#otherwise there are some horror themes I like LMAO

[airanke]

Rating how scared of things I am:

elevator: 0/10

cemetery: 9/10

snake: 5/10

clown: 0/10

spider: 5/10

darkness: 10/10

heights: 5/10

horror film: 100/10

bottom of the sea: 1000/10

hospital: 7/10

insects: 3/10

toad: 0/10

needle: 1/10

plane: 4/10

blood: 5/10

cockroach: 3/10

Tagged by @dabisqueen!! Thanks for the tag bby <3

[meanbossart]

Hello! I really love your art!!! Im a big fan of horror and erotica, do you have any toughts to share about being a horror-orinted artist? Im also an artist and contantly want to draw (and share) some darker stuff but am too afraid of internet judgment i guess (a coward lmao). In your journey on the internet, do you were harassed or something because if your subject? Sorry if it is a weird ass ask - im genuinely curious.

Heya, glad you enjoy my stuff!

I've never really experienced any harassment because of my art. I've gotten unkind reactions/opinions about it but one individual expressing their dislike for what you do every once in a while isn't really noteworthy enough. I do, sometimes, get the impression that people online are very reactionary about getting negative feedback of any kind, which makes sense with how over-exposed we are to the worse-case-scenarios of true, nightmarish harassment. But, truth be told, MOST of us will A) never make it "that big" B) While it may be kind of rude, receiving occasional negative attention is just a part of the human experience and it will always be sprinkled into otherwise positive feedback. You just have to be okay with that and take it maturely.

I think one of the main reasons why me and my partner never received severe negative attention for our comics (besides for being mind-numbingly boring as people with our internet presence) is because we are explicitly clear about what they are and what they contain. I have seen a LOT of horror/shock-content artists be... Very euphemistic about their work for whatever reason? Like, trying to sell the themes of their work but somehow failing to explicitly disclose the triggering content within it, or they just leave it at "gore/horror" when a more in-depth description of what the work contains would have been necessary. Sometimes, people seem to do this because they are preemptively scared of the backlash they might receive; but other, much more infuriating times they seem to be tricking people into giving them money before being fully informed.

As an example, here's what the content warning for one of our comics looks like:

Could a "sexual content and assault, death and bigotry" warning have sufficed? Maybe, and at some point I would have argued about the necessity of this level of thoroughness. But nowadays I really think my boyfriend's insistence for detailed TWs are to thank for keeping the people who DON'T want to read about this stuff away, and the people who DO to be able to find it and """enjoy""" it responsibly.

So, be objective about what it is that you're making, not only with others but with yourself. Is there a more complex point that you're trying to convey with your work? Probably. Is being cagey about the work's content and refusing to acknowledge that it may still be triggering, pornographic, repulsive and shocking going to make people see that point more clearly? Absolutely not.

[thewertsearch]

GC: YOU W3R3 STRUTT1NG 4ROUND 1N YOUR D3L1C1OUS K1W1 31GHT B4LL SU1T 4ND RUNN1NG YOUR FR3SH MOUTH 4S USU4L GC: durp yo terezi sup sup gotta beat john gotta beat john GC: hes got a long hood and he does wind, how can i get powers too? [....] GC: [...] 1M L1K3 D4V3 TH4TS GO1NG TO 1NVOLV3 F4C1NG YOUR OWN D34TH GC: 4ND 1M SORRY TO BR34K 1T TO YOU BUT 1 DONT TH1NK YOUR3 R34DY FOR TH4T

Well, at least she gave him fair warning.

Thanks to Vriska, John was able to achieve the god tiers without confronting his mortality. He didn't have to grapple with any of this, and it's possible that he was robbed of some character growth as a result.

That said, I still think Vriska did him a solid. It's just ironic that she thinks she's helping him develop as a hero, when she might be doing the exact opposite.

GC: BUT ONLY 1F YOU PROM1S3 TO TH3 3X4CT T3RMS OF MY 4RR4NG3M3NT, 1N ORD3R TO PROT3CT TH3 1NT3GR1TY OF TH3 T1M3L1N3 >:] TG: the arrangement being the coin flip thing TG: thank god we did that otherwise wed be screwed TG: i probably would have gone back in time and killed my own grandfather oh wait i never had one

lmao

I do wonder if Bro had an adopted family. We know Nanna and Grandpa's background, and Mom was probably the child that Skaianet were apparently raising in their laboratory. (Remember when I thought there was a secret clone of Rose down there?)

Bro, however, is an enigma, even among the Guardians. He has no known relationship with any of the other parents, but was definitely getting foreknowledge of Sburb from somewhere. I'm not even sure I want to know what sort of childhood produces Bro Strider.

GC: 1 TOLD YOU 1 W4S GO1NG TO FL1P 4 CO1N GC: 4ND B3FOR3 1 D1D, YOU H4D TO P1CK 4 S1D3 W1THOUT T3LL1NG M3 GC: GOOD H34DS OR B4D H34DS

Really, the coin is just a rhetorical device. Terezi doesn't need to flip a coin, or even have a coin, because the real flip is happening in Dave's head. His Mind, if you will.

This does raise a lot of questions, though. I hope there isn't a timeline for every conceivable decision you could make. We've sort of discussed the idea before, but I don't think I've really talked about the subtle horror of a multiverse that works that way.

I mean, if there's a timeline for every possible decision - if everyone is capable of making any choice, at any time - then John will randomly kill his friends, for no reason. There are millions of offshoots where he does this. WV will become a monarchist. Dave will take off his shades.

It goes deeper, too. You can't even meaningfully ask why Dave wears shades, because he doesn't. He's constantly taking them off, because it is possible for him to do so. And if there's a timeline where he never takes them off, it's only because that's a decision he could potentially make.

If timelines branch at every decision, with no restrictions, then every single person in the multiverse is constantly doing things that contradict the core of who they are. In fact, there is no core. Everyone is an indistinguishable robot, constantly making every possible decision, simply because they can.

Homestuck could work like this, but I prefer the Discworld interpretation - I think it's more consistent with the comic's themes of choice. In Night Watch, protagonist Vimes is confronted with this exact question, and we get this exchange:

“But sometimes you can’t help wondering: what would have happened if I’d done something different–” “Like when you killed your wife?” Sweeper was impressed at Vimes’s lack of reaction. “This is a test, right?” “You’re a quick study, Mister Vimes.” “But in some other universe, believe me, I hauled off and punched you one.” Again, Sweeper smiled the annoying little smile that suggested he didn’t believe him. “You haven’t killed your wife,” he said. “Anywhere. There is nowhere, however huge the multiverse is, where Sam Vimes as he is now has murdered Lady Sybil. But the theory is quite clear. It says that if anything could happen without breaking any physical laws, it must happen. But it hasn’t. And yet the “many universe” theory works. Without it, no one would ever be able to make a decision at all.” “So?” “So what people do matters!” said Sweeper. “People invent other laws. What they do is important!

In short, there are some things you would never do, physical laws be damned. It is inconceivable that Vimes would murder his wife, because his current personality is incompatible with that decision. It simply cannot be made to make sense, so it can't spawn a timeline.

Note that this is only true for Vimes 'as he is now'. His moral code doesn't necessarily apply to his alt-selves - or even his younger self, whose code hasn't solidified. Hell, half the book is about making sure Young Vimes develops that code in the first place. There could be an evil John Egbert, but our John can't just arbitrarily turn evil.

So that's how I think it works. There's a timeline for every decision that you'd choose to make, and that subset of decisions will change as you grow. Your development as a person shapes the multiverse, in a very literal way.

[just-a-carrot]

Hoi carrot so you mentioned having a niche taste in music and now I must know what kinda music do you like? (it's ok if you don't wanna answer the question I'm just curious lol)

according to receiptify, these are my top genres lol:

but i also listen to stuff outside of spotify, too, like i like to stick on game soundtracks or those "1-hour extended" youtube videos of OST songs lol

generally i listen to a lot of soundtracks and scores, both from games and movies (lately for obvious reasons i've been listening to the DD2 OST a lot on YouTube, also lately a lot of horror soundtracks??? i guess because Autumn™ which is why currently spotify is telling me my top track from the past month is the Suspiria theme LMAO i had that one on repeat for a bit while working... it's so spooky...)

i listen to my OW char playlists a lot, which are all quite varied, but are all collections that have Meaning™ to me because they are associated with the characters. i feel like that helps a lot with me when it comes to music even beyond if i like a song if it's Meaningful to me for some reason then i will attach greater importance to it and might like it even if i otherwise wouldn't

i listen to some jpop and cpop. but those are mostly in the form of FAKE TYPE. for jpop and Mayday + Jay Chou (but only upbeat songs) for cpop with a handful of others thrown in. i like to listen to random "internet songs" i don't even know how to refer to them, like fnaf stuff and other songs based on games. like i generally enjoy JT Music and DA Games. i like some oldies and such because it's what i grew up listening to (my parents would constantly have the radio set to oldies stations). i like a lot of electroswing but sometimes i have a weird taste even for that like it needs to scratch my head just right

i do NOT like ballads. i NEVER listen to ballads LOL i just do not like slow songs (unless it's a soundtrack). unless a ballad has Meaning™ to me i will not enjoy it. generally unless it's a soundtrack i need the music to make my brain buzz and i have specific sounds and vibes i tend to like but i don't really know how to refer to them lakdfjasd. i don't often like multiple songs from an artist or group, i tend to just have a select few i like unless it's one of my absolute favs

i'm sorry this got so long i started rambling lol

[viridiave]

A little love post to HORROR JRPGs

Content Warning:

So I'm gonna be talking a lot about some pre-Undertale era RPG Maker Horror games, and this post is gonna contain both spoilers and the discussion of the following:

Blood and Gore

Psychological horror

Child abuse

Sexual assault

Suicide

Violence

Fictional minors being put into very messed up situations, because that's just the kinds of games these are

Other upsetting themes

Hetalia (because I can imagine that all of us have very complex feelings about this fucking franchise. It existing feels like it needs a warning)

This post is a nostalgia trip and exists purely because uh. I have literally no one else to talk to about these games, and please just click away if any of the above makes you uncomfortable in any way. Some of this stuff can't exactly be handwaved as just being products of their time.

I'll draw smthn real quick later just to make up for it I promise

I'm like days late to Halloween but I just wanted to write this after getting a bout of nostalgia lmao

I absolutely fucking love Horror JRPGs - the freeware ones, even though I haven't touched one in a LONG time. I'm talking about the pre-Undertale era freeware games by the way, and in the first place I don't think I can consider Undertale a horror game but that's a topic for another day. OneShot also doesn't count aksjak OneShot gives me existential dread and a nonzero amount of guilt sure, but never terror

But let's dial that back a bit.

To begin with. 'Vir, you're a fucking coward, you run upstairs when you see that someone on TV has a gun. You can't stand watching horror movies. How the FUCK did this happen'

Weirdly, you can thank Hetalia for that. Specifically, the freeware Hetalia fangames that used to circulate on DeviantArt - that shit led me down this rabbit hole. And I guess it made sense, most Hetalia fangames are a coin toss between a horror game and a fantasy JRPG with countries getting isekai'd. I also played the fuck out of those.

For a bit of background, I love video games, but neither me nor my family ever really had that much spending power to buy game consoles, so my selection was pretty limited. Before I turned 18, I remember that we owned a GameBoy, a GameBoy Advance, a PSP, and one of those Fun-Sized Nintendo consoles with built-in games. We never bought cartridges either. I got my first DS from my dad on my birthday when I turned 18, and that's all the consoles that my family has ever owned. Still kinda jealous of my friends who have Switches, but eh - one day.

I just played a lot of Harvest Moon growing up, that's been my object of interest in my elementary days. The most of a horror game that I've been exposed to was watching my friends play Five Nights At Freddy's back in 5th grade.

Then high school happened, and I got new friends and shit - and was introduced to both more conventional horror games and Hetalia. Which is. A really weird combination when I think about it now, but everyone who was alive and kicking around in the early 2010's would know what HetaOni is, and you can see how that slope led to me playing freeware horror games. I'll always be grateful to these games, seeing as I never had easy access to mainstream experiences growing up.

I think I played HetaOni exactly once, on my first laptop. I played most Hetalia fangames exactly once, but they all just stayed on my old hard drive. None of them really had anything interesting going on gameplay-wise, I mean it's RPGMaker and these were people who just really wanted to make Hetalia fangames, but I remember some of them just sticking with me. I'd play them while I was away on trips to my grandmother's house, then watch let's plays on YouTube when I wasn't otherwise occupied with schoolwork. Really when I say Let's Plays I only mean KyoKoon64's - and that's how I was actually introduced to horror JRPGs.

CLOÉ'S REQUIEM

There's been a couple of times where they played some of the more recognizable horror JRPGs on their channel, but the first one I REALLY saw a playthrough on was one called Cloé's Requiem. I don't know what exactly it was about this specific game that stuck with me, and at the time I didn't know that this had like. More warnings than you would usually find on a horror JRPG. Calling it now, please look up said warnings before you try ANYTHING with this game - I can't promise quality and nuance, but I can promise great moments. Those moments stuck with me to this day, SOMEHOW, even after encountering games with better story and gameplay experiences… it's about a cursed 12 year-old boy trying to free a cursed 13 year-old girl, never getting a shot at the normal life he wanted and playing the violin because he can't do much else.

I think this game changed my life. Not in like, any grand manner mind you - but I feel like it's the game that best represented this time of my life as a weird high school outsider who obsesses over games that nobody's ever heard about. I was introduced to a lot of things through this game, it's just this whole volley of firsts that I wouldn't trade for anything else. Baby's first horror game, first jumpscare I ever consented to, first taste of games containing disturbing themes of sexual assault and gore, first trips to Pixiv and NicoNicoDouga - just all the fucking firsts. I wouldn't call it a great game, but it IS important to me.

When I think about it now, it's a game about curses. Michel D'Alembert is a talented violinist at 12, and his alcoholic father milks the shit out of this talent because they're not exactly what you would call well-off. His twin brother Pierre is a pianist, is nowhere near as talented as his brother, and hides his misery over this situation under a big-little brother façade. Cloé Ardennes is a pianist too, she's wealthy, talented, and still plays with her stuffed animals. She is cursed with an insane father who rapes her, and a mother who hates her. Charlotte is a young maid with nothing and tries her best, only to be killed because she happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Unsurprisingly things fall apart for everybody very quickly.

Pierre's frustrations with his spoiled, lazy brother boiled over, and he curses Michel out in a heated moment. This drives Michel to murder their Charlotte by accident, and she becomes his curse - he runs out of the house, kills cats, and finds himself in the dilapidated mansion that Cloé inhabits. Cloé by this point is already dead, and so is her dad, her parents, and the maids. Cloé's father may be her curse but she is the curse of this mansion, and it transforms into something hostile until Michel comes along and saves her from the shadow of her father. Michel plays her a requiem, and resolves to go home to confront his crimes - and back to Pierre, who regrets everything he's done. Watching the sun rise with a disappearing Cloé in the True Ending will likely be the last peaceful moment he will ever have in his life.

That's like. Not everything that happens in this game, but this post is already so goddamn long and I still have a lot of other stuff I want to talk about. But the gist of it to me nowadays is that these children are cursed with loveless lives and the whims of the adults that have power over them. In the end, their lives are all ruined. Cloé and Charlotte are dead, and we have no idea what becomes of Michel and Pierre when word gets out that Michel killed a maid and assaulted several others in the house in a fit of emotional instability. In every other ending, Michel is killed and Cloé remains an evil spirit, so really this is the best that anyone ever gets out of this experience.

I remember watching a playthrough of Con Amore on YouTube, but I understood none of it because it was in Japanese, and the game itself was untranslated at the time. It follows the cats Noir and Blanc and basically serves as an addendum to the base game - honestly it made me feel sorry for Charlotte, who was nowhere near as psychotic as Michel thought she was. There's also light novels, but international shipping is expensive and I don't know Japanese so. I'll just never figure out what happens to everyone after the game ends I guess

One of these days, I'll buy the remake on Steam - which exists, and I can't say I recommend it if everything I just listed bothers you in any way. But I can't shake the attachment I feel towards this game no matter how many years it's been, nor how uncomfortable its themes are, so you know - maybe one day. I'll go back to it.

IB

So - following that, I got pretty curious about the other games in this genre of freeware horror. Ib is the one that everyone knows the best, both Markiplier and Pewdiepie played it so you KNOW it gets press, but even in Japan this game was a hell of a hit. To me, it's a simple game that I can finish in an hour, but man what an hour it can be.

If you were to play this game right now after seeing how much press it gets (which I think you should, it's on the Switch now! Go get it!), you MIGHT be a little disappointed. It's nowhere near as gory or disturbing as Cloe's Requiem for one and you know - a bunch of blood and guts and ghosts on the walls does not a good horror game make, but make your choices accordingly. Nah - instead this game's staying power lies in its atmosphere. Like how many games can you say take place inside of an art gallery where most of the pieces try to fucking murder you? I mean there's probably a lot, but something about Ib's almost ambient sense of dread and exploration just kind of sticks in people's brains. Everything's a little scarier when the shapes are so close to being discernable but aren't, and I guess that's the appeal and horror behind Guertena's gallery.

Ib herself is a mute protagonist, pretty typical, but she's also NINE, and the game will let you know that no matter how unfazed she gets or how precocious she can be, she is a child all the same - and children break very easily. I personally love how the game barely has to say anything about how shaken she actually is about her situation, because it will show you how - she has nightmares that you can't escape, she sees herself getting hanged, Garry will need to shake her out of her shock when she sees a picture of her parents in the gallery that should not exist. She loses all of her will to live when she loses Garry to insanity. And speaking of Garry…

There's one standout room in this game and it's the Doll Room. 10/10 would NOT recommend it to anyone who suffers from anxiety because WOW I did not think the RPG Maker 2000 engine could ever have been capable of that. Nobody blames Garry if this room fucks him up. I mean come on the dude has to literally rip open the stomachs of dolls to find a paint ball. Those sound effects make it sound like the dolls are made of skin and flesh and all the while the giant fucking doll is creeping out of the goddamn painting while some of the most anxiety-inducing background noise is playing -

Yeah no I don't know why I ever said you'd be disappointed by this game. Or maybe you still would, this is a low-res game made in 2012. But my god does it TRY to scare you in the best ways it can.

One of the best moments in this game I think is the one where Mary and Ib are alone together, and the conversation gets increasingly unhinged with Mary asking Ib questions non-stop with no background noise other than their steps. At this point, they're separated from Garry, and they're trying to find a way back to each other. Garry meanwhile is slowly piecing together the truth about Mary and how dangerous it is for Ib to remain alone with her, all the while still trying to figure out how to get back to both of them.

The section after that is in the Sketchbook which honestly? The vibes of this place are impeccable. Somehow it's fitting that one of the tensest areas in a game about a fine arts gallery is the place made entirely out of childlike scribbles.

Overall, I'd say the experience is well worth an hour or two - I'd recommend it happily over Cloé's Requiem, if only so you can have a taste of what Horror JRPGs were like before Omori came along. Yes I know that Omori isn't Japanese but it's very much in the same vein as these games.

OTHER GAMES

Those were the safe two that planted my feet firmly into the Horror JRPG fandom, but there's a lot of other titles out there, so let's go - lightning round!

Ao Oni is the ubiquitous one, like chances are you've at least HEARD of it in passing at some point in your life. Like this shit made it to the big screen in Japan, that's how much of a deal it was. I've never played the original myself, but it's partly because its formula of stuck in a mansion with a horror that chases you around is present in pretty much every Horror JRPG after its release in 2007. If you want some classic fun with the big blue demon though then you can't go wrong with the freeware version.

Mad Father and The Witch's House are part of what I like to call the Big 3 of JRPGs starring preteen girls experiencing the Horrors™, mostly because back in the mid-2010's I couldn't go three posts without seeing them all together. Mad Father is the only other one of said Big 3 that I've touched, because I was too coward to touch The Witch's House and Ellen's whole deal remains a mystery to me to this day. I think Mad Father got a remake a couple of years ago, so you can check that out if you want, but keep in mind that these two games in particular might not stoke the same kind of magical staying power that Ib somehow retained years after its release, and I know those two rely on jumpscares a lot more than Ib does.

I'll eat my fedora right here by the way, because one of my cardinal sins of being a Horror JRPG fan is that I've never played Yume Nikki. As far as these freeware games go, this is probably one of the more avant-garde ones - it's artsy, atmospheric, and a game best experienced by getting lost in the strange environments it provides. Out of every game on this post, this is the one I'd describe as the most Earthbound-esque, with its horror lying mostly in the surrealist ambience of just… wandering around in Madotsuki's mind. The end is just as quiet as the beginning, but is no less chilling to watch happen. Then you fuck around a little bit on Youtube and you find out what's actually going on, and uh - yeah that checks out, cosmic horror sounds par for the course at this point.

Yume Nikki and OFF are two of the games I think of when I hear about Horror JRPGs being talked about alongside Undertale - and nope, I haven't played OFF either. That's my other Horror JRPG sin. I was a picky teenager, but I've grown now and wow I need to find a time to play these games in peace. OFF actually isn't even Japanese, it was developed by Mortis Ghost and released in French back in 2008, making both pretty old and already pretty weird in the library. The reason I bring up OFF is because it's one of the older examples I know of that also incorporate Earthbound's precision 4th-wall breaks, and that it's a game about judgment and interrogates the player (more you than the Batter you play as, serving more as a vehicle that the game uses to ask questions through) about the choices they make in the game. OneShot is probably the one game in this genre of indie RPG that I know so far that employs this metaphysical idea of the player existing in the game in any kind of charitable fashion (aside from again, Earthbound and to some extent Mother 3), so between it, OFF, and Undertale they're what I'd refer to as the Interface Screw-RPG Trio.

Some other titles that I like are between the same devs, even some that I haven't really played to completion. Cloé's Requiem for example was made by Buriki Clock, and they've made other titles like Fantasy Maiden's Off Hideout and Trauma Traum - the latter I can't play because it doesn't have an English translation rip. Miwashiba is another dev which I think people who have a taste for light lolita goth-pastel colors would like, because my god the character designs in both Alice Mare and LiEat are peak. Don't even get me started on the fashion of 1BitHeart because everything in that game has such an impeccable aesthetic. I think I saw something at one point about 1BitHeart that like. Might count as a shared joke between Xenoblade fans, but I'd be hard-pressed to give context because again… packed schedule, who dis?

Just to talk about Alice Mare a little more, I've actually played this one - it sports a heavily storybook-inspired cast with some unique tastes on the tales. Most of my actual experiences with Alice Mare were from the English Light Novel, which I do still have! I really recommend it to people who have a couple of hours to spare on some light, relatively bloodless horror. Most of these games have Light Novels, come to think of it - hell Ib even has whole audio dramas, one of which was fanmade in English, and from what I remember of it the voice acting for Mary was PEAK.

One last dev I want to talk about is Segawa. I've saved them for last because their brand of horror is reserved mainly for one game, but their other games Farethere City and Tower of Hanoi are no slouches either. I don't know much about Tower of Hanoi (or if it even has an English translation right now), but Farethere City is a pretty cute experience as far as pseudo-horror games go from what I've heard, which is probably good for us because their other standout game is anything but cute.

END ROLL

Ah, End Roll. The last of the Horror JRPGs I've played before school kicked me even harder in the shins and I had barely any time for it. Out of all the games I mentioned on this list, this is the one with the most staying power in my brain - and also the one that influenced me the most.

So, I don't talk a lot about my original works. Nobody asks, so I don't overshare. But some of the prevalent overarching themes of my personal mythos are those of guilt, self-love, and the burdens of love. All of these themes were lifted directly from End Roll - which is to say, End Roll actually only deals in guilt, my brain just ran buckwild with trying to wrap itself around the logistics behind InfoRuss. One of my main protagonists, Rosso, is a dead-ringer expy of Russell - the same goes for Blanco with the Informant. One of the only ways I can describe Rosso and Blanco's relationship is 'selfcest as a metaphor for the painful coexistence of self-love and self-loathing', and how this relationship reached this point was largely thanks to the Informant and his role in Russell's dream.

I don't really know why I've come to associate the idea of self-love with guilt, because that's like. Not what the game is trying to do. The game's express purpose is to tell you the story of a boy who comes to love his victims and self-destructs under the crushing guilt that he carries from killing them. By some weird hand, I've fixated on the Informant and his determination in seeing that mission of the game through - AND his secret boss fight. Actually, I should. Go ahead and describe the build-up to his secret boss fight

You can only access it if you've purchased the optional villa, and if I recall correctly you can only fight him on the last day of the dream. The locked shed next to the villa is revealed to be a library of some kind called the Graveyard of Books and like - sure enough, there's books of every kind just torn apart and scattered about everywhere. The reason for all of this is because of the Informant's jealousy. He is created specifically so he can provide Russell with the necessary information to complete the Happy Dream Experiment, and in this regard he thinks Russell doesn't need anyone other source of information than him. So he does away with the useless other books, except for the strategy guides because that's the only kind of book Russell likes - and thus, the only kind of book that the Informant likes. Notes are scattered in the hallway leading up into his boss room, with the last one sticking out in my mind to this day:

'He thinks he's the most important thing to you.'

Which. I don't know why that line is so important to me. Whether it be because it awakened something weird in me, or because I myself was dealing with my self-loathing in a VERY complicated manner at the time, that line has gone on to dictate the way that I write about my characters even to this day.

It's such a visceral depiction of self-inflicted brutality. Russell Seager is a 14 year-old serial killer who grew up loveless and abused, and has no shortage of things that make every waking moment of his life fucked up. He killed people - some who just happened to be wherever he was at the time, some willingly by his hand - could not feel guilt about any of it, and when he lost Yumi to his drunken father while his nymphomaniac mother watched he snapped and killed both his tormentors. He then turned himself in to the police, a teen on death row. Happy Dream is him discovering guilt through dream versions of the people he killed. Happy Dream is what allows him to manifest the newfound emotions he felt through interacting with the kinds of people that his victims COULD have been. The world he creates morphs into the self-inflicted hell that is his guilt.

Russell has no happy ending, his guilt won't allow him that. Everything around him becomes a reminder of the lives he's destroyed, and how much of a living hell his own life was. Through feeling happiness and love from these fabricated visages of the people he killed, he learned guilt. It's such a weird exercise in sympathy, knowing that you're playing as this remorseless kid going through rehabilitation through extreme means. It either doesn't work, and he's deemed a failure - or it does, and he commits suicide either by confessing his crimes to one of his victims and stabbing himself to death with a syringe, or he stays in the deteriorating dream, never to wake up again.

At some point it honestly just turns into misery porn, if you look at it from a certain angle - this game is set on having Russell die no matter what. I couldn't tell you what EXACTLY it is about this experience was so impactful that it would go on to influence the way I want to spend my life - that is, I want to make games exploring these kinds of themes. Guilt. Sins. If loveless lives can be redeemed and made better. By the time the last day in the game rolls around, it's just a matter of giving Russell closure over his miserable life and choosing for him what his last freedom is going to be.

I think one of the reasons I like thinking about the Informant with regards to Russell is the scene that happens if you choose to go through with the first True Ending. Russell never really much liked the Informant, and the feeling is mutual. Russell is cold to him, and the Informant takes every opportunity he can to rub all of Russell's sins in his face - and that's his job, he represents the fundamental, uncomfortable truths of Happy Dream. If Russell chooses not to leave the dream, he is resigned to its destruction and waits for the inevitable along with the other denizens of Nameless Town. But if Russell chooses to get out of the dream, the Informant returns to Russell in tears, happy that he can finally be back to being a part of him - to this game, it's the ultimate acceptance. Russell then goes on to confess his crimes and the reality of the dream to one of the citizens, and he wakes up when they kill him in tearful retribution by his request.

He grabs the syringe next to his bed, and stabs himself to death, unable to handle the guilt. That's how the game always ends for me. The Informant succeeded, Happy Dream succeeded - and Russell chose to die as person who could finally feel remorse.

It's a regretful story with themes that really shouldn't be replicated in any fashion in real life, but somehow I found it fascinating in the way it explores the facets of the self. It makes me want to ask more questions and explore that angle of self-reflection to the furthest extremes that I can conceivably reach, and I guess that's one of the many reasons why I respect it so much.

SO… WHAT NOW.

Nah, that's kind of it. Like, OF COURSE this isn't all I have to say about the games that I mentioned, but wow this post is so long and I was just pining for the days of a couple of years ago. These games were present for the most transformative years of my life, and uh - whether or not that was actually a good thing remains to be seen, but I'll always be grateful for their presence in the void that I call my gaming experiences.

Horror JRPGs will always have a special place in my heart for how they tell their stories. Nowadays, I've developed more of a taste for fantastical RPGs that prefer to hide their horror in the margins of the narrative, fridging the terror for when the player wants to step back a bit and think about the implications of certain events in the greater world. Undertale, OneShot, and the Octopath Traveler games all tick that box for me - and all of those games are ones I hold dear. Like I'll probably ramble about OneShot some other day, because that's the other game that really changed my life in a way I felt like I can never come back from - but there's just a lot of special things to be said about these neat little self-contained, 6-hour freeware games. For now I'll close this long-ass post out. Happy late Halloween I guess - the M&Ms in our fridge have never tasted better.

[snailchasers-den]

How does starclan reacts to Spottedleaf's lies?

Super sorry for answering this so late, I've been super busy LMAO I try to answer asks as quickly as I can, so thank you for being so patient!

This will contain some spoilers for my fic, even if I might tweak some things before then, so know this is subject to some possible changes! It'll also contain some mild horror and themes of being watched, so fair warning!

It's nothing big at first, for a while she actually flies comfortably under the radar, the problem only really starts getting recognized by Starclan once they tell the clan the false prophecy, uncomfortably close to before whenever Spotted receives the 'Fire will save our clan' one, and gets worse once Yellowfang gets there and starts working alongside her. A lot of the plan hindered on the only other medicine cat around being her and her apprentice, so Yellowfang appearing threw a massive wrench in things. Yellowfang does agree not to reveal the fact she's faking her and Tigerclaw's prophecy, but can't promise she'll be able to keep her safe from everything that may come her way because of it.

She starts to avoid the night sky after that, doing her best to only go out during the day, or when the stars are hidden by clouds. But that doesn't always help her when she starts to feel watched near constantly. She's not exactly sure if it's a manifestation of guilt or Starclan themselves, at the time, but she starts to have dreams if not hallucinations of silent starclan cats, just... Watching as she tries to gather herbs. It's extremely rare for Starclan to decend from the sky, much less for no good reason. They don't tell you how dead and lightless an otherwise glittering Starclan cat's eyes can look when they stare at you so blankly. Nothing proves they're no longer alive more than that.

Yellowfang tries to comfort her through the days, but she out of anybody can tell it's starting to weigh on her- She does her best to make her feel a bit more secure, but having another cat with Starclan's gifts so nearby only makes things more unsettling.

Starclan is very different in this AU, being a lot more reserved and ominous, much closer to a coalescence of all the spirits of their ancestors that started having their lines between eachother smudged long ago. The clans have this image of ethereal starry passed family members who watch over them and keep them safe, but if you look deeper, there's something beneath the surface. They don't actively try to stop Spottedleaf, since this is likely a new type of crime, faking a prophecy not for power, but for something as simple and small as love, so instead they just judge. They know she knows they're watching her, and they plan to keep doing it until she dies, even if she tries to shut Starclan out of her mind later.

She does start trying to shut out Starclan once she realizes she's pregnant with Tigerclaw's kit. She knows the clan will see them as something special due to the prophecy that allowed them to be born 'within the code', and she doesn't need twice the stress with Starclan still lingering around her during the whole thing. Unfortunately, with her having such a strong connection with Starclan, and Tigerclaw having his own ties to it for wildly different reasons, their son ends up having a much, much higher connection than a majority of medicine cats do, even from a young age. Spotted isn't sure whether they passed it down to him, or if Starclan felt a bit sadistic and decided to play along for now, but for a while, the starry figures that stalk her through the forest seem to dissipate. She can't tell why, though, but she can feel in her bones that they'll be back for her.

Tigerclaw doesn't have a direct link with Starclan, but he does actually get his own glimpses of them, though his seem to be more based in malice. They've obviously never been too fond of him, and since Pinestar refused to kill him as a kit, they've let that demand go, but a lingering distaste for him never faded. He's been plagued with nightmares his entire life, but something about the ones he started getting once Starclan discovered their lie seemed to be less copy-paste with a few adjustments, and more personal. Deeper cutting and more unnerving. Ones he couldn't shake even with Spottedleaf at his side every night.

[madame-mortician]

For Pride Month I wanted to discuss LGBTQ themes in Horror (slashers in particular) because it’s so interesting how queer themes have been present in this genre for MANY decades now, it’s insane that there are homophobic slasher fans lmao.

I mean, literally 3 out of the Top 6 slashers are LGBTQ lmao. Chucky, Pinhead and Freddy are LGBTQ, and technically Jason/Michael at a stretch (this is if you seen them as asexual, which I mean they kinda are, you think Jason gives a shit about sexual attraction? Bro doesn’t give a shit about anything except his mother lol)

Anyways, as I was saying, Chucky is bisexual, as is Freddy and Pinhead is Pinhead. It seems most classic slashers were either (A): Silent, emotionless killing machines or (B) Comedic and evil psychos. Most of the silent slashers have little to no character outside of killing, and things like sexual attraction (or attraction in general) would just not apply to them, not really because they’re asexual, but rather because they don’t think about anything other than killing. The comedic characters have way more personality and usually they have actual lives and relationships outside of murder, so they actually do have bonds with people, romantic or otherwise. It really comes down to who had an outside life, since Michael spent his whole life in a hospital, and when he’s not incarcerated he’s killing people, bro has no friends, relationships, aspirations, hobbies he just kills. Freddy on the other hand, has a life, he has friends, a house, a wife and a job, he does stuff he isn’t just mindlessly killing people all day. The characters like him are more likely to actually have attractions because they don’t completely focus on murder and do think of other things. Pinhead isn’t a comedic jokester but he’s also not a silent killing machine, so him and some other exceptions are odd cases. Pinhead especially in regards to this topic because Pinhead’s whole motivation revolves around physical attraction, so unlike the other slashers who’s ideals are focused on murder and the other stuff is not the priority, Pinhead focuses on the attraction and puts the other stuff second. Of course in his case that “other stuff” is eternal (and internal) damnation and torture, but considering he sees this masochism and sadism as pleasure and is attracted to it, his killing stuff is basically the attraction stuff.

Moving away from that, back in the 30s, Dracula’s Daughter was released. It was a sequel to Dracula and focused on *gasp* his daughter as she tries to stop being a vampire. The entire film is her seducing women to eat, whilst mourning her loss of humanity. It’s pretty interesting actually, because she acts exactly like Dracula, with her victims being women who she assaults in rather seductive ways, however the difference is she feels guilty about her monstrous form, unlike Dracula. It’s been considered one of the oldest queer horror films ever, and it’s not hard to interpret the Countess’ “vampirism” as an allegory for lesbianism, especially since she tries and fails to cure herself of it and feels guilty the whole film for it, unlike Dracula who’s allowed to like women because of his gender. It was probably intended to be homophobic due to the times, however this actually raises an interesting topic I want to discuss.

Part of older horror, especially the homoerotic ones, is the characters who can be interpreted as part of the LGBTQ, typically being bad guys. Most of them are the blasphemous villain who the good guy defeats, with the message obviously being that gay people = bad, and people should be scared of them. The interesting part though, is the modern interpretations of these things. These were supposed to be homophobic, cautionary tales advising people that queer people were evil villains and they never get a happy ending in these films and yet, modern audiences have reclaimed these characters and almost “praise them.” Like a reclaimed slur that becomes a compliment to people in that community, characters who were canonically LGBTQ, but were only so, so that they could be the bad guy of the fable, were now being reanalysed and adopted by modern audiences as progressive and queer characters. Sure Dracula’s daughter is certainly and canonically a lesbian, but the movie makes it abundantly clear that this is a “bad thing” and that she is a bad person for this… yet modern audiences saw she was gay and reclaimed her. I probably should mention I think this is a good thing as it’s kind of petty and really funny to grab characters meant to hate on us, and then we admire them.

I see it sort of like this:

“I’ve created a story about a gay person, who is evil and the villain, and dies at the end and the message is that gay people are bad and straight people are good.”

“I love this gay villain! I love that they’re LGBTQ like me, and I love villains, they’re so cool!”

“No, wait, you’re supposed to be rooting for the heroes-“

“Fuck yeah, gay people are awesome.”

Of course nowadays representation isn’t as big an issue as back then. Back then the only gay characters you’d see would be evil or stereotypical, and now we do get diverse characters so it’s definitely not an issue as much anymore.

I probably should also mention a LOT of 80s-90s slashers had LGBTQ people working on it, like as directors, writers or actors, so that’s why there’s a suprising ammount of homoerotic themes in those (Looking at you A Nightmare on Elm Street 2)

[attroxx]

                                         GET  TO  KNOW  THE  MUN

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐮𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐬 ?

as far as canons go, they are my lil glorbo's. i have a thing for main characters, especially underrated main characters. naruto and atsushi are just my lil guys that i heavily relate to in one aspect or another. i'm writing an alt verse of atsushi but i love atsushi's character in general ( i've considered adding his canon self ) john has been a recent add to this blog and just...i really love FAITH, the game hits all the good religious trauma / horror notes for me. i love a priest who is dabbling with his faith and loyaltys. as for my oc's well, some of them i've had for years ( dom and mia ) but a lot of them are new since i made this blog and i love each of them differently but deeply.

𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 ?

i'm pretty down for most genres. there are some tropes / writing themes i'm not into like pregnancy threads ( i could make an exception for mia ) and obviously gross shit like incest / pro-ship stuff makes me sick. heavy no. otherwise i'm pretty open to things like horror, comedy, romance, dark themes, religious themes.

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 ?

i love writing romance and i'm tired of being made to feel sorry for it. of course i love writing angst, familial things as well but i really enjoy romance. i am a hopeless romantic in real life so, i just love shipping and the different dynamics that come with that. i love writing religious themes and general horror. i love writing characters who are total opposites it's just super fun.

𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐮𝐩 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐞𝐚��𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 ?

mostly at random. i'll see something in a movie or have a random thought and it leads to other thoughts and boom headcanons. my muses just give me vibes on things and it stems from that...idk i dont have a system LOL

𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐜 ?

music. i gotta have music. even a yt video in the background works but i gotta have noise. lmao.

𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 ?

mostly wing them. plotted things i have a little bit of an idea how things will go but i'd say 99% of shit i write is never plotted so, it's all me just winging it. i don't really enjoy super plotted threads tbh cause then it feels like i'm just coloring in the numbers ? i like things to be a little loose and free.

𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 ?

yes very much. but not just romantic. platonic and familial is good too. <3

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐬 / 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞 ?

salem ~

𝐚𝐠𝐞 ?

i am 28 *cries*

𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲 ?

october 1st, libra gang

𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫 ?

pink, blue, black

𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐬 ?

next. lmao how am i supposed to pick favorite songs of all time ? smh.

𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 ?

scream 6

𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 ?

i'm not sure ? probably one of the 4 anime i'm watching rn

𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 ?

moving out - kacey musgraves

𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐝 ?

potatoes, seafood, ramen, sushi, chicken ( mostly fried chicken or wings ), pasta, chocolate and a bunch of stuff i love food i love eating out at a good restaurant.

𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 ?

fall, it's the best season. i don't mind early summer either but august is too fucking hot. i hate winter . . . i got seasonal depression and i live in midwest hell so winters are terrible here.

𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐭𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 ?

would have to be @aeviare who is on hiatus rn but she's my babe. lmao. we met on tumblr rp in 2020 and i've flown to see her multiple times and talk every day so. but other than tiff i'm not sure ? sighs. i'm very shy and i do love getting to know my rp friends but sometimes conversations just die and i'm horrible at reaching out. i'm just . . . i'm a shy lil guy okay i'm trying to be better but. (: personally i consider all my mains good friends but idk if they would say the same so. shrugs.

tagged by: @blaecdog tagging: @mythcaels, @metrictita, @fangier, @mundanemiseries

[joanna-lannister]

i was tagged by @damadisangue thank you so much for the tag bestie ❤️✨

When did you start writing?

I started writing back when I was a child (original stories and in my journals), but my first fanfic was written when I was around 11-12? I'm not sure precisely, but I know I was around those ages and I had no idea fanfictions were a thing. I found out way later fanfictions existed and that some people had the same brainrot as me lmao.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

God, I love Thriller and Horror, but I don't think I'm capable of writing those kind of genres.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

Gillian Flynn! I just love her writing style, how sharp and incisive it is. Also, Anaïs Nin. I haven't read her works yet, but I have seen way too many quotes around here, and I love what she was trying convey with her writing. And of course, I love Jeffrey Eugenides' writing style too (tho I haven't read The Marriage Plot yet, so I could be disappointed).

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

My tiny kitchen 😂😭 I sit on my chair with my phone (I know this is terrible, but I can't write on my laptop) near the open window, and I just write what's going on in my mind. Also, cigarettes. I need my cigarettes with me to and to smoke to focus on what I'm writing. A bad habit, I know, but everyone has their own vices, I guess?

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

Honestly, anything. Can be a song, a movie or a TV show, a book or a picture.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Yes, childbirth and pregnancy are two of the main themes I love to explore because they touch me personally, so it comes as no surprise. Also, sibling incest between brother and sister obviously, and I love writing Jaime and Cersei being married which is kinda funny because I guess marriage is not for me? But yes, I love giving them that, what they couldn't have in canon.

What is your reason for writing?

Oooof, because I have too many ideas? And I like to explore the "What if?" that create endless possibilities. I also need to put my blorbos in situation lmao.

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

Oh, I never thought about that question before. I would say as someone welcoming? Maybe charming and warm, who tries her best to feed her fandom?

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

I think I have the ability to create a cozy and heart-warming atmosphere. At least, that's what people compliment me about.

How do you feel about your own writing?

Uh, I hate it most of the time 😔 Sometimes, I'm impressing myself, like "Wow, I really wrote that!", but most of the time I hate my writing style (tho I've gained confidence over the years, someone claps). I wish it could be more poetic and less dull.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

For myself first and foremost, because as I said, I have too many ideas, and I need to put Jaime and Cersei in situations, but each comment fills me with joy. To know someone enjoyed what I had in my mind, and took the time to read it and leave a comment? There's no better feeling, but I don't think I'm influenced by what people wants to read (or otherwise I would write for a more popular ship LOL).

tagging: @musical-chick-13 @bellamyblakru @nepobabyeurydice and anyone else who wants to do it.

[mercurialmalcontent]

I re-read the original Schism up until the point the story really unraveled, and my big takes are

Wow, this is bad

I was really cooking with the horror elements even as much as they clunk

... and really brazenly using the names of people I didn't like for villains and annoyances, past!me had NO chill lmao

I had some interesting concepts and names that I've tucked away for reuse, and I verified that this original draft did have something all the aborted re-writes failed at -- atmospheric stage setting.

It got me thinking about what works for good stage setting and what fails. I think good stage setting involves things that don't really matter if they have a 'good' explanation so long as too much attention isn't drawn to them. Having weird things just to have them adds a lot of flavor! You want to match the mood, but otherwise, go nuts!

However, anything you draw a lot of attention to had better have a good tie-in to the characters, narrative, and/or themes and some kind of an explanation, or it's going to suck and undermine the story you're trying to tell.

*pointed look at Life is Strange*

Anyway, that was an interesting and useful trip down memory lane. Now I'm tempted to read through my other ancient NaNo novels. I know I haven't looked at one of them since I finished it as a full draft and edited it into something resembling coherence, and that was 20 years ago. I'm kind of scared to look at it...

[sharpth1ng]

No joke bruv I really haven't read ff in a while but GODDAMN HAVE I DEVOURED THE ACTUAL FUCK OUT OF DEBASER IT IS THE MOST PSYCHOLOGICALLY COMPLEX AND YET PALATABLE PIECE OF FICTION I HAVE EVER READ ITS FACINATING. I'm a big whore for like circumstantial relationships and destiny and all that bollocks and you have actually completely ticked all my boxes well fucking done man five stars. jigsaw type dynamics yk (like metaphorically not the horror franchise)? and the fact that you made sadism so appealing despite the fact that I am 100% not into that shit? hats off to you sir. also if there are any other ships with the same type vibe/dynamic that you are aware of PLEASE LET ME KNOW cheers. like anything psychotic horror-y knifey would be mad appreciated. murderous boyfriends or really who the fuck ever idc ILY MWAH

also p.s. I don't mean to sound demanding or wtvr but you gotta write much fucking more like now ur way too good not to and plus ur the only one I've read that's captured stuilly properly. like not romanticising yk proper fucked shit u wizard fucker pls do it again

Hooo damn there are so many incredible compliments here thank for all of them 🫣 when y’all tell me I made sadism or idk some random kink appealing to you I feel so powerful lmao.

In terms of other ships like this I can offer GhostFrank, which is the Ghostface from dead by daylight with one of the other in game killers. Proceed with caution, there’s a lot of dark themes with them, and a lot of fics with them deal with some real fucked up stuff so read the tags carefully. But I’d recommend this fic “Two of a kind” if you want to check them out. I actually started writing them before I wrote debaser, I just never finished it or published it.

Hannibal/Will Graham would be another, although I haven’t read much fic with them, but the show is incredible and I know lots of people write for them.

Otherwise if you like wlw stuff too I would suggest Jennifer/Needy from Jennifer’s Body or Eve/Villanelle from Killing Eve.

And hey don’t worry I have lots of plans to keep writing these two, I’m not done with them. I’m actually really pumped for the Sequel I have planned, I’m already writing little bits of it and I haven’t even finished debaser 😅

[daakjenaar]

Manic creativity in the best cRPG

I’m not doing anything else with this Tumblr account, so I’ll post my inane ramblings instead.

There is a fine line to walk when trying to fit so many ideas into one video game. Walk too far on the side of serious, realistic content, and you’ve brewed a modern Larian Studios game where an insistence on being down-to-earth is utterly destroyed by a comic-relief encounter with some sort of whimsical chicken in between body horror and misery. Or to a lesser extent, have an otherwise mostly serious story get derailed by something lighthearted but altogether harmless, as is the experience with so much of Fallout 2. Walk too far to the side of cartoony, goofy subject matter, however, and watch as your writing becomes the wrong kind of laughable the moment you try to get mature. See the Borderlands series for a fine example.

I just made someone angry with each of those takes, so moving on.

There are ways to maintain a balance. The simplest way is to stick to one side and cut out everything that doesn’t fit, to curate a game to be a cohesive experience. As much as it’s a shame that so much of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 was forced to be cut, for all its faults, the game is a serious take on a classic, perhaps overdone franchise with a clear thesis. The balance between comedy and maturity can be achieved, of course, but that is easier said than done. As much as I hate to praise the works of Chris Avellone, I must cite a second project he worked on, every terminally online person’s most formative roleplaying game. Fallout: New Vegas is by no means a flawless game, I’m still amazed that the same quest can jump between the absurdity of helping a bunch of zombies piloting prop rockets to their holy land, and genuinely feeling conflicted about their treatment of their non-ghoul scientist ally. Of course the ghouls need these model rockets, that makes perfect sense, but did they need to gaslight this poor human into helping them? The quest I’m citing is the go-to for anyone singing the game’s praises, but any number of the game’s regions are host to the same kind of mix of the two tones. With high-enough quality in your writing, even the most disparate vibes can mesh.

But that’s a high bar. Saying to “just write good enough to make it work, lmao” is useless advice. Writing is exceedingly difficult, and good writing even moreso. So what if you try doing everything at once? Every idea, regardless of cohesiveness, coherency, sometimes even quality, all thrown into a bizarre soup of raw creativity.

If that sounds like a good time, then I urge you to get yourself a copy of Wasteland 3. All at once, it is one of the most engaging, fascinating, and baffling video games I have ever played. A point where it crosses the threshold from ‘a few weird ideas’ to a display of sheer, manic creativity. The kind of game where I encountered a weaponized statue of Ronald Reagan and the robot anarchist commune said statue is fighting. Where many quests center around a society of people named the ‘Monster Army’, who wear outfits taken from an off-brand Spirit Halloween and inhabit an old, buried mall. All the while, this Monster Army is under constant threat from a bunch of crazed clown-themed bandits who bring pain and destruction wherever they go. A partially-mechanized army of well-organized raiders seek to pillage and claim the post-apocalyptic snow-swept lands of Colorado, lands currently led by a man who wields a comically large warhammer wrapped with an American flag, sitting upon a throne of guns.

Wasteland 3 is a truly, genuinely bizarre title. At every turn, the game has some new idea to throw at you. The tone is so erratic that there really is no tone anymore. In its own way, it is such a strange and incoherent game that it comes full circle into making perfect sense. The most faithful attempt at recreating a classic psychedelic film in a game format. The game’s own drug imagery aside, every facet of its story seems to be focused on baffling and throwing off the player. The gameplay itself is quite good as far as cRPGs go, but the story is why the game has stuck with me so strongly for well over a year after playing it. Even when the game gets serious, there’s still an air of delirium. Sure, everything seems to be making sense now, but when is this important character going to do something fucking weird? I know it’ll happen, I’m just waiting. On paper, Wasteland 3 should be a mess, incoherent in all of the worst ways, and a cautionary tale. In contrast, though, it broke the idea of coherency so hard that it makes perfect sense. You just need to be in the right mindset to pick up on it, the kind of mindset you get in after clearing out a clown-bandit circus camp or watching a (good) Ralph Bakshi movie. 

There are absolutely points being made, satires to be found among the bizarre vignettes, and moments that justify the game’s strangeness. I’m sure that the murderous Reagan statue’s saying something witty about America, and I can’t help but look for some meaning in the Patriarch of Colorado and his throne of guns. A game written by a more self-serious writer might try to add a few more layers of abstraction, but Wasteland 3 dares to ask the most important question.

With a sufficiently large gun, can I kill Ronald Reagan? If you know anything about writing essays and wish to malign my sloppiness here, please direct unto me your rage in great detail. I am a failed arts student, and thus too lazy to properly structure arguments.

[six-improbable-things]

Been watching The Fall of the House of Usher, and I have uh... mixed feelings. I think it's because this is the first horror media I've ever actually watched. But um, they did manage to hit on basically all of my (not many) fears over the course of like, 2 episodes.

Spoilers for episodes 1-4 under the cut. TW for discussion of murder, animal death, and general horror themes?? Also, please no spoilers for episodes 5 and beyond!!

My pets dying

Getting mauled by a chimp (yes, I'm afraid of chimps. No, I'm not afraid of literally any other animal. It's been a thing for YEARS now.)

Not a Major Plot Thing, but also just... injections and needles.

On the other hand, I'm living for the Poe references. Like, Madeline using The Cask of Amontillado in her little "pep talk" to Roderick. The fact that there's an in-universe reason it's called Rue Morgue. (Plus the fact that the murderer was an ape remains unchanged...) The raven... I'm excited to see what becomes of Goldbug and (hopefully) The Tell-Tale Heart. (I know Goldbug is a thing, obviously, since that's mentioned from the first episode, but idk for sure about Tell-Tale Heart. I just assume that it must be because it's one of his most iconic stories.)

Also... Verna (if that's really her name) is killing me. I'm fascinated by her. It took me until the end of the 3rd episode to realize that she was also the Red Mask, and I wouldn't have figured it out if not for the fact that the characters starting piecing it together. (I'm awful with faces, I'm sorry. I think Juno(?) looks too similar to Verna's og appearance in the bar.) (As a side note, I'm also awful with names, and I usually have only just barely learned a character's name when they die, lmao.) At first I thought she had some kind of personal grudge against Roderick and Madeline, but then she told Camille that it was "nothing personal" which would be a lie, even if her beef was with Roderick. So idk. Maybe she's just some kind of "punisher of the wicked". (In which case it wouldn't be personal, it would just be paying a price / doing a job.) Since you know, she met Roderick and Madeline the night they clearly did something Not Great. (Potentially killed/framed Gris?) But also maybe Roderick and Madeline just stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time. When they first met her, Verna said the bar was a midnight place, if only for the night. And Roderick and Madeline remarked that the bar seemed oddly uncrowded. (Not to mention that it was nonexistent when Madeline went back in present times.) So maybe they just stumbled into a trap laid for anyone, or maybe it was a trap specifically laid for them. I guess I'll find out!

I don't really like horror media, and I don't see myself watching more after this. (The only reason I decided to watch this show was because I enjoyed reading Poe's works in school, and I was intrigued to see how it would all fit together into a show set in modern times.)

But I am very intrigued to see where this all ends up. And to see how Roderick got from passed out on the sidewalk with blood pouring out of his nose to in his ruined childhood home with Something down in the basement... (I don't think it's actually Madeline, at least not normal, not dead or otherwise fucked up Madeline...)

[patrocles]

Listen the fucking HBOwar discord was CRAZY. I dont remember the full names of everyone but the “leader” or whatever was this chick called Cass who was unhinged. I joined in the middle of this drama about this girl who wrote a p sketchy fic but they were both head cases and kept fighting with like mean anons and backstabbing and shit and even tho i had just joined both of them kept DMing me to see who i agreed with. She would also post full p*ssy pics in our #adult channel (aka where we were allowed to swear baso) unprompted and wrote terrible smut. Some other chick watched The Pacific and saw the horrors of war and decided joining the Marines would be a good idea. Her recruiter had discord and made a separate gc with a bunch of other girls (including me, non american) to try recruit us and ended up flying out an out of state woman from the gc to fuck her when he was married and like 30+. Otherwise it was just like 16-17 year olds who were just super… raised Online ig and didnt like mentions of war/gore/death/you know the themes of the fucking Shows we watched and just wanted to ship and spam whatever Internet meme of the day was popular (not my cup of tea) It wasnt all bad im still really good mates with one girl who is normal and we used to go drinking together (even tho i was 17 LMAO). I miss being able to watch films/shows together really. Maybe theres a normal HBOwar gc somewhere

anon i need u to understand this has absolutely SHAKEN me to my core at 7:15 in the morning

what do you MEAN posting coochie to the gc??

wha do you meeeeean joined the marines!!!

AND A RECRUITER GROOMING GIRLS????

[mrs-luigi-vargas]

(Sorry for hijacking your post with my own theories but also its cool to see others thinking about this!!!)

There's also a bit in the beginning of Origami King where you come across the edge of a cute little campground, with a cute little song playing out of a nearby speaker. If you hit the tree the speaker hangs in, the speaker falls to the ground and the music abruptly stops, leaving you to awkwardly walk away and pretend it wasn't you who did that. However! That cute little tune is actually the background music for the main part of the campground, as you find out when you walk towards it, and there are several speakers there, too! So that's a fun way to anchor that song into the world 🙂

And obviously there's the parades and celebratory dances and dance numbers and stuff in the Paper Mario/M&L games - that's kind of a low hanging fruit as far as diegetic music goes. (e.g. in Origami King, you can still hear the parade music in the distance as you leave the area and continue down the river, iirc)

But yeah this theory is fun and I think about it sometimes also, haha. I've personally always explained most of the level/town/character themes away with ambient magic resonating in a certain way that manifests as music. Because, like. Where is the music coming from otherwise, lmao. It would probably be something subtle, something you only really hear and latch onto if you really concentrate on it, because otherwise I dunno if people would want to make towns and settlements with the knowledge that they'd be stuck with some tune incessantly blaring in their ears for all the years they'd be living there XD

Maybe some of the music from SMB 1-1 stuck to Mario while he was there and that's his theme now! It's where his hero journey began, after all. And then he got famous enough that people started making songs based on it or something, lmao. And then it's a weird feedback loop where you hear it on the radio and stuff but also Mario brings the song with him wherever he goes by virtue of existing. And then it ends up as Wario's ringtone in Mario Power Tennis, somehow.

(I wonder if the magic can't figure out something for Luigi - which is why his theme music shifts as it does between games. He's too complex and multifaceted, heh)

(But meanwhile Peach and her castle are pretty consistent! And Bowser has a lot of different castles throughout the games so it makes sense for the music for those would vary.)

(Also sometimes Bowser and Junior's themes share a melody and that's fun. I just wanted to say that, hehe)

And then that's why everyone's musically on the same page in Luigi's Mansion. I'll bet E. Gadd is in tune with it too, which is why the Game Boy Horror ringtone is the Luigi's Mansion theme as well.

But then if the Mario music is diegetic, then in addition to the background music it would make sense for the timed powerups (e.g. Superstars, Mario Galaxy's Fire and Ice Flowers) and timed switches/challenges (e.g. P-switches, red coin challenges) to have noise playing out loud or in people's heads, too. As well as some minigame music too, like the Chuck Challenges from Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope (that song is the same length as the minigame itself). Or maybe you can figure out that you're trapped underground, for instance, because you listen and hear that pattern of notes echoing in the caverns. Or there's people who like to go diving just so they can hear the underwater music (and then get into debates about which region's body of water has the better version of the tune, haha). And when you're in a level - if you're a native, the song's probably baked into you because you live there, and if you're stuck patrolling the same area for a long time, what else is there to do but listen to the music and dance a little? You're probably bored, after all.

Anyway yeah diegetic music's a fun concept, hehe~

Thesis: in the Mario universe, the characters can hear the background music

I firmly believe that the background music in the Mario games is diegetic, meaning that the characters can hear it. Here are four examples that support this.

EXAMPLE THE FIRST: in Mario x Rabbids Kingdom Battle, when you’re on the overworld as opposed to the tactical encounters, there are various musical things scattered around the world that appear to be playing the music. If you interact with them, you can turn them off and make them stop playing the music… and this causes the music heard by the player to be quieter.

EXAMPLE THE SECOND: in the New Super Mario Bros series, the Koopa Troopas, Goombas, and similar enemies famously dance, jump, or otherwise react to the little “ba-baaah!” musical cues, strongly implying that they can hear it. (And since this affects how they move, a player who doesn’t take this into account will misjudge where the enemies will be at any given moment, possibly causing Mario to get hurt or killed, and that’s somehow hilarious to me.)

EXAMPLE THE THIRD: this one is my favorite. In Super Mario RPG, in the special suite at the Marrymore inn, Mario can go into the bathroom and take a shower. While he does this, he loudly whistles the ground theme from Super Mario Bros. Now I ask you, reader, where could he have heard that song before? Exactly. It’s diegetic, I tell you.

EXAMPLE THE FOURTH: much like the third example, in Luigi’s Mansion, Luigi nervously hums along with the main theme. Where’d he learn the song? Why is he so on-beat? The music being audible in-universe is the simplest explanation.

This simply makes me happy in a geeky way.

[theboarsbride]

Those Red Nights - WIP Intro.

Title: Those Red Nights

Genre: Crime thriller; neo-noir; mystery; urban fantasy; werewolf horror.

Status: Developing and plotting.

Themes: Hubris of over-confidence; having hope in an otherwise grim society; celestial motifs and imagery.

Warnings: This is a true crime- and werewolf horror-inspired story, so, of course, there will be murders, gore, etc. Also, some themes of misogyny and ableism.

Synopsis: Little Red Riding Hood meets The Silence of the Lambs meets Se7en... aka Jojo is bad at writing a good synopsis

Selene Radcliffe is a young, mute, freshly-graduated detective, having spent long hours and many sleepless nights researching, studying, and looking through cold case files in an effort to prove herself as skilled of a private investigator as her late father, the renowned and well-respected Det. Arthur Radcliffe. However, she is a woman in a predominately male profession, a woman without a voice--literally and figuratively--and she wants to make a name for herself without relying on whatever legacy her father left behind.

When the presence of a serial killer who the media has named “The Big Bad Wolf” on account of the strange, animalistic nature of his murders that occur on the nights of a full moon begin to plague the streets of Milwaukee, Selene sees this as her opportunity to prove herself and her skills to her peers, and she tasks herself and her partner Det. Apollo Esposito to hunt him down. 

But it swiftly becomes apparent that the man they are hunting is no man, and may instead be a dreaded creature of folklore--one that is now keen on hunting them down in a blood-red game of cat and mouse...🌕🐺

---

so uhhhh dipping my toes into a thriller horror (and werewolf) story, something I’ve always wanted to write because uhhh The Silence of the Lambs is one of my all-time favorite movies!!!! But this whole project was deadass inspired by me making a werewolf OC based on Saul Goodman Bob Odenkirk after a friend and I wanted to make ocs based off of actors we liked in Breaking Bad lmao...now it’s its own thing, and I’m excited to work on it!!!