#my wii still works very well

[anadorablekiwi]

12 year old Kiwi would simultaneously be Very Very Disappointed and also Very Proud

[intothedysphoria]

He hadn’t been talking to the guy for even five minutes and Steve’s stomach was already turning itself in knots.

He was like 6 foot, just short of Steve’s height, looked like Eros had become mortal and Steve was pretty sure the guy was trying to sell him drugs. Maybe. He had the same look as Munson who definitely was a dealer. Was it classist to think that?

Regardless, Steve did what he always did when stuck in a conversation with someone beautiful and fucked off.

You absolute fucking loser Steve Harrington.

Robin later came and berated him for being rude. The guys name was Billy, he’d just moved from California and he was just trying to make friends. Steve had evidently not taken any of that information in while panicking.

He sent a quick message via WhatsApp (where else) to apologise and then felt guilty for five days afterwards.

Billy sent back a fairly frosty reply and Steve got the message that they were not going to be the best of friends.

Lucky for him, Billy seemed to be in regular contact with everybody else Steve knew. Even his mom. Fucking typical.

He had a physical embodiment of his shame chasing him around and that shame was blonde.

Claudia insisted that Billy wasn’t even that upset anymore and if Steve just talked to him it would be fine. Steve enjoyed not getting punched in the face and declined that offer.

One person Steve found he did get along well with was Billy’s younger sister, Max. She was a fiery kid with an imagination that veered towards the gruesome and bright red hair. She said Billy could be a bit volatile but he’d cool down. He always did.

Billy did seem to warm to Steve after seeing his closeness to Max. Minutely. Like ice thawing.

Watching how easily Billy talked to Byers, the kids, fucking Munson, Steve let what he’d always known sink in. Steve was a dick.

A dick who was still somehow invited to the Corroded Coffin Halloween concert. Billy was up at the front, practically sitting on the stage, while shouting to the drummer. Steve was sipping a Coke Zero and trying not to have flashbacks to highschool. God, he was awful to everyone in this room.

Tommy was also there for some reason. Probably because he was also obsessed with Billy. It was kind of sad but also nice to be able to talk to someone who wasn’t constantly judging him.

Max seemed like she was kind of freaking out by the latter half of the concert so Steve made sure she got home safe. It was the least he could do, considering Billy seemed like he was busy breaking up a fight.

He got a text the next morning. It was a hell of a lot less curt than the last time Billy had messaged him.

“Thanks for taking care of my little sister Harrington. I misjudged you.”

Max was overjoyed that they were finally getting along. In her words “I knew you two assholes were perfect for each other.”

Perfect was a stretch. Mainly Billy just wasn’t glaring at him anymore. And sending him tiktoks pretty much daily. And inviting him to gigs.

Shit, maybe they were friends. That was novel. Most people didn’t come around to Steve after deciding they hated him.

Steve decided to just ask Billy outright and got the worlds most incredulous yes as an answer.

“You’re funny Harrington” that’s what he’d said.

Steve could live with being funny. Sure, it wasn’t the adjective he wanted to be described with by practically the man of his dreams but it wasn’t the worst.

A new routine formed after the establishment of friendship.

Billy would swing by Steve’s apartment every morning, 9AM on the dot. They’d have coffee and a couple of cigarettes, Billy would kick Steve’s ass at Wii golf and they’d go out to get a pastry together before work. Then they’d meet up after work, Steve would attempt to cook dinner and Billy would stay until about 7:30PM to get back to Max.

When he told Robin of his triumph with Billy, she stared at him very seriously and asked how long they’d been dating. Steve responded that they weren’t. Billy hadn’t said anything about dating so they weren’t. Obviously.

Robin stared at him and slowly shook her head sadly. Rude.

Steve was definitely not Billy’s type. Billy used words like obsequious in casual conversation, he was a hot nerd. Looks wise, Steve had been described as a “solid 7.5” but he was not smart. At all.

Billy was probably interested in Munson, with his constant long speeches about Lord of the Rings. They were so similar it would make perfect sense for them to be.

Well, Steve thought that until he saw Eddie making out with Jason Carver. Huh. Life was full of surprises.

Billy had started sleeping over at Steve’s. Making breakfast for Steve. Sometimes cuddling Steve.

They were just really good friends. Who fucked weekly and were living together.

And had…………matching rings. For like, friendship reasons.

Steves had an emerald on. Billy was just really thoughtful.

Robin looked like she was going to start tearing her hair out, grabbed his face and said “Steve. You’re engaged. I don’t know why Billy is allergic to using words but you are engaged.”

Casually asking Billy if they were engaged had Billy going extremely red and mumbling something about “if you want to be”.

Fuck yes.

They’d been in a relationship for like two years and Steve insisted they celebrate both their anniversary and engagement immediately.

California would be wonderful and Steve had a feeling Billy would agree.

[lives-in-midgard]

Halloween With The Maximoff Family

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x reader including Billy and Tommy Maximoff

Summary: You celebrate your first Halloween with your girlfriend Wanda and her kids.

Word Count: 1150

A/N: Hey everyone! Happy Halloween and I hope you like this Halloween fic with the Maximoff family. This fic takes place in the same universe as my Maximoff family easter fic.

Masterlist

It’s been a few months since you, Wanda, and the boys celebrated Easter together. It was such a beautiful day and the day they called you mom for the first time. You remember it like it was yesterday. Billy was the first one to say it, you were playing Wii together and he suddenly said it. Later that day when you and Wanda brought them to bed, they both said “goodnight mom” to you. You were so happy and so was Wanda. A lot had happened since then. You celebrated birthdays together; you had a lot of fun at the summer activities, helped take care for them when they were sick, and moved in a few weeks ago.

You just finished work and were on your way home. It still felt new to call it home, even though you’ve spent a lot of time there since the beginning of the year, but now it’s truly your home. You were still a few meters away from the house when you immediately noticed that something was different. As you approached the house, you finally saw what it was. There were Halloween decorations in front of the house, on the windows and even on the door. You parked your car in front of the house and walked to the door. You looked at the decorations and chuckled because you didn’t know that Halloween was such a big deal at the Maximoff family. Before you opened the door, you suddenly heard screaming from the inside and then went in.

“Boys it’s enough.” Wanda said and then noticed you. There was as much decoration inside the house as there was outside.

“Mom is here.” Billy shouted and was running towards you. He hugged you and then Tommy ran to you too. You hugged them both and smiled at Wanda, who was now hanging a garland on the wall with her magic. You walked up to her and hugged her from behind.

“Hey, my love.” You whispered and Wanda turned around to face you.

“Hey detka.” She smiled and you kissed.

“I didn’t know Halloween is such a big deal here. “You said after a while.

“You don’t like it.” Wanda assumed but you shook your head.

“No, I was just surprised.”

“Billy and Tommy love it and it’s also a memory of mine. I loved to celebrate it with Pietro.” Wanda told you and you started to smile and took her hand. When you turned around you saw the boys putting up decorations somewhere.

“But you can be sure that everything here will be decorated for Christmas as well because that’s my favorite holiday.” You confessed and Wanda chuckled.

“I can’t wait for that.” You smiled at each other and were about to kiss when suddenly Billy and Tommy ran towards you and Wanda. You pulled away and looked at them.

“Mom, do you want to go trick or treating with us?” Billy said and looked at you. You turned to Wanda who was smiling.

“Of course, I want.”

“That’s so cool, we’re gonna have so much fun.” Billy happily said and Tommy agreed with his brother.

“But you have to help me find a costume.”

“That’s okay, I also don’t have one yet. We can go to a shop later.” Wanda suggested and the boys smiled. You had dinner and then decided to go to the shop Wanda had suggested earlier. Wanda drove and you sat in the passenger seat while the boys sat in the back. Wanda turned on the radio and smiled. You could see that she was really happy with the kids and you by her side. When you arrived at the shop you all walked around, looking for a costume for you and Wanda. After a while you found the perfect costume for the two of you.

The days until Halloween passed very quickly and it was finally the day. You woke up to Wanda snuggled up to you and placing a gentle kiss on your forehead.

“Good morning detka.”

“Morning Wands.” You mumbled because you were still tired. After lying in bed and cuddling with your wonderful girlfriend for a while, you decided to get up and get ready for the day. You and Wanda both went into the bathroom and brushed your teeth next to each other. During the breakfast the boys were really looking forward to the day and couldn’t wait to go from house to house.

The time has come, and everyone went to their rooms to change. You had to smile when you saw Wanda in her costume.

“What?” She asked shyly.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” You said with a grin, walked closer to her and pulled her into a kiss. You finally had a moment to yourself when you heard Tommy from the other side of the door.

“Mama we are finished.” Wanda groaned and you chuckled.

“We’re coming boys!” Wanda yelled and gave you one last kiss before going out of the door.

“Oh, Billy, Tommy you look so cool.” That’s what you said when you saw their costumes. You all went into the living room, picked up your buckets from the table and went outside. Billy and Tommy led the way while you and Wanda walked behind them holding hands. They went from house to house and Wanda and you followed them. You really had fun and laughed a lot with them. Sometimes a child jumped out and tried to scare you. Once a child managed to scare you, you screamed and squeezed Wanda’s hand stronger. The kids laughed because they scared you, but Wanda looked at you worried.

“Everything’s okay.” you tried to reassure her.

“You sure detka?” Wanda asked and you nodded. You walked to a few more houses until Wanda decided it was time return home. But before they walked back home, they had one more house left. Tommy knocked on the house next door and it only took a few seconds for Agnes to open the door.

“Hey boys finally you’re here. Look I have something for you.” She said and gave them some sweets. Before you went back home, Agnes smiled at you and Wanda and said she would like to come over tomorrow. When you got home you all changed into comfortable clothes and sat down on the couch to watch a Halloween movie. Wanda sat next to you while the boys decided what movie they wanted to watch. Using her magic, Wanda pulled one of the buckets of candy off the table and into her lap. She started eating some and handed you some. Then Billy and Tommy grabbed something too. When the movie started, you laid your head on Wanda’s shoulder and were so happy. You can’t wait to celebrate Christmas with them. And you know for sure that it will be great, and you will have a lot of fun.

Taglist:

@marvelogic | @eviebuggg | @yelenasdiary |

[luigiblood]

Why Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online is shit

I have been very critical of Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online since the beginning, not only the very noticeably broken graphics emulation was certainly a case that everyone understood, but it did certainly make me completely avoid the Expansion Pack subscription entirely for a year because that was genuinely shit in 2021.

Now how is it in 2024? Well, it's not that much better. They did fix a lot of problems during that time for sure, and that's something that we do need to acknowledge to do at least something resembling fair criticism.

Current context

That one Dark Link room in Ocarina of Time was fully fixed, as the fog and even transparency emulation was just outright broken, somehow worse than its Wii U Virtual Console counterpart (which was already not very good), it also affected other games like Super Mario 64 where the fog was actually not correct, but oddly enough, it's not as much of a problem in Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and I'm not entirely sure what happened between that and Nintendo Switch Online for it to have such a massive emulation downgrade.

I've done some analysis of the software, though not a ton because I don't have that much time to waste reverse engineering emulators. Through that, I found out that iQue was responsible for the Nintendo 64 emulator on Wii U and Switch, because of the emulator framework, named "TRL," being 100% identical to their NES and GBC emulator for 3DS, confirmed to be iQue through leaked source code among other things, and the debug menu is seen on Wii U if you have more than one game ROM in the folder, and it's just like the 3DS one.

The Wii U Virtual Console N64 emulator was already seen as worse than its Wii VC counterpart, mainly due to the dark filter, but that thing has nothing to do with the emulation quality it was providing, aside from apparently some additional slight input lag on top of the already massive input lag which I find mindboggling, the graphics emulation was already considered worse than on Wii, a lot of issues that people saw on NSO were already on Wii U VC, which turned into a massive mess of complaints because, yeah, it turns out the Wii U was just not successful, but the Switch is, making obvious complaints very much more important.

The Dark Link room just happened to be using a bunch of graphical features at once which made it very noticeable when they don't work as intended. When I discussed this with other people, I couldn't help but feel terrible at the answer I get: "It's good enough."

This response annoys me to no end, but in truth, yes, the games are playable, nowadays graphically you probably wouldn't tell the difference from the real N64 with an untrained eye, and in fact, so am I at times too. But the problem is that it now becomes an actual history rewrite of how the game actually was, and you could still say that you would prefer the N64 games now than before with better framerates, better resolution, all that.

Better performance is always better?

Now this is still more of an opinion piece so here's my opinion about better framerate and better resolution: It's fucking misguided. Doing better framerate and better resolution works a lot better for games after that generation than the 32-bit and 64-bit era of the mid 90s to 2000, because the graphics looks a lot better for it and the standards are closer to the current era that we're in.

For N64 however, simply running the game better does not work as well as it should most of the time, and, frankly, seeing big polygons in 720p does not work as well as it should for most games. 2D games especially suffer from this and get some really weird filtering that just bothers me, especially in games like Yoshi's Story and Harvest Moon 64, where the emulator seemingly can't decide whether the graphics should be almost pixel perfect, or become vaseline.

Speaking of vaseline, where's the anti-aliasing? The N64 is very much known for its blurry anti-aliasing! While I'm pretty much immune to aliasing myself, I can still see it's not really respecting the original N64 very well about that, and it only deepens one of the biggest history rewrite of the N64 nowadays, where most people is more likely to look at badly emulated footage of a N64 game than seeing the game running on the original system, and this really bothers me that when you have every single other system on the service to care about this to the point of having a CRT screen filter, and even outright and pretty faithful reproductions of the Game Boy series' screens, N64 is the only one that forces you to play in its uglier HD resolution with no actual option to play games in their original resolution with some CRT filter or not, and that is just a real evidence of a lack of care to me compared to the rest of the systems.

When it comes to better framerates however, as much as I love that (Pilotwings 64 on NSO is actually one of the few experiences I can recommend on it), a lot of the games' speed are tied to the framerate, potentially making games harder than they should due to its speed being more accounted for the actual system, and sometimes, causing actual desync problems that iQue had to implement ways to manually slow the framerate down in specific moments of games just to account for it, but this only works for games that can run faster than intended. A lot of games sometimes have their framerate completely capped and doesn't run any faster.

But emulating the N64 lag is genuinely complex, and it's a problem that's not fully solved to this day even on unofficial N64 emulation, because there's way too many factors to take into account that it would probably take too much performance to figure out where it should take more time to process or not, so, on this one, I have a bit of sympathy about that as a developer, but it is still possible to roughly approximate that, even if the result can be weird; but I don't seem to notice any legit attempts about that.

Besides, a lot of people would be annoyed about the N64 lag and bad framerates, but to me if you want better framerates, in my opinion, it would be done differently, and unofficial emulation absolutely can deal with it in ways that isn't intrusive to the game's performance: If you played the N64Recomp PC port of Majora's Mask, you would know this, as RT64, the new graphics plugin powering this port (and hopefully emulators soon), actually handles interpolation between frames, allowing better framerate without sacrificing the game's performance to be better or worse than intended, and it makes for some real impressive results while still being relatively low in cost. For me this seems like a potential avenue to attempt to ease in comfort with N64 games.

Is N64 emulation really that hard?

…frankly, if you asked me this question 10 years ago, I would have said yes, at least to my understanding back then, but also now. But if you ask me this same question now, the answer is no, mainly because of brand new standards that actually makes a huge difference in how to handle N64 emulation in current systems, even through unofficial emulation.

I know it's very easy to mock unofficial N64 emulation as relatively hard to play, and this I would agree with, but this problem is purely user faced now. The old problem of unofficial N64 emulation was mainly that not many people were doing work on it and their time is just not infinite, but that is very much changing nowadays.

The Nintendo 64 is actually a well understood system, additional research are still being done, but for the most part, we can understand the N64 to a decent degree. The actual bottleneck of N64 emulation was actually how to emulate it on current systems, when we were stuck to older graphics API standards like OpenGL and DirectX 9.

However, a shakeup happened since with Vulkan and DirectX 12, allowing deeper GPU control. This, is actually one of the most important events of computing that actually unlocked bigger N64 emulation potential and finally get rid of problems that plagued N64 graphics emulation and it started with an adaptation of THE most accurate N64 graphics plugin as Parallel-RDP, and its extremely good, but its pretty much asking on performance and requires a decent GPU (no need for the latest stuff though).

Unfortunately, not much happened since on that field, due to as I said before, a lack of developers, but now RT64 exists, and is made to be extremely performant, and especially made to be accurate without relying on any game specific code for it, which is extremely impressive and shows a lot of potential for the future, while providing tons of new features that allows enhancements like frame interpolation and more. RT64 was fully enabled because of Vulkan and DirectX 12, else it would simply not exist!

Now why did I talk about this stuff that's seemingly unrelated to NSO? Well remember that Majora's Mask PC port I talked about earlier that uses RT64? I saw that thing running on Nintendo Switch, seemingly perfectly fine, with enhancements as well.

This makes me look at N64 NSO differently, and with even more criticism than before. Instead of making good graphics emulation through Vulkan, they seemingly instead just ported the graphics emulation from Wii U VC's GX2 API to Vulkan. That isn't without effort, but it is quite frankly lazy, and means that whatever they're doing, they're not using the technology at their disposal to the fullest, especially since Vulkan is a standard that applies to pretty much every current GPU under the sun now, whatever the work is done here, it would likely work on the long term, especially the next systems after the Switch. Why Nintendo did not allow that is just sad, and a waste of time. RT64 was done by mostly a single developer, and while it took many years to be developed, these years could have been reduced a lot more if it was handled by a team fully dedicated to this, with possibly even more cutting edge to it. The ingredients are there, but the recipe was just botched.

Genuine trust issues with the quality

But aside from all this stuff I just talked about, if you didn't understand much of it, hopefully this part should help you understand other issues that I have with N64 NSO.

Remember that the first version of N64 NSO was graphically buggy, and while they did fix that over time, new games sometimes were outright buggy and possibly game breaking:

When they added Paper Mario to the service, while the game did actually receive some improvements over the Wii U VC emulator, the game, somehow, was more prone to crashes. If you game over with Watt as a partner, the emulator crashes, and you lose your progress. If you have the curiosity of hitting trees with your hammer, one of them in the snow town actually crashes the game too! Thankfully both were fixed, but you still needed to wait months! If you had no idea why crashes could be caused as Nintendo just never warns about that stuff, that is genuinely inconvenient.

When they added Kirby 64; the western version actually had a game breaking bug that makes you softlocked if you get hit in a particular way underwater. That is genuinely a terrible bug that could affect just about anybody playing the game. Thankfully, they fixed it the next week, but that REALLY shouldn't have happened to begin with!

There's also the smaller problems like Yoshi's Story's boss, Inviso, where the point of the boss is to be invisible. Except he's very visible at all times making the point of the boss moot and any respect to the original game gone. For some fucking reason, they took more than a year to finally fix it, and that's just a huge shame.

There's also how Jet Force Gemini had a worse widescreen mode and somehow thought it was good for release, thankfully fixed 2 months after, but you still had to wait 2 months!

And then F-Zero X still has genuine framerate problems to this day where the game just runs worse over time. That game is known to run a perfect 60 FPS on the original system, so there's no excuse here.

I could also mention Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but just look up Graslu's videos on them, he has done a full comparison, showing what's wrong with them with enough detail.

For these, I just mentioned the glaring issues plaguing several games, but a lot of times these issues just comes on their addition to the service, and then only gets fixed months later; and for me, that's an actual disrespect to the player. I understand the developer is doing their best here, but frankly, what that looks like to me is a legit constant: they visibly seems just scrambling to get games to work to a "good enough" state. I am NOT accusing iQue of this, however I accuse Nintendo to not have taken any measures to stop having these kinds of problems to begin with.

To speak better of iQue, they seem to be good at reverse engineering, as they do patch games to fix issues, or sometimes just modifications like anti-epilepsy measures or other kinds of hacks.

The controls

I had some really bad things to say about the controls, but it got partially invalidated when I played Perfect Dark on the service to see how bad it got. I think I simply overthought about it.

Now I have an opinion about the controls of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark that will not please people: They're… fine. The default controls I mean. I know people have some real aversion to FPS that doesn't use a double stick, but frankly I dare say those controls didn't age as badly as you'd think. Some people say it's best played on a N64 controller but I don't agree about that, it's also okay on a regular Switch Pro Controller.

Turok however, oh boy, the default controls can be a double stick FPS… except it's reversed. That's where the ability to remap controls would be very useful here, or possibly just one moment where better forced control setups would be actually nice here.

Or how Pokémon Stadium has minigames that uses actually both the D-pad and the Stick, it could be great if the right Stick acted like the N64 Stick at that moment on a Pro Controller instead of the C Buttons!

Instead, I sometimes get told it is an excuse to get the (frankly expensive) N64 controller. Fuck no. I should not be forced to buy that, and I actually dislike using that controller, and I played tons of N64 games through emulation with different controls without having serious issues either, so for me, this isn't an excuse. Wii U VC also provided button remapping!

The forced use of ZL as the N64 Z button, and L for N64 L button for every game, also bothered me. I know they care about consistency, but then, I got actually curious to check how they handled Z and L on Wii and Wii U VC… and holy shit. They handled it right from the start. On Wii they actually just used the L button for the N64 Z button! But, the N64 B and A buttons do correspond to the B and A buttons on the current controllers regardless. Though, on that one, for most games, it's not as much of a bother, but if you're playing games like, let's say Wave Race 64 or F-Zero X, this is particularly worse.

F-Zero X has the use of strafing left and right, so I'll let you imagine how worse that sounds if you use ZL and R. NOT ZR, that's for C Buttons macros on the face buttons. It feels horrible and unintuitive, but also there's how the B and A buttons on N64 are vertical, and you just use your thumb on both buttons, making it easy to boost or to soften bounces on waves in Wave Race 64, which is a pretty darn important thing to understand, but instead you have to handle it on horizontal B and A buttons, making it a slight bit more annoying to your thumb, physically speaking. It just feels unintuitive and actually bad for your thumb, frankly.

It's where I wish games would actually make either ZR or R buttons to be swapped depending on the title, to be the R button and C button macro, and also offer an option to rotate the face buttons so that B and A would be placed on Y and B instead, corresponding more to the actual feeling of the N64 controller.

Sin & Punishment is oddly enough the only game of the bunch that comes with slightly custom controls, more adapted to the game, and I'm sorta glad that they bothered.

Just to go back to the N64 stick emulation, I also wish the sensitivity of it was managed better on current controllers. It really seems like when some games run faster than intended, added with the fact the stick isn't reproduced faithfully, some games are a lot harder to play, especially with Joy Cons if that's your only and basic options, where for example, turning the camera is way faster and you just keep wanting to reposition all the time.

Missing features

Man, imagine emulating the Controller Pak for the ability to save in games that only uses it instead of battery backed save memory in the cartridge, but then, literally never use it, ever.

Well that's what happened to Wii U VC and N64 NSO. iQue has actually emulated it, but for some reason, they never use it, and I just do not understand why, especially in games where the Rumble Pak isn't supported.

Speaking of the Rumble Pak, it is emulated, but there's one thing I just do not understand: Why isn't there code to automatically swap the Controller Pak and Rumble Pak? They have the best ways to actually handle this in ways that is pretty transparent and unobtrusive, but somehow, they don't bother with it, and it's just very strange. I know the N64 games are weird about it, but some outright allow to swap them, sometimes they even bother to remove the No Controller Pak message in Winback, but in other games they don't even bother removing the Rumble Pak swap message. It's just inconsistent and weird.

We don't have Transfer Pak emulation unfortunately, but that one, I can partially understand, it's definitely a bit messy, but it would still have been cool to play Mario Tennis and Mario Golf with your GBC characters and to level them up on the N64 games. Instead, in Mario Tennis GBC, you actually get the Transfer Pak content unlocked from the start, which is still pretty cool of Nintendo to care, and a mere reminder that they do care about these details in other apps. But in Mario Tennis on N64 NSO, the Transfer Pak courts are yet to be unlocked.

Then there's the wish to see 64DD emulated, which they initially did some work towards that back on Wii U VC, but then simply never touched in years, and then removed the code after I noticed they tried to support the fanmade cartridge ports of them. It's probably just for testing though, I don't really care that they do it like that, but I would think it's particularly crass had they used them officially on the app. This has yet to be seen again, so I don't have my hopes up. Here's hoping the Nintendo Museum made them care though, considering Doshin The Giant 64DD actually showed up there.

The future

I think I pretty much said what I wanted to say the most in one place. It might have been a little hard to read, but I really wanted to make my points very clear.

When I look at N64 NSO vs the rest of the service, I just cannot help but see how worse it is in general, I have genuine trust issues as it is very badly managed as games get added but then doesn't run properly, only to get resolved, if it does, only months later. It just makes me want to put off for later any time I wanna play a N64 game on that service, and I really want to love that service, I want to recommend y'all the biggest N64 library so far that Nintendo has given us that surpasses both Virtual Console libraries on Wii and Wii U, but I just can't.

Unfortunately, I don't see the future to be that bright. I see no reason to believe Nintendo has done any big efforts to allow a better N64 emulator, and of course, Nintendo has never really addressed complaints, and I partially blame the "good enough" feeling. When I read ArsTechnica to make an article just to complain about the borders after the N64 NSO ordeal, it just makes me feel like no matter what, this bigger complaint of mine across all of N64 NSO just cannot be seen seriously. It's a much bigger problem than borders (though, I agree, they should allow more, including pitch black borders).

I don't see any reason for Nintendo to read this either, but that's my full impressions of N64 NSO so far. Nintendo 64 NSO is just shit, and disrespectful to the legacy of the N64.

I outright accuse it to force people to buy a N64 controller just to play it correctly, which definitely worked as it definitely was out of stock several times, but if that's truly what they aimed for, then it's an app that doesn't know what audience it wants. If it aimed to be played by casuals, they'll be put off by the controls. If they aimed for the hardcore, they'll find problems, no matter what.

And it really cannot be helped when the emulator is clearly designed for the developers to manually fix problems per game instead of having a better emulator overall.

[wvbaandtheboys]

DREAMESCAPE: RE-DREAMED EDITION!

forthethirdfuckingtime-

Hey punchy peeps, yup it's me again I present to y'all my pride and joy, the Dreamescape AU! This time, redone with an idea I originally discarded when I was first making the AU, but I ended up using for the revamped version! Let's get into the ✨ lore ✨

THIS AU DEALS WITH DARK THEMES! BE CAREFUL TRAVELLERS!

This AU takes place in the span of the 1920s. The Macs live with their single father, Jerome/Doc Louis, having a docile and normal life. Their father works tirelessly to provide for his sons, being a middle class worker. With familiar faces surrounding their everyday lives, the family is content and lives out their days in joy. However, over a tense and perplexing time span, many people in their community begin to pass away unexpectedly with little to no closure on some of their deaths. Hysteria rises amongst the townsfolk; hysteria of a supernatural curse of well known origin, rooted in folklore, that threatens the adult population. And by proxy, the children of the town.

It is the Constellation of Shadows. An arachnoid, nightmarish entity that targets children through the adults in their lives. It invades the dreams of adults while they sleep, and takes them into its dark abyss of a web. It then mutates them, reforms them for its own purposes. Then unleashes them like wild animals to murder the children in their sleep.

Very few families have survived the Constellation's insatiable hunger for terror and demise: there are only two documented survivors of the Constellation throughout the years. Those families were never the same, suffering long term effects that led to either tragedy within them, or them disappearing from the town, never to be seen again. Hysteria once again breaks out, with the message to stay awake and alert at all costs and protect your children, as the Constellation cannot attack if you are not asleep or drowsy. However, it was only so long before the Louis household succumbed to exhaustion, and entered a deep slumber.

However, there is one hope. Father Dream. Father Dream is another folklore figure who, once upon a time, constantly did battle with the Constellation in order to uphold the safety of all dreamers. However, the feast of fear supplied to the Constellation allowed it to best Father Dream and trap him within his own seemingly unending slumber. However, Father Dream was still in control of some of his power. He blesses Mac with a special ability: the ability to resurrect the dead. Now, the Macs must face monsters of familiarity in order to make it out alive. And, in order to rescue their father before he suffers the same fate as the adults before him did. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ With the lore out of the way, let's learn about those adults: WII:

Joe - Chef (27)

Kaiser - Clockmaker (52)

Disco - Radio Show Host (25)

Hippo - Tribal King (50s to Early 60s)

Hondo - Photographer (33)

Hugger - Game Warden (44)

Tiger - Illusionist (31)

Don - Fisherman (26)

Aran - Dockworker (27)

Soda - Ice Cream Parlor Owner (41)

Bull - Priest (40)

Macho - Singer (30)

SUPER PUNCH OUT:

Gabby - Librarian (62)

Hurricane - Meteorologist (29)

Bob - Homeless (36)

Dragon - Lead Dragon Dancer (25)

Muscle - Doctor (37)

Heike - Unemployed (16)

Mad Clown - Clown (obviously shjsjs) (30)

Narcis - Nobleman (31)

Hoy - Retired Teacher (83)

Rick and Nick - Tailors (R - 28, N - 29)

Now, how did all of them meet their untimely demises? TRIGGER WARNINGS: DEATH, WRITTEN DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENCE/GORE, SUICIDE. PLEASE TAKE THIS INTO ACCOUNT WHEN READING FURTHER ON! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WII: Joe - No one heard from him for a good while since his restaurant was suddenly closed, so it eventually drew the attention of police. When they went in, they found him in the basement of the restaurant, slumped against one of the walls and clearly long dead. He appeared to die clutching a kitchen knife in his hand. He represents Ataxophobia.

Kaiser - Kaiser’s somewhat anti-social personality did put some off from checking in on him too frequently, but they knew he was in and working when they heard the ticking of the clocks within his workshop. Concern arose when the ticking stopped. When concerned folks went inside the old man’s shop to check on him, They found him sprawled out on the floor, stiff. He was surrounded by clocks, all had their hands frozen at the hour of midnight. He represents Chronometrophobia.

Disco - Way too suddenly did Louie Brown's show get taken off the air. An announcement was made in the newspapers shortly thereafter that the host had passed away. Though they didn’t release details, he was found to have cords of recording machinery taut around his neck, still seated in the recording booth. And with the recording machine on, but thankfully not on the air. He represents Sedatephobia. Hippo - Hippo and his people (women, men and children alike) were quite sociable with the public. Seeing as they weren’t native to the town and after a great tragedy for the tribe, the king seemed to have a certain desperation to be accepted and gain a new home, considering what happened to them. However, the Hippoans were extremely generous and shared their culture with the townsfolk. But, they all just… vanished one day. It was presumed that perhaps Hippo had tried to guide them to live elsewhere, but no one can say for sure what happened to them. He represents Anthropophobia.

Hondo - Though nothing was visibly perturbing about him, laid on either a couch or his bed, his camera was in close proximity. When the photos recently taken on it were printed out, they showed cryptic, vignetted images of Hondo at angles that appeared as though another person had taken it. Though there were no signs that another person had ever been there. He represents Photophobia.

Hugger - He said he just felt tired, and was going to take the winter months to rest. No foul play, no signs of injury, no nothing. He just appeared to have passed in his sleep. He represents Nyctophobia.

Tiger - He was found with red scratch marks all over, which were initially thought to be self inflicted. However, the cleanliness of his fingernails and the angles of the markings made it almost seem like… something was trying to escape from his own body. He represents Rhabdophobia.

Don - He and his wife, Carmen, had been out all day on a lengthy fishing trip. Even when dusk had arrived and fog had started rolling in, the couple still hadn’t returned. Their fishing boat that came floating back to shore, belongings and equipment still on it, but they were nowhere to be seen. He represents Thalassophobia.

Aran - The last his coworkers saw of him, they say he was quietly sitting on the docks with his legs hung over the water. Something he readily instructed others to never do. The very next morning, he was gone. They never found him. He represents Megalohydrothalassophobia.

Soda - When the cold months came over the town, his charming little ice cream parlor closed for the winter as he said he was going to go for a trip to the mountains. After the winter was over, with no word or sign of the man, concern also arose for him. They discovered him a while after. He was completely encased in frost despite the warmth returning. He represents Cryophobia.

Bull - The toll of the church bells at night brought a sense of dread over all that heard it. He was found knelt in a praying pose at the front of the chapel. He was already dead, clutching the jewel of the necklace he wore in his hands. He represents Theophobia.

Macho - The singer known as “Deep Blue” by his many adoring fans had a dark cloud over his head. A rumor mill had churned much devastating gossip regarding his personal life. Some even say it drove him mad. Regardless of the true motive, the performer was found with a slit throat. Some suspect it was a suicide, as the letter opener that cut his throat was in his own hand. He represents Scopophobia.

SPO:

Gabby - Even though he was getting on in years, Gabby always said that there was never a time he felt alive, even since his youthful years, due to the plethora of health issues he had developed over the course of his life ever since he was born. “I don’t recall the last time I ever felt young and spry, if I even did in the first place. So, getting old really doesn’t feel any different.” As such, it was a well known rumor that Gabby read many books to cope, to feel some kind of whimsy in his ever shortening life. He was found dead in his sleep at his desk, an open book beside him. He represents Gentrophobia.

Hurricane - A thriving meteorologist, he loved the experiences of being up in the sky on hot air balloons. On an unsuspecting day during a storm, he suddenly fell unconscious mid flight. A bolt of lightning struck the hot air balloon he was riding and sent him crashing into a building. He died on impact. He represents Astraphobia.

Bob - An impoverished homeless man, he often wandered about with cigarettes on hand. He secluded himself far away from others while he smoked. No one has a clue what really happened to him, as he was discovered lying in the mud. However, it was suspected that he had asphyxiated. He represents Homichlophobia.

Dragon - The dragon dancer troupe traveled to the town from Hong Kong during Lunar New Year. He piloted the head of the dragon during the ceremony. How sadly ironic that such misfortune followed a dance meant to bestow luck. He was discovered slumped in a chair in the dressing room made for the dancers, with the headpiece of the dragon over his body.. and his own decapitated head in his hands. He represents Atychiphobia. 

Muscle - He was alone one night, and that was all that it took. He was discovered in the morning with slit wrists, surrounded by blood soaked gauze. He may have tried to save himself. He represents Hemophobia.

Heike - The once aspiring dancer faced the Constellation's wrath despite being a child himself as well. His limbs were bloody and twisted, yet he still held his signature fan in his hands, and wore his signature performing kimono. He represents Pistanthrophobia.

Clown - The circus was never the same without him. His face was painted half and half with his two circus personas: Serenata the Opera Singer, and Burlone the Jester. He represents Coulrophobia.

Narcis - For the short period of time that night, while his servants were not overseeing him, the Constellation struck. Though efforts were made to enter his bedroom as the realization dawned that he was in danger, the door did not budge until it was too late. He was found with the skin of the left half of his face completely removed. On his fractured bureau, there was a message written in his blood: “The beauty of my heart was never reflected in my face." He represents Cacophobia.

Hoy - The death of the dragon dancer deeply wounded the old man, as he was quite close to him. He died of a broken heart. (Broken Heart Syndrome) He represents Philophobia.

Rick and Nick - It seemed like death wanted to keep them together forever. They were discovered seated on chairs next to each other, their left hands sewn together. It was noted that when there was effort to cut the thread, the fingers of the brothers would twitch violently. They represent Thanatophobia.

[epickiya722]

You know what, season 2 broke a lot of our hearts, didn't it? Well, here's some moments I thought were funny, heartwarming and just off the wall to lighten things up!

Starting with the Hidden Inventory/Premature Death Arc and if y'all want, I'll do a part 2 for the Shibuya Incident!

NOTE: I may have talked about some of these moments before in other posts.

Utahime, just all of Utahime in the first episode. She's awesome, I adore her. "SHOOOOKOOOO!!"

Chibi Satoru and Suguru. Especially the part of Suguru walking up the stairs as the others were talking. "Urusei."

"SENSEI, I SAY WE STOP THIS HUNT FOR THE CULPRIT!"

"SO IT WAS YOU!"

"Blegh!"

Shoko dipping out.

Suguru was really about to jump Satoru with a curse!!!

The fact that Suguru even went from wearing regular-waist pants to high-waist ones from manga to anime is glorious. Whoever decided that knew Suguru was meant to be a fashion icon.

Digimon

That WALK!!! Y'all, those are Special Grade sorcerers!

Suguru scowling Satoru on his behavior, also... "Satorrruuu~" Did he have to purr? That was a purr!

I love Satoru Gojo, I do. But with those glasses, he really do be looking like one of the Three Blind Mice from Shrek.

I don't know how but Toji somehow made saying he took his wife's last name scary. Like, he was very intimidating that it bypass me the first time of how cute it is that he loved Mamaguro a lot.

They actually added Suguru fixing himself a cup of tea in the anime!! This teenager really had that man captured by some Kissing Curse, told him he couldn't be a rice farmer and had himself some tea. Iconic.

Ooh, Satoru didn't have to do Bayer like that. But I applaud him for taking such a selfie!

Shoko trying to explain how RCT works actually irritated Satoru... which is rare!

Riko actually was the first to defeat Satoru. Did him dirty!! Suguru actually laughs at Satoru getting slapped while in the anime he looks shocked. Either way, his reaction is funny as hell.

"You look like a liar! And what's up with those bangs?" Then Riko got jumped for that!

Suguru's bangs ain't that bad, come on!

Knowing how Suguru turns out, it's something he's the one to tell Kuroi that she's Riko's family. Years later, he had his own "family". It's actually heartwarming he tells her that.

That old man didn't even get touched yet and he was already seeing his dead dog from 50 years ago!! Man's life flashed right before his eyes and he even says that! The whooping Suguru put on him was so bad that he was having visions!!

The one time Satoru is shown to have some sort of charm is with a bunch of school girls. The teacher should be locked up though.

Baghead man really had on the All Might cosplay.

Toji didn't have to say a word to that man and he still scared him shitless. Alright, Toji, I see you being all scary!

Satoru really be carrying kids like they're bags of groceries. Did it with Yuji, he did it with Riko.

"I failed!"

Kuroi being rescued! Satoru really stomped on those guys!

The plane scene. Satoru checking each passenger all with a glare. Meanwhile, Suguru was just chilling with a book, sitting there all pretty.

The whole beach scene!! "IT'S A SEA CUCUMBER!!"

Teen Kento having that hairstyle and his dynamic with Yu is just too adorable. He looks like he has Wii music playing in his head all day. Such a good kid!!

I cannot believe that DIO's VA is also Toji's. It's funnier when Toji has had beef with Satoru as a kid and DIO has had generational beef with the Joestars.

I just know that Worm Curse was having the time of its life on Toji's back while he was jumping around and being tossed about. Also, Toji smiling the whole time while fighting.

Suguru actually has mad hops! Did y'all not see that long ass jump?!

Squid gun. Speaking of, where in the hell did all those squids come from?! I need a story on that one!

Toji talking about how he fights for a while before Suguru tells him to shut up and due.

"Am I pretty?" "Sorry, you're not my type." Okay, well, damn.

The Worm Curse pretty much "NOPE" at Suguru.

That kick was fucking personal, I just know it! Also, the fact that Toji actually thought about the curses inhabiting Suguru's body is something. Especially, given later. I actually question that when Suguru dies in JJK 0, did Satoru have to deal with any curses?

Toji remembering Megumi.

Also, if you pay attention to the Worm, that thing sometimes matches Toji's expressions. It's like Reki and his headband (SK8 the Infinity).

Satoru standing all menacingly outside for Toji.

"Is he high?" Well, given that a few moments later he'll be floating in the air.

The fact that people have described Toji's death as "turned into the Apple logo" to "the Rengoku treatment". Y'all are out of pocket! And he looked so disappointed, too.

"Mommy... hug me..." That scene is just...

"I like girls with healthy appetites!" Yu, never change!!

Yuki's reaction to what Suguru tells her about what he has heard about her. "She's pouting."

"I heard you the first time. That's why I said 'huh'!" Bro was just that mad.

Shoko. Just Shoko when she and Suguru meet in Shinjuku.

Heartbreaking as the scene is, you had one lanky ass teenager looking deranged on one end and the other with the "I'm going to the store real quick" fit on having this fight in front of KFC. Becomes even funnier when you remember the slogan "finger lickin' good". What does this have to do with anything? Think about Yuji.

One, where did Suguru get the robes from? Two, given he was born the following year in February after Satoru, if I did my calculations right... Suguru really started a cult at 17. No wonder there were objections. After he killed that guy, I'm sure everyone was like "oh, he's unhinged".

Okay, but the head rubs he gave the twins were so cute!! Look, they may been raised as killers, but it's sweet that they were Suguru's family. He adored those girls and they adored him!

The first meeting between Megumi and Satoru!!

Satoru waking up and seeing his students was just so heartwarming!!!

[rightshoeonleftfoot]

More Jäger headcanons because he won't leave my head and I'm still insane for him..

🧮 (there is no calculator emoji for some reason so the abacus will do) Jäger carries a calculator in his back pants pocket like he does his phone. He always has one with him, it's a habit, he doesn't like using the calculator on his phone, he thinks it's a hassle to have to turn his phone just for it to become a scientific calculator.

🎸 Jäger plays Guitar Hero!! He played guitar hero during his late teens and he was absolutely obsessed with the game, finding time between helping his uncle and studying to game. He still plays it, he has a nice set up for it back at his flat, with an old wii and a few of the remote guitars he's collected since the game came out. Yes, he is an absolute beast at it.

🔭 Likes astronomy! Throughout his childhood and teenage years, he's wanted to fly so I think it's very likely this man also thinks astrology is fascinating. You'll catch him reading studies, watching movies about space. If the documentary is about both AI AND space? You will be hearing about it for weeks. He owns a nice telescope he keeps at his flat for when the sky is clear, he definitely lives somewhere closer to the country where there's less light pollution.

🐕 It hurts me to say this as a cat person but he's 100% a dog person. He radiates dog energy. When he retires he wants his own dog, and he definitely takes that small high pitched voice when he talks to a dog. I would see him with a border collie, an australian shepherd or a bernese, but he's definitely the type of guy to get a rescue. He likes high energy dogs, until he's trying to work and they're begging for their third walk of the day.

⛰️ He likes hiking! To piggy back off my dog headcanon, this man loves high energy dogs because he takes his dog hiking with him. You can bet your ass that that dog is trained extremely well and responds to commands instantly. He'll never go on super long hikes alone, since it's more of a hobby he indulges in occasionally than anything else, but he has gone on week long hikes with his friends.

☕ He is a coffee connoisseur. He knows his brands, knows the best ways to make coffee, and loves to spoil visitors when they come to his flat with amazing coffee. Even though he settles for cheaper, regular coffee at work (I don't think he's picky about his coffee, as long as it wakes him up), he definitely loves to impress his coworkers by getting better coffee for the break room every once in a while.

[kafus]

how to connect to wi-fi services in pokemon gen 4 (DPPT/HGSS)

it's still possible to access the wi-fi services of the gen 4 games after the official shutdown of nintendo's wii/ds wi-fi in 2013 due to fan efforts by changing your DNS settings in-game - this is called the DNS exploit. this is popularly used in gen 5 which really has no complications, but in gen 4 it's a bit more complicated because the games are So old that they can't connect to the internet through modern routers due to fancy modern internet encryption. the connection either needs to have no password, or have WEP encryption, which most modern routers do not support. i had some people asking me how to do this so here's a post lol

first, it should be noted i use the pkmnclassic service, and i think you should too. this gives you access to old mystery gifts as well as pretty much every other wi-fi feature. their website also allows you to view pokemon currently uploaded to either gen 4 or 5's GTS through your browser. once you get your wi-fi set up properly, connecting to the internet will be easy, but that setup comes first. below i am going to list all the options i am currently aware of and able to explain

option 1 - phone hotspot (easy/convenient, doesn't work for every type of phone)

some phone hotspots are able to use old WEP type encryption, or be password-less. if you have access to a phone hotspot, it's worth taking off the password if it lets you and trying to connect to the gen 4 wi-fi with it before trying any other method, since if it works it's super convenient, just turn on the hotspot any time you want to do something online in gen 4 and turn it back off when you're done. unfortunately this depends on the type of phone and what OS its on and i don't have a list of what phones or OSes are compatible, so good luck lol. mine personally is not, and i have a fully updated iphone

option 2 - guest wi-fi (a little less convenient but still easy if you have access to router settings)

in the same vein as phone hotspots, guest wi-fi hotspots can also work, and this is what i personally use myself. the catch is you have to have access to your router settings, so if you're a young person using a parents' router without access to those or some other situation like that, you may have to ask for assistance every time you want to turn this on/off, which could be a dealbreaker for some unfortunately. but if you're able to do that, simply make your guest wi-fi password-less and turn it on when you want to connect to gen 4 wi-fi and turn it back off when you're done. since these settings pages are so different per internet provider, i can't really give a guide on how to do that here, though mine through verizon fios is pretty straightforward. some guest wi-fi may not work for this but i think most should

option 3 - use an old router that supports WEP encryption (probably inaccessible for most, but only has to be set up once and then you're done)

i've done this in the past but i had my dad's help with the process, i cannot walk you through buying an old router lol. but yes if you purchase an old router and set that up you can have password protected gen 4 wi-fi permanently

option 4 - save backup + emulation through melonds (works pretty much 100% of the time if you have a hacked 3DS and some sort of PC)

MelonDS is a really great DS emulator that you can find here for windows/linux/mac: https://melonds.kuribo64.net/downloads.php

the basic idea is that you can backup your save file/game with a hacked 3DS using Checkpoint or TWLSaveTool (outside the scope of this guide but this is easy to do and you can walk through the steps here) and then run it through melonds, which can bypass all this WEP/encryption hell for you and simply connect to the internet. of course this is not very convenient if you have to constantly back up your saves to do wi-fi stuff but it's better than nothing if you have no other option.

unfortunately setting up the wi-fi can be a pain, and you also need DS BIOS files to run everything properly, which i cannot provide myself for legal reasons but they uh... aren't that hard to find lol, and you can back them up from an actual DS if you have access to the necessary tools for that.

if you use a windows PC, feel free to use my version of melonds which already has all the wifi shit set up, you'll just need to provide your own bios files under emu settings (it's a bit old but it works great for this purpose): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DQotaqFuBwXz1KYdQWiwxghtn3faLgj-/view?usp=sharing

edit: just found out right after posting this that the most recent version of melonds might work out the box without having to do any particular wi-fi setup? so feel free to try it instead of my version if you like

if you are using linux/mac or don't want to use my version, you'll have to use the melonDS FAQ/google to figure it out, i'm sorry!

by the way yes, this means even if you don't have a gen 4 cart and solely play over emulator, you can trade/battle/etc with people who are playing on DS - they connect to the same servers!

okay and NOW once you have one of those options set up, you can actually connect to wi-fi in game by doing the following:

(these screencaps are from my capture card, i am doing this on an actual DS, but you can also do this with melonds if you're using that option)

step 1: navigate to "NINTENDO WFC SETTINGS" in the menu where you press continue on your save file, in-game. in gen 4 you need to do it here and not in your DS settings.

step 2: tap "Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Settings" and pick any of the three connections here to start the set-up. if you already have some here, i'd click "erase settings" underneath to start from scratch.

step 3: search for an access point and pick your desired access point from the list that comes up, and put in a password if needed (this assumes you have set up your wifi properly at this point)

step 4: it will attempt a connection to the internet, and may or may not throw an error. regardless, the error doesn't really matter, you can just hit "OK" whether it's successful or not

step 5: go back into your new connection (the box that previously said "None" should now say "Ready") and scroll down until you see the option "Auto-obtain DNS" - change this to "No"

step 6: change the primary DNS to pkmnclassic's DNS, which is 178.62.43.212 - in layman's terms this will essentially let you connect to their servers instead of nintendo's, which are obviously down. as for the secondary DNS, either leave it at 0.0.0.0 or change it to the same DNS as the primary

step 7: now would be a good time for a connection test. tap "Test Connection" in the top right. there should be a successful connection. assuming there is a successful connection, congrats! save your settings and enter your game as normal. you'll need to go to the basement of any pokemon center and pick up your pal pad, then try entering the wi-fi club (middle NPC at the counter) to test it in-game and get your friend code.

if there isn't, try a few more times or get closer to your access point - sometimes it's not you, the service can just occasionally be spotty. if you keep getting errors, you can use this site to look up what the error code might mean. if you still can't solve the issue, you may have to try a different method of connection as listed above.

sorry i couldn't be more in depth but frankly i'm not an expert on this stuff either, i'm just doing my best. there are a couple other options for doing this, like taking the password off your modern home wi-fi, or bridging your connection to an old laptop/computer, but the first is particularly dangerous so i didn't want to include it in the list and the second is completely out of my league, i just know people have done it before

good luck feel free to ask questions but no promises i'll have answers. if you need troubleshooting help i'd recommend pkmnclassic's discord over me, they have channels for that stuff (yes i hate troubleshooting stuff moving to discord and not forums as much as the rest of you but it can't be helped lol)

[wisteria-winter]

Pillowstatic, Lucifer's Commission

Inspired by @onesidedradiostatic 's #lucifer's commissions saga

Synopsys: The greatest artisan of hell gets one peculiar commission from one of the Vee’s.

Words: 3636

Started writing this a while back, it’s very much just one for fun. The characters might be a little more domestic, specifically the Vee’s

________________________________

CRASH

The sound of glass shattering spread through the room. Chards glistening on the floor like newly fallen snow. It was an accident. Valentino just lost his grip. It had all just slipped through his hand.

“This is the THIRD TIME! This month.” Vox screeches though his shaded screen. Anger clear, despite the distortions hiding his expressions. “If you keep forgetting the strap one more time, I’m not playing Wii with you guys anymore. Ever!”

“You said that last time too, Vox.” Velvette reminds, focusing more on her phone than whatever the two of them have going on.

“Well, this time I mean it! Do you know how annoying it is to replace my screen?”

“Oh. Don’t be like that Voxy, it was an accident.” Valentino tries, acting as harmless as he can.

“And YOU! I’m not talking to you, AND I’m removing your WiFi privileges until this is all fixed! How do you expect me to hold a conference looking like THIS!?” Vox retorts, pointing at his glitched out screen face, which had a clear indent where the remote had hit.

“Vox! How can you do that, to ME?! How do you expect me to work without WiFi?!” Valentino retorts, thinking only of himself.

“...” Vox isn't impressed.

Not getting a response he starts to work backwards with, “How about I get you something to make up for it? I could draw you a picture. Anything you’d like.” Trying to placate Vox, though he can’t really hide the contempt within, “Even if it’s the radio demon.” He really can’t understand Vox’s obsession with Alastor.

“Hmph. You did that the first time.” Vox has his back turned and arms crossed. He won’t give in that easily, not this time at least.

“How about a pinup? I’m sure it would...” Val gave a sigh, “look nice in your collection.” Dreaded river Styx, why is this the only thing that placates him?

Vox does perk up at the suggestion, but is quick to steady his resolve. “And you got that, the last time.” He says before crossing his arms again in annoyance. “And they forgot his antlers.” Like, how could they have forgotten his antlers? Did they not even look at the reference pictures? He- uhh- Sent a lot.

“Fine.” There is one thing that Vox doesn’t have, or rather, doesn’t have anymore, and he has been bugging them about it for quite some time. Valantino gives in and sighs, “What about a new body pillow?” he asks in the most monotone manner.

“Really!” Vox excitedly exclaims, uncrossing his arms and turning his face towards Val with glee, before realizing what he just did and going back to being stoic. “Yeah, I think that would suffice.” Though, glee and excitement are still present in his voice. Valentino gives the little dork a smile, despite how weird the circumstances might feel.

“Good. Then I’ll send the request to our merch department and see what they can do.” Valentino takes out his phone and starts writing something while mumbling under his breath that, “It shouldn’t be too hard to change an Angel picture to an Alastor one.” He then turns to Vox and asks, “What kind of-”

“I heard that! I’m not letting you create some sloppy half finished, inferior, mass-produced pillow. I want it to be an authentic, one-of-a-kind, high quality pillow that won’t rip at the seams and smells just like him.” Vox sounds exceedingly stern, why does the pillow mean so much towards him?

“Vox.”

“Okay, it doesn’t have to smell like him. But it has to be really good quality. There has to be an artisan that can make the best pillow in hell, right? Get that person.”

“Vox. What are you on about? What do you want me to do? Spend 50k just so you can get a nice body pillow of Alastor?” He says in disbelief. There is no way-

“Yes, exactly that.” He looks towards Valentino as smug as he can with his broken face. “Or else, no WiFi.”

“Ugh, fine. Do you want to commission them for the image too?” Val says with a dead tone, he has given up, given in, no use in fighting this stubborn brat when it concerns Alastor.

“Of course, it has to be special. Also, make sure that they don’t forget his antlers, and tell them that his hoofs are red and that the red claws are not gloves, but claws, just like mine and that his arms and legs start black at the tip then gradually melt into his skin. Oh! and don’t forget-” Vox rambles on, seemingly lost in thought.

Valentino just looks at him disapprovingly, wondering in a long whisper ‘w~h~y~?’. In essence, Val isn’t really looking forward to the coming conversation with the ‘best artisan in hell’, whoever that might be.

________________

Lucifer gets a phone notification. Ignoring everything in his surroundings, he takes his phone out and looks at whatever it may be. Huh.

“And here I thought you cared for dear Charlie's exercises.” Alastor says also ignoring the exercise and taking more interest in what Lucifer may be up to.

________________

A few moments before.

Charlie has assembled everyone for some team building exercises. There are some colorful balloons bouncing softly around her on the floor. The plan is to have a few exercises where everyone is in pairs. For the first part, the goal is to keep one balloon in the air for as long as possible, but you can’t touch it more than twice in a row.

“So then, Angel, who do you want to team up with?” Charlie asks, happy as always, making sure that their, now only, actually resident is comfortable playing.

“I’d like to go with Husk if that works.” Angel says.

“Yes! Sounds perfect! Husk?” Charlie responds, delighted over him showing engagement. This might actually be a really progressive day.

“Yeah, sure, works.” Husk agreed.

“Now then, Alastor?” Charlie then moves her attention to their one and only hotel manager. It would be nice if he participated more.

“I'd rather stay out of this one, wouldn’t want to accidentally pop one of your lovely balloons and ruin your diligent work.” He responds cleanly.

“You don’t have to worry about that, I have many more!” She says before stopping herself. “But I understand.” He’s already doing so much it doesn’t feel right to pressure him.

“Thank you dear.”

“Then Vaggie, does teaming up with Niffty work for you?”

“Yeah, but what about you?”

“Oh! Well, if Alastor won’t participate then we’ll have an uneven number of participants if I join, which wouldn’t work as-”

“I understand, it's alright, I’ll go with Niffty.” Vaggie gives her a soft smile, to which Charlie’s shines even brighter.

They all team up and get their balloons, though before they can start; Lucifer walks in and wonders what they are up to. He also positions himself between Alastor and Charlie as a small attempt to shield her from the sketchy and untrustworthy sinner.

“Dad, how about you join in?”

“I, sure, sounds like fun.” He answers, thinking he’d team up with Charlie for some father daughter bonding.

“Great! How about you team up with Alastor?”

“No.” They both respond in unison.

“Aww, come on. You two are always bickering, this could be a great opportunity to help you create some enjoyable memories,” Charlie says, wishing for everyone to be on friendly terms. “And it would mean a lot to me if you two were able to get along.” She ends, giving her dad some puppy dog eyes.

“Charlie...” Lucifer starts, not fully knowing what to say, before being interrupted by Alastor.

“Well, if it means so much for you dear, then I guess there is no choice than for me to join in the fun.” He says focusing on Charlie while approaching. “Though I guess that if the big boss himself doesn’t want to join, then I guess I’ll have to team up with you my dear.” He continues with a mischievous smile as he rests his arm on Lucifer like he’s a table.

“NO!” Lucifer retorts loudly, pushing Alastor off and away from him, letting the sinner fall to the floor, before composing himself. “I mean- I’ll join. I’d do anything for my sweet Char Char.” He tries to look at her softly, showing how much he cares. Though his expression quickly turns sour, seeing how she’s moved to Alastor’s side, helping him get up. Why does she care so much? Especially over a sinner who is clearly only bad news.

After helping Alastor up, she turns towards Lucifer. “Dad! This is exactly why we need the bonding exercises, what if you hurt Alastor?”

‘Why would I care about that?’ Lucifer thinks before answering absentmindedly. “He’ll survive, I didn’t even push that hard.”

Charlie just gives him a disapproving look.

“I told you I’d join.” He says defensively, why did it feel like she thought he was in the wrong?

“So, how are we to start, dear?” Alastor asks Charlie sweetly, ignoring Lucifer before turning to him with a gloating smile, making Lucifer's blood boil. In contrast, Charlie brightens up and goes into her presentation mode, restating the rules so that Lucifer hears them as well, and then proceeds to give each pair their own balloon.

It starts off quite well, though Alastor does accidentally pop some balloons with his sharp claws. Resulting in him and Lucifer electing to use their canes instead. To Charlie’s delight, everyone seems to be enjoying the exercise. It’s working!

Then a notification can be heard. Lucifer loses any focus he had on the exercise and takes out his phone, ignoring the balloon slowly descending beside him.

“And here I thought you cared for dear Charlie's exercises.” Alastor utters as the balloon hits the floor. He also moves closer to get a look at what Lucifer might be up to.

Lucifer, taking note of Alastor’s approach, makes sure to hide his phone from the demon’s view before reading what it says. -

 Hey, Luci! You just got an... interesting(?) order, They’re willing to pay 50k for you to make an image of an Alastor and put that image on a body pillow, a very high quality body pillow btw, where super adamant about that Also, got a bunch of reference photos, so you don’t have to worry about not knowing who this Alastor is I’ll send them over soon I got a bunch of notes they wanted you to follow and they are like, super specific and detailed, but like, whatever right?  Anyway I’ll send them too,  Or do you want to come and pick it all up?  (it’s a lot to send)

- And it said a lot, he had to re-read it a few times just to get a grasp of what it was about. Someone was willing to pay him 50k for an Alastor pillow?! 50k! Do they want him to use angelic wings as filling? Do they want him to embroider the image? Maybe? Yeah, sure. He can do that. Though that still leaves the big question of, WHY ALASTOR?! Ugh, Luci was not looking forward to having to spend so much time having to deal with seeing images of that one. -

Thanks Crymini. I can come and pick it all later today Did they want anything else or just the pillow with the costume image?

-

Think that was all, he seemed pretty irritated when he came in though So, maybe add some extra stuff to keep em happy? (If you want) (He did mumbled something about it having to smell like this Alastor dude, but it’s not really in the request, so think you can ignore that)

- ‘Yeah, sure’ Lucifer tries to write for some moments, before giving up and leaving his only employee on read. He’s going to meet her later anyway.

“So, what does the little picture box say?” Alastor interrupts.

Lucifer turns towards him, started by the closeness of the demon, Lucifer screams, drawing everyone’s attention. “Nothing.” He says as he scrambles away, getting some distance. It would be the end of him if Alastor knew any of this. Lucifer quickly composes himself.

“Dad? What happened?” Charlie asks calmly, approaching them.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing, though I find it quite sad that he’d place more importance on a supposed phone than the exercises you’ve worked so hard on dear. Quite a pity indeed.” Alastor responds.

She gave him a humoring smile then turned towards her actual dad to ask more directly. “What did she say?” Only considering the possibility that the only one who’d contact her dad, would be her mom.

“What?” Slightly panicking and wondering how Charlie figured him out. “Oh, nothing, just a few things, nothing important. Anyway, how about the next exercise, what do you have planned sweetie?” He tries to play off.

Charlie looks at him a bit confused but decides to leave it be and lets the focus shift towards the next exercise, as suggested. All while Alastor looks at the king with utmost suspicion, wondering what Lilith might have said that was so important to hide.

________________

Lucifer walks into the empty little shop and is greeted by his one employee. They converse a little and he grabs all of the images and the long list of requirements that were basically telling him to be as accurate as possible. ‘Huh? Alastor has hooves,’ he thinks while ignoring the disturbing amount of artistic rendition of how they look.

Opening a portal back into his room with everything, he starts to look through everything, putting all the images all over his room so that he can get a better overview of it all. When done he starts his creative process, drawing up some initial drafts. Though the more he draws the more he realizes that it’s going to take quite a while for this all to become perfect.

________________

At the end of the week his garbage can is full, Alastor pictures are all around and no real progress has been made. He needs a break, a breather.

After a while of just meandering around the hotel he hears some sounds from the kitchen, one of them sounding to belong to Charlie, so he makes his way there. Arriving he sees them all having fun, walking closer, he notes that they are mostly looking in books. Why read in the kitchen?

“Ah, your majesty, and to what do we owe the pleasure of your presence?” Alastor asks, delighted, catching the devil off guard.

“Just wanted to check out the ruckus in MY kitchen.” Lucifer straightens his suit, ignoring Alastor and focuses on what Charlie might be up to, meeting her gaze. She gives him a quick awkward smile, before her attention drifts elsewhere. Thinking nothing of it, he approaches her. “So, Charlie, is this another one of your redemption exercises?” He asks with cheer and a smile.

“Kinda, it was Alastor’s idea though.” Ugh. "Isn't it great? What’s a better way to show appreciation than making something together?” Her glee and delight is so radiating, he finds it hard not to smile, as she continues her explanation.

“We are working on making a full course meal, Angel and Husk are in charge of the appetizer, Niffty and I are working on the main meal and Vaggie is in charge of the desert, while Alastor is supervising, giving us pointers. Oh! How about you join in too? You could help Vaggie with dessert! How about it?”

“Sure.” He agrees, for how can he say no to that face?

________________

“So Vaggie, what are we making?” He asks approaching Vaggie who seems to be looking through a book.

“I don’t really know, was thinking maybe an apple pie?” She answers, fully engrossed in the book.

Apples! His favorite! “Sounds great! What do we need?” Lucifer asks, taking the book away from Vaggie to read what it may say, instructions. Ooh, that makes sense.

Before he can read much, she takes it back and turns to the radio demon.

“Alastor! I need like 6 apples, some sweet almonds, butter, sugar and 2 eggs. Also, a pie form and some whipping cream.” She calls out. Alastor turns and gives her the same smile he always holds before snapping his fingers, summoning the items along with some tools for assistance.

Lucifer takes one of the apples, it’s bright green, and scoffs, “You call this an apple?” He says giving Alastor a most judgmental look. Then transforms the green misfit into a lovely red apple. “There, better.” Smiling at his own accomplishment and the slight annoyance that passed over Alastor. Ha!

Lucifer finds himself actually enjoying working with Vaggie, she’s a good girl, and despite the annoyance that is Alastor he can’t deny that it wasn’t too bad of an idea. Though he’d never inform anyone of that.

The final meal was also nice, and to Lucifer's delight, Alastor was acting as the busboy. He had set the table and explained each dish, letting his shadows bring the plates to each person. The only part of agitation was how clear it was that Charlie appreciated it too, winning her over even more.

________________

After the meal Lucifer decides to go back to his room but is interrupted by Charlie in the hall.

“Dad?” She starts carefully.

“Yes?” He stopped in his step, turned to her and tried to give her all his attention.

“How do you like living here?”

“It’s nice to always be close to you.”

“Un huh, and what do you think of everyone else? Vaggie, Angel,” She pauses shortly, “Alastor?”

“Vaggie is a very nice and strong girl. Angel is showing progress, I think. As for that Alastor, I doubt he’s ever going to be able to leave hell.”

“Do you want him to stay in hell?”

“He doesn’t deserve anything else but hell.” He says bluntly, starting to get in a bad mood having to be reminded of that guy.

“Right...” Charlie starts, looking at the ground having a hard time figuring out what to ask next.

“Honestly Charlie, I don’t understand why you keep him around. He’s not going to get redeemed and anything he can do I can do better, so just, depend on me more, I’m always here for you.” Lucifer slightly vents.

“Thank you, dad, but Alastor is still a big part of the hotel, and his idea today was really nice, wasn’t it? You and Vaggie looked like you were getting along really well.”

“I guess that’s true.” As much as he hated to admit it, he did have a nice time.

There was a little awkward pause, before Charlie spoke.

“So, umm, thanks for the talk dad and if you ever need any help then you can always talk to me. I’m here for you too, dad.”

She gives another pause, before steading her resolve “Even if it’s something like you’ve moved on from mom, I’ll understand, okay?” She gives him a somewhat sorrowful smile, clearly trying to stay strong.

“Oh no, I still love your mom, we’re just, having a bit of alone time is all.” He doesn’t really like talking about what happened, but there is a reason he still wears the ring.

“Okay dad, thanks.” She looks back to the way she came. “I think it’s time for me to go back to the others.” She says, trying to give Lucifer the choice of joining back.

“Okay, have fun.” He says, moving towards his room.

________________

His head is only filed with Charlie and to a lesser degree, the conversation. All until he opens the door towards his room and is hit by his reality. His room is plastered with Alastor pictures.

Oh.

Oh no.

A cold fear fills him, what if Charlie saw all of this?

And a thought tells him, she already has.

________________

He teleports back to the lobby, where they had all seemingly gathered after doing the dishes without him. Locates Charlie and bolts in her direction. Grabbing both her arms he looks her straight in the eyes.

“I do NOT like Alastor.” He proclaims with vigor. He can’t handle the thought that she might think otherwise.

“Yeah, we know.” Angel comments, directing their focus his way.

“No- I-” Lucifer looks back at Charlie and tells in a whisper for only her to hear. “I don’t like him like I like your mom.”

“Oh! What a relief, I don’t think Alastor would ever like you either.” Wait, what?

“Why not?” He says out of reflex, short and snappy, almost a little offended that there would be one who wouldn’t even consider the possibility of him. Not that he’d ever fall that low, but a peasant should always worship the king. Should they not?

“Because you’re an insolent fool who can’t even clean up after yourself!” Alastor injects with disdain, having been sitting in the armchair behind them during the whole ordeal. He then stands up and walks towards the two. Positioning himself by Charlie's side he takes his staff and points it at Lucifer's chest.

“And why are you here? I thought you said you were busy, hmm?” He continues.

“I am busy, just had to- wanted to make sure that Charlie was doing fine. Can’t be sure about that when you’re around.” Lucifer responds, as if he has the higher ground.

“You should have more faith in her, Charlie is a very capable person.” Alastor gives a short glance towards her, “I for one believe that she can accomplish anything as long as she puts her mind to it. Sad to hear you don’t feel the same.”

“I didn’t-”

“Now dear, you were discussing plans for tomorrow?” Alastor directs all of his focus on Charlie, fully ignoring Lucifer, except for a smug smile he quickly shoots his way.

________________________________

Hope it was a fun read ᵔᵜᵔ

Also, the idea with Crymini was something like, Lucifer is trying to connect with the rest of hell, but still doesn't really want to interact much with them. So he chose to create a shop of sort and found a random sinner to help him in exhange for a nice salary

[audrey-carr1]

The Heiress and the Lady of the House (part 5)

A/N: I finally updated! Yay!

word count: 3.3k+

warnings: fem!reader, Hettyxreader, some kissing and other things but no smut

Want to read on AO3?

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |

The morning of NYE

Hetty was always the first one to wake. She says she enjoys watching the sunrise and seeing the sunlight enter the room to illuminate my beauty. I am always the last one to fall asleep, naturally as I am the one running the business, but also because I wanted to be sure Hetty slept. More than once, I have heard Hetty talk about how she does not sleep well or at all. Since she has begun to sleep in my bed, she has slept very peacefully. As she enjoys watching me sleep in the morning, I love to watch her sleep in the evenings. Her face relaxed and free from anxieties. Often times I find myself twirling her hair between my fingers. Sometimes I would have to keep myself from laughing when Hetty would begin to snore softly.

Now Hetty and I lay cuddled in bed enjoying the peace of the morning. Almost an hour ago, I had set up the Wii for the ghosts that were awake to play Just Dance. It was not a game I thought they would enjoy, but they took it up very quickly. I, along with everyone else, was surprised to find that Thor was very good at the game often getting 5 stars on his first try on every song. 

Even though she rarely played with them, the only person Thor could not beat was Hetty. She was always just a couple of points ahead. I had never seen Hetty enjoy herself more than when she finally got the hang of the game. At first, she complained that the music was horrible, but over time I have heard her humming the lyrics to the songs. Ofcourse I would never tell her this, this was a moment I’d keep to myself. 

“Have I told you how beautiful you are? Especially in the morning,” Hetty says placing a kiss on my forehead.

“Every morning since we’ve been together, but I will not tire of hearing it,” I say placing a kiss on her lips. Hetty greedily accepts the gesture. 

“Get up here,” Hetty says in a sultry voice as she moves to lay on her back and brings me on top of her to straddle her. 

“Hetty, everyone is up they could hear,” I say sitting up. My hands lay on her chest, and her hands began to caress my upper thighs.

“Well, maybe you should work on being more quiet,” Hetty teases. Hetty takes a moment to marvel at your beauty. Your positioning on the bed allows the light to cast around you almost like you have a halo around your body. “My personal angel” Hetty muses to herself. 

My giggles turn into whimpers, and soon my whimpers into soft moans.

“Quiet remember,” Hetty whispers in my ear, her grip on my thighs tightening. I nod biting my lip to keep silent. 

One of her hands continues its journey up your thigh and getting closer to the place I wanted…no, needed it most. 

“(Y/n), can you touch the Wii remotes again?” I hear Trevor ask through the door.

Hetty’s hand stops abruptly, and I slump against her in defeat. “Oh, so close,” I sigh to myself.

I sigh outwardly and Hetty chuckles, “You are going to have to give those boys a curfew on that game machine. No gaming hours that could interrupt our morning activities,” Hetty says letting me go, so I can get up. 

I quickly wrap myself in my silk robe, and look for my slippers which I quickly find near the door.

“Is this what parenting feels like?” I ask

“Honestly, I haven’t the slightest idea. I let the nanny take care of that aspect,” Hetty says waving off the question. 

I laugh as I slide on my slippers, “I love them, but I am almost at my wit's end being called. I’m about to push Riley or Nadine down the stairs so they can see everyone too.”

“That wouldn’t be the worst idea, how about Nadine?” Hetty asks a bit too eagerly. 

“Behave, Hetty. She is still my friend,” I reply

Hetty smirks to herself and turns to lie on her side. 

“Hurry back,” She says waving me away.

“Trust me I’m trying to,” I say leaving the room. 

I head towards the room with the Wii, and I’m met with Pete and Trevor waiting for me. I could almost laugh at the picture. 

“Oh, good morning!” You hear Pete say, “We hope you weren’t sleeping,”

“No she and Hetty were trying to get it on,” Trevor says making a gesture. 

“Trevor!” I say swatting his arm. I try to keep from laughing, as I blush from being found out. 

“What am I lying?” Trevor defends himself, “Honestly I do not blame them, Hetty and I-”

“Please spare me the details of what you and my girlfriend used to do,” I interrupt.

“Girlfriend? You two are using titles now?” Trevor asks. A grin spreads across before laughing, I even hear Pete chuckle a little bit. Trevor enjoys being able to tease you about something. 

“Oh no, I mean…where are those stupid remotes,” I say scanning the room. I spot the remotes on the couch. I grab them and give them to Pete and Trevor. Before leaving the room I touch the rest of the Wii remotes in case the other ghosts wake up and decide to play.

“ Hopefully that’ll buy me an hour...if we’re quick,” I tell myself.

 I hurry back to my room turning the sign on my door to do not disturb before entering. 

“Took you long enough,” Hetty says in mock boredom. 

“You are very impatient this morning,” I say crossing my arms. 

“I come from a time period of sexual repression, and of the 130 years I have been dead it was not until year 126 that I discovered my own sensuality via broken washing machine,” Hetty says in an unamused tone, “I have a lot of time to make up for.”

“Washing machine?” I ask. 

“Yes, a washing machine. Now lover, if you could please,” Hetty gestures for me to come back to bed. 

“Well since you asked so nicely,” I say untying my robe. 

I discard the robe at the door leaving me in my silk nightgown. Sauntering over to Hetty I try to keep a serious face, but I cannot help the smile that threatens to break. I reach the bed, and Hetty grabs a hold of my waist.

“Even when you are being silly, you make it sexy,” Hetty says, beginning to pepper my chest with kisses and making her way up to my neck. While I try to focus on the moment, I cannot help but think about what Trevor had said earlier. 

Hetty helps me back onto the bed and moves me to straddle her lap once more. Her lips resume their kissing but this time on my neck. I feel her teeth graze against my skin, but my mind is elsewhere. I barely offer an auditory acknowledgment of the gesture.

“Darling, when I said you had to be quiet, I did not mean statute silent,” Hetty mumbles against my skin noticing my lack of enthusiasm. 

“I am sorry Hetty, I’m just not in the mood anymore,” I say climbing off of her.

“What?! Why?!” Hetty whinged. 

 “I mean what happened? Is something wrong?” Hetty quickly corrects herself and sits up in bed trying to fight the pout forming on her lips. 

“When I left to go fix the remote situation. Trevor said something, and actually…do not worry about it. Forget I even said anything, I’ll meet you downstairs for breakfast,” You close the door to the bathroom.

Hetty sits on the bed in disbelief. She hears the shower start to run, and she knows that the moment is ruined beyond repair. 

“I’m going to kill him,” Hetty says leaving the room on a mission, “Oh, Trevor!”

------

The rest of the morning and into the early afternoon goes by quickly as we all prepare the house for our New Year’s celebration. After a while, I head upstairs to take a nap. I tell Alberta that if they need anything to wake me up, and she sends me on my way telling me not to worry. 

“Hetty have you noticed (y/n), lately?” Flower asks. 

“I tend to notice her a lot,” Hetty says not knowing where Flower could be going with her impending line of questioning. 

“No like her complexion, she looks a little…different,”

“I hate to brag, but I might have something to do with that new glow she has been sporting,” Hetty smirks to herself. 

“No, Hetty not like that. She looks a bit pale and she has been more tired than usual. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed,” Flower says.

“Well it is the wintertime, and Sam and Jay always say they lose so much color in the winter. Maybe her trip to the beach will bring her back to life. Do not worry you’re pretty little head about,” Hetty says beginning to get worried herself. How could she not have noticed these changes, and she sleeps right next to you? 

“Worry about what?” Flower asks. 

——————-

Still thinking about what Flower said, Hetty begins to get even more worried and sets out to find you. After searching what seems to be the entire house, she finds you still asleep in your room. Hetty smiles softly to herself at the sight and comes over to brush your hair from your face. Hetty does notice that you do look a bit pale, but she tries to tell herself that it is due to the change in season. Hetty places a kiss on your forehead and leaves the room. Hetty wonders if she can get Alberta to ask the Alexa a couple of questions about your symptoms.

When I wake up from my nap, I groan and hold my head in my hands. I feel as if my head were about to split in two. I take a couple of steadying breaths before standing on my feet and going to the bathroom. I  rifle through the medicine cabinet to find some kind of medicinal relief. I gulp down a couple of pain pills with a glass of water, and I press the cold glass to my chest, now feeling a bit overheated. 

“I better not be getting sick,” I say out loud. I refill the glass and gulp down the rest of the water before heading downstairs. 

I am surprised to find that the entire house is quiet. I look around the house, and I finally find the ghosts huddled around the Alexa. 

“Hey guys, why so sneaky?” I ask the room. Everyone jumps at the sound of your voice not expecting you to be awake. 

“Nothing, we just wanted to settle a debate,” Alberta quickly says. 

“A debate? A debate about what?” My eyebrow quirks up as I cross my arms. I knew they were up to something, but I could not tell what. 

“If hotdog is just hotdog or if hotdog disguised as a sandwich,” Thor says quickly. Everyone looks at him, and he just shrugs. 

“Well, what did you find out?” I ask, playing along. 

“How about instead of quizzing us, we figure out how we are going to throw this New Year’s Eve party that you keep talking about,” Hetty says emerging from the group and to my side. 

“But Hetty,” I begin to say. 

“Ah ah ah, as Lady of the house, I demand we talk of party plans,” Hetty leaves the room, and I am sure I am expected to be behind her. 

“Is she always this bossy?” I ask them slowly making my way to the door.

Everyone nods while Trevor says, “In ways you can’t even imagine.”

“Shut up Trevor,” You hear Hetty say from the hallway.

-------

New Year’s morning

Hetty and I try to finish what we started yesterday morning, and we are off to a good start. The room is filled with soft sighs and moans. 

“My nape, kiss my nape,” Hetty begs. 

I do as told, and she arches her neck to allow me a tiny bit more access. I begin to urge Hetty onto her back. As soon as her head hits the pillows we hear my name being called…again. Hetty curses under her breath while I offer an apologetic look. Once again I do the same routine of adjusting my gown, tightening my robe, and putting on my slippers. 

“I’m getting blocked by ghosts, this has to be my worst nightmare,” Hetty groans. 

“Just imagine how Jay feels,” I laugh knowing this has likely happened to him on more than one occasion. 

“I’ll be back before you know it,” I say standing on my feet. I push myself off of the bed, and I bring a hand to my head to ward off the dizzy spell that just came on. The other hand grabbed the footboard of the bed. I stand still for a moment hoping that the room will stop spinning for one moment. 

“Darling, are you alright?” Hetty asks sitting up, ”(Y/n)!”

I try to answer her, but instead, I feel my knees collapse and I hit the ground.

——————-

I groan as I open my eyes, my head throbbing just a bit. I’m thankful the curtains are drawn to keep any bright light from entering the room. The only source of light comes from my desk lamp.

“Finally, you are awake. There is a glass of water next to your bed, dear. On your nightstand,” Hetty says softly. 

Without looking in her direction, I gulp the glass of water in one go. I set the glass back down on the nightstand, and I slowly sit up in bed against the pillows slowly.

“Maybe we need to convince Sam and Jay to add an extension to the house,” Hetty suggests. 

“I would still be called, Hetty,” I say holding out my hands. Hetty smiles to herself and comes over to me. 

“Well need to figure out how to extend this power of yours. I very much would like to have some interrupted time with you. As well as moments where you are not fainting because of what I assume is stress,” She says. 

“Hetty, you have plenty of uninterrupted time with me,”  I say adjusting my position a little. 

“Next time you are called, you are not answering,” Hetty says sitting on the edge of the bed next to me. She helps move the pillows to make me more comfortable. 

“Is that an order from the Lady of the House?” I ask.

“Yes, it is, and it would be wise for the heiress to heed that order,” Hetty replies 

“Hetty what if it’s an emergency?” I ask.

“Well Sam and Jay are back for a while, they will figure it out,” Hetty responds. 

We sit in silence for a moment before I speak up again.

“You are fretting dear,” I say. 

I see Hetty squint in disapproval, and I know I have hit a sore spot.

“You are having night terrors, you barely have an appetite, you are pale, and now you are fainting,” Hetty points out.

“Hetty I always have night terrors, some nights are just better than others. As for my appetite, I am just not hungry all the time. It just happens,” I brush of Hetty’s concern hoping that she would drop the subject soon. Then I remember this is Hetty, we will not be dropping this anytime soon. 

“I hope you know that I do not believe you. Even more so since you still have yet to explain the fainting,” Hetty says standing up. 

“Point proven,” I say to myself.

“It was one time! What can I say? I fall for your beauty every day,” I say hoping to lighten the mood. 

“This is serious!” Hetty declares.

“Fine. What is it that you would like me to do?” I ask crossing my arms. 

Hetty does the same, “I want you to go see a doctor.”

“Fine,” I say a bit exasperated. I’m in no mood to keep this going back and forth.

“You aren’t going to argue about it?” Hetty says a bit taken aback. 

“I would not call this an argument. Do you want to argue about it?” I questioned with a raised eyebrow. 

“No, you just have a stubborn streak. Therefore, I was expecting you to fight back a little,” Hetty says, her hand cradling my chin. She tilts my head up to meet her gaze. 

“Well, we could argue, as you say, or we could kiss which could lead to some other things. I think a little love may be the best medicine I can get,” I prompted.

Hetty laughs brushing my lips with her thumb before getting up and leaving the room. 

“What? So no kiss?” I sputtered. 

—-----

Over the next week, my headache does not get any better. Now that Sam and Jay have returned, I do not have to worry about being up and ready to work as much. After hearing of my condition, Riley and Nadine were more than happy to help cover my hours. 

Now I mainly lay in bed, and Hetty stays with me tending to my every need however she can. It is mainly her telling Sam that I need something, and then Sam bringing what was requested to me. 

“You seem to have quite the motherly instincts,” I say. 

“And if you tell anyone, I’ll cut your tongue out,” Hetty says. She continues to brush my hair.

“You wouldn’t, you like my tongue,” I say sticking my tongue out.

“Oh great, now you’ve gone delirious,” Hetty says no doubt rolling her eyes. Her arms wrap around me and sink back into her. I close my eyes, enjoying the feeling of being wrapped in her arms.

“When do you have your appointment?” Hetty asks.

“Early tomorrow morning, Riley and Nadine are going to take me,” I respond.

Hetty hums in response. 

“I am worried about you,” Hetty says quietly. If I weren’t so close to her, I probably would not have heard it.

“I know,” I say.

“I do not want to lose you,” Hetty says. Her voice is a bit thick, and I can tell she is fighting back tears.

“You won't,” I replied kissing her hand, “I promise,”

————————

The next morning, I wake up feeling slightly better than in previous days. I find it unusual that Hetty is not awake with me, but I let her rest. She was probably up fretting over me all night anyway. I get ready, and before leaving I leave a kiss on Hetty’s head. I whisper an “I love you,” and smile when I get soft snores in response. I quietly leave the room, and head down the stairs. 

Riley already has my coat in hand ready for me to put it on. I slip into it, and Nadine helps to adjust the collar. 

“You two are acting like I’m dying or something,” You whisper trying to lighten the mood. 

They barely crack a smile, and I scoff. 

“Guys I am fine. We are going to get me checked out, and they are going tell me I am fine, and then we will come back and live a life so good it could be a sit-com,” I say, “Now let’s go before everyone else wakes up and looks at me like I am going off to war and never coming home,”

That causes a snort to leave Riley and Nadine to laugh softly. 

Riley offers to drive, and Nadine lets me sit in the back so I can sleep if I want to. The car starts, and I try to ignore the uneasy feeling that appears. I've had this feeling before, like a panic attack, but it feels way stronger this time. Instead of the usual impending sense of doom, I have an overwhelming sense that something horrible is about to happen.

“I’m fine,” I assure myself.

I take a steady breath, to calm myself.

As the car moves closer to the gate, I feel a build-up of energy. Almost like static electricity all over my body. My body begins to feel pulled almost as if I am being split in two different directions.

Then everything goes black.

-END-

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 13/05/2024

Stickerbrush Queen

Season 1 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume L [Side A]

Ripped by toonlink

EIGHT. Years later. And we're still jammin'. I can't believe I missed the anniversary to such a historic part of the channel's legacy. I hope the world can forgive me for being a whole day late and that we can all recover from this scandal together.

Stickerbush Symphony is one of the most revered songs within VGM to a degree I don't think I can describe accurately. The original version from Donkey Kong Country 2 is still arguably David Wise's magnum opus and continues to touch hearts everywhere through its various YouTube reuploads, wheras the equally-beautiful remix in Super Smash Bros. Brawl has its hooks in an entire generation of Wii kids who are forever attached to the theme through its prominence in the Subspace Emissary campaign. It of course has a huge presence on SiIvaGunner too, one I've covered multiple times before, most notably in Sidelined Symphony. Yet the song's presence on SiIvaGunner has branched out into something entirely different, an outright franchise of bangers based on the already banging Brawl remix - all of which started with Stickerbrush Queen.

Yes, you'll have to forgive me for Toonlink-glazing once again...it's likely that not even this will be his final appearance on here, but it genuinely cannot be overemphasized just how much of Season 1's spirit was defined by his contributions. Rips like The Great Weed and Dr. Soulja are just quintessential SiIvaGunner to me, and were my go-to rips to share back in 2016, their comedic timing near unmatched, but Toonlink's versatility as a ripper extended to genuine bangers as well. Case and point - Stickerbrush Queen, the first-ever rip of Brawl's interpretation of Bramble Blast, and one that hit the nail on the head right away with an utmost brilliant idea - to use the track as the backing beat to a rap mashup. Whether or not you have attachment to Trap Queen or Fetty Wap before listening doesn't matter - the two halves of the rip lift each other up in such perfect harmony, that it starts to feel wrong to listen to them in isolation afterward.

In my eyes, a huge part of what makes the mashup work is that its playing to the traits of Trap Queen rather than lifting it into a completely different environment - its beat in the original version has a very similar bright, sparkly sound to Brawl's Bramble Blast, and the contrast between it and the vocals are likely part of how Trap Queen was envisioned. More drastic tone changes in rap mashups can certainly bang, I fucking love Sweatpants Select for that very reason, yet there's something just so elegant about how Stickerbrush Queen does it - it still FEELS different, the Bramble Blast instrumental is undeniably emotional, yet its able to balance itself out through the steady rhythm of Trap Queen's vocals. The break in the middle of the rip, at around a minute in, hits extra hard though - the instrumental additions to Trap Queen changing in turn make it such a memorable part of the whole and unify the two songs amazingly well.

Being uploaded so early into the channel's very first season, during the period of time in which EVERYONE's eyes were on this weird new music uploading channel, Stickerbrush Queen slowly garnered a sort of legendary reputation. Perhaps that was just my view of things, but it was one that got validated more and more as the channel went on. More Bramble Blast and Stickerbush Symphony rips were made over the months and years, ones like Stickerbrush State of Mind and more, that all felt like they were paying tribute to the very beginnings of it all. Eventually, those tributes would become direct - The premiere to Season 6 of the channel, Bramble Blast Collab, includes direct nods to this one rip, and its only one of several examples - most notably, a direct tribute to it on Season 7's RIP² album. This release, 7 YEARS LATER AND WE STILL JAMMIN', is of course also notable for referencing perhaps what the rip is most known for these days - the persistence of one sole commenter who returns to Stickerbrush Queen once a year on its anniversary to remind everyone that, yes, all these years later we ARE still jammin'.

Eight years, huh...that's nutty to think about - and yet even with its age, this one sole rip continues to be referenced all over the place on the channel. Stickerbush Symphony, Bramble Blast,whatever you want to call it (even StickerBRUSH Symphony if you're wrong), continues to live on, celebrated as the legendary piece of VGM it always has been - yet the contribution Toonlink made to its legacy all those years ago feels everpresent in a way that's really fun to see - almost EVERYONE following the channel has heard that one mashup at one point or another. Be it the aforementioned direct arrangement of it on RIP², or this fucking stupid tweet that blew up around the rip's fifth anniversary...its the kind of rip that just brings the community together any time we get to hear a trace of it. The definition of an enduring classic - and yes, we are STILL Jammin'.

[bucketspammer4life]

ranking the boxers abilities to cook, worst to best (Wii)

yeah dont take this seriously im evil

Aran Ryan - my god this man needs to be kept away from the kitchen, he sets everything on fire so much that he forgets what hes cooking and fucks it up

Soda Popinski - He def adds soda to everything, mind you soda probably wont go well with bread, he can make a mean stew though

Bear Hugger - dude, he just eats the ingredients raw and calls it a day, thats okay to some extent with lettuce, tomato,Apples, stuff like that, but get meat and eggs involved and it gets worse, unless hes out in the wilderness with a pot and a very shitty campfire, hes not making anything edible

Bald Bull - He can make some basic meals + some traditional dishes if hes looking at a recipe, its not really the best but its not inedible either, there are some hes really good at

Mr Sandman - He used to be as bad as aran with it, but he actually learned how to get better, especially at baking, he used to be a better cook during his teen years but he got rusty since he didnt practice enough thanks to boxing getting in his way

Disco Kid - He used to work as a cook so he has some remaining knowledge from those days, hes very good with vegetables and fruit, not much other than that though

King Hippo - Hippo island has a huge culture built around cooking, And hes no exception! He has studied cooking for years and still does, he has a soft spot for sweets and usually makes dessert, hes good at other kinds of cooking too

Great Tiger - He learnt cooking at a young age since he wanted to help out his parents and be a bit more responsible, so he practiced cooking a lot and got pretty decent at it

Don Flamenco - actually learnt how to properly cook when he first met carmen, She didnt like how he couldnt even make a proper salad without setting anything on fire so she taught him how to cook better, to this day, they still cook together and Don still somehow manages to fuck up something, still good at it though.

Piston Hondo - He had a love for cooking for a long time and still loves it very much, he always cooked with his mom and thinks of it as a fun way to pass time or prepare for matches (dont ask how it just helps)

Von Kaiser - give this man a grill and he'll cook up a feast without you even needing to finish your sentence, he learnt how to cook to take better care of his health since he had a bunch of health problems related to blood pressure and his doctor recommended him to eat healthier

Super Macho Man - this might be suprising but hes actually a great cook! He didnt bother hiring a cook for him since he thought it would be lame, he takes cooking classes weekly so hes rapidly improving

Glass joe - hes a slut for bread, specifically homemade bread, i think that tells you enough

[blazehedgehog]

You hear about what's going on with Sam Procrastinates? What do you think of that?

I caught a whiff of it today, yeah. I'm sort of glad I'm mostly outside of that circle of influence. I know of a lot of those people, but I do not know them personally. I probably run my mouth on here too much and too freely for some of those types.

Especially seeing Sam get out there in front and be like "whoa whoa whoa whoa I'm trying to protect my business by distancing myself from leakers and bad actors" -- like, maybe I don't have the full context here, but trying to divorce yourself from leakers is a bit weird to me?

Keep in mind I'm coming at this from the perspective of being on Sonic Retro during the massive Sonic 4 leak, which lead Sega to partner with Sonic Retro. Some of the inroads paved during that partnership almost certainly lead to us getting Sonic Mania, given there are future Sonic Mania staff thanked in the credits for Sonic 4 Episode 2.

Like, I get trying to keep your nose clean. I try to do that, too. People get on my case for being spooked by emulation in my "Definitive Way to Play" videos, but people who really, actually know me, know that I've never had a problem with emulation ever in my entire life. Up until Tristan started buying me games to review for TSSZ, emulation was literally all I had. I could not afford games on my own, and I basically still can't. (I'm counting on next month's Twitch payout to cover my pre-order for Shadow Generations)

All of that is me trying to keep my nose clean. I've seen channels get shut down for talking too openly about emulation (particularly with setup tutorials), and even Discord servers are not as private as people think they are. The hammer can and will drop, and I'd rather my financial livelihood not be under it.

So I will never tell people to "just emulate it" in my videos and I have a rule against linking piracy material in my Discord. If you like me, and like my work, that's the way it's gotta be to protect that kind of stuff.

But that's on video. What I do in my personal life has no baring on that. I endeavor to capture all my footage from real consoles but I'm also living in a cramped little bedroom with maybe ten square feet of floor space right now, so I'm not digging out my Wii or my Saturn or my PS2 every time I have to capture footage of something. I emulate it.

I'm getting off topic. Shutting people out of your life because they don't align with your business is a bit extreme, to me. But again, I don't know the relationship there. At least in the clips Sam uses, he never seems very happy to have Shanny around, even though it's clear Shanny can and continued to join Sam's discord calls. I guess I just don't have any friends like that -- I either have personal friends, or... well, I just don't have very many "business friends." (Which depending on your view point, is or isn't a problem and one of the reasons my channel growth can be so sluggish)

So, like, whatever. Again, I dunno how a lot of that stuff goes. Ultimately, I guess I don't blame Sam for protecting his business, because again, I protect my business too, and it's clear Sam is more successful than I am.

I will say this, though, and I am about to step neck deep in the shit: I have never liked that Jaden Sonic Show dude. There was a time...

...Let's see... I had to dig around in Discord because I was so put off by this guy's videos I straight up erased them from my Youtube History, so this is the only way I even know I watched them:

I watched two or three of his videos around this time and this dude's tendency to just make stuff up, believe in bad sources, and push the worst rumors was infuriating. I would say it's not a stretch to claim he is eroding the overall intelligence of the Sonic fandom with his sensationalist, reactionary, straight up false information. He reminds me of the way I used to think about the game industry when I was 13, which is to say: deeply, deeply, deeply incorrect.

This is where I was going to pivot and say, "and he makes more money than Sam and I combined," because he has 150k+ subscribers. But according to SocialBlade, that doesn't seem to be true. Despite having 3x as many subs as Sam, SocialBlade claims The Sonic Show seems to make less than Sam Procrastinates.

I guess there are benefits to keeping your nose clean.

(And given I have a Youtube channel of my own, I have a vague idea how accurate these numbers are -- which is to say: I am not making $122 a month from Youtube, but I wish I was. I also understand why Sam is so protective of his channel's earnings, too)

Anyway, all of this to say, Sam seems in the right here. I do get a whiff of, like, the puritan Japanese Idol culture from some of this, where if you're a J-Idol you can't be caught drinking, or smoking, or even swearing. You have to maintain total purity or else you fall victim to a witch hunt, and there's a weird amount of finger pointing going on here that I don't know if it was deserved. Sam shouldn't have even needed to make a video like this, but like I said, that Sonic Show guy kind of seems like a vulture.

I would not put stock in what that dude has to say.

[berrypass-de-murdler]

95. A Free Press Can Cost a Killing

Happy to say that Fletch has already made multiple book 2-3 designs! So have I but they will be kept secret for now

Unless you join my server/hj

DON'T READ THE EPISODES UNTIL YOU'VE FINISHED THE FIRST BOOK!!

Irratino is playing a Wii exercise game. I think? He’s kind of just doing the macarena in front of a TV. There’s a ring of the doorbell. Irratino’s doorbell plays ‘Fur Elise’ when rung.

IRRATINO: Um, uh… I’m kind of in a bad… outfit right now?

The doorbell rings again. Irratino looks at his ankle monitor and panics. 

IRRATINO: Just leave it at the door!

The doorbell turns into very violent knocking.

IRRATINO: ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT JUST DON’T SHOOT!

He peers through a crack. 

LOGICO: Logico <3 IRRATINO: [happy scream]

Goat picks him up and wiggles him around.

IRRATINO: I thought you were in HOLLYWOOD! LOGICO: Alright alright SHHHH! Quiet. I’m here to get you out. IRRATINO: HUH?? But… Logico you can’t! I’m under house arrest! LOOK! LOGICO: … Just take it off then. IRRATINO: I can’t! If I try to undo it, it’ll send the police! LOGICO: Just slide it off then. IRRATINO: I can’t, it’s too tight! LOGICO: Just- IRRATINO: LOGICO

There’s a long, awkward scenario of Logico trying to get the monitor off.

LOGICO: Now, I’m going to grab hold as tight as I can and pull it off, HOLD STILL. IRRATINO: Nehhhhhhe, tickles! LOGICO: I didn’t even touch you, you idiot. Grab onto something - I’ll pull the leg out of the socket if I have to. IRRATINO: NO ONE AGREED TO THAT!!

There’s a pop, then a very loud scream. Now it’s off.

IRRATINO: Ah, thanks Logico! Come on let’s go let’s go let’s go!

They fly to Logico’s tiny crammed Hollywood apartment (They totally let Irratino on the plane without an ID). They dance like hell for two seconds. Then, they go to a newspaper company. Logico slams his little fists on the counter.

LOGICO: Midnight Movies is involved in a global conspiracy! IRRATINO: National. National conspiracy. IVORY: Yeah… uh… [khhhh] Sorry, but like… no. We need kinda evidence or something? Also it’s kinda cool you’re here because my assistant is dead. LOGICO: NO, APPLEGREEN?!?!?! IVORY: [snort] Uh, NO! Just some human.

I wonder who could have done it?

GAINSBORO: I write the newspaper! LOGICO: Hello Gainsboro. GAINSBORO: Ohhhh go away! 

Hack Blaxton is there, and though everyone knows his true identity, he still is trying to talk through the puppet. Having no mouth, he is a very good ventriloquist.

BLAXTON: I’m ready for my interviewwwww!

And finally, Champagne.

CHAMPAGNE: I’m here to see if I can unionize the workforce, and put them on the path to seizing the presses! LOGICO: Looks like we have ourselves a little murder. I couldn’t be happier to have you here, Irratino.

Goat Lord blushes and softens his cheeks. He’s such a good boi.

LOGICO: I already know Gainsboro wasn’t on the roof. GOAT: How? LOGICO: Because he can’t fly that well! GAINSBORO: [almost called him ‘Butterfly’] I… CAN… FLYYYYYYYY!! LOGICO: Right. Statements, people! CHAMPAGNE: Take it from me, a working man: I brought a- LOGICO: Everyone works, Champagne, get over your own head. NEXT! GAINSBORO: I have a Bookie, so take it from me.  A Marble bust was on the balcony. Aside from being spectacularly me, I’ve also taken up Poetry. INK: Babe-

This episode has a lot of pacing around a very bland building, which is so enticing to look at. Logico closes his eye, and hears Irratino’s voice in only his mind. It’s just so amazing to hear… 

Then he gets a text.

“Did you get my message?”

Irratino stares at him with a cheeky expression. Logico texts back.

“Yes I did, you little superstar.”

Irratino told him who did it!

It was… ivory. Guess it's not so cool Logico was there?

IVORY: It was all CHAMPAGNE-UH! He ‘radicalized’ the assistant editor! He was gonna make a UNION! So I fucking killed it.

Logico and Irratino leave, and head to a bar to sit and recollect.

LOGICO: How did you know that EXACT chain of events would happen to make me know Midnight Movies was in charge of the ruins? IRRATINO: Huh? No I didn’t. LOGICO: Then why did you send me to the magick shoppe? IRRATINO: So you’d learn to look inside yourself… and see the other side of the world. LOGICO: Why didn’t you tell me you were innocent? IRRATINO: I knew you’d never believe anything you didn’t deduce yourself… not even me. I-I felt horrible about faking my death without telling you, but there were cultists everywhere. And it was the only way I could shake them. The marot told me not to tell you. LOGICO: That is so, so, so impeccably stupid. IRRATINO: I know. I’m sorry. 

Tino looks down with genuine guilt. He looks so sad, helpless, and cute, even though he did something so wrong. And Logico has no choice but to forgive him. He kneads needs him. And he’s ‘beginning’ GL UZOO RM OLEV.

BLAXTON: THEY’RE TRYING TO BLACKMAIL ME BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHO I AM! LOGICO: Please… go fuck yourself.

The end!

Now irratino will consume logico as god intended. I'm so happy he's back!!

The power of Goat Lord compels you!

See you next time murdlers!

[crazylittlejester]

playing skyward sword on the Wii and beating it is such a power move-

Skyward sword is literally my favorite Zelda game of all time and I’d rather eat cold soup and get hypothermia then try to play it on the Wii😭

ALSKDKDKD it’s my favorite Zelda game too!!

Motion control stuff is generally just really hard for me because my hand shakes really badly some times, and it can be really hard for me to grip things well. Sometimes my hand just twitches (?) and I drop whatever I’m holding and lemme tell you it really sucks dropping the fuckin wiimote mid fucking fight 😭 like that is my whole ass sword, gone

when i don’t have to grip something so tightly in JUST my right hand or worry about having to wave something around for the game to work it is a HELL of a lot easier to play, though I am very stubborn and will still be trying to finish the game on the wii 🧍‍♂️

[blueskittlesart]

okay so feel free to delete this message for asking you about TP crimes. but I'm curious if you have any purely aesthetic thoughts about the Link + Zelda designs, as well as the Zora designs, in TP? like how do you feel about the designs on their own, even apart from your distaste for the general atmosphere + story. again feel free to ignore this for TP crimes and no harm done!

yeah ok. disclaimer for those who don't know. i don't like twilight princess and i think the art direction was almost as bad as the story. do not argue with me about this. let's get into it. link first

from a purely character-design standpoint I don't think this design is bad, but I don't think it's all that special either. it's very evocative of oot link, which I'm SURE was intentional based off everything else in the game. it does a decent job of complicating the outfit to the standards of tp's setting without going too overboard in terms of little details. the long hat looks stupid but i understand what they were going for. my biggest critique of the design itself is the desaturated color scheme, which I understand was present in the game at large but. I don't like it. I honestly do think that taking away the vibrance and colorfulness of loz takes a lot of the fun out of it. these games were originally for the NES. we're working off of 8-color pixel graphics. link's tunic should be eye-searingly green no matter how dark and brooding you want his story to be, because without that brightness and vibrance the games cease to feel like loz imo.

anyway. the real PROBLEM with this design, and with most of the art direction in tp, lies in how it was actually handled in-game. twilight princess was a game for the wii & gamecube, released in 2006. while advancements in graphics were GETTING THERE, the models were still relatively low-poly. The franchise had already seen a lot of success working with low-poly models in oot and ww, specifically because they leaned into the limitations of low-poly graphics and went for a more cartoonish, unrendered art style which made the blocky models seem purposefully stylized instead of limiting. twilight princess, however, did a complete 180 with the art direction and decided to attempt to HIDE the low-poly graphics behind over-rendered textures. this combined with the desaturated color palette of the character designs makes everything look very flat and lifeless.

in every close shot of link throughout this game i was constantly distracted by how awful the textures made the model look. the rendered folds of his tunic being slapped onto a flat surface, the rendering in his hair being an obvious coverup for the fact that it's one mass on the model with no physics, etc etc. the textures seldom rendered perfectly smoothly on the wii either, so the painted rendering would be strangely pixelated or blurry compared to the model's sharp edges. the game's lighting also seems to operate entirely in harsh black gradients, making the color and rendering choices on the model all the more obvious. Again, I understand that these are limitations of the medium the devs were working with, but i think that art direction that takes the medium into account and works WITH it instead of AGAINST it is almost always more successful than attempts to cover your ass after the fact, and i think that twilight princess could have been a more visually pleasing game if the art direction hadn't been so focused on covering the flatness of the models with hyper realistic textures.

onto zelda. again, we have a theme here of taking the oot design and overcomplicating it. i think the color choices are better here than they are with link, but i would have liked a brighter pink on her bodice. I also think that the dress's neckline was... pretty obviously a sexualization attempt. there's a reason men love this zelda. imo if they were going to keep oot zelda's shoulder armor they should also have kept the breastplate-ish piece in the middle and the high neckline from that dress. you cant say ooh look shes a swordfighter see she has armor!! and then leave her fucking jugular exposed. no wonder she got possessed by ganon immediately. other than my general complaints with the over-rendering i don't have much else to say about her tho. shes fine

the zora tho... this is where i start to get pissed off. HOW ARE YOU GONNA DESIGN A SPECIES OF FISH PEOPLE BASED ON TROPICAL FUCKING FISH AND THEN REFUSE TO PUT A SINGLE SATURATED COLOR INTO ANY OF THEIR DESIGNS. the way these designs could all be improved by about a hundred percent if you just TURNED UP THE GODDAMN SATURATION. GIVE ME A REAL RED. IM BEGGING. UGGHHHHHHHHHH. i also think the ugly rendering REALLY shows through on these guys because they don't have a lot of detail on them to cover it all up. someone needs to explain to these designers that you don't shade with black. like. god. the designs truly are not bad in terms of like creature design i dont think but they are so DESPERATELY in need of color that it's fucking distracting. color is not your enemy guys please