#my money goes to my pixel men

[midnight-rendezvous]

[cedarwoodtears]

ud characters playing the sims bc im bored

ashley: for such a sweet girl you’d be surprised at the fact she has a lot of sacrificial mods..what do you need them for?????? she still has her cute little family households of course but why do you have THREE serial killer sims. tbf they’re some of her ocs so it makes sense!! she loves making her ocs and making them have cute little happy domestic family lives…but also. so many strip clubs ashley we get you wanna look at virtual boobs LMFAOOOO we know all the animations you have downloaded yeah..it’s okay no shame in it girl ✊ ash doesn’t like playing around other people though she would rather not flash them….

chris: dedicates his time to breaking and exploiting the game…the ways this man thinks of ways to get a million simoleons you would think this man is el0n reincarnated no LOLLL even he’s got to step back sometimes and be like “this is a little fucked. oh well” and goes back to trapping pregnant sims in the pool and forcing them to constantly spawn cradles outside because they’re immortal and stuck in a constant birth loop. it’s entertaining as hell though i can’t blame him hours absolutely fly by when he’s breaking the game, half the time he’s just on call with his friends and sometimes sharing his screen so they can watch the horrors

emily: spends HOURS in cas. don’t ask how much cc she has on her computer. she stopped checking long ago. barely ever plays in live mode or build mode but always has the most EXQUISITE JAW-DROPPINGGGG sims. like wow i didn’t even know pixels could look this good. she’s made over all the townies and loves to make more…and they all manage to look unique in their own way she does NOT struggle with same face syndrome. em has made herself and the sim version of mike fight and she killed him LOLLL she used to do that with all the people she didn’t get along but now that she’s made up with a good majority of them they’re good friends in the game now..how cordial!!

jess: build mode GODDD oh my gosh she does not play around like that. you’d think her dream was to be an architect or interior designer the way she plays. she managed to rebuild the washington lodge amazingly!! it took her awhile to get the confidence to go back up there but she took her reference photos and got back..it took her a few weeks but she did it!! that’s her biggest achievement so far but she also just generally makes super nice houses!! like girl if you don’t use your talents in the real world NOW!!! we need you jess please save us from these ugly modern homes..babygirl..babygirl please…she hates modern homes. some of her favorite styles are gothic revival and mediterranean ^^

josh: he sometimes uses it to cope with his sisters deaths…he has a save file with them and him and he spends a lot of nights making them all a happy family with no worries 💔 usually he gets real sad after and doesn’t touch it for a few weeks….but then his next save is his mafia kingpin drug dealing multi millionaire who is the king of willow creek and has 80 girlfriends LOL josh what a life you’re making your sims live..either that or making the most old pathetic senile men do crazy stuff WHYYYYY is that man a stripper he’s about to die in one day LMAOOOO he occasionally uses the sims as inspiration for his short films funny enough!! maybe not the mafia one. or the um. other one. i’m sure him and chris would be down to poorly recreate it and laugh at it though

matt: has the WORST luck when playing…his guy somehow always manages to get caught on fire, drown, get into fights, get abducted by aliens, get stuff repossessed, all the bad things you can think happened in the sims has happened to him. tbf he doesn’t really know how to play so that doesn’t help LMAO he makes sure to save constantly at least!!! matt does his best to keep a happy family though even if it means doing a little money chest here and there ahem..kaching…motherlode…it’s not cheating if it’s for the better. that’s what he says. so it’s not wrong. matt also loves making the moms knit for the kids too i just think he sometimes wants to take knitting ideas from the game so he uses the moms to do so..

mike: his sims are always so ROWDY and WILD wdym your sims are bad as hell. and not in the good way. homewreckers, leaving toddlers homeless and constantly getting into fights and having the whole neighborhood hate you like mike 😭😭 not his sim self though. no that man GRINDED for WEEKS to max out all his skills and become the prime minister. and also have like 50 friends and an amazing romantic partner and be a multimillionaire all while being dashingly handsome…just like himself in real life, no?!? nah he knows that’s not true but doesn’t mean he can’t wish!! but yeah if it’s not himself in the sims they’re all such objectively bad people LMAOO we need to take away the extreme violence mod from him..

sam: always cheats to make the animals constantly in a good mood and never age bc she can’t let them die that would be wrong…sam loves making super long family lineages though like one of her favorites is her royal family of canada one..not the most realistic duh but it’s a silly little hobby of hers she’s had since she was a kid!!! there’s always an ominous graveyard outside the house with all the ancestors though. just a bit creepy. anytime she sees a ghost she sends it back to the spirit realm she will NOT have them roaming around!!! sometimes she just moves them onto another lot bc she’s trying to deal with 8 sims at once and well it gets a bit distracting having random furniture start floating when 3 of your sims are about to accidentally starve

[lawyernovelistpersonal]

Robin Hood Legend of Zelda

So I stumbled on @skyward-floored's suggestion of a Legend of Zelda game based on Robin Hood, in which there's a huge monster problem, an evil king (probably Ganon, unless Ganon/Ganondorf is the power behind the throne, which I agree could be fun) taxing the people for everything they have and not using the money to do anything about the monsters, and Link starts doing something about the monsters and gathers a ragtag band of people to help.

This idea has set up home rent-free in my head.

First of all, I love the idea of Zelda as Maid Marian, but as well as being the damsel at court who's interacting with Ganondorf she's also gathering intelligence and working with Link as Sheik - it's been a while since we've had Sheik. She's introduced soon after the inciting incident and she's bringing Link information about the monsters and what's happening at court, but it's not until midway through the game that he finds out what Sheik's deal is. One option could be that the first plot point/dungeon boss fight is actually that Link has to fight Sheik to prove himself. Sheik then concludes that this guy can actually do something and isn't just another poser or some kid who's not actually as badass as he thinks he is.

Ganondorf has some other powerful minions of one sort or another to serve as dungeon bosses - they can have various quirks and powers. One of them could even be holding onto the Master Sword - I like the idea of it being in a vault in the castle and Link finds out about it from Sheik and then has to sneak in, maybe beat a dungeon, and grab it.

The mechanic of stealing things from the castle (or other enemy strongholds) could work on some combination of the mechanic for learning echoes in Echoes of Wisdom and the popular fanon in the LU fandom of Wild storing things in his Slate (plus something like the way cartoon!Link pulls things in and out of his belt pouch in a little sparkly pixel cloud). Link has a magic pouch with an inventory size and maybe some sort of mechanism for controlling the size of things he can take in and out and when the player goes up to something they want to put in the pouch they go up to it, hit a button, and Link magically dissolves the object into the pouch. Then he gets it out again the same way. The inventory and the input/output bandwidth are both upgradeable, so to begin with Link can only pick up small things and can only carry a limited volume of stuff, but by the endgame he can steal entire carts and that kind of thing.

As well as defeating bosses, part of the goal is to put a team together and there are recruitable NPCs with different skills. Some of these people can be rescued from monsters, some have to be won over with specific sidequests. Their skills can vary such that only particular ones are good at combat; maybe some are good at crafting (or dismantling) and mending equipment and maybe that's how upgrades could happen and would be a way of handling weapon durability: Link can steal weapons from monsters, but if he gets something particularly good (maybe stolen from the castle or a dungeon boss or something) it can be maintained. However, the "Merry men" who are good at combat could have a mechanic like in Hyrule Warriors attached to them, where the player can set up strategies and send them to different parts of a battlefield or dungeon to help him, taking advantage of different skills as well as having multiple not-quite-playable characters to use.

One option for stealing things (and getting loot from monsters, finding resources, etc.) could be that different things are more or less easy to repurpose or sell to travelling merchants (Beedle). A team member who can break down something large could therefore be useful so if Link does something wild like steal Ganondorf's bed right out of his bedroom, it can be converted into wood, fabric, precious metals, nails, etc. that can be used. Link can then use those resources for himself or give them to ordinary people in need in the traditional Robin Hood way.

And there could also be a mechanic that incentivises helping ordinary people on top of it being thematically appropriate and giving the player warm fuzzies. I really like the idea of this being how this game has an equivalent to spirit orbs. Kind of reaching to the Robin Hood roots, people Link helps can't pay him with anything - that's kind of the point - so there aren't rupee rewards for doing side quests or saving people from monsters or anything, especially in the early game where people are under the heel of monsters. However, what they can do is pray for him. As more people are praying for Hylia to bless him because he helped them, Link is able to pray himself and gain hearts that way (and maybe something like stamina vessels, maybe special upgrades or abilities, that kind of thing).

So the gameplay loop is first trying to protect people from monsters, then moving on to stealing from the rich ((monstrous) minibosses) and giving to the poor, and these things allow Link to gain more powerful equipment and strength in the form of things like hearts, stamina, and so forth. Sheik becomes aware of him and vice versa and that's the first dungeon - trying to get through something to talk to Sheik and then fighting 'him' to prove himself. After he's defeated Sheik, Shiek offers to help him with information and things like warnings of monster movements. On an open-world any-order basis, he can then work his way through other dungeons, including sneaking in and out of the castle, building up his team of merry men and taking down Ganondorf's minions, all the while protecting and helping the common people of Hyrule and gaining more strength and ability himself. Midway through, Shiek gives him information that leads him into the castle and to getting the Master Sword from its vault, a little after that - maybe something to do with the sword or the triforce or something - he finds out who Sheik actually is and that Zelda, who he's seen from a distance while sneaking around and maybe she's covered for him or hasn't reacted to seeing him or something, is also the person who's been feeding him information and maybe training or something. Then, gameplay-wise, once all the sub-bosses have been dealt with something happens and Ganondorf finds out about Zelda/Sheik, turns on and probably kills the king, kidnaps Zelda (I mean, it's a LoZ game, it's a little bit mandatory) and then Link gathers his resources, leads his merry men in an attack on the castle, takes down Ganondorf, Zelda becomes queen, we all live happily ever after.

And the whole time he's getting tips and suggestions from his fairy companion Little John :P

[miragecounseling]

there was a "what do my love interests say about me" trend on the love island app subreddit and it made me think abt all my dragon age + bg3 love choices

ive romanced everyone. in every game. and i think almost every romance has it's upsides, but there's certain ppl i enjoy romancing more for whatever reason (party banter is better, overall romance scenes better, they're Hot, etc)

anyways if u care abt this or wanna share ur own fave romances, pls lmk / read my ramblings

dao: I was gonna put morrigan here but i'll always hold a little Anger over any romance that forces me to play a male bodytype ! i know it shouldn't matter, and if they let me be more gender neutral or fem presenting, i'd hate it less but i don't wanna be an early 2000's rpg male character AHHH. anyways.............. i love zevran, god what an amazing character. i wish so badly he'd made an appearance in vg. and alistair. one of the only blonde men i'll tolerate. (i remember debating ppl on if he was blonde or ginger. ill always stick by goldeny / strawberry blonde)

da2; MY GAME! MYYYY GAMEEEE!!! i hated this game for not letting me romance varic, my 1 true love, but i loved this game for letting me romance everyone hot (aka basically ur whole party) the only romance i didnt care for across all da games was sebastian. he just wasn't it for me. i was a die hard anders fan in ye old fenris vs anders debate of 2011-12 on tumblr dot com. i now like both of them, but anders holds a nostalgic place in my heart. he also takes up the mantle as also one of the only blonde men i'll tolerate. and isabela. ♥ the only one tht matters i love u i wish i could sleep with u in every game

dai: prob my least fave and def least played da game so i don't have superrr strong opinions on this game's romances. sera is so fucking annoying i love it. and josephine is like, the absolute opposite so it's the perfect match. honorable mention to cullen (but fuck his va) and ironbull (also fuck his va, which still makes me sad he made those comments especially considering who he voices)

datv: oooooh ohhhh davrin is my #1 first and foremost thats my pixel Husband

but luckily he's happy 2 let me love others such as neve, my grainy b&w noir film hardened deceive that goes soft for me alone, my ball of sunshine smut writer with intellect that goes unmatched bellara, my gentlemanly professor with a heart of gold emmrich. god i love the romances in this game sm

and finally bg3:

wyll ♥ wyll ♥ ♥♥ ♥ i love u wyll larian ill pay u soooo much money to give us more romance scenes plEASE. god he's the fairytale romance king !!!! in a world full of morally grey men, i rly needed a knight in shining armor sighs

and HIS ENEMY TURNED BFF KARLACH ugh their friendship while also loving them both? perfect. and shadowheart is such a good, sweet romance about learning to trust someone and learn to make decisions that benefit you, even if it's hard to see or scary to do. ;-;

and the emperor. :) listen we all made our dream guardians hot as fuck anyways so like

what's a few tentacles

[itskikanow]

In honor of the DLC coming out tomorrow I’ve replayed Error 143 to enjoy the adorable dork that is Micah Yujin. So let me gush about him will ya.

Micah Yujin is the main character and only love interest of the indie dating sim called Error 143 made by Jenny Vi Pham and her crew. The main premise is that you, the player, lost in a coding/hacking competition to your rival (Micah) and you as the sane level headed person as you are decided to troll him by hacking his computer and leaving a note “Ha, whose the better hacker now”. In response Micah hacks you back and puts you in his not discord server that he made and from then on comedy ensues.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward, it’s like every other dating sim. There’s the occasional hacking minigame that is just hangman which is neat, but the whole design of the whole game is so cool. I love pixel art and not discord looks fantastic with it. I also find it elegant that the parts without voice acting look like chat conversations, and the conversations with voice acting to be video calls is fucking great!

Also his voice actor goes hard!!! Corey Wilder is a talented va and I wish nothing but the best for them!^^

Micah himself is a funny playful cheeky guy with a shit eating grin on his face. His banter with the player is honestly hilarious and wholesome at times. He doesn’t hide the fact that he thinks you’re hot and he starts being flirty around day one or two. Him and the player have some good chemistry and they really match each other’s vibe. (Oh yeah forgot to mention but the player character actually have a personality in this game. They’re not a fully fleshed out character but it’s more than what the player character gets in these games. The only other time I can think something similar happened was in The Arcana [also a great dating sim I do recommend that])

The story spans out 5 days (well, 4 actually cuz day 4 is pretty short). In those 5 days the player and Micah get to know each other pretty quickly and it’s pretty obvious you both really like each other. And Micah puts his money where his mouth is because on day 5 he makes your dream first date come true. I find that so wholesome and sweet like on my first playthrough my first thought ‘I wanna hug him’ and ‘AAAAAAAAAA!!!!!’ (And that’s just one of the sweetest things he does in game, there’s like two other one which I both adore a ton.)

But I couldn’t because the game ended! 🥲🥲🥲🥲 (Thankfully the dlc is coming and will probably give me that option and I honestly cannot wait!^^) It is a short game but it’s definitely one of the best ones out there!

I also remember when this game first came out it got really popular in just a few short days. And I also cannot forget how in just one night a bunch of twitter ghouls jumped on the creator and accused her of fetishizing black men, hiring a va who voiced in a pe** game and how her writing is actually very racist because….. she shared some old concept ideas for Micah’s parents that are not even canon. Back then I was pretty scared about those accusations because I myself am not white and thought “oh fuck what if actual black people found something actually problematic that I’ve missed”. In reality what actually happened was a bunch of racists didn’t like that there was a dating sim out there with the main love interest being a half Korean half African American. And they hurled shit on both Jenny and Corey. I even saw people whom I used to follow take those accusations seriously and write it of as “ah even when we get a dating sim with a black love interest there’s always a catch”. (I was honestly baffled by them cuz, ‘wha- you can’t be serious! There’s gotta be something more to this’.) Thankfully Jenny managed to resolve that drama in the end by explaining everything in a tweet longer? (idk the exact name of it but you know what that is) and addressing every main accusation while also addressing how the harassment has affected her. I’m honestly proud how she managed to still write on Twitter where most would’ve gone silent to take a break from that bullshit. But she and Corey shouldn’t have been subjected to that kind of harassment in the first fucking place.

Still, I’m so happy that things are better now. I don’t have Twitter anymore (and I’ve been much happier since) so I don’t know if anything similar happened since then (hopefully not).

Amidst all that bullshit tho there were some people who gave genuine constructive criticism, one I can remember is about Micah’s inconsistent hair texture. Since there are a lot of artists in the team they all drew his hair a little differently every time. Jenny responded to that critique apologizing and doing some research before deciding what Micah’s hair type is gonna be. Ever since then his hair has been consistent in official arts. The assets in game hadn’t been switched out but by the sneak peeks she posted on Instagram, it looks like they’re gonna be finally.

(Ok I originally wanted to write down his hair type but I’m actually not sure what she said cuz I forgor but comparing his hair to pictures on google, seems to his hair is either 4B, 4C or a mix between those two. I’m sorry I don’t remember 🥲)

My apologies for the detour there. My final thoughts about the game though is that it’s amazing, fun and I adore Micah a lot! If you like dating sims, fun and wholesome cheesy romance then I can recommend it to you wholeheartedly!^^

[joytraveler]

60. Sunny Spring Mornings

(This chapter divided into two parts for your reading convenience.)

The title screen shows a large office complex at dawn, with a line of glowing car headlights entering the security gate. (Not exactly exciting video game material.)

Then the game begins and you're informed that it's your first day at your new paid internship at the world's biggest tech company, but there are so many handsome men here you hardly know what to do! It's a dating sim!

"Are you serious?! OhohohohOHOhohhohoo, here we go, this could result in pixel porn!" (she goes around making small talk with potential suitors!) "And you look good, and you, and you.. and YOU have yaoi hands!"

The first one is a tall, blond surfer dude with a shiny smile. ["Welcome to i.O Technologies. What did you say your name was?"] This is followed by a name entry screen! The default name in the field is JOYCE, but you can put in anything you want, in English or Japanese.

"Joyce, huh? I like it, that was my grandma's name too" ["Joyce Walker? Nice to meet you, I'm George. First day too? It'd be nice if there was orientation, but I think we're just supposed to wing it!"]

aroseahorseboy: wow, you're not going with QUEENIE? must be a special occasion Baconnaise: Bea pick mr bighands, trust me Llord_Kuruku: make them all line up so you can see who has the longest arm

The next one is a very tall, skinny black guy with glasses who seems very officious.

["Ms. Walker? I'm Keith Moed. I'll be your direct superior. I relay your research to Dr. Ryder. He can be a little intimidating but don't be afraid to approach either of us if you have questions."]

"Joyce Walker! Ahhhh, I get it! That's cute! Oh, I think I'll be approaching you fellas anyway but, soon enough.."

DueyDecimal: Wait, what's the joke behind the name? aroseahorseboy: joyce walker = joy traveler indicating that her true husband is Mr. 1*67

The third prospective husband is a small, geeky but cute fellow, who greets Joyce with a huge goofy smile. He's a person of color, but not Black; there’s a bit of debate in the chat what his ethnicity is, but he explains it immediately.

["Joyce? Hi! Call me Woody. Actually my name is Edward Yellow Pine, I picked the name up in college, it's a funny story-- well, not that funny, people picked up on the name Yellow Pine and that was that. Cause I'm, um, I'm Nimmo Indian, actually. Went to college with George. Yeah. You?"]

"Read that, guys? That's the same tribe that tells a story of certain dreadful, competition loving beings... Probably not a good way to break the ice, though. 'Nice to meet you, let's talk about corpse demons'."

GlockRoach: Can you date a spanunko tho That's what I wanna know Syrupentine: Find out, ask Woody out! He's my husbando

Once Joyce has met the three of them, a menu of things to do opens up: visit with the boy of your choice, go home (which refreshes your charm stat) or do your work (which increases your money stat).

"Work before pleasure, because money's probably important in case he tries to make me pay. Then let's talk to Woody again"

Upon choosing WORK, the scene fades out, and we fade in on... the image of the astronaut and the box.

[WILL YOU PLEASE LET ME OUT NOW? Y/N]

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" "............is this her job"

HNV: THIS IS YOUR JOB??? aroseahorseboy: you get paid to beg to be let out of a box

Upon answering 'no': [ALL RIGHT. I'LL ASK AGAIN TOMORROW. GOOD NIGHT.] The game returns to the office. "Well working was fun but let's never do that again!! Time to go see the mens. What are we working on besides nightmare box technology?"

Keith is busy with work but replies politely. George is busy with work but replies politely. Woody is SO EXCITED to see you, he's bouncing in his chair. He ignores his work and sits backward in his chair to talk, getting a bit motormouthed!

berg_snerdler: bea this guy likes you a lot. he's gonna make you his spununko bride, look out

Depending on your answer, he gets more excited, and eventually he does ask you out on a date! The date, however, is not played in dating sim style: it's more like Pong... with Breakout bricks between the two paddles.

"Huh? Oh. Oh I get it! It's a metaphor!" she bobs her eyebrows at the camera. "If he likes me now he's REALLY gonna like me when I get that laser power up"

It's an easy win for Bea, and Woody is shyer and more tongue-tied than ever! If you keep pressing him like this, something's bound to happen... and in two more dating rounds, it does: the third match has a ring box in the middle of the blocks. Who'll get it first??

"Date meter maximum, POWER UNLEASHED! GO!" A well-angled bounce hits the box at last. "For ME??? Well I don't know about that but OKAY IF YA SAY SO! Why can't more dating sims be like WarioWare, I wonder"

The screen fades to Woody's overjoyed smile, and a shot of the wedding... and for the first time we see who it is that Bea has been playing all this time (since the game was in the first person).

aroseahorseboy: called it! HNV: It's Redmom's origin story!

"My goodness things happen fast around here don't they! So THIS is our mom after all! Hello Joyce! We've met a few times, in your future, and you gave me the coolest present ever!"

HNV: but her name in POP was Joy RIDER... sounds like there's a 'true ending' to this!

After the wedding scene, there's a few screens of epilogue.

[Joyce and Woody were happily married.]

[They remained at i.O Technologies to support themselves, but could not afford to start a family.]

[With their help, Dr. Ryder completed his research.] [HAPPY ENDING!]

Klickitat_Street: ??? HNV: So... nothing changed, the end. Huh.

The game returns to the title screen, but when you choose "Continue" it brings Bea right back to the Visit/Work/Home screen.

DueyDecimal: Now the big question, does Bea have the determination to get all the endings?

--to be continued.

[bluewinnerangel]

DEMY ARE YOU STILL WITH US?!

CAN YOU CONFIRM HE IS IN FACT REAL?!

I am on the other side of the world and still can’t move on from this. How does anyone with daily contact with him survive?

ALSO HIS SHIRT. ALSO HIS LIL CURL His curl I couldn't stop watching.... I got the good stuff men i was bless-ed my show fucking ruled so fking hard

Also orange shirt plus Teenage Dirtbag in Amsterdam? This plus that equals:

Also

I just wanna put this pic somewhere too where he might or might not be looking at me and my funny lil shirt im not gonna tell u what it is because i might wanna wear it again and i don't need to be recognised but like who knows its half a pixel but I love these pics lol like the experience bro to experience HIM. LIKE. HE'S REAL. HE'S THERE AND HE WAS SO GOOD. SO AMAZING.

Okay I'll try to stop all-capsing now and tell you all about it. Gonna put a cut in because BLAAAAA about the entire thing including a lot of personal experience queueing and seeing the fans and stuff so if you're here to read a beautiful written concert review about all the songs you're shit outta luck that mans everything i have no words for how mindblowing it was but ill throw some pics at the end to make up for all the rambling ok:

Before the concert - So first of all I have to acknowledge how much of a privilege it is to even be able to watch him like that, not just that he's got a show somewhere close enough to you it doesn't cost you a fortune to even be there (and then still.. to even be able to afford a ticket), and managing to get a ticket in the first place, but I joined the queue in the afternoon the day before in order to be sure of a good spot without being an asshole about it sdfasd (with that I mean, others ensured their spots with other tactics causing quite the.. vibe.. at the front there. It's not even the "cutting line" I'm bothered by it's the part where they'd just brag over and over how they did that. Like you're trying to make people around you feel like shit or start an argument like do you wanna get punched by a horde of exhausted people or what like let's just all enjoy the show instead maybe). Anyway about the privilege thing. You have to be able to afford the time and money to accommodate yourself and also.. who the fuck does that for anyone? that's insane it's absolute fucking insanity what the fuck are all of us what the fuck does this man do to us that we do that for him like it's. ridiculous. I can't believe how willing I was to do that ksadjlakj. I didn't think I was. I don't think it makes sense to do this. I'm gonna be honest here I don't enjoy this aspect of the fandom, this need to be in the first box of people to enter, to run to barricade (tbh that part was kinda fun), to exhaust yourself for 24+ hours, remove comfort, perhaps endanger yourself if you aren't able to do it properly for health reasons or just naivety or whatever, to all keep inching the time you need to be there to get a regular spot further up and up and up as tour goes on until people are claiming the venue doors a full 2 days in advance. And even on the day like if you wanna be in the first 2000 to get in you need to be there for like 8 hours (im just saying numbers here like these are prob total bs but you get the point) like either you camp to be in the first lil clump of people that are let in, or you just arrive just before it starts. Those are your options really. To be honest I wasn't planning on sitting there for 24hrs but I did, like on the spot I decided to stay, because I was there the day before just to bring my friends ( @ialwaysknewyouwerepunk and partner <3 EDIT: @caralara !!! I didn't know if you wanted to be tumblr official so I didn't tag but EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HI) some stuff for camping and then the plan was for me to go to sleep and join them early morning. But once the system was explained it was clear that would mean a lot of queueing by myself and I just wanted to be with them so I stayed and we managed and were somehow still prepared even though it was an improvised thing. It was actually really fun, I didn't mind any of it really. But that was 100% the company. And in that regard I do get this whole... situation we got going on before every show where fans are just all have a big camp out. It's addictive even, it's part of the whole experience, I do really get it, but for that aspect of it, not for the need to be at the front over and over again. That's just... an amazing perk then. Like really I'd queue again if there are people in it that I wanna hang out with and I wouldn't see them otherwise, but in no way am I sitting outside for that long solely to get a good spot at a concert. Even if that's louis. And the best fucking thing I've ever seen. Anyway on friday we just snoozed with a view of the tour bus which was like.. a night under the stars get it asddsf. The next day we sat in the front lil box for the special first 150 and it was funny to recognize a lot of common fandom faces and then figuring out from what exactly.

I also talked to one of the people working at the venue, and they said they've only seen something similar 4 or 5 events in the 20 years they've been doing this work, but they were all huge and in Ziggo Dome, another venue at that square. They also let us store our stuff in lockers beforehand at that venue instead (but i think a lot of people already had means to store their stuff)... I guess they got the memo we would NOT take ANY time putting those safe whatsoever once the doors opened. literally people were willing to risk their lives and possessions for a good spot. Really just all logic is out the window for louis tomlinson istg and I knew this of course but seeing it all around me was new. Oh but talking to other fans? TALKING TO ELLA? my PEOPLE my PEEOPLLLEEEEE I'm SO happy I got to meet you two you are such amazing amazing kind souls we're absolutely gonna meet again weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

So it got pretty shit about 2 hrs before we could get in, because the sun was JUST behind the building and all of us had already stored all our stuff and the temp was being weird, like it almost heated up and then it didn't so we weren't doin too well luv and that was the first moment I really felt like this wasn't it this wasn't the way akasljsal.

Inside - Once the doors opened of course it was total chaos and we ran and managed to get on what I think was 4th row? but by the end it was like 6 or 7. We were slightly to the left, this is the exact spot with the help of louis pointing at me of course its potato footage:

There was a water sent into the crowd, us and the people in front and behind us had a job like we were constantly busy handing over plastic cups, both full ones into the crowd and empty ones back, it got a bit less motivated to keep that up after a while but let me tell you i NEEDED that water and so i also wanted everyone behind me to get it if they'd feel like me or worse. I was well hydrated, i needed to pee but you don't notice it at all with all the adrenaline, but with all the screaming and jumping and post covid lungs/throat you need it.

The intro is LOUD. LIKE. LOUD. Like I felt that everywhere and it adds to the buildup and anticipation perfectly and then the curtain falls and he walks in and I apparently look like a child with wonder in its eyes when he came on, because these bitches were filming me (<3) and I got to see my reaction and its .. askdljalks cute I guess. yeah and then he was just there. he was there. in HD boy real life in very high quality did you know that? and hes fucking perfect like seriously what the hell and he just-. I don't have words I don't get it. I was going in between losing my shit dancing and singing and everything, just standing there staring at him, and trying to take some pictures. Unfortunately the taking pictures caused me to miss his stupidass smileyface green wink flickering thing (did you pick that up online? Yeah it did.). I was taking pictures at that exact moment but it didn't catch it rip.

Another unfortunate bit was that my hearing got fucked from the beginning with all the screaming so I didn't get to fully experience his sound but it was already SO overwhelming in every other aspect I didn't even really mind plus the premise of seeing him again ASAP and experience it then, with the assumption I'll get a ticket (got my eyes on Antwerp so if anyone has one please) that is.

Then there were the stops... again... I don't know if it was just one person or multiple that needed assistance but the show got stopped 2 times and you can tell he's so fking sick of it. I was fking sick of it. Anyway shits not nice of me to say, perhaps these people were in big need of assistance for reasons out of anyone's control and it did end badly but you just get so desensitized to it when it happens constantly I'm just afraid people are either clueless to the point where they just didn't know they couldn't handle it, that with not knowing how to take care of themselves included, or knowing they can't but are willing to risk everything to see him... or they're exaggerating, perhaps not even consciously, to get an unfortunate notice. Like OmG LoUiS CaReS aBoUt Me yeah but do u care about louis anyway I'm just afraid of people, louis included, not responding anymore when there's a very critical emergency at some point and everyone yells to stop the show and louis is just like bitch here we go again whenever i stop the show everyones just good what are we doing lemme just continue? you know? I thought he said something like "really?" something too but it's all a blur.

have a pic have a pic

But man the ENERGY? THE CONFIDENCE? THE even though i know every single fucking bit of this show because ive watched lives 30+x times this was still just all so .. another level. Ella warned me beforehand that it's nothing like it. The lives are missing the sound the vibe the entire stage his whole body how he moves how he talks where he is within the space how awesome his band is the crowd EVERYTHING and man I was not prepared. I have a lil confession i always thought he was a lil awkward. Cute awkward but still... I thought he was awkward and turns out you can make the most confident man look awkward when you zoom in on their face performing without showing the rest of the performance, environment, nothing, and perhaps further made awkward by you as the viewer sitting in your pjs snacking in front of a screen watching it, who knew, apparently. BOY OH BOY he is NOT awkward. He owns that fking stage. What the fuck. Not even a lil bit. I was so so so wrong. I'm. intimidated lol (somehow wasnt at all when he pointed ... i was like YUUUUUHHH BROOOO BRING IT [my partner is telling me to make an edit of mad max where hes like HE LOOKED AT ME HE LOOKED ME STRAIGHT IN THE EYE!!!! i just might]) but yeah so yeah jesus christ omg.

picspics this is a ramble

As for things during the concert I noticed that were cute outside of the regular program... there was a sign in the crowd that said stage dive or something so he saw it, laughed at it, and then pretended to stage dive. it was cute af. he did rock paper scissors, he pointed and agreed with a sign that asked if they could smoke a joint together after the show, he cracked the absolute fuck up about a sign that said "stroganoff to get it wrong? In front of all these people" which was all the way to the right of the stage. Like he deadass just stayed in it it was so fking hilarious watching him just crackling.

He was vibing with someone off stage and making funny movements idk what it was but i was just staring like oh. He really loved some signs all the way to the left as well but I didn't know what they were.

He REALLY hated someone else that seemed to be at barrier on the left of the stage too, it was like... like a fucking dagger stabbed me lol he just gave them the 2 fingers british fuck you sign, then walked away not looking at them and flipping them off behind his back but it was with SUCH force. He was MAD. No idea what he saw but he was not happy. He then looked at one of the bandmembers like yeah they deserve it kinda thing.

He said "I see ya at the back" at some point and we looked back and didn't really see anything. There was a group cheering and jumping, so my best guess is he saw them vibing. There were pride flags on the balcony tho so it could have been that as well.

When he jumped off the stage during kmm we lost him for a long time and then he popped up reaaaaallyl short he just went BLOOP and gone, not sure about that, maybe someone pulled him? idk.

Also he refused to acknowledge a sign that said something not very interesting because we were right behind it and every time he came close like CLOSE CLOSE like i can SEE YOU SO WELL RN close the fucking sign would pop up with the speed of 28 lightyears so stronk so high so present I couldn't see him basically at fucking all i mean... it needs an arrow to show you where louis is because you can't fucking seeeeeeeeee, this is no zoom what it looked like:

I mean.. after the 5th time he has stood right in front of you reading it you don't need to keep holding it up after that? He's read it. What do you want him to do? I'm sorry he's just not gonna interact with it the 28th time if he hasn't 27 times before. It's done lemme see him please :') But this is going somewhere I promise because after a while at more than one occasion he tried to look around it at fucking us god damn it and it was in the way and so I missed 2 or 3 interactions that were directed at either one of us or one of the people next to us because only one of us at the time could see him whenever he got near so I just got half of a sentence or movement or whatever that I couldn't make out now and then, no idea, maybe watch an uploaded live, I know this one was very close to us, maybe I will, but there's one happening very soon so. Anyway he could've been interested in giving us that lil pointypoint for many reasons of which half aren't mine to tell so I won't, but for me it was just 1) going fucking mental, and it wasn't to like get him to see me do that, but lemme tell you when he confirmed that he did and enjoyed it I just got such a fucking sense of like this is the tiny thing I just gave back to him that he's given me. That seems weird probably but I'm very very held back, not just with a celebrity everyone wants to get near it seems, but with anyone I'm just always thinking I'm violating peoples space and I annoy you when I alert you of my existence basically that's just a me thing and makes me not want to like, meet him, send him anything, just... nada. Like I just don't wanna bother anyone. But like this? It's perfect. He had all the freedom to not acknowledge me but he did on his own free will because he enjoyed it and fed off the energy there seeing how ALDKJSDKLJLK we were going from his music and performance? what the fuck else would i want like shit that's just. thats perfect. But then there's 2) which is my shirt, which again I'm not gonna say just yet but you're welcome to ask me in a dm if we talk of course, but it's just combining 2 things he's big on so it would make sense it'd catch his attention.

But that's not what I came there for. I don't wanna be like y/n moment xoxo let's get more (but also, I do now, because he RUINED IT. HE RUINED IT. nothing is gonna compare to him fucking being like YO THIS BITCH IS GOING FOR IT *P O I N T S* like fuck) I just wanted to see him at least once because I could, and I was honestly planning on getting there just before it started and standing at the back by myself, chilling. But that's not what I got, I got to meet amazing people and had the fucking time of my fucking life holy shit. Like everything went better than I could've ever imagined and he was better than i had imagined and i already thought he was everything.

LOOK AT THAT FUCKER WITH THE POINT THAT WILL SHIT ON MY FUTURE CONCERTS:

[fauxcreche]

The Introverted salesman: The Commodification of Nessie

An Investigation

In Jeff Noon's Solace, the commodification of the protagonist is a gradual process. The question of ethics and morality around the circumstances of their commodification is what a reader is left to dissect by the end of the story.  There are economic factors that favour his commodification but at the cost of his autonomy. When he creates intrigue by sharing the taste of Solace, Nesbit's commercial purpose is fulfilled. But at what cost to his humanity? The question of a human being as an advertising tool is uncomfortable to consider, but in Solace, it explores the ontological split between the product, its genesis and its forthcoming reality. To put this another way, Nesbit gradually loses his humanity in order to sell a product to those in his environment and it does work, until it does not. It is at this point that Nesbit becomes both the commodity and the target audience.

To better illustrate my position, a brief explanation of commodification in relation to a generalised ontological system is needed. Sandlin and Callahan identify that the rise of consumerist ideology has been linked in sociological and consumer behaviour to emotion (2015:83). When considering Nesbit as a commodity, his friendships are his emotional foray into selling ‘Spook’ to his peers. It is evident that these friendships are somewhat motivated by Nesbit’s economic status.

The narrator describes him as “that scrawny little brainbox with the rich parents,” and goes on to detail how Nesbit was the one who first introduced his peers to ‘Spook’, as it was not advertised; one had to already know about it in order to buy it. Within his ontological system, Nesbit is not capable of autonomy as his purpose is to sell ‘Spook’ and he does do this successfully by means of enticing his peers with the different flavour combinations that they then pay him to make for them, as they can’t achieve these combinations of their own.

There is the moral dilemma of where does Nesbit, the non-commodity begin and where does Nesbit the ‘Spook’ advertisement end? In other words, is there an autonomous Nesbit who does not need to sell or buy ‘Spook’ and what are the moral and ethical implications of the answer to this question, as far as his commodification is concerned?

Within his ontological system, Nesbit can only exist if he is preoccupied with ‘Spook’, whether that be the sale or his own purchase of it.

As Eagleton (2003:143) notes in his chapter on Morality, he says:

“Moralism believes that there is a set of questions known as moral questions which are quite distinct from social or political ones. It does not see that ‘moral’ means exploring the texture and quality of human behaviour as richly and sensitively as you can, and that you cannot do this by abstracting men and women from their social surroundings.”

Putting this quotation in context with Solace, it is clear that Nesbit cannot be separated from his ontological system when considering the questionable morality behind his commodification. I’d like to jump ahead in the story to further expand upon this point.

The narrator notes on page 22 (Noon, 2001) that it was not the taste of the flavour combinations that drove Nesbit, it was merely finding the flavours. It begins to consume him, becoming his lifeblood in many ways. As the narrator notes, there came a point where Nesbit was the only person concerned with ‘Spook’ and its different flavour combinations:

“You’d think he’d be happy to just mess with the bottles, but no, he had to drink every single bottle, even the ones that were failed experiments.

By this time the rest of us were growing up, you know. Moving on to the more sophisticated pleasures” (Noon, 2001:21-22).

It is at this point that the commodity becomes the target audience. What critically influences the gradual disinterest in ‘Spook’ in not only the growing up of Nesbit’s peers but his own spiralling, which results in not only a physical deterioration but a moral one within his ontology- it is at this point that a distinct helplessness settles not only over the reader. Nesbit’s commodification not only erodes his own autonomy but goes on to reveal the lack of ethical decisions that preceded his birth and subsequently, his adolescent and adult life. Returning to Eagleton, in order to better explain this conclusion, he explains that ethics are about excelling at being human, and this does not happen in isolation (2005:142).

It deserves mention that Nesbit’s design as a commodification falls in line with the traditional of advertisement and consumerism. The ideology of consumerism correlates with emotion management and relies on both advertising and mass media to elicit specific emotions in consumers that attract them to buy products and experiences (Sandlin & Callahan, 2015:83).

While it may have been preferable for better ethical decisions to have been taken on behalf of Nesbit, his ontological system favoured his commodification rather than his autonomy due to his parent’s poverty and their want to improve their economic position, rather naively believing that the premature sale of their child would not be detrimental to its future.

Furthermore, in becoming the target audience, his search of Solace falls in line with the emotive experience sold to him by the makers of ‘Spook’, as Nesbit knows that such a combination is possible from his previous experimentations- the narrator cites the following as evidence,

“Instead, in this really clear voice, he told me that has was searching for the solace. […] Solace. He said it might take him years to find the right way to twist the bottle cap, but he was determined to get there, even if he died doing it” (Noon, 2001:23).  

His compensation is also bittersweet, as he does not have to work but he spends a lot of that compensation money on buying ‘Spook’.

In the absence of morality and ethical direction within this ontological system (although it can be argued that there is some morality within this system), by dedicating his life to finding Solace, despite how bleak his existence may seem to the reader, the experience of this search is how Nesbit finds a meagre sense of autonomy.

However by the end of the story, a new want for ‘Spook’ is subtly planted. The narrator’s interaction with Nesbit at a pub, he tells his listener about the experience of seeing Nesbit combine the six flavours and tasting Solace: He describes the scene:

“It was like watching an expert at play, like a magician or something. I tell you, I was frozen in space, as these six streams of colour[…] all started to appear in the clear liquid,”

By the end of the story, the narrator speaks of the taste of Solace with fondness. And thus, Nesbit fulfils the original purpose of his design. He is born a human commodified from an unfortunate absence of the ethics and the morality that were not possible due to an unequal distribution of power and an opportunity to further consumerism in a more insidious fashion.

Reference List

Eagleton, T. 2003. Morality (in After Theory). Penguin Books Ltd. London; England.

Noon, J. 2000. Solace (in Pixel Juice: Stories from the Avant Pulp). Anchor. Lansig; MI.

Sandlin, J.A. Callahan, J.L. 2009. Deviance, dissonance, and détournement: culture jammers use of emotion in consumer resistance. Journal of consumer culture, 9 (1):79-115.

[tabloidtoc]

National Examiner, March 22

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson -- his journey from thief to superstar

Page 2: These stars wheely like to bike -- Hugh Jackman, Eva Longoria, Matthew McConaughey, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Russell Crowe, Arnold Schwarzenegger

Page 3: Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez, Al Roker, Pierce Brosnan and Keely Shaye Smith, Matt Damon, Justin Theroux, Ethan Hawke

Page 4: Jennifer Aniston's roles and costumes

Page 6: Susan Sarandon is 74 and single now and she admits she likes to date younger men because they have more inquisitive minds than older guys

Page 7: Golden Age of Glamour -- the shocking beauty tips, tricks and secrets of Hollywood's most stunning stars -- Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford

Page 8: Listen to Granny -- older media influencers are getting into the act on social media, with women in their 80s and 90s earning huge followings and lots of money on Instagram -- while some are all about their head-turning styles, others go with decorating or fitness to create their granfulencer brands

Page 9: Go ahead and binge that new TV show because it's good for your mental health -- new research shows the lack of social connection we're all feeling now because of COVID-19 restrictions can be filled, at least to some degree, by watching TV, reading books and listening to music

Page 10: Lucia DeClerck has some advice for living a long life, and she knows what she's talking about because she's 105 years old -- not only did Lucia live through the 1918 Spanish Flu, she's the oldest person in her nursing home and she just beat COVID-19 -- how does she do it? Gin-soaked golden raisins

Page 11: 8 ways to prevent back pain

Page 12: Stars Still Strong and Sexy As They Hit Milestone Notorious 90 -- Marla Gibbs, Gavin MacLeod, Angie Dickinson, Barbara Eden

Page 13: William Shatner, Olympia Dukakis, Dan Rather, Rita Moreno, Willie Mays, James Earl Jones

Page 14: Dear Tony, America's Top Psychic Healer -- all marriages need care and attention to flourish

Page 15: There are nicer, more medically accurate ways to describe it, but "dead butt syndrome" says it all, that feeling of numbness or achiness from sitting too long -- it is no joke to the many people who experience the discomfort of DBS, otherwise known as lower cross syndrome, gluteal amnesia, or gluteus medius tendinosis -- people who sit at their desk all day for work are particularly prone to this syndrome, where muscle tightness in the hip flexors and weakness in the gluteus medius muscles in the buttock combine to create hip and lower-back pain, leading to numbness -- luckily there are simple remedies you can try to alleviate symptoms and even reverse the syndrome

Page 16: Princess Diana: little girl lost -- Diana's brother Charles Spencer reveals truth about heartbreaking childhood

Page 18: There are about 100 prepaid food receipts fluttering on the wall of Ruma's Deli in Missouri and if you're hungry and your pockets are empty, you can grab one, bring it to the counter and get a free meal, no strings attached

Page 19: Pixel the cat is so creepy-looking even a professional exorcist crossed himself and ran -- Alyson Kalhagen's cat has giant googly eyes, a Halloween pumpkin smile and oversized bat ears and he's also fond of making funny faces but the two-year-old has racked up a fan base online, where more than 12,000 followers find Pixel's peculiarities precious

Page 20: Cover Story -- Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is huge in every way -- the muscle-bound ex-wrestler has starred in dozens of blockbuster films, has tons of projects in the works, millions of bucks and a brand new show about his childhood but he hasn't always been on top of the game -- the dynamo has gone through so many tough times and bad decisions they would sink a lesser man but he's an open book about all of them and how he fought to get to the top every step of the way

Page 22: After a long break to raise her children, Michelle Pfeiffer is on the silver screen again and looking better than ever -- the 62-year-old is in a new film called French Exit, in which she plays a tragic widow who packs up and moves to Paris with her son -- the actress says to return and thrive in an industry formerly known as being obsessed with youth is a gift -- although her husband David E. Kelley has been behind dozens of hits like The Undoing and Big Little Lies, Michelle doesn't want to work with him because she's seen a lot of couples where they seem to have a great marriage, and then they work together and next year they're filing for divorce -- next up, Michelle will play Betty Ford in the upcoming series The First Lady

Page 24: A Texas grocery delivery driver got more than just shelter from the storm when her car became stuck in a customer's driveway -- the people who lived there took her in for five days and made her feel like part of the family

Page 26: Deep Focus -- stunning underwater pix from an unseen world

Page 32: Pet Projects -- family portraits get everyone into the picture -- photographer Tasha Hall creates "farmaly" photos, which include each and every one of the household where they've got two feet, four feet, paws, claws, hooves or wings

Page 34: While everyone loves a comfortable, cozy mattress, having a really good becomes more important with age because a bad one may leave you with aches, pains and posture imbalances but the problem is that these specialty mattresses are very expensive -- fortunately, Medicare may cover up to 80 percent of the cost if you go about this purchase the right way and you'll then be responsible for the remaining 20 percent, as well as any deductible

Page 40: Psychic Self-Defense -- many people are born with a psyche that is naturally sensitive -- there has been a modern-day rise in occultism and practicing psychics and the way of the world at this time had made many more people seek help -- this has produced a far greater awareness of the need to protect and defend ourselves when working in a magical or psychic context -- we are all constantly being bombarded with psychic vibrations, not all of them good

Page 42: 20 Things You Never Knew About Tiger Woods

Page 44: Eyes on the Stars -- Jenny McCarthy is in high spirits as she preps to tape a new episode of The Masked Singer in L.A. (picture), Goldie Hawn works out in L.A. (picture), Jane Fonda has given up on getting hitched -- she has three failed marriages and being single means she can watch whatever she wants on TV, Kelly Clarkson admits that since her marriage soured she no longer considers marriage a fairy-tale thing and she can't imagine being married again, Charlize Theron admits she hasn't made the grade when it comes to homeschooling her kids Jackson and August, Patrick Schwarzenegger is looking to follow in the footsteps of his dad Arnold Schwarzenegger but says his dad hasn't offered any pointers when it comes to a career in showbiz, Bindi Irwin is close to welcoming her little wildlife warrior with husband Chandler Powell and her 17-year-old brother Robert Irwin has some opinions about his sister's ever-expanding figure saying she's massive

Page 45: Duchess Kate and Prince William hold video calls with folks shielding at home during the pandemic to discuss the positive impact of the COVID-19 vaccine (picture), Chrissy Teigen goes shopping with daughter Luna (picture), Mary-Kate Olsen finalized her divorce from French banker Olivier Sarkozy and she was spotted in NYC having dinner with businessman John Cooper, Gordon Ramsay is steamed after being diagnosed with arthritis, Jessie J has a new boyfriend with dancer and choreographer Max Pham Nguyen, Alec and Hilaria Baldwin dropped a bombshell -- they've welcomed their sixth child via surrogate

Page 46: We all get a bit snippy at times, but if you tend to fly into a rage, it's not good for your health or friendships -- here are some simple anger-management techniques you can do any time

Page 47: Curious Earthlings have always been hungry for movies about the moon and its mysteries -- Cat-Women of the Moon, A Trip to the Moon, The Right Stuff, First Man, Gravity, Apollo 13, Hidden Figures

[kar3npage]

One Day We’ll Be Free (But Today is Not That Day)

Inspired by this post from @im-here-fam 

 Read it here on ao3

A unwanted gift arrives in the mail for Neil and the Foxes nearly a year after Baltimore, bringing back bad memories. Or: Neil is given a flashdrive of videos of him while he was on the run. The Foxes all see.

The envelope it comes in is perfectly unassuming. It’s a relatively small, white, cheap envelope, just the same as most everything that comes in the mail. In fact, Neil is so unconcerned about it that he nearly forgets about it on the kitchen counter top, distracted by Kevin who had been watching Exy highlights and wanted to chat about the Trojans (like he always does. Neil doesn’t mind, he likes talking about them too).

It’s not until Andrew gets home with Aaron and Nicky in tow that Neil remembers it again.

The envelope bulges out where a flash drive sits and the return address is some random, unknown place in the state of New York. 

“What’s this?” Nicky asks, refraining from opening it because it has Neil’s name on it. Neil can see the effort it takes him not to mess around with it. He appreciates it, Nicky has been trying not to cross Andrew and Neil’s clear boundaries, but he doesn’t always know what they consider as too far.

“I’m not sure, I got it today in the mail.” Neil gets up to grab it, brushing past Andrew as he does. Aaron moves past them to sit with Kevin. They aren’t friends per se, but they have been trying very hard not to antagonize each other for the sake of Nicky (and Andrew, thought Aaron refuses to admit that).

Andrew’s eyes track Neil’s hands as they tear open the paper and get ahold of the silver flash drive.

Neil catches his eye to see the carefully blank expression on Andrew’s face. He notices the slight crinkle in his brow, mirroring Neil’s own confusion.

“Where’s the return address?” Andrew asks quietly, so Nicky can’t hear. He doesn’t have to worry about that since Nicky has already gotten bored and moved into the other room.

Neil understands the question though. Despite his earlier casual reaction to the mail, the small flash drive is starting to set off alarms in his head. He shows the envelope to Andrew and watches him anxiously to see any hint of recognition at the address. Andrew shakes his head and moves over to the couch.

“Kevin,” Andrew says, showing him the envelope. Kevin looks first at him with glazed eyes, head still stuck in Exy.

“What?”

“Do you know where that is.”

Kevin stares at the paper before shaking his head. He closes the computer after seeing Neil’s expression and focuses his attention on them.

“Why? Who is this from?”

Neil steps forward to answer. “I’m not sure, I got it in the mail this morning. It had this in it.” Neil brandishes the flash drive like it’s a weapon, which it really possibly could be. Neil feels shaky but his hand shows no sign of a tremble. He steps closer to Andrew in an attempt to ground himself.

It’s been over a year since Riko and his father, and Neil has been doing his best to get over the panic that’s been sticking around like a determined collection agency. He has even been talking to Betsy after months of Andrew’s gentle nudging. 

Neil curses at himself over the fact that months of hard work are dashed to the ground with a single, small flash drive.

Kevin is already on the phone with Wymack when the upperclassmen join them in their room.

“It’s not a big deal,” Neil can hear himself saying while Nicky catches the upperclassmen up on the situation. 

Andrew bumps into him with his shoulder to get his attention. “Don’t say everything is fine,” he says in low tones, fixing Neil with a blank glare.

“Wymack’s on his way,” Kevin announces, still studying the flash drive. Another burst of conversation fills the room, with only Renee and Andrew as silent sentinels. 

The ringing of Neil’s phone silences the room all too easily. For a moment, no one moves. Neil grabs the phone off of the living room table where he tossed it earlier. His breath catches when he sees that an unknown number is highlighting his screen. He answers the phone and lifts it to his ear with mechanical motions, mind already leaving his body. Everything about this is too similar to Baltimore. He can’t deal with that again, not after finally being able to catch his breath here. What about Andrew? What about the Foxes?

“Hello?” Neil says into the receiver. His voice comes out stronger than he was expecting it to. Andrew’s hand his hovering over his neck, waiting for the pin to drop.

“You have received a package,” a pleasant female voice says from the other end. “My employer requests that you watch the full video. Do you understand?”

Adrenaline kicks in. “Who is your employer?”

The Foxes react nearly as violently as Neil would like to. Kevin goes sickly pale, sinking into the couch like he can disappear and Nicky grabs his hand, mouth opening but no sound coming out. Allison looks up in alarm towards Renee, who has shifted into a fighting stance. Dan and Matt both take a step toward Neil, but Andrew holds out his hand to hold them back. Even Aaron looks alarmed, half in the bedroom and half out.

“You know the answer to that, Nathaniel. Do you understand his request?” The ‘request’ is clearly an order.

“What would the Master do if we didn’t go through with it?” Kevin makes a pained moan at the mention of Ichirou Moriyama. 

“You also know the answer to that. He would also ask that your teammates watch with you.”

“Why?” Neil’s hand has started shaking, but his voice stays firm. Andrews hand on the back of his neck roots him to the room.

“This is a reminder, Nathaniel. You seem to be getting… comfortable. My employer would like you to remember what your purpose is,” she hangs up, cutting off any other questions that Neil has. He lowers the phone slowly and looks at Andrew. 

Neil takes a deep breathe. “Is everyone here?” Neil asks, assuming that she meant the original Foxes and not the new ones. Dan knows what he means and takes a quick scan of the room. She nods after doing a quick head count.

“We need to watch whatever is on the drive. Courtesy of Ichirou Moriyama.”

Andrew tightens his grip. “Why?”

“They said I’m getting too comfortable. Kevin, where’s Wymack?”

Kevin doesn’t answer, his frame shaking has he tries to suck in deep breathes. Nicky turns to him and starts speaking as calmly as he can, turning his head to check on Andrew and Aaron every once in a while.

Wymack barges in, saving Neil from having to shake Kevin for answers. His face clears in exhausted understanding as he looks around the room. Dan gives him a quick rundown before he even asks, and they all stare at the silver peeking out of Kevin’s tight grip. 

Neil’s head floats outside of his body, Andrew’s grip holding him somewhat close to earth like a child holding the string of a balloon. He watches himself pry the flash drive out of Kevin’s grip and put it into the computer where it sits, forgotten, on the living room table. The room hesitates while he opens the file.

The name of the video shoves Neil solidly back into his body. Nathaniel_Wesninski.avi. Andrew watches him with the same blank expression, but Neil can see the concern in the tension in his shoulders and the quick way that his eyes track Neil’s movements.

“You’re all supposed to watch it with me.”

Wymack’s expression is difficult to read, but he gets the room moving until they are all sitting around the low table. Neil wishes that he knew what was coming. This video could be anything, and his mind keeps coming up with worse and worse options. He waits until they’re all settled before pressing play.

It is so much worse than what his mind has imagined.

It starts with security footage from somewhere in Chicago. Neil is young, 12 or 13, and his mother struggles with one of his fathers goons in an alleyway behind a sketchy tattoo parlor. They had been getting new passports from a less than reliable source. It was a last ditch effort-they had no other option after losing some of the money in a scuffle in Geneva, Illinois. They didn’t have enough money or energy to get to the closest place that Mary had hidden money and they desperately needed to change their names.

Neil watches as his young frame grabs the duffle and runs before another of his fathers men steps out from behind a dumpster and shoots him. There’s a collection gasp in the room and Andrew grabs Neil’s hand, squeezing it almost painfully. Neil squeezes back. He wants to look at Andrew, check to make sure he’s okay but his eyes are glued to the screen. He massages the scar from the bullet wound with his other hand while the scene shifts.

This time it’s shaky phone footage of a speeding vehicle. The clip is short and pixelated, but it’s easy to recognize Neil’s slight frame as the back door of the car opens and a hand shoves him out. The footage rolls up to show the sky as the person holding the phone panics, but it goes back to the road in time to see him rolling on the pavement, then struggling to get up as he clutches his side. 

Neil didn’t know that someone had seen that happen-no one had helped him get back up and back to the motel where his mother was waiting for him.

The montage continues, each scene as gruesome as the last. There’s security camera footage of Mary hitting Neil after she had caught him kissing that girl in Montreal, his father smacking his shoulder with that hot iron after he had disappointed him during that dinner. The images flash by until Neil can’t hear the horrified gasps, see the movement as everyone flinches at the attacks, feel Andrew’s hand squeezing so hard he’s losing blood in his hand. He feels numb and he watches with a clinical interest.

The video feels both far too long and ridiculously short. He’s almost proud of himself for not reacting to anything when the last video rolls around. 

The basement that it films is far too familiar to Neil. It shows Baltimore, Lola and Romero standing behind his father as he cowers in front of him. Neil’s arms show the livid cuts and burns and his face is almost unrecognizable with the blood covering so much of it. Romero and his father move to hold him down while Lola gets the axe. 

Neil’s entire body flinches as he watches the scene. It feels worse to be watching than it did to actually be there. At the time he was in survival mode, just thinking about the next second. Now his head can replay exactly what it looked like as he rolled away just in time when the axe hit the concrete beside him, as Lola held his legs down and his face contorted in pain and terror, and as he crawled away while bullets riddled Romero. 

All Neil can think while he watches the worst moment of his life is that he’s incredibly grateful that there isn’t any sound to the video.

That’s when his lungs decide that he can’t handle any more oxygen. He barely notices the end of the video, too focused on trying to breathe. 

He has no idea how long he sits there, hyperventilating. It feels like forever that his muscle clench tight and shoulders rise in desperation and his body shakes violently.

“Get out of the way, give him some space,” he hears Andrew order, and the space around him gets colder.

“Neil, listen to me.” Andrew says close to his ear, shaking him a bit to get his attention. “Are you listening? It’s over, he’s dead. You’re at Palmetto State, you’re Neil Abram Josten.”

Neil’s lungs scream for air and he can barely hear Andrew over his gasping. 

“Abram.” Andrew says, and Neil nods to show him he’s trying to listen. “Abram,” he says again. His one hand holds the back of Neil’s neck, grounding him, while the other still clutches his hand.

“You aren’t there any more, it’s done.”

“Except it’s not, is it?” Kevin’s frantic voice punctures the air. “Because the Moriyama’s-”

His voice cuts off and there’s the sound of a scuffle. Neil ignores it to listen to Andrew.

“Stop it.” Andrew says, reminding him of that time in the hotel after Baltimore. Neil huffs out a choked laugh and leans his head back against the sofa to take a full breath. 

He stays like that until his breathe evens out and his body only shivers every once in a while. 

“He’s dead?” he says, meaning to say it as a statement but it coming out more as a question. 

Andrew leans over and bumps his forehead gently against Neil’s. “Yes, he’s dead. It’s over.”

Neil nods and opens his eyes finally. The room has emptied out and someone took the computer. Andrew hovers in front of him and Neil is shocked to see that his eyes are shiny. He gives Neil’s hand another squeeze before taking it away.

“I’m going to make tea. Do you want me to call Bee?”

Neil shakes his head no. He’s still getting settled with Betsy, and he knows that he’ll talk to her about this...eventually. Right now though, he just wants to make sure that his Foxes are okay.

“Where did everyone go?” he winces at his hoarse voice.

“Abby’s. We’re all staying there for the night.”

Neil opens his mouth to protest, but nods instead. “Can I have a shower first?” he finally says, though he isn’t sure how he’s going to get the strength to not only stand in a shower but then get to Abby’s after as well.

The simple chores seem like they would take herculean effort after this.

Andrew doesn’t respond, just hands Neil is warm mug and helps him to his feet. “No. I think a bath would be better.” Andrew says and Neil nods in relief.

They don’t have baths in the dorms, so Andrew packs them a bag and Neil follows him to the Maserati. 

His skin feels like it’s just been scrubbed and a part of Neil realizes that everyone just saw his life flash before their eyes. He feels naked after that, and he’s not sure how he’ll be able to face the team now that they’ve seen his darkest moments.

“Stop it.” Andrew says, eyes on the road.

“Stop what?”

“Thinking. You’re hurting my head.” Neil relaxes into a small smile and lets his head lean against the window.

 Stepping into Abby’s house is much harder than Neil thought that it would be. Andrew gives him a few minutes to stand outside in despair, but he eventually opens the door, ignoring the panicked look Neil gives him.

They’ve barely gotten inside before Nicky bowls him over in a tight hug. Neil tentatively hugs him back, not quite sure where to put his hands. Andrew pulls Nicky away when it gets to be too much, giving him a dirty look. Aaron nods in acknowledgement at Neil from the kitchen where he’s been coerced into helping Abby. Wymack and Kevin are nowhere to be seen, but Neil can hear murmuring coming from a bedroom down the hallway.

Matt is the next to approach, Dan in tow. He reaches out before looking at Andrew and tucking his hand back in Dans. 

“You know if you want to talk about anything…” he lets the sentence trail off and Neil nods gratefully. He’s been friends with Matt long enough that he might even be able to take up that offer someday. Dan pushes Nicky out of the way and hugs Neil fiercely, reminding him of that night that he finally told them the truth over a year ago.

Renee and Allison don’t move from the couch, giving Neil space. He’s grateful to that as well.

“You look awful,” Allison says bluntly, and the awkward tension in the air dissipates. Neil huffs and everyone moves back to the kitchen to help Abby.

Andrew nudges Neil forward. “He’s taking over the bath,” he states and Abby nods encouragingly.

“Let me know if you need anything. The last room on the left is yours for however long you need it.” She addresses that to both of them and Neil tries to smile at her.

Andrew ignores everyone else and tugs Neil to the bathroom, locking the door behind them. He gives him a bored look. Neil can tell he’s assessing the situation, checking to see how Neil is dealing with everything.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asks as he pulls clean clothing out of the bag for Neil.

“No. Could you… could you just talk for a bit?” Neil shifts around while he waits for Andrew to fill the tub. 

Andrew checks the water, back to Neil while he gets undressed. He waits for Neil to lower himself into the warm water before starting. He sits on the floor beside the tub and tells Neil about the week. His calm voice fills the air, first going through small stories that different members of the team have told him, then changing to explain the plots of books that Neil has never heard of. 

Finally, Neils muscles are able to relax. His back aches after being so tense for so long. 

Andrew doesn’t stop even as he towels off and puts on the clean sweats and large hoodie that covers all of his scars other than the ones on his face. He avoids looking at himself in the mirror while he changes.

Neil isn’t sure how long they’ve been in there, but Wymack and Kevin are in the kitchen by the time they get out. The colour has come back to Kevin’s cheeks but Neil notices how he sticks close to Wymack while they set the table. He gives him a sheepish nod when he notices Neils eyes on him.

Thankfully no one says anything about Andrew being in the bathroom with him while he bathed. Neil wasn’t sure he could deal with any kind of teasing at the moment, and everyone seems to sense that.

The rest of the group is huddled in the living room. Nicky and Matt are in the process of creating a blanket nest in the center of the room while Dan and Renee speak quietly in the corner and Allison searches through movies to watch.

“What’s this,” Andrew says with his usual lack of inflection.

“We’re going to watch Harry Potter,” Allison announces. Nicky doesn’t pause his blanket arranging, but Matt looks up to give Neil a reassuring smile.

“Don’t worry, you can have the couch,” he tells them. Andrew doesn’t respond, but starts herding Neil to the sofa where a few blankets have been left for them. Neil’s glad that everyone is treating him like normal, he’s not sure he would be able to hold himself together if everyone was overly sympathetic.

“Lie down,” Andrew mutters and tugs him down so he’s leaning against his shoulder.

“Is this okay?”

Andrew rolls his eyes and covers them with a blanket.

“This is the last chance for anyone to say no to Harry Potter,” Allison shouts so Wymack, Abby, and Kevin can here her from the kitchen. Nicky scoffs.

“Even if anyone did, we would have to watch it anyway.”

Allison grins and shoves everyone down into the blanket nest.

Neil has never seen Harry Potter, but he spends most of the movie inspecting the faces of his Foxes.

Kevin has calmed down and talks quietly with Wymack about plays until Nicky shushes them. Aaron is texting, Katelyn, Neil assumes. Everyone else is in a cuddle pile on the floor. It reminds Neil of when he came back from Baltimore. He would think that the reminder would be a bad one, but he can’t help but feel safe with all of them around.

When he looks up, Andrew is watching him instead of the movie.

“Staring,” Neil mumbles quietly.

Andrew nudges him and huffs. “How do you feel.”

Neil takes another look at the people who have wormed their way into his life. After all they’ve been through (most of it was even his fault), and not a single one of them turned him away.

Nicky sends him a bright grin then continues his commentary with Allison.

“Better.”

And for once, Neil isn’t lying. It may be tough now, but he knows that he has help to get back on his feet. 

He falls asleep quickly after that, and no one wakes him until late the next morning.

I recently saw a prompt on tumblr about what would happen if the Foxes saw videos of Neil's past, and so this was born. If you were able to read the books you should be able to read this, and I tried not to explain anything too graphically. There is a description of a panic attack. But since I can't help myself and all I want is for my fav characters to heal, this ends happily:)

[laughingpinecone]

Game Awards 2k19 thoughts:

glad for GEESE Gris and Sekiro’s wins, I trust them implicitly, can’t wait to play one of them and watch the other

The No More Heroes 3 trailer sure was something. Other trailers, not my thing at all (I mean, neither is NMH but I’m glad Suda51 is having fun, you do you and all)

LOVE the temporary demos on Steam:

Spiritfarer lets me hug a snake in a cape? A+++ experience and looks extremely pretty even though it’s not quite my genre (I’ll consider it if it’s not a massive time sink!)

Wooden Nickel just shut up and take my money, and give me the burly men and cute dog games while you’re at it. just. wow. the nature of humanity is just that every so often someone accidentally invents text adventures again but this time they look so pretty

If Conway simulator here (The Drifter) comes out before Act V I’ll flip a table but it looks great, can’t wait to play the demo!

I’m not feeling Eastward 100% but it’s certainly easy on the eyes. The artistry that goes into pixel graphics these days. Damn

“You're a dog wielding a magic brush! Use painting powers to explore, solve puzzles and make friends in this top-town adventure game” amazing, show-stopping, spectacular

Acid Knife, definitely not my thing but definitely super pretty. You have to see it in motion. Gameplay looks interesting too?

And Roki is famously pretty by now. Wishlist’d and keeping an eye out for it even without playing the demo...

[toongrrl-blog]

The Mommy Myth: The War Against Welfare Mothers (Part One)

This gif is from the 1970s film Claudine, a romantic comedy starring James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll about a garbage man and a welfare mother trying to make the relationship and where he helps provide for her home and kids without the social worker checking in. 

We check in with The New Yorker, who took a break from their cartoons to cover a welfare mother named Carmen Santana (not her real name): she is Puerto Rican American (and judging by the text’s descriptions of her “wide nose”, complexion, curly dark hair, and thick lips, she must be Afro-Latina) who weighs over 200 lbs and boy the writer was having a field day describing her heft and body. She has no interest in “national or international events” (common flaw that goes across class lines), she spends her day watching soap operas, cursing in Spanish and giving her many kids “a good cuffing” and they just throw the trash out the window. Her kitchen is filthy and her philosophy is “what will be, will be” (a common thing) and sits all the time even when she is cooking while her kids’ bedroom is decorated with obscene graffiti; she had her first child at age 15 and went on to have eight more kids by three different men and her mother had three children by different men and now Carmen’s daughter is also on welfare. She spends the money from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) on makeup and perfume and hair (honestly wasn’t that a thing at some point? Like Midge Maisel and her mother make sure their husbands never see them without perfect hair and makeup) and junk food for the kids and she also plays the numbers where she spends her winnings on “jewelry , beer, and liquour” and “trips to Puerto Rico”. I guess we are not supposed to sympathize with this woman. 

Carmen was an example of a stereotype that was used to represent and demonize welfare mothers. Johnnine Tillmon, the first chairwoman of the group National Welfare Rights Organization saw welfare and the stereotypes as a feminist issue. 

I’m a woman. I’m a black woman. I’m a poor woman. I’m a fat woman. I’m a middle-aged woman. And I’m on welfare. In this country, if you’re any one of those things---poor, black, fat, female, middle-aged, on welfare---you count less as a human being. 

She even said that the biggest reason that people believe the stereotype of the welfare mother is that they are “special versions of the lies that society tells about all women”, sadly she wasn’t listened to in the mainstream media where welfare mothers were deviants in a culture that valued the rugged individual, relentless hard work and sacrifice, slim bodies aided by Bowflex or Thighmaster, and shiny blond hair with perky smiles. Yo because of this stereotype, women of color with several children are considered suspect. It was also another way to pit moms against moms, the resentment of packing the kids’ lunch and work at a dull 9 to 5 job or scrub the kitchen floors while this stereotype gets to have sex with whoever and drink booze with tax dollars. Even Time magazine went in:

Here’s a few facts: the average welfare family in 1994 had three members, the mother and two children. 39% were White and 37% were Black, African Americans numbered 12% of the national population but were about 35-37% of the welfare population and African Americans were three times as likely as White Americans to live below the poverty level. Only 10% of AFDC mothers had four or more children and 80% had one or two kids and figures in 1993 shown 75% of adults left welfare within two years and 1/2 of single mothers worked while on welfare and 1/3 were working to supplement the minuscule allotment and get off from unemployment. But that was lost on the media that focused on families with two or more generations on welfare (a tiny fraction of welfare recipients) even focusing on unwed teen welfare moms because they were...SHOCKING! Only 1% were teen mothers. Welfare mothers were known only by first name and she lived in the urban decay of New York, Camden (New Jersey), Chicago, or Detroit; they were black and unmarried and had a bunch of kids who don’t share a common biological father and she smoked and painted her nails and gave soda to her baby (OMG imagine 2010s soda freaks) and her face was pixelated in the media. Some of them were depicted as cynical about life and motherhood, it wasn’t sexy for them and at least they felt ambivalence (which was soooooo disco era). 

Then came the 1990s where the moderate Democratic Clinton administration introduced “Welfare Reform” where President Bill Clinton ended “welfare as we know it” and he was just following his predecessors: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush (the first) regarding their attitude towards welfare recipients. The Welfare to Work program who were being trained by job placement programs that prepared them for low-paying jobs in retail and in service and the resources for job training were limited (also if your hours took you away from your kids?). Also it was hard for welfare to work moms working to move up in their jobs and often mostly got gigs like seasonal retail. 

The depiction of welfare mothers was different from the celebrity mom: she wasn’t ascribed emotions where her eyes welled up with tears or laughed, she wasn’t well lit with a light or a rosy focus, never seen holding her child up or clutching the child and magazines like Redbook or McCall’s never did a cover story with a welfare mom and her kids done up and showing the readers fun things they do with little or no money or touring New York City on $10 for a day or games to play while waiting in long lines (honestly that is a good idea, someone pay Susan and Meredith if the magazines do that). Also if you were a woman of color, especially a young one or a poor one (or both) you weren’t supposed to have the “baby lust” so gushed about in celebrity mom profiles; trust me I grew up a Latina kid in Central California and many older women like my mom would worry about the girls that want to have babies so bad or fall in love hard and fast, a young Karen Wheeler in 1967 can give all to family and babies and staying home but it is more precarious for a young girl of color. 

The media depiction of poor people wasn’t always so negative: political scientist Martin Gilens found that when the “War on Poverty” began, where the Lyndon B. Johnson administration focused on eliminating poverty and started programs like Head Start rather than piss on poor people, coverage focused on poor white people in rural areas like Appalachia or in the Rustbelt where mines or factories closed down, these were the faces of The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family who fought against hardship on their way to a better life. After Michael Harrington published his book The Other America, public support for ending poverty was strong. But then came the riots in Watts, Newark, and Detroit (just a few) where mostly people of color fought back against law enforcement and the media used images of African-Americans to illustrate their pieces on welfare, which reinforced stereotypes about welfare and as the coverage became more negative, the skin color got darker (even though statistics then and now showed many more white recipients of welfare)

How about how the face of welfare became so feminized? In the 1930s, when the Welfare program and Social Security began under the New Deal by President FDR, a lot of women of color were barred from welfare because of discriminatory practices, this changed with the Civil Rights Movement which opened up some doors for women of color to get assistance for their children and households. Before the Welfare recipient was faceless or usually a man, who got rich off welfare and bought Cadillacs with the money, something that Richard Nixon really clung to and he asked Johnny Cash to perform the song “Welfare Cadillac” at a White House event sparking controversy. Indeed when Cash met with Nixon, he gave him a private concert with songs that were more compassionate and less reactionary than what Nixon wanted. In the early 1960s, magazines like Look or Reader’s Digest wrote to readers about women who sent their many children to beg for money while the mother ate steak with their boyfriend, or worse, spent the money on narcotics and kept giving birth to more than 10 kids. The image of poor, fertile mothers on taxpayer money was more infuriating than that of a able-bodied man getting the money, but making welfare moms work was shocking (as the system was designed for widows to stay home with their children and not worry about money), even a stinging David Brinkley chafed at leaving kids at a daycare center...it would cost the taxpayer more.

Ronald Reagan coined the term “welfare queen” (look it up) and made exaggerated anecdotes and given how people were drawn to him (looking at you Mike and Nancy’s parents), he was believed despite him not citing sources or studies. Reagan voters fell for the image of a welfare mother who spent money for fancy cars, vacations, designer clothes, and played the system (there were a  few like Dorothy Woods, but again if this were common, the landscape of the inner city would look a lot different...) It was a dark time, the Religious Right took control, Proposition 13 in California put a limit on property taxes and started many tax revolts to limit government spending, and let’s not forget Ronald Reagan opposed the following:

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Fair-Housing Legislation in California

Legislation to declare Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday

How does that Reagan/Bush ‘84 sign look Ted and Karen?

Stay tuned.....

[tegan-the-peach-blog]

I met Anna because she flatly

I met Anna because she flatly offered to talk to me — clothed or unclothed — in exchange for money. Camming has become a huge part of the sex industry over the past decade, and it’s continuing to grow. Feminism has come to be in every essence of my being, and having somebody question my core beliefs was incredibly jarring.But her words lingered in my mind all night. Unfortunately there's a lot of girls who do turn to webcamming for the wrong reasons, especially when it comes to money, and a lot of people feel guilty for doing it. Anna embodies almost every delightful stereotype an American brain can hold over a young girl from Romania. Youre not sharing it with 100 thousand other people. But the English teacher, Andrea, has a remit that goes far beyond language skills.One had a wife who insulted her constantly. Inside, Studio 20 feels like the Paramount Pictures of camming. She says that if she ever was, she'd just "ask then [sic] how hard they came and if i'll be seeing them as one of my regulars," which is just good business sense.And that is not to say that there haven’t been bad times, like in any job. Peel away the sex and pixels and money and you're left with the cloudy truth about the internet's relationship status with these on-demand entertainers: it's complicated.The next step is prostitution. I see that now.

Women already have plenty of dick pics, thanks. 20 bucks for six hours of sitting around in my underwear, net­flirting with dudes. Unless of course you want to do shows for gay men, which she says a lot of straight male cam models find "strange," probably because those guys assumed they'd be models for women. But, like Domino, heard things about the lucrative streaming flesh trade — a recommendation from a male friend who convinced her to strip from his cramped two-room apartment as he did the same in the other room.Before she started stripping — both online and off — Domino was a suit: working at a Fortune 500 company as a graphic designer. Entirely unsurprisingly, it's impossible to get in touch with any of the people who actually run these networks. To this end, Studio 20 employs trainers, a psychologist and an English teacher. Instead: a bright, modern apartment inhabited by a bright, modern girl. Cant you read the profile that says, Australian?Which on the surface would seem like a less daunting task, but for me it left me stumped. She claims to have almost no "real" friends off of the internet, but is consistently cheery, and enormously talkative. Money trickled in. She says the last three weeks have been "the slowest in three years...very bad. Still, she's a rich woman in an industry of destitution.Streamate itself is hard to pin down. I was naked underneath my pink robe, hair extensions falling out, one eyelash stubbornly stuck on.

But when her camera first flipped on for me, I didn't see the stained walls of a prostitute's den. Heidi sells her underwear for $100 and has performed sex acts on other girls for her followers.This accounts for the fact that those who talked to the BBC in Bucharest preferred to use their cam name, or just a first name.Sometimes self-­regulation regarding finances is the best option for some people: Ive been treated better and more fairly as a Cam Girl and nude model than I was in my last retail job where I, no word of a lie, got fired for looking sad. Even so, it’s clear that Ona Artist really likes her job. Part of the misconception comes from the fact that it's not policed. And so far all Id done in a chat room was flash my boobs for an influx of tokens. This is my art, and whilst I am making myself sexually desirable, nobody can objectify me, as I hold that power. At times, it's hard to believe Mila even enjoys the work. I stopped by one of her more recent shows, and she sat, almost motionless, with her top unbuttoned, literally wincing. One of the cam girls, Rosie Renee, became a camgirl in May because she wanted a job where she could choose her own hours and work from home.Odds are, you're referred by a newspaper or website listing. But it's enough for her to be completely self-sufficient, albeit weary of the whole thing sometimes. At times, it's hard to believe Mila even enjoys the work. I stopped by one of her more recent shows, and she sat, almost motionless, with her top unbuttoned, literally wincing. Anna embodies almost every delightful stereotype an American brain can hold over a young girl from Romania.

CONTINUED BELOW...

[lesbiyang-xiao-long-blog]

The massive LiveJasmin

The massive LiveJasmin would have you believe it's owned by "Gestao e Investimentos, Lda", a company based in an autonomous region of Portugal — and has a host of fraud complaints lodged against one of its subsidiaries. But a recent tax bust against LiveJasmin's Hungarian CEO Gattyán György — one of the richest men in Hungary — and his corporation, Dolcer Holdings, shows just how muddled the corporate picture is. No doubt deliberately.Entirely unsurprisingly, it's impossible to get in touch with any of the people who actually run these networks. None of the above entities from LiveJasmin, Streamate, or MyFreeCams responded to efforts to confirm that they do indeed exist and have some affiliation with the websites in question. All that's available is a semi-robotic technical support chat, which fields basic questions about how to use the site and credit card processing. These web cam kingpins might as well not exist. We don't know where the money goes.Some sessions earn her $10 – others $2000 depending on how much the men on the other side of the screen are willing to give her in tips. Exactly! That's where I got my first taste of sex positivity. Going through my relationships and going to university I was like ‘woah, nobody thinks the way I do, I must be weird'. But being a webcam model, I realised everyone is into something different, they just feel like they can't talk about it.

And that is not to say that there haven’t been bad times, like in any job. There have been mornings where I have come home with bruises all over my knees, my makeup sweated off, after a busy night. I have felt overworked and underappreciated by my bosses. Sometimes after a shift I have an overwhelming need to curl up in the arms of someone who loves me just because I crave that intimacy that I don’t get when I am at work because I am so self-sufficient there. And I am lucky that I have people who do love me, who can hold me after work and let me be still for a moment. I know that not everybody has that and I am never ungrateful for that privilege.Would I recommend it? It's up to the individual (obviously), just make sure you do your research and find other women in the industry to go to for advice.It's very possible, but if they do no one has ever said it to my face. I used to be in porn production for big companies, and that was probably the only time I experienced negativity. I told a guy about what I do and he was like I don't agree with porn. These women are being forced to do something they don't want to do. It's degrading. He did bring up some good points but I argued that it was the same as any office job. Your boss is going to fuck you over or you don't get paid, right? It's the same. At least with webcamming, I work for myself and I can choose how much I earned, and if nobody wanted to pay me that [amount], they wouldn't come to me.It happened through a friend of a friend of mine. Thats usually how these things go. She had found, through a network of girls, a website that paid decent money for cam girling if you put the work in. I signed up, submitted my name, ID, bank details and some photos and within 24 hours I was approved as a bonafide Cam Girl ­with no bloody idea of what I was doing.

"I usually go for dresses, lingerie, or leather," she says.If you think cam girls — those flirty naked characters that plague porn site pop-up ads — are raking in easy money, you're right. If you think cam girls are bleakly stripping online out of desperation, you're also right. Peel away the sex and pixels and money and you're left with the cloudy truth about the internet's relationship status with these on-demand entertainers: it's complicated.In a corner of the room there is a large computer screen, an expensive camera and behind them, professional photographers' lights. Dozens of pairs of eyes may view Lana in her room online in real time via dedicated adult websites. But she does not make any money until a member asks her to "go private" in a one-to-one webcam session.Entirely unsurprisingly, it's impossible to get in touch with any of the people who actually run these networks. None of the above entities from LiveJasmin, Streamate, or MyFreeCams responded to efforts to confirm that they do indeed exist and have some affiliation with the websites in question. All that's available is a semi-robotic technical support chat, which fields basic questions about how to use the site and credit card processing. These web cam kingpins might as well not exist. We don't know where the money goes. CONTINUED BELOW...

[millimallow]

pt. 4 - a new religion

part 4 of the world of owa anthology.

inside an arcade is a new hierarchy. a new priest, a new crown, a new war.

dozens of people crowd around a single arcade machine, eyes fixated on the screen as it flashes. blue, pink, purple, both the case and the game itself glow radiant in the darkness like a neon fire. intricately decorated with holographic tinsel and silver resin jewellery, a halo is formed. a modern shrine for the ancient people of u’baani. it has its worshippers, and it has its priests. my history lessons in the modern glass-and-steel central academy told me of the slow death our traditional gods had experienced in the cities. but wearing my intricate getup for the opportunity to offer myself to the legacy of champions? i knew better. there was nothing wrong with becoming a prophet in your own right.

before a match begins, we turn our hands so that the palms face up. our right hand men wash them gently with cloths dipped in sacred water for luck, all in order to remove sweat and potential tampering. who said there’s no honour amongst competitors? a whole crowd gathers beforehand and watches on. they’re anticipating the match, but they’re also checking to make sure everything has gone neatly and to order. if anything is awry, someone will no doubt catch hell for it.

today i’ve been careful. you have to, when the stakes are this high. busy city streets can distract you easily- one moment a shrill pubescent catfolk tries to sell you some fluorescent lemonade from a refrigerated cart, then you’re lost, and when you’re lost you’re late. i’m here at the allbalm arcade before anyone else gets there. it’s a matter of principle more than anything, but there’s also no shame in warming up at the machines so long as you don’t overdo it and burn out. though even if i arrive out of match time, it’s impossible to not draw attention.

he was already there.

my rival is a bright young thing named keyr’lin coo’per. i only met him a few months ago, as he recently returned from the coastline and a fairly exclusive boarding school. he’s a mangrove elf, like me, but his family is involved in some intricate computer-y business and it hasn’t been hard for them to get rid of him somewhere remote. it’s not apparent they’ve gotten much for their money, though, as, well… he’s proven himself a competitor for my dominion over the local joint. must have spent a lot of time in the local arcade and less at his fancy-boy brick school. now though- he’s on my territory. he’s wearing his silver shimmer jacket, blinding me as i get closer as it refracts the light from the screen. maybe it’s purposeful, maybe it’s not, but i suddenly want to leap at him like a wild fucking animal. especially when i can see that he’s smirking. smirking right in my face.

“i know that you turn up early, clever boy.”

“you’ve got some nerve, new boy.” i’m trying to match his mocking tone, but he’s somehow completely apathetic to my taunt.

“we don’t have to fight like this. we’re competitors, not enemies. let’s get down to business.”

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word has gotten around quickly that we’re here. informal legend of our competition spreads instantly amongst the people who gather each day, it can be replaced just as soon. neither of us has prepared whatsoever, and i’m increasingly perturbed by keyr’lin’s apparent lack of a nerve. it’s okay, i tell myself. it’s all about what i show him, everything else only exists to distract me. so i put on my confident face, bear the magenta neon ceiling lights, and let the young woman standing next to me wash my palms down with a soft pink rag. old rituals demonstrated to us come back to me like an instinct. how a cleric could meditate in front of an idol on their knees for days on end just to prove their devotion. how it exceeded all others. how travellers would stoop behind them to wash their feet clean of insect bites in the tropical weather.

the name of the game is overdrive exe. it’s a racing game, rendered in a pixelated fashion, providing a surface-level simplicity of challenge and objective. be the fastest, control the best, optimize your time. one of my areas of expertise. me and keyr’lin take to the seats in front of the two machines, long worn down, now just black leather pedestals. i observe his straddle- it’s neat, confident and exudes control. then i match him as we select our boats and accessories of choice. a lot of strategy goes into this, but in the moment a crazy idea comes to me- i want to beat him at his own game. a countdown begins as my hand hovers over the control button, firm on the joystick, ready for an explosion of light. he’s whistling something under his breath as it happens. i whistle my own call to power; one of the old songs we sung in our religious instruction.

let the waves carry me to shore, provideth me with calm oceans. my land where the sugarcane grows tall, tall as the sun in a blue sky. seaweed in the water, becometh my gentle guide. no more shall the ocean be full full of the tears of my ancestors.

push, push. push as hard as i can go then further. keep myself in the space i have, let no other overtake my great desire. there is a sign in the light. you must try. it flickers, and i become heady with its instruction, so as that my eyes fill with the great flurorescent blaze. the rush overtakes me, all until i hear a familiar tune. the finishing song and the ring of a plastic bell.

did i win?

“draw!”

i turn to keyr’lin. his eyes are glassy and he’s not blinking. there’s an expression of shock on his face, but it’s frozen there, and his body won’t twitch when i move my hand over to him gently. on the screen is his score- the very same as mine.

down to the finest second. and he’s not responding to the finishing call, either, hand still firm with its grip on the controls.

rendereth my enemies inert and shipwrecked,

so longer i can offer myself to you.

what in the world had just happened?

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on... a few games

[discussion of A Case of Distrust, Gray Skies Dark Waters, and The Lion’s Song below the cut. there won’t be any major spoilers, but I will be at least alluding to some things that you might be better off not having heard allusions to if you want to play the games.]

Thoughts on A Case of Distrust

I heard rumblings about A Case of Distrust on Games Twitter, and, while the pitch sounded enticing, there wasn’t any demo and I didn’t want to buy a game I knew next to nothing about. I put hands on it for a few minutes at PAX East this weekend and immediately bought it from the developer. (I confess the discounted PAX price helped.)

The enticing pitch is as follows: You play PC Malone, the only female private detective in 1924 San Francisco. PC mostly gets adultery gigs - snoop jobs for suspicious wives - but snags her first proper case from a shady rum runner investigating some death threats he’s received. Things get dicier when her client shows up dead the following morning. The art and presentation are killer, the downtempo jazz soundtrack is choice, and I appreciate the way the game leans in to having a female protagonist in a classically male role.

This isn’t some alternate-history 1924, where women are treated with equal respect to men. PC quit the police force after the death of her biggest advocate, her uncle Lewis, knowing that none of the other policemen would let her work real cases. So she struck out as a private dick, and is constantly underestimated by the suspects she interrogates. (Though it wasn’t explicitly mentioned in my playthrough, it’s a safe bet she goes by PC instead of Phyllis so that potential clients won’t know she’s a woman until they meet her in person.) (Also PC is interactive fiction speak for Player Character.)

The whole of the interface is a fairly robust notetaking system, where you can interrogate any suspect about any statement made by any other suspect or any evidence you’ve seen. Getting new bits of information and using them to contradict a suspect’s story is the whole game. It has one thing to do and it does it well: letting you construct a theory of what happened in your head and test every piece before making an accusation. It’s something a lot of mystery games imply while actually doing the hard parts for you, and, while I wouldn’t say A Case of Distrust completely forsakes handholding, it knows what the fun bits are and lets you do them yourself.

What the game is missing is... a plot. A Case of Distrust has a complete first act: it has an inciting incident with the rum runner hiring PC, it sets up its themes about PC’s feelings of failure as she tries to live up to her uncle’s example, it introduces its central characters and hints at its world of seedy speakeasies and businesses that serve as criminal fronts, it has an unexpected (and very artfully directed) dream sequence, and the first act ends with the rum runner’s death.

It also has an ending.

Between them, there’s no real plot. There’s a mystery, for sure, and what hardboiled detective story would work without one? And it opens with an excellent nod to the scene in The Long Goodbye where Philip Marlowe fails to feed his cat. But it doesn’t have the scene where Sam Spade meets with Gutman and then passes out from a spiked drink, or where Jake Gittes sleeps with Evelyn and then tails her car through Los Angeles, or where Brendan Frye gets thrown in Tug’s trunk and driven to meet with The Pin. There’s no rising or falling action, no setups or payoffs, no setbacks or reversals. There’s just the mystery. Every suspect stays right where you left them - one guy sits in a chair waiting for his barber to get back for the entire game - and the only thing that happens between you and any of them is conversation. There’s not even much in the way of red herrings; you can have a bad theory, but there’s never anything that sends you down the wrong path to eventually turn up nothing.

Even the threads about PC trying to be a proper detective in a world that doesn’t take her seriously, though not exactly dropped, are unsatisfactorily resolved. (Frankly, the defiance of gender politics would go down easier if the female suspects weren’t the same old noir tropes, jealous gangster molls with no real agency.) The whole affair ends pretty abruptly, save for an obligatory sequel tease.

The game is worth playing, certainly - more mysteries should have that notetaking system - but I hope the next one recognizes that the mystery itself is the least important part of a noir. It’s what happens around the mystery that makes or breaks it.

Thoughts on Gray Skies, Dark Waters

Another mystery of sorts, though, in this one, the female detective is simply a daughter trying to find out why her mother vanished the year before. There aren’t any interrogations or recovered murder weapons, just a girl wandering her home town and asking her friends and family what they know.

It’s hard to discuss Gray Skies, Dark Waters without addressing its production values. I’ve played a number of microbudget indie games in my day, but even small-scope adventure games have a hard time looking polished without a decent amount of money. Gray Skies, Dark Waters is maybe the roughest-hewn game I’ve ever bought off of Steam. There’s no character animation to speak of: main character Lina has a walk cycle and that’s it. Everyone else has a talk animation and a standing/sitting-in-place idle animation. (This is another game where everyone stays in the same place waiting for you to come talk to them for the entire game; only one character shows up in a second place.) No one’s lips move when they talk. No one moves their hands when ostensibly handing inventory objects to each other. Voice actors are very clearly recorded using different mics, because the audio quality differs wildly from character to character, sometimes from line to line spoken by the same person.

I want to say this up front because I want to get it over with. I came up on TIGSource, I’m used to rough edges. None of this matters if the story is good.

I’m not sure the story is good.

It’s definitely not bad, though it’s hard to talk about without spoiling anything because the game is very short. Lina and her family have been living alone with her dad for the last year, ever since their mom disappeared. Much of the game’s appeal is in the details: Looking for clues means hearing Lina’s musings on her house, and, by extension, her life before and after her mother’s disappearance. Talking to her siblings is one part investigation and several parts painting a picture of different ways children deal with grief. And, frankly, the dialogue and characterizations are quite good. Some of Lina’s poetic commentary is overwrought, and the siblings can be a bit one-note, but foibles of a talented writer who hits the mark more often than she misses.

The game’s biggest setback is that there’s just not much mystery to the mystery. The explanation is not the kind of thing you’d assume from the outset, but you’re going to have it figured out by the midpoint. This makes the gameplay feel less like uncovering a narrative and more going through the motions. It can almost feel like a third-person walking sim, where you’re just moving through the narrative, not really directing yourself through it.

But I like walking sims, so that’s not really a complaint either.

On the whole, I think there’s a lot of value to playing a game like this. I’m not sure I’ve experienced an adventure game that was this comfortable with sadness. Plenty of games have broken my heart before, but not many are about the laborious process of mending one. If it has a failing, it’s that it’s insubstantial. This isn’t a portrait of grief or of family life, it’s a sketch. It has barely enough time or budget to glimpse the big picture before its over. But it’s a big picture worth glimpsing, I suppose, of a subject rarely addressed in games.

I’d call it a worthwhile experience. That’s not quite a recommendation, but it’s not not a recommendation, either.

Thoughts on The Lion’s Song

Of these three games, The Lion’s Song is the most ambitious. It’s a pastiche of pre-war Austria’s art and science culture, viewed through three vignettes and a coda. Each character is devoted to a particular passion and is trying to create their first real masterpiece: Wilma is trying to compose a symphony (the titular Lion’s Song), Franz is trying to break through a person block with his painting, and Em is trying to write a mathematical proof but has to disguise herself as a man to work with other mathematicians.

The gameplay is largely about how each character manages the personal issues that both impede and inform their work. The player helps Wilma tune out the parts of her environment that distract her and focus on things that give her inspiration; helps Franz pick and converse with his portrait subjects to try and locate their essence; and helps Em extrapolate a proof about objects in conflicting states from her own dual existence as both man and woman. This is all done very artfully, with a number of visualization tricks and some gorgeous sepia pixel art.

The writing is also quite lovely across the board.

The weakest link is the final chapter. I’m not the first to say so. Each episode has cameos of the characters from the other chapters, and the episodes are even more tightly related thematically. But I’m not the first to say that the ending, which aims to tie them all together narratively shoots for the moon and lands somewhere short of the stars. What it’s going for is a sobering reality check on what happened to the mini-Renaissance in Europe at the dawning of Modernist thought, and it’s very poignant on paper, but in practice it just comes out of nowhere, to the point where it feels like a cheat. In an episodic story where you rely on the ending to tell you what it was all about, not sticking the landing casts a shadow backwards on the whole series.

The other elephant in the room is the problem with telling stories about genius artists: You have to be a genius to pull it off.

The devs can’t really sell Wilma as a genius composer if we’re going to hear snatches of her symphony, or Franz as a genius painter if they’re going to show us his paintings, or Em as a mathematical prodigy if they’re going to show us her proof, if any of these things are not made by actual geniuses. The music is lovely, but it’s being sold as holding its own with Stravinsky; the art is pretty, but it’s sold as holding its own with early Duchamp; Em’s proof is either based on real math but simplified until it’s unrecognizable, or it’s gobbledygook that’s meant to sound sort of like math.

I never want to be the guy who asks “why is this a game,” but one might pull this off better in a non-audio/visual medium. (Then again, Marc Estrin tried to pull this thing where he’d make up “genius” symphonies and ballets that took pages and pages to describe in Insect Dreams, and that book was insufferable.)

As an analysis of how artists and scientists push through creative blocks, it’s a bit over-simple. But as a kaleidoscope of the artistic culture and the social and political pressures of Vienna at the turn of the century, it’s kind of wonderful. (Or, at least, 3/4 of it is.) The first episode is free and the whole endeavor is worth checking out.