#seriously though fuck jumping puzzles

[sleepymoonlady]

Roevember Day 14: Climb

Rose has one true foe in this world, above all else: jumping puzzles

Silly lil bonus:

[specialagentlokitty]

Jake Peralta x reader - mistakes we made

Hii!!! I’m just wondering if you can make a story about Jake Peralta x Yn. The reader gets into a argument with Jake about a case, Jake take sit too far and the reader gets really hurt and stops showing up to work. But eventually Jake apologies:))) - Anon💜

Sitting in the interrogation room, you looked at all the papers and photos that were scattered around you, occasionally moving one or two of them.

The door was opened at you looked up.

“Carefully I’ve got papers everywhere.”

Jake closed the door, stepping over and around all the papers.

“What you doing? Murder puzzle?” He asked.

He sat down next to, setting your cup down for you and set his own cup down.

“You put way too much much sugar in this didn’t you?”

“I may have lost count.” He grinned.

Laughing a little you picked up the cup anyways, taking a sip of the overly sweet coffee.

“Did you manage to find anything else?”

“Nope, I did find the is penny though.”

Jake dug through his pocket though and pulled out a penny and he showed it to you.

You took it from him, carefully examining it, and you got up, rummaging through the papers, pulling out a photo that was hidden under all the others.

“Jake check this out.”

You handed him the photo, then handed him the coin afterwards, letting him look at them both but you could tell that he wasn’t making the connection between the two things you had given him.

“Jake it’s the same one. From the coin collection? It was the one missing. You may have just found the thing that can help us catch our suspect.”

You jumped up, taking the penny from him and you made your way out of the room to go see if they could pull any prints of anything from it.

When you had taken it to where it needed to be you made your way back to the interrogation room, gathering everything up, taking it to your desk.

While you were working you noticed Jake was sat at Charles’ desk throwing things into the trash can across the room.

“Seriously Jake come on we’ve only got a small timeframe before this dude goes back underground for another couple of years.”

Jake looked over at you.

“Come on lighten up, you sat we have the missing piece to your murder puzzle.”

“Jake this is serious.” You snapped a little.

You got up, heading somewhere else to focus on your paperwork since at your desk wasnt going to work.

You didn’t return to your desk until you were finished with the papers, and you checked your emails to see if your results had come back yet.

And they had.

And the result made you absolutely furious.

Slamming your hands on the desk, you marched into the break room.

“Jake you fucked it up!”

He jumped a little, turning around from where he was snacking.

“What? What did I do?”

“You’re god damn sticky ass finger prints are all over our only clue, fucking chocolate? Seriously?!”

“How was I supposed to know?” He huffed.

You walked over, grabbing the bag of chips from his hand and slammed them down on the table.

“It was at the crime scene!”

“Come on (N/N) you know we’ll find something else we always do!”

“That was all we had!”

“That was all we had title of your-“ “don’t!”

Jake went quiet.

Your let out a deep sigh, running a hand over your head.

“I’ve been trying to catch this bastard for years, he takes just enough, then goes underground again until he wants more. He’s going to go underground again!”

“Why are you pinning this on me?!”

“Because you fucked with the only thing that could’ve had prints! Why weren’t you wearing gloves!?”

Jake threw his hands in the air.

“How was I supposed to know?! Maybe if you were better at looking you woulda found it first!”

“You should follow procedures!”

“This is why you’ll never amount to a Lieutenant you’ll always be a detective! Cause you can’t catch one criminal!”

“You’re off the case.” You sneered.

You stormed out of the break room, dropping the file on Amy’s desk.

“You’re my new secondary, get yourself caught up I need a new pair of eyes.”

“Hey what’s wrong?”

You ignored her and just left the precinct for your lunch, hoping some time away would calm you down a little bit.

It worked for the most part, you let Amy run point on your case for the rest of the day since she might be able to see what you couldn’t.

You never went straight home, you decided to go out for a drink or two before heading home late that night.

When you walked up to your door you found Jake sleeping leant up against your door and you sighed.

Unlocking it you pushed it so he fell to the ground and he immediately woke up again.

“I thought you were just ignoring me.” He pouted.

“I was out.”

You stepped inside, and Jake just rolled through the door, letting you close it behind him.

“What do you want?”

Jake sighed, sitting up and he rested his arms on his knees.

“To say sorry for what I said… and did…”

You walked away into the kitchen and he followed after you.

“Come on (N/N) I mean it, I really am sorry. Okay? I’m sorry I messed up your case I know how important it is to you, and I’m sorry for what I said, I know you’re worried about the exam. I even got you your favourite candy look!”

Jake rummaged through his pockets, pulling out a bag of candy that was open.

“I may have eaten some I got hungry.”

“Could’ve gone to get something else.”

“Nah, I would have just sat there all night if I had to.”

Jake set the candy down on the counter.

“You’re going to ace the lieutenants exam (Y/N), I know you are. And I went back to the crime scene, I found a new lead and currently have everything being checked over by uniforms so I don’t mess up your case again, and they’re going to pass everything on the Amy first thing in the morning.”

You furrowed your brows a little bit and turned around to look at him.

“What?”

Jake shrugged a little bit, giving you a small grin.

“I’m sorry.”

You sighed.

“I’m sorry too, I shouldn’t have gotten so pissed off at you. There wasn’t a good chance we would get any prints or anything, I guess I was just stressed about all of this.”

“I get it, I do. Which is why, I also brought a copy of die hard because it’s the best film and I can’t believe you haven’t watched it, and we’re going to order so much takeout we can’t move in the morning.”

“You mean I’m going to order takeout?”

He grinned.

“You know I’m always broke.”

Laughing a little, you followed him to the living room so he could put the dvd in.

You kicked your feet up in his lap, and he laid down so he was laid on your legs, messing with the laces on your shoes, tying them together.

While he was doing that you were shoving random bits of paper in his hood for when he went to put it up later.

Jake wasn’t one to hold a hard day over anybody, and he knew he had made a mistake when he called out your biggest fear like that, which is why he was planning on doing whatever he could over the next few days to make everything easier on you before going back to his usual ways of annoying you

[sandersontheside]

Happy October 1st! Have some fun Halloween themed HCs!

Haunted House/Maze:

Virgil loves haunted houses because it's scary in a controlled way and he ultimately knows he's safe. But he won't go alone. So, he drags Roman with him. Roman talks a big game about protecting Virgil, but ends up mostly clinging to Virgil the whole time and scraming his high pitched girl scream.

Janus, Remus, and Logan also appreciate a haunted house. Janus likes to roleplay with the actors. Remus has been kicked out at least once before for accidentally punching an actor on reflex.

Patton does NOT like haunted houses and will wait in line at the snack shack to buy everyone hot cider and donuts to enjoy when they're done.

Roman is a big fan of "getting lost" in the maze to make out (Virgil is also partial to this, though he definitely prefers the haunted house).

Logan appreciate the puzzle, which is good because Patton has no sense of direction and would be utterly lost without Logan.

Remus cuts right through the corn and jumps out at people. Janus is the only one he is never able to scare, no matter how hard he tries.

Pumpkin Patch/Pumpkin Carving:

Roman and Remus get really into pumpkin carving every year, the more intricate and over the top, the better. It's also sort of a competition with them. Virgil also gets into this, but he's less intense about it.

Patton collects the pumpkin seeds from aforementioned carving and roasts them! He's also the one who suggests sprinkling cinnamon in the carved pumpkins, so they smell like pumpkin pie when you light a candle in them.

Logan likes to design pumpkins, but hates the actual carving (the pumpkin guts are too gooey and it's a sensory nightmare) so he makes a template and then has Patton do it for him.

Janus doesn't carve a pumpkin (he doesn't want to take his gloves off), so he becomes the impartial judge of the impromptu pumpkin competition. Roman insists this is unfair, because he's "biased towards Remus" but he's vetoed.

Remus selects the ugliest, knobbiest, weirdest looking pumpkins to carve because "they'll be scarier that way" and "they have more character" while Roman selects the smoothest, most perfectly shaped pumpkins to carve because he likes a nice, clean canvas, and "it's just so SHAPED" and pleasing to the eye.

In addition to carving pumpkins, sometimes Patton will select a small, sweet pumpkin to roast and puree to make pumpkin pie. He insists that roasting the pumpkin yourself is vastly superior to the canned stuff (he's right).

Costumes:

Logan is big on obscure nerd costumes that no one else understands until he explains it. He's out here dressing up like famous scientists and stuff like that. Sometimes he lets Patton talk him into something more recognizable though.

Virgil always always makes his costumes himself. We're talking sewing, hot glue, making props, etc. He starts planning in the summer to make sure he has enough time. And he always goes for something scary.

Janus also plans early, but he's not afraid to buy things. Usually his costumes come from scouring thrift stores. No one can spot a treasure at the Goodwill like Janus.

Roman and Remus will pick costumes that either go together or completely clash, and there's no in between. One year, they'll be Peter Pan (Remus) and Captain Hook (Roman), the next year Roman is Superman/Clark Kent and Remus is in one of those inflatable dinosaur costumes.

Patton always has grandiose ideas for costumes, and then waits to the last minute and throws something together. Usually he goes for cute rather than scary.

Various Other Stuff:

Virgil will die before he admits this, but he fucking LOVES pumpkin spice. He claims he likes his coffee "black like my soul" but in secret he might love a PSL even more than Patton.

Roman and Remus take candy trades very, very seriously as kids. If either of them ends up with more of one thing it will result in all out war between them.

Patton and Virgil go absolutely balls-to-the-wall when it comes to decorations. Spirit Halloween exploded all over everything. Logan wisely doesn't ask how much it cost.

Janus answers "trick-or-treat" with "trick" every time and sets up friendly spooky Halloween pranks for his friends. Nothing too bad, and he usually has a treat for them afterwards, too.

Roman hosts Halloween movie marathons. The campier the better. Your Halloweentowns and your Hocus Pocuses and your Beetlejuices and your Scooby-Doos. Of course, Remus and Virgil slip some actually scary stuff in there, too. (Roman isn't too upset about it, as long as he can jump into Virgil's lap when he's scared)

[nokillbananashelter]

A HUGE portion of the criticisms for BOTW and TOTK boil down to “there isnt (xyz) in this game like other games!” And the answer to it is almost always “yes there is, you are just ignoring it or actively avoiding it or willfully engaging in it in a way that is breaking it and then getting mad that it broke”

Like, if you want a tight 50 hour 3d zelda with a full ACTIVE PRESENT story and linear story/mechanical progression & big dungeons….just listen to what the game is telling you to do and inviting you to see when you see it and you will literally get a classic linear 3d zelda experience complete with “yes, we did infact have ONE PARTICULAR solution in mind for this puzzle!”, deep lore implications, extremely melodic and complex orchestral music, progression, & a zany cast of characters.

Both of these games are so much more than that though, and contains so much more content that people don’t see that meat and potatoes run because of their own choices and desire to break the game wins out over wanting to meet the game where its at. And to be fair, that is a major component to what these games are daring you to do. And you should engage with those, but if you really did want the classic experience, it should be obvious you should treat it like the OOT era games and it will LITERALLY provide that for you in neon blinking lights and guardrails.

I really do feel like these two games are sort of an exercise in discipline /listening /spotting subtly /recognizing things in their new shape as much as they are an invitation to explore experiment and fuck off, and people are mad that the option to break from the path exists at all because they dont have the control or desire or sight to focus in on whats being asked of them and they don’t want to accept the shape of what the game is working with.

I’m not saying these people are playing the game wrong, but the attitude and closed mindedness is the problem. it’s almost always the source of these kinds criticisms that want to present these games as empty repetitive experiences, when these two games give the entire franchise a run for its money on uniqueness and novelty and story depth and profoundness.

You went in for a bad time, didnt want to play, and got exactly what you worked for- a lame, monotonous level skip that jumps ahead of itself, disrespects the intention of the developers, and misses the point of very obviously and enticingly marked gametunnels they made for you.

Like, seriously here, both but totk especially is quite literally an on-rails CINEMATIC GAMEPLAY experience if you want it to be, it literally has a path that is like 99% laid out in such a way that you are directly on mine cart rails and jumping up and down on direct vertical pathways. The regions-to-temple pathways are about as much of a bee-line as you can get. The skylands & cave systems are effectively old oot era compartmentalized zones. Same with shrines. There are so many ways they have created pathways and say “GO THIS WAY” that if you ignore those and get lost its kinda on you for not being observant….. which has always been one of the top asks of the player required to beat a Zelda game.

The biggest difference between these two games and other 3-D Zelda’s is that it just has taken the roof and some walls off the design. It Lets you experience more in context to your journey at any given time and that gives you a lot of freedom and agency to break from the path or stay on your goals, and both enrich your experience and inform what links journey is going to be and how narratively/mechanically/progression cohesive it will be.

[sweetnsour1]

3:23

Fluff, Bakugou x g/n reader

“That’s IMPOSSIBLE!”

You jumped, but broke out into laughter as another growl left his snarling lips. His eyes were still fixed on the back of the takeout menu in front of you.

“So you want to do…o?”

“Yea, sure.” He folded his arms against the black and orange of his costume, and glared as you filled in the blanks. You let your gaze drift down to the word bank of letters remaining beneath the nearly finished hangman.

Y O U / A R _ / A / P R O / _ _ _ _ / A _ _.

“How is it NOT hero??? It would fit!”

“That doesn’t make it right, dummy.”

He leaned forward across the center console of the car. His breath brushing against your neck. He still smelled like the cinnamon gum you’d made him spit out when he wouldn’t stop popping fucking bubbles. It’s not like he was the only one annoyed that Kiri was taking a while to join you. You were already gonna be late to Deku’s office anyway.

“E.” He huffed when you only filled in one blank. “H.” You laughed and added a leg to the poor body taking his punishment.

“Always so stubborn. How could it be hero with no e, r, or o.?”

“Shut up. It should be hero. You just made it up wrong.”

“Nah, this fits better.” He smiled as you covered another laugh. You bit your lip when you received a side eye along with his next letter.

Y O U / A R E / A / P R O / _ _ _ _ / A S S.

You made sure to keep your eyes glued to the page and away from whatever face he was making.

“Seriously?”

“What? Do you have a guess?”

“Yea, yea very funny.” He snatched the paper and pencil, filling in the puzzle himself. He took the time to erase the rope on the hangman before starting a hurried and long series of lines. “My turn.”

“Well damn…don’t be too mean.”

“You started it, dumbass. You even cheated. That’s definitely one word not two.”

“Nuh uh, I was just describing the intelligence of the ass.”

“Uh huh. Don’t be cute.” The pencil froze for a moment before continuing its journey across the page.

“I’m sorry. Don’t be what?”

“Don’t be dumb.”

“That’s not what you said though.”

“Shut up. Pick a stupid letter.”

Random floof story to help get the dust and cobwebs out of my brain.

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Masterlist

[melodich4n]

I have an absurd HC about certain games I feel like with a passion Caesar Clown would love if he ever got to even put his hands on the games either for the concept it centers on like DEATH Or for more in depth reasons from genre to scenery, and sci-fi elements that would intrigue a man like Caesar.

I can see him loving the following games listed and why:

Franbow,

More for its psychological horror in narrative and artistic choice that I see Caesar taking the enjoyment. Along it makes you think, and put together items and figure puzzle-like tasks to get through levels/segments of the story that is very narrative driven that would keep him very deep to play it fully. In more detail knowing being someone who played the game myself plenty of times before. The timeline Franbow takes place is in the 1940s. Which depicts the very depressing reality of mental illness and the lifestyle of how children grew up in them. Along how it goes through this canon of *The Five Realms of Essential Existence*. He'd eat that shit up. Also because of the gore, lots of death. Like seriously the very fucking opening slaps you right off the bat with its jump into the narrative. I see him also enjoying Miss Unfortunate, the same developers of Franbow too for its more dark witty humor and twist in the story he'd find it amusing for a one shot experience. I see him enjoying Franbow more though as mentioned reasoning.

Fallout 1, 2, 3 tactics, bhos, NV,

I'm pushing for NV, but it stays because it has a lot of DLC I definitely would see him enjoying. But anything like 4 and 76, or the mobile Fallout game are out of his interest for being more adventurous and the atmosphere that the older games had, being more dreadful with fallout's usual depicted storyline and emotional given storyline of humanity barely surviving the remains of a once thriving society that plummeted into war is what would not have him into those games unlike the ones mentioned instead. Also because Caesar wouldn't really take mobile games like the Fallout Shelter because it's more tediously *grinding* and waiting and he would be preferably doing something more gruesome with its entertainment. Fallout as a franchise provides a lot of ideas that Caesar himself has done somewhat or most definitely.... Or would open new thoughts and ironically a sense of even inspiration because I do take this idea that he'd enjoy things like the Vault lore and the whole pre-war segment canon. And as much as I don't see him into Politics the politics in fallout are always something that I take interesting because of how it went with it and the end of the world feel and war driven mongering American purist themes it has. He'd definitely perhaps be the kind to max out his character in charisma and be a speech build guy who'd take in ED-E as his companion as one for also the quests that follow with "ED-E my Beloved" With Veronica to continue any BHOS quests (maybe). Despite her annoyance at first for my own use of Veronica. She is a tank, and I see Caesar using companions like a pussy he is too- though funny enough. Caesar would be too annoyed with Cassidy for her whole BS reputation triggered opinion for you as the player. He'd get that fucking BLOODY MESS perk as soon as he ever sees and can achieve it just for the endless nonstop every kill animation one can get to feel the immense pleasurable enjoyment of killing literally everything in sight like it's the forth of July with how literally 99.9% of all kills result in an explosion of guts. Also makes up for comedic kill times too.

Haven't played too much though of 1 and 2 (Yes. I have, but to say I did everything? No. Far from it. It's a play style I'm not used to but I did take my shot to say Caesar though would enjoy the older game click to move and see the grim feelings of what older fallout offers. Also because it's still full of its own story. Something that I am familiar with to say this myself.

The GAME Adaption of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,

A click and scroll game. Very old style. The voice acting, the game's forward story, being it is an adaptation based from yours truly of Harlan Ellison's book of the same name. The very simple nature but intriguing manner the game took to depict AM like for an experience for gamers. Yeah. It's a peak game. He'd take the character AM interesting, and take each storyline that the 5 humans have with a thought that lingers a good while. It would make him ponder a bit.

BioShock 1&2,

I'm not including infinite. Caesar would not be as interested in the story Infinite has, and be more so put off by it for its Multiverse twist, and the plot holes given with the DLC it brings (Burial at Sea). Yet step aside that and back to 1&2, Caesar would've loved to have been in a place like Rapture. A place where scientists and creative geniuses alike that can get away from the government, and especially away all those who try to "say" what is and isn't fine to work with for the name of scientific discovery. He'd enjoy this place. Especially because it's not just stuck for that but full of musicians and artists. There's a place down there just for Caesar to spend his days outside his work and it's Eve's Garden down at Fort Frolic. That dirty manwhore. If only he could be his personal paradise. Though he'd lovingly keep his DF and not use the Adam *unless* SPECIFICALLY he had one for something like a youth Gene-tonic addition.

Yet to play the game itself forwardly. He'd have a blast and enjoy the story that comes with it. Only daydreaming away why he can't be in a place like prime Rapture when he heard of it 😔...

.

.

.

An honorable mention would be Bloodborne. The atmosphere and themes are there but the gameplay style would make Caesar want to shoot himself in the head in anger. I had set my case after seeing a friend of mine play it and. Yeah. Def not Caesar Clown gameplay mechanic approved.

Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal would also be an honorable mention. He'd love its bloody action pack violence but not be so into the whole lore aspect of the games. He's into the visual death aspect that the game gives you.

Don't escape franchise, I think its atmosphere brings something he'd enjoy.

That's all I got today. Personally. I could make a revamp eventually. I just wanted to post something after having the flu and taking a small break.

[etrosgate]

the nonary games port of 999 is worse than you think

it's fine if you play the port, or even prefer it. but i'd like you to know what you're getting into.

9 hours 9 persons 9 doors for the nintendo ds is a masterpiece of a game, with wonderfully snappy dialogue and a quickly paced narrative that avoids many traps of visual novel writing (such as being overly obvious and repetitive) with a ludonarrative cohesion that makes SO many of its aspects initially perceived as flaws into an active strength of the experience. the endgame twist is very possibly the best in gaming history.

i think i've made it pretty clear that i really fucking love this game, and recommend it to everyone.

so

i used to say "the ds version is better, but it's fine if you play the port for its various quality of life features" but im no longer able to have that stance, now that i know the extent of how it kinda butchers its narrative. it's not super obvious, but that subtlety honestly makes it worse to me.

it's the difference between a good game, and a incredible game.

in the end, this boils down to the "novel mode" versus "adventure mode" gimmick that they decided to build the port on.

if you choose to play in adventure mode, it removes almost all of the narration and rewrites that aforementioned incredible dialogue to awkwardly shove in some (not all) of that information, resulting in overly obvious and clunky writing that seriously drags some scenes out. the descriptive text in general is actually incredibly important in a way i can't describe, and though it will forcibly shift to novel mode to show it to you very occasionally, it's not Nearly enough and you will miss out on some of the most memorable striking moments because of it. i cannot overstate how much the impact of the ending is affected by this.

if you choose novel mode, you do get narration (very important). HOWEVER. the writing is still the adjusted one done to facilitate only playing adv mode, so now the dialogue is overly obvious and clunky and slow AND (despite changing+taking out some of the narration entirely) repetitive (all the things i said 999 very cleverly avoided 🤔?) and then, for some ungodly reason, it is actively difficult to play the game in novel mode. the game will Constantly shift you back to adv mode so you have to spend the entire game checking to make sure to switch back (something even i found difficult to remember to do, as someone familiar with the game).

so neither way to play the port is good. also they changed the final puzzle to be worse. and a LOT of ludonarrative things i cannot actually get into due to spoilers.

"how much of an impact could these small changes actually have?"

well this is anecdotal, but me (and many other people i know) who originally played 999 on the ds and thought it was a masterpiece, years later went on to play the port version and thought "huh. it was still good, but it's like the magic was gone. i guess the game's just not as good as i remembered, one of those things that doesn't hold up to your memories of it."

and then we replayed the ds game. and found out that the game we remembered DOES still exist! it's just as fantastic, the magic IS THERE. the port just made the game worse!!

anyways, so what were those quality of life changes i mentioned earlier?

in the original ds version of 999, every time you reach an ending you have to start from the beginning of the game again, fast forwarding through the text and replaying the puzzles. (the port changed this to having a flowchart where you can just jump to decision points)

HOWEVER

as someone who Very recently replayed the ds version, i truly don't think this is as much of a pain as you might expect.

skipping text isn't a big deal. yeah it takes a bit, but it's easy to watch a youtube video or something while you're waiting the 5 minutes it takes. using an emulator, you can even speed up the text skipping to an even greater degree. if you can't physically hold down the button, you can find something to hold it down for you, and on an emulator you can rebind the key to be something easier to do that with (like the space bar)

redoing puzzles isn't that big a deal either. not only do you still have to redo some puzzle rooms in the port version anyway, it can be pretty fun to figure out how to essentially speedrun rooms you've done before, and you don't redo them that many times (i would recommend a walkthrough anyway for deciding which endings to get, so making that redo time even shorter is a bonus).

and please trust me when i say those hassles don't just exist bc the game is old, there is artistic intent involved in their inclusion that (for me at least) ends up enhancing the game more than they detract from it.

if you really need the accessibility of voice acting, i might genuinely recommend watching an LP of the ds version instead. yes, i really do think some guy from 10 years ago reading out the text will give you a better experience than a genuinely good cast of voice actors reading the port's. bc the writing of the port's dialogue is so fucking bad lol.

btw, if you're scared off at the prospect of reading a little more now without being able to choose adventure mode... if you've played danganronpa (and most of you did!) 999 is shorter, faster-paced, and has LESS READING.

okay im done

i'd recommend THIS WALKTHROUGH, even if you don't want to use it for the puzzles, it'll give you good info for how to get each ending (especially recommended for true ending), and a general order to do them in. i'd recommend doing getting all the endings (except coffin, which is just the true end cut short) EDIT: thank you to tlblitz for recommending this walkthrough, which gives additional hints for the puzzles instead of just telling you solutions outright

if you've already played 999 (or are just curious about specifics), this video details all the changes mentioned here and more, and it gets all the way into spoiler territory. maaaan did it open my eyes to everything i had subconsciously picked up on in playing the port. (i though the first part about the dialogue was being too nitpicky but then i did a side by side comparison of the beginning of the game and op. was not exaggerating. that port dialogue is AGGRAVATING).

EDIT

i forgot to mention. if you emulate the game, there's a visual glitch that messes up the sprites a little, but you can fix it really easily! in DeSmuME, go to Config>3D Settings and set the renderer to OpenGL

also, here's a mod that increases the text speed, if you find that bothers you.

and i figure i should put my reasons for not just tolerating, but loving the hassles that come from the ds version onto the base post (reposted from another reblog)

major major 999 spoilers below (and some vlr spoilers too)

-----------

to me, one of the coolest aspects of 999 (and zero escape in general) is how much the experience of playing it reflects the narrative

the final twist isn’t just that the text on the bottom screen has been akane, but that you’ve been playing as HER the entire game, not junpei (and with turning the ds upside down for the sudoku, you finally do so for the first time)

in the narrative, you spend basically the entire runtime getting to know her as June, but in the ludonarrative, (the actual Playing the game) you get to know her as Zero. and those annoying bits are a big part of that.

every time akane reaches her death in a timeline, she has to go back to the beginning and start over, because that’s how her powers work. she has to redo all the puzzles, has to wait through all the dialogue until she gets to a point where she can nudge junpei to another route. (in vlr, sigma+phi have a flowchart not just because it’s more convenient, but because that’s how Their powers work).

so subtly, without noticing, you start to reach her point of view. the first time you see the ninth man die it’s shocking and horrific, but even just on your second playthrough the horror doesn’t affect you much. for junpei and everyone else, these sequences are just as terrifying in every route but not for you, cause you’ve seen them before. you can’t be affected by them in the same way, what matters now is finding the futures you haven’t seen yet.

speedrunning puzzles by skipping the clues and zoning out while you wait for the dialogue to finish aren’t just game things, but diagetic events, of akane going through the motions of something she’s done over and over.

when i replayed the ds version recently (something i hadn’t done in a LONG time), i felt so close to akane in a way i never did in the port, because i’d been through the same experience as her. i understood how she could be such a kind and sensitive person who rationalizes away putting all these people she loves through all those the moment to moment horrors in pursuit of a timeline where she and everyone she care about lives, because i’d become detached to them through repetition too.

i completely understand why people wouldn’t enjoy that, but i’m a pretentious gamer who LOVES when mechanics are technically “worse” in a way that is characterful or thematic. so the frustrating bits of 999 add to that experience much more than they detract from it for me haha

[dottie-writes-haikyuu]

Crash Landing

This is part 13 of my fic Not Everyone Survives (But I will do the Best I Can). More info and other chapters can be found here.

After a crash landing, victims must adjust despite being disoriented, and learn to move on. Or, simply learn to move once again.

Keiji was a mess. He had been able to put together a good front for the rugrats but aside from that, it was clear he was in distress. He couldn’t sleep alone, but he couldn’t go to sleep without patrolling the inside and outside of the base, and he woke up in the middle of the night crying. He slept with Kuroo some nights, then Kenma and Yukie other nights. Sometimes he slept with Lev, or Konoha, or Yaku. He woke up, calling for Koutarou, and then sobbed when he realized that his lover was not there, guilt consuming him.

In his defense, it wasn’t just him. Kenma had to be wrestled away from work, Kuroo was running on autopilot to avoid thinking about it too much, Kai and Eve were inseparable and angry, and everyone was just… not themselves.

“We’re having an intervention,” Kaori announced. “Before one of you does something idiotic, or actually loses it.”

They were all sat in the conference room, and Tetsurou could feel Keiji trembling next to him. But he was always shaking, even more so since Bokuto had been taken.

Kuroo was only mentally checked in because this was different from the code he’d programmed himself to follow. Kenma’s hands were twitching and Tetsurou reflexively passed a puzzle gadget to the blonde, who caught it. With his hands at work, Kenma looked a little more present.

“Messenger has Bokuto. We can’t do shit about that right now. But having collective mental breakdowns won’t help either.”

“What else are we supposed to do?” Kai questioned.

“Plan for when we get him back. And what we’re gonna do to them for taking him.”

“They’ll expect us if we try to get him this soon after they’ve taken him,” Kenma pointed out.

“And Messenger’s artillery isn’t something to mess with,” Lev added reluctantly.

“So, even though we don’t want to, we have to let him stay there for a while so they stop expecting us,” Konoha said, his voice quiet. Keiji’s eyes snapped over to the other.

“Are you insane? You’re seriously considering letting him stay there? We don’t have a clue what they’re doing to him, or if they’re gonna kill him, or—“

“He said he’d give him back. But not until after whatever they’re trying to do,” Kenma interjected. “We just don’t wanna wait. Which is reasonable. But if we try to get him now, we risk our safety and his. Just a few more months.”

Maybe, if God was real, he was just testing them all. How fucked up. Keiji opened his mouth then closed it. His tremors got worse. Kuroo decided against speaking.

It was, ultimately, Keiji’s decision. They all were looking at the short ravenette, probably waiting for him to speak. Tetsurou squeezed his shoulder.

“We’ll, uhm…we’ll wait, then.”

“What are we gonna do when we get him back?”

“Let’s wait until we get to that point,” Konoha said quickly. Lev nodded along.

“Yeah, let’s worry about that when it’s time to worry about it. We’ve got…more than enough to worry about right now,” Yaku said with a small sigh.

“Yeah. I just…” Yukie trailed off. “Let’s just focus on keeping things afloat until we get him back.”

“We’ll get him back,” Eve said, nodding to herself.

—

Subject 8’s experimentation was going well. Some of the desired characteristics were already showing up, and it was hardly fighting recently. The glowing eyes had already started manifesting, canines sharpening.

Things were going as they should be. They could truly begin with Project Savior soon. When he walked into the lab that morning, Subject 8’s eyes snapped up to look at him, and maybe he was smiling a little too widely because a startled hiss jumped out of the other.

Huh, that was a new ability. It looked shocked, itself.

“Oh, no need to be upset, now,” he said, and its brows furrowed. “What next, you’ll be roaring at me? Like some sort of monster?”

It gave no reply. It never did. He didn’t need it to.

He wouldn’t be observing today, as there were things to do. But how intriguing.

“That wasn’t something we gave you. You developed that on your own. You’re becoming less human by the day, aren’t you? Will Torch even want you back when we’re done, then?”

He let out a small chuckle when Subject 8 frowned.

“I— they’ll come for me,” it said defensively. “And I’m still human, just…a little different.”

He scoffed. “Let’s go with that.”

“They will come for me.”

“Then why haven’t they? We’ve had you for a month and a half. Why didn’t they come for you right after we took you?”

A growl. He laughed.

“Oh, wow! And you say you’re human?”

Hinata shook his head, shrugging. 

“No matter. Project Savior will succeed.”

He started for the door, then turned to tilt his head at Subject 8.

“You will save all of us. Human or not.”

—

It was nighttime when they came. Koutarou flinched, and then there was beeping and his collar loosened and there were voices shushing him. A click of a lock, then the cuff on his right wrist opened and the chain fell to the floor.

“We’re gonna get you outta here,” one of the voices whispered. A rugrat. “This is fucked up.”

“Wait, if he catches you—“ he started, being shushed again.

ItHe could kind of see the rugrats. There were seven. Another approached him and removed his collar, grimacing at the burn scars that were definitely there. Meanwhile, his other hand and his feet were unchained.

“Don’t make a sound. We gotta pass by Captain’s room to get out.”

He nodded, and they exited the lab. It had been so long since he’d seen anywhere outside of the lab. He crept along behind the rugrats. How funny, his life was now in their hands. He was being led by rugrats, instead of rugrats being led by him.

How funny that he needed saving.

He caught sight of the door and felt his heart leap. Was he really about to go home?

Did they still want him there?

Of course they did. Shouyou had just been trying to get to him. Keiji would always want him. Even with his newer features. The others, too. They needed him. That was irrefutable. Or, he hoped so. He was so absorbed in his thoughts, moving on autopilot, that when they finally reached the door, he was a little startled. Then it clicked.

He was going home. He grinned, an excitement he hadn't felt in months filling his veins. He suppressed a purr, still unused to the sensation. A nudge had him sprinting, and then he heard a yell behind him.

“You traitors, all of you!!! If he gets back, I’m going to kill every single fucking rugrat in this base,” Shouyou’s voice shrieked. “Tobio, go reactivate the fucking collar! I am not letting him get away.”

Shit, shit, shit. His breath picked up and he ran faster. He was unarmed, it was dark, and he was so, so far from base. The moment the collar activated, it was game over. He would either scream so loud that mutants would find him, or maybe he'd just be burned to death by the voltage. He couldn't go back, though, that would most certainly yield consequences too and then those rugrats’s efforts would be in vain. So he ran, quicker than he ever had gone before. Was it adrenaline or a result of experimentation? 

He wondered if this was how deer felt, back when there were deer, being chased by something they certainly could not outrun but running anyways. Did he even remember the way back to base? It had been two months. He was only running, with the hopes that he would make it there. Away, he needed to get away. He had to get away. Maybe Keiji was still trying to save him. Maybe he'd run into his lover while he was running, his lungs contracting and expanding quicker and quicker. Air began to burn as desperation filled him. A desperate hope that clung to him, clawed at him.

He felt the collar flicker back to life and his breath hitched, heart stopping, and then it started.

—

The screams were likely heard for miles. Subject 8 was immune, so Shouyou was in no rush to retrieve it. Maybe the burning electricity combined with getting maimed again would teach it a lesson, before the executions tomorrow. Seven rugrats. Seven. Shouyou was fuming, saying all of these thoughts into the air between them.

Tobio watched the ginger pace back and forth, the faint shrieks of agony heard even at base. His boyfriend’s hands were trembling and he'd never looked so maniacally angry. He looked like he was losing himself. Tobio hardly recognized him.

“Shouyou. We should go get him–”

Those eyes snapped over to him in fury and he quickly corrected himself.

“It. Before they kill it. Or before the collar does. The voltage is higher, now. It's not meant for extended use.”

“Then, change it,” his lover gritted out, something akin to disdain in his voice. The ravenette flinched at the tone, wringing his fingers together before going to do just that. At times, even before the experimentation started– even before Hinata learned of Bokuto’s immunity –there would be moments in which Kageyama truly didn't recognize him. He acted different, almost as if he didn't recognize Tobio either. Just another thing he was mad at, that wasn't doing what he wanted it to do.

He wondered if Hinata loved him during those moments.

When they finally retrieved BokutoSubject 8, it was trembling, bleeding, and the distinct stench of charred flesh filled the air. Tears streamed down its face and when they arrived it let out a fearful hiss, scrambling away as best it could as it heaved another sob, shaking its head desperately.

“Kei…Keiji,” it sobbed, curling in on itself. The collar was still going, and it scratched at the object weakly, wailing. Tobio opened his mouth, uncertainty worming into his heart for the first time since this had begun. Well. The second time. The first execution had been the first. So he was maybe going to say something– perhaps Shouyou would listen to him –when the ginger spoke first.

“Pathetic.”

And with that he doubted himself. So he simply nodded, though he disagreed, wringing his hands together instead.

“We should…get it back to base. Before it…”

For a moment, he saw Shouyou– his Shouyou –glance toward him in concern, but it was quickly replaced by agitated confusion. A quick kiss pressed to his lips by a stranger, then the ginger moved to haul up Subject 8’s trembling form. Immediately it shrieked, writhing and clawing at him in a desperate, blind attempt to get away. He sounded more animalistic than human, each desperate cry bordering on primal, and Tobio put a hand on Hinata’s shoulder. The ginger backed away and Tobio crouched in front of Bokuto. He kept his voice soft, gentle.

“Hey, hey, the only way I can make it stop is if you let us take you back,” he tried, and got a purely distraught whine in return. The other yanked at the collar again, trying and failing to stop what was probably destroying his skin right now.

“If you come back, I'll let you have one message to Keiji. Alright? Collar will turn off and we’ll fix you up, get you back in your head. But you have to come with us.”

Those hazy eyes looked up at him and watered.

“Keiji…”

Delusional, maybe, from all the pain, the man latched onto him.

“Make…make it stop, Keiji, please, please I'm sorry they found out I'm sorry,” came the broken sentence which gave him pause.

However, playing along was likely best. So he willed himself not to stim and instead soothe a hand down Koutarou’s back.

“I will, don't worry. Just let us take you back.”

A nod, instantly. With that, he carefully hauled the larger man up and they began their trek back to base, Tobio soothing little whines and growls along the way the same way he may sooth a child, or one of the strays he used to take in before the Crumble.

“You'll be alright, Kou,” he murmured, the lie sticking like glue between his teeth before coming out silky smooth.

“We’ll be alright.”

Previous Chapter

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Proving Lab

Welp. That happened.

And here we are - what's left of HADES. I mean, I'm surprised there's anything left of HADES at all, honestly. But I guess Sylens doesn't have so much a concept of mercy.

HADES, you are a shitheel. I mean, the Derangement and the Mysterious Signal probably contributed to that, but I don't think getting mucked with by Travis Tate et al helped all that much.

So ... wait ... Sylens, are you seriously telling me you left HADES alive (insomuch as an AI is alive) specifically so you could keep your word way back when you said you'd give me the means to destroy it? ...Well, if I'm running around settlements that look like Dreamer's Terrace, I guess it's fitting that I've got Fae-wording bargains coming from this dipshit.

And now you give me a schematic to let me ignite firegleam. Only when it suits you. Ugh, fine, I'll go hunt Leaplashers. (I hate Leaplashers.)

Best way to deal with Leaplashers - from the next post code over.

"Story and Easy Mode: you do not have to shoot off the power cores--" Can I ... do it anyway?

Right. Firegleam ignited. In we go!

So ... there was no mechanic for just ... letting me swim there? Really?

We're really hammering home the parallels between Sobek and Aloy, aren't we. Also ... why can I not punch Travis Tate in the face? I mean, really, I want to punch him in his face.

.........Well, this wasn't what I was expecting the "We still have dozens of hours of gameplay to give you so we'll contrive a problem" to be, but I'll take it. This game really enjoys kicking one in the metaphorical balls.

Sylens ... these are unknown quantities trying to come through the door, and you're not tellng me nearly enough, but I've done enough reading to know that the little you say you know? Is complete bullshit.

Yeah, see? Though now I'm almost regretting having crunched that particular Focus because I want a very good, very solid, "I TOLD YOU SO" right now.

(Also, if she was carrying around a spare Focus - or several, given what she told Varl at the beginning - why did she not do that six months ago? Or even when she discovered what he did to HADES? She knew Sylens had spyware! If she wanted to keep getting answers from him, she shouldn't have destroyed the spyware-filled Focus; she should have shoved it in a belt pouch and used a different one - at least until she wanted to pry answers out of Sylens again.)

...What the fuck are you people wearing? Did you get all your ideas on future fashion from Star Trek: TOS? That's tacky as fuck, guys.

Except you, Mini-Me. ...I have a Mini-Me. Great. And someone really needs to give you some actual shoes. Your feet must be cold.

(Yes, I notice this shit.)

Okay, these are not the machines I know, and ... yeah, I read a review at some point that talked about the "new machines" and how disappointing their designs were, and ... I get what they mean now. Robots should not ooze.

"One is trouble enough". Oooooh, Sylens, I wish I'd left you eavesdropping. Just because of how much you fucking hate being wrong.

Oh, so your horrible blingy jumpsuit has a forcefield on it. So this is going to be the most annoying fight ever.

...I get Aloy wanted information, but why was there no option to just jump in the damn water and swim?!? Why did she have to play some demented version of Tag to crash an entire ... whatever that fucking thing was when it wasn't even going to hurt him?!?

So jumping puzzle plus oxygen management plus stealth out the ass. This has been the most annoying fucking thing ever and I hate it. Good thing I'm way better at stealth.

...Crippling by Cutscene. THANKS FOR THAT.

Ah. Hi, Varl. Guess you're feeling better. I personally feel like shit. But I'm going to Do The Thing anyway--

Okay, that's fucking clever. The Utaru name their settlements for music because they remembered the old "do-re-mi" scale-singing from their ancestors' Cradle teachings, and let it live on in the name of their "land-gods". And this is the first civilisation that actually acknowledges what the machines were supposed to do. Everyone else treats them as a hazard at best; the Utaru worked in concert with them. So ... basically it's the Utaru that have it right. Neat.

Yeah, go be with your girlfriend, Varl. I will stay put, I promise. If only because a) the cutscene wants me to and b) I don't want to be that much of a hypocrite given everything I've said to you and Erend over the last little while. Also, c) someone ought to have a romance option that isn't one throwaway bit in the DLC.

(YES I KIND OF WANT TO ROMANCE EREND SHUT UP.)

Aaaaaaaand my ribs are better. And little green exclamation mark. Hi, Xenophobe Lady.

...Aloy? Why could you not just explain to the Xenophobe Lady what a 'thrush' is?!? Maybe she'd stop being such a bitch!

Right. I know there's all this saving-the-world stuff (though I have to admit I'm a lot less jazzed about that when I'm fighting Futuristic Techno-Gods or whatever), but I'm going to take a break and then I am going to go and ignite every bit of Firegleam I have passed so far. It has been taunting me.

(No, seriously, Futuristic Techno-Gods who bring all of the mindsets of the Old World with them? I don't want this. I am in this game for seeing how civilisations might shape themselves outside of the influence of the Old Gods - this is speculative fiction at its finest! And now you're giving me Futuristic Techno-Gods who are, in point of fact, generations old? And where were they all this time?)

(...They were in space, weren't they. IF THIS GAME SENDS ME TO SPACE I AM GOING TO THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW. METAPHORICALLY.)

Right. Yes. Break. Then, Firegleam and hunting. I ... am weirdly less jazzed about this game now that we're bringing the Old World this far into it. There's still enough for me to love, but none of it's the main plot. It's getting space-opera convoluted here - more clones, advanced technology, people treating the civilisations that formed without APOLLO as lesser--

...Wait. If we have APOLLO and DEMETER and HADES and HEPHAESTUS ... why do we have MINERVA? Every single one of the subordinate functions, and even the rogue AI Nemesis, were named for Greek gods, so why didn't they go with ATHENA?

Anyway, we're going into a vaguely colonialist direction far beyond shit like the Carja being stuck-up about everything and I am not sure I like it. Also I want to punch Sylens in the face for effectively arming the rebel Tenakth. What does he gain from destabilising the region? More to the point, what do these Techno-God dipshits gain from it? They have to be helping with that shit somehow.

[boxkeith]

Video Games I Played in November 2024

I’m writing this only a few days after the end of the month and I’ve already played a bunch of new games that are etching away at my memories of the stuff earlier in the month. It doesn’t help that November was uniquely prolific with 15 different games started on top of perennials like Helldivers 2 or Picross 3D 2, as well as spillover from October with Sekiro and Twilight Princess. Slow work and high life stress means a whole lotta gaming.

Astral Ascent – I’m starting to think I don’t actually like action roguelites. Maybe it’s overexposure. Maybe it’s that the genre is incestuous and so there’s too little outside influence and far too much churning reiteration of the same concepts. The same boss patterns. The same metaprogression upgrades. Again and again. It’s tiresome, as if some demiurge were doing broadly the same thing over and over hoping this configuration would be a demonstrable improvement over the rest. But in all seriousness I tend to fall off roguelikes pretty hard if I feel like I understand the bulk of the systems early and this one I knew 80% of its deal from looking at how they drew grass.

Ori and the Blind Forest – What can be said of Ori? I played it a few times on release, played the Definitive Edition in 2017, and sat on it since then putting it on the shelf with Hollow Knight and Super Metroid as one of the pinnacles of the genre. Against my better judgment I took it off that shelf. Bash still feels like a dream, and when the game is at its best it’s atmospheric, flowing, and a joy to behold. However the added abilities from the Definitive Edition (a dash and a projectile you can bash off of) completely undermine the game’s flow, and the ending section remains tedious and frustrating. There’s a lot of charm here but time is unkind to works carried mostly by their aesthetics.

Peglin – I like peggle. I like goblins. I tolerate turn-based card battlers. This finally came out of early access so I gave it another go. It’s unfortunately the game that it is. Not much depth, a few too many trap options, and for me it hit a sourspot where the randomness inherent in pachinko was fundamentally undermining my ability to sequence or plan. If there’s no strategy and I’m just hitting buttons, then a roguelike gets frustrating quick because chance is such a huge component.

Rivals of Aether II – I really expected to have more of a fire lit in me by this but I did a few CPU matches, one ranked match, and put the game down. Dunno what’s up. Maybe it’ll be like Lethal League and in a year or three I’ll go fucking bonkers for it for a year.

Kao the Kangaroo (2022) – Mascot platformers are a genre I dabble in, and when one is 5-10 bucks and I’m in the mood it’s hard for me to say no. Unfortunately, the shallow gameplay, oddly stilted voicework (Polish speakers trying to do an Australian accent), and glitchiness undermined what I had hoped to be a few hours of jumping around punching stuff. One of these days I need to try Ty the Tasmanian Tiger or something, I guess. Or I can replay Vexx again.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps – Did you ever have a friend in high school who saw the wrong movie at a formative inflection point and you’re just gonna have to write off their personality for five years while they wildly chase after a version of themselves that isn’t real? The Ori devs did that after playing Hollow Knight. Gone is the atmosphere. Gone is the momentum. In its place you get a fiddly inventory, NPCs, sidequests, and themes that completely undermine the first game. Mechanically it’s much more solid but structurally it’s a bit of a mess and the designs don’t cohere. Taking bash off its own button is a monumental error and that snag cascades through the entire feel of the game.

The Rise of the Golden Idol – I should really finish Obra Dinn. I liked The Case of the Golden Idol well enough, though I felt the DLCs were full of overly complex puzzles whose ambiguity was such that without the solution as a framing device getting an intuition for what had happened was impossible. This game doubles down on that, and oftentimes it felt like some of the shakier Sherlock Holmes mysteries where he pulls a secret clue out of his armpit that resolves everything. It’s not a bad puzzle game but it doesn’t hit the highs of the first game which is a sad spot for a sequel.

UFO 50 – If nothing else this was an extremely efficient way to add bullshit to my steam library that I feel like I should play and then don’t. I tried a half-dozen of them, they’re all very interesting and cool, I like a lot of the concepts at play and the breadth of designs is truly impressive. I just can’t be bothered to filter through several dozen games that are each worthy of 2+ hours of playtime. Good lord.

Voidwrought – Speaking of games that took one look at Hollow Knight then gouged out their eyes… I keep trying indie metroidvanias and for every one that’s actually doing something novel in structure or in presentation there’s three that are slavishly copying Hollow Knight and/or the cultural memory of SotN (which is closer to Aria of Sorrow). None of them are copying Super Metroid wherein enemies are closer to environmental hazards than combat encounters and momentum is a reward for systems mastery and map knowledge. No sir. It’s stats, enemy pogos, and losing resources on death. This one was notable for giving me a projectile I could pogo off of very early, which I used to sequence break the everloving shit out of the intended progression. The end result of this was I did 99% of the game without double jump when you’re supposed to get that in the first few hours, but such is life when living on the edge. The final boss was touhou nonsense with far too much HP and I have learned to just set games aside when they get to that level. Exactly one game’s final boss was interesting and intricate enough to be worth five hours of my life, and that was Nine Sols. Y’all ain’t Nine Sols.

Headlander – Y’ALL DEFINITELY AIN’T NINE SOLS. Games like this are why people stopped giving DoubleFine money, good gravy. The core conceit of being a head that body-hops to use various body-specific traits like unique weapons, traversal powers, or keycards is solid. However the 60s retrofuture aesthetic gets old quickly and after the opening half hour there’s no changes in complexity or structure for the rest of the 5 hour game. Writing was also pretty loose, which is what DoubleFine usually leans on when the gameplay is shoddy, leading to a game that really underlined how much Psychonauts was lightning in a bottle.

Final Fantasy I: Dawn of Souls – This GBA remake is older now than the original was when this came out. My Final Fantasy exposure is mostly playing XIII in high school, Kingdom Hearts, and watching Advent Children at least five times. I felt I owed it to myself to go back to the source. The source showed me we’ve been making the same damn game for 40 years. It’s a pretty good game. If I wasn’t able to fast-forward the emulator and hold down A to autoattack I might’ve lost my marbles though. The GBA bonus dungeons were the highlight of the game, so I’m glad I went with this version.

STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN – Playing FF1 was also homework for playing this. I want to kill chaos. I do not want to play a Team Ninja game. This leads to conflicts. I expect to stick with this because I’m genuinely fascinated by the game’s delirious genius, but it’s also bewildering.

Noreya: The Gold Project – Metroidvania map design is hard. It’s been said that in many ways the map is the main character of such a game, and the player avatar is merely the means of exploring and understanding that character. Noreya has interesting ideas of save points being shrines to one god or another, and the god you choose to install both unlocking parts of your skill tree and whoever is winning sets world tendency which alters around a quarter of the map. The issue is the game’s laboriously labyrinthine tunnels, with constant linear corridors ending in a switch to open up progress in another corridor that requires a six room detour to return to. It’s cumbersome, it’s boring, and it’s incessant. I ended up dropping the game at that point, because the good parts of this game’s lore and presentation I already got from Blasphemous years ago.

Metal Gear Solid 2 – Substance – Same as MGS1 I’m going to be playing this 1-2 hours at a time for several months when I hang out with a buddy. This means I’m on a drip feed of Kojima’s bullshit. Any other game series I would assume the named woman who establishes her familial relationship with other characters, history with various factions, pregnancy status, and combat skill would be a recurring antagonist or otherwise a driver of the plot. However, we’re in Kojima’s house so he used every polygon available to the PS2 rendering her armpit hair then drowns her offscreen. Maybe I’m wrong! Maybe she’s alive! Maybe she’s 16 rats in a trenchcoat! Possibilities abound.

Thread – Games like Thread are why I buy random shit off steam and give it 5 hours of my life sight unseen. I only heard of it from an offhand comment in the steam review of another metroidvania and it quietly snuck its way into being one of my favorites. Dense, consistently clever, and a joy to move in, it’s everything I could want out of a metroidvania that deliberately eschews bosses. What an absolute joy to discover.

[jokers-bat]

All My Joker Headcanons (that I have so far, mostly involving 2004 Joker and UTRH Joker)

Warning, this is long but I hope you like it anyway!

2004 Joker

Likely has experience in gymnastics or dancing at some point in his past (possibly in childhood or teen years). That, or he was a theater kid.

Is capable of doing SOME good…As long as there’s something in it for him!

Can wear shoes and/or socks but prefers not to because he’s more confident when barefoot.

Chaotic evil…With maybe a small pinch of empathy?

Takes very good care of his hair. Will sometimes steel shampoo, conditioner, hair brushes, combs and other hair products to keep it clean and healthy. 

You know he’s sad or upset when he goes for hours without laughing. 

He’s often mistaken for being clueless or ignored and dismissed as some find him annoying, but he’s actually very observant and a lot smarter than others give him credit for. 

Knows Arkham Asylum inside and out…No matter what kind of cell they put him in, he always figures out how to escape. It’s like a game or puzzle to him!

He’s your best chance at escape if you and him are ever imprisoned somewhere.

He and Penguin are rivals…But he is the closest thing to a friend he’s ever had and he’s not good at expressing that.

Side note to that, he’s not good at socializing or at making or keeping friends. He’d rather pull pranks than simply ‘hangout’ with people. He’s surprised when Harley or his thugs sticks around but is secretly relieved that they did and do.

…Sometimes he’s lonely…

Still has no memory of the whole ‘Gotham cemetery’ incident, but he doesn’t like people touching his neck now. The idea of someone putting their mouth on his neck terrifies him. Penguin and Batman are the only ones who understand it though. 

Hides in his room or cell when he cries. He has a lot of bad memories with people seeing him vulnerable and doesn’t trust anyone to see him in that state. 

Under The Red Hood/Death in The Family Movies Joker 

Remember that friend your mom used to ask if you’d jump over a cliff for if they told you to do it? Yeah, HE’S that friend! 

Whatever you do, DO. NOT. Tell him you’re not afraid of anything! He will take that as a challenge and try to figure out what scares you! 

Don’t TELL HIM your phobias either! Chances are, he’ll use them to prank you. 

Side note, nothing scares Joker…Nothing really grosses him out either…You could get sick and throw up on or near him and he won’t judge you for it, but he’ll NEVER let you forget it either. 

Nuclear evil and a certified asshole.

If he considers you a friend, he’s your bodyguard for life…Seriously, he’ll offer to kill anyone who bullies or harms you. 

Not gossipy, but loves witnessing drama and absolutely will not help the situation. For example:

Y/N: “Joker, do something!!” 

Joker: “I am doing something!” (heats up popcorn in the microwave) 

He loves his crowbar and thinks he can solve most problems with it. Usually anything that could involve hitting someone with it or use it to break into something.

You know it’s bad and/or you’re in big trouble if Joker is concerned.

Secretive about his own past. Open about his brief time as the Red Hood, but nothing before that. Either he doesn’t remember his life before that or he keeps it to himself. 

Finds everything funny. Life is never boring for Joker!

No one knows if he feels sadness, fear, or regret. If he does feel them, he doesn’t show it…

Reliable horror movie buddy! Will watch scary movies with you any day and will aways bring snacks.You’ll scream, but he’ll laugh. For him, horror is comedy!

When you call him, his response is somewhere along the lines of: “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it!” or “It wasn’t me!”

Never give this man anything made out of glass!

One of the few who can stay calm and level-headed in serious situations. 

Usually gives unhelpful and borderline homicidal advice. Some highlights: “Why don’t you just send him a text that says ‘Fuck you, I’m staying home today?’”, “We can always kill him.”

Other comments he’s made: “I don’t know whose crazier. Me, or the people who hangout with me.”, “Why would you trust ME with anything?”

Joker Headcanons in general: 

Being friends with Joker is not easy.

He’s the biggest asshole you’ve ever known but he’ll remember your birthday, your favorite treats and your interests till the day he dies. 

Halloween and April 1st are always an adventure with Joker! 

He might not have accepted Batman’s offer to redeem him in TKJ, but he appreciated it. The man he was before may be gone, but there’s just enough of him left to know Joker couldn’t change that easily. 

That same part of him hates himself and what he’s become more than anything else. 

More than likely has a lot of unresolved issues. Past traumas, possibly mental health issues, etc.

Even if Joker did accept Batman’s offer and genuinely wanted to redeem himself, he has so many bad habits to get rid of and even more demons to face. Not necessarily impossible, but would be extremely difficult and might not be completely successful. 

If he has any family, he doesn’t have contact with them. Mostly for their own safety, not putting it past his enemies to go after them for revenge against him, but more so because he doesn’t want them to know who he is or what he’s done (basically, they think he’s dead and don’t know he’s become the Joker). 

Even if someone DID care about Joker and he cared about them, he’d drive them away because, one, he doesn’t himself (either he’ll hurt them or they’ll somehow get hurt because of him), two, he knows he’s dangerous and that he’s an evil monster and doesn’t think anyone could or would actually care about him, and finally, being hated and feared is easier than navigating relationships. 

He does in fact have feelings for Batman but it’s very complicated.

Joker should really have a non-lethal, non-criminal hobby-and he probably does…But he doesn’t have enough free time to do them…

He’s the guy who’d piss off politically powerful people just for the fun of it.

[empty-pizza]

thoughts on gideon the ninth chapter thirty-five

lmao that's rough gideon. i'd feel like shit if i did that to someone too, even if it's not actually a bad thing to do and not your fault.

okay, it was dulcinea who killed people. yeah, that's better than ianthe. sorry for jumping the gun and blaming ianthe, last chapter. i did realize she wasn't implying it was her who did the killing midway through, though.

i maintain that this still isn't wholly surprising — the sick one, the one you'd never suspect, did it? wow, exactly what i'd expect — and making it harrow could have been a really bold and interesting move, but it works.

ohhh, it wasn't dulcinea septimus. okay, i see. not following why abigail's interest in history made her a threat, but we can keep going. the details of who she is (someone from the same family) are a bit hard to follow, but okay — she kept the corpse around and burned it with protesilaus's.

okay. this person wanted to get the emperor to come back to the system and fuck with him. who are the Hands? and now she wants to get rid of the houses while he waits, and then do... something to him?

oh this is a lyctor, huh. interesting.

oh and palamedes is already killing her

did palamedes just blow himself up?

that's a shame. he was my favorite character.

damn she really did vomit up a lung.

Cytherea the First, huh. soon to be Cytherea the dead, I hope.

Okay. I'd appreciate if any of the people who have been commenting on my post could tell me the foreshadowing for Dulcinea being the murderer, and Dulcinea not being Dulcinea. By the way, I appreciate all of your comments a ton, even though I haven't been replying (because apparently tumblr doesn't let you reply with your sideblog and using my main while mentioning I'm OP just kinda seemed like a hassle).

From a mystery perspective, I don't love this answer. I want two things for a mystery answer: One, to feel like it ties together so many pieces of evidence and foreshadowing that I realize I should have realized it all along and feel dumb. Two, ideally, for it to expand my perception of what is even possible as answer, which is pretty rare. Something like Knives Out, that treats the entire role of culprit in a unique way.

This is why I got really hyped up for the Harrow theory; I feel like her plot role was one you'd never expect to be the culprit and thus it'd be mindblowing if it was. I think it being not-Dulcinea is considerably more... regular, as a thing for a mystery story to do. I mean, I kind of called it early on that it could very well be her, since it would cause the most emotional pain for Gideon. I don't get credit for being right, because when it came time for me to put my money where my mouth is, I didn't say it was her. But like I said earlier, the sick, unassuming character? Kind of becomes just plain old assuming.

But that's just my preferences and personal expectations being projected onto a book that didn't necessarily need to conform to my ideas, and it works narratively nonetheless. I mean, clearly it does. And I hope that knowing what the foreshadowing is will enhance my appreciation. Plus, I don't even know what she did to kill Jeannemary and Isaac yet! Hope that's interesting.

From an entirely different perspective, though, this reveal is awesome. I love stories that start as one thing, only to unfold into something much bigger and more complex. That's something I like even more than the answer to the mystery being something I never would have considered — when the direction of the plot itself is like that. This started as a story about a bunch of people solving puzzles in a facility, but Dulcinea actually being Cytherea, a Lyctor, suddenly thrusts this story into something WAY bigger. There are so many questions I don't even understand well enough to ask, about the Houses, the history here, the emperor, the hands, the Lyctors, everything that's going on! This is a huge game that's being played and I am seriously looking forward to all the insane things I'd never expect that the next book will likely do. The possibilities are genuinely endless in my mind, of what this story will even be about, and that's a feeling I love. That, more than anything else, is the best thing you could take in inspiration from Homestuck and Umineko.

I'll hopefully finish the book tomorrow, but I seriously need to sleep now.

[failurefemmegf]

why aren't you a transmasc anymore?

short answer: i realized my dysphoria was a combined reaction to being a lesbian who was scared of other women along with depersonalisation due to misogyny

long answer: i started identifying with the transgender community when i was around 12 or 13 years old, around the time i was in middle school. in elementary school i was friendly with boys and girls but as i grew older and the social cues for being a "girl" became too complicated, the other girls regarded me as weird and i was always lumped in with the boys.

i had childhood friends who were girls but a combination of mental health issues and abusive platonic relationships made it difficult to hold onto them. by the time i entered my sophmore year of high school, i no longer had any friends in my grade, and i resorted to helping for a very male-dominated gaming club as a last resort, which i stayed with until graduation. the gaming club was extremely libertarian conservative (i once got into an argument over whether "water is a human right") (it is, obviously). i was full on "not like other girls"ing my way through high school. my primarily male friendships continued into college, where i joined a game design degree program with a total of maybe 4 women including me in my entire class.

in the fall semester of my only year of college, i was constantly sexually harassed by a male "friend" and then manipulated against the rest of my friend group by a different male "friend" who ditched me after winter break when he realized i wasn't going to fuck him. in my spring semester i was completely alone (i had no roommates) and actively suicidal. it was at this time i threw myself into trans identity politics. i'd always been uncomfortable with my breasts because i developed earlier, and i bought my first binder, began tucking my hair into hats and attempting to pass as male on the rare occasions i would leave my dorm room.

i had waist-long hair from middle school until this point, where that summer i chopped it off, broke up with my long-term online girlfriend, and called myself a gay trans man. really though, the only men i was attracted to were fictional (comphet). i transferred to a community college and was still actively suicidal along with doing nothing about it. i blamed it all on my dysphoria.

covid hit that spring, and given some time to myself, i realized i was a lesbian. i jumped head first into being part of the lesbian community on twitter at the time, and it felt so right, like i'd finally figured out a last puzzle piece. my mental health still wasn't great due to other reasons but i didn't feel at odds with myself anymore.

after i lost my summer job and swapped to retail, my suicidal ideation and depression came back in full force. i got a new job at a grocery store and ran into a former childhood friend who happened to be a guy, and my complicated feelings towards him i mistook for love. boom, i was iding as a trans gay guy again, i continued to throw my mental health down the trash can because "IF I TRANSITION EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE", developed an eating disorder, and ended up in an intensive outpatient program for lgbt+ young adults.

i turned a corner when i learned to stop caring what others thought of me. to be secure in myself and not rely on other people to validate my feelings, my appearance, my identity. i had my ups and downs but by the time january hit, something felt different. i no longer felt "socially" dysphoric, i stopped caring about people calling me "she" or "a girl", but my trans identity had become such a huge part of my life that i was extremely torn. i began looking up detransition resources, desisted to "nonbinary/genderfluid" until i stumbled across some radfem blogs.

i'd always been told to avoid radfems because they "hated trans people" and "WANT you to detransition". but they were the only people to take my thoughts of desisting seriously. i reached out anonymously over the course of several months to several different blogs and i was blown away by the grace and kindness i received. i really want to thank blogs like @woman-for-women and @detransition for their wonderful posts about female depersonalization and dysphoria, they really helped nudge me in the right direction for me.

from where i stand now, i'm a gender abolitionist, but i'm not completely against the idea of transition. because of my past i have a lot of sympathy for dysphoric people, and i know there are probably trans mascs and men out there who do feel a genuine disconnect. however, i don't think we should push transition as the only option to treat dysphoria, and we need more studies about the effects of female socialization on female depersonalization. i'm not a scientist or a psychiatrist though, i'm just a girl on the internet who wants to help people.

[residentdormouse]

Tackling Those Tenacious ‘T’ Words 

Trudging through tombs of text, torn on what tapestry of terms to tack together, I try to trust that the tremendous task we have taken on will traipse along without turning tedious. The turnout of “T” themes throughout my tales tested the theory that this trip could be terribly treacherous for maintaining any type of tranquility. Treason. Trauma. Torment. Torture. But thankfully, tears only tempted to tumble when testing out the ‘tire’s, and that's only from thinking of the turbulent trail this will soon travel down for them.    

(One section makes me cry, what of it 😂. I didn't end up picking that one though, cause you know, River Song.)

My Words: Track, Throw, Tight, Tough, Tire

Your Words: Unknown, Unusual, Unique, Umbrella, Under

As always, Open Tag, jump in if you want to join!

Track

“So this,” she pointed between the two of them, “meant nothing to you?”

Panic took over immediately. Shit! Take it back. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

“We’re not a thing?”

In his current state, Lloyd was in no place to gauge the sincerity of her pout. “I never said—”

“Don’t you love me?”

“Hey. Woah…”

Hands flew up in defense, but the cheeky smile bursting from her face, her eyebrows raising and falling in a playful challenge; it caused him to stop in his tracks. “Just fucking with you, sweetheart. Like I’d be involved with a guy who seriously uses the phrase ‘sweet buns’…”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Throw

Once she was finished, Glen sat there, puzzling the matter for a bit. His sigh was very similar to when they pieced together their shared dreams. It was a lot. Too much. The longer the silence lasted, the more her anxiety grew, and she felt just as crazy as when she first met him. Was she just imagining all this? Was it all in her mind?

Hoping for the best, she decided to cap the explanation. "I wish I had better answers."

Focused on different points on the floor, his eyes darted about, but he was far from admiring the hideous carpet. New information was processing, connections being made, theories developing. The process would be enjoyable if circumstances were different.

"There's obviously more going on here than any of us really thought possible." He stood as he spoke, and grabbed some of the long since cooled tea from earlier. "Maybe I got a glimpse into your dreams somehow, and maybe… maybe it was your doing. I don't know how this works. None of us do. But if we're throwing crazy things up for discussion, I paint the future. We're all having dreams of some woman out in Colorado, and we share a boogeyman in our nightmares..."

Hayden sat down on the far edge of the bed next to Kojak. Happily receiving absentminded head scratches, his tail thudded against the mattress. Glen continued on once she was settled.

"What I'm getting at is, who's to say what can and can't be done at this point. This isn't exactly the world we knew anymore, and there's no unringing that bell."

Tight

To say Nick was appealing was an understatement.

Ever since their first night here, her eyes had been drawn to him. Tall, dark, mysterious. But mysterious led to intimidating, and her comfort zone with small talk and introductions was little to none. Mostly none. So watching from afar, making amusing assumptions based on no facts at all, that's what she had.

'I bet he's the type of guy to walk in the rain instead of running.'

From there, she just started making a game of what random thoughts she could come up with about him. 'I bet he houses food like there's no tomorrow.' 'He's probably a light sleeper.' 'He seems like a spicy food type.' 'You know, he probably stretches like a cat when he wakes up.'

Then there was the one assumption to change everything.

'I bet he's the type to rest his chin on the top of your head while he's holding you tight in a hug.'

There was nothing overly special with the assumption itself. It would be logical with their heights, and didn't have anything inherently sexual in the thought, but after that, her brain held him in a different light. Her cheeks would flush as she thought of him further. Internal thoughts that only she could hear began to babble and trip over themselves in her head.

Tough

(Surprisingly only two instances of this, and you already caught the other one with river.)

Even with the makeshift bandage, blood still trickled down from the wound on her arm, and more contusions were forming at an alarming rate. While he couldn’t see the wound itself, the mats in her hair indicated a substantial wound was hidden under there as well. Worry was hard to hide at this point.

"So what is this?"

An inclination towards the gash on her arm was made, and she responded with a sigh.

"A four." He went to inspect it further, but she pulled her arm away with a hiss in pain. "Okay, a five."

There was no question to him that Max was tough. Since he had known her, she had done some of the most risky things he had ever witnessed. Running about burning buildings, taking on multitudes of those unknown creatures. Now fighting outnumbered battles with her own. A five to her was probably a nine to anybody else. Good luck trying to get her to admit that though.

Even still, he raised an eyebrow to question the assessment. Her reply came back firm.

"A five."

Tire

(No instances of ‘tire’, and most of the ‘tired’s are spoiler heavy or already used. I guess this will suffice.)

“So did you all have a plan for this?”

Without surprise, Harold was the first to jump in, but Quinn only offered up a brief glance to him before going back to his packing. “Honestly?”

At this point, she couldn’t tell if her agitation was all still bubbling internal, or if it was now visible to those around her. With frustration built up ready to burst, Max was sure it was the latter. And if it wasn’t, it soon would be.

“No, Quinn, we want your happy horseshit. Of course, honestly!”

The short outburst let out a small amount of her agitation, but it was immediately replaced with regret. Quinn clicked the final latch on his bag with a soft sigh and looked up at her, tired features clearly worn down beyond anything she had seen on him before.

“We never really had a solid plan. Truthfully, we were just hoping to do as much as we could until we inevitably got pinned. If leaving subtly on our own was no longer a viable option, and it came down to the wire, which apparently it has, we figured we’d just run the same route as we sent everybody else. Seems that may very well be the case now.”

The information tore at her; this was it from the brains of their group. One locked in a cube, if not worse, and one with no plan whatsoever. No backup at all. Flying by the seat of their pants.

[xmiad]

"Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Mia shouted angrily, grabbing some clothing she found laying on the floor. She couldn’t be fussy this morning, she had to wear whatever she just picked up - after all, she was running late for work. The brown haired woman couldn’t exactly be late for work either as she had to hand over her presentation to her boss before the children came in. Mia questioned why she wanted to work as a teacher when all she truly wanted in that moment in time was more sleep. “Coffee.” She blurted out to herself, shrugging on her backpack. The brunette looked in the mirror, she really looked like a school kid. She was wearing a jumper, leggings, boots and a backpack with her hair tied in a bun. Mia always worried the children wouldn’t take her seriously if they had her in class and she felt as though her attire wasn’t helping her case either. Mia ran out the door, locking her apartment after her.

Mia was currently on one mission - get coffee. The short woman ran down the streets, trying her best to make it in time for coffee and work - she couldn’t do her job this tired after all. The brunette wasn’t usually one for coffee either, she was truly a tea lover through and through. Although, she did know when she was needing it - it just meant that she would be up all night marking papers before crashing hard. “Coffee, coffee, coffee.” The girl murmured, looking up at the shop that stood before her - Java Junction. She sped in, not realising she had jumped the queue. “Can I get a triple-shot espresso iced coffee please?” She asked the server, pulling out her phone from her bag to pay. The brunette looked up at the server with a puzzled face before turning round to the person before her who was also about to pay for their items. “Oh my God, I am so sorry.” She blurted out, looking the person up and down. “I just jumped didn’t I? I’m like the worst person ever. Please let me buy you your stuff.”

[boredandmedicated]

Blaming the DEA for the adderall shortage does nothing

I am in my 20s and have been diagnosed with ADHD since 2008. Taken stimulants since 2008 with brief periods of trying nonstimulant medication in hopes of not needing to take stimulants anymore. I’ve been on adderall since 2016 and never had an issue obtaining my prescription until the past few years. Now, I blamed the DEA at first. Couldnt fathom why they wouldnt just raise the fucking quotas. Surely it isnt a supply issue. But as time goes on I honestly understand why more and more. Not to say I agree with it or LIKE having the stress I get every month, nor am I saying the dea is blameless here- seriously, they certainly arent blameless, okay? Dont take this to mean that.

But in large part this is because of the original, extremely loose standards surrounding an adhd diagnosis in, say, 2000-2005. Kids could get a diagnosis and a prescription for doing shit that normal kids do. Not wanting to read a book. Wanting to play outside. Normal kid shit. There were a substantial-though perhaps not a majority- of parents who obtained a diagnosis for their children like so despite knowing that their child did not have it. There were multiple reasons for this, though from anecdotal accounts it seemed more common for kids aged 12-17; whereas parents with children under 12 years old seemed (again, anecdotal, not statistical) to be seeking that diagnosis as an easy answer.

Prescriptions were booming and the kids were predictably not getting better after being given adderall- in fact, many were WORSE, unable to sit still entirely, having been given an amphetamine that just boosted their energy and didnt help with focus at all.

Following the realization that this was because a lot of kids that were prescribed adderall and diagnosed with ADHD did not, in fact, actually have it, the measures for prescribing and diagnosing ADHD were significantly tightened up. One requirement I recall is that an in-person visit and evaluation was required before any diagnosis or prescription for adderall. This would continue until COVID, when they declared a state of emergency. This allowed people to bypass the usual requirements for obtaining adderall and an ADHD diagnosis- so, no in-person, lengthy evaluation and comprehensive exam with a questionnaire, puzzle-type things, and verbal questions with open ended answers.

At the same time, as COVID quarantine extended beyond the original short-term that people were expecting, people were realizing quarantine fucking sucked. It is hard for ANYONE to work at home as they normally would at the office. Flexibility is incredible at home, but people were going stir crazy. And many attributed that stir-craziness, either validly or less so, to undiagnosed ADHD. ADHD became “trendy”. Platforms like Done would advertise on tiktok and twitter with little videos about how easy they make getting a diagnosis, how quickly they can get you adderall, how its all online. How with quarantine in place, it can get you where you need to be, easily diagnosis within an hour, a prescription within the week.

As a result, as shown by this graph (somewhat), there was a significant jump in adderall prescriptions for young adults aged 22-44.

I dont know and cant say how many of these are attributed to misunderstanding normal human behavior with ADHD, as opposed to valid diagnoses. I can say this: Adderall is not a joke, and abuse of adderall, people seeking diagnoses because they just want the drug itself, thats not uncommon. Its not uncommon for any drug. The DEA will not risk another drug crisis after crack, and especially during the fentanyl crisis now- and not to mention, tranq on the rise.

For that reason, I think blaming the DEA is a fruitless endeavor. We should be focusing on things that we CAN do. One idea I’ve had is, maybe we could make nonstimulant medications the first line of treatment. Wellbutrin, for instance. Nonstimulant medications tend to work much better prior to having any stimulant medication treatment for ADHD anyways. And bringing back the in person evaluations and lengthier diagnostics. I really do understand the classism arguments made about that requirement. But I think its honestly necessary. It is much harder to “fake” or “exaggerate” ADHD symptoms during an hours long in person evaluation, than it is to do so on an unmonitored, five question quiz and a 20 minute zoom call.

Taking adderall without needing it is not only selfish, but also, harmful to others AND yourself. Heart issues, anxiety, lack of appetite, and the “focus” doesnt work the way it does in people with ADHD if you take it without needing it. Not to mention, longterm stimulant use in someone without ADHD, when that person stops taking it, withdrawal symptoms from it can look remarkably similar to actual ADHD. Then we get stuck in this perpetual cycle. And frankly, Its not fun to wake up and see posts from people who made fun of me for my ADHD in elementary and middle school, suddenly glamorizing their own sudden onset ADHD and posturing as though theyve had it all along. Especially when I know theyre the ones contributing to the stigma that not just me, but many people face today when trying to simply… get the medication we need to do work at an even remotely functional level. And even more so when I know that shit is why doctors are hesitant to even recognize an adhd diagnosis as valid anymore. They see any adult with adderall now as the epitomal pill pusher, pill seeker, addict that just got a fun little upper to stay up and be energetic.

So yeah. Dont just blame the DEA. It is people too. Its people you know, sometimes even your friends.

And, you can acknowledge the bad ones without dragging the people with valid prescriptions and true intentions through the mud. So if this post doesnt apply to you, i promise im not talking about you.