear; I understand you want people to play frequently, but there should either be an option to say "Yes I will wait longer to fight against other teams" or a rewards incentive to play against your own team instead of just throwing it or being dissappointed when it happens. It also unfortunately suffers from the lack of matchmaking, and this was pretty clear when team past started getting prestige ranks in the double digits on day 2 vs a normal teams as well. That's a little trickier, as genuinely I can believe that people who picked Past are genuinely long-time players, but it's an unfortunate issue with competitive games with ladders.

The stage for the triple battles though was also cool. Personally I wasn't a big fan of it's layout, however if your team secured the Ultra Signal your idol group would actually come out and cheer you on, which was rad af. The whole event was just one big hypefest that really fit the style of the game, and the best send-off to date. I wish more games were able to do a big send-off like this rather than just slowly deteriorate and fall-oof, but that's an impossible standard and made me excited for the series' future.

Also, there was a Splatfest in October and they're still doing balance patches so it wasn't really a send-off but still

Image from download page

Super Mario and the Rainbow Stars (PC)

I forgot what pointed me to this game, but it's pretty good! definitely made by people who love the series and want to see a more cohesive world and Mario RPG level story inside a platformer. It's pretty fun and has a great amount of content despite only having 1 world so far!

Gameplay wise I do have some criticisms. The game tries to bring Mario Odyssey gameplay into a 2D platformer, and while sometimes that can work, it does feel a little out of place here. It's not bad, and the levels do a good job of showcasing it, but it feels a little out of place and I personally had issues with the movement options and the star throw at the same time.

Level design is another thing. I'm not sure if this was a limitation thing, a deliberate choice, or just coincidence, but basically every level has similar feel and recurring layouts. Specifically, you'll find yourself going up for a few jumps, then a part where you need to ground point or descend vertically, and then back up again in the next area. But the levels themselves aren't vertical, and in fact pretty limited in that direction, so seeing that same layout repeatedly makes it feel more like a fan game than a real one. It's difficult to describe, but picture the heartbeat line on an EKG and that's how your path typically seems to pan out. With this many movement options and gimmicks in the game, it would be cool if they took a more open-level style approach where you could skip some of these sections through some more technical, high jumps, branching paths, etc.

All that said though, it's still a very good fangame! Visuals are great, Music and Sound design are great, and there's a lot of love put into it. I'm hoping that the level design continues improving over time, and this could be a really iconic fangame.

Screenshot from the Steam Store Page

Spark the Electric Jester 2 (Steam)

This has been floating around my backlog for a while; I've tried it before but I got distracted by collectibles and didn't give it a real shot, so I figured I'd give it a go this time and just go through the game without obsessing.

Spark the Electric Jester is an indie game series that's based off of Sonic, and 2 is the first 3D one that builds off of Sonic Adventure 2's playstyle. It adds in combat as well, with combo building and timed parries which open up the attacker to your assault, but ultimately the game shines the most when it's just the classic Sonic 3D platforming.

Like real Sonic it's a little Janky; sometimes when you try and run up walls it doesn't quite stick right, some jumps are a bit strange, enemy targeting is finicky, but overall it's a fun time. The game itself is very short, taking me only 2.4 hours to beat between both my attempts, but I also didn't focus on doing the achievements and gathering the collectibles, of which each level has a few in their branching paths. Plot-wise, it suffers a little bit from taking itself a little too seriously and being a bit too complicated for my tastes, but that doesn't detract from the gameplay.

If you have a Sonic Adventure itch and this is on sale, it's worth a pick-up I'd say, but if you don't the game is just okay by its own merits. 3 is where the series really gets into its own.

Screenshot from the Steam store page

Spark the Electric Jester 3 (Steam)

This is like 2 but way better!

An actual, really well-polished love letter to Sonic Adventure 2, Spark 3 goes back to Spark being the main character and a less-linear level structure. Each level has a few challenges within them to keep you coming back and replaying, and the combat as a whole feels way better with some unlockable moves and even alternate characters to play as.

Again, the story is convoluted but you won't miss much if you skip straight to this one as they do a good job of recapping enough so you're not totally lost. I still think it takes itself a little to seriously, and I'm not a huge fan of how it gets near the end, but as a game it's a great experience.

Highly recommend this over the 2nd one for Sonic Adventure fans, though both are great games. The replayability and polish on this surpass even SA2 in those regards, imo.

Screenshot from Steam store page

Neon White (Steam)

Reminds me of Lovely Planet but with more polish and care placed into level design! I'm not too big a fan about how long the between-worlds sections can take with the plot, but I also haven't gotten very far in it.

Gameplay-wise, it's an FPS where you pick up cards to use guns/abilities to quickly defeat all the enemies and get to the end of a level as fast as you can. Replaying the level will open up other opportunities to get goodies or complete it faster by showing you a hint somewhere in the level that will save you enough time to get the highest rank. I really liked this game, but my attention span prevented me from getting very far. That's a me-problem though; this is a great pick-up for precision platforming and execution fans.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch)

I don't know how I feel about this game to be honest. I mean, I really like it but after I was done I was torn between "this game dragged on" and "I wish there was more to do".

To get started, this is a Zelda game where you play as Zelda, and instead of attacking directly you use a magic wand to copy and paste items and enemies to attack other enemies and solve challenges. It's a very fun concept, and I think they executed it well, but it runs into a few problems. First, when you find items and summons that let you bypass multiple things, you end up only ever using those. These get mitigated after a while with a few rooms and bosses that require specific elements, heights, wind obstacles etc. to get past, but "grab spider and climb wall" is a fairly early game discovery and a faithful one throughout nearly the whole game.

Second, narratively the game could use some work. I like the idea that Link is silent through the whole game, canonically, however Zelda really shouldn't have been. A game from Zelda's perspective has a lot of unique potential to tell a familiar story from a new angle using its own gameplay, but what really seems to have happened is we got "what if Link didn't have items but instead was kirby, and then also you can be Link normally sometimes." The game certainly shines in a lot of places with clever puzzles and copy interactions, but Zelda being the main character isn't explored upon and feels more like the gimmick than the gameplay gimmick. That on top of the entire game being about people fawning over how cool Link is and nobody outside of the castle knowing the princess of Hyrule somehow really cements that she can be done better, Nintendo. This point is also tough to bring up because it could easily be misconstrued as me saying "why ruin this game by making me play as a girl, UGH" but I would like to stress that I'm definitely not making that point; I'm saying they picked a character who is always crucial to the plot and arching theme of every game and didn't use that to the game's advantage. Also, every other Zelda game you should've been able to play as a girl don't @ me

As for the good parts though, they did a good job of world and puzzle design despite the issues with dominant solutions. I did 100% the game and run through areas multiple times to discover fun puzzles I hadn't seen before and cool hidden things that I would've missed had I not been so thorough. Ultimately this is a good game and I'd recommend it, but if possible try and find a way to play a bit of it first before dropping full price on it, as it may not be for every LoZ fan.

Super Nintendo World (Universal Studios Hollywood)

That's right; I went to a REAL LIFE VIDEO GAME!

And it was pretty cool! I'll open up top with a few caveats though:

Universal Studios struggles in comparison to Disney when it comes to immersion in their theme-parks, with their employees being not so much in character as much as people who are trying to keep a theme park going. In most areas this is fine, but SNW's facade and experience necessitates a bit more character work than they're clearly paying these people for.

Universal Studios Hollywood is cramped for space since it's actually a functioning Studio with over 20 sound stages and in the middle of an incredibly cramped city. As a result, there is only 1 ride, vs Japan's 2 (soon 3) and Orlando's 2. I also doubt they'll be adding the Donkey Kong Country to it.

This land requires that you pay $42 for the power up band, as without it you can only ride one ride, and the minigames/interactable content don't do anything if you don't have one. For families that didn't realize this, this is a huge bummer for kids who get to see a bunch of other people having a blast hitting blocks and getting coins, only for those same blocks to do an empty thud if you don't have one.

The space is way too small and without other rides. Since it's clearly USH's biggest draw at the moment and the ride easily gets to over an hour long wait and the missions encourage you riding it several times, it makes for an overwhelmingly crowded and anxious experience.

That all being said, I had a fun time there. With the power-up band and a smart phone, there are over 132 stamps to collect, including secret interactables in the world, collecting keys and coins to fight Bowser Jr (the biggest minigame in the area), completing minigames such as an interactable block wall that will stop a thwomp from falling, hitting timers to keep a piranha plant asleep, and timing a pow block hit to knock a koopa shell into a key. It's a really cool, well-done immersive experience and I appreciate that they made the whole place a game rather than a reference.

That being said, the band interactions could use some work. The Mario Kart ride is an interactable, AR 3D shooting game where you use koopa shells you get from item blocks to try and beat bowser's team, and while it's fun in its own right, the visors aren't wide enough to get a good view of everything, and the employees make no effort to tell you where to scan your band so that the ride actually counts in your app. As a result I had some fun with the ride itself, but my progress was not tracked and I was left wanting to try again only to be met with the 75 minute wait time, which we weren't doing. This would be mitigated with a much bigger park; you can encourage guests to re-run the same rides over and over again if all of them had similar band interactions, but with just the one it really grinds it all to a halt. The employees not explaining band interactions was a recurring issue; you'll spend a lot of time wondering if you're doing it right for some minigames and you don't know that somethings don't count as being completed, like character meet-ups, unless you make a point to ask and they let you scan something specific.

All-in-all, it's a fun experience but there's not too much there unless you're a freak like me, and it could still use a lot of work. I had a good time though and would go again, but the park being restricted to such a small space with only one real ride limits its potential, and on the whole it's an expensive experience.

If you do go though, I would highly recommend getting the early pass and going on a Tues/Wed/Thursday; Those are the cheapest, least crowded times, and the early pass will let you get in the Mario Kart ride without a wait if you're there on time. Avoid any times near holidays of course

Super Mario Party Jamboree (Switch)

Super Mario Party gets a sequel!... I'm not sure how this is different branch than Superstars though. I guess more sub-modes and focus on switch-only motion controls? It's fine, that's a nitpick.

I'll start out by saying that its core Mario Party game mode is pretty good! Most board have their own gimmick, but as a whole it's pretty close to the style of Mario Party everyone knows and loves without trying to reinvent things to the point of over-complication. The inclusion of "Pro mode" is also nice, as it allows you to play solo without feeling like the computers are robbing you and makes every decision you make on the board actually mean something. I have yet to play this with friends, but this feels like a fun game night experience and a good entry in the series for sure.

I will say that pro-mode feels like a necessary option in this one though. Mario Party is known for having a lot of randomness, but this game in particular has a TON more minigames, random events, and just un-counter-able nonsense than Superstars did. It's a little frustrating because I want to play with more minigames, but a lot are dominated by what are basically that exploding bowser minigame in terms of luck. No idea why "Select a key, select a door, hope for the best" is in there.

It also boasts having a ton of minigames in its own right, which technically isn't wrong, but when you split it by game mode it comes up severely lacking. On the box it says there are over 100, but when you play the main mode, exclude the completely random ones, and while I try not to personally I understand that a large chunk of players exclude motion controls, You'll be seeing repeats within the same game over 10 turns, and there are really at most 40 available. That sucks! I feel like I speak for a lot of people when I say I don't mind them bringing back more mini-games from Superstars; they add more variety, are nostalgic, and genuinely people appreciate non-repetitiveness more than they would appreciate having "new" minigames that they end up seeing way too often.

In terms of some new mechanics, the free-roaming team mode and buddy system present in Island tour and then in Super Mario Party has been replace by a "Jamboree buddy" system. Roughly half the characters (The unique, non-minion ones) have the chance of appearing on the board, and passing them initiates a unique minigame that if you win lets them follow you for 3 turns and grants you special perks. Events will proc twice when you have them, including shops, coins from spaces, stars, and even Bowser spaces, which is a fun risk-reward feature. They can also be stolen after being won, which is a bit frustrating because all that takes is passing the player with them. Would've preferred a duel minigame, boo, and/or an item to challenge them instead. But regardless, the gimmick is fun and most of their special minigames are cool because they're uniquely tailored to the character. My main issue with this is that it would've been cool to have minigames for every character, but I understand that time constraints would make that difficult.

The lack of the previously mentioned team/partner modes is a little sad though. Those modes were definitely my favorite "new" game mode the series introduced, and the unique dice per character added some fun and strategy to the otherwise simplest aspect of the game: rolling the dice. I would've preferred it over a couple of the Game modes they added, which I'll get into.

Party-Planner Trek is their single player mode, where you select a character and wander across the 5 main board completing challenges and mini-games to collect stars, each board ending in a boss minigame where you team up with characters you may have found along the way. It fine as a game mode, not too exciting and introduces you to each board, but also not really that difficult or entertaining in its own right. It'll only take a couple hours to complete, and the story itself is pretty low stakes

Para-Troopa flight school has you holding the joy-cons out to your sides like wings and flapping/gliding with them to move around in game. Unfortunately this is where my experience with it gets in the way; I have essential tremors which unfortunately means that my small, constant shaking easily meses up the sensors and I have to make much bigger movements to compensate. It's not for me, and Toad's Item Factory I've not even tried for similar reasons. Rhythm Kitchen is also similar to a Super Mario Party Game Mode, but again I found it improperly reading movements I made so I'm just passing on all these.

Koopathlon is a fall-guys esque? game mode. Not sure if "A lot of players bumble around trying to get further than the rest" is a genre yet, but also it's a little different, like Super Mario 35 was. Basically you go against 19 other players and play 3 "solo" minigames in a row where you try and rack up more coins overall before a bowser minigame that can even the playing field more, as you're playing directly against the other players and if you get eliminated you get sent back more and more spaces depending on your current lead. The minigames then come back a difficulty level harder. It's fun, but not really worth more than a couple replays, in my opinion.

And then finally Bowser Kaboom Squad has you working as a group of 8 players trying to take down imposter bowser before 5 rounds are up, running around and breaking crates to load bombs into a canon while environmental enemies and bowser himself tries to take everyone out. This is the game mode other than the main one I spend the most time in. It's not too difficult or stressful, and I much prefer the cooperative nature of this rather than the chaoticness of Koopathlon, but again this suffers from a shallow mini-game pool and only 3 levels.

Thematically this game also suffers from being a recent Mario spin-off, where they're not allowed to stray far from the Mario formula. Indeed, every NPC is aa different color toad or a basic enemy with a hat, which makes the game a lot more bland when those characters are already playable. It's frustrating that in the Gamecube era they were very willing to embrace the variety of wacky characters they had like Piantas and wacky hosts, but after Odyssey, 3D world, Wonder, all the Luigi's Mansions, Princess Peach Showtime, and their RPG games we're back to "Kamek is the host, everyone is a toad or bad guy, and we made a fake Bowser." The Mario world has a lot of creative things in it; please start using them

Overall this sounds like a bad review, but I still quite enjoyed it as a Mario Party game. I think Superstars is still a better core Mario-party experience, but this definitely stands up in it's own right. But if you're looking for a lot more variety in minigames, I'd maybe pick this one up on sale or something later down the line.

Screenshot from the Steam store page

Shadow Generations (Steam)

Ohey, the best 3D Sonic game, which previously I would've qualified since Generations, but it's EVEN BETTER?

I had a lot of things on a Wishlist for a Sonic Generations remake/sequel, but I wouldn't have ever said "side expansion about Shadow" as one of them. But lo, it was a wonderful decision! Plotwise, the story is somewhat hampered by the fact that it takes place before Lost World, meaning nothing can substantially change with Shadow's character/ knowledge in future games like Forces, but they did a great job with his characterization none the less. His voice actor, whose been on the job for a while, still feels like he's trying just a bit too hard to be edgy, but not so bad that it detracts from everything more than just being like "Haha, edgehog"

Gameplay wise it's a vast improvement over the baseline Generations. It's in a different engine (more on that in the next review), but it's close enough to stay familiar while also being much smoother. Shadow's Doom powers add the sort of progression that Sonic's been flubbing with for quite some time, offering options that both improve movement and attacks in ways that allow you to properly branch paths in ways more interesting than "did you jump when the spring wasn't visible on the screen" that Generations liked to do.

Length wise, it's also pretty decent. I would say that I would've liked one more "world", something like Prison Island from Shadow the Hedgehog and a boss fight with a GUN robot. It was actually surprising that that game didn't get any level representation, and they opted to instead shove Radical Highway in every level. It was the first level you play as him in the series, but Doom being like "That's some nice platforming you're doing, shame if it were suddenly RADICAL HIGHWAY" every time got old. I would've rather they stuck with themes in the level, like Rail Canyon could shift to have weird gravity and parts from Mystic Manor, The ark could have you planet hopping like you did in the Rouge/Knuckles levels, Forces could've had the ruby fucking with everything. It would be more novel anyway.

But for those who like the boost style gameplay of 3D Sonic games, this is the best outing yet and worth picking up for $30 at least. If you've not played the original Generations, this is a great bundle.

Screenshot from the Steam store page

Sonic X Shadow Generations (Steam)

This is for the "remake" part of the bundle, which is just a slightly updated Sonic Generations. I did 100% both of the games in here.

I consider these to be separate games mostly because even the game considers them to be separate. Instead of remaking Sonic Generations in the engine they had access to, they really only did some slight, almost mod-like changes to the version of Sonic Generations that was already available on steam to account for Sonic being an asshole to Amy (for literally no reason, originally framing Sonic shoving his hand in her face to talk to tails as "cool", so a good change actually) and then plot changes for Shadow Generations to fit better in. This version of Sonic Generations is then launched after you select it in the starting menu, as if it was a launcher itself.

On the one hand, I'm okay with this because it was likely a rights/age of the engine issue that prevented them from updating the game significantly or remaking it entirely in the new engine. On the other... Modders have used Generations as the base for like 12 years now? It would've been cool to see them add in more levels, if only just the 3DS levels that now are unplayable through any modern means. Granted, the 3DS levels weren't good, but they had game representation in there that's now just completely lost.

Adding in new levels would've also been nice. Sega re-used, and will continue to re-use assets from the Sonic Generations, so there's justification for adding more substantial content from games that are overwhelmingly popular in the series and were missing from the original, ie anything from Advanced, Rush, 3D Blast, to newer games that never made it to 3D like Mania.

Gameplay wise, it's still pretty good. It definitely shows some of its age with level and mission design, but overall it was the best 3D Sonic experience since Adventure 2, and then undefeated until Shadow Generations in my mind.

I would recommend picking it up if you don't own Sonic Generations anyway, but if you've played it at all, especially recently, don't buy it for Sonic Generations; Buy it for Shadow

Screenshot from Steam store page

Sonic Origins (Steam)

So now I'm on a Sonic kick, and while I waited a while to pick this collection due to its price and also misleading release, I'm glad I did now the plus version is out and it was on sale.

Full disclosure, I'd never actually 100% CD and 3 & Knuckles. CD was a bit to complex for me (and I had no idea you had to go back in time and destroy the generators on every level), and I only ever had &Knuckles to play with originally. The removal of lives (optional) and the ability to use medals to replay levels and specials stages really allows for exploration of levels without fearing losing all your progress, and to makes a much more enjoyable experience on the whole. The music they had to replace is definitely worse than the originals, but easily overlooked. Otherwise, the games play well, the inclusion of Amy was a good choice (though I would've liked to have seen more classic characters for the price) and the other quality of life features are good as well. The 10 Game Gear games are nice, but none of them are really that memorable or play well on their own so that's passable.

If this is on sale for $5-10 and you haven't played all these games to death, I'd pick it up, but if you own these games in another form this is certainly a more polished way of enjoying them but nothing to drop too much on

Image from srb2 website

Sonic Robo Blast 2 (PC)

After an attempt to revisit Forces to continue my Sonic 100% streak up to 7, I decided to pick up one of the most beloved Sonic fangames which started out as a DOOM mod (and I think still is? I didn't research this tbh).

Overall I'd say it's pretty fun; the multitude of characters to play as cool and the levels feel more or less true to what a 3D classic sonic would be. I however didn't finish it, as I kept getting frustrated with the thok move, camera, and controls, and after all those 100%'s I kept needing to restart to find those chaos emeralds. Ultimately, I made the experience worse for myself to achieve an arbitrary goal.

The game is free and a really fun fangame, so give it a try but also understand the controls and movement aren't for everyone

Screenshot from my only god pack pull so far

Pokemon TCG Pocket (Android)

I hate Gacha Games. Blind Boxes are gambling. Therefore, this blind box F2P game is the worst thing I've ever downloaded on my phone.

Except it's not? I really can't explain it past Nostalgia for when I was 5 collecting Pokemon cards, especially since I suck at battling as much now as I did then, but there's just something cool about collecting all the pokemon and seeing all the cool card art. I am not immune to the dopamine rush of opening 2 card packs a day and a 1/5 chance of picking from friend's packs.

Gameplay wise it's a little simpler than the in-person game, but as a result smaller balance issues make greater impacts. In most cases for example, it's much better to get tails on the initial coin flip to go second, as the energy advantage is usually way more useful that the evolution advantage that the first player gets on turn 3. Also, a large number of decks rely on coin flips going well, and that can get frustrating very quickly when you're already relying on card draws being in your favor.

This game is a dangerous gateway drug into getting into TCGs for real. Use responsibly, and understand that when you drop your first buck on any gambling game you have crossed the biggest line to cross and it will be hard if not impossible to go back.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership (Switch)

I was so excited to see the series not only return, but in stylized 3D! I was very concerned this series was dead after the studio shut down.

That being said, this one is just... alright. The way it's structured with the constant return to hub and the disjointed islands is not doing it any favors. It might be more... "streamlined" I suppose, but what I really liked about the series was for the most part the world was interesting to explore and really bizarre and wacky. With every dungeon essentially being a rather small island among a vast, mostly empty ocean, it kinda feels a bit shallow.

It also unfortunately suffers from the issues that prevented Dream Team from being on of the greats, mainly the constant tutorials all the way up to the final boss and cutscenes explaining what just clearly happened on screen to you in case you weren't playing during the playable section where you did the thing.

Gameplay wise it's pretty solid; It can get pretty repetitive, especially in the first half the game when you're missing a lot of your kit and mainly just focus on jump attacks. But it's a M&L game, so even that feels really solid, and the battle plug system also adds a lot to the game. The characterization of Bowser, Jr., and his minions is also really solid.

Overall this game suffers from dragging on way too long, which I can't even say is because it's just too long a game or the dialogue and constant explanations really stretch it for all it's worth. I'd place this below Dream Team, as not a bad game but one with a number of flaws preventing it from being good. Worth a pick-up if it ever goes on sale, but also not a necessary experience like Superstar Saga, SMRPG, or TTYD.

Official Update Artwork by Hibachi (@HibachiX1)

Dead Estate: GOOD NIGHT! (Steam)

The final update for this game! I decided now would be as good a time as ever to catch up on those achievements. I never did, but only because of Assignment Anya (the last update I covered earlier this year).

This update adds a Dream route, which include 4 floors, a bonus floor that can appear in the main route, and some insane bosses leading to a unique ending for each characters and even more costumes! It's a really solid cap on the game and a great note to end on; I thoroughly enjoyed almost every moment with it.

If you've not picked up Dead Estate yet, it's now "complete" and definitely worth the purchase. If it's been a while, it''s worth a revisit (but warm up on some basic runs and challenges first)

Screenshot from the Steam store page

ATLYSS (Steam)

Once again it's proven that randy furries can make some of the best content known to man (I don't know if the creators of this, Pseudoregalia, or Dust an Elysian Tale are horny furries it's a joke I should probably delete this when I proofread it).

Atlyss is a Diablo-like game combined with a 3D platformer, where you can pick one of 6 races and then 3 classes to get a variety of skills, weapons, and attacks to overcome enemies, dungeons, and complete quests. It's very fun despite only having 2 dungeons in it so far, and even better when you grab a friend or few to do some dungeon runs. I'm very excited to see where the game goes!

This game really took off of course because of its character customization, which lets you slide bars all the way to the right to get absurd proportions and wear some pretty thirsty clothes. That being said, while its character designs are definitely what you would expect with a game that lets you do that, the amount of options lets you create some really cool looking characters. The game even makes a point to give you scrolls that let you learn the skills other races have innately pretty early on, so there's really no reason not to make your favorite character look how they want and then play them exactly how you want (because imp's life drain is insanely powerful)

You could wait for more content, but honestly there's a good 8 hours in there right now to mess around with a some built in replay ability, I very much recommend this one

Screenshot from the Steam store page

UFO 50 (Steam)

I'm gonna have a couple controversial reviews on this list I think, but maybe not too controversial.

This is a collection of NES style games, with on overarching narrative about this being a found classic console with these 50 games released in order in the 80s. The games themselves for the most part feel very modern in a way that's hard to describe. They lack that classic jank that NES games used to have, like the sprite limit flicker, bad hitboxes in ice climbers, etc that make it just enough not to hit my nostalgia buttons but also mechanics that are much more polished overall.

Total I think I played 15 games before I put this one down. Each game is actually a real game in its own right, ranging from RPGs, arcade style games, platformers, puzzle games, even some strategy games in there. I've definitely spent a lot more time in some games than others, but this is unfortunately where I run into a personal problem when it comes to compilation games. If I'm not excited to try every game in the bundle, I often time abandon it pretty quickly.

I understand this is a me problem and I may have just not found the crazy good ones yet, but these games for the most part all just felt like fine. None of them really grabbed me except one of the later ones where you play as a Spaceman and gather resources like the top-down sections in Blaster Master, but even that was hindered by the design choice to make you wait for meat to regen in your town before you can explore more.

Overall, I can tell a lot of love went into this compilation and i'm not faulting it for that. Personally, I just couldn't get too into a lot of these games in the modern era, and because of that I ended up dropping this compilation early. Your mileage may very!

Screenshot from Steam store page

Black Mesa (Steam)

The Half-Life 2 update that made it workshop compatible and contain every Episode reminded me of this! But mostly my friend Blossom sharing funny videos of it actually.

I actually wasn't a huge fan of original half-life that much; I find the sequel nails the tone and game feel a lot better, but again it's not bad. Certainly this is the definitive way to play the original, and worth picking up for that alone, but if you didn't like the OG half-life you're not going to get much mileage out of this

Screenshot from Steam store page

Marvel Rivals (Steam)

Overwatch but better! I think. It's very easy to get overwhelmed in this game, and clearly takes a lot of time to understand character dynamics and what is even going on, but honestly I enjoyed what little time I spent with this way, waaaaaaay more than any time I spent with Overwatch. Sniping also doesn't seem to be nearly as prevalent; a huge plus for people like me who, on top of knowing that snipers take away any fun from a game that balances around weapon strength/reload speed/range, are correct.

There's clearly some balancing issues, but overall since I'm never going to be playing competitive it's just a good time and I can look past that.

It scratches that hero shooter itch without fomo or demanding so much of your time. Definitely worth a try (with friends)

Screenshot from DLC Steam store page

Disney Dreamlight Valley: Storybook Vale (Switch)

This is again what my Sister plays when she visits (or I visit her), so this is from the perspective of someone who watches her play and occasionally when she doesn't complete timed events finishes those up after the visits.

I'll open up by saying that the game definitely runs a lot better overall. Granted, it's very far from perfect, but the game crashes are now few and far between, slowdown is a lot less common, the music no longer skips, and a lot of item spawning issues have been fixed. Granted, the slowdowns are still there, loading times are frankly unacceptable still, and the item management system still needs to be reworked to prevent forced loading screens if they're going to be this long, but it's good progress.

This expansion specifically adds a whole new land in the form of the Storybook vale, a world shaped vaguely like a book that has 3 biomes: a ruined library in the fall, a golden Greek paradise based off of Hercules, and a fairytale forest with references to Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty. It adds in 3 new befriendable characters (will like increase to 5 later), Merida from Brave, Flynn from Tangled, and the star of the show Hades from Hercules.

The lands themselves are much better design, going from geometric walls and winding paths found in the base game and last expansion to much larger, more detailed and open areas that allow you to see further into the distance and actually take in the sightlines. It also adds in a new mechanic, a net, which you use to gather Snippets (small creatures made out of paper) which you then use to rebuild a book and create art to advance the plot.

On the whole, it's more of the same gameplay loop but better polished. It's very easy to lose yourself running around and doing tasks, but since my sister isn't one for decorating the world that specific large aspect of the game gets lost.

The new characters are neat, though I've not seen Brave myself. Flynn is also an odd choice, as now all three main characters from Tangled, what I thought was one of Disney's weakest movies, are now present in the game when other majorly successful movies like Alice in Wonderland and 101 Dalmatians are nowhere to be seen.

My older reviews still mostly stand in terms of recommending this game at all, but the expansion offers a fair amount of new content and promises to release more throughout the year so it's not a bad game.

Luigi's Mansion 2 HD (Switch)

Aight so I have major beef with this one, to the point where I kinda want to do an extensive write-up on all the switch ports/remasters that Nintendo's done over the past 7 years. Their record kinda sucks but this is the worst by far.

This is just a straight port of Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon on the 3DS. It can only technically be called HD because of the resolution, but other than that, some lighting, and a few specific textures I cannot tell the difference between the two. Additionally, they did not fix any of the animations, something that's forgivable on the 3DS because the resolution's so small and it's a tiny console, but when you see animations in cutscenes just run out and characters freeze on the big screen it's frankly unacceptable to call this "HD." In a lot of games I review, I talk about how their jank is part of the charm, but this isn't just jank, it looks bad and lazy.

As far as new features: There aren't any. This game is virtually identical to the 3DS original, except there isn't 3D. I know a lot of people didn't like the 3D on that console, but I loved it and consider it a feature taken out. So to me, this is the equivalent of an upscaling mod on your PC. For nearly twice the price the game was 11 years ago. Absurd.

Gameplay wise, this is the weakest entry in the series by a mile. The constant interruptions from E. Gadd and the mission structure make it really difficult to get into the gameplay and environments since you're constantly being told what wacky thing just happened on screen or just straight up yanked out of the level back to the hub. It was again acceptable at the time because portable games typically get different experiences than you would expect from a home console, but on a home console it's just not an engaging experience.

I got this as a gift, and I spent the whole time playing thinking about how much a waste of money this was. Skip it and get Luigi's Mansion 3 if you haven't

Screenshot from the Steam store page

Awaria (Steam)

From the makers of Helltaker comes Helltaker but as a fast-paced arcade-like game instead! You play as a repair-lady who runs around between generators and generator part dispensers to fix them while being assaulted by ghost ladies with strange powers related to how they died. Then you smooch them at the end of each level. Pretty simple, but really addictive and easily overwhelming as parts take time to generate, you have a limited amount of time to fix generators, and you can only hold 2 items at once. As it introduces parts that take other parts to generate, it really forces you to strategize instantaneously while running around and dodging like a madman.

The difficulty is quite up there, but it wasn't anything insurmountable and I played it on Hard mode by default, which you don't have to do of course. I would highly recommend giving this one a go; it's another labor of love and insanely fun for the time you spend with it. Also it's free

Screenshot from Steam store page

Balatro (Steam)

I'm really bad at poker and I've only gotten to like Ante 4? in a run so far and that felt like a lot of luck by getting insane straight multipliers and then losing when I couldn't make a straight. Other than that, I really don't get it; it seems like a distilled rogue-lite in that they've removed core gameplay elements and turned it from a platformer/shooter/deckbuilder etc. to just playing cards, and while I typically enjoy that style of gameplay I need more than that out of a game. It just genuinely feels like luck.

Personally I would skip this, but it's also one of the most bought, played, and well-received games of 2024 so like my opinion's an outlier here.

Screenshot from Steam store page

Tower Factory (Steam Early Access)

This is a really neat idea! Basically a mix between your standard Tower Defense game and your endless factory maker (Satisfactory, Factorio, etc.) You basically have to create and optimize factory buildings and conveyor belts to get the resources you need, process them into different resources, and then use those top create the towers to defend this.

While doing this, you need to create light towers to further unlock the map and find Light Crystals, which you then use to defeat the wizard tower (enemy spawn point) which you also have to find. Maps are randomly generated, with your resource pools, obelisks that power up adjacent towers, resource/coin chests, and light crystals scatter across the map. This allows for your replays to be different every time each level, of which there are 4, progressively harder ones so far.

Despite not seeming like a lot, the replayability is high and in fact key, because you start off with very few towers and resources and may end up losing your first bout on each level, gaining coins depending on your performance at the end of the level. These coins can then be used to permanently upgrade and unlock new towers'/factory components to help you perform better on the next run.

It's pretty fun! It can get really hectic jumping between the two halves of the game, especially since resource pools can run out and you may need to refactor your factory during an intense wave, but the actual TD aspects of it are pretty simple so it's not overwhelming. It unfortunately falls into the pitfall that almost every genre crossover game has however, where if the audiences for both were a Venn diagram, the only people who would really get into the game would be at the intersection of both genres, not pools from both sides. The TD aspect is pretty simple, and the factory aspect seems so as well, and they have to be so in the intense moments you're not overwhelmed fine tuning either. Again, I like it, but it's very easy to tell it's not for everyone.

Keep in mind it's early access, but if you like TD and Factory games this might be worth a pick-up! or at least a follow to see when it nears completion if Early Access is understandably not your thing. I picked it up in the Steam winter sale.

And that's it! thank you for reading this far, and have a great 2025!