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purplesurveys · 4 years

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What weird food combinations do you enjoy? I’m willing to experiment mayonnaise with most food. I also dip my fries in hot fudge sundae and because I’m Filipino I have to have my fried chicken paired with banana ketchup. Where do you get your news? Usually from the Twitter and Facebook handles of my go-to news outlets. My dad is also the only one who turns on the TV in the dining area so whenever he’s home and watches the evening news I get to hear the reports as well. What social stigma does society need to get over? HIV/AIDS, dating or marrying the same sex, tattoos... even breastfeeding is a fucking stigma lmao. So many people are babies. What is the best/worst prank that you've played on someone? I hate being the victim of pranks so I never pull them on anyone. What was the last photo you took? My dog jumping up to ask for food last night.

What makes you roll your eyes every time you hear it? Lately our president has been wanting to give nightly addresses on TV every midnight so when I hear another announcement from the government I just roll my eyes because I know it’s gonna be another hour-long speech that not only has absolutely zero substance to it, but made everyone unnecessarily stay up that late. What are you currently worried about? I’m worried about my remaining academic requirements. With the suspension of online classes and the lockdown being extended until April 30 (which is virtually the end of the semester), I have no idea what’s gonna become of our academic calendar and my grades – and the status of my graduation.

A notable school in the country already mass-promoted (read: passed) all their students and is planning to give tuition fee refunds since only two months of the sem were used. It’s honestly the most responsible thing to do for now and I hope all other universities follow suit.

Do you think aliens exist? I believe we aren’t the only ones alive out here but I also don’t think they look like the creatures books or movies have made them out to be. What mythical creature do you wish actually existed? Meh, was never a fan of anything mythical/mythological. What are you interested in that most people aren't? Pro wrestling. In my 15 years of being a fan I’ve only found literally a handful of people (at least who are also Filipino) who shared the same passion or amount of interest as I have. It’s just never been a popular topic or fanbase here so I never get to bring it up – and I’m afraid to bring it up because people seem to judge anyone still into wrestling these days. What's the most ridiculous thing you have bought? My most pointless purchase was a pink bar of soap with lettering that says “Gay Bar.” It’s a novelty item at best and I never needed to buy it, but I had money that day so I did and now it’s gathering dust in one of my drawers. What sounds hit you with major nostalgia every time you hear them? The PS1 start-up noise is a big candidate. If given the oppurtunity to open a museum, what kind would you create? They have museums about everything now, so I think it’d be a good idea to turn to my roots and make an ancestral house instead and have it in our home province. My family has a rich history and it’d be a waste if we allowed ourselves to forget. When was the last time you immediately regretted what you said? I think last night? We were having pork belly bought from outside for dinner and I was talking about how good it tasted and that it was the best thing I’ve had in a while. I forgot my dad has been cooking us a different meal every single day since the quarantine started and they all have tasted amazing as well. After I realized what I said I felt like shit and immediately downplayed the pork belly so that he didn’t feel left out. What's the silliest thing you've seen someone get upset about? My mom is a champion of this list lmao, there’s so much stupid shit she’s thrown a fit over. The most ridiculous one happened last year when my sister sprained her ankle and my mom would not help her walk around and even walked faster than the rest of us. It was like she was purposely leaving us behind, which confused and pissed me off. Anyway I was left assisting Nina as she hobbled on. Eventually I caught up to my mom and asked her to slow down and to be with us and to help my sister walk. Apparently it was enough to piss her off and the whole ride home she was yelling at me and legitimately sobbing about how humiliated she was when I called her out because she thinks people overheard and are judging her for it. I mean if you’re afraid of getting judged isn’t that proof you know you did something shitty?

The sermon also turned personal and she started screaming about how I was a horrible daughter and that I’ve never done anything right, and that I was a disappointment, and that I was straying further from God everyday and she could see the horns growing on my head. How’s that for abusive? What was the best thing that happened to you today? I finally finished the level I’ve been stuck on in Mario Kart 8 and now I’m officially done with the game. I’ve never finished any video game before so it feels pretty bitching!!!!!!!!! Do you consider yourself a good cook? I don’t even consider myself a cook. What's the dumbest thing someone has argued with you about? ^ The thing I just talked about, even though it wasn’t technically an argument because my mom didn’t let me talk throughout.

The next dumbest thing I could think of is probably when my grown-ass aunt fought me back when I was 13 on whether Beyoncé lip-syncs or not. It was a random family discussion and I was just talking about how much I like Beyoncé and she not only stole my thunder by picking a fight with me, but she also made me feel bad about something I loved lol. She was so insistent that she lip-syncs and was so hungry for an argument, I didn’t understand why?????? so I just dropped it and rolled my eyes at my dad. IT’S SO DUMB RIGHT What did you google last? Information I needed for an article I’m currently writing. What fashion trend makes you cringe or laugh everytime you see it? Skirts paired with either denim jeans or leggings, and short vests. All the Disney stars wore them and it was the epitome of fashion for us at the time aaaahhhhhhahahahahaha. What's your favorite holiday movie? LOVE ACTUALLY. For sure. I’d also say It’s A Wonderful Life but it has some very low points that ruins the Christmas-yness for me. How ambitious are you? I’m pretty ambitious and also a bit of a perfectionist, but I’m also aware of my limits and I don’t always jump onto tasks feeling confident. I know what I’m capable of so if I’m faced with something I know other people can be better at, I’ll consciously be less ambitious at it cos I usually let my insecurity get in the way. What was the biggest realization you have had about yourself? As someone who’s always thrived on being an introvert, the last few months and years have taught me that I CAN talk to people if I have to? And they’re not scary? I had little hope for myself prior to my internship - but it ended up being fun and I met a lot of awesome new people. I also never thought I’d get to write articles solely because I hate interviewing people - but my sources have all been nothing but nice to me. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’ve always doubted my ability to talk to people and dive in to unfamiliar scenarios, but when I do either it’s always turned out to be great experiences for me.

What topic could you spend forever talking about? If we’re going for what’s been the most recent hot topic, it would be the government’s incompetence in dealing with COVID-19 so far. Which way should toilet paper hang, over or under? Over. What word is a lot of fun to say? I dunno. I don’t think of words in terms of how fun they are to say. Maybe curse words? HAHAHA If you didn't have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time? Assuming the internet is nothing to worry about, I’d watch all the series I’ve long planned on watching but can’t because Netflix does a big pull on the entire household’s connection. Are you usually early or late? Early or on time. There is no ‘late’ for me. What do you wish you knew more about? The future. Not knowing the answers to it is so irritating/boring to me. What is the most annoying question you've been asked? Asking if I go to rallies/am an activist/am part of the NPA just because of the school I come from. None of those things are bad at all, but I’ve always been annoyed at the stereotyping. How different was your life 1 year ago? I wasn’t graduating yet then. And I was OUTSIDE MOST DAYS because there wasn’t any fucking virus. What movie title best describes your life? Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, except I literally have to be stuck at home. What was the last lie you told? Telling my groupmates I had some family stuff at home to fix before getting started on our group project, but really I had to take a bath first because I wanted to feel fresh while working. It’s a minor lie, but it still made me feel bad. What type of music do you listen to? It’s usually varied but my go-to genres are indie pop, electropop, alternative rock, punk rock, *some* indie, R&B, and pop.

Are you a good listener? Yeah, it’s why I prefer to be one than a talker. What is your favorite milkshake flavor? Cookies and cream or some peanut butter/chocolate concoction. Do you think you're brave? I can be. Just not about everything. What are you most grateful for in your life? The relatively comfortable life we live considering where we live. And that covers everything from the food we eat, the schools we’ve been sent to, where we get to travel (or the fact that we can travel at all), etc.

What was the worst phase in your life? My rebellious, no-one-understands-me, angsty teen phase when I was 12-13 and my time readjusting in college when I was 18-19. What is a relationship deal breaker for you? Verbal abuse. What are some things that give you complete peace of mind? Staying in coffee shops, driving at midnight, views of the skyline at night, staying on the rooftop at night and being under the stars... I just like a lot of things about the night. Would you like to explore another planet? Yesssssss. Who was your favorite cartoon character as a child? Spongebob. Cosmo from The Fairly Oddparents comes at a close second. What would you do if you were the president of your own country? Right now? I’d assure people everything was being taken care of – mass testing, support for doctors, provision of PPEs and free transportation for frontliners, making all the senators (who are all expectedly not doing anything, save for one) work their asses off, put part of the P275B fund to assist middle- and lower-class people who can’t – instead of imposing shoot-to-kill orders for the military to anyone criticizing the government or rambling about absolutely fucking nothing in nation addresses.

#survey #surveys

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ladala99 · 5 years

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Spyro Reignited Countdown - Spyro the Dragon

Hey, as someone who only owns a Switch of the current console generation, and as someone who grew up playing Spyro on the PS1, I’m super hyped for the return of the dragon!

And I thought up yesterday, what better way to do that than by reviewing every Spyro game I’ve played.

Well, I’ve played... *counts* 22 Spyro games. Counting the 3DS ports of Skylanders games which are different enough to talk about separately.

Alright divide the number of days left until it comes out and...

Uh... one every two days, huh? Guess I better get started! (May space them out or have bonus comparisons/recaps at the end to deal with the extra days)

Spyro the Dragon

The first Spyro game! Also the first video game I ever played. One day, when I was 3, my dad plopped me down in front of the Playstation, gave me the controller, and started up some demo disk. The first one on there was this game called Spyro the Dragon, and he told me what the buttons did (since I couldn’t read the screen that told you), and let me play.

I told my mom about it (divorced parents), and we rented the game from Hollywood Video. *She* played it. She loved it. And I loved watching. And pressing buttons on a controller put into slot 2. I had a fancy Barbie controller. I don’t know what eventually happened to it.

Eventually the Hollywood Video lost the disc and we bought it for ourselves. We were renting it every week, anyway. I remember us going up to the video game counter and my mom going “We’d like to get this game, it’s about a dragon...” and I shouted “And he’s purple! And his name is Spyro!” I loved him so much.

Now I didn’t play through the entire game myself until I was a teen, but unlike any other game, I did see the ending as a kid because my mom was able to make it through the game, into 100%. It’s a series we bonded over, and I have so much nostalgia for it. I can’t wait to play it in Reignited and see what she remembers.

Anyway, stopping with the memories and onto the review! It’s just... really hard to be fair for a game like this. I have too much nostalgia related to it. Honestly, though, that’s the case for a lot of the series.

Gameplay

Spyro the Dragon is an early 3D platformer. Despite being early, though, it controls really well. I’ve played a few others from that era (Croc, uh... Crash? Maybe not a few) and none of them control quite as well as Spyro does. Spyro is extremely responsive, stopping and starting on a dime.

You have two attacks, spitting fire and charging with your horns. The latter can be used to move quicker, but you don’t turn as sharply when running. When to use each attack is well-conveyed, as large opponents are immune to your horns, but weak to your fire, and opponents with a shiny metal shield are the opposite. There’s a few enemies immune to both, but they can be beaten by ways that are broadcasted well.

Collectables

One of those ways is the dragons. There’s three main collectables in this game: Gems, Eggs and Dragons. Gems are everywhere, Eggs are only in a few levels, and Dragons are placed in key locations in each level. The Dragons are I suppose the main collectable, but all three are needed for progress. Dragons in particular also double as tutorial and lore pieces, as each tells you something when you free him. They also all look unique, with each of the five species having their own general look and each individual having his own textures. I go into a lot more detail in this blog post. This really makes the dragons in this game stand out amongst the series, as no other collectables are nearly as unique.

Gems I don’t really know what to say about. Many collectathon platformers have collectables like them: something spread around every level so you need to explore the entire play area. Gems are special in that each one has a different value: red being 1, green being 2, blue being 5, gold being 10, and purple being 25. And this spread shows approximately how common each was, with the lower values being more common and spread around, and the higher values being rewards for going into more out-of-the-way areas. Collecting them is satisfying, especially in larger amounts. Just watching the numbers spin is one of the highlights of this game, especially at the end of the bonus level.

Eggs are special. They come from chasing down blue thieves, which are the most annoying enemy in the game. Sure, now I can get them in one try, but back at the beginning the ones that don’t have a full circular path were the most annoying things, since if you got to the end, they’d just jump out of reach and taunt you.

Powerups

There’s two main powerups in this game: Superflame and Supercharge. Both have a couple of levels that use them extensively.

Superflame definitely is the weaker of the two. You get kissed by a fairy, turn red, and then for a limited amount of time you can use your flame breath to destroy metal objects and enemies. In the two levels it’s in, there’s an enemy you specifically need to use it on: the terrifying spiders and the enchanted suits of armor. The thing is, Superflame otherwise looks and works exactly like normal flame, just is usable on more things. While it’s cool to get the limitless one in Haunted Towers, overall it’s not a very memorable ability, and is improved dramatically in the sequels.

Supercharge you get from charging over lit arrows, and it enhances your charge to work on larger enemies and makes you go really, really fast. It takes a bit to master, but once you do, it is a very satisfying skill to use. Too bad none of the levels in this game have a limitless track to use it on. The levels that use it use it in very creative ways, including the one where I’m not even sure how you’re supposed to know the path you’re supposed to take. It really spices up the gameplay, to the point where Tree Tops feels like an entirely different game. And if you know me, you know that I love games that spice up the gameplay.

Bosses

The one weak point of this game is its bosses. They’re basically normal enemies, just with a slight gimmick. And that gimmick usually involves a large battlefield where they will run away from you. It does make you feel powerful: after all, they’re running away from the fire-breathing dragon attacking them. But at the same time, they offer very little challenge. The only really interesting one is Metalhead with his electric-guarded power generators, but even then, it’s not like he can hit you or anything unless you’re standing completely still. And the final boss is only hard because of how many holes the stage has in it. Not at all because of Gnasty. He’s still the most likely to directly hit you of all the bosses, but that’s not saying much.

Levels

The levels are all themed to their world, which is pretty neat, but does get repetitive at times. Still, it made each world feel more real.

Speaking of things feeling more real, something I’ve noticed is that Spyro the Dragon doesn’t fall into the same pitfall of having platforms that are just platforms because this is a platformer. Every piece of land is connected to something, oftentimes even in Dream Weavers which is literally floating islands. Moving platforms are caused by wizards, dangerous platforms are caused by Gnorcs zapping them, and often random platforms in the middle of the level are themed to it, like the stumps in Beast Makers.

The game progresses from easy to hard very smoothly, adding more gimmicks and platforming challenges as it goes along. This is also shown by the Gnorcs getting more competent as the game goes along, beginning with no weaponry in Artisans, getting cannons in Peacekeepers, electricity in Beast Makers, and finally machine guns in Gnorc Gnexus. Too bad Gnasty never learned to use a gun.

Story

Gnasty Gnorc turns all the dragons into crystal for insulting him on live TV. And if you read the instruction manual you learn that he hates gems because he hates his own reflection because he is too ugly. Really, there’s not too much here, but that’s not the point of the game. At least it’s not a save-the-girl plot. You don’t really see save-the-adults too often.

Unique in the Series?

Truly what makes this game unique is the fact that it’s completely platforming-based. No minigames, few gimmicks, just the entire game is platforming and collecting stuff.

This comes with a lack of real NPCs, which many people find makes the game lonely, but I don’t mind at all. It’s definitely a different feel from later games, but it’s not in a bad way.

Also something I’m surprised is unique to this game is the fact that many of the secrets involve going onto parts of the level that look like they should not be accessible. You glide onto the surrounding hillsides in Stone Hill, you climb up nearly-invisible steps in Terrace village, and you use the walls that look just like random scenery to fully explore Misty Bog. This type of thing isn’t used in future Spyro games, and rarely (if ever?) in video games in general. Truly a unique experience that has since turned me into an accidental bug hunter because I keep trying to get out-of-bounds just in case in other games.

Conclusion

All-in-all, Spyro the Dragon is tied for my favorite video game of all time with its sequel, Spyro 2. I compare everything I play to these games. They’re just the standard. I love them. Nostalgia-bias? Maybe. But despite there being a few flaws, I can’t really find fault when I play it. It’s too fun.

#spyro #spyro the dragon #video game review #spyro reignited

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maximelebled · 6 years

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Growing Pains - Zelda, Tony Hawk, The Sims, games and related memories from my formative years

This blog post is about my personal history with video games, how they influenced me growing up, how they sometimes helped me, and more or less an excuse to write about associated memories with them.

This is a very straightforward intro, because I’ve had this post sitting as a draft for ages, trying to glue all of it cohesively, but I’m not a very good writer, so I never really succeeded. Some of these paragraphs date back at least one year.

And I figured I should write about a lot of this as long as I still remember clearly, or not too inaccurately. Because I know that I don’t remember my earliest ever memory. I only remember how I remember it. So I might as well help my future self here, and give myself a good memento.

Anyway, the post is a kilometer long, so it’ll be under this cut.

My family got a Windows 95 computer when I was 3 years old. While I don’t remember this personally, I’m told that one of the first things I ever did with it was mess up with the BIOS settings so badly that dad’s computer-expert friend had to be invited to repair it. (He stayed for dinner as a thank you.)

It was that off-white plastic tower, it had a turbo button, and even a 4X CD reader! Wow! And the CRT monitor must have been... I don’t remember what it was, actually. But I do once remember launching a game at a stupidly high resolution: 1280x1024! And despite being a top-down 2D strategy, it ran VERY slowly. Its video card was an ATI Rage. I had no idea what that really meant that at the time, but I do recall that detail nonetheless.

Along with legitimately purchased games, the list of which I can remember:

Tubular Worlds

Descent II

Alone in the Dark I & III

Lost Eden

Formula One (not sure which game exactly)

Heart of Darkness

(and of course the famous Adibou/Adi series of educational games)

... we also had what I realize today were cracked/pirated games, from the work-friend that had set up the family computer. I remember the following:

Age of Empires I (not sure about that one, I think it might have been from a legitimate “Microsoft Plus!” disc)

Nightmare Creatures (yep, there was a PC port of that game)

Earthworm Jim (but without any music)

The Fifth Element

Moto Racer II

There are a few other memorable games, which were memorable in most aspects, except their name. I just cannot remember their name. And believe me, I have looked. Too bad! Anyway, in this list, I can point out a couple games that made a big mark on me.

First, the Alone in the Dark trilogy. It took me a long time to beat them. I still remember the morning I beat the third game. I think it was in 2001 or 2002.

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There was a specific death in it which gave me nightmares for a week. You shrink yourself to fit through a crack in a wall, but it’s possible to let a timer run out—or fall down a hole—and this terrifying thing happens (16:03). I remember sometimes struggling to run the game for no reason; something about DOS Extended Memory being too small.

I really like the low-poly flat-shaded 3D + hand-drawn 2D style of the game, and it’d be really cool to see something like that pop up again. After the 8-bit/16-bit trend, there’s now more and more games paying tribute to rough PS1-style 3D, so maybe this will happen? Maybe I’ll have to do it myself? Who knows!

Second, Lost Eden gave me a taste for adventure and good music, and outlandish fantasy universes. Here’s the intro to the game:

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A lot of the game is very evocative, especially its gorgeous soundtrack, and you spend a lot of time trekking through somewhat empty renders of landscapes. Despite being very rough early pre-rendered 3D, those places were an incredible journey in my young eyes. If you have some time, I suggest either playing the game (it’s available on Steam) or watching / skimmering through this “longplay” video. Here are some of my personal highlights: 25:35, 38:05, 52:15 (love that landscape), 1:17:20, 1:20:20 (another landscape burned in my neurons), 2:12:10, 2:55:30, 3:01:18. (spoiler warning)

But let’s go a couple years back. Ever since my youngest years, I was very intrigued by creation. I filled entire pocket-sized notebooks with writing—sometimes attempts at fiction, sometimes daily logs like the weather reports from the newspaper, sometimes really bad attempts at drawing. I also filled entire audio tapes over and over and OVER with “fake shows” that my sister and I would act out. The only thing that survived is this picture of 3-year-old me with the tape player/recorder.

It also turns out that the tape recorder AND the shelf have both survived.

(I don’t know if it still works.)

On Wednesday afternoons (school was off) and on the week-ends, I often got to play on the family computer, most of the time with my older brother, who’s the one who introduced me to... well... all of it, really. (Looking back on the games he bought, I can say he had very good tastes.)

Moto Racer II came with a track editor. It was simple but pretty cool to play around with. You just had to make the track path and elevation; all the scenery was generated by the game. You could draw impossible tracks that overlapped themselves, but the editor wouldn’t let you save them. However, I found out there was a way to play/save them no matter what you did, and I got to experiment with crazy glitches. 85 degree inclines that launched the bike so high you couldn’t see the ground anymore? No problem. Tracks that overlapped themselves several times, causing very strange behaviour at the meeting points? You bet. That stuff made me really curious about how video games worked. I think a lot of my initial interest in games can be traced back to that one moment I figured out how to exploit the track editor...

There was also another game—I think it was Tubular Worlds—that came on floppy disks. I don’t remember what exactly lead me to do it, but I managed to edit the text that was displayed by the installer... I think it was the license agreement bit of it. That got me even more curious as to how computers worked.

Up until some time around my 13th or 14th birthday, during summer break (the last days of June to the first days of September for French pupils), my sister and I would always go on vacation at my grandparents’ home.

The very first console game I ever played was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on my cousin’s Super Nintendo, who also usually stayed with us. Unlike us, he had quite a few consoles available to him, and brought a couple along. My first time watching and playing this game was absolutely mind-blowing to me. An adventure with a huge game world to explore, so many mysterious things at every corner. “Why are you a pink rabbit now?” “I’m looking for the pearl that will help me not be that.”

Growing up and working in the games industry has taken the magic out of many things in video games... and my curiosity for the medium (and its inner workings) definitely hasn’t helped. I know more obscure technical trivia about older games than I care to admit. But I think this is what is shaping my tastes in video games nowadays... part of it is that I crave story-rich experiences that can bring me back to a, for lack of a better term, “child-like” wonderment. And I know how weird this is going to sound, but I don’t really enjoy “pure gameplay” games as much for that reason. Some of the high-concept ones are great, of course (e.g. Tetris), but I usually can’t enjoy others without a good interwoven narrative. I can’t imagine I would have completed The Talos Principle had it consisted purely of the puzzles without any narrative beats, story bits, and all that. What I’m getting at is, thinking about it, I guess I tend to value the “narrative” side of games pretty highly, because, to me, it’s one of the aspects of the medium that, even if distillable to some formulas, is inherently way more “vague” and “ungraspable”. You can do disassembly on game mechanics and figure out even the most obsure bits of weird technical trivia. You can’t do that to a plot, a universe, characters, etc. or at least nowhere near to the same extent.

You can take a good story and weave it into a number of games, but the opposite is not true. It’s easy to figure out the inner working of gameplay mechanics, and take the magic out of them, but it’s a lot harder to do that for a story, unless it’s fundamentally flawed in some way.

Video games back then seemed a lot bigger than they actually were.

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I got Heart of Darkness as a gift in 1998 or 1999. We used to celebrate Christmas at my grandparents’, so I had to wait a few days to be back home, and to able to put the CD in the computer. But boy was it worth it! Those animated cutscenes! The amazing pixel art animations! The amazing and somewhat disturbing variety of ways in which you can die, most of which gruesome and mildly graphic! And of course, yet again... a strange and outlandish universe that just scratches my itch for it. Well, one of which that forged my taste for them.

I can’t remember exactly when it happened or what it was, but I do remember that at some point we visited some sort of... exposition? Exhibit? Something along those lines. And it had a board games & computer games section. The two that stick out in my mind were Abalone (of which I still have the box somewhere) and what I think was some sort of 2D isometric (MMO?) RPG. I wanna say it was Ultima Online but I recall it looking more primitive than that (it had small maps whose “void” outside them was a single blueish color).

In my last two years of elementary school, there was one big field trip per year. They lasted two weeks, away from family. The first one was to the Alps. The second one was... not too far from where I live now, somewhere on the coast of Brittany! I have tried really hard to find out exactly where it was, as I remember the building and facilities really well, but I was never able to find it again. On a couple occasions, we went on a boat with some kind of... algae harvesters? The smell was extremely strong (burning itself into my memory) and made me sick. The reason I bring them up is because quite a few of my classmates had Game Boy consoles, most of them with, you know, all those accessories, especially the little lights. I remember being amazed at the transparent ones. Play was usually during the off-times, and I watched what my friends were up to, with, of course, a bit of jealousy mixed in. The class traveled by bus, and it took off in the middle of the night; something like 3 or 4 in the morning? It seemed like such a huge deal at the time! Now here I am, writing THESE WORDS at 03:00. Anyway, most of my classmates didn’t fall back asleep and those that had a Game Boy just started playing on them. One of my classmates, however, handed me his whole kit and I got to do pretty much what I wanted with it, with the express condition that I would not overwrite any of his save files. I remember getting reasonably far in Pokémon before I had to give it back to him and my progress was wiped.

During the trip to the Alps, I remember seeing older kids paying for computer time; there was a row of five computers in a small room... and they played Counter-Strike. I had absolutely no idea what it was, and I would forget about it until the moment I’m writing these words, but I was watching with much curiosity.

The first time I had my own access to console games was in 2001. The first Harry Potter film had just come out, and at Christmas, I was gifted a Game Boy Advance with the first official game. I just looked it up again and good god, it’s rougher than I remember. The three most memorable GBA games which I then got to play were both Golden Sun(s) and Sword of Mana... especially the latter, with its gorgeous art direction. My dad had a cellphone back then, and I remember sneakily going on there to look up a walkthrough for a tricky part of Golden Sun’s desert bit. Cellphones had access to something called “WAP” internet... very basic stuff, but of course still incredible to me back then.

I eventually got to play another Zelda game on my GBA: Link’s Awakening DX. I have very fond memories of that one because I was bed-ridden with a terrible flu. My fever ran so high that I started having some really funky dreams, delirious half-awake hallucinations/feelings, and one night, I got so hot that I stumbled out of bed and just laid down against the cold tile of the hallway. At 3 in the morning! A crazy time! (Crazy for 11-year-old me.)

(The fever hallucinations were crazy. My bedroom felt like it was three times at big, and I was convinced that a pack of elephants were charging at me from the opposite corner. The “night grain” of my vision felt sharper, amplified. Every touch, my sore body rubbing against the bed covers felt like it was happening twice as much. You know that “Heavy Rain with 300% facial animation” video? Imagine that, but as a feverish feeling. The dreams were on another level entirely. I could spend pages on them, but suffice to say that’s when I had my first dream where I dreamed of dying. There were at least two, actually. The first one was by walking down a strange, blueish metal corridor, then getting in an elevator, and then feeling that intimate convinction that it was leading me to passing over. The second one was in some Myst-like world, straight out of a Roger Dean cover, with some sort of mini-habitat pods floating on a completely undisturbed lake. We were just trapped in them. It just felt like some kind of weird afterlife.)

I also eventually got to play the GBA port of A Link To The Past. My uncle was pretty amused by seeing me play it, as he’d also played the original on SNES before I’d even been born. I asked him for help with a boss (the first Dark World one), but unfortunately, he admitted he didn’t remember much of the game.

We had a skiing holiday around this time. I don’t remember the resort’s or the town’s name, but its sights are burned in my memory. Maybe it’s because, shortly after we arrived, and we went to the ski rental place, I almost fainted and puked on myself, supposedly from the low oxygen. It also turned out that the bedroom my parents had rented unexpectedly came with a SNES in the drawer under the tiny TV. The game: Super Mario World. I got sick at one point and got to stay in and play it. This was also the holiday where I developed a fondness for iced tea, although back then the most common brand left an awful aftertaste in your mouth that just made you even more thirsty.

We got a new PC in December of 2004. Ditching the old Windows 98 SE (yep, the OS had been upgraded in... 2002, I think?). Look at how old-school this looks. The computer office room was in the basement. Even with the blur job that I applied to the monitor for privacy reasons, you can still tell that this is the XP file explorer:

A look at what the old DSLR managed to capture on the shelf reveals some more of the games that were available to me back then: a bunch of educational software, The Sims 2, and SpellForce Gold.

I might be misremembering but I think they were our Christmas gifts for that year; we both got to pick one game. I had no idea what I wanted, really, but out of all the boxes at (what I think was) the local Fnac store, it was SpellForce that stood out to me the most. Having watched Lord of the Rings the year prior might have been a factor. I somewhat understood Age of Empires years before that, but SpellForce? Man, I loved the hell out of SpellForce. Imagine a top-down RPG that can also be played from a third-person perspective. And with the concept of... hero units... wait a second... now that reminds me of Dota.

Imagine playing a Dota hero with lots of micro-management and being able to build a whole base on new maps. And sometimes visiting very RPG-ish sections (my favorites!) with very little top-down strategy bits, towns, etc. like Siltbreaker. I guess this game was somewhat like an alternate, single-player Dota if you look at it from the right angle. (Not the third-person one.)

I do remember being very excited when I found out that it, too, came with a level editor. I never figured it out, though. I only ever got as far as making a nice landscape for my island, and that was it!

A couple weeks after, it was Christmas; my sister and I got our first modern PC game: The Sims 2. It didn’t run super well—most games didn’t, because the nVidia GeForce FX 5200 wasn’t very good. But that didn’t stop me or my sister from going absolutely nuts with the game. This video has the timestamp of 09 January 2005, and it is the first video I’ve ever made with a computer. Less than two weeks after we got the game, I was already neck-deep in creating stuff.

Not that it was particularly good, of course. This is a video that meets all of the “early YouTube Windows Movie Maker clichés”.

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Speaking of YouTube, I did register an account there pretty early on, in August of 2006. I’ve been through all of it. I remember every single layout change. I also started using Sony Vegas around that time. It felt so complex and advanced back then! And I’m still using it today. Besides Windows, Vegas Pro is very likely to be the piece of software that I’ve been using for the longest time.

I don’t have a video on YouTube from before 2009, because I decided to delete all of them out of embarassment. They were mostly Super Mario 64 machinima. It’s as bad as it sounds. The reason I bring that up right now, though, is that it makes the “first” video of my account the last one I made with the Sims 2.

But before I get too far ahead with my early YouTube days, let me go backwards a bit. We got hooked up to the Internet some time in late 2005. It was RTC (dialup), 56 kbps. my first steps into the Internet led me to the Cube engine. Mostly because back then my dad would purchase computer magazines (which were genuinely helpful back then), and came with CDs of common downloadable software for those without Internet connections. One of them linked to Cube. I think it was using either this very same screenshot, or a very similar one, on the same map.

The amazing thing about Cube is not only that it was open-source and moddable, but had map editing built-in the game. The mode was toggled on with a single key press. You could even edit maps cooperatively with other people. Multiplayer mapping! How cool is that?! And the idea of a game that enabled so much creation was amazing to me, so I downloaded it right away. (Over the course of several hours, 30 MiB being large for dialup.)

I made lots of bad maps that never fulfilled the definition of “good level” or “good gameplay”, not having any idea how “game design” meant, or what it even was. But I made places. Places that I could call my own. “Virtual homes”. I still distinctively remember the first map I ever made, even though no trace of it survives to this day. In the second smallest map size possible, I’d made a tower surrounded by a moat and a few smaller cozy towers, with lots of nice colored lighting. This, along with the distinctive skyboxes and intriguing music, made me feel like I’d made my home in a strange new world.

At some point later down the line, I made a kinda-decent singleplayer level. It was very linear, but one of the two lead developers of the game played it and told me he liked it a lot! Of course, half of that statement was probably “to be nice”, but it was really validating and encouraging. And I’m glad they were like that. Because I remember being annoying to some other mappers in the Sauerbraten community (the follow-up to Cube, more advanced technically), who couldn’t wrap their heads around my absolutely god awful texturing work and complete lack of level “design”. Honestly, sometimes, I actually kinda feel like trying to track a couple of them down and being like, “yeah, remember that annoying kid? That was me. Sorry you had to deal with 14-year-old me.”

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At some point, I stumbled upon a mod called Cube Legends. It was a heavily Zelda-inspired “total conversion”; a term reserved for mods that are the moddiest mods and try to take away as much of the original foundation as possible. It featured lots of evocative MIDI music by the Norwegian composer Bjørn Lynne. Fun fact: the .mid files are still available officially from his website!

This was at the crossroad of many of my interests. It was yet another piece of the puzzle. As a quick side note, this is why Zelda is the first series that I name in the title of this post, even though I... never really thought of myself as a Zelda fan. It’s not that it’s one of the game series that I like the most, it’s just that, before I started writing this, I’d never realized how far-reaching its influence had been in my life, both in overt and subtle ways, especially during my formative years.

And despite how clearly unfinished, how much of a “draft” Cube Legends was, I could see what it was trying to do. I could see the author’s intent. And I’m still listening to Bjørn Lynne’s music today.

The Cube Engine and its forums were a big part of why I started speaking English so well. Compared to most French people, I mean. We’re notoriously bad with the English language, and so was I up until then. But having this much hands-on practice proved to be immensely valuable. And so, I can say that the game and its community have therefore had long-lasting impacts in my life.

I also tried out a bunch of N64 games via emulation, bringing me right back in that bedroom at my grandparents’ house, with my cousin. Though he did not have either N64 Zelda game back then.

The first online forum I ever joined was a Zelda fan site’s. There are two noteworthy things to say here:

It was managed by a woman who, during my stay in the community, graduated from her animation degree. At this stage I had absolutely no idea that this was going to be the line of work I would eventually pursue!

I recently ran into the former head moderator of the forums. (I don’t know when the community died.) One of the Dota players on my friends list invited him because I was like “hmm, I wanna go as 3, not as 2 players today”. His nickname very vaguely reminded me of something, a weird hunch I couldn’t place. Half an hour into the game, he said “hey Max... this might be a long shot, but did you ever visit [forum]?” and then I immediately yelled “OH MY GOD—IT IS YOU.” The world is a small place.

Access to the computer was sometimes tricky. I didn’t always have good grades, and of course, “punishment” (not sure the word is appropriate, hence the quotes, but you get the idea) often involved locking me out of the computer room. Of course, most times, I ended up trying to find the key instead. I needed my escape from the real world. (You better believe it’s Tangent Time.)

I was always told I was the “smart kid”, because I “understood things faster” than my classmates. So they made me skip two grades ahead. This made me enter high school at nine years old. The consequences were awful (I was even more of the typical nerdy kid that wouldn’t fit in), and I wish it had never happened. Over the years, I finally understood: I wasn’t more intelligent. I merely had the chance to have been able to grow up with an older brother who’d instilled a sense of curiosity, critical thinking, and taste in books that were ahead of my age and reading level. This situation—and its opposite—is what I believe accounts for the difference in how well kids get to learn. It’s not innate talent, it’s not genetics (as some racists would like you to believe). It’s parenting and privilege.

And that’s why I’ll always be an outspoken proponent for any piece of media that tries to instill critical thinking and curiosity in its viewer, reader, or player.

But I digress.

Well, I’ve been digressing a lot, really, but games aren’t everything and after all, this post is about the context in which I played those games. Otherwise I reckon I would’ve just made a simple list.

I eventually got a Nintendo DS for Christmas, along with Mario Kart DS. My sister had gotten her own just around the time when it released... she had the Nintendogs bundle. We had also upgraded to proper ADSL, what I think was about a ~5 megabits download speed. The Nintendo DS supported wi-fi, which was still relatively rare compared to today. In fact, Nintendo sold a USB wireless adapter to help with that issue—our ISP-supplied modem-router did not have any wireless capabilities. I couldn’t get it the adapter work and I remember I got help from a really kind stranger who knew a lot about networking—to a point that it seemed like wizardry to me.

I remember I got a “discman” as a gift some time around that point. In fact, I still have it. Check out the stickers I put on it! I think those came from the Sims 2 DVD box and/or one of its add-ons.

I burned a lot of discs. In fact, in the stack of burned CDs/DVDs that I found (with the really bad Sims movies somewhere in there), I found at least three discs that had the Zelda album Hyrule Symphony burned in, each with different additional tracks. Some were straight-up MIDI files from vgmusic.com...! And speaking (again) of Zelda, when the Wii came out, Twilight Princess utterly blew my mind. I never got the game or the console, but damn did I yearn badly for it. I listened to the main theme of the game a lot, which didn’t help. I eventually got to play the first few hours at a friend’s place.

At some point, we’d upgraded the family computer to something with a bit more horsepower. It had a GeForce 8500 GT inside, which was eventually upgraded to a 9600 GT after the card failed for some reason. It could also dual-boot between XP and Vista. I stuck with that computer until 2011.

We moved to where I currently live in 2007. I’ve been here over a decade! And before we’d even fully finished unpacking, I was on the floor of the room that is now my office, with the computer on the ground and the monitor on a cardboard box, playing a pirated copy of... Half-Life! It was given to me by my cousin. It took me that long to find out about the series. It’s the first Valve game I played. I also later heard about the Orange Box, but mostly about Portal. Which I also pirated and played. I distinctly remember being very puzzled by the options menu: I thought it was glitched or broken, as changing settings froze the game. Turns out the Source engine had to chug for a little while, like a city car in countryside mud, as it reloaded a bunch of stuff. Patience is a virtue...

But then, something serious happened.

In the afternoon of 25 December 2007, I started having a bit of a dull stomach pain. I didn’t think much of it. Figured maybe I’d eaten too many Christmas chocolates and it’d go away. It didn’t. It progressively deteriorated into a high fever where I had trouble walking and my tummy really hurt; especially if you pressed on it. My parents tried to gently get me to eat something nice on New Year’s Eve, but it didn’t stay in very long. I could only feed myself with lemonade and painkiller. Eventually, the doctor decided I should get blood tests done as soon as possible. And I remember that day very clearly.

I was already up at 6:30 in the morning. Back then, The Daily Show aired on the French TV channel Canal+, so I was watching that, lying in the couch while waiting for my mom to get up and drive me to my appointment, at 7:00. It was just two streets away, but there was no way I could walk there. At around noon, the doctor called and told my mom: “get your son to the emergency room now.”

Long story short, part of my intestines nuked themselves into oblivion, causing acute peritonitis. To give you an idea, that’s something with a double-digit fatality rate. Had we waited maybe a day or two more, I would not be here writing this. They kind of blew up. I had an enormous abcess attached to a bunch of my organs. I had to be operated on with only weak local anaesthetics as they tried to start draining the abscess. It is, to date, by far the most painful thing that has ever happened to me. It was bad enough that the hospital doctor that was on my case told me that I was pretty much a case worthy to be in textbooks. I even had medical students come into my hospital room about it! They were very nice.

This whole affair lasted over a month. I became intimately familiar with TV schedules. And thankfully, I had my DS to keep me company. At the time, I was pretty big into the Tony Hawk DS games. They were genuinely good. They had extensive customization, really great replayability, etc. you get the idea. I think I even got pretty high on the online leaderboards at some point. I didn’t have much to do on some days besides lying down in pain while perfecting my scoring and combo strategies. I think Downhill Jam might’ve been my favorite.

My case was bad enough that they were unable to do something due to the sad state of my insides during the last surgery of my stay. I was told that I could come back in a few months for a checkup, and potentially a “cleanup” operation that would fix me up for good. I came back in late June of 2008, got the operation, and... woke up in my hospital room surrounded by, like, nine doctors, and hooked up to a morphine machine that I could trigger on command. Apparently something had gone wrong during the operation, but they never told me what. I wasn’t legally an adult, so they didn’t have to tell me. I suspect it’s somewhere in some medical files, but I never bothered to dig up through my parents’ archives, or ask the hospital. And I think I would rather not know. But anyway, that was almost three more weeks in the hospital. And it sucked even more that time because, you see, hospital beds do not “breathe” like regular beds do. The air can’t go through. Let’s say I’m intimately familiar with the smell of back sweat forever.

When I got out, my mom stopped by a supermarket on the way home. And that is when I bought The Orange Box, completely on a whim, and made my Steam account. Why? Because it was orange and stood out on the shelf.

(As a side note, that was the whole bit I started writing first, and that made me initially title this post “growing pains”. First, because I’m bad at titles. Second, because not that I didn’t have them otherwise (ow oof ouch my knees), but that was literally the most painful episode of my entire life thus far and it ended in a comically-unrelated, high-impact, life-changing decision. Just me picking up The Orange Box after two awful hospital stays... led me to where I am today.)

While I was recovering, I also started playing EarthBound! Another bit of a life-changer, that one. To a lesser extent, but still. I was immediately enamored by its unique tone. Giygas really really really creeped me out for a while afterwards though. I still get unsettled if I hear its noises sometimes.

I later bought Garry’s Mod (after convincing my mom that it was a “great creative toolbox that only cost ten bucks!”), and, well, the rest is history. By which I mean, a lot of my work and gaming activity since 2009 is still up and browsable. But there are still a few things to talk about.

In 2009, I bought my first computer with YouTube ad money: the Asus eee PC 1005HA-H. By modern standards, it’s... not very powerful. The processor in my current desktop machine is nearly 50 times as fast as its Atom N280. It had only one gigabyte of RAM, Windows 7 Basic Edition, and an integrated GPU barely worthy of the name; Intel didn’t care much for 3D in their chips back then. The GMA 945 didn’t even have hardware support for Transform & Lighting.

But I made it work, damn it. I made that machine run so much stuff. I played countless Half-Life and Half-Life 2 mods on it—though, due to the CPU overhead on geometry, some of those were trickier. I think one of the most memorable ones I played was Mistake of Pythagoras; very surreal, very rough, but I still remember it so clearly. I later played The Longest Journey on it, in the middle of winter. It was a very cozy and memorable experience. (And another one that’s an adventure wonderful outlandish alien universe. LOVE THOSE.)

I did more than playing games on it, though...

This is me sitting, sunburned on the nose, in an apartment room, on 06 August 2010. This was in the Pyrénées, at the border between France and Spain. We had a vacation with daily hiking. Some of the landscapes we visited reminded me very strongly of those from Lost Eden, way up the page...

So, you see, I had 3ds Max running on that machine. The Source SDK as well. Sony Vegas. All of it was slow; you bet I had to use some workarounds to squeeze performance out of software, and that I had to keep a close, watchful eye on RAM usage. But I worked on this thing. I really did! I animated this video’s facial animation bits (warning: this is old & bad) on the eee PC, during the evenings of the trip, when we were back at our accomodation. The Faceposer tool in the Source SDK really worked well on that machine.

I also animated an entire video solely on the machine (warning: also old and bad). It had to be rendered on the desktop computer... but every single bit of the animation was crafted on the eee PC.

I made it work.

Speaking of software that did not run well: around that time, I also played the original Crysis. The “but can it run Crysis?” joke was very much justified back then. I had to edit configuration files by hand so that I could run the game in 640x480... because I wanted to keep most of the high-end settings enabled. The motion blur was delicious, and it blew my mind that the effect made the game feel this smooth, despite wobbling around in the 20 to 30 fps range.

Alright. It’s time to finish writing this damn post and publish it at last, so I’m going to close it out by listing some more memories and games that I couldn’t work in up there.

Advance Wars. Strategy game on GBA with a top-down level editor. You better believe I was all over the editor right away.

BioShock. When we got the 2007 desktop computer, it was one of the first games I tried. Well, its demo, to be precise. Its tech and graphics blew my mind, enough that I saved up to buy the full game. This was before I had a Steam account; I got a boxed copy! I think it might have been the last boxed game I ever bought? It had a really nice metal case. The themes and political messages of the game flew way over my head, though.

Mirror’s Edge. The art direction was completely fascinating to me, and it introduced me to Solar Fields’ music; my most listened artist this decade, by a long shot.

L.A. Noire. I lost myself in its stories and investigations, and then, I did it all again, with my sister at the helm. I very rarely play games twice (directly or indirectly), which I figure is worth mentioning.

Zeno Clash. It was weird and full of soul, had cool music, and cool cutscenes. It inspired me a lot in my early animation days.

Skyward Sword. Yep, going back to Zelda on that one. The whole game was pretty good, and I’m still thinking about how amazing its art direction was. Look up screenshots of it running in HD on an emulator... it’s outstanding. But there’s a portion of the game that stands tall above the rest: the Lanayru Sand Sea. It managed to create a really striking atmosphere in many aspects, through and through. I still think about it from time to time, especially when its music comes on in shuffle mode.

Wandersong. A very recent pick, but it was absolutely a life-changing one. That game is an anti-depressant, a vaccine against cynicism, a lone bright and optimist voice.

I realize now this is basically a “flawed but interesting and impactful games” list. With “can establish its atmosphere very well” as a big criteria. (A segment of video games that is absolutely worth exploring.)

I don’t know if I’ll ever make my own video game. I have a few ideas floating around and I tried prototyping some stuff, though my limited programming abilities stood in my way. But either way, if it happens one day, I hope I’ll manage to channel all those years of games into the CULMINATION OF WHAT I LIKE. Something along those lines, I reckon.

#video games

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closetcasefabray · 6 years

Text

Blue + Yellow (2/2)

so i’m never drinking again (meaning i’m not going to drink until a few days from now), but i did some stuff around my apartment & recovered before looking this over. it’s in decent enough shape i figured i’d post it on my night in. so here's the second/final part of b+y, a soulmate clexa au. thanks for the likes & reblogs <3

(i also have some ranya companion bits & other cute shit in my head from this. hit me up in the asks or message me if you wanna know anything.)

(Part 1 / 2)

Blue + Yellow

Part 2 / 2

Once you’re old enough to be trusted on a computer, your parents let you use your dad’s old laptop (with safety settings programmed in, courtesy of your dad being a computer engineer and generally a protective father). You spend hours reading stories online about people seeing color. The romantics talk about how life burst into color as soon as they set eyes on their soulmates. The realists are more prevalent, like you, and they tell of their search for their soulmate, having seen color gradually after a few days. Some even reject the idea of soulmates completely, finding different kinds of love with other like-minded people.

Your heart breaks when you read about the people who never see their soulmates again—whether a war-torn nation dividing them, or travelers who board a plane back home only to start seeing color as they leave, or sometimes death. But you feel reassured when you read about those who have lost a soulmate and find love again with someone else. Still, your heart aches at the idea of giving up on finding Lexa, even more when you wonder if she’s given up on you.

Your parents did all they could when you told them about Lexa those years ago, a few days after coloring with Lexa in the park, but they couldn’t get much information because of child protection and privacy reasons, especially because Lexa had been in foster care with her half-sister before moving. With a different last name in a city of millions, you know you’ll never be able to find Lexa, but that doesn’t stop you from searching Facebook and social media most nights.

Once puberty hits, everyone talks about seeing in color. You never hide the fact that you have been able to see colors since you were five, but you don’t like talking about it much. It’s often something you keep to yourself and your paints. Most kids in your small town know it’s unlikely and often hope they don’t meet their soulmate here, but that doesn’t prevent their hormones from kicking into full gear.

When a new student arrives in the spring of seventh grade, you’re not surprised when you hear Octavia (amongst several others) has a crush. You’re also not shocked to hear that Bellamy confronts him after baseball try-outs that same day, telling the new kid, Lincoln, to stay away from his sister. You decide you like Lincoln when you hear he dodged Bellamy’s first swing and in turn gave the Blake boy a bloody nose. Neither of them get into trouble since it happened far enough from school grounds, but Octavia does get in trouble for giving her brother a fat lip as soon as he gets home for starting a fight with Lincoln.

After punching Bellamy, Octavia calls you.

“I can see colors like you now,” Octavia says excitedly. “Just... wow, Clarke. You never told me how beautiful it is.”

She ends up rushing off the phone when her mom gets home and sees a beat up Bellamy holding bags of frozen corn to his nose and mouth.

Although Octavia is grounded for the first month of their relationship, there isn’t anything or anyone who can stop Lincoln and Octavia from falling in love because both puberty-stricken thirteen and twelve-year-olds knew as soon as they saw each other in fourth period English. It really is beautiful, seeing the world in color, but you don’t have the heart to tell Octavia that the colors you see haven’t been as bright since you were just a kid in a park.

Your mom never asks, but you know she’s thinking it when you tell her your top choices for college—Columbia, New School, NYU, Fordham, CUNY. You don’t talk to your mother often, not since your dad died two years ago, so you think she might not want to scare you away from opening up by asking questions.

“I like the idea of being somewhere I don’t have to drive to get to the best art in the city... or the world for that matter,” you say one night over dinner.

She nods in understanding. It is true that the city has that benefit, but you’re not sure if you’re rationalizing it more to yourself or your mother.

You drove enough to get your license, but you hate it. You’ve grown more comfortable riding in passenger seats because Octavia luckily loves to drive, and she talks and plays music loud enough to stop you from thinking too much. But it’s still too easy to get in your head when you drive on your own. You still tremble in your seat at large intersections, and your hands sweat as they hold the wheel because you don’t think you’ll ever forget the sound of metal being crushed and the silence that comes after.

“So wait,” your roommate slurs with a chuckle, “you’re telling me... you decided to come here... because you think your soulmate might still be here?”

“Way to make me sound like a total sucker, but yeah, pretty much,” you confess before downing another shot.

You just had the entire art department rip into your sophomore year portfolio, so you decided to put some distance between you and the art world and get drunk with Raven—a computer engineering student who transferred from UMass back to her home, New York City born and bred.

“You’re not like a sucker. Pretty sure you just are one, but I’m a bitter asshole,” Raven says with a smirk.

You smile and clink your beer bottle with hers before taking a sip.

Raven has good reason and you’re sure you would be much angrier with the world if in her shoes. She met her soulmate when she was fourteen, and they fixed cars and built things with their hands together. Then they were sixteen, riding on a motorcycle they had fixed up together, a car didn’t see them, and Raven just remembers waking up in the hospital with a shattered leg. “I can still see colors,” she said that night the whole story spilled out of her, “but it’s all... faded, I guess. Colors are pretty dull in my eyes.”

“Do you think it’s stupid?” you ask Raven. “That I thought I could find her again?”

Raven shrugs. “Don’t put your life on hold for someone who isn’t here right now,” she says. “If you really are soulmates, things will work themselves out. Until then, have fun, make art like you weird liberal arts kids do. Do whatever. Doesn’t mean you have to fall in love.”

“Makes sense,” you agree as Raven pours you both a shot and opens a couple more beers.

“Of course. I know what I’m talking about; I’m in the sciences.”

You kiss a boy who also sees color, but nothing about him feels special or makes your heart race. You both know you’re welcome distractions for each other, but he knows his soulmate is never coming back and you might always be looking for yours.

You kiss a lot of people and sleep with a few others too. Some can see color, some can’t, and some you don’t bother asking. It’s fun and nothing close to love, so it fills the gaps between those times you think about a little girl who brought green into your life and then everything else. You wonder what she looks like now, if she’s cut her hair, or if she’s somewhere thinking about you.

You fall for a girl with long, light brown hair. She has the opposite curse—born colorblind like everyone else but informed by doctors that she will never see colors. She has to learn to love the hard way—heart first. When you’re lying next to her in bed, and she hums as you trace her jawline, you wish you could love her the way she deserves.

You think she’s always known and that’s why she never said “I love you” because the response would be a lie or an apology.

She’s standing in front of you now, smiling that sad, knowing smile. “You showed me color in a different way,” she says before kissing you softly for the last time. She leaves you in your studio with your hands covered in verdigris.

You don’t know if it’s the lack of sleep or your eyes playing tricks on you again, but you swear you see a flash of green eyes and dark hair on your morning commute. You don’t know if it’s because you’ve been busy and single for the past couple of months, but you feel your heart swell, your blood flowing through your veins to your fingertips. You just know that when you get to your studio, your paintings look a little brighter and your hands find the paint on their own, blending the perfect shades for your last piece of your senior presentation.

Your advisor introduces you to more of her curator friends and they praise your work as you stand in the gallery beside one of your paintings of an eclipse, half the canvas is a haunting cerulean, the other half painted bright shades of yellow.

“I assume you gave Ms. Griffin the A she deserves?” jokes one of her colleagues.

Dr. Miles grins and hugs your shoulders. “I wouldn’t dream of giving her anything lower than that,” she says with pride.

Dr. Miles had been so impressed by your senior project, she invited some friends from MoMA to your show at the campus art center. You were already elated to have your work being viewed by such important people, but when Dr. Miles called you during senior week to ask if you’d like to feature your work at a gallery in affiliation with PS1, you almost burst. You could hardly process what you were hearing and when you did, after hanging up your phone, you screamed and jumped around your apartment, much to Raven’s hungover chagrin.

Since it was rather last minute, Dr. Miles managed to sort out most of the details while you prepared for graduation. Still in your apartment until the end of May, you were able to help move your work to the small gallery space in the Lower East Side on Rivington with some help from Raven. It didn’t feel real until you saw your name in the brochure for New York City Museums’ Summer Tour.

You excuse yourself to greet your mother and her boyfriend, Marcus Kane. They’re beaming as they look at all your work on display, but mostly they look happy together. You smile because your mother’s found a kind of happiness you haven’t seen since your father passed away. Of all people, you’re glad the first person to put paint in your hands is now the person adding color to your mother’s life again.

You give them both a hug and kiss on the cheek, asking how they like the city since they stuck around after your graduation. Someone offers them wine, and Marcus happily takes a glass and mouths to you, “Fancy,” and wiggles his eyebrows, making you laugh.

“Wow, your work is selling quick,” Marcus notes, sipping from his wine.

You’re surprised when you take in how many red dots are stickered next to several of your paintings.

“You’re taking us out to dinner when you visit,” your mom teases.

“I like lobster,” Marcus adds before wandering off to look at more of your work.

You find him a bit later in front of your favorite piece. It’s mixed media, with various New York debris scattered around the edges with the blur of a subway train speeding through the center, featuring green eyes that stand out from the grey. You didn’t put a price on it; you want to hold onto this one.

You’re taking inventory of all the sold pieces and confirming contact information with buyers as Raven continues texting you from across the street as she waits for you to wrap up. She keeps sending you ridiculous ideas of how to spend your newfound relative wealth.

You’re in the back office when you hear the door open.

“Raven, I gave you the passcode to help me move my stuff here, not so you can treat it like an extension of our apartment,” you say as you round the corner, flipping through the contact paperwork. “I’ll just be ten more min—”

You forget how to speak as you blindly set down the stack of paper on the desk, unable to look away from the figure in front of the door.

“Sorry. Your friend told me the passcode... I’d have come earlier, but I had to take the train in from Connecticut.”

You remember everything: the laughing leaves, the charcoal skirt, her brown hair, and those eyes.

“My sister only told me a couple of hours ago there was this art gallery I had to see,” she says, offering a small smile as she takes a couple tentative steps toward you. She picks up one of the small pamphlets about yourself and the exhibit. “Blue + Yellow,” she reads, “Still your favorite color?”

You nod, still struggling to find the right words to say. Maybe it’s because you never let yourself plan this part out; all your energy went solely into making her appear again. Now she’s here, right in front of you.

“Clarke Griffin,” Lexa says like she’s trying it out, putting the pamphlet in her pocket. “Clarke, with an e, Griffin...” She lets out a small laugh. “That would have made things easier.”

You let out a laugh of your own. “And you’re Lexa...”

“Woods. Well, now anyway, once my parents adopted me,” she explains.

"Woods,” you repeat. “Suits you. Woods, forests... like pines.”

Lexa’s smile broadens at that and you wonder if she’s played your last conversation as children over and over in her head like you have, as if sifting through memories for clues to find each other again.

“Is it stupid of me to have dreamed of meeting you again here?” you ask.

Lexa shakes her head. “Only if it’s stupid of me to have read every art section of every New York magazine for the past five years,” she admits, blushing lightly and looking away from Clarke. She notices your unsold mixed media piece and stands in front of it. “It must have been you,” she says, almost to herself as she deciphers the subway and her own eyes gazing out, “but I also thought I saw you walk by me or waiting on the opposite subway platform for years.”

“If it’s any consolation,” you say, standing beside her, looking at it as if from her perspective, “I thought that too. I painted this after I thought I saw you in March. Everything was grey in the rain, but then I saw you... Or thought I did.”

You watch her take in the painting, a look of awe. “Yeah, it must have been you then,” she says, lifting her hand to her chest as if she felt you too. Her eyes trace the grey-blue edges filled with bits of New York—a MetroCard, a crushed coffee cup, a newspaper, and a faded piece of paper with a simple cartoon boat with half the sky colored blue. “It’s always been you,” she says, reaching out as if to touch it but stopping herself.

She turns toward you. “Sorry, this is... a lot.”

You nod dumbly. Lexa smiles and takes your hands in hers. Your artwork breathes with you, seemingly radiating colors off the canvases. They’re singing as they all come back to you in full.

“I spent all my time hoping to find you again... I didn’t put much thought into what I’d say,” Lexa admits with an embarrassed half-smile.

“We have time,” you give her hand a squeeze. “You being here is... We don’t need to talk at all.”

Lexa closes the small distance between you and presses her lips to yours. Every stroke of your paintbrush for seventeen years has been a wish for this moment, and if magic exists, you’re sure it’s in art because Lexa is wrapping her arms around you, holding you, and you’re kissing her back. Like neon buzzing butterflies in your stomach, all the light and color makes its home in you and you’re in love exactly as it was supposed to be.

When you part, you’re looking into those green eyes and you don’t want to look away or wake up if this is all a dream. Lexa blushes under your gaze and you let out a laugh like a breath you’ve been holding in. “Hi,” you sigh.

“Hi,” she says quietly in return, her eyes shimmering like those leaves in the wind. “Would you like to get dinner with me?”

“Now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

“I’d like that. I just, uh,” you keep Lexa’s hand in yours, pulling her with you to grab your phone and keys from the back office, unwilling to let her go now that she’s here. You laugh when you see Raven texted you about a dozen messages, concluding with, you’re welcome. have fun. i’m going to meet with octavia and lincoln to help those poor souls around the city. you owe me several rounds. xox.

You walk out of the building hand-in-hand, and the city’s fast pace and noise welcomes you back to reality. It doesn’t feel jarring with Lexa still beside you, and you sigh contentedly. The city doesn’t feel lonely, seeing it the way you do now.

“I painted a sunset for you... well, several, actually,” you tell her as you walk down the street toward one of the restaurants Lexa likes nearby.

“Any paintings of your hair and eyes?” she asks, smiling at you and almost walking herself into the streetlight pole because she can’t take her eyes off you.

You laugh and kiss her cheek as you wait for the crosswalk sign. “I’m not a fan of self-portraits,” you say, “but you don’t need a painting of me now; you have me right here.”

“You’re right,” Lexa says, and that same look of awe washes over her again because she touches your hair, tucks it behind your ear, and leans down to kiss the corner of your lips. “I’ve missed you... That’s what it feels like.”

Like coming home, you think.

“I’ve missed you too.”

So you ignore the walk sign and kiss her again, under the golden glow of the streetlight to start making up for all that that time spent apart.

fin.

#clexa fic #clexa #clexa au #ccf fic #ccf drabble #fic: blue plus yellow #fic: bpy #closetcasefabray #ccf #clexafic #soulmates au

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richsretroreviews · 6 years

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Spyro the Dragon Review.

Release date: 9th September 1998 NA, October 1998 EU.

Developer: Insomniac Games.

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment, Universal Interactive Studios.

Ok, I have been putting off doing this for way too long…

Back in 1999 for my 7th birthday I got my first Playstation as an early birthday present. I remember being incredibly impatient for one reason or another until my parents went “Fine, here, this’ll shut you up and keep you occupied.” And it did. I had already gotten a SNES from my uncle when I was 6 which blew my infant mind, but getting the Playstation had solidified video games being a prominent part of my life.

One game in particular that was special to me was Spyro 2 Gateway to Glimmer (or Ripto’s Rage in the US). I was very possessive of that game as a kid… Then I got Spyro 3.

But I never played the first one…

I remember seeing it in a Playstation magazine after I had got Spyro 2 and for some reason it astounded me that there was another one that came before it. I mean, I was a kid. Anything new would bewilder and fascinate me. I remember it clearly that it was a screenshot of the beginning of the Toasty level and Terrace Village. Also there was a Tekken 3 article in that magazine too of that little dinosaur, Gon.

Anyway, fast forward to about 2012. I had just gotten a PS1 emulator working on my laptop and gotten a PS2 for my dad. I still kept a hold of my PS1 memory card from when I was a kid that still had Digimon World 2003 and a couple other saves on it. And I still got that blue card today. That’s when I decided to get back all the games I had lost as a child to play on the PS2, starting with Spyro 2. BUT, the lady I bought it from on ebay mis-advertised the game and I ended up getting the first Spyro. It wasn’t what I wanted at all, but I had never gotten to play it all these 13 years since I first got my Playstation. So I wasn’t one to complain. I messaged the seller, told her it was the wrong one “Oh, haha, ok send it back and I’ll get you a refund” but it was a Friday afternoon. So before I went to send it back the following Monday I blasted through that game on my PS1 emulator on my laptop and made the most of it. I know I could’ve used the PS2 but whatever.

And I’m so happy I mistakenly got the first one.

It was exactly like being a kid again to when I first played Spyro 2. The soundtrack by Stewart Copeland immediately sticking and playing songs on loop in my head, the atmosphere it laid out, controlling Spyro for the first time in a long while and the first time ever in his first title, setting everything on fire, charging everywhere (because you don’t just walk everywhere in a Spyro game, you have to charge), but also there was a wealth of new things to the game that was very different to what I was accustomed to in Spyro 2.

You go through the game freeing crystalized dragons, collecting all the gems, catching all the eggs, doing the time trials for more gems, beating all the bosses and beating Gnasty Gnorc. By the end of it you can get 120% completion.

With Spyro’s controls, you charge, you glide, you breath fire, you charge faster, you fly forever until you hit a giant lighthouse, and you plummet to your death at the push of a button.

I was so used to pressing X to glide then triangle to do a little hover for an extra boost of height in Spyro 2 and 3, but that was never a thing in this. You press triangle after a glide and you plop down on the ground. So many times when I first played it did I mess that up, especially in Alpine Ridge. I go to glide across a giant chasm, feel I’m not quite going to make it so I instinctively press triangle for a last bit of extra height and—nope, let’s just turn gliding off.

You glide along, you soar! Whee! It’s fun! Triangle and turn it off. Foomp. Shit…

But honestly it didn’t take that long after a while to learn that triangle=bad when gliding in this. Do it all you wish in 2 and 3 but this, noooooo.

Either way, gliding was just as fun as the other 2 games. I feel like it was refined in 2 and 3 more, obviously, but it was definitely satisfying to do. Which a lot of what you can do as Spyro feels like, it’s satisfying. It’s a joy to run and fly and play around and jump about as Spyro. For the most part it has great controls to play as Spyro and I never had any problems controlling the lovable purple dragon.

Although, if you were to charge down a line of 6 enemies in a row, you see them all lined up and think “Yessss, I know exactly what I’m going to do!” You go to knock them all down but sometimes it doesn’t entirely work because it feels like after you hit one and go to hit the second behind him it feels like you roll off of the enemies and have to almost fight to keep Spyro in a straight line. So you can’t satisfyingly knock down the whole row of enemies like you want to. Otherwise you miss one and it kinda takes the fun out of what you wanted to do.

But yeah, beyond those two complaints Spyro controls so well it feels too good to play around as him, and it’s important that you enjoy playing as the character you’re stuck with for the next 6-8 hours, otherwise what’s the point?

Also, with being able to roll side to side. I don’t understand why they took that out in 2 and 3. That came in so useful against bosses in this game they could’ve easily used that mechanic again in the later games, but they didn’t. I liked it and I thought what the others would have been like if they implemented that move. Oh well…

The soundtrack I’m not sure I could say anything more to it that hasn’t already been said the past 20 years for it (shit, it’s been 20 years already…). It’s good! It’s wonderful! It’s so joyful, bouncy and uplifting and so fitting for the universe of Spyro that it feels almost like no other could’ve done it better than Stewart Copeland. It’s like outside of the Police that’s what he was meant to do. He put so much energy and attitude and enthusiasm and creativity into each track to accentuate the atmosphere and tone of each level he’s done more than a marvellous job of it. And his soundtracks only got better later on for 2 and 3.

But what sold me and captured me was Lofty Castle and Haunted Towers tracks. That’s when I had to stop myself playing to take in what I was seeing and listening to and thought to myself “I am in love with this game.” And I didn’t want the level to end. I hadn’t felt that way about a game in such a long time I felt robbed of not having more frequently felt that feeling.

And for its levels, the Artisan homeworld and its levels available there are perfect opening levels. Easy enough difficulty, access to how each enemy works and a safe enough environment for you to figure out how to deal with them without being too pampering. But the look and design of the Artisan homeworld and its levels are very good. Bright, colourful (throughout the whole game really), inviting and laid out all for you to run about and play in and explore. Which is what the whole game is designed for you to do. To play.

The Beast Maker’s homeworld and its levels I think is the only place I didn’t like. They all seemed a bit murky and muddy and almost grimy. It still had charm and fun to be in, definitely, but with its colour schemes I felt I just wanted to get through them and move onto the next world and hope for something brighter. In fact, while I’m at it, most levels and its designs and even its enemies and bosses do have this “first time doing this” feel to them which can be pardoned given its execution. They got better though.

And that’s when I got to the Dream Weavers homeworld and its levels. Like I already said, once I got to Lofty Castle and Haunted Towers I fell in love with this game and its design. It gave me the warm fuzzy happy feeling I got as a kid and I loved it. Hell, playing the levels again now and even just listening to the tracks makes me feel giddy! Once a game can do that to me in some way or another it has me captivated, I’m helpless to it. That’s what made me a fan of this game.

Now the boss fights are the most interesting I’ve come across in a platformer.

All the ones I had been acquainted with were Spyro 2 and 3 (ok, I got to stop referencing those I feel), Crash Bandicoot, Mario Sunshine, and numerous others I can’t really think to name off the top of my head. But still, no other game I’ve played had done boss fights like Spyro.

The first is Toasty, who is just a joke and I definitely don’t mean that in a bad way. He’s set out as this scary scarecrow with a fleet of wolves, or dogs. I seem them as wolves. You flame, roll and flame again to defeat the wolves and then you get Toasty all on his own. You flame him and then… it’s a sheep on stilts. You don’t expect that. You’ve gone in all raring and prepared for a tenacious boss fight but then you get this for your first boss and it’s just “Oh… Alright.” I didn’t expect it going in. I went in on this game blind knowing almost nothing about it. But it’s well executed and so funny to come across and for kids I’m sure that would get many a heavy laugh.

Doctor Shemp felt like the first actual boss with a proper video game-y rhythm to him that you had to learn to defeat him. You jump and flame his behind. Easy stuff.

Blowhard was cool but his design didn’t really stand out, same with the rest of them really, Metalhead and Jacques. They were serviceable and the battles themselves are perfectly fine, especially how their levels are laid out as full levels and then the boss battle at the end, but how they look they don’t really stand out.

Metalhead’s battle was cool though. I liked that one.

And then Gnasty Gnorc.

He was honestly pretty challenging at first, what with chasing down the egg thieves to get the keys first. Which! The egg thieves were honestly not that hard to get throughout the game… At all… They were so easy. I can understand struggling as a kid getting them, but these days they’re just not that difficult as you remember them to be. Spyro 3 however, the egg thieves on that, THOSE guys are hard. That’s how people remember the egg thieves to be in Spyro 1 I feel.

Anyway, you beat Gnasty Gnorc charging through the level over some fairly tricky moving platforms flaming him along the way and then he’s toast. Poof.

After you get 100% you get to raid Gnasty’s Loot and collecting those last little bits of gems and that giant room of purple gems with Gnasty’s mug looking down on you is so rewarding for everything you’ve been through.

On my first playthrough it took me 6 hours to complete. I wanted to see if I could beat that and in my second playthrough on that same weekend I beat it in 5 and a half hours. Recently I managed to complete it all 120% in 5 hours.

It’s not too hard a game when you know what you’re doing but for those going in blind and for a child it’ll definitely give reasonable enough challenge, which is good.

Some other things I liked about it, it basically had no loading screens. I mean it technically does when Spyro is flying from homeworld to level, but for a game to do that before Arkham Asylum claimed to not have loading screens is impressive.

Overall, it’s a fun as hell and straight forward adventure platformer. I’d most definitely recommend playing this. It’s dirt cheap to download these days so go for it.

Also, Tree Tops isn’t that hard at all either. It’s fun as hell charging and flying everywhere once you know where you’re going and how to do it. And I know, I understand where the dread comes from and it’s fine. But come on, when you’re a kid it would be tricky but most of us are in our mid to late 20’s now. We can handle a couple slow moving egg thieves and tree top speedways.

Also also! After sending the game back to the buyer I did buy this game again from another seller later on and this one came with a demo disc too. I still don’t know why I didn’t decide to originally keep it the first time. Maybe it was money. And I did want Spyro 2 more. Oh well…

Where to purchase: Playstation Store (PS3 PSP); £7.99 (Trilogy) £3.99/$5.99 (single)

Ebay; £14.99-£49 (Even £100!! Why?) $20-$150 (20/08/18)

Amazon; £25.99-£199.99 $19.99-$246.95 (20/08/18)

#spyro the dragon #playstation #games #video games #review #rich's retro reviews

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sizzites · 6 years

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Hello everyone! My name is Sarah and I’ve recently decided to begin dipping my toes into gaming journalism. I’ve always liked writing and LOVED games, so why not combine them? I recently had the honor of attending Square Enix’s reveal event for the newest installment in the Tomb Raider series… Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I was able to attend this event due to winning the “Path of the Stars” contest. It’s one of those moments where you almost don’t believe it’s real… no one ever wins those contest, right? That’s how I felt until suddenly I had a congratulatory email and 7 days to prepare myself for a trip to LA! All in all, things all seemed to come together as the perfect opportunity to start up a blog and get working on things. So here we are! I’m going to walk you through my experience at the reveal event as my first piece.

When we arrived at the event, we were immediately blown away by the venue SE had chosen… the Mayan Theatre. From the outside, it was a beautifully crafted tribute to Mayan artwork. Stone hieroglyphs from the floor to the roof of the building immediately pulled my brain back to all the “Path of the Stars” puzzles which had landed me here in the first place. This was a wonderful little gem hidden away among the city streets of downtown LA. Entering into the building, I felt my excitement levels jump even another level higher as we entered into a dark corridor full of smoke, vines, and amber colored lighting. In front of us was a decorative podium holding up each of the different case designs for the different versions of the game. There were also a few small placards showing some details listed out as well as explaining what would be given to those of us who are able to throw down some cold hard cash for the deluxe collector’s edition of the game.

We pushed past this display and moved onto the doorway into the main theatre. Vines hung down from the ceiling and obscured our view of the next room. As we pushed past the vines, I felt like my jaw would hit the floor. The beauty of the sculpting on the outer walls was nothing in comparison to the magnificence of the decorative walls surrounding the stage. Larger than life sculptures of hieroglyphs and deities were lit ominously from below with bright amber spotlights. The bar was lit with saturated purple and blue light as the bar tenders served up some wonderful themed cocktails. Turning towards the stage, there was an enormous screen with an animated version of the box art for the upcoming game. On either side of this screen were too smaller (but still quite large) screens which ran through each contributor’s logos as well as a small clip from the trailer (which we would be the first to see in just a short while). The floor in front of the stage had a few “standing room only” tables with small candles on the. The floor in that area was awash with fog. It swirled around the feet of those who mingled down in that area. It was somewhat spooky, but totally set the mood for the Mayan/jungle themed event.

The next thing we witnessed was one of the two big reasons I was excited to be present… the previously unreleased trailer for the game. It was absolutely beautiful and the excitement in the room was palpable from all of the press and game community members surrounding us. The footage cut between Lara Croft sprinting through the forest and what appeared to be a human sacrifice. Lara becomes stuck under a rock while moving through an underwater tunnel. The tension heightened as the Mayan priest raised his knife above the sacrifice and Lara got sucked out from under the rock. Just in time, Lara stops the sacrifice and reaches her hand out to the man, painted in blue, whom she had just saved. He stared at her in fear and ran away instead. Lara looked at herself and the dagger she held in her hand before walking forward to look out over the vast Mayan landscape and into the solar eclipse. After the trailer ended, there was a round of applause from everyone in the room.

A few moments later, a man walked out on stage and gave a short presentation. He began by elaborating and emphasizing that this third game in the trilogy was going to be where Lara becomes the tomb raider she was born to be. Multiple times, he said this game would contain her defining moment… although he didn’t let us in on the secret of what that would be. From his description, and also from the game play which I’ll talk about in a bit, I could see that the character of Lara Croft is going to be much more flushed out in this game. She is much more vulnerable and flawed… she is no longer the innocent student from the 2013 reboot… no longer the survivalist from Rise of the Tomb Raider… she is now THE tomb raider and is taking actions that will has consequences that she must face. Her decisions will no longer be black and white or good versus bad. There is now a gray area which makes Lara feel much more human, but she’s still just as much of the heroine we have loved for so many years.

He ended his presentation which meant that the secretive area for playing the demo was now available for press groups to begin coming in. We weren’t able to play right away, but that only had me chomping at the bit even more by the time it became our turn. We entered into the room to see rows of mid-sized televisions and Xbox Dev Kits. I slid on the oversized headphones and grabbed the controller anxiously. I fired up the demo and held my breath as an introductory cut scene played. From there, Lara was tasked with tailing a man through a beautiful Day of the Dead celebration. The candles scattered all around the scene gave off a warm orange light in the outdoor marketplace. Lara wore a large poncho as a disguise and a skeletal mask. The people all around her felt alive. They played music and games and you were able to interact with a few of them. The colors of this game struck me right away, ranging from deep, saturated colors, dark alley ways, to the bright lights of parties.

I won’t give away much more about the actual story, but I will say I was able to do some tomb exploring as well as a tiny bit of fighting. In terms of controlling Lara, everything feels very familiar. The methods of traversing through the environment are all pretty much the same. There are some new stealth elements were felt brilliant, including the ability to hide amongst vines and bushes lining walls. It made Lara feel much more dangerous now that she is adept at using her surroundings. The game play felt classic, but still fresh. And, of course, how can I even begin to talk about the tomb? It was always the one element that I felt was somewhat missing from the previous two games. Although challenge tombs were present (and fully wonderful) in Rise of the Tomb Raider, they still weren’t enough for me. I grew up on Lara Croft’s adventures and have always been very fond of those times when Lara spent an entire game running around in old Egyptian tombs and other similar locales. In the 45 minute demo, we were able to visit one tomb area with no enemies to speak of. It allowed us time to explore and really immerse ourselves in the absolutely fabulous graphics before our eyes. It felt just like the days of Tomb Raider on PS1 (but with a massive visual upgrade) and I loved every second of it. I finished the demo and left the room feeling more excited than I ever thought I could be for September.

All in all, I can say definitively that Shadow of the Tomb Raider is going to be one of the few games I will pre-order and possibly even get one of the “upgraded” versions right away. If I can make a suggestion, it would be that you plan on playing this game. If you haven’t yet played the two previous games, I would also say you should do that before September rolls around. The story arc in this trilogy has been brilliant up to this point and Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics have given me no reason to think they will do anything less than deliver an amazing third chapter with this new game. I’ve been playing Tomb Raider for as long as I have been playing games (and happily watching my Dad play it long before I was able to figure out the controls myself), so I’m admittedly a bit of a fan girl for Lara Croft. That being said, even speaking as objectively as possible, this is going to be a monumental release and I think you’d have to be crazy to miss it!

XOXOXO Sarah

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fallenstarborn · 4 years

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Well this might take long but bear with me...

So, I finished True Beauty and I want to point out some things in an honest way. This will just be about the KDrama.

1. I don’t see a real development in JK. Yes she can wear her bare face at school but she doesn’t at work, she’s bare face with Suho but that’s all. She’s adorable don’t get me wrong but whwre is the ✨real beauty ✨ goal for her charcter. I wanted to see her accepting herself in a more mmm opened way, cause when she says she’s with Suho she’s just defending him from other people, she doesn’t want people making fun of him because of her and stand out like that wow she’s brave but...where is she? Maybe I didn’t get it correctly but I fell like her character just started to love herself and accepting herself cause two pretty boys said “You are pretty”. Maybe I wanted more for her

2. Suho...I like his character but he ended being that cold handsome guy who is actually a soft cinnamon roll when he finds the love of his life in the geek girl nobody wants. Yes he sees JK for who she is, he loves her, he has his flaws of course and damn the boy has the right to be jealous and make mistakes...and still his character got kind of stuck. He’s all soft inside and actually when he’s at the hospital and faced his Dad wow that was hard, our of all the expressions seein Suho crying was devastating, this is why congratulations Nunu you did an amazing job there. I also kind of wished his anxiety situation was more discussed along the drama cause let’s face it a lot of people (including myself) are suffering from this and just putting it in 5 minutes without tracking that his situation is part of his life...idk they could have maybe just not put that devastating scene and the scene where JK gives him all the presents/ useful items to handle the situation..but this is just me.

3. Seojun, My poor boy honestly...this is why it’s difficult to handle a love triangle always one of the characters ends with nothing, yes he debuted and he will be loved by many people but the writers did him so dirty...also trigger warning, When he goes to the stairs I felt my heart was gonna stop cause he’s i thought about Seyeon and the stairs. Also please don’t say JK owes him cause she never lead him on to think she might like him. Let’s talk about the hugs in the last two episodes: she never hugged him back of course it hurts cause we know he’s wanting it, there is a point where I even questioned their friendship cause she was so cold towards him (and also clueless but well) but let’s be honest would you be comfortable with soemone who hugs you just because they want to? In my case no, that’s why i think the writers made him dirty, cause why would you feed on the narrative that he stands a chance when we all knew he didn’t. Wouldn’t be better to show their friendship? To show that he cares for her but not just a love interest? Cause he cares for her when the video of her came out as his friend, as soemone who knew bullying was not okay but no...let’s make him suffer making him the perfect boy, a gentleman who doesn’t kiss a girl if she’s drunk, a boy who brings you flowers at work, a boy who doesn’t take advantage of a broken heart to make his way...idk Seojun deserves better not only on the love story but as a character.

4. Why all romantic k dramas have to get that “they knew each other since kids but one of them doesn’t remember” why?! I don’t get it, they can be soulmates without a shared past, they are gonna have a shared future who cares. In True Beauty idk sometimes it feels like too forced the fact that “they knew each other since kids”

5. Unnecessary suffering. When Suho goes to the US he breaks with JK, i get his reasons what I don’t get is that even tho his father is not okay he comes back like...mmm okay. Now let’s pasa to JK, she looks devasted but even tho she might haven’t forgotten Suho she continued with her life while SH was in pause, same with Seojun like he’s stuck with his feelings cause he doesn’t say he likes her so “he can be rejected and move on” which it seems it’s not true cause Seojun’s sister rejected JK’s brother but he’s still there and in the end the little girls tells him to not flirt with others. Like WTF...

6. We need to talk about this cause I’ve seen it so much...hating a character or hating the behaviour the character has doesn’t give anyone the right to hate on the actor. Like for real? Calling EW toxic, bad actor, useless, bla bla just because you want Seojun and JK being the endgame? For gods’ sake why go to his IG and comment those hurtful comments, did you watch the same kdrama? Cause it speaks about how malicious comments affect people and how those might lead to a decision that cannot be undone. What the hell is wrong with people? I saw several comments against him and threads and threads on Twitter just because people didn’t like the character, people even attacked his work as idol and singer, I get idol-actors have it difficult but we are just fans or spectators why would someone wants to hate on someone because of a character? Do you know how many male actors have this kind of character? It’s not my fav type- but a lot, believe me a lot...even female characters that are far worse but then bullying an idol it’s okay for that. Don’t do that, EW is still learning to be an actor, he’s young,he’s a 97 for gods sake and Who is good or bad is not Up to us that’s for professionals who actually know about acting if you don’t like Someone don’t watch, why would you waste your time like that?

7. The school behaviour, it couldn’t be more real honestly kids these days dont care about what happens to others the same way none of the classmates of JK cared about how she was suffering, nobody visited, nobody called her...they were more offended by her wearing make up than the fact that she was bullied and humiliated in her former school.

8. Kang Soojin I know we all hated her for what she did but Can we please take a moment to appreciate how this character actually overcame the problem: her father. She was always under the pressure of being the best, she was the best not because she wanted but because she was pushed to be the best. Do you imagine how hard that is? She did bad, of course she wanted the pretty boy cause let’s be honest she maybe didn’t like him that much but he was the trophy and she was taught to win, no matter what she had to be the winner and at a time Suho was portrayed as the prize (let’s be honest okay).

9. JK’s family: they really make me think of that’s how it is in reality, I come from a very close family so I can’t imagine my mother not realised something is wrong. The mum was really violent, she threatened JK in several ocasions like “I am going to kill you” and also she’s like a professional in beauty why she never helped her daughter? Or why she was so angry that her daughter spent money and time in make up if she actually was making a living from that (For me she had a beauty saloon right?). Also the mum was so confítenle do sharing how she likes the other two children better than JK, idk.

10. The bromance. Lastly but not less important the bromance, my god all the times Suho and Seojun spend together were so pecios their relationship went to “I hate you” to “But i miss you” And that’s something I really liked from the story. Cause they were friends so obviously they knew each other but when Seoyun died* they were busy trying to find the guilty one that they never knew the only thing that was necessary was to be together. So as always it was the lack of ✨COMMUNICATION ✨ but I am glad even tho they were in love with the same girl they found a way to share their lives together.

PS1. Please support Inyeop in his next drama! Love Gayoun she is very talented and if you like Eunwoo please check our his work as idol with ASTRO they are so amazing and adorable.

PS2. I would love to discuss these points with someone ☺️ just let’s be respectful to each other okay!

PS3. I’ve always been team Suho since the webtoon started but Seojun is a lovely boy so no, I can’t really be impartial here.

Have a good day/ night

#true beauty #cha eunwoo #moon ga young #hwang in yeop #lee suho #han seojun #im jukyung

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justanotherdumpingground · 6 years

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Chapter Reviews: March 19-23, 2019 + Thoughts on upcoming books

High School Story: Class Act Chapter 6:

Most of the trip to the aquarium is relaxing. There's no presidential election drama to worry about aside from Ajay learning that the twin's ahead in the polls. Definitely the break I needed from all that drama.

As much as I dislike Ajay, I feel bad for him that his parents are arguing to the point of getting a divorce. I just wish his story is executed properly and has a conclusion that makes sense. Same goes with Skye.

Across the Void Chapter 14:

Ah, back to Matara. Playing as my MC is fun in some ways, but these moments are few and far in between. And my happiness quickly vanished when I have to get back on the Atlas. Not to mention that having to pay diamonds to save a passenger's life is just stupid. On a morbid note, that's one less passenger to worry about.

Great, I have to play as Eos again. I still remember how petty and self-righteous he is, and I certainly am not pairing him with Lyra. She deserves someone better. At least there's no sign of Pax.

I didn't hesitate picking the option hoping that Barlow is a handsome fellow. That was actually pretty funny. With VEE and Sol on board, I hope most of the rest of the crew made it safe and sound. And since my MC's dating Sol, I hope they get to reconnect, and Sol gets to develop as a character. He has potential owing to his vast knowledge of the setting around him.

The Heist: Monaco Chapter 16:

Wow! This is a nice, sweet ending. Prove that a Choices story doesn't need romance as a main focus to be awesome. It was also nice and satisfying to take down Ansel and Carlise in order to prove who's boss. Reuniting with Sonia at Vegas was the cherry at the top. I owe her a premium scene once I can afford it.

As for the ending, I got an average one, but at least it's more satisfying to match the good endings of my recruits. I particularly enjoy those of Jones and Graves. Even the cameos from other books are fun to watch. Sure some of them are from books I'm not fond of, but at least they're done in a way that doesn't piss me off. It's fun to see Graves starring in a movie directed by Tommy Phelps. And yay for Alana! I miss her so much!

Overall, this story is great. I love the fact that I have to think in order to get favorable outcomes, allowing me to exercise my mind. The heist crew is also one of the strongest points, each of them having unique and distinct personalities, and their conversations together are fun to watch. I'm definitely replaying this with the crew members I didn't recruit in order to immerse myself again. I think this story works just as well with a second book, but with a new crew and a few recruits returning, kinda like America's Most Eligible has a new set contestants in All Stars. That would keep the story fresh and exciting while still preserve our choices on who we recruited.

Desire & Decorum Chapter 13:

I'm starting to miss Prince Hamid, whom my MC is engaged to. It doesn't help that the premium option to go with Ernest comes across as pointless, so I skipped that. Nevertheless, it always cheers me up to pick the snarky options with Duke Richards.

I picked the premium options to play as Briar and eavesdrop on the conspirators with Luke. Reaching the point where I have to pick Arthur Woods or Edmund Marlcaster got me thinking that it's. For the conspirators, I wish there's a way to play them against each other, and the pretending part to keep them unaware is a start. At least I got proof of how much of a hypocrite the duke is.

Bah, that snake Henrietta! Always looking after herself. I'm not super surprised she would get rid of MC. After all, it's a temporary "alliance" of convenience, and she practically does nothing to help with the investigation. This series's MC has suffered a lot, espececially because of Duke Richards, but I can't see her giving up because she strikes me as determined to be with who she loves no matter the situation in the end. In her case, I'd love to see people's reactions when she marries Prince Hamid. That's right, a prince.

Passport to Romance Chapters 1-2:

Eh, it's okay. I get that it's light-hearted, but there's not much to say because I don't get to see much of the love interests. At least they don't look super bad, though Elliot looks like he should lighten up. I also like that Marisa and Sumire are opposites in terms of personality, though it's a tad bit sterotypical. Still miffed that the male MC faces come from BSC. Why can't it be from VoS or AME?

I cringed at the thought of spending diamonds just to get extra views on the blog. Not to mention that I already have a bad feeling I have to pay diamonds just to add certain pictures of iconic landmarks to the vlog. Nevertheless, I'm more interested in the traveling for the vlog than the romance.

Anyway, let's see how this goes.

America's Most Eligible Chapter 10:

Ugh, Vince continues to get on my nerves for his unnecessarily rude behavior, and I'm glad Ivy's sick of him.

I'm curious of Ivy right now. I know she comes across as an underdeveloped villain back in Book 1, but I'm all down for understanding her character. Pity it costs diamonds, and after watching the scene on YouTube, I'm glad she reveals that she plans to run pageants if she won, and her desire to win no matter the cost makes more sense now. I think it's fun to see her choosing underhanded means to win and not letting her past bring her down.

As for All Stars' format, it's about time Jen and Omar are feeling the frustration with Carson's mishandling of things. I saw some screenshots, where Carson doesn't want to become like Piper, only to mess things up. If I were him, I'd take Jen and Omar's opinions into account and evaluate them. That would've allowed him to keep the show exciting for the audience and contestants. Either way, Jen and Omar should've been the showrunners instead of Carson.

The go-kart ride was a breeze for because I picked the premium option to pick the audience vote and train with Crash just because I wanted an advantage and continue roleplaying my MC as a flirt. Didn't expect things to go easily. Oh well.

Holy cow! That ending with Eden and Kiana was a curveball! I had a bad feeling they'll get eliminated soon, but having them in a go-kart accident that results in karts exploding? That was a drastic move! I just hope they'll be okay, but chances are that they won't, and I'm scared. The next chapter summary doesn't exactly relieve my worries either.

Open Heart Chapter 6:

Man, the beginning of this chapter was super tense. For a moment, I thought I might kill Shonda if I wasn't being careful. Fortunately, she survived and gave decent advice to MC. That should be useful later on.

My MC's number 19 on the list. Well, that means he has to work harder. Jackie's shock at Aurora being first and Aurora telling her to go on was priceless, though.

So, Sienna's boyfriend Wayne is a clone of some characters I've already seen. He even talks robotic that it's creepy instead of funny. There's no emotion when he talked about being a lead programmer at a software company. Seriously, Sienna should dump him and move on to Danny, just in case Wayne's company decides to go after Edenbrook Hospital.

Speaking of which, it's adorable to see Elijah feeling infatuated with Phoebe, even if Phoebe has Lucilla Nazario's model.

I'm curious about the C.T. scan from Ethan. My guess is that it's on Naveen Banerji, hence his retirement announcement. Either way, this story is getting more interesting.

Ride or Die Chapter 10:

After seeing the nitrous oxide tank, I just can't help but think of Crash Team Racing. It's a PS1 game I often played during my childhood, and its antagonist is named Nitrous Oxide. Anyway, I didn't use it because I'm saving diamonds.

The party's okay, though I'd rather not go to one in some decrepit area. Pity it costs diamonds to kiss Mona, but whatever.

I didn't pick the premium option to talk with Teppei Kaneko, but after seeing some screencaps on it online, I have conflicting opinions on him. I get that he ultimately cares for his son and encourages him to pursue a life outside of crime, but grooming Logan as his "successor" just so he'll have nothing to lose in case Logan gets in trouble is what caused Logan and Colt's rivalry in the first place. Colt needs a heart-to-heart talk with his father, especially since the MPC leadership is hereditary, and Kaneko seems adamant to encourage his son to abandon this kind of life, just like Colt's mother did.

So Logan knew the dad was investigating the MPC and was the one who called the cops because he wanted to MC to "owe" him? Well, MC never owed him anything. In fact, I never liked Logan to begin with, so am I supposed to feel angry and heartbroken that he tricked the MC? That's something he would do, honestly. I thought the rest of the MPC will get rid of her, but that didn't seem to happen. As for her oldest friend, I'm guessing it's her old friends Riya and Darius. I hope it's Darius because I like him for displaying common sense.

The Elementalists Chapter 2:

I like this book even more than I thought. The indication that some choices affect MC's karma meter looks like choices will affect the MC's personality and relationship with others. After the ability to impress Kane A.K.A. that funky fashion disaster of a villain, I'm guessing we can choose who we can trust.

Katrina Harrington is so pretty. And a cool teacher, not less. I love the way she teaches her students and look forward to know her better, preferrably directly from her.

I swear, Beckett should start behaving in front of his sister and friends. I get that he's distant to his friends besides the MC, but his rather disparaging descriptions of his friends isn't helping matters on his insecurities. I get that he doesn't want to be overshadowed by his sister and thinks she barges into his space, but that doesn't give him the license to abuse it by acting dismissive towards his "friends".

Thoughts on upcoming books:

I'm mildly excited for Nightbound, in part because it will feature gender options. Yet at the same time, I'm worried that Pixelberry will resort to the same clichés plaguing so many of its books, forced white male LI derailing the story being the biggest one. In the end, let's see how this goes.

I have mixed feelings for Wishful Thinking, especially after it's revealed that we can only play as a female. What's more important, however, is the quality of the story. If it ends up aimless like #LoveHacks, I don't want that.

I'm not excited for Sunkissed, which comes across as a cheesy romance story most likely to be female only. After all, Choices's low-effort books tend to lack gender options in order to make quick bucks. As for Platinum, I'm more excited because it's less like just romance and more like building up a music career. I fear that it will end up a fiasco like Red Carpet Diaries because of the protagonist being an up-and-coming music star. When Peyton said it will be gayer than TH:M, my guess is that its female love interests will be more prominent than the male ones. It could have gender options like TH:M, but it's also possible we won't.

Regarding the Royal Romance sequel series, I feel like a short epilogue would've been a bit better than an entire sequel series. Don't get me wrong. I love Olivia, Maxwell, the corgi, my MC, and her husband Liam, but I think it would've been better if the writers focused on treating their own characters well in Book 3 instead of focusing too much effort on Drake.

#choices stories you play #chapter reviews

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potassium · 6 years

Text

OPINION // Thanks For The Memories

Written for wellplayed.com.au

There’s a quote that I’ve seen doing the rounds on the Internet over the last few years, which I can’t recall word-for-word (and, typically, cannot find now that I need it) which goes something along the lines of: “Growing up doesn’t mean that we have to stop playing games, it just means that we now have the responsibility of paying for a house to play games in” — and who would have thought that time would come around so fast when it feels like just yesterday that I was sitting around the tiny CRT television with my brother, hiding our faces behind couch cushions while we watched our dad fight the tigers on the first level of Tomb Raider 1 on PS1 (and then listening to Dad get in trouble with Mum for letting us watch “scary” games).

My mum tells me that at two years old I would climb onto the dining table where we kept our computer (back when there was one computer per family), insert the floppy disk, and load and play my games. My earliest memory of gaming is a Simpsons game which I had on floppy disk — Bart vs. the Space Mutants. I don’t remember much of the game, just that I never really understood what to do and so never got far in it, but I really enjoyed playing it.

My dad is a big gamer, and so a lot of my childhood was spent watching him play games like Tomb Raider, Alien Trilogy, Ace Combat, Quake, etc. and then, when we were old enough, teaming up with my brother to compete against our dad in games such as Age of Empires (2, of course!), Command & Conquer, and Worms Armageddon… and then listening to Mum tell Dad off for not letting us win.

While all of this was definitely the foundation of the life that being a gamer has brought me, I think that my real addiction began the day that I first played The Sims 1.

I had seen the ad on TV many times — you know, the one where the kid comes home with a llama (was everyone else disappointed that you couldn’t actually have a llama?!), and the parents are kissing which makes a baby appear — but unfortunately for me my parents had also seen it, and deemed it inappropriate for a child to play. I begged them for weeks, months, to let me have The Sims — “I’ll buy it with my own money”, I would plead. But the answer was always no.

At this time, my dad had a friend who sold pirated copies of PlayStation games for a living. We always bought the latest games from him, and looking back through now, I realise that probably 99% of our PS1 and PS2 games were pirated.

One day in our usual delivery of pirated games, to my surprise and to my parents’ horror, there sat The Sims for PC. And I swear, as I held it up, a ray of light beamed down from the sky onto the disc while angels sang and danced, and harpsicords played. At least, that’s how I choose to remember it.

I spent all of my free time playing it (when I was allowed to, and when my dad wasn’t using the computer) and eventually for my 9th or 10th birthday my dad called from work to say that he’d be late home because he had to pick up my present, which he told me was “small and can fit in a little box”. I was sure that it was jewellery, and did not have the slightest idea in the world that I would be receiving my very own computer for my bedroom. And then my life was all downhill from there… just kidding. But it did begin my addiction to my computer which, to this day 15 years later, I still haven’t shaken (and have no plans to!).

As time went on and I got more into computers and the Internet, I eventually joined the forum for The Sims 2, where I posted regularly and became reasonably known, and made some absolutely incredible friends who I still speak to every day more than 10 years later, some of whom I have met up with in real life. Though we all lived on different continents, we grew up together.

Discovering that I could befriend people that I didn’t physically live near opened up a whole new world for me, and it is through meeting different people online and joining different communities that I have learned skills that have helped me in my work life and my personal life, such as programming languages, website development, etc., and it is because of them that I know I belong in a career in the gaming industry.

My real-life best friends, who I hang out with regularly, are people that I met on the Internet, and I know that my life would not be the same had I not received The Sims that day. Thanks For The Memories that I have because of it, and Thanks For The Memories that I will make in the future because of it.

#gaming

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oddlymysteriousphoenix · 7 years

Text

#62 12:51am May 29

Huzzah, I have achieved the next level of life for most people living in first world countries, I have graduated. Won’t lie, the experience of graduation is something I won’t keep closely to me at all. Things that have happened before and after will. Again, I’ll do what I can to recollect all the memories. Before graduation I had to wake up various times to go for testing, all I feel that I did well in, not a good sign, but it’s in the past. On that testing week, Jessica and I went out for a wall starting from the school. It was a long walk. Wonderful experience, to be with a buddy and out of the influences of stress. We walked around these collection of stores and off we went to Burger King. Since it was still morning that Friday,I think 11am, they weren’t selling the vege burger she wanted so she got something else while I ordered (she did, I was too shy) a burrito basically and a drink. We ate and spent the time well, she payed for it as I had no money, how kind of her. Not only that we went to a nearby Goodwill and we were there for a good amount of time. I can’t avoid to mention she bought me some stuff we were trying out like sweaters and suits. In the time we were there, I found old CD cases and video games for the Xbox and PS1, I miss old box art on them. There were also vinyl discs including the soundtrack to Ben-Hur and Vincente Fernandez, I took pictures of them. Eventually we ended up getting items in which she, again, bought for. She got a mini plate of a clown and some child, a blue painting with yellow eyes to it, a sweater that was bigger than her sweaters. While I got some random sweater and suit, all of it was cheap. We soon parted ways as I didn’t want my need to poop come instantly so I walked back home. My mom told me tell sweater is made out of wool and would costed around 90 dollars, I got it for free, nice. Skip some days, graduation practice occurred. I hated those two days, ah. Then graduation occurred this past Friday night, at the Germain Arena, small arena if I must judge. I sat with a very few people I knew, also I had this golden rope around me to signify my GPA, but I didn’t care. My mom put on Bobby pins to hold down the hat, I look like I was balding. Worthy mention was that my dad was there and he recorded it, but he complained the video wouldn’t focus and I’m too terrified to look into it, he never had my camera to play around with. I was glad, of course, to have him there. It was the plan to leave the next day, but Rose is coming down here tomorrow as I write, well, today, so I’m having a good feeling to me. Before I go too fast, we ate at an Italian restaurant that I enjoy, dad and I ate “underwear” my favorite Italian food. Oh, also, my mom and I went out before the day of graduation to look for a suit for me. I’ll probably post a picture of it, it’s a flawless suit. Mom tried to show me over suits to get, but it was calling to me and I required to get it in order to be glad in something I wear that’s fancy for once. My dad had to leave the past Saturday to go back up in order to work. He took my computer so when Rose comes to my house, she won’t be able to see my “ultimate power”. Eh, oh well. I’m almost at ease that I’ll be meeting up with her, just hoping her blinding by her boyfriend won’t get in the way of our enjoyment. As the day got closer, she has been texting me more and just a few hours ago I could actually tell she was happy for once unlike the other times she texts me. Not saying she texts upset, just no faces or such, you know? I’m seeing if I should say what I’ve been fighting to hold in. She’s so happy with the guy and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I’ll need to clean up my act too, especially my habits that plague me, such regrets. Good thing is that workout had worked out a bit, that’s a plus. On Sunday I managed to get to Bubba as it was his birthday, I gave him some money that was given to me by my mom. So my mom gave him money, basically. We, as in Bubba, Russian guy and some dude along with me were in his room the whole time. I’ve known tell Russian guy for many years, just never tried to keep contact to the guy and Andrew, the other guy, seemed cool. We all got along very well and we laughed at each other’s jokes and so on. There was some food, I barely ate the cheesecake and I mostly had some cheeseburgers and Dr . Pepsi. Bubba and his family must drink soda everyday as he never fails to not have any. I was there at 12 and mom picked me up at 8:10pm. His mom, dad and relatives were there too. I brought my Xbox, we were going to pay Resident Evil 7, but his computer was a mess so we played Bioshock Infinite for a bit, mainly me that I bought as no one else wanted to play as he was trying to fix the computer. It was something to do with Windows that was messing up. We eventually played spilt screen Minecraft and then to YouTube watching videos, obviously. It was wonderful, I loved it. Now Rose will be coming around, we’ll see what happens. Also, Mollyboo and I chatted awhile back to meet up in Toronto as I was talking to my dad about it, my favorite movie is set there. I have no clue where exactly in the city, but oh well. Dad is up for the idea. So is Mollyboo. The bad news so far as been Alyssa hasn’t been doing well. Her health is diminishing as she left me a voice message on snap chat about it. She’s doing awful, they’ll have to move somewhere in about a year so I dearly hope I could possibly drive up there to her to get a chance to be with her. I honestly miss her, I do. Erin, on the other hand, I don’t care, I won’t mention of her anymore. I hope Alyssa texts back with something soon, I’m afraid for her health and life in general. There would be no problem if I had to take care of her, she’s a good person at heart, an innocent heart with some unique characteristics. Oh, about that Jenna girl, she disappeared suddenly from my life. She just stopped replying a bit after I offered for Skype. As for now, I know who to care for and who I shouldn’t care much for. Deep down I’ll always care regardless. Over the summer, I’ll be practicing a lot of guitar and maybe drawing or Russian. Time passing will only make the motivation get stronger, I wouldn’t mind getting better at guitar and singing was to kill me. I do believe what you love will kill you, hopefully others will understand what I mean. Probably best way to die, or dying peacefully knowing all who you love will be safe for now. I don’t want to think too far, it’s not the time. Almost forgot, dad shaved my beard so I look whiter and younger. Hah. Not like it’ll make a difference with people assuming my background. I think I’ll have to pass by to my school soon, I want to keep contact with a bit more teachers. I haven’t done that with Estock yet. I was going to invite Mr.Sharp to the graduation, but during the practice they told us, including the audience, to not even cheer to hear the names properly as they say and honor the students rightfully. People cheered anyway. Plus, we were off to eat right after that so yeah. I’ll see what I can do if I can go tomorrow, maybe. If they’ll let me, who knows? As for now, I’ll do what I can. Stress has been low for now, I’ve made some progress with what I want to do and that’s good. Unfortunately, I’ll be off to college near here, plan is to leave Florida in about less than 3 years. I want to go. I need new surroundings and places. A new identity. My true identity. But for now, I need true sweet dreaming. Good night.

1:42am

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beowulfs-booty-call · 7 years

Note

Any interest in new games for the PS2? And is it the kind that can play PS1 too? Also I find it funny we both are named Chris, though I'm not sure why I'm named that. We have similar goals of sorts too. As for questions... 1. Kind of speculative, what do you think Lilith would define as love? Asking because that one thing you mentioned bugs me a smidgen. 2. Favrorite crystal? 3. What do you think of the latest SU episodes? 4. How's today been?

Hm… I’m hoping to do a little digging, I get some of my games from amazon since it’s easier to work with now…! It’s why I got Raidou Kuzunoha and Persona 4! But… Trying to buy Crash Twinsanity is hell lmao, but Sonic heroes makes it worth it.

I do have the one that plays Ps1, and I play crash bash multiple times because it’s amazing for a party game!!! Unfortunately, my dorm tv is too new though, so it doesn’t pick up on the game when I play ps1 games…

Ah…! Really!? I had no idea, actually…! Well, nice to meet you then, Chris! To be honest, I’ve been thinking of changing my name to Beowulf for a while, but, huh… I guess I’m gonna have to stick with Chris for now, since now that I look back on it? There’s more to a name than just uniqueness or meaning in a book. Stories don’t tell much on a person if they can’t hold a candle to them, I suppose!

—

Lilith, huh… Hm… Forgive me, but I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean in the context of things, RP universally, or, the actual Lilith?

In terms of actual Lilith, love is really love in the way she sees it. It’s just, of course, she was the first wife of Adam, and was casted out of Eden for refusing his sexual advances, later being demonized as the demon of the night who gave birth to Incubi and Succubi as well as other demons of the fold with Samael (it’s sometimes Satan depending on the culture.)

Though, in her teachings, Love is not just lust or yearning for someone, it’s being equals in the sense of both people in a relationship sharing power between one another. In that way, love is a relationship that must be earned, you must have trust, you must not be seeking someone for simply sex alone (although, if that’s what your aiming for, Lilith really has nothing… Against that? She knows how the flesh and the heart works, so, she’s very understanding.) and you are, basically, sharing someone with yourself, you are sharing yourself with someone you feel deserves to see the side of you no one else has before. In a way, Lilith is seen as a dark mother because of this, because she’s seen as the Badass Aunt™ that kicks ass and isn’t afraid of her sexuality.

She’s not afraid of her body, or her heart, but she treats both with the utmost respect, and doesn’t tolerate anyone who tries to go beyond consent or choice. That said, she is also, in my experience, very frightening when angered, and a cunning lady who knows how to get what she wants. You don’t mess with her at all, and it shows in the way that she never relents in the ideal that no woman or man should ever conform to someone else’s standards when it comes to love. For me, she lives in this very thick swamp like jungle, wearing nothing but jewelry on her neck and nearly naked save for a huge python around her neck and wraps around her body. She has long nails, and eyes that pierce into you when she speaks, and her voice is as tough as nails. Really, she’s a very big person on the aspect of true love, but because of the actions taken before, most of it is reflected in others who feel some way about her. It’s just… Lilith herself, from what I’ve experienced, is very very… Held together, and extremely confident in her abilities, and she wishes to share that with others should they accept her.

RP Lilith is seen a bit more like how others portray her. The Districts are all surrounded by fallen gods and other deities who are seen as their counterparts, and Lilith is no exception. A concept plot is that, as she gave birth to succubi and incubi, she wants to take Demi back as her foster child and use him to her own gain. Instead, she clashes with Parvati because her other form, Kali, was also seen as a counterpart to Lilith. The two are at odds together, but also maintain a professional relationship for Demi’s sake, either way. She’s one of the patron deities of Eros, though, she is the first person to teach Demi what love is “like” in terms of how it’s meant to be.

(”Love is… This exotic thing, it holds you to it’s chest, never letting you breathe for a minute until… You and someone you care about, are face to face, quiet and still, but enjoying the time you have…”)

—

Boulder Opal, actually! It’s quickly become my favorite gem with it’s colors and look…! Especially considering how affordable they are…! It’s almost… Amazing, just really looking at them, feeling their glassy sheen…! I even wear a blue / violet one as my choker!

—

((SU SPOILER ALERT))

Hm… Truth be told, I love Mr. Maheshwaren’s voice as a Dad™ as well as how we’re seeing some sort of development as a whole; However, I do dislike how Peridot and Lapis are always somewhere not even where they can help out, and considering how close Lapis and Steven are, I’m upset she had no part in trying to get him away from Aquamarine and Topaz. It felt a bit off, the way Steven was simply ready to accept himself as “Rose Quartz” to protect everyone when nearly everyone was trying to tell him he wasn’t his mom.

Lapis and Peridot feel like they have no plot semblance to them anymore, and, it kinda hurts in the sense that Peridot went from cold merciless possibly killer gem for YD, and now she’s comic relief in that sense. Lapis is… The real upset sis of the gems and it sort of… Teeters me off balance along with Room For Ruby where she was hellbent on proving Navy wasn’t adjusted to earth. It was cool, but, when shiitake mushrooms go down, the two are nowhere to be seen, but are some of Steven’s closest friends! Summertime beach buddies! The nerve!

That said, I am disappointed in Lars overall in the episodes, I mean, I get it that the point was for him to be himself and let the gang let him be, but as Steven and Sadie point out despite that, Lars isn’t giving anyone a chance to give him a chance. It’s slightly annoying how far Steven goes to help him, and he simply won’t give anything back besides be angry at Steven a crud ton of times. But what sort of brings it to a kicker is when Lars gets all cowardly from Topaz and hides from them while Sadie is trapped in their grip. Normally, I’d get the idea that Lars is too scared to react, but, considering that Steven and Connie were trying to get everyone to the door, I would imagine Lars would have ran there rather than the steps leading to God knows where. That said, it seems to be supposedly be a plot element because he’ll show up later since he’s still in the ship. Most likely development! But, of course, meh to Lars, as, personally, I really dislike his character as a whole, but, hey, I respect him even then. You can’t have a dynamic like Lars and Sadie without someone laying you down one last time, right?

—

Oh, gosh, today’s been a day…

I found out I gained about a few pounds in muscle, which, is pretty great for my workout regime, but also, I ended up having some real bad burns from my regular old deodorant and had to keep putting on fresh aloe vera to ease them. It was just… Ick… But most of it has cleared up now!

I got my last week of classes coming up before finals, so, I’m excited! But also tired… But also grateful for finishing up some really great work today!

I also ended up really missing the smell of incense which I burned all weekend at home when I was visiting, but at the dorm… It’s banned. But, no worries, I chatted a little with Parvati, did some reading and breathing exercises, and really took some time to appreciate myself further. It’s been a helluva week, but, I know I can handle what ever’s coming my way, person or test!

#Wulf answers #mirron91 #thanks for asking me!!

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jackietracks · 8 years

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so I was actually tagged for like the first time ever I think?? thank you @kerokerobitch you’ve made my day.

1: Are you named after someone?

Well not my first name... My middle name, Diane, was my grandmothers name on my mums side. She died before I was born so I never got to meet her but she sounds like she was a wonderful person.

2: When was the last time you cried?

This probably sounds stupid but I kind of cry all the fucking time planning out stories. I like to plan out lots of emotional scenes and just kind of end up crying over them a whole bunch. I know I’ve cried this week bc of that. Hell I might have even done it last night.

3: Do you like your handwriting?

It can be pretty sloppy but if I take my time and actually put in like the smallest amount of effort its really clean and I swear it practically feels like a font and I like it a whole lot when its like that.

4: What is your favorite lunch meat?

Dude I ain’t gonna like to you here. None. It’s really never worth asking me about favourite foods because the answer will pretty much just be none.

5: Do you have kids?

No. I’m quite sure I’ll never want kids either which really pisses my mum off.

6: If you were another person, would you be friends with you?

I’m not sure? That’s a really weird question. I mean I’m apparently quite easy to get along with? So I guess I’d at least be able to tolerate me?

7: Do you use sarcasm?

I can’t have a conversation with a friend without being at least a little sarcastic. I’m glad my friends give as good as they get so we can just go back and forth being horrible, sarcastic assholes to eachother for eternity.

8: Do you still have your tonsils?

Yeah. The most work I’ve had done on my mouth has been a few fillings over the years. Never had need to have my tonsils out.

9: Would you bungee jump?

lol fuck no.

10: What is your favorite kind of cereal?

Ok, this is a food one that I can actually answer. I don’t really eat cereal any more but fucking Kellogg's crunchy nut clusters clusters with chocolate are a gift from god himself.

11: Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?

No. I just kick those bastards across the room and forget about ‘em. I toss those fuckers off

12: Do you think you’re a strong person?

My physical strength is... weird. Like I feel like I can lift a decent amount of weight without too much issue yet I can’t open a bottle of lucozade? Actually... it really is always lucozade huh? Other drinks are like a 50/50 chance but lucozade, my absolute fucking addiction, I can never ever open by myself unless I use my fucking teeth... weird.

Mentally and emotionally I don’t really know, I don’t recall a lot of my previous thoughts and feelings very well. I can sort of recall highly positive feelings sometimes but anything else is like a swirling void of “these things sure happened huh?”. If I were currently going through a severely distressing situation I’d probably be able to tell you if I felt like I was coping well but right now there’s no distress and I’m in a state of ‘pretty chill’ so sorry fam, idk.

13: What is your favourite ice cream? Ever, ever?

Ok ok, this is another food one I can answer easy. Ben and Jerry’s phish food. I fucking love it. Every time I go to the cinema, they have this fucking stand where the sell fucking Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, I always have that with either chocolate fudge brownie or cookie dough.

14: What is the first thing you notice about people?

I really couldn’t tell you. That’s another thing I can never recall is what I notice first about people. I’ll try and take note of what it is I notice next time I meet someone new.

15: What is the least favorite physical thing you like about yourself?

I’m still sort of getting over the whole “I’m fat and ugly” thing I was going through for years but the only thing I can really think of is that my hair is really fucking flat? Like, there is no volume to it at all? It really bugs me then when people are like “Oh your hair looks so nice straightened!” because I feel like that’s when its at its worst. I love it when the hairdresser curls it though so I guess its and easy fix?

16: What color pants and shoes are you wearing now?

No shoes and these cute ass Bambi pj bottoms

17: What are you listening to right now?

Arctic Monkeys - Arabella honestly I fucking love it so much!

18: If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

Uhhh? Well purple is my favourite colour so I guess I’d want to be some kind of blueish purple?

19: Favorite smell?

Shit man I am a sucker for lavender. Like every time I go to Lush I have to get something lavender. I remember the first time I ordered from their website literally everything I ordered was lavender scented and my dad went to get the package for me and when he got back the smell of lavender was fucking painfully strong. it was fucking absurd.

20: Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?

I don’t use the phone much, it makes me really uncomfy for whatever reason, but it was probably my grandfather... Yeah, I remember now, he asked me if I had fun when I went to London for Shelter.

21: Favorite sport to watch?

I’m not to keen on sports but roller derby fucking owns.

22: Hair color?

I’m naturally blonde, but like a darkish, dirty blonde, but I got my hair dip dyed purple again on Wednesday and it looks so fucking good!

23: Eye color?

They’re like a kinda hazel green.

24: Do you wear contacts?

No.

25: Favorite food to eat?

I really don’t do a whole lot of eating atm and I don’t like a whole lot of foods but I will chow down on McDonald’s fries for the rest of my life if you let me.

26: Scary movies or comedy?

I don’t really know... I love horror but most scary movies seem to use cheap tactics or just generally be really dumb but I can’t say I’m fond of like pure comedy movies, if its like a comedic action movie then hell yeah. How about just fuck both of those and give me an action movie instead? Or some animated kids movie? That’d be better.

27: Last movie you watched?

I think it was Captain America: Civil War. Spider-man in that movie is a fucking blessing. And Ant-man.

28: What color of shirt are you wearing?

White fucking Bambi pj top to match the bottoms.

29: Summer or winter?

I’d say summer. Its warm and its like the designated relaxation season.

30: Hugs or kisses?

Yes.

31: What book are you currently reading?

I’m like a quarter of the way through Outcast, book 3 in the Power Of Three arc of Warriors. I actually haven’t picked it up in a while. I might get on that later.

32: Who do you miss right now?

Nobody.

33: What is on your mouse pad?

I’m using a fucking laptop.

34: What is the last TV program you watched?

I think it was 8/10 Cats Does Countdown which is fucking excellent by the way.

35: What is the best sound?

You ever turned on a PS1?

36: Rolling stones or The Beatles

No?

37: What is the furthest you have ever traveled?

Spain I do believe.

38: Do you have a special talent?

I say I can draw but I really can’t atm...

I feel like I don’t talk to anyone enough on here for me to tag them without feeling weird about it so I’ll just tag @aclockworkqueer and @theplumps because I know you both in person so it feels less weird to me so if either of you wanna do this then cool but if you don’t that’s cool too.

#really tho thank you nova seeing this notification made me so happy like you have no idea

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somethingineedtodo-blog · 8 years

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About me?

My name is *E* I’m a 20 year old male and this is my very first time here on Tumblr, this is also my first time online in almost a year*

I would currently describe myself as a very quiet, reserved, intellectual yet very insecure guy.

My interests are music (drums and piano), languages, photography, singing, psicologhy/human behaviour and helping as much as I can to other people.

Well, I’ll keep it super brief, but this is an overall resume of my life starting at 8 years.

8-10 Years.

- First of all let me start saying that I do not live in the prettiest place of the world, there are lot of gangs and is a common occurrence to get mugged, beat up, threatened or even killed. -

Due to the nature of the place i was brought into the world and other things, my parents were always very dire with me for me to do excellent in school from the very beggining.

My father comes from a bad place-family, he ran away from his home at age 10, didn’t even finished elementary school but yet he managed to learn a decent job (he is a mechanic), he is a class A- worker, an old fashioned man.

I have nothing but the outmost respect for him for what he has accomplished with the very few tools that he has... but that’s it.

My mother on the other hand comes from a decent family, yet she didn’t finished elementary too, she has had a lot of “jobs” during her life, nothing serious.

Despite their excessive pressure i managed to always be on top of every class, i was super participative in all the school activities, yet didn’t had any friends, sometimes i felt like a robot, but a very intelligent and cool robot.

Even at that short age i remember constantly spacing out and getting lost in my head for a lot of timel, having a lot of thoughts and questions about life, existence and things that i believe right now are were not a common thing at that age. The things that i remember asking myself the most at that age are: “Is being good at school really going to guarantee me a succesful life?” ”what does“succesfull” mean? does it mean having a good house, car, material possesions or does it mean being happy with myself while at the same thime contributing something positive to those around me? “are succesful and happy two different things?” “what if im not happy?” “how do i know if im really happy?” I remember in vivid detail watching other kids playing football and then out of nowhere they started to fight while i was just... away, away in a corner just observing.

I had two things “clear” in my mind.

I had to be good at school and nothing else, i couldn’t afford to lose focus on some other thing because i would get in trouble with my parents.

The place were i was living wasn’t a place for someone like me, I didn’t wanted to do “bad” stuff nor having to do with those things in the slightest way (As a result of this i pretty much stoped talking with everyone in the area and that got me into a lot of troubles even back then, constant threats, stealing my money, bullying, etc etc, but i didn’t even minded it, it felt somehow natural and i developed this state of insensibility and numbness toward those psicological abuses and the people (15-20yr old guys) that were doing it)

And then it was my house... Things were not okay at my house. My dad despite being an awesome worker and always providing what he could to the house... he was an alcoholic and abused my mother physically and verbally all the time in front of me, my mother on the other hand was just “numb” and didn’t even cared, she only cared about serving him and doing good in her “job”. One of the “fondest” memories that i have of my “family” was in one christmas... They were arguing... badly. My father was drunk an started yelling while my mother was just preparing the dinner... and i was just watching them... not knowing what to do... nor understanding what was exactly happening because from my perspective they had nothing to be figthing for... Thats when i turned on the Tv and the first thing i saw was the “Tom And Jerry” show... i looked up again to my parents and i don’t know why but i found such a resemblance in how how “Tom and Jerry” and my parents were acting...

I just thought to myself... “Tom and Jerry hate each other right? So that means my parents must hate each other?” And i toldto my parents with a cold dead face but with tears in my eyes... “Why are you even married...? Went to my room... and cried my way to sleep... at age 9. The days passed and nothing changed drastically...

My parents noticed that i didn’t go out and that i was turning into a (in their words) “very weird and lonely kid” so they decided to buy me a PS1 for me to do something else besides just studying and “mumbling, humming, and hitting things with my hands making senseless noise”. I played for quite a bit and loved it... not because i liked video games in particular but because it was a chance for me to develop my hand-eye cordination and to learn another language (Yes, english is not my primary language, in fact i learned everything i know through video games and music, i have never had a formal -english ed in my city is a joke- or decent class, but i plan to enter one in this year”) I played with that thing hoping to be able to understand everything that was on the screen, understand the music, and be able to hit things as fas and precise as i could (rithym and figthing games). It served me as an escape from the arguments and the screaming of my parents too, another thing that i remember quite vivid is my father and his cop friends being drunk and shooting some guns (that are supposedly for cop use only)... he was too drunk that he ordered me to shoot the gun, i couldn’t say no despite knowing that was such a dumb and clearly dangerous thing to do. I did, but i was so upset that i called another cops, he found out and well... throwed me a cup at my head and ever since... he and I... well our relationship since that day is complicated to almost inexistent (I’ll elaborate more on that later...). 10-15 Years. Despite both of my parents losing their jobs and us as a “family” starting a “family business” -food truck at a flea market- and me having to work almost everyday i managed not only to be the best of my school but also securing a place in the middle school of my choice due to my grades... but most importantly me asking directly to school principal. I felt very happy with this achievement in my life... seemed like i was finally going to escape from various things such as bullies, drugs and such and i WAS FINALLY GOING TO BE ABLE TO TALK WITH SOMEBODY ELSE, to have “friends”, to go out and play and not feel like a total weirdo because of the constant words of my father. Talking about him... he and i drifted away completely... as i grew older and started to voice my opinions a lot more he was more and more convinced and expresed that i was (and I quote) “Not like him,and not his son at all”. What kind of opinions am i talking about? “It’s okay for people to be homosexual, a certain preference (that does not even affect us directly) should not affect how we see or think about those who surround us, being homosexual does not imply that you are a bad or a “distasteful” person... i think that kind of judgments are far beyond race, color, sexual preferences, likes, dislikes, etc. It’s your actions and the way you affect society what determines if you are a “bad” person. This lead my dad to think that i was starting to (in his words...) “transform” into an individual with sexual preferences towards guys, so he immediatly started to talk to me about sex... in such an uninformative and rather rude way... objectyifing women almost all the time and using words like “fuck” or “cunt”. (On a side note, my father is not religious at all, so his (quiet obvious if i must say so...) hate for homosexual people has nothing to do with religion at all... he really hates gay people, he calls them by such horrible and disrespectful names sometimes...wich bring us to the other opinion... “I dont really see what’s the point on being excessively rude with words, I don’t see what’s the point on cursing so much, wouldn’t be better if we could talk and express our thoughts without the use of such pointless words? wouldn’t we sound better?” This led my father to believe that i was giving him orders. And as a result it deteriored our relationship even more. And then... the final straw. I started to voice my opinions on how he treated my mother and women overall. I was starting to defending her if you like. He obviously didn’t liked that and this lead us to so many arguments and fights where the phrases “What the fuck do you know about life” “What the fuck do you know about women” “You don’t know anything you don’t even have any friends, you don’t even have anyone to talk to” were pretty common. Despite all this i loved him and i was hoping he someday would start to change, not even for me or for my mother... but for himself. His words obviously hurted me so bad everyday, i cried... a lot. And crying for him was a weakness and he didn’t hesitated to say it whenever he saw me crying over one of our figths. Our allegattions got to a point were i didn’t even tried to say a word... i just was listening to his words and i didn’t even cared... thus i stoped talking with him. There’s where my mother started to genuinly worry about me, because i always looked so tired and beatdown, she started to talk to me a lot more and whenever i returned from school she always asked me “how my day was”... i don’t know if it was too late or what... but it felt werid, like it was forced or something, so i just said the strictly neccesary. I started middle school and things were different for a change... The whole zone was different, there were guards, there was order and “peace”, also the guys and girls over there seemed different... like they had interests and did some other “cool and interesting things” like sports, playing an instrument or things like that. I loved that. And for once in my life i felt quite at peace, but i couldn’t talk with anyone. I didn’t knew how to do it, i felt anxious all the time and i had nothing in my head... “just do good in school” “you are returning to your home regardless...”. Fortunaly for me there was just one guy and one girl that were somehow able to go trough the mix of my insecurity and me not talking at all... i don’t know what they saw on me or what lead them to talk to me... one ended up being my 1st girlfriend (trough 12-14) (i don’t talk with her anymore due to how things happened...) and the guy as of today remains my best friend. That girl was very special for me... She was my introduction to so many new things. Trust, actively talking with somebody, a lot of new stuff (music, sports, knowledge etc) that i was totally ignorant of, sex and of course “love”. I GOT TO OPEN A VERY BIG PARENTHESES HERE. (Yes, i know that those things might seem totally rushed for a 12 year old child, and yes, i do agree, in fact if i could i would do things totally different, but i think i did things like i did because i didn’t had a good guidance, i didn’t had good advice per say, i didn’t even knew how to act or what to say... i just kinda went with the moment with the best of my judgment and the logic that i had, do i regret it? maybe some things, but others taught me valuable lessons at such a young age. Do i think it is right for a 12 year old to get introduced in such things as sex, “LOVE” (*big laugh*) or such complex topics as those? Absolutely not, i wouldn’t want my kids to experience those things. Now i know that i might sound super ridiculous talking this way about my 12 year old self, maybe i didn’t word things like i do now back then, but the feeling remains the same. So yeah.... back on. This girl and i developed a quite unusual relationship, mainly because we understood each other so well (his dad died because of alcohol poisoning and her mom was the only family she had) so as soon as i heard her story i could relate, i had this feeling that i should protect her, i didn’t quite knew why, i just felt it, and so we became “very close friends”. The time moved on and she helped me to get out of my shell, to start talking with more friends, we spent so much time together alone doing homework or listening to music just laying in the floor in her house, because her mother was working and my parents thought that i was with my other friend (wich they got to know, but as of this date they don’t know a thing about this girl) The things in my house were just falling apart, to the point were i made up excuses like “i have to do extra homework” in order to be as little as possible in my house and more around my friends and her. Despite all this i still maintaned excellent grades and i was still very participative in extra curricular things in my school such as poetry, music and such, but it was around 12-13 were something started to feel weird, i started to gradually lose interest in school and started doing it “just because i would get into serious trouble with my parents if i didn’t deliver them good grades” and that feeling was growing stronger and stronger, to the point that i was in a bad mood all the time, i once again stoped talking with everyone except this girl. This thing got into my head so bad that i yelled at my biology teacher (wich was my favorite assignment) one day without any apparent reason and started crying desperatly in his arms as he was trying to comprehend why i was acting like that all of the sudden... he asked me “Are things in your house ok?” And i just didn’t respond. That day something snapped in my mind. I’m not quite sure what, but ever since that day all i can think about is how the things that surround us, everything and everyone, all the words, all the actions, all that we see and hear, from music to tv, everything that we are exposed to... how those things have such a big repercussion in how we act and feel and mostly who we end up being in life. Time passed and to sum things up... i got my heart broken. The girl ended up being with somebody else (i don’t like the word “cheating”) And end of story. This is where i found out that i could be very extremist with people that let me down, to the point were i just... pretend that they are dead and that’s it, nothing more, nothing less, i end up denying any kind of relation-story and existence of people that have let me down, in fact, this is the first time that i talked about her “in depth”, with other times just being a “yes i had a gf before...” “Yes, i’m not a virgin” “Yes we were such good friends” and the “tragic story about how all ended”, to my friend and inevitably to my next Gf. It does take a lot to let me down though, i don’t tend to hate on anyone, i like to respect everyone as much as i can, all their ideals, their decisions, preferences and such, but when somebody hurts someone without any reason... without even saying a word, without even caring about how much it could affect somebodys life... i just lose it, those type of people are not worthy of being called “humans” because humans are not supposed to be like that, not even animals are like that. This obviously added up to the issues in my house into my head, made me feel not wanted or not worthy at all, without even an explanation of what i had done wrong or anything like that, it was painful, yes it was, but at the same time the thought of “this was your first time, this was just your first love, it was obviously not going to work out” remained in my head... the thing is... i do know that things are not supposed to work out the first time... but it wasn’t the fact that didn’t work out what messed me up, it was the “how” things ended up not working out what really affected me. Either way, it cost me a lot to got over that but thanks to a couple of friends and a new hobby i got introduced to thanks to one of them (drums) i could do it. Fast forward to the end of the second year of middle school and there i was.. Still being the best in the school, but without any kind of fullfilment or sense of actual pride for it, not even doing it for the sake of “learning” or enjoying it. -Even though it never got clinically confirmed or anything like that at that time (mainly because my parents never had interest in therapy/dental care plus we couldn’t quite afford it at the time) i think i have been suffering from severe depression from that point up until this day (were i can now say that yes, i’m seeing a neuropsycologist and im under treatment)- Thing’s got way worse when i broke my wrist one day playing football outside in the flea market where my parents and i went to work on the weekends, i took that day “off” and started to play football with some random strangers in an open field, i fell off and landed badly and broke my left wrist... i quickly went back to the food truck with my parents expecting to leave as soon as possible because my “S” shaped wrist... But no, they told me that i had to wait 2+ hours until they finished some stuff... and yes... i waited there, in pain and trying not to scream my lunges out. All that was going trough my head was “I’m not going to be able to practice the drums ever again”. But then a random thought poped in my mind, it made me very angry and turned all my pain into straight up burning anger and discomfort and yet again numbness and it goes like this... “WHY AM I WAITING TO RECEIVE ATTENTION FROM MY PARENTS FOR A BROKEN WRIST, IS IT REALLY MORE IMPORTANT FOR THEM TO WAIT? SHOULDN’T I BE THEIR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY AT LEAST NOW? 2+ passed until i was finally receiving some medical attention, the rest is history, that injury rendered me useless from practicing guitar (it’s not that i can’t play it, but it hurts a LOT) and i stoped playing drums due to a mental block that i self imposed in my brain. I felt so bad that whole year i was in a cast, that was my first birthday that i didn’t feel like celebrating, in fact that was the start of me feeling certain aversion or repulsion towards my birthday, i spent that day alone, just listening to music all day and laying in my bed. 15... That age marks the age that i had my first beer. Why? I don’t know. I certainly didn’t do it because i was feeling ok. Like i previously said... my dad was an alcoholic, i’ve seen how it can change somebody so quickly, making them senseless pieces of meat or straight up useless sacks of organs. So let’s just say that i’ve always had a certain depiction of alcohol in my brain since i was a little kid... it’s bad and there’s nothing benefitial about it... sure it can help you to socialize with certain kind of people but yeah... it’s not my thing, i even used to call beer “the devil’s piss” when i was a little kid... So how on earth that very fabric of myself got broken that day? Easy. I wasn’t feeling alright, i felt like i wanted to cease to exist or just go to sleep and never wake up again. Even my friends (who were super cool about me not wanting to drink a drop) acted very surprised when i just grabbed a 40 and chugged it all without even hesitating. All of them asked almost at the same time... are you ok? I just responded yeah, i just wanted to know what is it about it that you like it so much,nothing else. One of my best friends (who knew just a fraction of the things that were happening at my house and how i felt overall just looked me in the eye and prounonced a sentence that i think i will never forget: We both now why you are drinking... and it’s not the way.) I just kept drinking. And so i started (without knowing) to be an alcoholic at the age of 15. I was known for being a “tank” a term i think is associated with how fast can you drink or something, i don’t know. But something very weird happened, i never got a hangover, i never passed out, i never even went to bed, i just remained silent watching everyone sleep and once again getting lost in my thoughts, istarted to have problems with my sleep schedule some days only sleeping 2 hours, and i was not longer spacing out... i was straight up “blacking out” (having episodes or lapses of time were you don’t remember what you were doing or saying)and i started to have delusions of somebody following me, started to talk with myself as if i was another person and overall just drifting away slowly. 15-20 years. ************************************************* It’s been 4-5 hours since i started writing this stuff. It’s exhausting to say the least. I’ll cover up this time-span some other day... It’s the roughest i think, especially last year. If someone actually reads this... thanks for your time, if you want to say something feel free to do it, whatever it is. Do know that I’m in a “not so bad” place right now. I’m still dealing with some old and some pretty new stuff (that is actually the reason why im creating this thing in the first place...) but the point of all this is for me to get to know me a little better, re-learn from myself and my mistakes and hopefully improve with my life from now on, i certainly don’t want to feel like i’m feeling right now forever. And if i feel this is “something i need to do ™” (hahah) to make me feel better, then so be it... I’ll do anything to feel happy for once. But as of right now I’ll go to sleep. ...Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem...

#introduction #introductory post #my life #beggining #tumblr #psicologia #psycology #vent #thoughts

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