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mycptsdstory · 3 years ago

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So, to elaborate on the Love Bombing; my ex best friend who I talked about in the previous posts, when she lied to my face when I didn’t offend anyone. Saying THREE TIMES, twice in her discord that everyone could see and the third in private messaged me; is the girl I’m gonna talk about Love Bombing and why my mental health on people not messaging me back has gone down the shitter.

Before I say this, it’s not just me she did this too, she did this with EVERYONE! Even the people she worked with as content creators. Now I know she has bad mental health too, not gonna go into detail about it too much. Trying to be vague about it as much as I can; her family caused her mental health and I know she has some deep deep deep Trauma Bonding Issues with her family, especially her dad.

So, let’s get into the Love Bombing of my ex best friend.

She would leave discord servers to, take a break from her mental health and take a break in general. I don’t mind that. She did this so often that no one really questioned her. Then when she came back, it was all filled with love, sending people gifts and so on. It was pretty intense and I couldn’t cope with it, it was TOO much love that it was overbearing. Sometimes I had to take a step back because I couldn’t handle the intense compliments, the showering of gifts and her explosiveness of love. It’s not just “oh you look pretty” it was “omg youre so pretty! I wish I was pretty as you. Omg youre so good with makeup, youre so gorgeous, you’re so kind” and on and on and on. Like I said, it was intense.

However, the minute she kinda just left and ignored me for months, I would feel guilty that I wasn’t a good friend and I needed to be more kind. Then she came back telling me “youre such a wonderful person. I love you so much! You’re like a sister I never had. Not like my family who did…” and basically Trauma Dumping me with her problems. It’s like she didn’t understand boundaries and she didn’t know when is the good time, not to talk about certain shit she was dealing with. Like she had NO self aware of what she was doing. I get it she had a bad life, but please, don’t do this. It’s uncomfortable when people do this.

She would even leave the content community gamers (I can’t say their brand, I know they get paid on YouTube) and just leave and saying “I’m gonna miss you guys. You guys are the best. I love you all so much, you’re my family” and just really uncomfortable over loving when she left.

[Side note and side rant/vent; she could leave servers and no one bats an eyelid. THE MINUTE I LEFT? Oh no, I’m bad. Fuck off. Especially when my bf couldn’t handle the drama in her server with her friends, he left on his own accord. Oh no! He’s also the bad guy because he left. Fuck off. The more she caused drama and her friends (aka followers) tried and I mean fucking tried to get me to snap, the more I wanted nothing to do with it. I walked away and I know they hate that. Oh well, not my fucking problem. Again, fuck off with that bull shit. Me and my bf got fed up and left their bs. But noooooo we are the bad guys for leaving the fucking server. She can fuck right off with that bull shit.]

Again, when she came back it to the content creators, she was just filled with love. Looking back, it was toxic. I don’t have to prove my love to you, when you left. Fuck off. I will love anyone unconditionally, but the minute you Love Bomb me, I’m leaving. I’m done.

She would think if I didn’t give her the attention, she needed, I’m the bad friend. Fuck off. When I didn’t see her post, when I didn’t see the thing she tagged me in straight away; I’m the bad friend. Fuck off. When I didn’t see her message straight away and I didn’t respond straight away; I’m the bad friend. Fuck off.

Like I said, she had no personal boundaries and no self awareness on what she’s actually doing.

Omg everything has to be SJW (social justice warriors) bs but only pick and choose who’s the more popular opinion. Fuck off. Like with Johnny Depp, oh she didn’t like how he ‘retaliated’ back to Amber so Johnny is the bad guy and women are ‘never’ abusive. Fuck off. How when the tea channels all agree with something, you have to agree with them. Fuck off. When ‘I’ should agree that ALL Republicans are the bad guys and everyone should be put in a box. Again, fuck off. Not everyone is the same, everyone is different. Omg if I had a different opinion of hers she would get ‘triggered’. She and her ‘friends’ can suck my cunt. Ugh…. I hate those types of people. So immature.

How about this, instead of calling yourself a SJW, just be a decent human fucking being. It’s not e=mc2 for fucks sake. God, the SJWs need a participation trophy to fight for basic human rights… ugh. I hate people.

She and along with her friends would complicate sentences to make themselves feel and look smart. I just see a dumb ass tbh. Here’s the thing, even my bf said this “any idiot can make anything complicated. A genius can make something complicated into something simple”. I agree, they would try to use the (as I call it) “the gaslight dumb logic” to make them feel smart, but the minute you question on what they are saying and trying to understand on what they are actually saying ; they have a 5 year old tantrum. Really pathetic tbh. That’s toxic btw. You are not smart, nor you are clever to do that bull shit. It’s pathetic.

I still got the messages she sent to me when she deleted her old discord account because again, she caused drama… I wonder fucking why 🙄

I’m honestly glad she’s out of my life. Now I can focus on not being such a cry baby bitch when someone doesn’t reply straight away. I know she caused that, it brought me back when I was living with my family. My mental health got that bad at one point.

Don’t get me wrong, I used to love bomb people when I was teen, but I’ve learned from that. I haven’t done that since I was in my teens. I’ve grown up, matured since then. People who love bomb are so fucking immature adult babies. I’m done with people like that.

If want me to go into detail and explain what Love Bombing is in psychologically terms and put it into basics so you can understand; I’m happy to do that.

EDIT: This girl is in her mid 30s or late 30s but she’s acting like a teen. When I found out she was (I think, don’t quote me on this) 36? I was shocked. She acted like she was in her 20s or younger. Don’t get me wrong, even me at 29 I have my immature moments and I act like a kid sometimes, but this was different. It’s like she didn’t know how to act certain times and I have plenty of friends who are a lot older than me and we all act immature sometimes. I just can’t put my finger on it, it’s like she didn’t want to be an adult, or like she didn’t want people to know she’s older than she is.

Yeahh we can all act immature and have a stupid humour like laughing at farts or making silly faces, singing with our brushes or get drunk and act like we can do anything (as long you’re not doing anything illegal). Nothing wrong in that, me and friends still do that. Or even playing games and we piss each other off so we kill each other. Again, nothing wrong in that.

I can’t explain it, it’s hard to explain on the way she acts. Like she when she didn’t get her own way, she attacked my bf because she couldn’t get to me because I blocked her. When she couldn’t get my bf because he blocked her, so she attacked my friends. This screams immaturity and only teens and children do this when they can’t get their own way. It’s pretty pathetic tbh. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.

EDIT: I can do another post on Trauma Dumping in psychological terms and put it simple so you guys can understand. I can do that, been thinking of doing that for some time.

#cptsdhealing #living with cptsd #cptsd problems #cptsd thoughts #just cptsd things #actually cptsd #cptsd tag #tw cptsd #actually ptsd #cptsd vent #love bombing #love bomb #sjw idiocy #sjw cringe #ex best friend #ex bestie

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noxiatoxia · 5 years ago

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NearlyMellodraMattic headcanons

I'm obsessed with these three lads so I felt like compiling some of my headcanons!!

Near:

- He has minor amnesia and doesn't remember anything before entering Wammy's House when he was around five. Nothing. This amnesia might be the result of him coping with a traumatic event in his past, but even he doesn't know.

- He's easily grossed out. Not by any traditional sense tho, mostly by things that trigger sensory issues (touching dirt, for example).

- On that note he has really bad trypophobia. Like, it can make him sick.

- He loses like ALL reasoning ability when he's around Matt. Like, stupid shit he'd normally not do he'd do with Matt. Matt's one of the few people that can bring out Near's silly side (and also one of the VERY FEW people that can manage to make him laugh!!)

- this ones practically canon but Near is autistic. Thankfully due to Wammy's specialized education he's better at managing it, but he still can't work without some assistance. He has sensory issues, bad at conveying and processing emotions, stims, hyperfixates, doesn't know jack about social cues, etc.

- In relation to that, he HATES thunderstorms. The sudden loud and bright noises/flashes and the general "impending doom" feeling they give him freaks him out. He tries not to show it, though.

- Him and Matt could VS in Tetris for HOURS. There's a 50/50 chance either will win.

- Near suffers from depression and existential crises. It got ESPECIALLY bad after the Kira case once Mello and Matt were gone. (Suicidal thoughts were not uncommon, although he never acted on any of them or planned to.)

- Matt introduced him to online gaming. Near has been playing Webkinz ever since.

- Near is probably really perverted. Won't give any indication of it, however.

- He likes wearing overly large pajamas so he can do the Sleeve Flap Thingy.

- Obsessed with early 90s CGI box art for like computer games and shit. He just loves it.

- He has poor as shit health and multiple vitamin deficiencies and chronic illnesses.

Mello:

- Before coming to Wammy's House, he grew up in a poor urban area with a physically abusive father. He'd go to the public library or steal books when he could, as he had a fascination with learning. Due to this upbringing, however, he has a very strong "fight to survive" mentality: always pushing himself beyond his limits as if his life depended on it and being very, very agressive with others.

- He has minor ADHD.

- Also due to his mental state and nature, he has a really hard time showing that he loves or cares about others, which can lead to him losing them down the line.

- (He almost cried when Matt admitted he thought Mello hated him.)

- He's, what we in the industry call, pansexual.

- He's always eating chocolate because a) the snap is satisfying and calms him down, b) sugar = energy, c) cuz chocolate is fuckin' good.

- His favorite subject is science and philosophy.

- He's actually a really good singer!! He can do a lot of different pitches (him and Matt have def had a drunk karaoke night).

- He's not necessarily religious, and if you asked if he was he'd say "no", but whenever he's scared or feels hopeless he'll clutch the cross on his necklace and pray. (He did this when he knew he was about to die, and recited some prayers under his breath).

- While he doesn't tell people, Mello is actually an amazing artist. Painting, mostly. (He doesn't do it often though. He thinks it's girly smh.)

- Speaks fluent English, Japanese, and German. He may also have German ancestry.

Matt:

- WEALTH OF GAMER KNOWLEDGE. Literally ask him anything that has to relate to video games, he'll know the answer.

- He actually has the compacity to become the smartest Wammy's Kid, even above Near. He wasn't born a genius like Near was, but he could definitely reach a higher level than Near. He just lacks the passion or drive someone like Mello has to actually do better.

- He has really, really terrible anxiety. Video games help him escape reality and shut his mind away from the world, and smoking helps calm his nerves. When he gets panic attacks, it's not uncommon he's unable to speak during them or that he might pass out.

- He enjoys petting Near's hair (when Near lets him); he named a Mareep after Near.

- He also has a psychic-like connection with Near?? Like, they can just look at each other and instantly know what the other is thinking. This makes them a scary duo in Smash Bros. tag team.

- Desite Mello being a bit of an ass, he considers him his best friend. He just finds everything about Mello endearing and fun, even if he can get a bit pushy or annoying at times.

- Though, he often wonders if Mello actually cares about him as a friend, or just hates him. It's the Anxiety™

- Despite how laid back and goofy he is, he's quite introverted and barely talks to people. Usually Mello has to be the one to drag him outside.

- CONSTANTLY forgets or foregoes words and replaces them with nonsense. One time he interrupted L talking about his life as Hideki Ryuga, "...so since my bookbag was heavy and I had to lift my arms up, my shoulders-" "oh, so your shoulders are gayass now?" Matt finishes for him without thinking. Of course he means his shoulders are sore now, and Mello and Near know this and don't even question it or bat an eye, but L just stops and has to think about it for like a minute.

- Doesn't actually want to be L's sucessor. Was kind of forced here because he was Smart.

- For personal reasons, he doesn't like nor celebrate his birthday. Nobody in Wammy's knows his real birthdate except for himself. Everyone else just decided to celebrate his birthday on March 10.

- Has the attention span of a fly. You have to basically strap him to a chair to get him to pay attention to something he finds boring.

- When his anxiety acts up he will aplogize for every little thing. For laughing, for stuttering, for coughing—and especially for crying. Mello as a young child said Matt's crying was annoying, so it's something he's internalized (unbeknownst to Mello).

#miheal keehl #nate river #mail jeevas #wammy's house #mello #near #matt #death note #headcanons #;noxiatalksia

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bittwitchy · 6 years ago

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Alice Madness Returns, part 4

May include the triggers (be it outright or implied) of murder,death, abuse, sexual abuse, child abuse, etcetc (if you know the game, you’d know.) From 45mins-1hour 15mins in game (based on gamer’s little playgrounds playthrough.)

“I was the last one in the library, the night of the fire." “The log I added to the grate was dead when I went upstairs to bed.” “If it wasn’t, I may be responsible for my family’s deaths!” “Delighted to see you again, my dear.” “ Your arrival is filled with fortunate-ality itself." “Really? I... didn’t even know...” “My pregnant show is set to pop... “It requires only a medicament of your helpful-osity." “I’m looking for help to restrain or destroy it.” “The writer’s overly imaginative and exploring several endings.” “Hardly seems you're ready for the show. “ “Why can't you assemble these things yourself?" “An impresario has arrangements.” “To the personage of your distinguished repudiation?” “ I blush at the notionality. “Place smells like a ripe distillery. With a whiff of halitosis and urine.” “It’s the scent of unrecognized genius! So piss off!” “A lifetime hiding his true colors give him an edge. But he can't conceal the way he moves." “You’ve won, you’re a good sport, and no one died.” “The Carpenter commissioned a song and dance number on morality.” “He demands mirth, silliness, and restrained debauchery all around.” “It’s all wrong!” “If I had ears, they’d be hurting!” “I’m not terribly musical, but... you seem out of tune.” “It’s not my fault! I can’t hear my notes.” “I can see that, why don’t you do something about it?” “Everyone here has an excuse for doing nothing.” “Reminds me of the asylum.” “You’ve made a respectable start to it; but a decent job would require considerably more application.” “It’s surely not lost.” “Perhaps mislaid. I suppose I’ll have to help you carry the tune.” “Oysters are the presumptive stars of the show-- if you can wake them.” “You just interrupted my dreams.” “Let us resume our place before our adoring fans at the theater.” “My God, you’re not an impresario! You’re a killer!” “The mastermind of a criminal enterprise.” “The world is not so either or, [name]” “You start wailing about there being too much sand on the beach, I’ll have blubber for breakfast.” “Shame on you, [name], you made a promise!” “I had no choice.” “One can’t always do as one would like.” “I would have thought you’d know that by now.” “They may be hostile at first but their true souls are trapped.” “Do they want to be at peace?” “They do not know their own minds.” “What’s true of the living is often true of the dead.” “Do angels have this much trouble?” “It’s back to the ship for me.” “Be as good to yourself as you’ve been to us.” “Every picture tells a story. “ “Sometimes we don’t like the ending. Sometimes we don’t understand it.” “Rather bizarre show.” “That’s quite enough of that I think.” “Enough preliminaries. Here’s the performance you’ve been waiting for.” “Sword and crown are worthless here.” “I invite everybody to dance.” “Life is full of random deaths, and heaps of grief and shame.” “So few are soothed by ‘accident’, you want someone to blame.” “Fire, plague, and strange disease; drowned, murdered, or if you please.” “A long fall down the basement stairs; none are expected, no one cares.” “After the dance, I then must rest; and the eating can begin.” “Time to eat!” “Death is the ultimate equalizer. All have the right to be eaten.” “Wicked thing, feasting while Wonderland is destroyed!” “I’m not the enemy you seek, [name].” “I tried to hide this bit of Wonderland from that beast!” “Appeasement’s never clean.” “We must all play our assigned roles.” “Are you a pawn or a queen?” “An idiot or a practiced fool?” “However this turns out, consider the prospect that you have been mislead, [name], then ask ‘by whom?’“ “It arrived when you arrived!” “It’s more horrible than even you can currently imagine!” “The death of a dream!” “Caterpillar may know how!” “The blood in my mouth tastes like bile!” “Where’s the brute that hit me?” “What were you thinking butting into that mess?” “My mind’s in pieces.” “I still have terrible visions, and I need to know!” “My past is dead, I killed them, I should have saved them! I should have died!” “Her mind was in shambles.” “Eyes like pinwheels, drooled, occasionally screeched, but never uttered a sensible sound.” “Like the blameless ants that wasps consume, or a spider’s feeble prey.” “A woman alone sometimes does what she doesn’t particularly feel like doing, as you know.” “I can’t give you what I don’t have.” “Alright, but Mr Radcliffe’s useless!” “Don’t I know it.” “I suppose you better come up, mind the latch.” “Forgotten your manners? And what else I wonder?” “In a huff as usual, oozing with attitude and accusatory flummery.” “She won’t accept it; goes on and on about her ‘killing memories’, and her ‘need to know the truth’.” “From the outset, [name] was my candidate for the pyromaniac. “ “The girl had a fixation with fire.” “Did I rip his head off? I.. wanted to.” “What’s left of my brain will explode.” “Is it mad to pray for better hallucinations?” “Perhaps I’m fated to expire right here.” “This bloody ruin! It’s corrupting all of Wonderland!” “Seeking refuge from the wicked world?” “Perhaps things only ‘look’ like they’ve gone to hell.” “You’re not that good a liar, and I’m not that stupid.” “But something a bit less calamitous would have been welcome.” “This unmitigated disaster is your doing.” “It will get worse. Your train keeps a hellish schedule.” “Get moving. Time waits for no one. The change has begun.” “The Train is perfectly capable of terrifying me, [name]. You should find another job.” “Is there really so little hope?” “There’s even less... and if fear paralyzes you, we’re lost.” “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” “A single step off London Bridge could end my journey.” “That vaporous ledge only appears as flimsy and insubstantial as your confidence.” “It will hold you, trust me.” “I’m devastated. Look what’s become of my beautiful valley!” “What have you imagined, [name]?” “Look at the destruction around you! Consider its cause, then come join me.” “You are familiar with the saying that smoking stunts your growth?” “Adults assault children with that adage, usually while they’ve got a pipe stuck in their mouths.” “I won’t ask you to inhale, let the smoke envelop you.” “She who saves a single soul saves a universe.” “Is she the chosen one?” “Our saviour?” “He knows things. He even thinks things!” “Your victories in combat and conundrums suggest your fitness to confront the challenges ahead.” “Mental strength will confirm your worthiness, or declare your defeat.” “You can save us! I’ll open up the path!” “The wicked wasps lay siege above us, and control the peaks to East and West.” “I suppose I must go to the mountain top, as it won’t come to me.” “We have faith that Caterpillar, the strange and wondrous, helps those in need.” “One day, we’ll have proof!”

#rp meme #roleplay meme #rp memes #roleplay memes #rp sentence starters #rp starters #roleplay starters #sentence starters #memes #sentence memes #roleplay sentence memes #harley memes

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fandomoniumflurry · 6 years ago

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Nerds

Just a little drabble

For @spnpolybingo

square filled: Claire(Charlie)JoKevin

Sorry but I just couldn't write Claire lol I was gonna try but nope there was nothing in me that would allow me to do such a thing.

For @spnfluffbingo

Square filled: gamers

Taggers: @keepcalmimthecupcake @becs-bunker @hunterswearingplaid @janai-mcgarrett

“Oh, my God, you suck.” Kevin teased, pushing her gently with his shoulder. The two of them were sitting Indian style on the couch, controllers in hand. They were both red faced and animated, submersed in the fiction world of the video game. Lights and sounds, detailed graphics and endless gunshots exploded on the big screen on the wall a few feet away from them.

They had been at this for hours, the Asian boy kicking her ass over and over again. But the redhead would not be so easily defeated. She was the best at any game and she had never met a foe she couldn't defeat. That is until Kevin Tran, who clearly held far greater skill than herself and yet she still wouldn’t concede to his victory.

Charlie finally had the upper hand, moving in stealthily to make her attack while Kevin was otherwise distracted. That brief moment would make or break her reputation. Kevin was unobservant of her silence and she was oblivious to whatever it was he was talking about. Both of them too involved to pay attention to one another. Charlie’s smile grew as she closed in, raising her weapon with malicious intent. The moment was absolutely perfect, all she had to do was line of the shot and pull the trigger.

Finger on the button, she chuckled low in her throat. But the moment she went to press and fire, a body plopped down on the couch between the two gamers. The action made Charlie jump, hitting the controller and missing her target and alerting Kevin to her presence and he shot her in return. The redhead let out a growl, dropping the controller in frustration before turning to cast an evil glare at the person who blew her one last chance to win back her title as queen of the gamers.

The blonde smiled sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders. Jo had a mouth full of the burger she had in her hand and Charlie couldn’t deny how adorable she looked. And so with a sigh, her anger drifted away and her furrowed brow relaxed into a grin. Jo swallowed before pressing a kiss to the ginger’s cheek and curling into her side. Charlie shut off her controller and wrapped her arm around Jo’s shoulder and they both shifted to get comfortable on the end of the couch.

“You can’t just quit!” Kevin whined, turning his head to look at the pair. Charlie shrugged with a smirk, grabbing Jo’s wrist to bring the burger to her lips for a bite. Kevin pouted and in his moment of distraction, an enemy came up and blew him away, therefore ending the match and sending the girls into a fit of laughter.

He huffed and swatted Jo on the thigh gently but it wasn’t long before he was laughing as well. The game was shut off and instead, he turned on Netflix to their favorite show and then rested his head on Jo’s lap. She smiled down at him, planting a kiss to his forehead before sharing her burger with him as well.

“I don’t get the appeal of those silly games anyway.” Jo muttered and both of the hardcore gamers started at her with mouths agape. She giggled with a shake of her head and put her finger to her lips to shush them before their debate could even begin. “This is my favorite episode, ya nerds!”

#spnpolybingo #spnfluffbingo #charliejokevin #charlie x jo x kevin #charlie bradbury #kevin tran #jo harvelle #gamers #fluff #spn #poly #supernatural

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tehfootbath · 4 years ago

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How to simplify game controls for grandma

How to win 3 billion gamers.

Step #1: take the worst game controller in history. Double down on it to disrupt the big 3 console companies.

"Complicated"controllers (300M users) from "expensive" consoles ($299):

Two thumbsticks

Four buttons with labels

D-pad

Trigger and shoulder buttons

Haptic feedback

Pause / Menu and Power on buttons

Standard batteries / charge while playing

"Simple" family-friendly (0M families) controllers on "affordable" ($249) consoles (COMING SOON):

Disk that can act like a D-pad

Disk that can be spun like an iPod

Four physical buttons based on orientation and game

3 orientations for controller, L/R landscape and portrait

Microphone

Speaker

Tri-axis gyroscope based motion controls

Touchpad screen with per-game buttons and functions

Screen as screen with "in your hand" gameplay (cards)

Screen as trackpad (some games)

Single system button for pause, power, ssytem functions

Can only charge when not playing

To review --- the big 3 who are many generations into this business have agreed on a single control scheme that works well and is comfortable. like Ford, GM, Chevy back in the day. Or QWERTY. Imperfect, but if you have to learn something, learn something that works everywhere.

Promising to disrupt and simplify Amico has adopted ZERO of the things learned from the big 3 to produce a controller that mimicks nothing that anyone uses today in games or out. Forget focus groups, billions in R&D have been spent and 50 years on game input. How many evergreen successes share ANY of these elements of input? This thing more resembles a card reader at WalMart than a game controller.

While choosing 3 of these could be considered simple, the fact that there are so many permutations of ideas in one thing makes it hard for even hardcore gamers to understand. Every game is going to have to explain how it interpreted the way to use the controller.

There's some cool tech here, but this is not the key to conquer 3 billion non-gamers through simplicity. This is like some genius on LSD smashed together $18 worth of parts from the Fry's return bin in a fit of home automation rage. This is not a controller designed by a gamer or a game designer.

If Tommy took over Fauxrarri tomorrow, he'd move the wipers to the gear shift, make the window button the high beams, swap the gas and the horn, put the brake in the backseat and add LED wherever he could. He'd bundle golf clubs, nail polish and hairspray based on watching focus groups and would pre-sell a purple one at Costco to address the billions not interested in high performance Red Fauxrarris that still have those silly input like a Ford.

Be honest, is this focus groups talking ---- or?

#crosspost #submission

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tweakerwolf · 7 years ago

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Doki Doki Literature Club

Played the game and my thoughts about it are below the cut because I go on a bit of a rant...

TL;DR version: I love the true aspect of the game but it isn’t really my style and over all I was disappointed by the ‘psychological horror’ and ‘gore’ parts of it. (relatively spoiler free, I don’t mention any of the major twists or story plotlines, just the general ‘extra-ness’ of what makes the game intriguing)

So... I got the game on Steam and played it because a lot of people were talking about it and how awesome of a game it was...

I hate to say it but, I was disappointed in it...

I get why people are raving about it, I do think the reveals and secrets in the games are amazing! I can honestly say that I’m blown away by what the creators were able to do with the game. Without going into spoiler territory, all the hidden/surprise aspects of the game, are really awesome! I have read all about the intricate details and hints that people were able to find- SO MUCH information... I wouldn’t have had any idea of where to start with that kind of game. I don’t know anything about game files and translating text... I love complicated storylines but I’m very simple when it comes to *gameplay*... if it isn’t blatantly obvious then odds are, I won’t know what to do... If I was left to my own devices, I wouldn’t know about a majority of DDLC’s secrets... because they have to do with things that are outside of normal gameplay... I guarantee that I would’ve missed about 90% of the point, all the underlying DDLC elements, swoosh, right over my head. But when I looked up the game and I learned about all the ‘extra’ elements, again, I am SOOOOO impressed with what they were able to achieve! But lmao, if you were expecting me to understand it and delve into that on my own???? You’ll be waiting a long time for that... I suck at that kind of meta stuff, truly. I wouldn’t’ve even /thought/ to look into the things people were finding secrets in!

That being said... I saw the tags for DDLC and I saw all the warnings that appeared in the game... and that’s where I was disappointed. Psychological horror? After playing games like BTD and TDDUP... that game wasn’t that ‘edgy’ at all imo. Now, that’s not to say that the trigger warnings aren’t needed! Indeed, pay attention to the trigger warnings and play the game with caution, I’m not saying that they lied... just that /I/ had higher expectations for what was going to happen when I got to the ‘shocking’ part of the game. I was so bored... For the average gamer and especially for someone that generally plays ‘regular’ dating sims, I’m sure the triggering scenes were very /shocking/, I can understand that... but for all the hype I was seeing, I was expecting more. There was nothing to the characters that made me invested in them (Okay, I’ll admit, I was invested in Sayori and I do think they did her storyline right), there was no history... Things go from cutesy to chaotic in just a moment but that doesn’t make it psychological horror... I wasn’t twisted around psychologically by the reveals we were given... they were just /shock value/ (hence my earlier wording...). OMG look at this surprise scene that you’d never expect to see in a ‘dating sim’ game!!! Gasp! What surprise! Even the ‘extra’ part of the game, the fun secret stuff... that isn’t what I’d categorize as psychological horror... I’d categorize it as a mind fuck but ‘mind fuck’ and ‘psychological horror’ don’t mean the same thing. They often go hand-in-hand but pft, that doesn’t make them synonymous with each other, that’s all I’m saying. Like I’ve said, the scenes themselves should be approached with caution, they aren’t ‘silly’ by any means but... when I think of games that are psychological horror, I think of the part in the Resident Evil 7 DLC, 21. How your POV is a character that’s strapped to a chair, forced to play a game of 21 with another innocent victim and each time you lose, a finger gets chopped off. At the end of the game, you’re praying that you don’t lose another finger but in order to keep your fingers, you have to pray that the other INNOCENT player has a worse hand than you... you get to hear that player scream in terror and then in pain, you hear them beg and there isn’t anything to do because it’s you or them. You want to win because you don’t want to die but winning means you’re forced to watch/listen to someone else get fucked up. That’s deeply psychological. Even with BTD and TDDUP... those games weren’t overly graphic (in terms of *video graphics/frames*, they were mostly static scenes that depended on the /dialogue/ to get the point across, not a visual ‘movie’ with sound effects)... we didn’t *see* a lot of horrible violence unlike in RE7 but it was still psychological because there were visceral reactions that we read the character going through, the descriptions did the scenes justice and there were scenarios that just... they were designed to make you go “if I was in this situation... could I really survive this??? Would this break me???” That’s the point of psychological horror to me. This game completely missed the mark and it just felt like shock value with a lack of depth. Period.

I’ll even say that the ‘dating sim’ aspect of the game was bland... (I know that wasn’t even the point but, hear me out)... I was SPOILED by BTD and even TDDUP... I was expecting choices! I was expecting things to be at least a little broader... I was expecting more than 2 (3 depending on what you count as an ending) endings... I was expecting my choices to matter in the end game. And they don’t... The story is horribly bland and I was in agony as I tried to play through and get to the interesting parts!!! And even after I did get to the interesting parts... I was still SO BORED! It wasn’t because I knew what was coming either, I can know how a game ends and still be excited and enthralled when I’m playing it if it has a great story or good gameplay. I don’t play a lot of dating sims, but I realize that the dialogue isn’t always the greatest... some of them are just blah blah blah and let me see animated boobies (not all of them, I know but the ones with ‘boring’ dialogue can be described like that I think).... but it should at least be a little engaging... Daddy Dating Simulator at least had the ‘horrible dad puns’ kind of humor to make players laugh and groan as they went out and about. I dunno... I was let down... if I had come across this game cold turkey with no background knowledge... I never would’ve made it to the ‘interesting’ part because I would’ve stopped playing... and like I said, even *knowing* that the game was going to get ‘interesting’... it was still so hard to play and it still fell flat... When we replay the first day, even with the quirks, it’s too bland to hold my attention, I just didn’t care.

I can write a guide of the general gameplay aspects if people really want me to but... there are only 3 endings so.... is that really what you want? A lot of the game is pretty random so there’s only so much I can help you with.... If you’re looking for help with the ‘extra’ aspects of the game, I cannot help you with that, I’m sorry... Check the wiki and the reddit pages because I have no clue where to even start with that stuff.

#doki doki literature club #ddlc #opinions #long post #rant

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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How NFL Blitz Became the Best Arcade Football Game Ever Made

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Football is violent and fast. Brutal injuries are inherent to the action when 300-pound bodies slam into one another like cars at a demolition derby. In the late 1990s, no video game simulated that feeling more than the most anti-sim football game ever made: NFL Blitz.

Unfortunately, the world may never see a game like Blitz again. To be sure, football video games are as popular as ever—or at least EA Sports’ Madden franchise is, since it’s the only football sim officially licensed by the NFL. Spiritual successors to the Blitz brand of arcade-style football have come along here and there, with EA’s former NFL Street franchise and the 2017 reinvention of Mutant Football League by Digital Dreams Entertainment the most noteworthy. Even 2K Games plan to return with an NFL-licensed non-sim in the near future, and Madden NFL 21 has a new backyard-football mode called The Yard. But the marriage between the NFL and such over-the-top gridiron action as the original Blitz titles from Midway Games may have been unique to its time.

Two decades ago, arcade cabinets were still a lucrative proposition. Thanks to the arrival of Midway’s iconic NBA Jam in 1993, sports games in particular could be major money makers. NBA Jam raked in $1 billion in quarters during its first year. That’s billion with a ‘B,’ and it’s a figure even the game’s iconic announcer, Tim Kitzrow, still has trouble wrapping his head around.

“I happened to see an article that was posted on the bulletin board in the cafeteria. It said ‘NBA Jam breaks all records. Makes $1 billion in revenue this year,’” Kitzrow tells Den of Geek. “I just, I laughed and thought it was one of the guys with a sense of humor in the office who had typed that up as kind of a joke. I still can’t believe it. No one could believe a billion dollars [in] a year.”

Mark Turmell, creative director of NBA Jam, says that he and his team certainly enjoyed the fruits of their labor after the game’s success. With a team that included lead artist and game designer Sal DiVita, Turmell noted they were all “pretty young” and bought cars and “did silly things,” but that there was little room to rest on their laurels before working on the next game. With a steady stream of hits like the Mortal Kombat and Jam games, “we kind of kept our nose to the grindstone.”

Indeed, Midway Games enjoyed a golden age in the ‘90s. However, up until the team took up the project that would become NFL Blitz, their games existed in only two dimensions. But the gaming landscape was changing. Three-dimensional arcade games were nothing new by 1997, when Blitz released, and they were proliferating the market at a rapid pace. That was especially true of the home console market, with both the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 becoming the dominant players in that space.

The opportunity to work in 3D was new and exciting for Turmell, who noted the “hardware that could actually put enough stuff on the screen to get away with 3D, the horsepower” had arrived.

“If you look at the NFL Blitz models, the players, it’s only a few hundred polygons,” he added. “Kind of rectangular arms, biceps and more of a square-ish head and so forth. There was not a lot of resolution or detail, but it was still, the hardware was strong enough to run at 60 frames a second, which is just a necessity on really any game.”

Leaning into the Action

With the hardware and programming capabilities in place, that allowed the lifelong Detroit Lions fan the chance to create a Midway-style game for his favorite sport. That meant making some big changes to the gridiron game, most notably cutting the number of men on the field for each team from 11 to seven. The number of players wasn’t just chosen at random.

“We knew we wanted to focus on offense, so with the quarterback, a couple of wide receivers, a running back, that burned four characters there,” Turmell said, “and to have only one guy as a lineman or two, you really needed three for somebody to hike the ball and be at the line there. Three linemen was the thing that eventually dictated doing seven-on-seven.”

To juice the speed of games and keep things moving at arcades, quarter length was dropped to two minutes, and time ticked down at an accelerated rate — start to finish, a game of Blitz lasts about 12 minutes. Teams would need to advance 30 yards for a first down, a huge jump from the standard 10 yards. Extra points were (usually) automatic with the press of a button.

Oh, and no penalties. No pass interference. No holding. You want to tackle the receiver before the ball comes his way? Totally legal. As were Hulk Hogan-style leg drops after play was whistled dead. All of the motion capture for these moves was done by DiVita, a veteran of mo-cap who portrayed several Mortal Kombat characters, such as Nightwolf and Cyrax.

“It was kind of a new era, and because of the success of [NBA Jam] and the NBA connection, then the NFL was just a total natural to essentially try to do the same thing. Catch on fire, break the rules, a subset of the rules, multiple behind the line of scrimmage passes, those kind of little rule changes we did.”

As with NBA Jam, Midway brought back Kitzrow, a midwestern comedian and Second City alum, to lend his voice to the on-field action. Unlike with the two-on-two hoops classic, NFL Blitz was the first game he had worked on in which he contributed to the writing. Improved technology also meant the ability to include more speech than in NBA Jam. Rather than one- or two-word sound bytes, Kitzrow could mix more comedy in. Among his favorites: “He just ripped his head off! No, it was just his helmet. Darn it.”

“Tim’s amazing,” Turmell says. “His energy, his ad lib ability. He just totally nailed it on Jam, and then nailed it on Blitz, as well. He was the only guy we called.”

When the time was right, Midway initiated talks with the NFL to get the official go-ahead. They built a demo, telling the NFL that they were aiming for a “quicker-hitting [game], not a deep simulation,” according to Turmell.

“They were of course familiar with the consumer games of that era, and Madden football, where it was more of an 11-on-11, the simulation, the stats,” Turmell said. “We were trying to lean into the action, the arcade, the fast-paced gameplay, that I think the NFL felt like, ‘Okay, that can actually open up a larger fan base.’”

“Too Violent”

Thus, development of NFL Blitz began, largely without interaction between the league and the development team. As was common for the time with arcade cabinets, Midway was already testing the game for profitability at select arcades, and with about a week before final sign off, the NFL rolled into Midway’s headquarters in Chicago to see what Blitz looked like.

It didn’t go well.

“We played the game for them. We showed them the game, and they said, ‘Can you excuse us for a moment?’” Turmell said. “We left them in an office alone. About 15 minutes later, they came out, and they said, ‘We have to wash our hands of this product, and we’re going to give you your money back, and we can’t go forward with this product. It’s just too violent.’”

When Turmell asked what elements of the game crossed the line, the league reps indicated a few animations in particular, which would trigger during the small window after plays were whistled dead and players could pile on with elbow drops and other over-the-top hits.

“I had one where you could pick the player up by the face mask and shake him,” Turmell said. “I had a kick where you could actually kick the player when he was down, and then I had a tackle that was more of, like, a piledriver. You’d kind of grab the guy from behind, jump up in the air, and flip him backwards, so his head hits into the ground.”

Den of Geek reached out to the NFL to hear its side of the story but the league did not respond to questions regarding NFL Blitz in time for publication.

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With their work in jeopardy, Turmell regrouped with Midway Games chief executive officer Neil Nicastro. Turmell came up with a new plan: to remove the “offending animations” and test the game on location.

“If it still earns the money that it was earning already on [the] test, then we will know that it’s not about the violence,” Turmell told the league reps.

The plan worked. The NFL agreed to the proposal, and NFL Blitz earned the same revenue during the test as it had before the animations were excised. After cabinets were released in the fall of 1997, it became another smash arcade hit for Midway. Turmell estimates the game raked in about $650 million in its first year, very impressive for a two-player game which cost 50 cents per quarter of play, per person. That placed it around the top three of games at the time, he said.

Blitzing Consoles

With a mountain of quarters in their pockets, Midway Games successfully ported NFL Blitz to both Sony and Nintendo consoles in September 1998, as well as PC the following month. According to NPD Group’s TRSTS Video Game Service, which tracks total units sold as reported by major retailers, Blitz was the top new N64 game and the No. 3 new game on PS1 for September.

The tagline in ads for the console launch summed up NFL Blitz pretty accurately: “No refs. No rules. No mercy.” Commercials visually drove home the over-the-top violent hits the game allowed. In perhaps the most infamous 30-second TV spot, then-Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart works on his throws alongside a coach. Within seconds, we see that Stewart is targeting members of the marching band whose music can be heard in the background of the workout. The ad inspired outrage from music educators.

Turmell, who says he loved the ad, pointed out that the league gave the okay to run the spot. But, after the negative response, the ad was removed from the airwaves. Fortunately, like so many old commercials, it still lives on YouTube:

As far as the game itself, NFL Blitz was a faithful port of the arcade hit, especially on the N64. On the Nintendo console, all the fun of playing a quick and irreverent game of football at the arcade came home. The graphics were virtually identical, unlike what the visually-inferior 32-bit PlayStation could produce. And the game’s most fascinating feature could only be found on N64: an easy-to-use Play Editor which allowed players to create custom alignments. These plays could even be brought to the arcade on an N64 Controller Pak to be used on the sequel, NFL Blitz 99, plugged directly into the cabinet. Cutting edge stuff for the late ’90s, to be sure.

In what may come as a surprise from the creator of the revered NBA Jam, Turmell actually points to the arcade’s Blitz 99, released in fall 1998, as “the favorite game that I’ve developed, and it’s because of the tuning on the plays, the interesting things that can happen.”

“There’s a running push that we introduced with that game, and the original NFL Blitz, when you would do a push, you would stop and do it from a stationary position,” Turmell explains. “Blitz 99 did this running push, just the tuning on the dives, the entertainment value of the tackles, the variety of a tipped pass, a doinked pass, a fumble that goes up in the air, people diving for it. Dancing as they’re running down the last 20 years to the end zone, somebody comes up from behind. You could play that game today and it holds up, and you would say, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen that happen before,’ or you’d find moments to scream, and it’s competitive, it’s tight. It was quite a tuning fest. We really tuned it well, because we’d just play it nonstop.”

By this point, the NFL had really gotten squeamish about the game’s violence, particularly the late hits. The league told Turmell that Midway could still put out Blitz 99, but late hits had to go. Hoping to preserve what he referred to as “a cornerstone of the product,” Turmell got the NFL on board with a workaround.

“I said, ‘What if we did a secret code that gave the player a one second window to do a late hit?’ Just like what happens for real in the NFL. Players have that fractional moment where they do a dive, they do a tackle, where they’re a little bit late. They might get penalized for it, maybe not,” Turmell recalled. “And so they said, ‘Okay, if you put it in a secret code, then you can continue for that very small window of time.’”

The late hits code was simple to input: Just one press of the jump button and up on the control stick during pre-game loading activated the feature.

“The game basically continued to allow late hits, and we put a little message up that said, ‘Late hits activated,’” Turmell said. “I think the NFL was not happy that their concern over late hits didn’t really change.”

“Strategic Mistakes”

NFL Blitz 2000 Gold Edition became the final arcade release, the third consecutive year with a new cabinet. Turmell referred to the annual release schedule as “part of our strategic mistakes.” It was not an unexpected result, but Midway aimed to counteract it with its other sports titles.

“We knew it would be an issue, and we tried to start with our different sports titles to alternate years, go fresh, NBA Showtime, and go to the MLB Slugfest, do the baseball game. We had a soccer game called RedCard Soccer that we were working on. We wanted to have a portfolio of what we called over-the-top sports games that we could alternate. That’s tough to do, as well, developing so many products, consumer marketplaces changing, coin-op is drying up.”

But Blitz soldiered on, with yearly releases neither raved about nor widely panned by players and critics. NFL Blitz 20-02 and Blitz 20-03 saw the series jump to the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube console generation, leaving the dying arcade market behind.

Eventually, pressure from the ironically violence-averse NFL prompted major changes to NFL Blitz. A year after Blitz 20-03, Midway released NFL Blitz Pro in October 2003, which abandoned the series’ trademark arcade-style play for an 11-on-11 football semi-sim setup. By this point, Turmell had shifted away from the franchise and was working on the streetball-styled NBA Ballers.

“The NFL started to threaten not renewing the license, and so we kind of backpedaled and said, ‘We’re going to compete on the sim front and start to push into that direction,’” Turmell says. “It was going to take, no doubt, a number of years to get robust, but it was kind of the first foray into trying to come up with a product, a series that you could actually continually develop like you continually develop the NFL Madden-style product.”

In January 2005, the NFL gave Electronic Arts the exclusive rights to use the official teams and players anyway, leaving Blitz without NFL support altogether after already selling its over-the-top gridiron soul. Now, Midway was free to do as it pleased with the gameplay and leaned heavily into violence and the darker side of the sport with Blitz: The League.

Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor, whose career and post-football life has been rife with controversy and trouble with the law, lent his likeness and voice to the game, which released in October 2005 and became the first football game to be rated Mature by the ESRB. Driven by a salacious campaign mode that included gambling, drugs, and prostitutes, the unlicensed football game was still received about as well as the most recent arcade-style NFL Blitz games. A sequel, Blitz: The League II, followed three years later for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to a more mixed reception.

Behind the scenes, however, Midway Games was crumbling at the foundation. Turmell points to the 2003 appointment of David Zucker as president and CEO, replacing Nicastro, as a turning point. He identified game partnerships with Snoop Dogg and Shaquille O’Neal under Zucker’s watch as costly errors.

“It was pretty clear, once they started making these big financial mistakes, that we had the wrong guy in charge,” Turmell says.

In February 2009, Midway Games filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, ending the run of one of the most notable game development houses of the ’90s.

Back on the Field

With the remains of Midway scattered to various major games publishers, it was EA who acquired the rights to all of the sports games, including NBA Jam and NFL Blitz. Turmell was offered the chance to join EA Sports in Orlando to relaunch the Jam and Blitz franchises.

“The fact that [the games’ rights] were available and Midway was going through bankruptcy, it probably just made sense, from EA’s standpoint, to gather up those properties, anyway,” Turmell said, “but I think that me being involved was good icing on the cake.”

Turmell described his role with the 2010 edition of NBA Jam as more of a consultant for the EA Vancouver team. With NFL Blitz, he was more hands-on in its development as creative director. Looking back on his time working on the game, he marvels at the well-oiled EA machine that produced the game.

“EA is amazing,” Turmell said. “They are very disciplined, because these sports games do come out on a 12-month cycle, so they’re very production-oriented, very organized. The engineers and the artists know exactly what they have to do in each sprint, in each period of time to launch the product.”

But Turmell’s time with EA was short, as he accepted his current role as the creative director at mobile game developer Zynga. In fact, he left less than two months before Blitz released in January 2012. Reiterating that he “loved EA,” Turmell said the decision was fueled by seeing “where the business was going” with regard to mobile gaming.

“It was a tough decision for me because that’s not the type of guy I am, to leave a project,” Turmell said.

Unfortunately, Turmell said that those final few weeks, when he was no longer around to oversee development, yielded critical changes to NFL Blitz. He says the NFL reviewed the game and eliminated late hits, “so they removed content.” It left him feeling “a little disappointed” in the finished product.

“I wasn’t there for whatever ugliness happened with that, but the game wasn’t the same,” Turmell says.

Kitzrow, who had been brought back by EA Sports to do both Jam and Blitz, could hardly contain his disgust with the handling of the Blitz rebirth, especially with regard to the league’s stance on late hits.

“Unfortunately, the NFL was right in our face about all the late hits, the violence, the concussions,” explains Kitzrow, who shared commentary duties on the EA Sports Blitz with longtime friend and fellow comedian Brian Haley. “Like, dude, this is a cartoon. This is a video game. It’s not really happening. But they didn’t want that kind of extracurricular activity. So it took [out] a lot of the stuff that we grew up playing, having so much fun with the late hits and the craziness, the over-the-top sense of humor. That’s what made it NFL Blitz. It was so watered down that, as much as I wrote a lot of dialogue and a lot of stuff, the speech was very sparse in it. I think it sounded kind of repetitive. As far as I’m concerned, it didn’t really live up to the Blitz title.”

A representative of EA could not be reached for comment.

Legacy

Kitzrow had been given the impression that EA intended to release a new version of NFL Blitz the next year as well. However, despite favorable reviews and tight controls that had been adopted from the Madden engine, the PS3 and Xbox 360 digital release of the game remains the last of the franchise, more than eight years ago. It’s still available for purchase on both consoles’ digital storefronts, with disgraced former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice still representing the game as its cover athlete.

The closest successor to NFL Blitz is 2017’s Mutant Football League from developer Digital Dreams, for which Kitzrow lent his voice. The actor raves about MFL, but he’s pessimistic that EA Sports will revisit Blitz or Jam again in the future. Turmell, although no longer involved with the franchise or the company who owns the rights to it, often hears rumors of a revival and hopes to see it rise again one day. He even believes a great Blitz game can be made without the late hits, a feature which the NFL likely will never greenlight again.

Although Turmell believes that NFL Blitz had a harder time developing the same personal connection that people have with his more renowned NBA Jam series, he knows it holds a special place in the hearts and minds of gamers who flocked to arcades or brought it home for their N64s in the late ’90s.

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“I think Blitz … for the people playing in that two- or three- or four-year window, would remember it fondly, had great, competitive sessions with their brother or their buddies. I get a lot of people saying, ‘When I was in college, that’s all we did. We spent so much money on that and got into so many fights.’ You get those kinds of stories. It’s just a smaller crowd.” Still, Turmell adds, “It sure was a hell of a lot of fun to play.”

The post How NFL Blitz Became the Best Arcade Football Game Ever Made appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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zenlesszonezero · 3 days ago

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Join Zenless Zone Zero with Tsukishiro Yanagi, the deputy leader of Hollow Special Operations Section 6! Beneath her ordinary office lady exterior lies a meticulous, emotionally intelligent big sister to the team.

#zzzero #zenless zone zero #Yanagi #Gaming #Anime Game

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bios-for-horrorgamergirl · 7 years ago

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Rules!

Rules

Nothing Dirty like S m u t please! Suggestive things are probably the only thing ya gonna g e t here.

I hate if I do something that may trigger someone else, so please do say if I do that, this is just a dumb silly blog.

I will tag everything, tho I may not be able to from time to time cause I will be on my phone a lot.

I do sorta do this blog as a hobby, so I may not be on from time to time, I do got a life outside of tumblr.

My name is Lee, please don’t use the name Gamer for me, unless you have me added on Discord, since that is sorta where you are allowed, cause the discord was legit made just for the character, tho it’s mainly for random things now.

#Rules

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postgamecontent · 7 years ago

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The RPGs of the Super NES Classic #2: Super Mario RPG - Legend of the Seven Stars

Original Release Date: March 9, 1996 (JPN)

Original Hardware: Nintendo Super Famicom

Developer/Publisher: Square/Nintendo

There was a time where the idea of Mario being in a role-playing game was absolutely bizarre. Now that Mario's had several turns at the genre it's not nearly as outlandish a concept, but just about everyone I knew who was into games at the time was quite surprised by the mere existence of Super Mario RPG. Looking at it from a Japanese perspective, it's not that strange, I suppose. RPGs were hot, parody RPGs were already a thing, and Mario wasn't any more out of place than Doraemon or Godzilla. In the West, though, things were different. Console RPGs were about to break out on the back of an incredible marketing campaign from Sony for Final Fantasy 7 and the meteoric success of Pokemon, but they weren't there yet. The ones we did get typically fell into the fantasy genre, with the odd science-fiction game to mix things up. The best-known console RPGs were heavy on melodrama and usually played things reasonably straight. So yes, the news of the Final Fantasy folks making an RPG starring Nintendo's mascot kind of came out of nowhere.

Super Mario RPG represented the culmination of what was seen as one of Nintendo's closest relationships with a third party. Square had been peddling their wares almost exclusively on Nintendo's hardware for quite some time to great success. From Nintendo's perspective, having both of the major RPG publishers in Japan on their platforms exclusively was a real boon, and Nintendo had even gone so far as to publish Final Fantasy overseas to try to get it off the ground in the West, just as they had tried to do with Dragon Quest. It was in pursuit of that Western success that Super Mario RPG was born. Square had been trying hard to get the Western console audience to bite on RPGs the way their Japanese counterparts had. They pushed the Final Fantasy brand as widely as was possible for a company of their means, made a spin-off that served as a beginner RPG, and even tried setting up an American development team. Perhaps what they needed, it was surmised, was an established star. For Nintendo's part, Shigeru Miyamoto had apparently been interested in seeing Mario star in an RPG. The deal was made and Super Mario RPG entered development early in 1995.

Sadly, this game would prove to be the last collaboration between Nintendo and Square for quite some time. Scant months before the official release of Super Mario RPG, Square made the announcement that changed the entire video game landscape in Japan and arguably the world. Final Fantasy 7 would be their most ambitious project yet, and it was coming exclusively to Sony's new PlayStation platform rather than Nintendo's Nintendo 64. To say Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, did not take this announcement well would be an understatement of the highest order. It would be several years before Nintendo and Square would mend fences and do business together again. What should have been a celebration of a great on-going business relationship ended up being its eulogy instead.

While Super Mario RPG wasn't exactly the game to break down the JRPG walls in the West, it did do fairly well for itself considering how late it released in the Super NES's life cycle. It turned out that with some careful considerations, Mario was a really great fit for a light-hearted RPG that would appeal more widely than the usual game in the genre. Of course, with the relationship soured with Square, Nintendo went in a very different direction for their next RPG starring Mario. Intelligent Systems drew some ideas from Super Mario RPG for their Paper Mario RPG on the Nintendo 64, but it was very much its own thing on the whole. Meanwhile, several former Square employees, many of whom had worked on Super Mario RPG, set up their own new studio called AlphaDream in 2000. Headed by Square's former president Tetsuo Mizuno, the team self-published just one game before beginning a long-term second-party relationship with Nintendo, the greatest fruits of which being the Mario & Luigi series of RPGs.

For a lot of English gamers, Super Mario RPG was their first experience with Japanese RPGs or even RPGs in general. I've noticed there is a lot of affection for the game and its characters, with many of its fans believing that the Mario RPGs never got better than this. I can appreciate that perspective, but I'm not sure that I'd agree with it. The game was attempting a very unusual hybrid of mechanics and themes, and it doesn't always work out for the best. As we would similarly see in the later Kingdom Hearts series, there's a little bit too much Square in here at times. By that I mean the game occasionally feels decidedly unlike Mario, sliding into odd bouts of melodrama and opting for a slightly darker tone than we would see in later Mario RPGs. The pacing is a little hit-or-miss, too. That all being said, I have tremendous respect for this game simply for being largely successful at navigating the tumultuous waters of mixing a beloved side-scrolling action mascot and his world with turn-based battles and leveling up.

Outside of battles, the game didn't do anything particularly unusual by action-RPG standards. The game takes on an isometric perspective and involves a fair bit of platforming and navigational puzzles. These are all things we've seen before, even among the limited selection of games I've covered on this very site. The angled view of the action can make things somewhat tricky as usual, but Super Mario RPG is wise enough not to ask too much of the player in this regard. Anything truly maddening is relegated to optional content, ensuring that even a moderately-skilled player will be able to see the story through. Battles take place in a separate screen, and basically follow the turn-based rules of games like Dragon Quest or earlier Final Fantasy titles. The big innovation here was in including timing-based commands that, if successfully performed, could increase the amount of damage you deal to enemies or reduce the damage you take.

It was a smart way to bring a little bit of familiarity to a situation foreign to action game fans. Sure, you had to pick what Mario was going to do from a menu, but when he leaps into the air to jump on an enemy's head, carefully-timed button presses will allow him to bounce off of his foe's head and keep on going, just like in the platform games. This semi-action based combat would become the hallmark of Mario RPGs, with increasingly complicated mini-games introduced as time went on. Aside from pulling some of the action elements from the platformers into the game, these commands also kept the players fingers busy during battles. For players turned off by how hands-off many RPGs tended to be, this was a welcome element.

There's something else I have to give Super Mario RPG credit for, too. Namely, this is the game that started to flesh out Mario's world and the characters who inhabit it. This game was Princess Peach's second playable appearance in a non-sports game, and the first playable appearance of Mario's frequent foil, Bowser Koopa. The villainous king of the Koopas had never been presented as anything other than a nefarious bad guy before this game. Here, we saw a somewhat-likable oaf who was more egotistical than evil. This would eventually lead to Koopa starring in his own RPG in the third Mario & Luigi game, and certainly did a lot to endear the character to players. Mario's party is rounded out by new characters Mallow and Geno, who seem to have gone over a lot better with players in general than they did with me.

Beyond the playable cast, we also got a lot of world-building that allowed us to see the Mushroom Kingdom and other locales in ways we hadn't before. A village of Toads, the resident staff of Peach's castle, and even seeing Koopa interact with his henchmen all helped contextualize the platformers we had been playing for years. The game also features numerous nods to other Nintendo properties, to an extent that no other Nintendo title had done before. Do Samus and Link exist in the same universe as Mario? Smash eventually tells us that they sort of do, somehow, but it's first suggested in Super Mario RPG. Sure, it's just a bit of silly fun, but it was neat if you were a fan of Nintendo's wider world of releases.

My own experience with this game is somewhat strange. I bought the game the day it released for just over $100 Canadian, a typical price for Super NES games at the time. I blasted through the game over a three-day weekend, and having little desire to replay it, sold it on to a friend for $95. I was already a big fan of Japanese RPGs by this point, and I found Super Mario RPG to be a little too lightweight for my liking. To be fair, it was following a stretch of RPG releases that included Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger. There was only so much it could do. To be honest, very little of the game stuck with me at all. I first replayed it a few years ago when it got released on the Wii Virtual Console. It's a little clunky, and the art really hasn't aged well at all, but the core gameplay is solid enough. It's simultaneously more in some ways and less in others compared to the later Mario & Luigi games.

The game doesn't quite have its tone properly set, for one thing. It feels torn between trying to reconcile the silly nature of Mario's universe with an actual RPG-length plot. Later games in the series would pull back somewhat on trying to develop characters, instead opting for a greater emphasis on events and comedy to stretch things out. That gives Super Mario RPG a feel quite unlike other Mario RPGs, if nothing else. It also feels less confident in venturing too far outside of RPG norms in some ways. The various party members feel in a mechanical sense like the usual templates, something future games would expend a lot of effort to break away from. Still, there's some comfort in Super Mario RPG's embrace of the familiar. I'm not sure if this makes much sense, but if I'm in the mood for an RPG, this game does the job better than the later Mario RPGs in spite of their generally higher quality.

Given its slightly complicated rights issues (the game contains some Final Fantasy music among other bits), I'm glad that Nintendo has made it somewhat readily available through multiple Virtual Console releases and its inclusion in the Super NES Classic. While I don't think of it as highly as some others, it is one of the better Super NES RPGs to get an English translation. It's still a lot of fun, and trying to play the original game on today's TVs can be tough due to latency issues interfering with the timing of battle commands. I suspect that so long as things remain friendly between Square and Nintendo, Super Mario RPG should continue to see releases wherever Nintendo opts to plumb their back library. I only wish it had seen a Virtual Console release on the New Nintendo 3DS so that we could have the whole Mario (& Luigi) RPG series playable on a single console.

Previous: Final Fantasy 3

Next: Secret of Mana

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#retro #gaming #super nes classic edition #rpg #jrpg #super mario rpg #mario #nintendo #square #super nes #snes

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worldsandcenturiesfunposting · 7 years ago

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Late to the party: Should Video Game Journalists be good at video games?

You might have seen that cuphead video where some video game journalist spent over a minute trying to get past the tutorial and then proceeded to get railed over and over in the first level. The video is a little less than 27 minutes long and he doesn’t get through the first level in those 27 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=848Y1Uu5Htk Take note that the original title was Cuphead Demo at Gamescom: It Isn’t Easy

What you probably didn’t see was the description in the video. No one reads those but I think there’s a lot to pick apart and ramble about at 4:30 in the morning because I’m a lonely sack of shit with nothing better to do

But here’s the man himself writing to his defense: https://venturebeat.com/2017/09/08/the-deanbeat-our-cuphead-runneth-over/

My game crime: I was so bad at playing I was deemed unfit to be a game journalist. My Cuphead gameplay video from Gamescom blew up, inspired rage, and spurred discussions about the death of game journalism across Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter.

Don’t flatter yourself that much. People were talking about how game journalism was dead well before your video. Hell, you even mention GamerGate later in your article.

It was a failure to communicate.

In the description of the video, they mention that the guy playing the game isn’t good at platformers in general and the video was uploaded as a joke. I don’t know how true that last part is, but assuming it is, they’ve apparently put in 0 effort to make that clear. No tongue in cheek title like “Let’s Fail at Cuphead!” or giving context in the description. Only after shit hit the fan did they edit the description explaining why the guy sucked so bad.

I only wish my two books on the Xbox business generated as much attention as the Cuphead story. It is a humbling experience.

It would help if you books were available to buy at the store. I’ve been in plenty of book stores and haven’t found anything about Xbox business practices. There are ones partially written by Anita Sarkeesian though so I guess that’s close enough.

The more people looked at my poor gameplay, which I myself labeled shameful, the angrier they got. I played the tutorial so ineptly — failing to read the onscreen instructions to jump and dash simultaneously — and then went on, failing to conquer a single level. I said it was hard, and the fans saw my gameplay and decided I was a poor judge of difficulty. By a ratio of more than 12-to-1, the ratings on the YouTube video are negative. It wasn’t just the troglodytes of the internet who hated it. Most people hated it.

You failed an incredibly simple puzzle, one that literal children can figure out, and you want to throw out insults like “troglodytes” at people saying you were shit because they either didn’t see or don’t buy the “lol it’s just a prank bro” deflection.

Another game journalist (and some say “shitlord”

Including you or someone from your website in the description of the video itself: A shitlord on Twitter also linked to this video and claimed these are the same people doing reviews.

The guy they’re talking about is Ian Miles Cheong. Once a turbo feminist switched sides to a more pro-gamer stance during the whole GamerGate thing. Outside of that, I don’t know much about him and I don’t give enough of a shit about him to find out.

He clipped it to the 2.5 minutes of the most damning inept gameplay, and he posted it to his followers. He used me to condemn all game journalists

The guy is literally a video game journalist though so it wouldn’t be a condemnation of all video game journalist. Just pointing out that you (and presumably others) are awful at video games despite being paid to write about them. Which is true. Like if this was a video of some 4 year old failing the tutorial, there wouldn’t be this ire.

Raising the smoldering issues around Gamergate and its focus on game journalism ethics. His post was political propaganda for the disenfranchised gamers, the sort who went from Gamergate to the alt-right and elected Donald Trump as president.

At least you admit GamerGate was about ethics. The fact you then went on to then claim that its proponents went on to support the alt-right and got Trump elected is fucking horse shit for a few reasons.

1. GamerGate was comprised of various people of various different political backgrounds. Yes, some members were what we’d now call the alt-right, but a lot of its members were also incredibly left leaning. A few political compass tests were taken over the course of GamerGate and it seems a huge portion of its membership were what’s described as left libertarians.

2. Of all the reasons Trump was elected, gamers aren’t one of them. The shit system that is the electoral college. Mass propaganda efforts from Russia. A bunch of idiots who’d literally vote Republican even if Hitler rose from the dead and was the nominee simply because they’ll always vote Republican no matter what....but not a bunch of gamers upset over poor practices in video game journalism and attempts at shaming and censoring from SJWs.

Get fucking real, Dean. You’re out of your element.

Before he got to it, my video had maybe 10,000 views. Afterward, the Gamergaters, or hardline reactionaries — or whatever we would like to call them

How about people who know how to play video games. I wonder if there’s a name for that.

Crying conservative boogyman doesn’t help your own personal cause and it certainly doesn’t help your political side either.

— believed this narrative fit into their views about game journalists just fine

That’s because even before this clip, there was a general negative opinion of video game journalists and here you are proving that it’s pretty well founded. Not only are a lot of them unethical, but some of them fucking suck at their jobs objectively.

I despise how this was triggered by a viral post that represented the worst of fake news

Fake news is a Trump term. ALT RIGHTIST! ALT RIGHTIST! DEAN TAKAHASHI SUPPORTS DONALD TRUMP!

Hmmmm, maybe that’s a stupid line of reasoning. Tell you what. I won’t use it if you don’t either? Deal?

So he continues on whining about haters, giving his own life story, and he actually has the balls to say this: But during all of the time I have written about games, none of my bosses cared about exactly how good I was at playing. They required basic knowledge and competence, but not skill on an esports level.

He whines frequently about how mean people are for saying he shouldn’t be a games journalist if he sucks so bad at video games....and then goes on to say that the thing his bosses cared about was the very thing that people were pointing out he utterly lacks.

Not a skill on an e-sports level? Nigga, you were playing a tutorial! Stop acting like people are demanding the world of you and realize that people require you have basic knowledge and competence.

So blatantly dishonest.

Guess what? Unskillful gaming is authentic.

That’s literally the excuse DSP uses to justify being bad at video games and leaving in all of the footage of him bumbling around not knowing that he’s doing.

Here’s where my nonapology starts. Gamers need to stop being mean to those who aren’t skillful. They don’t need to put others down to elevate their own subculture. Games have gone viral. They’re more popular than ever, reaching 2 billion people around the world. They have become a $108 billion industry. It’s silly to look down on games.

No one’s looking down on games and no one’s looking down on people for no other reason than their lack of skill. For a lot of people if they’re having trouble, people will be more than willing to provide advice and pointers. Just ask any question about how to do something in a game on a game related subreddit and people will be perfectly fine to tell you how things are done without insulting you.

The fact that you’ve spent so much time playing and reviewing games, and it’s literally your job, is where it starts to cross the line. Games are 2 billion people and 100 billion dollar strong industry as you’ve said so clearly the ire thrown at games journalists who suck ass at their job isn’t a problem within the industry.

That industry will grow bigger, and gamers will get better games, if we embrace the new gamers.

You. Are. Not. A. New. Gamer.

Stop acting like you’re defending other people getting shit when it isn’t other people who are a problem. This deflection is as apparent as it is pathetic. No one’s going after Minecraftkid2003 because he couldn’t figure out redstone when he first came across it. They’re pointing out that Dean Takahashi, a video game journalist with 18 years worth of experience and has himself boasted he was playing video games since Pong isn’t able to figure out a simple problem solving exercise any faster than a goddamn pigeon.

We don’t need to dumb games down.

And then he says

We can have adjustable difficulty, so that the unskilled and skilled alike can play. We can make tutorials even easier than the one that I failed at so miserably.

Alright, dumbass. I’m sure everyone reading this has seen the video I linked. Here’s what the tutorial required. It required you to jump on a box....and then jump in the air...and then use a dash move to get over a pillar that’s too high to jump over from the ground.

There’s no losing conditions. Time is infinite. There’s no enemies. There’s no bottomless platforms of thing chasing you...it’s literally the easiest part of the game second to moving around map itself. How the fuck can it get easier? Does it need to outright say “Alright Dean, now comes the doozy. You need to press this button and then this button afterwords to solve the exact same problem. Here’s an animation of what it should look like. Can you follow it, Dean? I’ll play the animation over and over on the top of the screen so you can see what you’re supposed to do. If you do it, you get a gold star and Anita will give you the good boy award!”

No, I’m not blaming the developer for my own shortcomings. I respect the designers, even if I didn’t truly understand at first the games they’ve made. I would just like to make sure that they make their games for people who are new, or noobs, as well as hardcore fans.

Cuphead is specifically designed to be a challenging platformer for gamers who like more challenge. Designing it to be easier, especially a tutorial that has no losing condition, is counterproductive to what the devs want to achieve. It’s like asking Stephen King to tone down the horror in his books so that non-horror fans can enjoy them too without being too scared.

If you want an easy platformer designed with everyone in mind, there’s plenty of great games that will fill that roll. Not every game needs to be made for everyone.

As Nolan Bushnell, cofounder of Atari, said, games should be easy to learn and hard to master. (Yes, I know Cuphead’s tutorial isn’t that hard to learn).

Then what’s the fucking issue, ding dong?

No, I’m not celebrating mediocrity

You literally just did when you whined that Cuphead wasn’t designed for noobs in mind. Here’s one big thing though: You were’t even mediocre at it. Garfield is mediocre. You were just awful.

like the Antonio Salieri character in Amadeus. I’m arguing that all gamers, casual or hardcore, deserve recognition.

They do, but not in cuphead. And all gamers aren’t paid to write their opinions on video games.

We are not all going to be esports stars who rake in millions of dollars.

You’ve been at this for 18 years and got money for it. You got to play a demo that a lot of people much more skilled and much more deserving would have liked to play and you did poorly at it because you couldn’t figure out how to do 2 step logic.

But we’re going to be the masses of unskilled players who make the game companies, including the makers of Cuphead, as rich as they can possibly be.

If there’s one happy ending, it’s that Cuphead did do well on the market showing that contrary to what Dean believes, it isn’t a good idea for all games to be dumbed down to the point where even video game journalists are able to play.

The rest is more sob story and personal history.

---

So what are my final thoughts? Well first of all, if you can’t solve a simple 2 step logic puzzle in part of a game with literally no losing conditions, you really are stupid. Pro or noob, there’s some point where you have to wonder how dumb the person with the controller is. There’s plenty of cases like the previously DarkSydePhil and also this blast from the past from IJustine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkYxfjJ72k4 Like seriously: use your eyes and brain homie!

But what about being just generally bad at games or just not knowing how to play well? It doesn’t matter. Contrary to what Dean thinks, tons of people aren’t going to be major assholes to you just because you picked up a game for the first time, don’t know the ropes, but decide to record yourself playing and slowly learning them. Plenty of let’s players do blind runs where they go into a game with no prior knowledge of it and yeah, they make mistakes but people are generally cool about it.

However, there’s a point where making these silly mistakes over and over becomes...something of an issue. I’ve been driving for several years. If I legitimately couldn’t figure out which pedal is the break and which is the gas after all this time, it would be fair grounds to call me a dumbass or wonder if there’s something seriously wrong with my brain. As people do something more and more, it’s expected that they’re better at it than someone completely new. When someone does that thing for a job, it’s expected that they’re better at it than the average joe.

And that’s the big thing here that Dean never addresses: it’s his job. He writes more about the tech than he does actual gameplay, yes, but he still boasts in his own article that he’s been in the industry for 18 years and have been playing games since Pong.

It’s not even the rest of the video that was the issue but instead those 2.5 minutes (which he complained about Miles Ian Cheong trimming the video down to as a highlight) where he’s unable to solve that simple two step logic puzzle in a tutorial level. I drove cars for years because I have to get from point A to point B and it’s beyond walking distance and it would already be stupid if I couldn’t figure out the absolute basics of it. If I reviewed cars for a living and drove cars for longer than most car drivers have been alive for and I couldn’t figure out the basics of starting it, that would be beyond pathetic. I don’t think there’s a word in the English language that would be able to describe that amount of disconnect between the experience I should have and the amount I display.

He constantly hides behind the idea that we’re not all professional e-sport people and gamers come at all skill levels...but he’s not at all skill levels. He’s literally a professional. Playing and reviewing games is literally his profession just like writing code or cooking meals is a profession.

You know how on Kitchen Nightmares Gordon Ramsey gets so pissed off at people who don’t know the basics of cooking and how to handle a kitchen even though it’s their job and they should have learned that in training? It’s like that. We’re basically Gordon Ramsey here watching some guy call himself a chef and his output is microwave heated frozen mac and cheese that’s somehow still raw and yet also on fire. And he wonders why people are yelling at him over the internet.

Should video game journalists be good at video games? Yes! Just like food critics should understand how to cook a meal or reviewers of literature should know how to read! I don’t even know why video game journalists are trying to make this a contestable point. If you suck at your job, either get better....or don’t have you job! Get another one!

I’m aware that this whole thing is a bit of old hat and I’m rambling on more and more than this guy deserves, but it is indicative of a larger problem within the industry. Just like the Zoe Quinn thing or the doritos pope thing was indicative of issues in the larger industry. Video game journalism has an effect and if some of them aren’t able to beat a simple tutorial level and then without any hint of irony, whine that video games should be easier when people call him out on it....it’s just baffling.

It’s now 5:45 and I still have nothing better to do lol so I guess I guess it’s time for a few final words

I don’t think this event will lead to GamerGate 2. Hell, one article defending this guy had the title that GamerGate 1 never really ended. I don’t know how true it is but it seems over three years later since it started, the issues and arguments that were the foundation of GamerGate are still a bit relevant. But now there’s a new one: Some video game journalists are not only unethical....but they’re also utterly incapable!

Anyways, join me next time as I’m even more late to the party and write my epic response Martin Luther’s 95 Thesis followed by a point by point breakdown of Oag the Caveman’s declaration of “Fire bad!”

#video game journalism #cuphead #late to the party

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bolbianddolanhouse · 5 years ago

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BNHA self insert AU

New to the AU? Start here!

Chapter 31: Oh Lawd, He Comin’!

What can I say other than life is pretty great! Back to full health, got a boyf, it’s senior year AND life is on track for me. It’s February 6th, day before my birthday but it’s a thursday and I didn’t feel like celebrating other than opening what my parents sent me in my room after school.

-Dinner hour, Hero dorms-

“Guys are we still on for tomorrow?” Kirishima spoke up.

“What’s going on tomorrow?” asked Shinso as he took a bite of food.

“Oh that’s right! You were gone while we planned this” Midoriya perked up “tomorrow is Palma-san’s birthday and we planned a surprise party for her.”

Shinso nearly choked on his food “It is? How come she didn’t tell me?” he coughed a bit “we were hanging out after school today.”

“She says bad things always happen on the day of” Sato recalled “so she celebrates the day before, like last year, she made a really authentic Mexican dinner but with no cake.” He gets giddy “we met her on her birthday, so it’s a special day in itself! I’m making the cake.”

“All of us pitched in to make it extra special” Mina spoke up “we owe her so much for all the help she’s given us, it’s the least we could do.”

“Well now I feel sorta shitty” Shinso sighed “I didn’t get her anything and it’s sorta too late to include myself in the planning.”

“Actually, you can help us bring her up here tomorrow” Todoroki was granted the brain cell, once again “take her somewhere for a bit after school tomorrow and at 6pm bring her here.”

“Wow, Todoroki is on a roll with the ideas” Sero teased.

-After School the next day-

“Hey, I got your text” I trotted up to Shinso at the front of the school “what’s up?”

“A little birdie told me it’s your birthday today” Shinso said as smoothly as possible.

“Tokoyami never keeps his mouth shut” I pouted “guess you caught me.”

“Silly he didn’t tell me” he laughed “I overheard some of the boys last night on what you did last year.”

“Oh hehehe” I blushed out of embarrassment “well, you’d leave without a trace too if you were in my situation.”

“Let’s walk” he grabbed my hand, the gentleness of his fingers going between mine was making my heart race. Half way to the dorms, he stops and turns to me “actually, I have something much more exciting planned” he leans in to whisper in my ear “teleport us to your dorm, I wanna play.” With no hesitation I teleported us to my room, he didn’t give me a moment to breathe before kissing me.

“Hitoshi! So sudden” he puts his hand on my inner thigh “what did you want to play?”

“I want to make out and make you feel good” he runs his hand up and down my inner thigh “it’s your birthday, I need to please my baby” he kisses my neck “won’t you please invite me to play on your bed?” With consent, we climb up to bed and kissed to our hearts content. “Baby~ do you like that?” he rose up from on top of me, leaving me in a panting but satisfied mess.

“I loved it” I squirmed a bit and regained my composure “I just love you.”

He checks the time, it’s 6:15 “speaking of which, I left something in my dorm for you” he gets up “why don’t you get dressed, meet me at your car and we’ll go somewhere.”

“Won’t you be violating curfew?” I questioned as he picked up his bag to leave.

“Not if we go quickly” he was starting to sweat “just trust me!”

“Um okay, I’ll be quick then” I say and he bolted off before I could say bye “he’s excited heh.”

Shinso dashes in the hero dorms “Okay so I got her getting ready” he panted “I’m going to walk her in as soon as I finish getting dressed.”

“What did you do? Get in a street fight with her?!” Kaminari exclaimed as he noticed his messed up uniform “you look terrible.”

Shinso didn’t respond, he ran into his room to toss on something believable and run out again. She was at the meeting spot before him. “Oh you beat me!”

“It’s what happens when you have teleport” she paused to see Shinso was panting hard “you good? need some water?”

“No I’m fine! Um, ready to go?” he pat his pocket “ah! I forgot my phone in my bag” he motioned to the dorms “come with me?”

“Sure” they walked up to the hero dorms and took the elevator up. When the doors opened, it was dark, like all the lights were cut. “I have a bad feeling” I stop Shinso from stepping forward “something isn’t right.”

“Oh I BET IT’S NOTHING THAT’S THREATENING” he said as he stepped out quickly “nothing to whip your GUN OUT for.”

“Why are you-” I began to say before the lights came on.

“SURPRISE!” yelled everyone “HAPPY BIRTHDAY PALMA-SAN!”

“Please don’t shoot or hate us” whimpered Midoriya.

“Oh guys!” I started laughing “and here I was, about to throw down in a dress and boots!” I looked around and saw everyone pitched in to do something for me “all this for me? Yall know how I feel about my birthday.”

“Well this year, you don’t have to spend it alone” Iida said, walking up to me “isn’t it a milestone birthday to turn 18 in America?”

“It is! It means I’m a legal adult” I remember all the implications “I can buy porn, cigarettes, move out of my parent’s house, go to jail, get trialed like an adult and can have intimate relations with anybody older than me and it won’t be a crime.”

“All that at 18?” Mineta was shocked “we gotta wait until 20 for half of those.”

“ANYWAYS! Thanks yall” I desperately wanted Mineta to shut up “for making today special for me, I appreciate it.”

“TIME FOR CAKE!” Sato bellowed as he set a cake on the table “sit here so we can sing to you.”

“Oh theres...cake hehehe” I get nervous as all the flashbacks of getting my face decked in the cake since I was 2 years old “it looks so pretty! too pretty to eat!”

“Come on! Just sit so we can sing” egged the girls as they dragged me to the chair. It was no use, Uraraka used her quirk on me and got me in the chair. “Ok, 1, 2- HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO...” I sat there with a smile but I was panicking inside but also happy to not be alone on my birthday. “YAY blow out the candles! make a wish!” that snapped me out of my thoughts and I tapped out each candle with my fingers.

“What the?” questioned Jiro in near disgust.

“Oh thanks guys!” I sat up quickly “oh look! The Catptain is calling to me” I step aside to walk toward the cat “better pet him!”

As they were cutting cake, some noticed my odd behavior “Hey, did you notice that Palma-san was uncomfortable? I’ve never seen her so dodgy” whispered Ojiro to Midoriya “wonder what set her off?”

“Hmm, it’s not fire or cake” Midoriya starts to mutter “can’t be singing, maybe being the center of attention? No, she’s used to that” he starts to furrow his brow “maybe it’s the fact that it’s her birthday and she's anticipating something to go wrong.” He served a big slice of cake and turned to where she was “Hey Palma-san, I got you some cake!”

“What flavor is it?”

“Chocolate and strawberry” he tried to coax her to come closer “come to the table, we got gifts for you.”

“Okay... if you say so” she takes careful steps to the table, looking very tense. She gets the slice and a fork and starts eating “Oh this is divine! Thank you Ri!”

“Aww shucks thanks Palma-san” Sato replied to the compliment.

“You look a bit tense” Tokoyami said as he put his hands on my shoulders and started to massage “whats got you worked up?”

“FINE I’LL ADMIT IT!” I huffed and dropped my shoulders “top reason why I don’t celebrate my birthday is because in my culture, it’s customary to smash the person’s face in the cake, regardless of their age” I exhaled “so every year, since I was old enough to stand up on my own, I’ve had my face suplexed into cake by my sister and older cousins” I shudder “I can feel the frosting clogging my nose and gunking up my eyes, I’ve grown to hate cake on my birthday because of all those unpleasant feelings. And I know my family isn’t here to do that to me and yall won’t either but I’m still triggered.”

“Why is your culture, no offense, so fucked up?” Bakugo said as he stopped his bite of cake “I’d demolish anyone that did that to me!”

“And cake time is over hehehe” Kirishima announced as he quickly set his plate of cake on the table “why don’t we have you sit on the couch for presents? Away from the cake.”

“That’s the best plan you’ve come up to date Ei” I said as I finished my cake “you don’t have to tell me twice!” I jumped on Iida’s back “carry me Tenya, it’s my birthday~”

“I can’t say no that” he chuckled as he put his arms behind him to support my legs “to the couch!” He relished in the brief moment of her on his back with arms wrapped around his neck, they were happy and his feelings grew fonder.

They all gathered to give her gifts, begging to open their’s first. She opened the gift the girls pitched in to get her “Oh shit, it’s a vanity set of the perfume I wanted! Thanks girls!” I open Aoyama’s gift “STOP! How did you know I shop this brand of rhinestone socks?! Thanks.” Next the gamer boys “How the fuck y’all got a hold of the bubble gum pink LoL pullover hoodie?! AND a translucent pink controller?! Thanks, yall spoilin’ me!” Next was a few gift cards from Tokoyami, Midoriya and Todoroki, which were very kind of them to give me all coffee shop ones.

“Here, open ours next!” Kirishima said as he handed me the gift “this ones from the rest of us boys.”

“Hehehe alright” I start to unwrap the paper and lift the top of the blank box to see a note on top of tissue paper “to Palma-san, for all the fun times and music you filled the room with, here’s to many more of those days. From Kirishima, Bakugo, Ojiro, Shoji, Iida and Koda. Y’all too sweet” I said as I parted the tissue paper to unveil a Koa wood ukulele “You shouldn’t have! Are you for real?!” I gasped as I was in near tears.

“It was mostly Iida’s idea but we all pitched in” Koda spoke up “we love hearing your music.”

“Well, give it a play!” Bakugo coaxed “I know you got a perfect song to play.”

“I do actually” I picked up the ukulele and strummed it “ooh and in perfect tune already, this is Hey Soul Sister” I start playing and put everyone in a trance with the song “...the way you move ain’t fair you know...” little to my knowledge, Jiro and Iida were recording me “...I want the world to see you be with me, tonight~ “

“That was amazing!” cheered everyone when I was finished. Even the cat was meowing like he was cheering, it brought joy into my heart that I brought together everyone by just giving them a cookie in first year. To think I cried that year because I felt alone, boy did the universe bless me after that! Everyone started to clean up as curfew was closing in on them, I sat on the couch and didn’t dare move as the cat curled up on my lap.

“Hey come you come into my room for a minute?” whispered Iida behind me, like he didn’t want the others to hear.

“Oh sure, let me just warp these to my room” I whispered back as I teleported my gifts and got up. I follow him to his room and he checks if anyone saw before closing the door “Whats up? Why we whispering?”

“I have my own gift I wanted to give you but” he hands me a small box with an orange bow “I was too embarrassed to give it to you in front of everybody, so here, feliz cumpleanos.”

“Hehe you said that funny” I giggled as I opened the box. As I parted the tissue paper, I saw the small picture frame with two pictures in the slots “Tenya, I-”

“It’s a cinnamon wood picture frame with two of my favorite memories with you” he fixed his glasses “the one of the dance the other when we went to the beach. Well, I like all of our memories but these ones stick out the most.”

“Why?” I questioned as I sniffed the frame to see if it was cinnamon bark.

“Because I had the time of my life at the dance and the after dance party” he cleared his throat “and the beach was the first time I ever went with somebody that wasn’t family, let alone stayed to watch the sunset.” He saw me sniffing the frame and laughed “silly girl, you’re one of the most precious people in my life” he pulled me in for a hug “thank you for being my friend, never change.”

“I’m literally crying Tenya” I sniffled as my tears fell “you’re so sweet, all I did was give you a cookie and you gave me so much more.”

He dried my tears “It was a really good cookie” that made me burst out laughing and he just looked at me at peak joy, ‘this is the moment’ he thought to himself ‘she’s so happy, and a kiss to start more happy days.’ As he drew in closer, there was a knock at his door.

“Iida, have you seen Palma-san?” it was Shinso “I had something to give her.”

“I thought she was on the couch with catptain” he lied so I could make my escape “did you check the bathroom?”

“I’ll check, thanks” Shinso said as he walked toward the end of the hall.

“You better go out there” he sighed in relief “wouldn’t want everyone to assume anything.”

“Right! Thanks again!” I whispered before teleporting to the couch. When Shinso came back out to the commons, he looked confused “oh hey, were you looking for me?”

“Yeah I had a thing to give you” he saw the small box in my hand “who gave you that one?”

“The girls” I lied to cover up my tracks “it was part of the set they gave me” I warped it to my room to derail any further questions on it “so what did you want to show me?”

“It’s in my room” he held out his hand to lead me to the room. Once I entered the room, memories of my time in these dorms flooded back “Okay so to be honest, I was told about your birthday literally the night before at dinner. And not going to lie, I felt like shit because I’m your boyfriend and boyfriends should remember these things and give nice gifts” he blushed “so while it’s not a ukulele or a gaming controller, here’s my gift to you” he handed me a re-purposed shoe box “I’m also not very good at wrapping things all pretty.”

“Naw it’s all good” I assured him as I opened the box, there was a small card with cat stickers on the inside of the lid “To Ita, Sweeter than sugar and stronger than Endeavor- May our love last forever, Hitoshi. Aww you didn’t have to” I lean in to give him a kiss then I pulled the sheet of newspaper covering the rest of the items to see a bunch of little things “Oh it’s a box of my faves! But how did you?”

“I had some help from Tetsu and some of my other general ed buddies to get some of the items on their way to school” he pointed to the glass tubes with rubber stoppers “I rolled those myself, took a while to get them presentable enough. I even labeled them” I looked and they were joints in different wrappers and strain combos “do you like it?”

“I love it!” I hugged him “thank you thank you thank you! You’re so observant and sweet.”

“I’m just trying to be a good boyfriend” he hugged back “you’re very special to me, I feel like we’ve been together for way longer and you just make me feel like a prince that fell in love with a warrior princess” he kissed my neck “didn’t think I’d get this far with you but lets keep it this way, loyal and secret.”

“Oh I see, I also wanna keep this love to ourselves and behind closed doors” I agreed with him “you’ll be my best kept secret.”

Time passes and for months we kept our relationship under wraps. Dates consisted of getting coffee and exploring downtown on Sundays but my favorite bonding time were the nights I’d warp in his room. We were happy to have it this way but it seems like a few people were noticing my odd patterns.

-Week before the Sports Festival-

“...can you believe that they let her do the- Iida-kun? Are you listening?” Midoriya noticed that Iida in deep thought.

“I figured it out” Iida muttered then suddenly stood up “I’m going to ask them at the sports festival!”

“What are you talking about four-eyes?” Bakugo furrowed his brow as he was irritated at everyone’s mumbling in the commons room.

“DONT TELL ME!” Aoyama jumped in his seat as he gasped “you’re proclaiming your love to the princess?!”

“Yes I am Yuga!” Iida responded “since they are going to be there to announce and commentate, I’ll win this festival in her honor.”

“Not to be the wet blanket” Momo spoke up from her spot on the couch “but you’ll need a little more than that, what if you don’t place?” the room fell silent “I’m sorry but she did show us that plans and strategies fall apart if we don’t have backups and I was just factoring in on what ifs.”

“You should give her flowers!” Hagakure gasped “I read in this series of my fave manga that the love interest gives a bouquet of flowers in the girls favorite color and the guy’s favorite color” everyone could tell she was trying to do a hand motion but can’t tell what it is “he gave it to her the morning before the guy’s important match and said that it was a promise that they’ll finally be together the moment he wins” she sighed “the guy lost brutally but the girl was like ‘oh I love you anyways, win or no win’ and they got together.”

“You know what, I will do that” Iida was getting pumped up “I won’t hold back anymore, she’ll know just how much I want to be with her.”

Little do they know that her and Shinso were hand in hand at the local shopping square on their date.

“You two haven’t spent time together since her surprise party” Sero recalled “isn’t it a bit off that she hasn’t bothered Iida-kun for a party invite or pestering?”

“She’s been too busy lately for parties” Kirishima turned his head to face Sero “everyone wants a piece of her and her squad since they’ve been announced as their program’s Main 5. With herself being a commanding officer!”

“Not to mention that she’s been helping us with our next round of physical exams” Mina slipped in her comment “I hope she’s managing well.”

“I hope I’ll be able to catch her sometime during the festival” Iida says as he searches up local flower shops on his phone “I have some research to do.”

~Day of Sports Festival~

“GOOOOOD AFTERNOON! And welcome to UA 3rd year’s Sports Festival live broadcast for those watching at home, and a very plus ultra to the ones in attendance at the stadium!” announced Ita in their very best energy “This is agent 19, announcing and commentating our competitors.”

“And this is Agent 20 co-commentating” Mimi followed up.

“And Agent 21 at the weather tower with the weather and debris update” Jin spoke into his headset.

“And I’m Agent 40 at the pro-hero’s wing with exclusive interviews and updates!” Hansai announced himself.

“And I’m Agent 27 at ground level with the inside scoop on the food vendors and attendee favorites!” Yuka excitedly spoke into her microphone.

“And without further ado, let’s get the opening ceremony rolling!” Ita kicked off the whole event with their announcement.

“Wow, she’s doing an amazing job” Asui said as they walked with the class to the stadium wing “are you nervous Iida-kun kero?”

“A bit but I am feeling confident!” he puffed out his chest “let’s do our best everybody!”

The first half of the festival happened and it was all fine and well, then lunch intermission was announced.

“I’m fucking starving” Ita said as they turned off their microphone and swiveled her chair towards Mimi “did Jin order the food?”

“He did” Mimi stretched her back “if you want, you can go pick it up from the stall as Jin finishes his weather update.”

“Yeah I’ll go” she stood up and stretched “I’ll be back.” They teleport near the entrance to the vendor’s area and walked down the hallway, unaware of what was waiting for her near the stairwell.

“Oh she’s there” Iida whispered to himself as he ducked behind the wall, flowers in hand “I can do this, I can do this, just say ‘I’ll win this one for you’ and the rest will follow.” He psyches himself up and as he turned to walk to her, he sees Shinso walking into sight from the other connecting hallway and ducked out of sight again but peeking over.

“Hey Miss Announcer Lady” joked Shinso to get her attention.

“Hitoshi! You startled me!” she jumped a bit and giggled “what are you doing here? go eat lunch!”

“I will, I wanted to indulge a bit” he walked up to her and tilted her chin up for a kiss.

“Stop, what if somebody sees?” she harshly whispered after a quick kiss.

“Please, just one really good kiss babe?” he pleaded “I need some motivation to win this.”

“Fine, one kiss” she put her hands on his face “but then I gotta zoot to pick up food.” She kisses him very intensely, oblivious to Iida hiding and watching everything from his hiding spot. “See you later at my dorm?” She said breathlessly.

“I’ll be there, see you then love.” Shinso said as he walked back the hallway he came from.

As she walked away, Iida was in disbelief “I’m too late? She’s with Shinso now?” he said to himself “how could I lose to him!? I saved her life and nursed her back to health...I DON’T GET IT?!” he slid onto his butt and cried that he didn’t say anything sooner. He tossed the flowers in the trash and didn’t speak to anybody about what he saw. The rest of the festival went without a hitch and Iida didn’t place but neither did Shinso.

-Fast forward, beginning of summer break-

Ita warps in Shinso’s dorm “Hitoshi~” she cooed in an almost sinister tone.

“What’s with the tone?” he chuckled as he kissed her forehead “sounds like you have a cool plan to tell me in that cute little head of yours.”

“I do! And I’m so excited to share it with you!” she hopped as she spoke “sit down, it’s gonna be so crazy you’ll need to sit!”

“Okay okay, I’m sitting” he sits on his desk chair as she kneels on the bed.

“Okay soooo you love me right?”

“Yes, more and more each day.”

“And you’re gonna be displaced for work far from home right?”

“Yes, in Taito City.”

“And you haven’t found housing yet?”

“I haven’t”

“Well, I was just approved for guarded housing! And they allow others to share housing for discounted rent PLUS they allow pets!” she pause a bit “and the best part is that it’s in Sumida City, the city right next to Taito! And I’ll be working in Sumida.” she looks Shinso in the eye “will you move in with me?”

“Am I really allowed?” questioned Shinso.

“Yes, I’ll hand you the paperwork to review” she gets timid “plus, I really like the idea of us living together and maybe adopting a fur baby.”

“Of course I’ll move in with you” he gets up to hold her “I’d love nothing more than to wake up everyday to that sweet face” he kisses her lips “I can’t wait to move in.”

“Same! Sometime in October we’ll get the house tour” she sways as she speaks “and by New Years we’ll be moved in.”

“Quite a ways” Shinso starts to ponder “I guess priority is graduating first huh?”

“Yup!” she stops swaying “but I have confidence that it won’t be an issue for us.”

More time passes and nobody but Iida has an idea that Shinso and Palma are dating, but it’s getting harder and harder to hide it.

-3rd year dance, late October-

“You look so beautiful” sighed Shinso as Palma showed him her final look “like a princess.”

“Wish you’d come babe” she pouted as he held her hands “I wanna slow dance with you and just get lost in those eyes.”

“You know being in those crowds aren’t my thing” he kissed her hands “but go have fun, you deserve it after months of hard work.”

“Alright then, I’ll see you later” she tip-toes up to his ear “maybe I’ll drop in to have you help me out of this dress~”

“Naughty kitty” he blushed “don’t tease me like that.”

“Hehehe I’m not joking” she giggled “later Hitoshi.” She teleported off to the dance, upon entering and getting swarmed by the girls, Iida takes notice and walks over once the crowd around her clears up.

“Hey Ita”

“Oh hey Tenya!” she looked around him “who’d you come with?”

“Nobody, I just felt out of place if I was the only one not going” he looked around her “I thought Shinso was coming with you?”

“Shinso? Nah why?”

“Oh I just thought he was your date since you two have been sort of” he was finding the right word to say “attached at the hip lately.”

“Nah we just got a bit closer but nothing serious” she was trying hard not to give away anything “but anyways, I heard that you’ve been eyeing somebody for a while” I playfully elbow him “we’re friends, I can keep a secret, who is it?!”

He walks them toward the table he was sitting at “Erm, it’s not worth saying anymore” he sighed “they’ve made their choice.”

“Aww don’t say that!” I patted his back “maybe it’s not your time yet, plus we’re still young!” she smiled that genuine, encouraging smile “speaking of young, wanna dance?”

He smiled back “Yes, let’s dance” she grabbed his hand and led him to the dance floor. The whole time he was smiling and admired her energy, just like how it used to be. And her full attention on him made him feel like there was hope for him. “You know Ita” he said as they were slow dancing “I needed this, I missed this.”

“I missed our quality time too!” she responded “this year really got me busy and I haven’t spent enough time with you.”

“Yea, I think the last time we had quality time was when you were in stasis” he remembered everything he said to her during that time “hey, do you remember anything from your stasis? I talked to you a lot during the time I tended to you.”

“I don’t recall much from that time” she tries to remember “I remember feeling very cozy and bits and pieces of The Secret Garden OH! and somebody stoking my hair while mumbling something.”

“That was me!” his face lit up “I read the rest of that book to you and stroked your hair” a big dumb smile spread across his face “that makes me so happy that I broke through to you in that state.”

“And I’m thankful for that” she looked at his expression and tilted her head a bit “are you sure I can’t pay you back for that time? I know you said no but I want too!” she curled her fingers around his hand to squeeze it slightly “anything at all Tenya, just say the word, and I’ll do it.”

The song stopped and the next song was an upbeat one, giving him a chance to act. He grabbed her by the hand “Come with me outside” he lead her to the side of the venue, where it was away from prying eyes “Okay, you said anything? Even answering a question?”

“Yes anything, ask me Tenya” she was slightly afraid of what and why “what’s on your mind?”

He looms over her “Tell me the truth Ita, Are you and Shinso dating? And for how long now?”

Her blood ran cold and body got clammy, she gulped before speaking “It’s true, Hitoshi and I are dating and have been dating for about 9 months now.” She took a few breaths “but he confessed to me 2 weeks before my labyrinth practice exam and promised to ask me properly when the time was right. We’ve been together ever since and keeping things under wraps since we don’t like all that attention drawn to us.”

It was a bit too dark to see Iida’s face but he had an expression of hurt in his eyes “I ask because I saw you two kissing at the sports festival” he cleared his throat “I just wanted to know since you always tell me what’s going on and seeing that threw me off.”

“Why did it throw you off?” she asked confused.

“Well, it’s just that Shinso isn’t like Mirio and doesn’t fit a type” he fixed his glasses “I just think that Shinso isn’t your type is all.”

“Not my type? Shinso is definitely my type” she gushed “he’s very thoughtful, kind, respectful and we have so much in common! We even have the same coffee order!”

“Well isn’t that just quaint” he huffed.

“Are you jealous?!” she squinted her eyes at Iida, with her hands on her hips “just because I’m dating him doesn’t mean we aren’t friends anymore! Tenya you’re my chosen family and I want you in my life because you’ve helped me through my worse and lows” she reached out to hold his hand “even if he leaves me or vice versa, you’ll still be by my side, you promised me.”

“I did didn’t I?” he sighed and held their hands together “alright then, but lets spend more time together before graduation!”

“Lets see then” they walk back to the dance “I don’t have any plans from now until graduation, plan something Tenya.”

They spent the rest of the dance talking about plans and times but Iida was still bothered by the fact that Shinso was in fact her boyfriend. He didn’t dare speak about his feelings and start drama. He’s been telling himself that his time will come soon....but when?

-Chapter 31, End-

#mha #bnha #self insert au #chapter 31 #not canon #will update regularly #ask me anything #hahaha I'm back but yall caught me lackin #I said mid december but it's fully 2020 lmao #but here it is! and I have the next 4 chapters ready to go as well #now that I have more freetime...updates are now every 2 to 3 days #thanks for reading this far! uwu

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