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mykingdomforapen · 10 months ago

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chapter 10 of "courage of stars" will be coming next week and guys, I'm so nervous. I am so excited and I'm so nervous. This chapter is many things. It's where I got to do some things I've been really wanting to do. It's where I cross a point of no return in the story. I got to try a different style. It's where the line blurs between fanfic and a genre that I respect and fear.

It's also a huge factor in why this fic is rated M. Hoo boy.

So! In lieu of updating today, so that you won't have to face a three week wait afterwards, here's a fun little drabble/filler episode:

When Lu Guang was four years old, he lovingly killed three tadpoles. He had scooped them from the pond in a plastic cup and brought them home happily, convinced he would raise them into froghood. By Thursday, all three of them floated lifelessly in the surface of the bright blue tub in which he housed them. His mother poked them curiously with a chopstick while he sobbed into his grandmother's lap.

"Don't be so sad, Guangguang," Maamaa crooned as she patted Lu Guang's head. "You tried very, very hard. We all know that you did your best."

"I killed them!" Lu Guang wailed into her skirt. "I just want them to be frogs and now they died!"

"Oh, A Guang," his mother said as she furtively plucked the dead tadpoles into a bundled newspaper for a more discreet funeral. "This is a good learning experience, right? Now you know what not to do with a frog. See, it's good to learn with the wild tadpoles, before you spend money on a pet. You know better for next time not to use tap water."

Lu Guang sobbed louder ("I meant it to be comforting!") until Yeye came home. Maamaa intercepted Yeye before he walked through the door and sent him on a mission to bring home steamed bai tang gao as a consolation, and Yeye beelined to the nearest vendor to bring home a steaming, buoyant cake of tangy sweet rice. Lu Guang chewed on it sullenly on the living room sofa after bidding the dead tadpoles goodbye into the storm drain.

Yeye sighed as he sat next to Lu Guang, stroking his grandson's little head.

"You know," he said, "when I was little, my father raised bees."

Lu Guang blinked up at Yeye with teary eyes.

"Honeybees?" he asked.

Yeye nodded. "My father was a very adventurous man, you know. A scholar, but always enjoyed the outdoors. He got it in his head that he would like to try raising a colony of honeybees. I was so excited to help him. I thought we would have hives and hives of bees, but what do you know! Only a month or so of having the bees, one day they all flew away. The queen said, no more! I was so disappointed."

Lu Guang sniffled. Yeye scratched the back of Lu Guang's head.

"After that, we stuck with chickens," Yeye said lightly. "What do you think of chickens, A Guang?"

Lu Guang shook his head.

"I like frogs," he whispered.

"You want to try raising frogs again?"

Lu Guang nodded. Yeye smiled crookedly.

"Ah, well," he said. "Chickens are smelly, anyway."

For Lu Guang's seventh birthday, his parents took him to the pet store.

His mother had promised him a pet frog for when he turned seven, partly because she had assumed he would grow out of frogs in three years' time. She was a woman of her word, though, when she noticed him checking out library books about frog care and frog types when he hit age six. When asked if he wanted to invite friends over to play, he shook his head and asked to go to the pet shop.

So on Sunday when Ba and Ma were off work, they took Lu Guang to the best-rated pet shop in the city, four subway stops away from Peidi University. Lu Guang was shaking with anticipation as he counted down the stops, donning his frog bucket hat in celebration and looking away solemnly when teenage girls cooed at him. All he could think about was his dream coming true.

“Now, A Guang,” his mother said breezily as she took Lu Guang’s hand to wade through foot traffic. “When you pick a frog, you have to make sure it isn’t poisonous, okay? Mommy is afraid of poisonous animals.”

“I don’t want a poison dart frog,” said Lu Guang, albeit with reservation. “They won’t have them in a pet store.”

He did not know what sort of frogs were available in the pet store that Ma and Ba were taking him. Ba, in all his practicality, had assumed that they would go to one of the street markets and pick up a frog that was meant for the dinnerplate. He expressed mild surprise when they turned left to the subway station, so Lu Guang knew Ba wasn’t going to be any help in asking for clues.

“All right, Guangguang,” said Ma as she ushered Lu Guang into the pet store. It was a corner shop with clean glass windows, full of tanks and cages and colorful habitat accessories. Colorful parakeets squawked and glittering snakes coiled under sunlamps, and Lu Guang’s little heart began to race with anticipation. “Only one frog, do you understand?”

Lu Guang nodded, his eyes as wide as coins as he stared up at the tall towers of tanks. There were saltwater coral fish dancing among anemones, drowsy tarantulas (Ma squeaked at the sight of them), sunbathing turtles, bearded lizards, and–

Lu Guang felt his jaw drop.

An Amazon milk frog.

It was just at eye level with Lu Guang, so that when he pressed his nose to the glass he was eye to eye with the docile pale blue frog. It perched on a rock under the sunlamp, milky blue and content to stare back at Lu Guang. It was perfectly patterned, gummy blue webbed feet, and a lipless mouth that promised simplicity.

It was, in short, the most wonderful creature that Lu Guang had ever seen.

He stood up on his tiptoes to get a closer look at the frog. Its tiny breaths puffed in its throat in a fascinating rhythm. It was like seeing a real-life Doraemon in Lu Guang’s eyes, or Sun Wukong–a fairy-tale celebrity come to life, except instead of comic books it was Lu Guang’s frog encyclopedia. Lu Guang knew its habitat, its life cycle, its favorite foods, and now he could behold one with his own eyes.

Seven minutes passed, and his mother touched him on the head.

“A Guang, there are other frogs you should look at too,” she said.

Lu Guang shook his head. He pressed his hands against the glass.

“Aiyah, A Guang, not too close.”

Lu Guang moved his nose a millimeter away from the glass, leaving a smudge. His mother looked down at him with a crooked smile.

“Is this the one you want, then?” she said.

He looked up to his mother and nodded. Ma turned to Ba and tapped the price tag. Ba nodded solemnly and undertook the task of haggling (unsuccessfully) with the store owner.

“Let’s pick out a tank for him,” said Ma.

She took Lu Guang’s hand and tugged him towards the habitat shelves, but Lu Guang refused to budge. He glued himself to the spot, maintaining unbreakable eye contact with the milk frog.

“A Guang, come on, now,” she said. “We have to give him a home, don’t we?”

Lu Guang huddled closer to the tanks. He was convinced that if he were to let the frog out of his sight, some other seven-year-old boy would swoop down and claim the frog as his own.

“Ba is buying the frog right now, see?” Ma said, pointing to Ba who was conceding to the original price of the pet store while he pulled out his wallet. “There. Let’s choose a tank.”

After another minute of convincing, Lu Guang finally followed his mother to pick out a proper tank for his frog. He picked out the soil, cleaned rocks, plants, and water source that would all go into his terrarium, but it wasn’t until Ba handed to Lu Guang a plastic covered cup with his milk frog sitting politely inside did Lu Guang feel the surge of joie de vivre. He hugged the cup to his chest, whispered his thanks to his father, and then burst into tears, precisely in that order.

Thanks for indulging me with this little drabble, gang. Who knows, since I'm kind of keeping up this 2 week streak for the rest of the update schedule, you might see the return of Frog Guang's adventures again...after all, if you've been on my tumblr for some time, you may recall that I have a headcanon that Lu Guang has beef with one of his cousins.

Until next week!

#LC writes #link click #lu guang #stars commentary #shiguang dailiren #frog guang agenda

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jasper-unofficial · 3 months ago

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Hello, not to be rude or anything I was just curious about something and wanted to hear your opinion..I’m new to PPW’s fandom and ik you’re a big fan of pond..however what’s your opinion on their relationship..do you think they are very good friends or there might be more between them but they are just super private..I’ve seen all sorts on twitter and tiktok..mostly people criticizing phu..so wanted your opinion since it looks like you’ve been a fan for awhile..totally fine for you to not answer if it’s out of your comfort zone

generally speaking, i choose to believe what the boys themselves tell us, so - whether i hear people say they aren't friends at all or, on the other end of the spectrum, that they are dating - i think them saying they are close friends and very important to each other is exactly true to life. they don't really even joke about dating or keep it obscure, especially off-stage, which is something that's pretty common among other cps, so i think they are fairly clear on where they stand (although i suppose it does work in a sort of reverse psychology 'oh but them not bringing it up in the way everyone else does is suspicious too' way on some people). as for my personal (as well as obviously highly limited and subjective) opinion, while there are definitely cps who i occasionally look at and think 'hm 👀', although i choose not to speak about that much, as i understand why they might want to keep things private or why they might indeed be forced to keep things private (which is a whole other can of worms), ppw is not one of them.

as for the various opinions that people have on their relationship in general and specifically the things people say about phuwin, i think there is a certain... learning curve, for the lack of a better term, with seeing ppw interact. pond is a very heart-on-his-sleeve kind of person, while phuwin isn't very open and is in fact deliberately quite private, so initially i think everyone is a bit staggered by the outward contrast in the way they express themselves. it is very easy to look at some of the other cps or even just pond with any of his other close friends, who are more similar to him personality-wise, and see a more clear two-sided connection there.

but, as you observe phuwin more and allow him to express himself in the way he feels comfortable to, you will see that he is also very supportive and a great friend to pond. i think my opinion here is particularly objective or perhaps even slightly skewed in pond's favour, as i am indeed more his fan than anything else, so you can trust me on this one gkjfkgjfkljgf

in addition to that, i think in the recent... i wanna say year? they have been a little more closed off than previously, which did at first confuse me a bit, but they explained it themselves. they got really tired of people calling all their interactions "fanservice" and we are still kind of riding that wave (just recently, pond responded to someone tweeting about the pre-birthday dinner ppw had by saying it's not fanservice). and while i believe they will eventually get to a point where they won't care about those comments, i think it's understandable why essentially hearing people say "all these nice things you do for your friend and he does for you are fake, and you actually only do them for money" over and over would suck. but i see that the behaviour this whole situation resulted in is another thing that stumps some people who joined during or after the 'we are' era, so there is the explanation for that.

p.s. all the notification of this ask showed was 'hello, not to be rude or anything...' and i though it was a hate anon telling me to kms or something 😭 so yeah, thanks for not being... that

#archer responds #anon

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stemmmm · 1 year ago

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Stem's thoughts on Harvest Moon GBC2

AKA how I ruined a perfectly good game for myself

The first Harvest Moon on the GameBoy was a port of a pretty simple game onto an even simpler console. The limitations involved meant that only the most basic mechanics could reasonably be left in. The farming gameplay loop still existed, but without any superfluous aspects like wandering the forest for forage or speaking to any of the NPCs. The town still existed of course, as you needed to have a place where you could buy more things for your farm. The compromise they made was to turn the whole thing into a menu where you could choose a business and go inside to buy things, but nothing else, which is disappointing but understandable for such a simple game.

The first thing that Harvest Moon GBC 2 does is put you in a conversation with an NPC, and then makes you run around the town– a place that you can actually walk around in, with buildings and people outside –to talk to and meet everyone as you tell them that you’re going to take over the old farm.

To say this game was a relief to play is an understatement. I actually played this one immediately after GB1 because I decided to skip 64, so when I turned on the game and experienced its opening, I was still extremely raw from how awful GB1 felt. The first time I played it, I actually had to stop after day one, I didn’t even get to do any farming yet, because I was reeling so hard from how absurdly different this one was– and how COMPLETE! The excuses I made in my mind for GB1 were a complete and total sham!

The first thing that you see when starting a new file is something of a character creator. It’s a simple menu where you choose your name, your gender, pick a birthday out of any day in one of the four seasons (64 only let you choose a season), and then choose between a cat or dog for a pet. You aren’t told this in the selection, but a cat will bring home random seeds you can plant, and a dog will scare away wild animals, meaning that you can only leave your livestock outside overnight if you have a dog. I like free stuff though, so I chose the cat.

The next thing you’re exposed to is the town and what story there is, but I’ll get into that later. What I’ll instead explain next is your farm, which is a little weird compared to earlier games. In the first area, you have your house, a big open space, and then the usual barn, coop, silo, wood bin, with extra space on the left and bottom of the farm for a sheep pen and hothouse/greenhouse that you can buy in the future. You cannot grow crops in this area. Instead, there’s a different area to the south that hosts a huge, empty field where you’re expected to grow everything. This is also the only place where there’s an outdoor shipping bin, so you have to go all the way down there rather than just to the entrance of your farm if you have forage to ship. To the east of the farming area is a lake where you can catch fish, and a pond where you can save fish you’ve previously caught. The only thing to do with fish is sell them though, so the only reason I can really see for using the pond is if you caught something past 5PM, when anything put in storage will rot before it can be picked up. The lake is connected to a river that runs through the crop fields, and there’s actually a space to put a bridge so you can access the other half of the space for double the planting capacity.

You won’t use any of that space to plant grass though, as all of that is meant to go behind the animal houses. Each one has its own individual field behind it for planting grass, and the game won’t let you buy any animals to go in the corresponding buildings unless a certain amount of grass is growing in the field behind it. It’s pretty awkward to make sure the grass is actually cut, as a player who doesn’t go back there every day, but I see the logic behind it. They want to make people plant grass as an extra way to gatekeep animals beyond just money. It also works pretty tidily with the mechanics they have for putting animals in and out, which is that you get special tools for each of them that automatically sends them in or outside. I didn’t use these things because I didn’t have a dog, so putting my animals outside was equivalent to throwing them to the wolves… literally. And as you may have already theorized, individual items for three different types of animals turns into an inventory disaster because of the way tools work.

In your house is a tool chest that opens a menu when you interact with it. The chest holds up to 20 tools, each with a designated slot, and it has an additional page for all the different types of seeds you can buy. You’re able to carry four different tools or types of seeds on your person at any given time, with the ability to swap between which one is equipped quickly via the START button, or more precisely by opening up the inventory menu via the SELECT button, which is pretty nice in my opinion! It works quickly, and four tools is more than any other game has let you carry so far, but that only means so much when the game has such an excess of tools, while most others only have about six– not including seeds. Navigating the tool chest also becomes something of a pain because there are so many items, so it’s desirable to only keep the absolute necessities on your person.

Included in the excessive amount of tools is an exciting new item: the bug net. See, this game has reincorporated the forest as a foraging area, but it’s a little more than that. While it has the usual seasonal wild plants, a daily-replenishing supply of lumber, and a hot spring, it also has a myriad of insects that wander or fly around in short, predictable loops. It’s no Animal Crossing– the bugs always spawn in the same place and do the same thing for a whole season until the next one, where they’re replaced by a different kind of insect doing the same amount of nothing, but I think that’s appropriate for a game on such a short schedule. Bug catching is less about skill and more about remembering to bring your net with you on days and times that you haven’t gone bug-catching before. The fishing mechanic is similarly simple– it’s less about waiting and more about timing, as the rod will bob in the same pattern every time you cast it, you just have to catch it at the right time. As a result, if you get the timing down, you can always reel it in at the first bob and catch fish extremely quickly. This strategy ended up being my favorite during the time while I was getting started and didn’t have a lot of cash for seeds or animals yet.

But what do you do with these things you catch? You can sell fish but you can’t sell bugs. Instead, both are recorded in collections that you can access at the library in town! The function of the library is to let you access your collections of bugs and fish, view photos that you collected through experiencing events (kind of like what was in 64), and connect to the save files of your friends who have the game to share information and trade items. See, this game took a little inspiration from Pokemon in that while there aren’t separate versions, you only get access to certain things if you’re playing as either a boy or a girl. You get different crops, different bug and fish spawns, and there’s a certain quest that requires making a connection. It’s very cute! But inaccessible if you aren’t playing a physical copy of the game on original hardware, unfortunately.

Other than the library, the town has a carpenter, clinic, church, restaurant, ranch, tool shop, and flower shop. My making a big deal about how the town isn’t a menu this time feels a little disingenuous getting more into it, because while it is a space you can navigate and where people walk around, once you go in a building it’s almost exactly the same– no interior, just a portrait of the shop owner and their wares, but all of this is preceded by an option to talk to them this time around! Not that they have much to say, but it’s still a difference. You get another chance to talk to the shopkeepers and give them gifts (because you can carry items between rooms this time) on Sundays when all the shops are closed, which is another unique feature compared to GB1 where every day was exactly the same.

To the north of the town is a little square with a fountain and bulletin board where everyone who isn’t employed usually wanders about during the business week. At the start of the game, the bulletin board is loaded up with handy tutorials on how to play the game (yet another thing GB1 severely lacked). Later on, it fills up with dates for town festivals like the cherry blossom festival and horse races. The festivals usually aren’t much, shops don't even close for the majority of them, but they give the world a little more life and variety and the horse race gives you the ability to purchase a minigame from the tool shop that you can play anytime you want! There are several minigames which are all unlocked to replay by doing things like going to events or completing certain objectives.

The last new thing in this game is that if you press SELECT twice, instead of giving you the option to turn on Harvest Sprite helpers (no sprites to be found here), you get a more detailed menu with information about your animals, possessions, and then a long FAQ list with information like “weeds are back!” and explanations on how to get sheep or grow flowers inside the hothouse.

The Story

The premise of the story is that there’s an old farm in town that’s going to be replaced by an amusement park. It opens with your character trying to talk the mayor out of agreeing to any deals, saying that you’ll take over the farm to save it. He agrees to give you three years to do the best work you can and then you’re sent on your way. The first thing you have to do is announce the deal to everyone in town, who all happen to already know you… and apparently very well! The town doctor confirms that you grew up in this town, and everyone around is your childhood friend. I’ve never personally seen any farming sim take this angle, and I think it’s pretty fun! The game doesn’t do a ton with it, but it at least has a different vibe. It works well for a game where you do have relationships with these people, but they’re not in a ton of depth and they don’t go anywhere in the end because marriage doesn’t exist here.

This entry is also the first in the series that we see a wholly unique cast (almost). You could argue that 64 does it since technically the folks in town aren’t the same, but they’re awfully damn similar. Everyone here is a new character design unrelated to anyone we’ve seen before. Aside from Mary (librarian) and Ken (carpenter) anyways, who are both the same exact design as their counterparts in 64. While their personalities are similar, there’s nothing to indicate that these are the same characters in any way.

The stories to do with all of these characters mostly aren’t anything too special. There’s twin boys who run the tool shop and their narrative is tied to how you get tool upgrades. Whether you play as a boy or a girl, there are a couple events that indicate certain characters have a crush on your farmer. There’s also a marriage that happens once you make it into year three that puts a tiny change in the town where Rosie, who runs the restaurant is replaced by her sister. Some of these events have to do with little quests where just about all you have to do is go to a certain location when asked, others just occur. As I said before, the story’s all very simple, but it’s just fine like that.

For the most part, necessary events will trigger when the time is right, but other things only happen if you’ve made good friends with everyone by talking on a regular basis and occasionally giving gifts. You’ll know if you’re on the right track when peoples’ dialogue changes, which happens a few times as you become closer. There’s apparently all kinds of little events in the game, but I failed to see a good number of them.

As usual, the easiest way to get on everyone's good sides and progress the story further is by doing well on your farm and either giving people the appropriate harvests as gifts or just upgrading things further. Despite all the changes to your farm layout, the actual things you have to do to work the land and care for animals are the same as ever. It’s pretty simple and quick to get good farming work done, and a decent amount of options afforded to you in terms of how you want to focus your energy– be it crops, animals, fishing, forage, or friendship, so it’s up to you how you want to get to the finish line. While you’re not told the requirements very clearly, the game is pretty low-stakes and just wants you to take your time and enjoy the three whole years it expects you to play.

How I ruined the game for myself

So of course, without a clear goal given to me, I had to look up the endings as soon as possible. Which brings me to my problem with this game: the requirements it has for the best ending are completely absurd. Well, to be accurate, one of the requirements is completely absurd. The best ending in the game requires 70 or more Happiness Points, having 10,000 G or more, have at least 3 of each animal (cow, sheep, and chicken), find 10 Power Berries, and have the third home expansion built, which are all extremely reasonable to do. So reasonable in fact that I handily managed all of those things before the end of year two out of three. The final, problematic requirement is to ship 10,000 or more items. This is a ridiculous amount of items. This is a “fill your entire field to the brim and never let it run empty” amount of items. I knew this from the second I saw it, but… well, it’s three years of gameplay right? And you aren’t told this is what you need anywhere within the game that I saw, so surely the developers thought this would be a reasonable goal for people, right? I had to give it a try, right?

Saying this from the future where I succeeded, I wish I didn’t try at all. I spent the full three years of this game constantly on the grind, filling my fields as completely as I could, and panicking to rush everything to the shipping bin before 5PM hit so I would have more empty land to plant more crops that I would water in the dark of night before going to bed and doing it again. Fun fact, this game doesn’t make you reset until 6AM the next morning and without any real repercussions. I only found this out because I’d stay out all night weeding and watering. There was very little time left to talk to the people in town after that. I did manage to get them all up to their maximum friendships pretty early on, before I had the means to constantly be churning out veggies, so I had every opportunity to catch their events, I just missed them because every day, no matter the season, I was farming.

The funny thing is, I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy playing the games this way. That is still true, and I very well could have enjoyed my time much more if it weren’t for the damned horse and its awful AI. See, there may be four inventory slots for tools, but there are none for items. Every individual one has to be plucked and carried to the shipping bin, same as SNES, same as GB1. The saving grace in those two games, and technically this one as well, is that around winter-ish of your first year, a horse will appear on your farm, and when it grows up in a couple seasons, it either already has or you can buy for it a saddle bag which functions as a mobile shipping bin. All you have to do is ride your horse out to where you’re harvesting and while it wanders a bit, it stays put well enough for you to load it up with veggies as you run back and forth to harvest, which speeds up the process dramatically in the vast fields you have to work in these games.

This horse is not like those other horses. This horse will take off in a dead sprint with no warning in any direction it pleases. In my experience, this was usually in the worst possible direction that would put it the farthest away from me. And the timing of it was typically whenever I was about to throw something into the saddlebag. This aggravated the hell out of me not only because it was a huge waste of my limited time, not only because it wasted a ton of crops, but also because it was constant. Nothing I did, no positioning I tried was able to help keep the horse where I needed it, and this was how I was spending 80% of my time in this game, dealing with this horse. I could have been seeing fun events, I could have been peacefully farming at my own pace and leisure, even better this technique easily could have just worked out if the horse didn’t behave so erratically.

But I can’t judge the game on the merit of all the time I spent with the horse alone because that was my own choice to do. The best ending may require 10,000 shipped items, but all it takes to avoid the worst ending is to have more than 10 Happiness Points, more than 2,000G, more than four Power Berries, expand my house, and ship 100 items. With three entire years of game, the only way you fail to achieve that is by basically not playing the game. The vast space between the requirements for the best ending and the worst ending is to get a normal ending that accomplishes exactly the same thing as the best ending does, only the cutscene is different and you get a trophy for the best one. The cutscene barely stands out as anything special, which led to me having no idea what ending I got until I discovered the trophy was a thing I had to search for in my house. That’s it, you still get to keep playing the game either way, not that there’s terribly much else to do regardless of which ending you get, since there’s no special post-ending content.

I’ll still judge it a little bit though

While it makes sense to use your workable area to its fullest extent, having it be a requirement for the good ending to use all of it to the best of your ability for the whole extent of the game is excessive to me, especially since by year 3 it becomes completely unnecessary to try to earn money. I already had everything I was working for, and the requirement being to ship more things rather than better things meant there was no reason to get anything other than what was cheap and quick. No reason to make my animals like me so they’d produce better stuff, no reason to use the maker machines even though they weren’t obtainable until it got to the point where money had no meaning. I hardly bothered with the hothouses because they were both so confusing about what I could plant in each, and so tedious both to unlock and to harvest things since I needed a special tool that would take up a precious inventory space, lest I have to run back and forth between the tool chest. The hothouse might have been more useful if there weren’t winter crops, but there were.

What’s wild about my criticisms is that the game itself has something built in to mitigate everything that I struggled with. There is a tool called the miracle glove that automatically ships your crops the moment that they are harvested. But the only way to get it is via a link connection to a friend’s copy of the game– something near impossible in this day and age because you’d need to somehow find two working copies of this game with two functional GameBoys, and completely impossible if you’re using the magic of the 3DS eShop which doesn’t exist anymore and didn’t have functional multiplayer for most games anyways. That item alone would have solved the biggest problem I had in playing this game, and it was functionally DLC.

Closing thoughts

It took me a really long time to try and get to this review, and I’ve beaten two more games since, which has given me a new perspective. My original nugget for this one was going to focus on how much I hated the horse the whole way through and on how disappointed I was that the game was so hard for such little reward, but I’ve since realized that playing in a way that was no fun for me was my own choice. At any point I could have scaled things down and reprioritized to focus on the details of the game that are more fun like seeing events, but I just clung to that damn horse for 50 hours instead– which by the way, is longer than it’s taken me to beat any other game in this series so far that I’ve recorded my playtime for. The average sits around 25 hours.

If you don’t play like I did, it’s actually a really neat game!It’s not dissimilar to a scaled-down version of 64, with the way it focuses a little more on events and adds features to make the world feel just a touch more alive like the bug and fish collections. It’s not as deep or detailed as 64, but you still get to experience something of a sweet little story with a small set of characters in a game that feels very smooth and fun to play.On the bright side, even with the struggle I went through trying to get the perfect score, it was still a better game than GB1. It says a lot that I’ve found it more appropriate to compare it to 64, a fantastic game, rather than its actual predecessor.

#m.txt #hm posting #harvest moon #story of seasons #harvest moon gbc2 #hm gbc2 #game review #the worst part of these is always getting images together #i think you can see me getting lazier with each entry #by the time we reach the wii games these will be text only

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hannahssimblr · 1 year ago

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Chapter Fifteen (Part 2)

“I can’t stay long.” I remind him as we settle into a bench facing the pond where normally a hundred ducks and swans strut and swim about but today is frozen and still like glass. The frost on the bench instantly melts and soaks into the seat of my jeans, sending a shiver through me.

“I get it.” He says. “I just feel like I need to explain myself, like, what was going on with me on Saturday.”

“I’m all ears.”

“It’s complicated. Stuff is just a mess at the moment I…”

“Family stuff, like?”

“Yeah. It’s been a bit all over the place with my dad’s… estate, I suppose, if you can even call it that.” He takes a steadying breath. “It’s like, not even a huge deal it’s just, like…”

I feel a mini surge of sympathy for him, it really must be so difficult to lose a parent, even if he wasn’t close with his father, it must be a lot to have to handle. “What’s all over the place?” I ask him. “Money stuff?”

“Well like, he didn’t have any actual money. I think he had probably a hundred and ten euros in his account, so split three ways between his kids we’re getting a cool thirty seven euros off of him.”

“Oh.”

“Everyone is just going mental, fighting over his stuff, not that he had much of that either but his car is worth something, his TV, and like, the things that don’t matter to me but matter to my sister, like photos… ”

“You can’t have any photos?”

“No. He was living with our aunt when he died, and she’s completely nuts. She won’t let us have anything. She won’t even let us come into the house to look through his things, as if it’s worth shit to her. She called the guards on my brother Darren for going over to try and talk to her about it, says my dad would have wanted nothing to do with us, which I suppose is fair enough on Darren’s part, he’s been a bit unpredictable over the years, but my sister Millie was only two when he left us. She never did nothing to him, she just wants something of his to have.”

“It sounds really messy.”

He shoves his hand into the front of his hair and pulls it, revealing more of that dark brown regrowth at the roots. “So it’s just this, and my ma is crying down the phone to me all the time because when Darren gets into trouble she just loses the plot, and when she starts crying so does Millie, and I never have time to do anything ‘cause I just deal with them and work and go to college and then try and do all my assignments and it’s way too much.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, sensing that he’s about to spiral. “It’s alright.” I say. “You’re just doing what you can.”

“And the only way I can get through my shift is to do a bump of coke, otherwise I feel like I’d collapse” He barrels on. “And then I kind of lose control of that sometimes too, and on Saturday, like, me and one of the other lads got ketamine…”

“It’s alright.” I interject. I don’t really want to know the details of exactly what he did, preferring for that particular part of his life to remain a mystery to me.

“I shouldn’t have come to your birthday when I was like that, I’m ashamed of myself. I shouldn’t even be doing things like that to myself so that I can run away from my life.”

“It’s fine, Dean.”

“It’s not really fine. I can’t deal with the feeling like I’ve messed something up here.” He points to me and then himself. ‘Like you’re not gonna want to hang out with me anymore.”

I sigh. “It’s not… It’s not only you, Dean, and the way that you were, I think it’s all of it. I’ve been having realisations in this last week, like, that I feel unhappy about myself lately, and that I don’t like who I am when I hang around with Marnie and Fiona. It’s been so nice to be home with just Claire and remember what it’s like to have an actual friend who… enjoys having me around.”

“Marnie and Fiona are rotten, I don’t like hanging out with them either, they’re just posh girls who don’t get anything about what it’s like to have to work for things.”

“Yeah, well, maybe, but I’m tired of all of the bitching, of them talking behind each other’s backs all the time. I don’t want to be a person like that anymore, it makes me feel hollow.”

“Yeah but you aren’t like them. You’re different.”

“Lately I don’t feel like I am.”

“You’re a nice person, Evie, anyone can see that. You put up with a lot of bullshit. You can stop hanging out with them, in fact, I’d actually love it if you stopped, because that way I wouldn’t have to hang out with them either.”

I eye him distrustfully. “Why did you start coming out with us in the first place?”

The corner of his mouth twitches up. “To get to you, obviously.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah seriously.”

“You put up with people you didn’t like just to be around me?”

“Of course.”

I watch his face for any signs of dishonesty but if there are any I don’t spot them, and that’s when I feel my defences start to fall away. The tension in my spine softens and I lean back into the bench. “So you like me.”

“Yeah.”

“You still like me?”

“I do.”

I look at him, and he looks at me, and I begin to realise that I have no idea what to do. Never in my life have I experienced a situation where someone has openly admitted to liking me, to my face, and I haven’t wanted to run away and hide from them.

“So…” I venture. “Where do we go from here?”

He lifts his ankle to rest on his knee and gazes out over the frozen pond contemplatively. “We can just keep doing what we’re doing, I’m not really in the headspace to take on anybody else’s baggage right now. No offence.”

“Okay.” I say with hesitation, but he guides me through the murkiness with him, because I am flailing. “We can hang out, but like, I don’t think I want to be your boyfriend or anything like that, if that’s alright with you.”

“I get it.” I feel a slight thrill at the suggestion of being involved in something casual. I am never casual, I don’t simply go with the flow, everything always must be agonised over, but how exciting will this venture be for me? Evie Kilbride: in a casual relationship. “What does that mean though, exactly?” I find myself asking, because despite my best intentions I can’t quite let go.

“What do you mean? We’ll be casual.” He says it like it’s somehow obvious, and I shake my head. “Like, no, what are the terms?”

He laughs awkwardly, clearly not thrilled about having to explain something so rudimentary to me. “We can hang out and hook up, but I am not your boyfriend.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “What do you think it means?”

“Will you be seeing other people?”

“Do you think I’ll have the time to?”

I smile. “Okay so what now, should we shake on it?” I hope he’ll pick up on the humour in my tone, even though he never does seem to be able to tell when I’m trying to be funny.

“Why would we shake on it?”

“Never mind.”

We kiss instead.

An hour later when I arrive back at the apartment Claire and Shane are right where I left them, sprawled out on the couch watching a film. They look cosy together, curled up with their arms linked and her head resting on his shoulder. She looks around and smiles sleepily when I come in the door. “Hey babe, how was your walk?”

“Good! I did a long loop of the town, so now I’m pretty tired.” I quickly hide the Mulan book behind a backpack by the coat rack.

“Come watch this movie, we’re just starting it.”

“What is it?”

“Miss Congeniality.”

“Claire’s choice.” Shane hastens to explain as I come over to perch on the floor in front of them. Claire’s hand reaches down almost instinctively and starts massaging my scalp with her fingers. The gesture is so comforting and sends lovely shivers down through me and I instantly unwind and let all my muscles soften. I peel off my socks and hold my cold feet, hoping to bring some warmth back into them after being sunk into the snow for hours.

“You’ll never guess who came by earlier.” She tells me.

“Hm?”

“Dean.”

“Oh no, really?” I murmur. “What did you do?”

“We told him you weren’t home and then we got him to leave. I’m so glad you weren’t here.”

“Me too.”

“Hopefully he won’t show up here again, it was just so weird.”

“Mm” I say. “Well I’m glad you got rid of him.”

Prev // Next

#sims #sims 4 #ts4 #simlit #sims 4 story #sims story #writing #fiction #romance #sims4 storytelling #sims 4 storytelling #sims storytelling #lucky girl part 2

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andymakesgames · 4 months ago

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Andy's 2024 Year in Review

I tend to work on a lot of small projects with a smattering of larger ones mixed in. Often I end the year thinking I didn't do all that much, but then I start going through my posts and realize that I did more than I thought! Hard to believe that stuff I did last January was this year!

I've fallen out of the habit of doing these year-in-review posts, which is a shame, but I'm turning that around right now! Here's a quick look at all the things I made last year.

EMMA

Probably the biggest thing for me is another successful year of the coop I'm a part of, EMMA Technology Cooperative. After a somewhat tough 2023, we bounced back this year. Seeing us survive a lean time and watching the coffers refill in the past year really drove home the value of organizing around cooperation as opposed to infinite growth. And if you're reading this and in need of a creative technologist, please drop us a line!

Taper - January

A the start of this year I was on the editorial board of Taper, online literary journal for computational poetry. I only assisted with one issue (which I also contributed to!) but it was a very new experience for me and I'm happy I could be a part of it!

A few years ago I kind of stumbled into the occasional piece of digital poetry without ever realizing. I was doing a literal poetry reading when I realized that I write poems from time to time. It's very fun that my practice occasionally pulls me in unexpected directions.

MAGFest - January

Every year, we bring all of the games in the Arcade Commons collection to the Music and Games Festival just outside of Washington DC. It is our biggest show of the year by a mile and I love it every time. There is a DIY spirit to MAGFest that really sets it apart from any other con I've been to. We're well underway for 2025 as I write this. As I frequently do, I emceed a bunch of our tournaments.

The Algorithm - February

What a fun project this was! Alia ElKattan and Lujain Ibrahim contacted me about their Mozilla Foundation-funded project to explain how algorithmic feeds work. I created modular P5JS animations to serve as the "content" for their app.

They found me via the P5 tweetcarts I had been posting during the pandemic. I got to explore some of those same ideas without the super tight character restrictions.

Check it out here.

EMMA Skillshare - March

I did a small workshop on getting PICO-8 to communicate with Javascript. This was the basis for my project Pico Pond which I wrote about on the EMMA Blog.

This skillshare took those ideas and presented them in a livestream, which you can watch here.

Our Generation - May

I was contacted by Nick Montfort to submit a piece of computer generated poetry for a small-run book called Our Generation: Programs + Computer-Generated Texts. I channeled my inner Jenny Holzer for this and really enjoyed it. The full src appears at the top of the page and it was interesting to factor that in to make sure the output exactly filled the page. I keep thinking it would be fun to do a series using this size restriction but I haven't done it yet.

You can see my full page here.

Tastebud Tapdancer - May

You've been swallowed by a giant serpent but you're trying to make the best of it.

A little video game with a source code of just 500 characters! Made for TweetTweetJam 9 You can play it here.

The Indomitable Rocket Dog - June

Around this point in the year is where I started working on my current project, The Indomitable Rocket Dog. I'm enjoying this game so much. I haven't made a real twitchy arcade game since PARTICLE MACE, which just celebrated its 10th birthday. It is still very early but I feel really good about this one!

After MAGFest 2024 I was percolating on physics-y arcade games mostly because I am so deeply in love with Hoverburger by Nick Santaniello. Before I knew it my love of N++ was mixed in there as well.

I'm writing all of my own physics in C++ because I had a vague sense of how I want it to feel and it's a hobby project so I can do what I want.

I've been documenting my development on it in a mastodon thread.

Isabelle Poppy And Bling - August

OK, this one isn't new at all! This is a flash game I made in 2009 for musician Justin Braun. But this year I got it playable on the web again!

Like so many game developers my age, I got my start with Macromedia Flash. This game felt like the culmination of my style at the time, which was heavily influenced by Animutation. I was starting to be more deliberate with my collage style as opposed to aiming for totally random elements. I think I got paid $600 for it, which felt huge at the time.

1K Pac-Man - September

Another size coded game. This time it's as faithful a recreation of Pac-Man as I could muster in 1024 bytes of source code. All of the ghost logic is accurate to the original!

You can play it here. I'm very pleased with the mouth animation.

I made it for PICK-1K Jam 2024. I do wish I had read the page a little more carefully though. The jam required compressed source to be 1024 bytes and I did raw source. The game is only 723 compressed bytes so I had a lot of room to expand, but by the time I realized that I had painstakingly trimmed and optimized my code and I couldn't imagine untangling it. Oops.

Cloud Gobblers - November

Arcade Commons received a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council to create an arcade machine showing a collection of games that incorporate weather data into the gameplay. EMMA was commissioned to make one of the games. Cloud Gobblers is a snake-style game where the playfield is a video satellite field of global cloud coverage over a period of 48 hours.

This was the first time all of the members of EMMA worked together on one project!

Three Tapestries - October

I didn't make many pen plotter drawings this year, but I really liked this one. You can see the full thing here.

It's currently still available in my shop! Until somebody buys it it will be hanging on the wall in my office.

Lever Up Jam - December

Back in 2021, I worked with Matt Lepage on an alt-control game jam called Jam Jam Revolution. We prepped a parts list so all participants could build the same controller and make games for it. This year we decided to dust off that idea with the Lever Up Jam. This time there will be a full-sized cabinet at MAGFest that the games can be played on!

My favorite TweetCarts / Postcarts This Year

I no longer use Twitter, but I have been making the occasional tweetcart (a PICO-8 sketch with source code 280 bytes or less) and posting them on tumblr and mastodon. But there was an exciting development towards the end of the year! Lexaloffle, the creator of Pico-8 created a section on the BBS for 300 char or less "Postcarts", so we now have a centralized home for these little byte-sized demos.

Here are three of my favorite postcarts that I made this year:

Spinning Cube v3 - April

p=pset::_::cls()for i=0,99do u=0s=i/4+t()/5x=64+sin(s)*39a=64+sin(s+.25)*39y=39+cos(s)*9b=39+cos(s+.25)*9line(x,y,a,b,6)for k=0,99do if x>a and i<4and k<50then line(x,y+k,a,b+k,k>48and 7or 9+i)p(x,y+k,7)p(a,b+k)end v=pget(i,k)u+=v if(v>6)break if(u>0)p(i,k,8)end end flip()goto _

Big year for making things spin. You can check out my tumblr post to see all my attempts at perfecting this spinning cube. The outlines were the real cherry on top for me.

Balatro Spinning Card - May

a=abs::_::cls()e=t()for r=0,46do for p=0,1,.025do j=sin(e)*20k=cos(e)*5f=1-p h=a(17-p*34)v=a(23-r)c=1+min(23-v,17-h)%5/3\1*6u=(r-1)/80z=a(p-.2)if(e%1<.5)c=a(r-5)<5and z<u+.03and(r==5or z>u)and 8or 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2 g=r+39pset((64+j)*p+(64-j)*f,(g+k)*p+(g-k)*f,c)end end flip()goto _

This was so hard to make! I can't believe I did it. I wrote a giant writeup breaking down the 279 byte source code on the EMMA blog.

Fuji - October

pal({7,12,140,13,129,1,5,8,8,14,142,143,7},1)r=rnd::_::x=r(128)y=r(128)c=9+y/26-2+r(1.5) if(y<((x+40)/6)^1.6and y<((178-x)/6)^1.6and y<79+r(2))c=2.5-sgn(y-45-sin(x/21)*r(4))*1.5+r(2.5-sgn(x-69-r(8)-y/3+25)*.7) pset(x,128-y,c)a=r(1)d=r(25)pset(28+sin(a)*d,30+cos(a)*d,9)goto _

I made this during some downtime on a vacation to Japan. I was hoping to see Fuji the next day and the clouds wound up being kind to us, giving an amazing view.

I almost never make representational art and I was really happy with how this turned out.

That's it! I hope you all have a great 2025!

#tweetcart #pico8 #rocketdog #yearinreview #emma #plotter #gamedev #indiedev #generative art

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quillofspirit · 1 year ago

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Welcome to week 3!

We've had a big week, but we got to see so many beautiful things and I got to celebrate my 25th in a different country 🎉🎉 (more on that at the end!)

Here are some highlights

We walked through a lot of beautiful forests. Half the time, I expected to see a nymph lounging on a tree branch, and the other we were trying to find the birds amongst the trees. It was an incredible experience to walk through these, and we're heading to much (much) bigger trees!

Unfortunately, the bridge that brings you to the trout pools was closed, but honestly, for me the forest and river make the place.

The Hokitika gorge is as whimsy as foretold. It's such a impossible colour, accentuated by the white rocks hugging it and the lush green foliage surrounding it. It's an incredible sight, and so full of life I wanted to stay indefinetly.

Te Waikoropupu springs is another magical setting. There's no real way to accurately describe the feeling you get when you see water bubbling up from within what looks like a large pond. It's insane and there's too much science behind it for me to accurately describe just how insane it truly is.

The bubbles disturb the surface and create these swirls that travel in a line, and make it hard to see into the water. Even with that and the wind, the water is some of the clearest on earth. In some spots -not pictured here unfortunately because of the wind- you can distinctly see the turquoise bottom and the fish.

Ah-- Kaikoura. It was some of the most peaceful decor I would say, expect for the very loud gulls and gannets. However, there were also lots of fur seal lazing around, and pretty cows lounging in the sun. If you didn't know, I have a thing for cows - it was the first ever gift I asked my parents as a child and I maintain it each year.

I'm not much of a beach girl myself, but even I have to recognize that seeing the waves violently crash against rocks against the backdrop of mountain ranges is pretty cool.

Thanks for keeping up with me on this wild discovery of the world 💚

-----------------

The promised birthday stuff

I had no plans to ever celebrate my birthday outside of my country, and especially without family. They're the only ones, really, who manage to get me feeling celebrated.

Yet, I spent the evening drinking (very responsibly, we were home by 10.30 pm) which I never do, with a stranger, a friend of a friend, and said friend. And the weirdest part is I enjoyed it.

So, to this new and fresh year, may it continue as well as it's going 🥂

#new zealand #week 3 #photography

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iceeericeee · 1 year ago

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A Birthday? In This Economy?

This oneshot is for @matxhstixkers. Happy birthday bestie!!!

(Also, so sorry if this is ooc, I haven’t seen Good Omens in a hot sec lololol) (also, I made up a random last name cos I don’t know what urs actually is fjdjdjs)

It was quiet in the bookshop, until Aziraphale burst through the door and started frantically scanning his mini calendar he kept on his desk. Apparently, he hadn't noticed Crowley lounging on his armchair, and who was now lying on the floor because he had fallen out from Aziraphale’s loud entrance.

"Angel, what's going on? Does it have something to do with heaven?"

His eyes finally landing on a specific date, he replied to Crowley, "Oh no, nothing that terrible. It's just... it's someone's birthday today, someone special, and I had forgotten."

“Well, what do you propose we do about it, then?”

“Oh, I don’t know… I had been thinking maybe we could pop over, and wish him a happy birthday!”

“Right, yeah. We should just waltz on over, unannounced, to tell some random human that they’re getting older. Fantastic, Angel.”

“But it’s not just someone random, Crowley! His great-grandmother was a dear friend of mine, back when heaven had an assignment for me across the pond. The Smith family is very important to me.”

“Oh, well now, that’s different.”

“Don’t be so sarcastic, dear.”

He raised his hands in defense.

“Anyway, I need to get him a gift, something special. Something he’d really like.”

“How about we get him a book, eh? If you somehow know him, then there’s a pretty darn good chance he’s likes books.” Crowley suggested.

Aziraphale bristled a bit at the idea. “You aren’t suggesting giving him one of my books, are you?”

“No, Angel. I’m saying we get him a brand new book.”

He settled a bit at that. “Oh, well, that’s a good idea then. What do you think he’d like? Should we get him something nonfiction? Or maybe something more fantastical?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one who knows him, not me!”

They scratched the idea, and thought some more.

———

Aziraphale’s head popped up. “What if we got him a video game? All the kids nowadays love that sort of thing, don’t they?”

Crowley shrugged. “Yeah, sure. But what game would he want?”

He thought for a moment. “Oh! What about that newer one! ‘Fourteen days’, I think?”

“You mean ‘Fortnite’?”

Aziraphale nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s the one!”

“No. It’s… how do I say this. It’s not exactly, new, anymore.”

“What do you mean? It came out only 7 years ago.”

Crowey sighed. “Look, Angel. These humans move fast. Like, ridiculously fast. Seven years ago to them might as well be a hundred years ago.”

———

“Aziraphale, we’re not getting anywhere. Why don’t we compromise.”

He paused at that. “Well, alright. What did you have in mind?”

“How about, we send a card, yeah? A nice, simple, card. We’ll sign it, maybe put a bit of cash inside.”

He slowly nodded. “I guess.”

“Then we’ve come to an agreement.” With a small wave of his hand, a small, cheesy, happy birthday card and envelope appeared. With a flourish, Crowley wrote out a short happy birthday wish, and handed the card to Aziraphale. He, instead of something small, wrote out a long note, with more thoughtful undertones.

Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and there appeared a large sum of money — in pounds, of course.

“Nono, Angel. He’s American, remember?”

“Ohh yes. Thank you, dear boy.” And with another snap, it turned into American dollars.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s a sunny Tuesday morning when Charlie’s mother has a strange feeling, the need to check the mail, even though it wasn’t due to come until midday. And when she opened the mailbox, there, sitting neatly in the very middle, was a letter addressed to the birthday boy. But, strangely, it had no return address. There weren’t even any stamps.

You can imagine, then, the surprise on Charlie’s face when he not only saw it, but also the excitement when he opened the wonderful card. The card in which he promptly hung up on his wall, displayed for him to see every morning.

#eeeee I hope you like it!!#toast tries to write #birthday present

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pbandjesse · 4 days ago

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Today was a very full and long day. I am exhausted and a little emotionally fragile. Like I am not crying but I don't think it would take much to make me fall apart. I was just in the sun a lot. But it was not a bad day at all. It was just long.

I slept pretty well last night. It was really warm in here for a while and no one was comfortable. I sat with Sylvia in front of the fan for a bit and that calmed her down enough that she slept pretty well after that. It was just the first hour that was tough. And I felt bad because we were all in the bedroom because the other rooms were so warm. And I didn't want James to not get enough sleep. But once everyone was down it was fine.

I sat in my chair and read for a while. Got a couple chapters in. And would get Sylvia's midnight bottle out. And once she was fed I would go to sleep.

She did fuss around 2. But she would go back to sleep alright. And at 3 James would take over and leave me to sleep.

I woke up at 830. I got up and dressed. Was annoyed that I still have my period. I went down to say good morning to my husband and baby. Got a drink and a yogurt and headed to puhtok.

It was a nice drive. And I got to camp around 930. I parked at the lodge and changed my shoes in the car. I was looking forward to whatever this was going to be.

The brides (a lovely lesbian couple) were so nice and excited and thankful that I was willing to come do a guided hike. And I was happy to be there! Even if they didn't have many takers for the hike, it was fine with me.

I waited on the porch until 10 when we were slotted to walk. And the one bride was checking in with her guests about who might want to come. And in the end it was just the other bride's mom and two college friends. Works for me.

They were all really nice. And the walk was good. I would have made it longer and pointed out more things but the mother of the bride was power walking! That was okay. It was still fun.

We would even go check out the horses and got Sysco to come over for pets. And we got to see the new foal, Casper. We have the same birthday except he was born this year! Just a little baby.

I told them about natural dyes and camp and animals around camp. We also talked about mushrooms and foraging. It was really a good walk and I had fun.

I took them back to the lodge at the end. And then headed out. It has gotten really warm and I was sweaty and ready to not be wearing boots anymore.

I let James know my ETA was 1130. They told me they were almost at the harbor with baby and would meet me at the park. Which was perfect.

I got home and took a few minutes to reset. I cooked down and drank some water. And headed to the park.

I stopped to chat with our neighbor. Went back to the house to put shorts on under my dress. Which was good because it was way warmer then it has been and I was worried about my thighs chaffing. Ouch.

I got a little confused about how to get to the pavilion James told me to meet them at. I stopped to talk to a couple that was admiring a tree and told them about the champion trees. And finally just called James to confirm where they were.

They would meet me at the pond. I was only slightly off from the correct pavilion. Ah well.

We were there for the kinetic sculpture race. I wish we had brought chairs or a blanket but I didn't realize we would be sitting for so long. And the spot under the tree we chose had great shade cover but not nice grass. The second location we went to later on was better grass.

But I tried to deal and just enjoyed cuddling my baby and people watching. I was concerned about her being to hot. The shade helped a lot. I need to start bringing her floppy hat, even if it's to big. The last thing I want is for her to get sun burnt.

My anxiety was really bad again at times today. It comes and goes. I was enjoying playing with Sylvia and watching the world but I was just not feeling settled.

Once the racers started coming through I decided the crowd was to much and we moved to the better grassy area and I felt a lot better over there. We stayed long enough to see a handful of the racers and it was fun. I am really glad we were able to see some of it.

We had to get home to get ready for Gabe and Hannah's reception. It was very hot at this point. And a storm would be coming in so the humidity was also really bad.

When we got back home I struggled to do my hair because I was so hot and uncomfortable. I tried using a wet cloth to cool down and it only kind of helped. I would give up on my hair and just used a clip to put some of it back so it stopped bugging me.

I loved James's knit shirt. Thought they looked so handsome. And we were off.

Sylvia was the belle of the ball. Everyone wanted to hold her and tell her how perfect and pretty she was. She would be asleep for a lot of the party. But she was awake and sitting on my lap watching the world and seemed very happy and that made me happy.

I was struggling though. I loved Gabe and Hannah but I just wanted to go home. I didn't feel great. I was struggling to be social. I would go and sit with Hannah aunt who I like a lot and let her hold Sylvia and just chatted about being a mom and some of the jobs and activities I have a coming up.

The storm would roll in and there was a huge scary gust of wind. I protected Sylvia's head and got a big scare when a branch fell out of a tree and landed 12 feet away from us. Super scary but no one was hurt and the rain would last barely ten minutes.

And that short storm cooled everything down and the dinner much more pleasant. They are vegan so I could eat basically everything. The chili tofu was really good.

We would stay for cake. And it was so sweet watching them cut the cake together. And after a bunch of hugs (and people thanking us for sharing our baby with them), we headed out.

We stopped at the grocery store for formula but then they gave James the wrong one and they had to go back and it was a whole ordeal. But it was handled and we got home before the sky opened up again.

When we got home I went upstairs to take a shower. I washed my hair and now I am laying in bed.

There was just a wild thunder and lightening burst outside. Crazy loud. It's supposed to storm most of the night but I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the festivities we are going to at the museum in the morning. Callie is going to meet us there. It will be a good day.

I hope we can get good sleep tonight. It's much more comfortable in here so I have high hopes. Wish us luck. I love you all. Goodnight!

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curious-about-dramas · 23 days ago

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Leap Day - EP1+2

I was going to write that is the first Thai non-BL drama that I watched / am watching ... but technically, that was Peaceful Property (meh, between TayNew and ForceBook though, was it really non-BL? Who knows). Still, no CPs until now and the main leads are not CPs (again, you could argue that Dew and Gun will be tied up together in Burnout Syndrome, but they're not a CP).

TLDR: This series is really interesting and the actors are doing an incredible job. Also, it's not nearly as scary as one may think. As of EP2, highly recommended.

The reason I was initially drawn to it was because of the name - Leap Day. As a Maths enthusiast, I'm always interested in numbers, peculiarities about them, looking for patterns. February 29th does have twist to it, happening mostly once every 4 years, with the exception of 3 years every 400. Nerd alert: for those interested, leap day does not occur in those years that are multiple of 100 but not 400, even if they are multiple of 4. For example, the year 2000 was a leap year because it was also a multiple of 400, but 1900 was not a leap year. Nor will be the years 2100, 2200 and 2300. And upon seeing the pilot trailer, I got intrigued by the characters and the actors behind them. And now, having seen the first 2 episodes, where we got a proper introduction to all of the main leads, it actually got even more interesting.

Day played by Pond. Ngl, he was the one that I was most interested in. It took me a while to get into Pond as an actor, but now he really is among my favorites. I love seeing him with Phuwin, I love seeing him with Joong, Aou and Santa, I love seeing his friendship with JoongDunk ... yeah, I like him, as an actor/singer/dancer/idol(?). He is one of the 2 mains with this sort of curse on him - having people he loves most die on his actual birthday, February 29th. He lost his mother at birth (year 2000), then his father (2004), then his older sister (2008) and his aunt and uncle (year 2016). His 20th birthday is just around the corner and the only person near him is his older autistic cousin. Technically, his cousin became his legal guardian when Day was 16, but it was Day who had to be the adult between them. The thing that surprised me most of this character is his kindness - like, real genuine kindness, especially towards his cousin. And he's not making a big deal out of these acts of kindness, either. Even with Night, Dew's character, in the hospital after he hit Ozone, Gun's character, with his car, Day brings him coffee the next morning and tries to talk to him. I'm sure he has no idea why all this is happening to him and he's definitely trying to make the most of it, but I feel like he's definitely a glass half full kind of guy.

Ozone played by Gun. Tbh, I've seen just a few dramas with Gun in them - well, OffGun to be precise. Still, I know he's actually a very versatile actor. Him playing an autistic character feels very authentic, at least to me (definitely not an expert in autism nor in acting, so yeah, take it with a grain of salt I guess). I love that, as viewers, we've given the audio cues whenever he's having an episode, as to make us participants of his distress. We may not behave like him, but we're given the same stimuli, which in turn makes us connect better with him. I love his playfulness - when he's making a mess just because he wants to make a mess, when he kept cutting the light off while Day was trying to shower, when he gave Day a little sticker star because the younger had brought him 6 boxes of toys about planets and stars. I am also really intrigued by his self-awareness and the way he keeps talking about the stars and Day and Night.

Dream played by Pahn. I really loved this actress in My Love Mix-Up - one of the few Thai actresses I recognize. (I cannot wait to see her in Dare You to Death!) She's mostly just Night's current love interest, the person who's most likely to die this birthday, for him. Tbf, Night is trying to keep her at arm's length and not get too attached, but she's such a sunshine that he's really struggling to ignore her. Unfortunately, someone else also seems to have his eyes on her. And, man, Title sure is good at playing kinda-creepy characters.

Night played by Dew. This is the first time I'm seeing Dew. He seems interesting, even if the character he's playing is quite closed off and stoic - so not really readable nor relatable. On the other hand, I'm guessing having everyone you've ever loved dying on your birthday does that. So, we're not really shown all the people he's lost in as much detail as Day (at least not yet), but we viewers know he's lost both of his parents, an uncle that used to come visit and/or take care of him after his parents' death and his previous girlfriend (year 2016). Of course he hates and dreads his birthday, just like Day. Of course he does not want Dream near him, no matter how much he's intrigued by her. Of course he wants to become a doctor to have people "not die unnecessarily".

Another interesting character, that we've only seen a little bit in EP1, is that professor - I don't recall what he's called, but it's the one Title's character is subbing for. He's also born on February 29th and he went into hiding just a couple of days before his birthday.

Maybe it's not a curse like specific for Day and Night, maybe it's something that affects all people born on that day. But then why would Ozone be so sure that Day and Night must meet, that they have to stay together, now that they met? It's giving me the same vibes as the FL's grandma from Lovely Runner.

What I am pleasantly surprised by is that it is not that scary. It's like a Thai Final Destination, in 40 minutes episodes. They'll be skipping tomorrow's episode because of Songkran, so one more week to go ... cannot wait!

#no i will not be doing a text reaction like i did for thk #but i still want to write about dramas #so this will be it #leap day #leap day ep1 #leap day ep2 #my ramblings

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lynn-tged-posting · 3 months ago

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HEY GANG we actually have ANOTHER update on this!!! YAY!!! making it a reblog instead of an edit bc we got a bunch of various new canon info!!! i'm super happy!!!

(if you'd like to skip to the info regarding birthdays, that'll be at the end,,, sorry hehe i just wanted to cover everything!!! there's a tldr at the bottom for your convenience :3)

if you didn't already know, webtoon released a cardpack collection on their official shop in collaboration with Taeyang Shop, and there's a ton of really neat cards of artwork from the manhwa!!! among those, there's a handful of incredibly special ones. a couple caught my eye, including:

this 3 card combined spread!!! alillojavi is real. the trio ever. i love them . if you look at the edge of lloyd and javier's card too you'll see the wooden sword that got broken by og!lloyd HELPPP WAHAHA

and these character profile cards!!! these are actually what i wanted to focus on for this post so i'll be talking abt these from here on out. with just the sample i had actually just thought the lloyd, javier, and alicia cards were face cards, but no those are profile ones there's INFO ON THE BACK!!! i'll share those in a bit nod emoji

i've only found a couple accounts on twitter that show these cards in their entirety, which i will post and link below!!! please do check out the accounts of the OPs i link, they post a lot about tged!

card 126 is bangul's profile card! she's so cute~

a huge thank you to @silentnewtbark for helping with the translation,,, trying to do this myself would've been insane!!! we both relied on translation tools though, so all translations may be a little literal/a little off. if there's any corrections to be made please let us know nod emoji

in each section from top to bottom, left to right, her text reads:

Bangul -REPTILE- // subtitle is assumption based on hamang's card!

Weight: 190g (before transformation), 3.5t (after transformation)

Body Length: 10cm (before transformation), 5m (after transformation)

Blood Type: Rh type

Favorite Things: Lloyd, Javier, sunflower seed, Ppodong, Hamang, Ggoming, Bibeong, soil (especially soil with granite powdered on top), exclusive diaper (for volcanic ash collection)

Disliked Things: Soil with a lot of substances, cold, excessive labor (rebar production) ruining her butt // struggled with this one...!!!

end translation! she's so cute,,, its so sweet that her favorite things are her little family of summons and lloyd and javier,,,, SO CUTE,,,

we also see suho's brand logo from the flag in episode one in the background of the card!

next, card 127 is hamang!

in each section from top to bottom, then left to right, his text reads:

Hamang -MAMMAL-

Blood Type: A type

Weight: 230g (before water intake), 230g + water weight (after water intake)

Body Length: 11cm (before water intake), 50m (after water intake), 70m (after oneshot skill)

Disliked Things: polluted water, places without water, midwinter

Favorite Things: cool water, warm water, seawater, lake water, pond water, well water, clean water, rain water, ice water, Lloyd, Javier, Ppodong, Bangul, Ggoming, Bibeong, drinking water and rolling around while fully hydrated

end translation! so silly,,, again love that lloyd javier and the summons are all mentioned in here, so so cute! i imagine ppodong's card says the same thing! i'm not sure if there's a ggoming or bibeong card though, but i (and the rest of tgedtwt im sure) will be keeping an eye out lol

NOW FOR THE HUMAN CHARACTER CARDS!

we were able to see the front and back of alicia's and lloyd's character cards thanks to sion_wp on twitter! a huge thank you to them!!!

EDIT: fluff (@ milkbreadtoast) also did a translation of alicia and lloyd's cards, which is more accurate than mine, so i've updated them a bit! thank you fluff!!! they also had some really good insights about what the cards say about suho, alicia, and javier, which i will also add!

let's start with alicia's! line by line, from top to bottom, her text reads:

Alicia Termina Magentano

09.28 / B / 169cm / 56kg // birthday, blood type, height, and weight respectively!

Likes: Lloyd Frontera (his plump butt) (// LMFAO??), strengthening royal authority, fencing training, subjugating those of opposing political views, identifying and punishing corrupted officials, seeing lloyd's struggle/being flustered

Dislikes: Lloyd's (Kim Suho's) singing, the House of Peers/Parliament, banquets with politicians, National Audit Season, extremely sweet desserts, the sultan of the eastern sultanate (// Samarkand, sultan of Asfahan), conspiring of treason by corrupt officials

end translation! IM LOSING MY MIND AT THE VERY FIRST THING BEING LLOYD'S FAT ASS IM??? HELP??? PLEASE HAHAHAHA

additionally WE NOW HAVE A BIRTHDAY FOR HER!! YIPPEE!!! this wasn't something i expected at all!!! another one to the list hehe~ she's a libra, which makes her an air sign! (javier is also an air sign) (lloyd bagged not one but TWO AIR SIGNS THATS CRAZYYY)

i actually really like that she is a libra, it really fits well for her considering she is described as someone who is extremely just and fair when it comes to politics and civil decisions. the libra is represented by the scales, which is commonly associated with judgement and the law! it also has an association with Lady Themis, goddess of law and justice, which is very neat and so so fitting for alicia! i want to draw her as Lady Themis!

now, let's do lloyd's! line by line, from top to bottom, his text reads:

Lloyd Frontera

02.22 / B / 181cm / 71kg // birthday, blood type, height, and weight respectively!

Likes: money, beef, cheap and plentiful food, windows that allow lots of sunlight, free coupon, Jjimjilbang (// korean bathhouses/sauna), a person who buys food for him, bravo cone (// an icecream snack!), Autumn (puppy), jeonju-bibimbap-flavored triangle kimbap

Dislikes: cockroaches, yellow flooring, investment solicitation voice phishing (// financial fraud/scams), coin noraebang (// karaoke), items that are pretty and expensive but impractical, rainy days (delaying construction & limiting daily wages)

end translation! his likes and dislikes are so like, okay i dont know the better word for it but they feel simple,,, i hope u understand what i mean by that!! it's like... idk... he wants a simple life,,, relaxed and carefree and to only worry about the simple things,,,,,,,

EDIT: fluff realized that there's a lot that can be learned about how suho lived based on his likes and dislikes,,, he likes money and free cheap things, and dislikes scams,,, the foods he likes are ones that you'd probably find in a convenience store,,, it completely tracks with someone who's lived in poverty :')

this is doubly reinforced by him disliking yellow flooring; on twitter, nao (@ ayafumisera) pointed out that the oldest houses and apartments have yellow flooring, which in korea has given it an association with a poor/old/poverty environment.

it's crazy that these cards have told us SO much about these characters, suho especially, in such an indirect way... it's my favorite thing ever!! reading between the lines is always fun and i'm very happy that fluff and nao were also able to provide their insights, because i hadn't thought of it that way before!!! ohh suho,,, oh suho my heart hurts for u ily suho

also, fluff noted that while alicia has lloyd on her likes (as she knows him as lloyd) and while javier has suho on his likes (as he sees suho for who he is), suho doesn't have either of them. he doesn't explicitly mention a name, but he DOES make a reference to a person in his likes,,, a person who buys him food,,, and suho also likes beef and saunas,,, now who does that make you think of,,, THAT'S RIGHT IS GO GIYEONG!!! a fun nod at gogi yayy hehe (fluff: "so basically gogisuho was mutual ddmfnf #doomedyaoi")

OK END EDIT SECTION SORRY THAT GOT LONG LOL

(ALSO THE FACT THAT HE CANONICALLY DISLIKES COCKROACHES MAKES ME INSANE BC I LITERALLY WROTE A FIC ABT HIM FEARING ROACHES IM. THAT'S CRAZY THAT MADE ME INSANE. I WASN'T FAR OFF FROM CANON. APOLLO GIFT OF PROPHECY anyway fic plug here it is teehee)

WITH THIS WE CAN ALSO SAY THAT LLOYD DOES IN FACT HAVE THE SAME BIRTHDAY AS SUHO! YAYYY FEBRUARY 22ND

ok well to get picky, the likes and dislikes are all related to suho,,, so this could be suho!lloyd we're talking about. however, the stats appear to be for lloyd's body? so i think it's safe to say that lloyd's bday being the same as suho's is canon!!! unless the author says otherwise, but until then WOW THEY HAVE THE SAME BIRTHDAY THATS CRAZY!!! ITS CONFIRMED!!!!! THOSE OF YOU WHO COMMENTED ON MY LAST POST ABT THIS WERE RIGHT LMFAO

EDIT: ok now that i think about it, it's still kiiinda unclear whether or not that's like, OG!lloyd's birthday and not just suho listing his own birthday. like the stats are all for lloyd's body - we know this bc there's the 5cm difference stated between lloyd and javier, that difference would be smaller if it was suho's stats as suho has been shown in panels to be slightly taller than lloyd - but also it could just be that the birthday listed is what the Current Him considers as his birth date (like how javier's has his listed as the day he chose his birthday, 1.26, and not his definite birthday). this is supported by all the likes and dislikes being suho's too, and not OG!lloyds, so honestly,,, at this point, until we hear from the author, it's up to interpretation lmfao. i don't think it'd be incorrect to assume that they share a birthday, honestly at this point that's just as canon as them having different birthdays! again until bk moon says anything we don't know for sure lol

we also get to see lloyd's height, which also tells us javier's height since the novel mentions that javier is exactly five centimeters taller than lloyd! i haven't spotted anyone posting javier's profile card details yet, but hopefully once we find it it'll match up at 186cm!

for visual comparison, here's a sample diagram of their respective heights next to each other, created using heightcomparison:

WOW! quite tall!!! considering too that suho appears to be slightly taller than lloyd, suho could be a little over six feet tall, that's crazy!!!

on the profile cards, we also get to see seals for magentano and frontera estate:

so many little details in here!!! so sick!!! i'm in so much love this is so awesome I WANT THESE CARDS IN MY HANDS NOW!!!

as aforementioned, i have yet to see anyone post javier's profile card, so while we already know his birthday and height, we don't know his weight, blood type, likes and dislikes. hopefully someone pulls it and posts it soon! when they do, i'll update this post nod emoji

and that's all for now!!! a very long update, but so many goodies,,, the entire card series is full of so many fun cards - some of them are holo!!! - and oooh the things i'd do to have them in my hands,,, one day!!! ONE DAY!!! ILL HAVE IT!!!

i'm so happy about all this canon info we got too!!! so so happy! the archivist in me is dancing in so much joy!!!

if more posts about the cards come out ill be sure to report o7 but yes that's it!!! thanks for reading see y'all next time,,,!!!!

(tldr: WE GOT BIRTHDAY CONFIRMATIONS alicia is 9.28 and lloyd is 2.22! as well as heights, weights, blood types, likes and dislikes. also bangul and hamang profiles too!!)

WAIT SO IF JAVIER'S BDAY IS TODAY THEN WHEN IS LLOYD'S??

i don't think lloyd frontera's birthday has been officially confirmed yet, at least as far as i know! we actually got to find out javier's birthday because someone asked the author, and the author's response got posted, so hopefully someone can ask again about lloyd's!

the only two birthdays that are confirmed (to my knowledge) are suho's which is february 22nd, and javier's which is today, january 26th! though if i'm wrong please do correct me lol

edit: i've been informed that the unknown knight's tged collab lists his birthday as february 22nd, but whether or not this is canon is up to you, take that as you will! i personally will wait til the author / adaptation team clarifies nod emoji

#tged #the greatest estate developer #the greatest estate designer #lloyd frontera #alicia magentano #alicia termina magentano #tged lloyd #tged alicia #bangul #hamang #lynn misc #when i first saw the posts like. a half of a week ago i lost my mind #that night i was supposed to sleep early to wake up early but i did not. haha.#anyway i hope that over the summer i can make an archive website just for myself so i can store all these little treats and tged facts #like a squirrel preparing for winter...#“lynn why are you obsessing over literally just Tiny Facts” I LIKE IT OKAY I LIKE IT /lh #teeny little bits of info like birthdays and heights and things like that make me so happy . i dont know why #also translating / my attempts at verifying what it says took me so long so i hope they make sense #please appreciate my efforts... heart_hand emoji #i hope javier card reveal soon... i wanna see it... i need to know if lloyd is on the likes list. I NEED TO KNOW #ok that's all im gonna pass out now goodnight <- its not even close to night rn

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itskatepaddington · 2 years ago

Text

Analogue

I wrote a short film about this, which the world hasn’t seen as of 2023. But there’s only so much you can say in 10 minutes, so here I am, explaining myself again.

My godfather gifted me a point-and-shoot Kodak camera when I was a baby, or so I am told. It was with our family ever since. Developing film today is expensive; it would be cheaper back then, and yet it was pricey for someone on a lower income, with different financial priorities. And so taking these snaps limited us to only the events of importance.

When the roll reached 36 exposures, and they were passed onto the photo shop to be developed, you anticipated them nervously. Then, all of them were locked away behind the pages of the huge volume with a thick, red cover. I don’t think we’ve filled it all, to this very day.

If you flip a couple of pages through the album, you will quickly understand the meaning of what “an event of importance” was. It means weddings, christenings, big birthdays, Christmas sometimes, the end of the school year when yours truly got to show off her excellent grades (I won’t stop mentioning this, my Reader, for I have peaked at school), or the first communion for my sister and I, as we were both raised Catholic. We never went on holidays, but what I count as holiday snaps are the summer pictures: playing with our cats and dogs, burnt by the sunshine, with strands of hair highlighted by the summer rays, in clothes dirtied by mud and grass, hugging dolls or playing sports with our cousins or neighbours.

We turned the camera to these slivers of lives. Only the events of grander importance were captured, and I developed muscle memory - it’s that important event that I personally turn the camera to. While maintaining that rule helped us to remember those special occasions, a lot of everyday moments that burned into my memory would remain somehow unacknowledged, lacking any proof that they ever existed. I remembered them, and so did those that were there - even if they may have remembered them differently - but no physical evidence remained.

When my sister suggested we look through the album, I knew I would’ve remembered some of those photos. When I got my first PC, I was reading a lot of computer magazines (interested in a lot of things! Don’t ask!) One of them would give me the idea of digitising the old pictures. I scanned them all, or at least quite a few of them, so I remembered a lot of those. My sister and I laughed, we asked Mum to sit with us, and we reminisced. But there were a couple of them I haven’t seen before.

I really wanted to look for photos of Dad. He didn’t like being in the photos, but he complied when we asked, and I was still hoping I could possibly find some pictures he was in. There were going to be some from what I remembered, but when you lose someone, none of this is ever enough, and you're always hoping for a surprise. And even if you do remember some of the preserved moments, like these family Christmas snaps, you start to wonder how much of their feelings you truly understood at such a young age.

Eventually, we found some pictures, the stories of which I would never know. One of these was a black and white photo with people I assumed were Dad’s coworkers from his railway days. These were the times that I didn’t remember, but he would tell us about them, as opposed to that photo in which he was going through his bag, near a pond. A long-haired, young man, in his railway uniform, different from how I remembered him. I would never know the context of that photo.

In a moment like that, you realise how unknowable to one another you really were. There was a whole chunk of life your parent had before you came around. Now, it was on a page in front of you, a split second frozen in time, a memory that is not yours, for which you have absolutely zero context.

So many of the moments which shaped them were probably never captured. You know you would never see them. Some of them were; you may even have some context for those. I even jotted down some of his memories that he told me about since I was a graphomaniac for as long I could remember, and this time around it came in handy. They’re in a file on my hard drive, written quickly from memory, in a pained attempt not to lose those memories forever. My dad’s first car, for example, which he had when he was young and was very proud of, or what I remembered him saying about it. Or his shenanigans from the times he worked as a railway electrician.

Many of these captured moments will remain there for you without any explanation. Or you may try to find one. There’s the Internet, after all, with all the knowledge available to humanity - but then what if your parent never used it? You quickly counter that fact in your head. Others might have. They might have posted, and you can figure out the context, you think. You type a name into a search engine anyway. But you’re met only with some noise, followed by digital silence. No relevant search results, it says. Do you want to try something else?

You end up thinking that you took the ability to capture every day for granted. You take photos, and so many of them - then you post them online for the world to see. You share them with friends, you make it a brand or a meme, you name it. You wish you did that more often before.

I didn’t have a good digital camera before I left home. I had some snaps from rather bad phone cameras, but nothing much beyond that. Anyway, you end up wishing you had used the bad camera you owned.

But this learned habit stretches further, into the times when the technology was already at my fingertips. But the routine was an excuse. Even during the lockdowns of the curséd year of 2020, I discovered how much I appreciated returning to the moments I had previously kept for myself. But I did notice one thing: I still tend to turn the camera to the event of importance, whatever it may be. Yet, these pics of my family and friends around me let me escape out of the temporary confinement and into the life I used to live, brought to a halt by an unprecedented historical event. I promised myself to capture more of these moments back then.

Now that the world is open and I can do just that, I do take photos in multiples, yet many of them never see the light of day. I go crazy with the number of snaps I take, too. It’s so common that it probably lost some of its charm if not its value. This was when I first started considering that maybe I would like to have them in a physical form, too. And maybe I would want to think before I make the shutter click.

An article containing a lot of fascinating statistics about photos we take was recently making rounds on my timeline. An average citizen of the US takes 20 photos a day, it said. Even if professional photos represent a small percentage of those - what we take pictures of can be anything, from local posters and info we want to keep, to food to selfies and snaps at parties - and only about seven per cent of photos are taken with cameras, this is an incredibly big number when you think that a smaller film roll, commonly used about two or three decades ago, has the capacity for just 24 or 36 photos. More photos are taken every day than in the nineteenth century when the cameras were first invented, and we’ve surpassed the number of photos that were taken in the twentieth century already. It’s estimated that by 2030, 2.3 trillion photos will be taken every year.

It’s hard not to think about the environmental impact of something that we use so freely. A lot of these photos are stored in the cloud, and at some point, that will be a challenge. Every photo that we take is eventually turned into a little signature of the times that once were; a little acknowledgement that we existed. If climate change starts impacting technology in the end, what will happen? Will my family, in some distant future, know about any of these moments that I so painstakingly capture?

I have just received an email that one of my old service providers will remove the accounts that were inactive for more than two years - to save resources and all that. Maybe the huge chunk of it will be wiped out anyway, and unless I become Someone Important For History, someone will search for my name and find absolutely nothing one day. Maybe. Or maybe my brain is writing science fiction again.

My sister kept the habit of printing photos out, regardless of the digital copies she keeps. She selects some of the photos we take digitally and takes them to a print shop - as my kindest superfan, she even saved some of mine and put them in her album - but I store them all on hard drives only. And in the meantime, having taken up photography, I’ve developed a habit of taking multiple photos at a time.

There are obvious benefits to this. A lot of what I do now is in a professional capacity. When I do edit them, I have all the coverage I may potentially need. But it’s also chaotic. I end up with a lot of outtakes - some gems, some won’t see the light of day. And they take up a lot of storage. This is when I first started toying with the idea of returning to shooting film. I saw people taking film photographs, I thought it was cool for a while. I could potentially come back to it, too. And of course, there were film directors I loved, obsessing over the colour and the grain in a different context. The usual camera for everyday photos, special treatment - wouldn’t that be nice? I asked my sister to ship the Kodak camera to London, but she’s a busy gal, so it didn’t quite make it to me, yet.

Months later, I ran into a neighbour while taking photos at a local park. He saw my camera, asked about its make, and that’s how we started talking. We spoke about the photography business his son owns, his Sony camera, and the old film cameras he used to have back in Turkey when he was young.

“You kids, you’ve got it easy,” he said. “You take as many pictures as you want now, but back in the day, you needed to know your camera inside out to take good photos,” he said.

As we spoke about it more, his words started to make more sense. Getting a film camera could possibly get me into the habit of practising more thoughtful composition. Slowing down and giving it more thought could make my photography better, too. And both negatives and printed photos are tangible, and if kept well, boast rather good longevity - and that was just what I wanted.

So I went home, looked at some classic cameras, and found a physical vintage shop, but my expedition into the rabbit holes of internet reviews extended well into the night and it was unlikely a shop would be open at 2am. When I woke up the next morning, there were more pressing matters to attend to, but the whole film camera business came through my head and went a few times more.

A few months after, I ventured into the French sunshine for my first experience of a film festival abroad. Packing films into my schedule, I saw Aftersun. I will do the film a disservice if I try to summarise it; to start with, it’s a film about a depressed father and his daughter, now several years older, desperately searching for the meaning of his behaviour during a memorable holiday.

The protagonist was a child - she wouldn’t have understood everything back then - but she picked up on some of his behaviour, and now, an adult herself, she’s grasping for something that would help her understand his pain and dissatisfaction with life from the perspective of all that time. The final scene of it all leaves it open to discussion - was that her last holiday with her dad? Did he pass away? It’s all open to interpretation, and you can essentially project any story about nostalgia and memories onto the canvas of this confidently defined story that regardless leaves a lot of space for us all to empathise. It’s a phenomenal film - not just this slice of life story, but also the warmly coloured visuals of it all. They feel analogue.

As soon as I watched it, I walked into the Mediterranean breeze with tears in my eyes, a need to call my mum as soon as possible, and a want to get a camera that produces tangible memories. But that wouldn’t happen for a little longer.

When I did decide to pick up my first camera, it was totally an impulse purchase. I was heading for a Circa Waves gig at the Roundhouse, and I have just left work. The weekend has just started, and I had plenty of time until the support was on stage, so I went into the Camden Market. I passed by that camera shop with my friends once before, and I almost bought the camera then. I had talked myself out of it commiserating the state of my finances, but this time around, I was two beers in and about to have a good time… so of course I walked in again, asking the shop assistant about my different options.

The kind gentleman showed me a couple of cameras, explaining that point-and-shoot cameras are what most people go for, whereas the more expensive cameras are better for those who understand basic photography concepts.

I mentioned that I didn’t want to spend too much just yet - after all, my sister did have a camera waiting for me - so I picked a really old Halina camera from the 1950s. I eagerly jumped right into taking photos as soon as I walked into the Camden sunshine of the early summer.

A selection of photos I took with it was a light-leak-embroiled disaster, but it was fun. I found myself thinking more, and deciding to hold my horses and not press that button a lot of the time. After all, there were just 36 exposures on that film roll. Even if it was a test, you kind of want that test to go well. Shortly after, my second film camera from an online friend found its way to me, too, allowing me to take some more excellent photos.

Trying to get film for my new camera brought me to a realisation that film was becoming a huge trend - particularly amongst young people. Obviously, I saw some of my friends and plenty of strangers with film cameras. But I hadn’t realised how much of a demand there was until I found myself struggling to get a roll of Kodak Gold. I liked the warmth of it, so I was desperate to replicate it. I walked around the city pleading, I traversed the depths of Online, but both physical and online stores mentioned supply and demand issues, with others racking up the price by half.

And that’s definitely not the first time. Back in 2017, Kodak brought back their Ektachrome roll, which they phased out due to low demand just a few years before, and the company had to rapidly hire to keep up with the surprising growing demand. So much for that Kodak company that failed to keep up with innovation, eh? Take that, business people. There’s a market for everything, some say, and as the great ad man of scripted TV once said about a Kodak product, it’s all about nostalgia: “a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.”

Many have picked a camera as a hobby during the pandemic. Undoubtedly, with the aesthetic of the nineties and noughties returning with full force, many young people also did it for the nostalgic value. Like the annoying hipster I am, I’m a sucker for vinyl, too, and it’s hard not to see the similarity here. After all, at some point a few years ago, the demand was so big that more records were sold than CDs, and the demand for Adele’s latest album in that form actually caused a shortage at the presses for other artists releasing music around the same time. As much as we value our instant gratification, a huge part of us is yearning for an escape from it all. And we’re finding it in returning to familiarity with something that isn’t digital at all.

When the information that surrounds us daily is so unstructured, chaotic, tailored to us, and often agreeing with our bullshit, you can keep up without being tired or switching off your attention for only so long. Something that you can’t skip through, curated by a human, or simply bringing an experience that lets you breathe can release the tension your body and mind are unknowingly under all the time. It’s a bit therapeutic. It’s fun to do it blindly - you never really know how it’s going to turn out. It’s just a wonderful test of expanding your patience, likely severely impacted by the way we’re all filtering information now.

These negatives are something so tangible, along with the pictures you choose to keep for yourself. Taking these photos is a signature of our existence. We snap, we keep the moment, and we hope to preserve it with the evidence that can be held in our hands and hung up on the walls. You don’t have to filter multiple lines of bullshit at a time, you don’t have to switch off your attention to cope with the flood of irrelevant information. You focus and you stay in the moment for a little longer - you do it just before you decide to press the button. You hear the shutter click.

That signature of your existence will now remain with you for that much longer, signalling that once upon a time, you and perhaps people you cared about shared this moment, no matter how they want to remember it.

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youuuimeanmee · 2 years ago

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My ILY 219 Thoughts

When I first read this chapter on fastpass, my head was in mush the whole day, it feels like I've fallen in love. Even after today, 4 weeks later, I still can't put this chapter down. Everything was so intimate, it might be more intense than any romance media I've read so far. (I swear romance in slice-of-life genre is the best). With all that mush, there's also a silent dread in the back of my head, like, if tonight is the peak of Nolan's happiness since forever, what kind of pain and torture that awaits him in the future? Hhhahah let's stop thinking there.

1. I was pleasantly surprised when Nol was about to apologize to Shinae about the whole awkward-morphine-thing! I thought he's gonna use this opportunity to let her stay away from him, but nope. I forgot this is The Nolan Who-didn't-shy-away-from-Shinae-because-she's special Lochlainn. I should've known, despite the dread of loving (and losing) someone again, he also couldn't let her go easily.

2. The trio! YESS!! I was hoping they'd come! "How are you doing, stranger?" Damn right Shoushi, Nol hasn't introduce himself with his real name yet. "Oh shut up, let us have this!" Damn right Shinae. Just let them love you for God sake.

3. Awww that red blush! That crooked smile! It's the similar crooked smile Yeong-Gi had when Shinae gave him ointment for his scratch!

Nol really is touched by Shinae who doesn't give up on showing her care, despite him pushing her away many times 😭And Daww look at Lil Buddy on Nol's side ready to protect him!

4. Nol:

Also Shinae on ep 2, the first time she met Nol:

😏 Nice throwback Quim 😏

5. Soushi. "It's not like anyone's stealing my lunch money anymore." Is it because Soushi's high school is better than his junior high? Because he has friends who can kick ass now? Or because he kept receiving benefits for being Kousuke's spy? Kinda sus there. BUT! Since he finally realized just how severe Kousuke's relationship with Nol, I should trust him. Plus, Lil Buddy didn't attack him tonight! I trust Lil Buddy who trust Soushi.

6. DUCKIESS!!

If he wasn't impressed before because Dieter only described "Yeong-Gi," not "him," he definitely is now 😭 'Cause the boy who wondered where the duck is in the pond? Now that's Nolan. No wonder Nol is so touched 🥺

7. SoachRoach? Daww Soushi nooo :( I don't want you to consider yourself as a pest! Well, if being a pest means he won't leave Nol alone and continue to be his friend then I don't mind, but still-

8. The "I love you guys!" that Nol exclaimed at Dieter and Soushi, and the silent "I love you so much" that gaze straight into Shinae's eyes is *chef's kiss* 🤌🤌

9. "Shinae! Why are you standing so far away? You're a part of this group too!"

No Dieter, Shinae is a league on her own 😏

10. Haha, the "It's a Girl!" balloon that were changed into "It's a Gift!"? Nice save Shinae, real smooth. And oh, almost forgot. Fun fact, Quimchee said on her cc that if Nol were gonna have a child, he'd definitely want a daughter. Surprise surprise, the balloon Shinae brought on this ep is a gender reveal balloon, with "It's a Girl!" written on it. Quim, are you teasing us? Or is it a foreshadowing 🤣🤣

11. Ngl the panel where Nol is staring at his friends with red/pink sunrise and snowfall is soo pretty it's like shoujo manga. I'm soo sooftt 😭

12. Oh boy. That burger analogy he made is definitely dark. So his birthday is definitely:

1) getting stepped on by Hirahara; and

2) he found his birth/birthday leads to his mom's death/disappereance.

I really hope #2 is just some bs nonsense Yui has told him, but idk. Yui is the master of manipulation, some of what she said might contain some ugly truths, which, could be hard to counter :((

13. "Luck? Maybe bad luck..." Oi Nol, Shinae wouldn't know it was your birthday if it's not for the bible. You won't be able to celebrate your birthday in a good mood if it it's not for the bible. And you definitely wouldn't chase after Shinae in the first place if it's not for Nessa's letter in the bible. So it IS a good luck. How could you forget that?

14. Haha I knew she'd pick the orange! 🤣 But that doodle! I didn't expect her to do that but it's genius 🤣 And that message!

Not only it's a nod to Shinae's line when they first met (Humans suck), it's also the answer of his question earlier!

And it must mean so much to Nol cause, ugh, how do I explain it. For Nol who hate himself so much, hearing "you're a good person" might be a bit too much since it's hard to believe. But "you don't suck that much"? To me, at least, it's easier to take because it means Shinae acknowledged his downsides, but she accepts it anyway. Because she sees some good in him. Because he's special to her. For someone who were used to be told he's nothing? For someone who were told to disappear just a few hours ago by certain someone? That, UGHHH 😭😭

15. Oohh that tapping hand! I remember Nol said he knows how to do scales, so maybe he's playing imaginary piano in his head? Maybe he's reminiscing how his mom used to teach him christmas songs? Don't know if that's really the case but I thought it'll be a nice headcanon :) Shinae must've noticed how lost he is in his own world, so the way she brought him back using a finger dance, it's like she's saying "Don't go. Just look at me." 😭

16. The whole finger dance is so cute, but Nol's darken facee. It's like he's thinking, "Why do you think we can't dance? I don't care how much pain I'm in, I can dance with you. I want to." I swear, Nol's "take your shoes off" is much hotter than any "take off your clothes" from any ML in romance manga.

17. I see Yeong-Gi when I see one. With that smile, that happy remark, and that peek-a-boo? Definitely Yeong-Gi, alright. After he decided to live his life as Nolan, just this once, he wears his mask again to ease Shinae's worry, because he won't let her know alll the pain he felt (maybe I should write an analysis/theories about his motive in the future). He doesn't want to scare her, he wants to see her smile for as long as he could because By Gods he needs it. Their dance is like a sweet, silent goodbye, and they both know it.

18. Lastly, I wanna mention how good Quim is with gestures? Nol is holding only 2 fingers, like he still has a wall that says "I'm only asking you this as a friend. Not that I try to hit on you or anything." Almost like he's scared to invite her, afraid she might be scared of him.

But she's not. She accepted him with her full hand. Yet, he doesn't fully hold her hand because he's not ready to completely accept it, he's not ready to open up yet.

Despite all that, he holds what he can (Shinae's fingers) with all his might, because he's unable to let her go?

QUIMCHEEE 😭😭😭

I wanna write more but it's getting long and there's a pic limit, so I'll continue in another post! I'm gonna dump all my thoughts about what Nol might be thinking the moment he's alone with Shinae. Thank you for reading this far! 😆

#i love yoo #ily #webtoon #ily 219 #ily reaction #ily thoughts #nolan lochlainn #shin ae yoo #quimchee #ily meta #ily theory #i love yoo 219

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