#still trying to decide if i'll also do a second half of the year overall tt faves

[dunmeshistash]

Interview to celebrate the opening of the Ryoko Kui Exhibition

About Delicious in Dungeon: Story making

Q1. Your first long-running series has lasted for about 9 and a half years. Has it been different from your previous experience drawing short stories?

A1. Compared to short stories, the series has been easier because the same characters appear each time. But I was surprised to find that I got tired of drawing the same characters too many times.

Q2. You have said before that the overall structure of the story was decided before serialization began, but how much of that had you communicated to your editor? Also, what kind of communication did you have during the series production?

A2. The goal was something we discussed and had decided on from the beginning. The goal itself was simple, but the path to get there was more difficult and took longer than imagined.

Q3. Regarding the overall story concept and development, did you write out or put anything down in writing (such as the plot)?

A3. I did, but it was simple.

Q4. Did you come up with the dishes based on the monsters you wanted in the story? Or did you come up with the monsters based on the dishes?

A4. It depended on the story, but usually the story came first followed by the monsters or food. I feel like that was most often the order.

Q5. As you progressed in drawing the series, what elements of the characters, story, or world expanded or grew in the most unexpected way?

A5. Nothing particularly unexpected perhaps. When I used to draw web manga, I tended to think up inconsequential settings. So, from the beginning I tried to restrain myself as much as possible and not expand too much. I was surprised when my editor said "Let's expand it more," in the second half of the series.

Q6. "Delicious in Dungeon" starts with a relatively simple setting, but as the series and the labyrinth exploration continues, the map slowly expands little by little in the readers' minds. It becomes more three-dimensional, revealing the secrets of the world, and taking on a multilayered structure. Are there any sources that you used as a reference, or which influenced you in creating this multilayered structure?

A6. A long time ago, when I was working on my personal web manga (fantasy), I drew it however I wanted, thinking that "Only people who can read this will read it," but I regularly received feedback that it was "unreadable", so I tried to make it as easily. accessible as possible.

Q7. The series combines many elements, including "fantasy", "gourmet", "battles", and "puzzle solving", but I think it's also important that it is a "comedy" which makes people laugh. Could you let us know if you have a creative commitment towards depicting humor?

A7. My hopes are that I can make it fun for people to read.

[page 5]

About Delicious in Dungeon: Drawing manga

Q1. Please tell us about the drawing tools you currently use, both digital and analogue.

A1. In terms of analogue tools, I use a light box, a G pen, a round pen, and a brush pen. And for digital, I use CLIP STUDIO PAINT and a Wacom LCD tablet. Screentone pasting is always done on the computer, so ultimately it all ends up as a digital manuscript.

Q2. Do you have any rules or reasons for using digital and analog separately?

A2. I'm always looking for ways to draw better and save time, so the exact approach is probably different for almost every chapter. Personally, I feel that analogue methods create more appealing lines, but I feel like digital saves time, so maybe I'll do a digital rough sketch and do the inking by hand… I might have been using a G pen, and maybe I'll try out a turnip pen, or this time I'm short on time so I'll draw it entirely digitally, but with digital I can redo it over and over, so maybe analogue is still faster, and so on and so forth. I'm indecisive in this way and so haven't developed a consistent process.

Q3. I understand that you prepare 3D data for your assistants to draw the backgrounds. What kind of data did you make for "Delicious in Dungeon" ?

A3. You could call it 3D, but it's not a proper model, just something to help with the rough sketching. I line up cubes to share the perspective and sense of scale, and they use it as a reference.

Q4. At the beginning of the series, the characters and backgrounds were somewhat simply drawn, and it seems like they became richly detailed over the progression of the story. What was your intention behind using these different styles?

A4. It's simply that my technique isn't stable. I thought I'd put a lot of effort in at the start. I remember being confused when my editor asked me to add more in to the drawing, and I wondered "Where…?"

Q5. Thinking about the food, were there any menu illustrations that you were particularly satisfied with, or which you struggled with?

A5. I've never liked my own food illustrations. But the times when I read other people's manga and thought "That looks delicious," I think it's been more an influence of the movement, the staging, and the situation than the drawings.

Q6. For the world maps and the terrain of each continent, did you refer to any maps of the real world? I feel like the shape of the 'island' is similar to the shape of Fukuoka Prefecture or Kyushu.

A6. I didn't reference any specific geography, but I did try to put thought into things like whether a developed city would be near a river or the sea, and what the coastline would look like. I'm pleased if it feels similar to a real place, because it means my interpretation was pretty accurate.

About Delicious in Dungeon: Other

Q1. Which is your favorite monster?

A1. Nightmare.

Q2. I'm sure you have received a lot of feedback from readers in countries and regions outside of Japan. Please tell us if there was anything from them that made you happy, was unexpected, or which made a lasting impression on you.

A2. When you play foreign games, there are times when you think "Why did they translate it into Japanese like that?" But having been on the side of having something translated, I've realized some things are unavoidable, or endless, and there are many things that don't matter either way from the author's perspective, so it was interesting.

About Ryoko Kui's short story collections and herself

Q1. Dragons are a consistent and important motif in your work. Was there any particular work or experience which inspired this? Also, are there points about drawing dragons which you find interesting or have had to work hard on?

A1. It's less about liking dragons, and more that I'm interested in the worlds in which dragons exist. When I draw dragons, the depiction in itself has a sweet feeling to it. I have never had a pet reptile, so I don't have a very good understanding of them.

Q2. Unomiya University in your story "The dragon's school is on top of the mountain" has a Faculty of Dragons, Department of Environmental Studies, and Department of Technology Studies, and a Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. If you were to enroll in the university, which department or faculty would you like to enter?

A2. I probably wouldn't be accepted….

Q3. The collection includes a short story staged as an essay manga. Are you a fan of essay manga? Please tell us about any genres of essay manga that you like.

A3. I love all kinds of essay manga. I read them often.

Q4. If you were to make your own game, what kind of game would you like to make?

A4. I prefer being a player when it comes to games.

Q5. When did you first start drawing illustrations (doodles)?

A5. I don't exactly remember when I first drew a picture, but I think I started drawing manga around the fourth or fifth grade of elementary school. in my notebooks and had my friends read them.

Q6. What is the most fun part about drawing manga?

A6. Every part is fun and hard in its own way.

Q7. Please tell us if there is anything you "just can't stop no matter what".

A7. My procrastination habit.

Q8. Could you please tell us if there's something you want to draw now?

A8. I've been working continuously since the serialization, so I'd like to take about 2 to 3 months to just draw whatever I want.

[livingformintyoongi]

Massi, my gorgeous Lovely! First of all, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!! (I swear I can’t remember if I already said that, but who cares—you deserve it on repeat.) Sooo, I was just lurking around, being my usual stalker self, and I saw the preview of Guilty as Sin, and OH MY GOD, I am hooked. Like… he cheated and then she cheated?? That’s the kind of chaotic drama I live for. I’m so invested already—when are you posting?? I need answers and probably snacks for all the emotions I’m about to feel.

Also, I hope you’re staying cozy, warm, and super hydrated. Seriously, take care of yourself, okay? You’re way too amazing for anything less.

First of all, thanks for sending me that gif, it's literally one of my favorites (Tae gets me in general, but that presentation *cheff kiss* 🙂‍↕️).

Second: Hello again!!! Happy Holidays to you too, hope you had an amazing Christmas and that preparations for the new year are going well!

Regarding Guilty As Sin... it's a fic I've been thinking about for like a little less than a year now (? I'm really not too sure, but yes I've been wanting to write it for months because I loved the idea 🫡 still don't know when I'll publish it because I'm still deciding whether to make it a series or a single one shot (I'm indecisive 😔) buuuut, since I love you so much, I'll give you another look at what I've been writing!

----

You took a deep breath, looking at yourself one last time in your car’s mirror. It wasn’t the kind of outfit you’d usually wear for... well, for any situation in general. Dresses that were too revealing weren’t your thing. You preferred something simple and comfortable, something that made you feel at ease with yourself—something that definitely didn’t feel like one of your breasts might slip out of the overly plunging neckline of this dress. But you were running out of options; you didn’t know what else to do to save your relationship.

Ever since you talked about that topic with Taehyung, Jungkook, and Soyeon, you hadn’t been able to get the idea out of your head. Could all your problems really be solved if your sex life became more active? You didn’t have much experience overall. Hyunjin had been your first, and you were still quite young when you met him. You’d only had a few boyfriends before him, with whom you’d only kissed, nothing more.

You remembered having had this conversation with him in the past, and it had ended with him smiling at you and saying that it really didn’t matter to him, that he’d wait for you to be ready. Sure, that’s what you did—you waited a few months, and then, when things started getting serious, you asked him if you could try it. After that, neither of you seemed to want to repeat it as much as your friends claimed it was supposed to happen.

At least until now. You were determined to save your relationship, to completely forget all your dreams about Taehyung and focus on your boyfriend, just as you were supposed to. You softly patted your cheeks, a small attempt to encourage yourself somehow. You stepped out of the car, carefully ensuring that the dress didn’t ride up—or down—too much, risking exposing yourself.

You looked at the tall building in front of you, the one you had lived in with Hyunjin for the past three years. It reminded you of the exorbitant amount of money he had. You swallowed hard, clutching your clutch tightly as you walked to the elevator.

The ride to your floor was silent, filled with a layer of anxiety and anticipation that kept you from thinking clearly. Your heart pounded against your chest, and emotions began to course through every inch of your body with each step closer to your apartment. It had been almost a month and a half since the last time you were together, and you had never worn anything like this before. Would he like it? Would he feel attracted to you? Could this really fix the situation as Soyeon had suggested?

You pushed those questions aside once you opened the front door, biting your bottom lip at the restlessness taking over you. The entryway light turned on automatically, illuminating the hallway leading into the apartment. It was at that exact moment, as the light switched on, that your heart stopped.

On the floor were a pair of sleek black heels, scattered next to your boyfriend’s branded shoes. Soon, a knot formed in your stomach, and nausea didn’t take long to follow. Your legs seemed to refuse to move, keeping you frozen in place, your eyes fixed on those shoes. Heart still racing, you took your first step. You didn’t take off your own heels; you didn’t have the courage—not until you knew why there were women’s shoes at your entrance. Shoes that weren’t yours.

The apartment lights were all off, and because of the anxiety you felt, you didn’t dare turn any on as you made your way to your bedroom, wishing, hoping, that your intuition was wrong. Maybe it was just an old friend, and they were chatting or doing anything that didn’t involve throwing four years of your relationship away.

That wish was brutally shattered the moment a playful laugh, followed by a series of moans, made you stop in your tracks. You recognized that voice. Damn, you recognized it.

A thin line of light reflected on the hallway wall. You knew it came from your bedroom, so you didn’t take long to reach it, almost as if you were on autopilot.

You tried to imagine a thousand different scenarios in your head, all trying to find an explanation that wasn’t the one you were thinking. You took the last few steps, feeling the pressure in your chest grow heavier with each one, until you stood in front of the door.

Until you approached the small gap that caused that thin line of light.

Only then did your heart shatter completely. You weren’t sure if it was because your boyfriend was screwing one of the many models you’d seen at work—one he had sworn he’d never look at because she was “too vulgar” for someone like him—or because they seemed to be having so much fun, laughing and kissing as if they loved each other, as if they weren’t in your home, rolling around on your sheets, with your boyfriend.

A part of you wanted to run away, to break down crying right there, to kick down that stupid door and drag that woman out by her perfect hair, throw her and your boyfriend out of your home. You wanted to make him pay, wanted him to beg for forgiveness, to give you some sort of explanation. Was she the one who seduced him? Was he drunk? Did he have a twin brother you didn’t know about, and it was him you were seeing now?

You tried to find excuses to soften the blow. But there was no way to justify this, and you knew it. Hyunjin was screwing one of his coworkers in your bed, without the slightest hint of regret.

If you had thought this could be fixed just moments ago, you were completely wrong. There was no turning back now. Your relationship was destroyed, and nothing could fix it—not the uncomfortable dress, not the painful shoes, not a week of intense sex with him. Nothing would work.

With that final thought, you retraced your steps, feeling silent tears stream down your face, dripping onto your chin and falling to the floor, forming tiny puddles of water. That’s how you felt now—tiny.

You let your feet guide you back to your car. The nerves you had felt on the way to your apartment were gone. Now, there was only... emptiness, a void where there was nothing, where you couldn’t feel anything, as if your heart was numb.

You closed your eyes, letting the tears fall freely, but you didn’t last long like that. The memories of that girl moaning your boyfriend’s name, the way he kissed her desperately... he had never treated you like that, never smiled at you when you were together.

Maybe that had been the first sign you chose not to notice.

[bryan360]

No "On This Day" posting I'll be focusing today.

Also….

(NO COPYING OR PLAGIARIZING FROM ME AND ONE OF MY CLOSEST FRIEND’S WORK! THAT INCLUDES OUR CHARACTERS, DESIGNS, STUFF, ETC. IMPOSTERS AND SEXBOTS ARE NOT WELCOME TO FOLLOW MY BLOG WHATSOEVER! 😡 That will be all….I mean it.)

2024 Review - Seagate 2TB Portable Drive (Second Half - Installing and Formatted)

Hey, guys! Sorry for keeping this waited from past weeks that I’m trying to write I got. Nevertheless, it’s time for the second half part of my portable drive topic review without leaving behind. Last time where I’d covered the unboxing portion during the first half, I’m now moving onto to install with my gaming system which I’d did awhile back. Before I can show you around, there’s something I wanted to bring I’d kept secret from past years. I should’ve brought it sooner if I had such time left til now. Nevertheless, it’s for my gaming console itself as a previous upgrade that my family give me.

(From January. 6th; 2:29 to 2:30 P.M.)

This here’s my actual Xbox One S console (not the Xbox Series S/X, though). It happened back in December. 16th, 2019 that my family give me as a late Christmas gift by surprise. Well, a surprise for me back then from before. There’s also a second gift that would be save for another time. Anyways, It’s been past 6 years later after decided to move on with my Xbox One S system. Its longevity usage runs well of playing games I have; which I’ll get to that for my final part soon. As for what happened to my original Xbox One, the one I got from April 2015; is thankfully kept into my closest that doesn’t have scratches. Don’t worry, I still got everything for my Xbox One S system with its data that was originally carried from my original gaming console.

(From 2:32 to 2:56 P.M.)

So anyways as I continue on, we’re bringing you this step where I installed with my portable drive and its USB cable. Took about few seconds to connect with both items together, but finally got it of what’s on screen display right after turning my gaming console. As you can see, there’s a front USB slot down left corner below where I’d placed there. It was my second attempt when my gaming console recognize not too long ago. Of course there’s some USB slots on the backside I’d tried to get around minutes before that. I don’t know why or if I would’ve paid attention closely, but the front USB slot is one way to go. Now, I went to options setting to manage storage devices; where you can see I could select on either media and for games with my portable drive. Obviously, I’m here to formatted any games I got. As of now though, it read about 1.8TB instead of 2TB from what the box advertised. It does happens for other hard drives, so that’s alright.

(From 2:58 to 3:01 P.M.)

Just holding on til I'd promised I can finished off for the final part soon. In the meantime, I've given to formatted my portable drive that didn't take long to complete. I'd given its name of "My Games" first during this recording. Looks good so far as I'm moving to store with one of my games I got. That said, that's gonna be it for this second half part of my portable drive review. I’m sorry that things weren’t according as planned I’d would’ve do more for this month. I’m just having some trouble scheduling while I’m stuck doing at the program for weekday mornings. Even though I would be doing during the weekends by any point, I’d tried my best to write some stuff. Nevertheless, at least I’d gotten with this second half covered; especially finally showing my previous gaming console after years later.

My Overall Thoughts (so far):

As of now, It’s nice to installed with my portable drive and its 3.0 cable to my gaming console in respond. So far, I’d went through formatted with my device before I can move on with my other games to store later. And I just had one game that deserved to start up for my final part soon. Hope you’ll be ready for this. 👍

Reveal - Link Here

First Half - Unboxing Impressions - Link Here #2

Tagged: @murumokirby360 @carmenramcat @alexander1301 @rafacaz4lisam2k4 @paektu

[recurring-polynya]

Writing/Art Update 12.5.2023

It took me all week, but I did, finally, finish Chapter 5.

I had two great wordcount weeks in a row. This was not a great wordcount week. I did spend a lot of time thinking about my fanfic, and plotting and outlining. These are not normally activities that I enjoy, but it honestly wasn't so bad. I decided that I didn't want to keep proceeding forward until I had decided how this thing is going to end. If you've ever read any of my writing advice posts, you'll know that I nearly always advise deciding how the fanfic will end before you start writing the fanfic. The only reason I didn't take my own advice is because I usually don't need to. While I am infamously bad at ending individual scenes and chapters, I nearly always know how a fanfic is going to end, and this time I just...didn't?

Anyway, I thought about it all week and thought up some scenes I would like to do and thought about the character arcs and motivations I wanted my three mains to go through in the second half of this fanfic, and I also thought about characters whom I felt had not gotten enough screentime. All of these things were easier than coming up with an ending, but I did eventually come up with an idea for my last few scenes, and I think it's good enough that the rest will fill itself in as I go. We are definitely shaping up to be 9 chapters and an epilogue, which means I am now slightly over halfway done? Yay? It still feels frustrating because the front half is pretty self-contained and I want to show it to people, but I cannot, it needs to wait but there's soooooo muuuuuuch left to goooooooo.

Anyway, let's focus on the positive! I added 2,939 (new) words to Chapter 5, bringing it up to 10,160, the longest chapter so far, but not egregiously so. I added one scene which is both unnecessary and dreadful. It ruins the pacing at the end of the chapter, it goofs up my alternating narrator structure, and it's just extremely weird. Also, if I cut it, the chapter length will better match the other ones. I wrote a note in my outline "this scene is bad and you should delete it." Will I? Readers, I likely will not. This is fanfic and when you write fanfic, you can just make people read unnecessary scenes about Renji and Iba's dirtbag friendship and they can't do anything about it because I do not receive any sort of compensation for this. I promise that if I come to my senses and actually ax, I will post it here. In other news, everyone who loved the Squad Six-gets-universal-healthcare scene from Hearts will be overjoyed to learn that this one features a bit in which Ukitake-and-Yumichika-discuss-the-Gotei-13-procurement-process. Once again, I do not get paid.

I also spent some time this week fixing up the portion of Chapter 6 that I had already written. Some of it needs to be fully reworked, but there was a significant chunk that could be pretty much pasted in with a little minor editing.

That brings the wordcount for this week to 17,423 for Part B, or 54,296 overall (+10,207 for the week). That is...that is starting to become a fanfic.

It's also December, and there's a lot of stuff going on, so I'm really trying to not be too ambitious in my goal-setting, but I'm hoping that maybe I'll be able to get through Chapter 7 by the end of the year.

I did a drawing tutorial this week. It was okay. I'm kinda 🫠about drawing lately, but sometimes I can only really concentrate on one thing at a time.

[the--sound--of--rain]

2022 Writers' Review

It's already two months into the year, but I'm still going to do this, because I think it's such a nice thing. I was tagged by @lavandulacosmos and @natures-marvel thank you! 💕

1. What is your AO3 account?

brownest_goldfish

2. How many words did you write total in 2022?

34'481, according to AO3 stats

It's not a lot of words, but I feel like this was the year I've developed most as a writer so far, especially writing the first chapter of Lamb and the last chapter of my spooktober fic and I'm very proud of that ✨

3. How many fics did you publish in 2022? How many multichapters vs oneshots?

12 fics, 3 multichaptered and 9 oneshots (and of the 3 multichaptered ones only one is finished so you can see that this is not where my strength lies agajsks but i'm trying to do it more and i actually love it!)

4. What was your longest fic? Your shortest fic?

"A Lover in the story" (finished) is the longest at 9987 words but I published 5000 of those in 2023. Otherwise the longest is "A Lamb for Our Love" at 8618 words so far (one of two chapters)

The shortest is "With a smile" at 412 words. The shortness is owed to it being only one scene, more of a picture I imagined after reading Cry Wolf by @roccinan – and since I can't draw, I decide to write it down 🥰

5. What was your most popular fic? Your least popular fic?

I find this so hard to say, because numbers can never really encapsulate this, and every piece of appreciation from anyone for any fic is a gem in itself. But just for simplicity I'll go for Kudos and Hits here:

The one with most Kudos and Hits is funnily one I didn't write for Berlermo, but for "Arcane" as a birthday gift for @stilljustbitten: "Ice blue" got 113 Kudos and 842 Hits, probably owed to the fact that this fandom is just a bit bigger. My most popular Berlermo fic in 2022 in numbers is "Art and Attraction" at 83 Kudos and 755 Hits.

The least popular in numbers is "Love wins" at 16 Kudos and 146 Hits.

6. What fic didn’t perform as well as you thought it would?

I didn't expect a specific amount of reaction on any of them, so I'd say none of them. Every interaction with on of my fics just made me go "oh!🥰"

7. What fic performed way better than you thought it would?

I'd say "Like the Painting of a sorrow" because it was this oneshot I came up with, wrote and posted within 24 hours, a random idea after reading Dorian Gray. That being said, I am very proud and fond of it, so it made me so happy that it was appreciated!

And also "Love wins", I struggled getting the first chapter together and was worried it was too chaotic, and I was so happy it got good feedback.

8. What was your favorite fic you wrote from 2022?

I'm most proud of and currently most emotionally attached to "A Lover in the story". I'm especially proud of the last chapter, mostly because I managed to write it at all and make something I really like of it.

A Lamb for our Love stands right next to it though – although it's still not finished. (Not because I neglected it, but just because the second chapter is so hard to write) and I'm so excited for what it will become <3

9. What was your favorite fic that somebody else wrote in 2022?

Reducing this to one would be a shame, so I'll list a few 😊

and that was the moment i knew by @alfredo-kesmann

Andrés has Hanahaki disease and coughs up red roses. Whose favourite flowers could those be?

It had started with inconspicuous coughing, a few weeks ago. Soon followed the shaky breaths, the trouble breathing normally at random times. Then, came the shaking fingers, half a week later, creating unavoidable unsteady black lines in the painting he had been working on, the jawline of his self portrait now ruined.

A beautiful take on the trope, with all the drama befitting Berlermo, and overall an extremely romantic and enjoyable read.

Chimera 키메라 by @signorin-anarchia

A sort of crossover of Money Heist Korea and La casa de papel. Andrés is in the concentration camp Korean Berlin was in. Martín joins him there.

His mother's arms are a cradle, a safe haven.

A shelter from all that is evil on earth.

He can remember the faded feeling of bones colliding, rubbing, which nevertheless feels as comfortable as nothing in the world.

Nothing in the whole world.

But there's never much more than anything in the world.

And now his mother's arms are pincers, stealing his life, locking his way.

A very interesting concept with beautiful execution, and very poetic prose that aches just right when you read it.

The Swan's Symphony by @nharidy

Martín plans another and executes heist after the gold heist, and a rescue mission for Andrés on the side – who is alive but asuffering <3. All the old members of the gang are there, and also a lot of new additions.

“Is this true?” Estocolmo asked, turning to El Professor. Mirko, however, was looking at Palermo. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not , he realized. Palermo wasn’t there because one night in the future he might get killed in his bed. 

No, he was there for the one and only reason he's ever done anything since Mirko knew him.

El Profesor sighed.

This genuinely feels like a continuation of lcdp. It gives all the vibes of the show, the characters, their interactions and the action, flashbacks and execution of the heist are spot on. Just overall extremely fun to read.

Remember what your old pal said by @roccinan

La casa de papel Toy Story AU. Andrés is a bullfighter doll, and he finds Martín in the collection he belongs to. But what is Martín really up to?

Andrés is beautiful. And he doesn’t need a mirror to tell him what he already knows. Because he can stare at anything that bounces back light for a wonderful view of himself from head to toe: sunglasses, helmet visors, watches, or even the window on a bright spring day.

He has a slim, well-proportioned frame, a statuesque figure that expertly hides a body of incredible might and power within its wires.

This is genuinely just hilarious, and Andrés is perfectly delusional in it. And the Berlermo romance is so sweet – with an added element of darkness, of course.

10. Tag your friends to do this year-end fic review as well!

I think everyone has already been tagged and done this agajsks but I'll tag the ones I haven't seen doing it, please just ignore this if you have ✌🏼💕 @dormarunt @liz @signorin-anarchia @oreo @lammaducks ✨

[kenshiramblings]

My Three Playthroughs

I picked up Kenshi as a birthday present in 2020 after being pretty isolated that year. I'd held off buying it but finally caved.

So far, I have had three playthroughs of Kenshi. I will not disclose how many hours I have in the game but I will say that it's in the triple digits. But each playthrough has been different overall (though the second and third did have one bit of overlap).

Playthrough 1 (?): Mods: None

I've got to be honest, I can't even remember the first guys name. I think it was Stump/Stub/Stamp? Something like that. The reason that I can't remember is because the first playthrough lasted last than an hour. I was a Scorchlander and was trying to play as in character as possible. The game said that Scorchlanders didn't like authority and were loners so I mined up enough copper and iron to buy food/building materials before leaving to build my own shelter away from everyone.

What I didn't know was that once you set down stakes, it put you on everyone's radar. I also didn't know that people would come to your new base. I learned the hard way when the Holy Nation came for Prayer Day.

During the conversation, I got the option to slap the Holy Priest. Well, Scorchlanders are supposed to be anti-authority and this guy was annoying so I slapped him. I guess I hadn't thought about the 8 or so armed guards with him who promptly drew they're swords and absolutely ruined my level 1 character.

I remember still being in the main character mindset of 'they got me good but I'll get up, get stronger, and get revenge'. But my character didn't get up. He slowly bled out and died right there. I didn't even take a screenshot of him. I can't even remember his name. And as the game kept playing, allowing me to watch my corpse and people walking by in the distance, I understood what kind of game Kenshi was. Your character didn't have a grand story or immense destiny. You could die in the first two days of playing, broke and in front of a half built small shack you never even got to finish building.

And while that may have been off-putting for others, it made me want to try again. This first character's story was over but I'd learn from it and do better in the second one.

Playthrough 2 (Peace): Mods: Compressed Textures, 256 Recruitment Limit, Recruitable Prisoners

I didn't give Peace his name. It was the name generated for him and I just never changed it. I don't know why. I might not have expected him to live that long. Little did I know.

Peace's story starts very similarly to my first characters but the difference was that I played much more cautiously. Any sign of bandits, I'd have him run or hide. No fighting unless cornered. Because of this, his athletic and stealth stats went up pretty quickly to the point that he could out run most bandits easily.

Another skill he leveled up was from healing dying bandits that got attacked by the town guards. Maybe it was due to his name but I just couldn't sit back and watch the bandits bleed out so I'd heal them all up. This started a routine of me healing any dying bandits I could find and taking their weapons as collateral. I actually made a decent chunk of money this way.

At some point, I had him follow a group of slavemongers that had captured a bunch of unconscious bandits. After what felt like forever, they ended up passing Blister Hill where I decided to resupply. It was there that I found the first recruit, Moo.

Moo wanted to leave Blister Hill but complained that she couldn't because women weren't allowed to travel alone. I was looking for a bodyguard for Peace so I recruited her and after resupplying, I had them return to the Hub. I had Moo fight bandits which increased her toughness. I'd make Peace hide and if she got knocked unconscious, he was fast enough to swoop in and out run them with her on his shoulders. She eventually became strong enough to handle a small group of hungry bandits by herself.

As I mentioned, I had the recruit prisoner mod on which I hadn't used at that point but it would soon come in handy. And boy did it.

At one point, I happened upon a bunch of bandits who had gotten into a fight with Holy Nation Paladins and gotten destroyed. I healed them up like usual. I was finishing up when I saw a group of slavers coming our way. I decided to start grabbing some of the bandits up and hiding them in a nearby shack. I only managed to grab two before the slavers showed up and took the rest. I ended up taking the two I hid back to town where I recruited them.

After that, the group stayed at a relatively small size. After Peace's stealth got up to a ridiculous degree, I made a habit of sneaking into dust bandit camps, knocking them out, and stealing their gear to sell in town. We ended up making a ton of money. We ended up recruiting two Shek (one from Squin and a captured Dust bandit).

The turning point came when we got attacked by the Holy Nation and half of my party nearly died. Annoyed, I ended up sneaking into the nearest city (Stack) and abducting their top ranked guy. After turning him into the Shek, we made a ton of money and the Shek took over Stack which later became our base of operations.

The thing I love about Kenshi is that there is no set goal or end game that you have to follow to progress the game. You have to set your own goals to progress. My main goal became to make Peace the best blacksmith and learn the highest level of weapons, Edge class. And so, the party had to venture out to find books. Over time, we recruited more bandits and traveled to a bunch of different parts of the map. After another Holy Nation attack, I finally kidnapped the Holy Phoenix and left him chained to a post in the foglands. But Stack was always the final destination when it was all done.

After getting Peace to the highest level of blacksmithing, the next goal was to make our own base. I picked a spot across the road from Stack. Slowly but surely, our small base grew and eventually became a small stronghold. We survived many bandit attacks and raids with the attackers either ending up in cages or in beds. Most raiders usually ended up walking out of their own free will minus their weapons and gear. The kill count was very low. I'd be surprised if it even cracked the triple digits.

Eventually, I got bored and decided it was a good place to leave things off. Peace started with nothing but ended up with a small army and a large self sustaining base the size of a small town. I wanted to try a different scenario so I ended it there.

Playthrough 3 (Moon): Mods: Compressed Textures

For my third and most recent playthrough, I thought I'd try something different. I picked Son of a Captain backstory where you're the son of a United Cities captain who ends up in The Hub. Because of this backstory, you have a good relationship with the United Cities but the Holy Nation's hostility is at 100. But to get back to the United Cities, you have to travel through Holy Nation territory.

This time I named the character Moon. I just thought it fit with the world. I set out to play this character much differently from Peace. He was to be a lot more cunning and resourceful. The main goal was to make money and build him up enough to make the journey back to the United Cities safely.

After venturing south to Squin to get the travel supplies I would need (backpack, map, food rations, etc), I ended up recruiting Ruka. At some point, I ventured out to the swamps. I didn't go too deep just to the first town close to the outskirts. While there, I sent Ruka to a shop to get fish. Unfortunately while I was paying attention to her, blood spiders attacked the town and Moon. It happened so fast that by the time I noticed that he was fighting, he was already unconscious and dying. I had to buy a small shack so I could have somewhere safe for him to heal. It wasn't until after that that I realized he'd lost his left arm in the fight.

Returning to the Hub with one less arm, I basically built up their athletics so that they could outrun bandits and paladins. Once I decided that they were fast enough, I set them off to get a robotic arm from the Hivers and then through Holy Nation territory. In order to avoid a real fight, I sent them through the valley sneaking past farms. To avoid going through Okran's Shield, we took the long way around through the Northern Coast. It took a bit but we eventually made it through and eventually arrived at Stoat, which would become their home.

After that, my goal as Moon was to make money. After buying (and freeing) a couple slaves, I had them each learn different skills and bought a building to make our shop.

We ended up making several different things from bandages to armor but the main staple of the shop was food and liquor. We sold rum and sake at a pretty decent pace as well as foodcubes and gohan.

One thing that I wanted to do playing as Moon was see more of the map as I rarely ventured beyond a certain area as Peace. And as Moon, I ended up venturing out to see all the weird and crazy parts of Kenshi I didn't see the first time in half as many hours.

And while there were some close calls, we always made it back. I've been taking a break from this playthrough after putting a big chunk of time into it but as of right now, Moon owns three buildings in Stoat, has several skilled employees running his shop, has a million cats to his name, and generally just travels to far out places to find blueprints and science books.

The crazy thing is that if I decided to start again, there's still so much I haven't done and so many areas I can still explore even after three years. There are so many games that have little to no replay value but Kenshi is the type of game that you can go back to with different goals and have a completely different experience to the game you played before.

[excusethequality]

My 2024 in Film: April

Another month of films.

The sad part is I wouldn't be so far behind on these if I hadn't watched so friggin' many movies in March.

* = rewatches

81.

Bitch

(2017)

— Comedy Drama Directed by: Marianna Palka

A negligent husband/father is forced to start paying attention to his family when his wife suffers a mental break and stars thinking she's a dog.

I think it's worth noting that the actor playing the woman who thinks she's a dog is the director herself. I just think it makes the whole thing better knowing that all the weird scenes with her are ones that she created.

You know, I feel like this one would need a second viewing for me to really get a handle on it. I assumed I knew where it would go from the premise, but it tackles things rather differently than I was expecting. While the woman is almost always the central figure of the story it's actually her husband who we're primarily following and who is growing as a person through the process.

Since I found the woman who is having this break to be the more interesting figure, focusing on her husband was a little offputting. Especially because he is a wildly absent father and husband so watching him suddenly have to grow isn't the journey I came here for.

But there's some scenes at the end that made me start thinking that perhaps I had been looking at the story from the wrong angle and that perhaps the story was doing something subtler than I was giving it credit for.

I am still undecided on this one. But I will say that I have thought about it after I watched it and that can't be said for most movies.

82.*

For Your Consideration

(2006)

—Mockumentary Directed by: Christopher Guest

The set of movie is turned upside down when rumors of Oscar attention hit the set.

File under movies that took me half the movie to remember I had seen it before.

Sometimes Hollywood people want to make movies based on their life experiences as Hollywood people. The only problem being that life in the Hollywood bubble is FAR from a universal experience. So the more you know about the world surrounding Hollywood movies the funnier this will be. Which is rather unlike Guest's other films which have a much broader appeal.

It has its moments, but overall it just felt way too specific and a little ham fisted compared to his other work.

83.

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion

(1997)

— Comedy Adventure Directed by: David Mirkin

Two best friends try to create the image of a successful life in order to impressive the people at their 10 year high school reunion.

I'll be honest, I've avoided watching this movie for years because I just assumed it would be something I wouldn't like. But I finally broke and figured I'd knock another classic off the list and give it a go.

Lo and behold I actually kind of love it?

Since no one makes movies about asexuals, the closest representation I can get is stories about extremely close friends. For instance here Romy and Michele are best friends who've lived together for years. I can't remember exactly, but I think their beds are even in the same room? Are they said to occasionally hook up with dudes? Sure. Do they also seem to be way more into each other than anyone else? Absolutely.

And that my friends, is close enough for me. It's a non-sexual long-lasting, deeply intimate relationship. I'll take what I can get.

It's a silly movie. I could understand if its style of humor wasn't for everyone, but I was having a great time.

84.

The Hating Game

(2021)

— Rom-Com Directed by: Peter Hutchings Based on: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

After their respective publishing companies merge, two employees with very different styles start a bet to decide who gets to stay and who has to leave.

Okay, so this is just a very stock-standard enemies to lovers story. Usually that's a standard I enjoy, but here the whole thing is rather lukewarm because the two people are both corporate suits and fuck them.

Plus this is pulling on pigtails as foreplay style enemies to lovers. Not like a bitter rivals accidentally forge a bound of shared experience that only they can relate to, kinda enemies to lovers. So no thank you.

More importantly is the fact that early on we see the leading lady at home writing Smurfs fanfiction and then it's never brought up again?! I cannot stress enough how much this threw me. I was waiting the entire movie for that to somehow come back around.

My only guess is they threw that in because it sounded like a nerdy in a literary way kind of thing, without realizing that a person who would write Smurfs fanfiction is a very specific sort of person.

To further prove my point that the writers of this are strangely out of touch is the fact that at one point they refer to epipens as being nerdy...

...what the actual fuck are you talking about? The person has a deadly allergy! Plus the writer of Smurfs fanfiction does not get to mock the person with the epipen for being too nerdy!

Just very much an example of what you get when the popular crowd tries to write a "nerdy" character.

85.

Viktor und Viktoria

[English title: “Victor and Victoria”]

(1933)

— Rom-Com Directed by: Reinhold Schünzel

An aspiring singer impersonates a female impersonator to help a sick colleague, but when an agent discovers her she'll have to try and keep the ruse alive.

I loved Victor/Victoria so much I had to check out the original to see how it compared.

I definitely didn't like it as much as that one. Victor/Victoria used the premise to tackle ideas of queerness & gender and question if society's norms regarding them make any sense in the first place.

This one, however, is just here to have a good time. It's only goal is to give the audience 90minutes of silly good fun with some singing and dancing thrown in to make sure you get your money's worth of entertainment.

Renate Müller is definitely the star of the show as she was actually quite delightful and cute. But the rest of it was a little flat for me.

86.

Orlando, ma biographie politique

[English title: Orlando, My Political Biography]

(2023)

— [I honestly have no idea what genre this would be] Directed by: Paul B. Preciado

An amalgamation of trans stories with that of the story of Virginia Wolfe's Orlando. As the actors playing Orlando change so does the interpretations of the story.

This was the final selection for my house's Roommate Movie Nights and our theme of "Oh! So that's a thing."

It definitely fits the bill as it certainly is an original piece.

I think I was at a large disadvantage here as I have never read or seen any form of adaptation of Viriginia Wolfe's Orlando. So when they intermingle between the real trans stories and Orlando I'm at a bit of a loss as to where the line is.

So yeah. I don't think I'm the right person to go to for an opinion of this one. It's certainly a movie with a style all it's own. I enjoyed the uniqueness and the charm it had in tackling its subject. There was a Virginie Despentes cameo and I was so proud of myself for noticing right away.

[Tangentially I love Virginie Despentes' books. She writes deeply flawed characters in such a fascinating way. She's like the chain-smoking French aunt you never knew you needed in your life.]

87.

We Summoned a Demon

(2017)

— Horror Comedy Short Directed by: Chris McInroy

Two men try to perform a ritual to make themselves cool, but inadvertently summon a demon instead.

It has its moments, but overall not really in line with my sense of humor.

88.

Manhunter

(1986)

— Thriller Directed by: Michael Mann Based on: Red Dragon by. Thomas Harris

A retired criminal profiler is brought back in order to catch a dangerous serial killer.

I feel like I've had to have seen this before at some point, especially considering how big of a fan I am of Bryan Fueller's Hannibal show. I even went and read all of Thomas Harris' books during those years. But if I had seen this before I had forgotten nearly everything. So let's just say it was new to me.

This movie does so many interesting things in its adaptation of the novel and it's especially fun to compare it with the other adaptations.

William Peterson has an intriguing take on Will Graham. But the highlight for me was definitely Brian Cox's Hannibal. Which is just extra fun considering how Anthony Hopkins, Mads Mikkelsen, and Brian Cox have all played the character of Hannibal Lecter, they all have incredibly different versions, but I love them all.

Things like this are part of why I quite enjoy adaptations. Being able to compare how different stories tackle things is fascinating to me.

I really wanted to like this movie more, but there's just a number of parts that really took me out of the story. The music choices were especially bizarre to me. There would be these really tense scenes and then the soundtrack would kick in and just ruin the vibes for me.

I dunno. I'm a sucker for interesting adaptations though and there's just too many interesting choices here for me to discount it. I can't say I loved it, but I also can't say I didn't enjoy the uniqueness of the ride.

89.

Citizenfour

(2014)

— Documentary Directed by: Laura Poitras

The journalists Edward Snowden released his information to document the events of his leaks live as they happened.

Continuing my documentary kick this year, and finding my way here because Kirsten Joshnson, the current reigning champion of my best of this year list, was the cinematographer on this one.

I thought it was just a straight forward documentary about the events of the Snowden leaks, but it is so much more interesting than that!

Laura Poitras was the one Snowden leaked the information to! So she has this record of the whole process. You get to be in the room with her and Snowden and see how they plan the leaks and hear how they react as Snowden witnesses the pieces of his life falling apart as the government tries to track him down.

Just a truly fascinating documentary.

Plus I love reading about cyber security issues, so this is just a win-win all around for me.

90.

Monsters Crash the Pajama Party

(1965)

— Sci-Fi Comedy Short Directed by: David L. Hewitt

Some college girls have a sleep over in an abandoned house as part of a sorority hazing ritual. Unfortunately for them there's a mad scientist living in the basement and he needs more test subjects.

Did I watch this entirely because of the title?

...yes.

Am I proud of that fact?

No.

Not gonna lie: this was a rough watch. They really jumped in with a basic set up to a story and a gimmick, started shooting immediately, realized they didn't know where to go from there, then padded...that...shit...out...to...30...minutes.

The humor is so lazy it hurts. And the whole gimmick is that during one single scene the "monsters" in their bad Spirit Halloween-style costumes would leave the movie and run through the theater before returning to the movie. Even if I had witnessed the gimmick in action it wouldn't have mattered.

The thing's only 30 minutes and by the end it felt like it had gone on for ages.

91.

The Last Unicorn

(1982)

— Animated Fantasy Adventure Directed by: Jules Bass & Arthur Rankin Jr.

A unicorn goes on a quest to find the others of her kind.

This is one of those ones I've heard about forever, but never seen. But leave it to Rankin Bass to make something really unique, but deeply weird.

I honestly don't know what to say. It's a movie that both delivers some amazing emotional beats and will also routinely break their own flow with utterly weird scenes that don't really have a point. (looking at you scene where Alan Arkin is forced to motorboat a busty tree)

If the pacing flowed a bit more evenly I think I would have loved this one, but it was just too cluttered for me to fully invest it.

Also they were dirty for making Jeff Bridges sing that song. Y'all knew damn well he couldn't hit those notes and you made him do it anyway.

92.

Jumanji: The Next Level

(2019)

— Fantasy Comedy Adventure Directed by: Jake Kasdan

The crew from the previous movie wind up back inside the game, because of reasons! But this time some old guys are along for the ride too.

For those who have never seen Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), let it be known that it is far better than it has any right to be. It actually has some really interesting character work and Jack Black is quite fun in it.

This follow-up to it, however, doesn't make any sense. I am convinced the script was made in a single draft. Because anytime it finds that it wrote itself into a corner it will god-machine its way out. None of the character work makes much sense, but you can see them trying to replicate some of the notes of the other movie and just failing completely.

You cannot convince me that this wasn't made just to cash in on the success of the first one.

On another note, I feel like we as a society need to accept that Dwanye "The Rock" Johnson cannot act.

I think due to the sheer number of movies he's starred in that we've convinced ourselves that he can, because why else would he have so many movies?

I think even he has been fooled. "I've been in SO MANY movies," he thinks to himself. "I must be an incredible actor. I must surely be capable of doing this movie that requires me to portray both a depressed young man in the midst of a breakdown AND Danny DeVito portraying a man who is angry at his aging body and at his life filled with regrets."

Yet here we are.

Two hours and $125 million later.

Thinking to ourselves, "You know what…he is not good at this. Was he ever good at this?"

And the fact of the matter is: No. Not really.

93.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

(2023)

— Action Adventure Directed by: James Mangold

Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. has retired from adventuring, but is thrown back into the thick of it when a mystery from his past causes factions begin to converge around him.

I could have watched this at the theater I worked at for free, but after Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I really wasn't prepared to sit through 3 hours of this without the ability to take a break.

But the completionist in me finally won out so I picked it up from the library.

All they had to do to make this plot work was do a twist on The Last Crusade, where this time Phoebe Waller-Bridge was the adventurer and Harrison Ford was the old father figure whose passions have come back to haunt him, and it would have been a really fun ride. Instead we're stuck following this old Dr. busted "get off my lawn" Jones around and she's just kind of there.

There's just so much going on here and none of it means anything.

In other news, Karen Allen is aging gracefully af. Holy smokes.

In fact, I take back my earlier plot outline. I want Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Karen Allen as my dream duo for things that could have been made instead of this. In fact I just want them to work together on anything, it doesn't even have to be this.

94.

Anatomy of a Murder

(1959)

— Courtroom Drama Directed by: Otto Preminger

A former D.A. and current small town lawyer agrees to take a case defending a man who has been accused of murder after he killed a man he claims raped his wife.

Fucking Jimmy Stewart.

I often will watch something purely based on someone's recommendation or having read something about it that intrigued me, so I frequently don't know the cast of an older movie before I see it. And this bastard is always sneaking his way into my watchlist, in spite of the fact that he drives me up the wall.

Y'all, I don't even know.

It's shot really well, there's some interesting scenes and some great performances (not you, Stewart), and I know it has a pretty great reputation. But Jimmy Stewart playing a wealthy lawyer who doesn't pay his employees and takes a case to defend an abusive murderer for fun and sport? I just have a real hard time getting into that.

95.

Lake Placid 2

(2007)

— Made-for-TV Horror Directed by: David Flores

The events of the first movie have become mere rumors, but it turns out those giant crocs aren't content to let themselves become merely the stuff of legends.

I have a soft spot for the original Lake Placid. Don't get me wrong, it's a ridiculous movie, but it's the fun kind of dumb. Plus Betty White is in it and she is just a treat.

I assumed going into this that it wouldn't live up to the original, but at least it might bring some cheesy good fun. I was not prepared for just how low the budget of this movie was.

I actually had to pull out my phone and make sure this was actually a legitimate sequel early into the movie, because it is just so much cheaper than the original. It appears that the Sci-Fi channel somehow ended up with the rights to the property and decided to make some low budget made-for-tv movies with it.

Although 30 year olds playing teenagers never fails to make me laugh, it is not a good movie. The best thing about it is that they got Cloris Leachman to do their version of the Berrty White role (an amazing choice), but the writing is so bad that her talent is really wasted here.

For sure filing under bad films to laugh at with friends, but not to watch alone.

96.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

(1994)

— Queer Road Trip Adventure Directed by: Stephan Elliott

3 drag performers go on a road trip across Australia in order to get to a big gig.

My go-to drag road trip movie has always been To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar, but I figured I had gone long enough without having seen this.

I really like Hugo Weaving and Terence Stamp. Guy Pearce remains on my list of actors I just can't get into though.

I still need to get around to doing some research on this one. I'm curious what queer people think of it today and also what their consensus (if any) was back in the 90s.

Although I truly have no idea what the hell they were thinking with the Cynthia character, because that bit thoroughly confused me. It's hard to see that and not wonder, "how exactly did they think this wouldn't be considered racist?"

It's hard not to compare and contrast this with To Wong Foo, even though they are tonally very different. To Wong Foo is much lighter and more of a story about the importance of being yourself, surrounding yourself with people that support you, and not letting adversity tear you down.

Priscilla has a much darker and more realistic undercurrent and seems to be more of a story of knowing who you are, but struggling to figure out exactly how you're supposed to fit into a world that wasn't built with you in mind.

Like always, it would be great if a movie with a trans character had actually gotten a trans actor for the role. But at least Priscilla was written and directed by a gay man, so for a mid-90s movie it's still far queerer than most.

97.

Minding the Gap

(2018)

— Documentary Directed by: Bing Liu

Filmmaker Bing Liu dives into skateboard culture, coming of age, and a search for identity in this documentary. He combines the skating footage from his younger years with modern interviews with his old skating group to try and learn the role skating had in their lives and what it means now that they've gotten further into adulthood.

This movie is so good!

I went into this thinking this was a different skating boarding documentary, so I was a little confused at the start, but what a happy accident!

Part of what makes it so compelling is how Bing Liu straddles the line between documentarian and participant. The story he's able to capture is one only possible from him and because of his relationship with the group

Definitely one of my favorite things I've seen this year.

98.*

Minding the Gap

(2018)

see #97

Did I watch this and then immediately watch it again with the commentary?

Yes.

Yes I did.

99.

Vox Lux

(2018)

— Drama Directed by: Brady Corbet

A former survivor of a school shooting and current pop star struggles in a life where her public image has dominated how she is seen by both the world and herself.

I kind of hate this movie. I'm not sure it deserves to be hated though. A LOT of my hatred comes from the fact that Natalie Portman is the star and she is doing a BIZARRE accent the entire movie. Which is made all the weirder because at the start of the movie you see her character as a kid and she very much does not have the accent.

So here's this character that somehow grew up to have what I can only describe as the New York equivalent of the Dick Van Dyke-style British accent that Americans do. At not point does it ever approach accuracy, but you can kind of see where they were trying to go with it?

If you see me talk about enough movies you'll start to notice that I have a very hard time overlooking certain details in movies. It's why I traditionally don't like Hitchcock movies, because he is the master of throwing in random details of the type that I can't not fixate on.

And having the main character doing an absurd accent for the whole movie is so utterly distracting to me. Was the movie aside from that fact any good? I don't even know. Anytime I thought I was starting to understand the themes of the movie is would seemingly abandon that thread and start doing something else.

I just don't know. Whatever this movie is, it's definitely not for me.

100.

Paddington 2

(2017)

— Family Comedy Adventure Directed by: Paul King

A simple attempt to find a birthday gift for his mother goes horribly astray when it leads to a chain of events that get Paddington thrown in prison.

The Paddington movies have the sort of heart that you just so rarely see from family movies these days. Lots of others in the genre feel like some sort of innocuous thing that was grown in a lab and designed by committee to as unoffensive as possible.

But the Paddington movies have a charm and a soul all their own. And the direction of both films is leagues beyond what you'd typically expect from the cgi-character has an adventure family genre.

I'll admit that I like the first movie better as I found the whole thing to be overall tighter. But this is still a lot of fun. I wouldn't say this one is up there with the family movies that everyone needs to see, but it's still a charming little film that's awfully hard not to enjoy.

101.

Bad Black

(2016)

— Action Comedy Directed by: Nabwana I.G.G.

An American doctor in Uganda must get martial arts training from a child in pink crocs known as Swaz if he ever hopes to get an heirloom back from the notorious gangster Bad Black.

This is a kind of movie that you just need to see to understand.

Imagine a movie made by a group of money without a lot of money or equipment or training, but a hell of a lot of passion and fun. They're out here with the kind of originality that you only get from those who were never taught what the rules were, because—for better or for worse—they're breaking all of them.

It's definitely not going to be for everyone. But if you love action comedies and weirdly memorable b-movies, then it's certainly something you might want to try out.

102.

Good Time

(2017)

— Crime Drama Directed by: Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie

A criminal's desperate attempts to get his brother out of jail lead him to going to increasingly dangerous lengths as his desperation increases.

Jeez, there's a lot going on in this one. I enjoyed it, but I think I'd need to really sit down and dedicate some real time and thought to breaking it down properly.

The fact that it mostly takes place over a single night gives it this really interesting sort of tension. Robert Pattinson is fantastic. And this character we're following is really intriguing.

He's a really well written antihero. He is far from a good person and over the course of the movie he does a number of terrible deeds. He's greedy and uses people and is selfish. But like any good character you can't help but to find his struggle compelling because he really is willing to risk it all to help his brother.

It's certainly something I'll have to give another watch down the line.

103.

The Happytime Murders

(2018)

— Comedy Whodunnit Directed by: Brian Henson

In a world where humans and puppets live together, a puppet P.I. and a Human homicide detective must team up to solve a string of brutal puppet murders.

This was kind of exactly like what I thought it would be like, but I'll admit that it has its moments.

I feel like there's two ways to play puppets in the real world: A) a Muppets style (they're just there and no one calls attention to it, or B) a sci-fi style (where you take it seriously and try to explain how exactly that works).

This one tries to explain how this all works and create a believable human/puppet world, but they aren't great explanations and there's no consistency. Like in one scene a puppet will be able to beat up a human, but in another they'll be unable to do anything because they're just full of cotton.

If you're going muppets style I can easily suspend my disbelief, but if you specifically tell me this world has rules and then are constantly breaking those rules then that fucks really takes me out of things.

I don't really have much to say about this. There are certainly some fun parts, but it's a very one-note kind of movie. And the one note is just: "isn't it funny when puppets do or say crude things!"

104.

龙马精神

[English title: “Ride On”]

(2023)

— Action Comedy Drama Directed by: Larry Yang

An aging stuntman is given another chance at stardom when his beloved horse is shown to also have a knack for stuntwork.

When I saw the trailer I was just thinking: "Jackie Chan and a horse? That's a recipe for silly good fun."

I was not expecting a really thoughtful and poignant story to be hiding in there!

I know it sounds weird to say, but I've actually thought about this one a lot since I watched it. Hiding in the silliness is this thoughtful look on a life and career in stunt work. But it also works as just an older person looking back and wondering if some of the decisions they made in the past were worth it. Then looking to the new generations and seriously considering whether or not the old ways are actually better or if the new trends have merit.

Not to mention that Jackie is out here doing some really fantastic acting.

It's definitely not a perfect film though. It's probably the only time I've watched a Jackie Chan movie and wished there weren't as many fights. This time I'm here for the drama! The character work, the relationships between Jackie's character trying to make up for lost time and create a better relationship with his daughter, there's so much here. Most of the fights just seem shoehorned in because you've gotta have fights in a Jackie Chan movie, right?

I dunno. In spite of its flaws it has given me more food for thought than a lot of "better" movies I've seen this year and I quite like it. I wouldn't recommend it if you want pure Martial Arts action, but if you're in the mood for something silly, something sweet, something quirky, and something lighter but with some hidden depths? It's got you covered.

105.

무림여대생

[English title: “My Mighty Princess”]

(2008)

— Wuxia Rom-Com Directed by: Jae-young Kwak

A high school girl tries to navigate the troubles of high school and of her father's attempts to get her to dedicate herself to her training in martial arts.

I only just realized that a lot of people might not know what Wuxia is. So for context Wuxia is a genre of Chinese fiction that deals in historical martial arts fantasy. The closest approximation in Western literature I can think of would probably be something like the tales of Arthur and the knights of the round table? Where there are monsters and magic, but they're the magic and monsters of olden days, not full-blown high fantasy. And we follow heroes who have a strict code and fight for what's right.

Umm...what are some examples people might be familiar with in America...

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is based on a classic Wuxia novel. And Kung-Fu Panda was inspired by the genre (although they definitely cross pollinated it with some Western storytelling styles).

Anyways, it's a genre style that definitely had an impact across Asian fiction.

My Mighty Princess kind of aims to combine a high school rom-com with a more classic wuxia story and it's a tricky one for me diagnose.

I think there's a lot to love in this. The humor is quite fun and the setup is solid. It's just that there's a pretty heavy tonal jump in the middle. It starts out full rom-com then switches gear in the middle to start the wuxia angle and it's way too big of a shift for me. I definitely would have preferred if the genres were a bit more evenly melded from the start.

Then there's this whole weird b-storyline with this high school student who keeps trying to win the heart of this cop lady and that doesn't really go anywhere.

I'm probably a little overly harsh on it, because I quite like parts of it, but I didn't love it overall. And it's always annoying when that happens, because you kind of want to rewatch it, but then again you kind of don't.

106.

The American Buffalo

(2023)

— Documentary Directed by: Ken Burns

A look at the colonizers history with the American buffalo and how it relates to their history with the indigenous peoples.

Technically I think this might be a miniseries not a movie, but it's short enough to watch during a single sitting so I'm gonna count it.

It's pretty standard for a PBS-style documentary. The subject matter is interesting, but I think it perhaps would have been better handled by a native director instead of the whitest man alive. And I also was pulled out of it whenever they got famous people to read the bits of diaries and whatnot.

You'd just be listening and then suddenly be wondering, "wait, why is Paul Giamatti talking right now?"

107.

The Taming of the Shrew

(1967)

—Shakespeare adaptation Directed by: Franco Zeffirelli Based on: The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

A group of men seek to coerce a strong willed woman into a bad marriage in their attempts to wed her younger and more demur sister.

I'm not gonna lie, I've seen a number of loose Taming of the Shrew adaptations, but I've never actually seen a more-or-less direct adaptation or the play itself.

It turns out that the actual story is super fucked up? The whole "taming" idea was always a little iffy depending on how it was deployed, but in the story they are just straight up abusing the shit out of her? Full on mentally and physically abusing her into submission?

I don't really have any insight for this. When I wasn't a little bit bored I was just sitting there being deeply uncomfortable.

——————

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April Stats

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Movies watched this month: 27

Rewatch percentage: 7.4% (2/27)

Favorite new movie of the month: Minding the Gap

Least favorite: The Taming of the Shrew

——————

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Previous Months’ Posts:

JAN | FEB | MAR.p1 | MAR.p2

[princesscolumbia]

Pride Month 2024 - Day 1 (ish)

So yesterday I got the idea for celebrating Pride month by posting my works out one per day (and then cycling through them for the second half of the month again, 'cause I have NOT written 30 things...yet. 🤣)

Between crunching to get the Discord server up to Alpha status and my daughter getting ready for a medical procedure, I simply lost track of the time and spoons and wound up crashing out at the end of the night without posting anything.

But! There's no rules against posting two in one day! So here's the thing for Day 1 of Pride Month 2024!

One week after the Fall Formal, Principal Celestia is surprised to learn that a near-catatonic Sunset Shimmer has been calling out for her in the girl's sleep. Sunset has been unresponsive even to professional medical authorities, so what could have prompted her to call out in her sleep for an educator who had only occasionally interacted with her?

An AU that diverges at the Fall Formal, the path Sunset and Principal Celestia travel goes in a drastically different direction that will have HUGE repercussions down the road.

One thing that confused people during the initial writing and release of this (and still catches people who don't pay attention to author's notes) is the canonical, required reading side story:

Principal Celestia has had her hands full since taking a magically mute Sunset Shimmer. It hasn't been that long since the Fall Formal, and she's still trying to figure out basic communication with her student, let alone how to get her anything remotely like a Hearth's Warming present.

A hastily dashed off letter to her pony counterpart suddenly launches her on a night of adventure that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about Sunset Shimmer and how she can help the pony-turned-girl.

Taking place at approximately the same time as Empire ch. 5, this was intended to be a quick little one-shot as a "Christmas Special" for 2019. I didn't manage to finish it until May 2020. 😅 I decided to keep it separate because the composition and story flow just don't match up with Empire. Attentive readers might notice that in Empire, each chapter follows a specific pattern:

Situations™️ happen

Flashback scene

At least partial resolution of Situations™️

Whereas MBB is just narrative with no real 'flashback' scenes whatsoever (though one could argue that ch. 2 of MBB is one long flashback, it doesn't serve for the narrative setup to be such and so still doesn't allow MBB to fit)

I'll eventually taking this fic to print (it's just too damn good) and there will be two bonus chapters included that won't necessarily impact the overall story but do wrap up a couple of dangling threads from the rest of the work.

For the curious, I wrote a fairly lengthy Author's Notes for the whole thing. You can find that here:

Not interested in going to the Horsefic website? You can also find these mirrored to AO3:

My Empire of Dirt

Music Box Blues

Happy Pride 2024!

[justmybookthots]

The Bear and the Nightingale

One good thing (among others) this book had going for it? The MMC doesn't really show himself in great detail until the last third of the book. If he'd shown himself so much earlier, I'd have lost interest fast. He was pretty underwhelming as a winter king/demon, and I'd have felt demotivated to continue. But because he showed up late, the main plot of the story got to shine, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I was really sceptical about this book at first. Everyone on Goodreads said it was slow-moving and very dense and sometimes it felt like nothing was happening at all in the first half, and even though that was partly true, I kept turning the pages. The slow, subtle plot beats had some kind of grip on me, and even now I can't tell you exactly why they did. 

This book plays on tropes I'm not the biggest fan of: the heroine embracing more traditionally masculine traits and being lauded as better than the other women in the story because of that. But it's a tricky situation because if she was submissive like the other women, I'd have felt unsatisfied too. I don't know what the right move is.

Nonetheless, I liked Vasya a lot. She was pretty likeable for the most part, especially as a child. Sometimes I just wanted to give her the biggest, tightest hug for the stuff she was going through. I hated Anna, her stepmother, who I'd sympathised with at first but grew to loathe. It was unsatisfactory how Anna just died in the end without realising how wrong she'd been about Vasya. I wanted her to wallow in her awful decisions but that never happened. She just died after getting attacked by the Bear and there was no reflection on her part.

(Also, I saw a reviewer feeling sorry for the priest and I'm like, ARE YOU SERIOUS. Guy was the second worst person after Anna. Or maybe the first. I don't know. They take turns to vie for the foulest existence in the book.)

Overall, a pretty solid read, even if not the most memorable. There's some stuff that gets glossed over (marital rape, blatant misogyny) but I guess it's an evocation of its time period and makes sense. I don't think I'll be picking up the next book because it concludes quite nicely and the winter king was meh, but we'll see.

- 5 February 2024

I Hope This Doesn't Find You 

I'm really, really sad.

This book was one of my most anticipated books this year because This Time It's Real was my five-star favourite last year, but this just… did not make me feel the same way.

I'm torn about my feelings in two parts. One part believes that if I had read this some time last year, I'd have enjoyed it more. I'd been desperately craving some story with an academic-rivals/hate-to-love relationship. I'd felt Divine Rivals lacked the anger and heat I was looking for but now? This had all the anger and tension I had craved but I just found it tiresome after a while.

The other part of me just didn't get the swoon factor I was looking for in Julius that I got from Henry and Caz. I guess in romances I've always liked proactive heroes who were sweet on the heroine later into the story (not right away, but preferably through a slow burn)—and I don't mean by just doing things for them. Yeah, Julius did some things like running the race for Sadie and cleaning up some of the mess in her house… but for some reason, those actions didn't really move me. 

Maybe it's because Julius just isn't proactive about his feelings the way Sadie is. He does those nice things for Sadie—but you know he's still holding back, that he hasn't come to term with how he feels. In the end, all his kind acts do is make Sadie more emotionally beholden to him, and I don't like that. 

Sadie is the one who realises she likes him, who decides she's going to have the maturity to try to confess to him, but he fucks it up anyway. He assumes she's nice to him because she pities him, and he makes it about himself, and plays a victim in this situation. All this, when Sadie was the one who stood up for him in front of his brother, who took the courage to take the first step outside their decade-long feud by being nice to him and trying to confess, and he makes it about himself. And he says horrible things about her in retaliation.

There's one part that really got to me: when Sadie says she's been thinking the best of him, and he's been thinking the worst of her. That line hit me REALLY hard, and made me disgusted.

And how does it get resolved? By him overhearing her confession of her feelings towards him. Only when he has concrete proof that she likes him back that he allows himself to be proactive. He doesn't take a risk, doesn't let himself take the first step into the unknown like Sadie did. Never once does he let himself believe the best in her. He only believes that when he gets proof. 

This book left a horrible taste in my mouth, and I'm gonna admit I'm quite upset. I don't know how This Time It's Real was 5 stars and this book is like… 2. I was also disappointed by Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands and I wonder if I'm just gonna be met with disappointment after disappointment with all the releases I'm anticipating this year. 

The last one that I was really looking forward to is The Prisoner's Throne, so I shall see. I'm no longer feeling as pleasant as I did about it before this book.

- 6 February 2024

[sungtaro]

˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚ top 10 favorite releases of 2021!

↳ for the girls (boys version)

[imnotrevealingmyname]

Games I've Played And Loved

Ok so I decided to make a masterpost of the games I liked the most out of all the mobile games I've played in the last few years. Most of these are available on Android, I don't know about iOS though. I will be adding PC games to this list soon.

These are mostly puzzle/adventure games, some are platformers. There are a couple of other genres as well. I'll rate each of them based on several criteria such as controls, plot, playability, and (in some cases, because this is by no means a criterion I usually select my games based on) graphics.

I hope you like these games as much as I have, and lmk what you think!

(This is not ranked in any order, I'm going to list all the good ones.)

Masterlist

(Updated on 24th June 2022)

•Gear Enigmas : Really well made puzzle game, looong and interesting plot. Love the world building. The puzzles range from really easy (almost disappointingly so at times) to a good kind of challenging. The second half needs to be purchased. I'm currently playing the second half and it's really good. If you pirate it, you can get the second half for free AND infinite free hints by going to the purchase section. 9.8/10.

•here : The main objective of this game is to find the word "here". It is brilliantly made with a minimalistic design but excellent concept and really good controls. Once you finish the game, there's an Easter egg too. 9/10.

•Dear Brother: September : Rusty Lake vibes, very short game (20-25 minutes gameplay max.) Kinda unsatisfactory and bewildering ending because it makes you solve a puzzle and get an item in your inventory but then the plot becomes very weird from there and that item turns out to be useless. I thought there were multiple endings so I replayed, but no luck. The game is apparently still in development so I hope they give it a proper ending. 8/10.

•Where's Samantha? : This is an absolutely gorgeous game, kinda similar to Oddmar. The narrators' voices are also VERY similar imo. The story is really intriguing too. HOWEVER, the gameplay is less than satisfactory. The clones glitch into the walls sometimes and no matter what you do you can't bring them back to you unless you start the level over, which is frustrating to say the least because the levels are HUGE. Also, the jump button is very inconsistent in its functioning while you're on moving platforms, so it's very, very irritating. It makes you slide off randomly too. Also, some parts are so damn difficult I nearly gave up on the game several times, which usually never happens with me. But I kept going, and for what? The game has a beautiful story with so many twists and turns and character development, but the ending is absolutely fucking horrible. It's abrupt and pointless and makes you feel that you spent over six hours from a very unsatisfactory ending. One good thing though, I got zero ads throughout. Overall it has the potential to be a 10/10 but unfortunately I'm gonna have to give it an 8/10.

•The Witch's Isle (by Cocosola) : Oh so you think Rusty Lake is good? Try playing this. Oh so you think the Rusty Lake storyline is an absolute mess? Try playing this. In all seriousness (I just finished the game, got the normal end second try) this is one of the most complicated and baffling games you'll come across. There are seven different endings, and I have absolutely no clue how to get the five I still have left. There's so much exploration you can do here, and the graphics are absolutely adorable. The puzzles aren't frustrating, just the right level of challenging. There's a timer of 1h 25min exactly, which is 5h 40min in game. Be prepared to get the bad ending on your first try, there's absolutely no fucking way you make it first try. The controls are remarkably good, although it's kinda hard to see stuff at times because it's a pseudo 3D game and the foreground doesn't become translucent when you move back a tier so it's hard to discern your surroundings at times. Pacing is really good, too. 10/10.

•Card Thief : This is a solitaire style game with a mediaeval castle twist. I absolutely love the concept. Very addictive game, though the limited treasure chest capacity may be slightly frustrating because it makes you watch an ad to open the chests quicker. It doesn't have ads otherwise, which makes for a relaxing gameplay with no distractions. 9.5/10.

•Dungeons of Dreadrock : This has an 80s RPG vibe to it, and I absolutely love it. The puzzles are challenging without being frustratingly difficult. It's very addictive, though each level is pretty short so that's good. The controls are unfortunately very bad, there are no joystick controls and you have to swipe to do anything and sometimes it doesn't register. 8/10 (but only because of the controls.)

•Nora's Dream : I could gush about this game for days on end. This is a GORGEOUS game in all aspects. It has a similar vibe to Tunic but without the fighting. I enjoyed every second of it. The controls were a bit irritating at times because you have to keep tapping on the squares you wanna go to, but that's not really an issue tbh. Some of the puzzles might be a little too much. 9.8/10.

•one night, hot springs : Very short and very sweet. (Transphobes DNI.) 30-45 minutes long at max, this is a sort of choose your own adventure game, but don't stress too much cuz it's just a very relaxing game. 10/10.

•Désiré : Ok, I'll admit, I haven't played the entire game because it's a very time-consuming game and when I started playing it I quickly realized I didn't have the energy to continue right then. BUT, it is definitely something that's on my to-do list in the upcoming months. From the little I did play, I can say that it's a very unique concept. Controls are slightly wonky at times but it does not affect the quality of the game or even playability all that much. I won't rate this yet until I've played all of it, but I can say for sure that it's a good game and totally worth it.

•Nekra Psaria : If you've played and liked the Rusty Lake games, you'll love this too. There is some gore-y stuff, so TW for that. Very weird game overall but in a very good way. The puzzles are really good. You'll have to buy the full version or you can find a mod somewhere online, your call (I've played the full version, it's SO GOOD.) Smooth controls, no issues with gameplay. 10/10.

•Obsolete : It's a puzzle 2D platformer. Nothing extraordinary, really, but it's a good game. Iirc the controls did cause some issues at times but it's worth playing. It does get a little boring after a certain point but it's good for when you wanna try something new that doesn't take too much energy. 7/10.

•Medulla : Another very unique game. The puzzles are very abstract, sort of in the way Rusty Lake puzzles are but more difficult in some ways. I haven't played the full version but it's definitely worth it. 8/10.

•Oddmar : *breathes in deeply* THIS. GAME. OH. MY. FUCK. This is till date possibly the best platformer I have played, and it's AWESOME. Well, except for the fact that they have Loki as the main villain :(. But other than that it's so, so good. Again, full version is paid, but you can find free mods online. 9/10 (would've given it a 10 but the whole thing with Loki being the villain...)

•Finding Idun : This game has Loki as the protagonist. Although they still try to vilify him in some ways, he's mostly just chaotic here. It's a pretty short game, but it's really fun and has some really good puzzles. 9.5/10.

•Dash : This game is ADDICTIVE, holy fuck. It's a really good action platformer. Very good controls, smooth gameplay, never gets boring. Sometimes it definitely crosses the line between good difficult and frustrating difficult, so that's kinda bad. Overall it's worth playing. 8.5/10.

•Kub : One of the best puzzle platformer games I've played. Very cute graphics, very fun overall. I skipped one level with an ad iirc because I couldn't get through it after two very frustrating days of trying, but other than that one level it's REALLY good. 9/10.

•Ella's Dimension: Good for some casual fun. Very relaxing, kinda addictive. It's worth playing, although you may get tired eventually. 8/10.

•her tears were my light : GAY. WOOLOOWOO. HEHSJJAHSHJDJDHHAJAJJA. Beautiful game with three different endings and it's the cutest shit ever. 10/10.

•Meridian 157: Prologue : I recommend this entire series. I played the prologue, the first part and a bit of the second part, and they're all REALLY good. The puzzles are challenging, but not too frustrating. Definitely recommend playing it. 8.5/10.

•The Mooseman : This is yet another gorgeous game. It draws inspiration from the myths and legends of Chud' tribes, and it's so good. The full version has to be purchased, and I haven't played it full unfortunately. The free version is still really good. 9.5/10.

•Liyla and the Shadows of War : Based on actual events that occurred in Palestine. It's a heart-wrenching game. TW for extreme violence. Really short game, 15-20 minutes max. I really recommend playing it. 9.8/10.

•Fern Flower : Very relaxing game, beautiful graphics. It's quite engaging, although it does get kinda repetitive after a while. Good for some casual fun. 7/10.

•Dawn, P.I. (Pocket edition) : Really good puzzles, very well executed. The pocket edition isn't too long, and I didn't play the full version, but if the full version is as good as this, then it's absolutely worth playing. 8.5/10.

•Cassel : Cute and engaging game, kinda meh at first but it gets better and more challenging after the first couple of levels. Again, good for some casual fun. 7/10.

•Boo! : Very cute puzzle game, the levels get progressively harder but not frustrating in the slightest. One issue, though: SO many ads. 8.5/10.

•The Frostrune : This has to be the winner of the lot, honestly. Absolutely no competition. You won't find a puzzle game that is better than this game. If you love Norse mythology and/or puzzle games, you will fall in love with this game. 100000000/10.

•Tiny Quest Jungle : One of the cutest puzzle games you'll find. It's not very long, takes under an hour to finish. You won't by disappointed by this game. 9.5/10.

•Tiny Quest Desert : Part 2 of Tiny Quest Jungle. This is a paid game, but the apk can be found online. Longer than the first game and just as good, if not even better. Absolutely recommend playing it. 10/10.

•Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery : This is a huge game. I played it a while ago so I don't remember exactly how long, but I think around 5-7 hours. It's as interesting as it is long, and you'll have a great time with this game if you like puzzle games. The full version is paid, unfortunately, but there's a free apkmody.io mod of the game :). 9.8/10.

•NOX : This one has a sad ending, but it's really well made. Be prepared to use hints, though, some of the puzzles are all over the place since they're scattered over a HUGE map. The game mechanics are very similar to Tiny Room Stories, so if you liked that one you'll like this too. If you speedrun through it, it's possible to finish it in about an hour, but for first time players it's gonna take 2-3 hours. 9.8/10 (ads :') )

•Get Acc_e55 (by UnderAIR) : Another isometric puzzle game with similar game mechanics to NOX and Tiny Room. Sci-fi lovers will love this, it's got super cyberpunk vibes. Really good controls, no issues at all. The full version can be bought or you can watch ten ads on a little device on a shelf (it's right where you start the game.) Very challenging, but not frustrating at all. Possible to finish with no hints. 9.9/10 (cuz ads.)

•Tiny Robots Recharged : Very similar vibes to Get Acc_e55, although this one has levels. Super cute, though the puzzles are kinda easy (maybe they'll get harder, I've only played up to the second boss, so idk.) Definitely recommend playing. 9.5/10.

•Tricky Castle: Trap Adventure : If you like Kub, you'll love this too. Long game, probably around 10+ hours of gameplay, and it's worth every second. If you like puzzle platformers, this is the game for you. 10/10.

•IQ Dungeon : Very cute game, the puzzles are really cool though some of them are kinda unclear. Overall it's super fun, kinda like Tricky Castle in some ways. The last level is kinda squicky, personally. LOTS OF ADS. 8.5/10.

•Minimal Escape : I have a love-hate relationship with this game. As good as this game is, it is really, really frustrating sometimes, so I deleted it once and reinstalled a few months later. My game started glitching in one level and it wouldn't let me go through no matter what I did, and I tried restarting the entire level and it still glitched at the same place. This would've been fine but the levels are LONG. Each level is 15+minutes long so I got irritated and uninstalled it a second time. If you can handle that frustration with games, then you'll definitely like it. Even if you don't, you'll still probably like it, just be sure not to stress out too much. 8/10 (would've been lower but the game is actually really good.)

•Very Little Nightmares (by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe) : Very similar to Little Nightmares in terms of the puzzles, graphics and overall vibes. Puzzles are quite challenging, can get kinda frustrating sometimes but mostly pretty good. 9/10.

•Alto's Adventure : Oh. My. Goodness. If you hate endless runner games, this game right here is going to change your mind. Guaranteed. It's one of the most beautiful games you'll ever play, I promise you this. 12/10. Please do yourself a favour and play this.

•Alto's Odyssey : Part 2 of Alto's Adventure. Just as good as its precedent, if not even better. 12/10.

•Space Chase: Odyssey : This is also a gorgeous endless runner game. If you liked the Alto games you'll like this too. 10/10.

•That Level Again : Really good game. There are more games similar to this one in these series, but I haven't played those. I definitely recommend this one, though. 8.5/10.

•Within (by SilverLiningStudio) : It's a horror/puzzle game that won't let me share the link, for some reason. It's really good. Beautiful graphics, awesome music, really poignant game overall. 9.5/10.

•Apple Knight : This is a really good action platformer. Nowhere near as good as Oddmar but similar objective. You'll never get bored with this, that's for sure. 8.5/10.

•Knock-Knock : A horror/adventure game that you should play alone. It's surprising not repetitive at all and it's very addictive. It does glitch sometimes when you're on the ladder, and the ghosts attack you even when they're not around, then. 8.5/10.

•Heads Off : This is honestly just a really funny game. Not something you can play for a long time, but it's good for a laugh or two. 9/10.

•No Humanity : This is HARD. But so good. It's been a while since I played this so I don't remember much, but it's definitely really good. 8/10.

•Rusty Lake : You were probably waiting for me to mention this BRILLIANT series, if you're a puzzle game lover. This is an indie studio that makes some of the best puzzle games out there. If you're into puzzle games, you've probably heard of them already. All the games are connected and there are Easter eggs everywhere, including connections that you need to make to get certain achievements in a few games. The games range from 2 to 10+ hours long, and they're all so worth it. Some of them are paid, but as always, mods are always an option. Of course, some puzzles are very frustrating, but still so good. 10/10.

•Dark Dome : If you like Rusty Lake, you'll like this series too. Start from oldest and move on to the most recent, in the series. I ploughed through all five games in just over a day, that's how good this is. The members of this indie studio are masters of their craft, no kidding. There are Easter eggs here too, the games are all based in the same town so you'll see a lot of connections. 10/10.

•FM Studio : I've only played Forgotten Hill: Fall so far, but if the other games are anywhere near as good as this one, this is a brilliant series. There are a bunch of jumpscares tho and it's a horror-puzzle series, so keep that in mind. The gameplay is slightly wonky at times though, and some of the puzzles would be better if they were more challenging. That said, I absolutely recommend it. 9.5/10.

•BusColdApp : This is a studio that makes a LOT of really great escape room games. I've played several of these and half of my already played games list is filled by these games. Lots of ads though, unfortunately. Some of the puzzles are kinda meh. 9/10.

•EscapeFunHK : Idk if the devs of this are the same as the ones in BusColdApp, but these are are escape room games.

•HKAppBond : Same as the above two.

•HFG Entertainments : Same as the above three.

•Last Quarter Studios : This indie studio has made the Cats Are Liquid series, and both games are wonderful. Kinda sad, but very sweet. The second one is way better imo but if you wanna follow the storyline play them in order. Also, you can make your own levels and share them too, so that's pretty cool. 9.5/10.

BONUS:

Happymod is a mod app where you can get a lot of the paid games in this list (and more) for free. I've played most of the paid games here thanks to happymod. Just a heads up in case you wanna play them but are broke. :)

[on-stardust-wings]

Now that we art all here, let us recount the deeds of the day.

*puts on Crowley sunglasses*

So, I'm not living in one of the privileged countries that get to legally buy and listen to the new Good Omens Full Cast Audiobook. I have tried buying it the normal way, but it won't show up, or it disappears as soon as I log in or try paying something. I decided to give the Audible part of @fuckyeahgoodomens guide a try first, before coming up with own (and potentially worse) ideas.

I am also a gremlin child of the late 2000s internet, I live almost entirely on open source software, I avoid the likes of Microsoft, Google, Apple and Amazon as much as I can in my digital life, and I grew up enjoying TV shows and comics that did not sell in my country. I do not actually pirate things unless it can't be avoided, I'm happy for the creators to have my money, but I also hacked my Blu-Ray player into forgetting that region locking exists a week after getting it and I have tricked Amazon and Audible into selling me things that aren't for my backwater country before.

On a tangent, region locking is such stupid capitalist bullshit they do for digital content. If I want a hard copy of something in another language or from another country, I can usually buy one online. I can go to a website and buy a copy of a book from Australia or a CD from Brazil. I'll have to pay extra shipping probably, and possibly import tax, but that's the extent of the problem. I can also, technically, just travel somewhere and buy something that's only selling in this country. I don't have to give back a copy of a book I bought in the states when I cross European borders. That's not a thing.

In the same vein is the issue of DRM/copy protection. I understand it's purpose in preventing black market sales; I do not understand that I'm not legally allowed to have copies for my own personal perusal. If I bought a hardcover book, I own it and I can do whatever with it. I can draw in it. I can cut out pages I don't like. I can legally take that book and if I own a printer/copier, I can copy it page by page and have one real book in my living room and a stack of self-made paper copies on my nightstand. Short of selling the copies, all's fine. It's mine because I bought it. Same with CDs or suchlike. Turn the tracks on the CD into MP3s to put on my mobile player or in the car or whatever? Cut a track in half and listen to only the first half because I don't like the second part? Fine. It's mine. I bought it. I am not allowed to sell any copies, but for my own use, I can do with it whatever I like.

So, with this overall background and mindset, I logged into Audible.com instead of my local version, looking to pick a small fight with a multibillion dollar company and their idea of media rights and property.

And what does the multibillion dollar company do? It goes "Oh hey, you haven't been here for a while, do you want a free trial? Here, you can choose one free title, whatever you like."

I don't often listen to audiobooks, in fact, I only listen to audiobooks of favourite books I reread all the time anyway, so whenever I buy one, I immediately cancel my membership after buying the book I want, because there's no point in paying a monthly fee if I buy, like, one book per year. And instead of being mad at me for this, half the time I get offered gifts.

So, I log on, full of spite and looking for trouble, and am offered a gift instead.

Joke's on you, Amazon.

I still have to go through the 'set your credit card to US' thing described in the guide, but since I don't actually buy anything with this card, because I've been given a free book of my choice yay, I don't have to contest with any of the weird and scary messages some people get about their credit card info being fishy. I am now powered by spite as well as glee.

I manage to buy the book for my free credit. I get an email about my purchase.

That was easier than I thought.

I go to open the Audible app on my phone. The Audible app on my phone currently contains two books. None of them were bought in my own country (I think they're from the UK? But it's been a while so not sure). Its purchase history says this account never bought anything, because the account is registered to where I live, and I have indeed never bought a book there. (Look, I like books in other languages.)

The new Good Omens book does not show up. Not even after clearing the cache on the phone and refreshing everything.

The link in the email I got takes me to my country's audible website. The book cannot be found anywhere. I spent quite some time searching, too.

By now I'm back to being more spiteful than gleeful. I log back onto the Audible.com website, and whee, there it is in my previous purchases. I can listen to it in the browser (nice, but very impractical), and I can download it. Yay, download. (I also do not really like streaming things. Parts of that is the shitty internet connection in my parts, the rest of it is that sense of "I want to have a copy of it on my own hard drive".)

The downloaded file is .aax, Audible's own audio format, which is basically an MPEG-4 audio file encrypted with a 4-byte key that's unique to your account. 4-byte is super cheap in terms of encryption, so it's not very hard to get around. This is relevant information to this story because that's the next thing I did.

Could I have tried to somehow get my downloaded file into an official Audible app on my phone or computer to get it to play? Probably. Maybe. But here I was with the full file on my own hardware while also being just about done with All Things Amazon. If I want to burn this on CD or put on my MP3 player or my phone to listen to with a music player app of my choice, you can't stop me, Amazon.

Did you know that you can open your browser of choice, go to https://audible-converter.ml/ and drag and drop your .aax file into it, it'll spit out your activation bytes (that's the key to decrypt it with)? You can do that. You can then run it through a command line tool to decrypt it on your computer, or you can tell it to do so in the browser window (slower, but works on all platforms, just pick an output format of your choice and there ya go).

So, I now happen to have an unlocked MP3 of mildly dubious legality (I think it's illegal to strip the DRM, but as long as I'm not selling it *shrug*), for free.

I have that file because region locking exists and I was not able to easily purchase the thing I wanted in my own country. I would have given you money, Amazon. I would have been happy to. It was your own choice to make it a gift, and your own choice to refuse playing it on the regular players. But it was a pleasure doing business with you. Sincerely, fuck you.

PS: I'm off now to donate the money I didn't spend on the book to Alzheimer's Research. GNU Terry Pratchett.

Ciao. *takes off Crowley sunglasses*

[yuki-tsunodas]

The Player's Tribune: I will never forget the tears I shed that day

Article published 25 March 2021, originally written by Yuki Tsunoda in Japanese.

I translated the article with help from Google Translate and Naver Translator + my own interpretations of their rubbish translating, so apologies in advance for any mistakes! Anything I had trouble translating will be bolded with a (?) next to it!!

　I think that was the last time I cried in frustration, in regret.

　Four years ago, I was only 16 years old and was a student at Suzuka Circuit Racing School. It was the final selection to join Honda's Driver Development Program. If I pass, I can run in Japanese F4 the following year, but if I failed...I was thinking of quitting racing at that time.

　Now, I'm standing at the entrance of the stage called F1. Looking back, that was the turning point of my life.

　Of course, I didn't know if I would pass that year's trial because there were not only those who had already run in F4 but also some drivers who had come back from overseas.

　However, I've been racing in karts since I was four years old, and I've been doing well. That year, I was the youngest ever podium finisher in my debut race in the Japanese F4 championship, which allowed me to participate in the spot (?) race, and won the Super FJ Japan's first championship. At the selection test, there were good results until the final round of selection, and I was in a position to compete for first and second place overall. So I thought I could afford to make a big mistake in the final selection, and I was confident that I would still be in the top two in the end.

　I am a strong driver. But if you can't get results here or if you can't fascinate the judges with your running, it's already known (?). So I was prepared to give up my racing career if it didn't work. I think there were many other routes to go, such as running in other training programs or non-formal races, but I don't like it when it's not the direction I want to go. I decided to live a different life rather than to do it half-heartedly.

　However, the worst result awaited. At that time, I was very weak mentally and, of all things, it showed in the final round. Even before the race, I found myself tense and stiff. My fingertips were also stiff. I was not my usual self. I started like that, but suddenly I was flying...I had to drive through the pitlane and then rejoin the course. I felt like I was running alone, far away from the previous group. I felt sorry for myself, and I didn't even feel like running anymore. As a result, the points in that race were almost zero, and Tsunoda lost in the final round.

　I was so frustrated that tears welled up naturally on the train home. It was the first time since I started racing in earnest. I was the youngest among the participants, but I was shocked because I was confident that I wouldn't lose, and I couldn't imagine anything even if I tried to think about the future. I still remember clearly that I was so depressed that I didn't even want to see my parents on my way home from the Shinkansen.

　But there was only one faint hope. That was what the then Honda F4 coach said in an interview after the screening.

　"As a training driver for Honda, you will not be able to participate in the race next year, since the Formula 4 Honda has four cars. Maybe I can put you in one of the remaining two cars running as Suzuka Racing School."

　That was because former Formula One driver Satoru Nakajima recommended me. Mr. Nakajima was the principal of the school at that time, and at the time of the final selection, he was watching us run in the final chicane.

　I was given a penalty at the start, and I was racing without emotion, but I was running hard so that I wouldn't regret it. Through the visor, I saw Satoshi Nakajima standing in the final corner. I didn't want to show Mr. Nakajima a careless run. It was a hopeless ranking, but I thought I should not give up until the end and keep running toward the group in front of me. Then the road opened.

　In 2017, Suzuka Racing decided to enter me into F4 instead of making me a training driver. Then, I suddenly ranked 3rd overall in the annual overall ranking, and the following year in 2018, I was selected as a Honda Formula Dream Project driver, and was able to become the champion.

　It's all because I was frustrated at that final selection.

　The most unusual thing is that I think it's mental. Until I had a setback, I had a feeling that I would do well until the end without doing anything. I knew I wasn't good at starting even though I failed in the previous round, and I had time to practice before that, but I didn't. There was something sweet about overconfidence. And at that time, I was afraid of making mistakes, so I didn't know how to grow up.

　After failing the selection, I realized that I was still not perfect and that I had to be faster. I realized that it is important to make a lot of mistakes without fear of making mistakes, and to make new discoveries and grow from there. Therefore, I didn't feel impatient when I didn't get points as I wanted in the early part of the F3 and F2 seasons last year after I went abroad. Rather, there was no hesitation in the process of making a lot of mistakes first and learning a lot from them.

　Takuma Sato, a former Formula One driver, now driving in Indycar, is famous for saying, "No attack, no chance," but I think that's exactly right. If you don't try beyond the limits of any sport, you won't find the future, and if you don't try, you'll stop there. Therefore, even if there are times when I make mistakes or get no results, I don't feel strangely distressed. Even if you make a mistake, it's up to you to take it. Mistakes make me want to investigate the cause. If you think that you can overcome it, you can be faster than if you regret the mistake, and you can always face it positively.

　Now that I can race in F1, I feel grateful to my parents. I've liked to move since I was a child, and I played swimming, soccer, mountain biking, and also, not sports, but piano. Now that I think about it, I feel that my father and mother were letting me do what I was interested in. And the reason why I started driving karts was also influenced by my father. My father liked motorsports and played gym carna himself. One day, at the circuit venue I was taken to, I was allowed to drive a real cart. That was the first time. Actually, I also experienced a pocket bike at that time, but after trying two, I said, "The kart is more fun." I don't really remember at all (lol).

　But there were times I got sick of karts...

　For example, when I was about seven years old. When I was playing a game while waiting at the track, my father told me to "focus more on the race," and my game was taken away, and I felt like, "I don't like it anymore." Then my father became getting tougher and tougher on me to improve me, and he scolded me for many things. To be honest, I didn't really appreciate my father until I was 15, and there was a time when I hated him. 'This is "The Rebellion Period".' I think I was in the middle of it.

　Not only my father but also my mother was strict in terms of academic matters. I was always told to study in case I didn't succeed in motorsports. My junior high school was not a public school (?), so after the race, I would go home on the day, get ready for school, go to school, study, and take the test. To be honest, it was hard and I never liked it, but I continued to study anyway.

　At that time, I couldn't thank my parents, but now I have the opposite feelings. I think I am what I am now thanks to their harshness, scolding, and teaching me a lot of things back then. Thank you so much.

　I didn't expect to be able to get to F1 this quickly. Not only are there few Japanese drivers, but they are also those taking the shorter route compared to foreign drivers.

　When I first went to see F1 at Fuji Speedway at the age of seven, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were running. At that time, I wasn't longing for it, but I thought "I wanted to race with drivers like this someday", and those feelings are still the same. Hamilton is already a legend, and it's an honor to run with him, but when I get on the circuit, both Hamilton and Alonso are just drivers. Think of them as enemies.

　It's the same for Max Verstappen, who I think is the fastest and strongest opponent in Formula One, and Pierre Gasly, who's my teammate in Alpha Tauri. I want to know as soon as possible how well I can handle Verstappen and how well I can compete. Gasly was active in Japan's top-category, Super Formula, when I was running in Japanese F4, and I hope I can learn a lot of things from him, but I think he's also my biggest rival that I have to beat someday because we're in the same machine.

　'In the world of F1, "speed" is ultimately required.' No matter how fast you say you are, if you show off your speed, you can make an impact, and if you have speed, you can get back in front in the second half even if you were overtaken or separated from the pack in the beginning of the race. However, it is actually the most difficult to show "speed" in a situation like this. My biggest strength is speed, so in addition to that, I want to learn more of what I lack.

　Come to think of it, at an online conference held this off-season, my goal came out big like, "I'll be a Formula One champion more than seven times, the most ever tied," but that's not what I meant.

　I haven't done a single race in Formula One yet, so I can't say that (bitter smile).

　What I'm thinking about right now is to give the best performance I have in the first race, and to get as many points as possible throughout the season. Just like F2, even if you go up to F1, you will make a lot of mistakes from the beginning to the middle of the season, but I want to learn a lot by making new discoveries there. After saying such a thing at the press conference, there was a question like, "What is Tsunoda's ambition?" So I replied, "Maybe I'll win the championship seven times like Lewis Hamilton?" which became a big headline.To be exact, I really want to concentrate on everything in front of me now, and I hope that my ambition will come true as a result of that accumulated effort.

　What kind of scene will I see in the future? I want to improve my ability and become a race driver representing the F1 world, and I think it will be a different pressure and motivation, so the expectations of the fans may be even higher.

　That's why I want to never forget how I felt when I drove in Formula One for the first time in 2021. I want to cherish the current feelings of a rookie and continue to make mistakes to my heart's content, learn a lot from them, and enjoy them.

　I don't think I'll shed tears like I did four years ago in the final selection. I will never forget the tears I shed that day. But if I were to cry from now on, what kind of tears would I have...?

　I think it's realistic to say when I first win the championship. It's very difficult to get to Formula One, but it's going to be a tough road ahead. It's really hard to win, so if I'm going to shed tears, it's probably not "regretful tears" but "happy tears".

[wendystales]

Memories - lrh (Chapter Six)

Memories (also on Wattpad)

Chapter Five ※※※※※ Chapter Seven

“Problems in the fairy world: After almost two years, Luke Hemmings and Marnie McGonagall break up”

“The lovely couple of 2020, the model Marnie McGonagall and the singer Luke Hemmings, break up after almost two years of relationship”

“Shaken structure : After an accident and amnesia, Marnie McGonagall and Luke Hemmings puts an end to the relationship for a year and a half ”

After a week in peace and serenity, or something like that, my second one started with the internet breaking at the end of my relationship with Luke.

All the tabloids, renowned newspaper sites, gossip sites. All social networks. All radio stations. Everyone was commenting on.

All articles were based on “someone close to the couple”. Who? I have no idea, since after a slight spurt of distrust, I realized that none of my friends would do that. According to Noah, this was just the media playing, hoping to see if Luke or I would take the bait.

With my good leg beating at a fast pace, signaling my nervousness, I keep staring at the TV in silence, while Noah paces behind me, trying to control everything. The doorbell rings and I watch him go to answer. When Luke comes into view, I get up quickly and walk over to him, hugging him.

I close my eyes, feeling safer. I don't know how to deal with half the Los Angeles media behind me for a statement, or expecting a slip-up to attack me. I release all the air trapped in my lungs, in no hurry to break that hug.

“Are you okay?” he whispers and I just shake my head as if it was okay, or something close to it. “Great, that's what matters.” he leaves a kiss on my shoulder, before letting go and greeting Noah right.

“What's the order?” I see my friend question.

“The usual. They don't want me to say anything, but I won't be quiet while they attack her. I never stayed and it is not now that I will.” Luke replies, decided.

“Are they attacking me?” I ask approaching the two, who look at me without knowing what to say.

Since the headlines came out, Noah planted a lookout here at home, because he is the one who woke me up, and since then he hasn't let me see anything, just the TV and the mute yet. I knew he was protecting me, but I didn't know what.

The two look at each other and Luke approaches me again, sitting on the couch. As he tries to find a million ways to start, I interrupt him.

“Why do I feel like we already had this conversation?” I ask suspiciously.

“Because we already did, before we tell the media.” he scratches the back of his neck.

Once again, before he starts, Noah's cell phone rings and he leaves, leaving us alone.

“So?” I incentive to continue.

“There are a group of people, who like the band, but don't like our relationship and well …”

“They attack me.” I say, shortening for him. Luke states awkwardly. “How and why?” I don't know if I really want to know, but I know I need to.

Luke scratches his forehead. I feel bad for having to pass it on or go over it.

“They say bad things about you, about your job, about us. But nothing, nothing, is true.” Luke stresses "nothing" already knowing that most likely I would have that in my head. “Look, no matter what we do, there will always be people wanting to get in the middle and think they know more than the two of us, so just ignore it. Let them talk to themselves, they stop and go on to another topic. OK?” his face lowers, trying to meet my eyes, which were focusing on the pillow between us.

“OK!” I look at him with a weak smile. Luke gives a weak smile too, before giving me a kiss on the forehead and going after Noah to post his text.

In his tweets, Luke explains what happened between the two of us. He tells about my amnesia and how we both talked, and together, we decided to take a break, until I got used to my life or until I remembered everything. In the sequence, he also made clear all the affection and respect that we still had for each other. In addition to pulling the ear of whoever was attacking me or blaming me.

I don't know where it would be my fault. After all, I am the victim. Not to mention that none of this would be happening if it weren't for the accident. I would probably still be with Luke, together and happy.

I stare at the rug, hoping and praying for some memory to come, but my brain ignores me. I sigh, sinking into the couch. I look at the balcony, seeing the two talking. Luke is too perfect, it is not possible. I wouldn't have all that maturity.

This is not just maturity ...

I close my eyes, trying to silence my conscience. I know what it was, but not talking or thinking makes it seem like it’s not real.

Who am I kidding?!

Soon Luke's tweets were on TV, with several photos and videos of appearances, and everyone was commenting. Apparently the text was well accepted by the media, which changed the focus of the relationship a little and went back to talking about my accident. I hold my breath when the accident video is played again. I get up calling the attention of the two, who return to the living room and turn off the TV.

“Are you OK?” Noah asks attentively. I just nod.

“I need to go. I'm sure someone will show up at the studio to discuss with me. Later I try to stop by or call you.” Luke warns, coming towards me.

I hug him again, feeling safe. I apologize for getting him into this mess.

“It is not your fault and what matters is your well-being. And remember.” he holds my face, making me look into his blue eyes. “Nothing they say about you is true, don't let that take your head. I'll call you later.” he kisses me on the forehead and leaves.

“Oh, it is so difficult to see you like this and know that you are not together.” I turn to Noah, who is sitting on the sofa, looking at me in pain. I throw a pillow over his face and sit back down next to him.

“Believe me, I know.” I watch one more picture of us on the screen. “We are a beautiful couple.” I give a sad smile.

“Are?” Noah comments with a hopeful smile. “Can I start to ship again and create expectations?” he nudges me.

“First of all, did you ever stop to ship and create expectations?” Noah gives a weird smile. “Second, even if you haven't stopped, no. Despite everything, I still don't feel anything for Luke.” I sigh.

Perhaps "nothing" was a very strong word. I have affection and gratitude, but that I also have for Noah, Kyleen, Mike, Ashton, Calum and Leah, that is, it didn't mean much. What I needed was not there yet. However, I still hope to happen.

[...]

“Doesn't he look beautiful dressed like that? You have to see when he uses the overalls.” Calum sits next to me, provoking Ashton who was sitting on the floor, moving in his garden.

“Old Ashton had a farm, ieieo.” I humming with Calum, continuing the provocation.

I take the water bottle from Calum's hand, watching Ash dressed in faded jeans, a dirty T-shirt and a wide straw hat. I give a short laugh, watching Ashton glare at Calum. Apparently, his hobby in gardening was pretty funny.

“I already know what to give you on your birthday.” I get on the joke with Calum.

“You already gave that.” the two talk together, scaring me.

I look at them both with wide eyes as they laugh. This is already getting boring, it seems that everyone has some advantage over me. I see the idea of ​​the garden kit for kids going down the drain. I didn't know what to give, now then.

“Then I will need your help with this.” I whisper to Calum, who just nods.

“So, you stopped when Luke left.” Ash reminds me.

After yesterday, with my name and Luke's in everyone's mouth, today I didn't want to stay at home, I needed to relax, so the two ladies went to pick me up to spend the afternoon here at Ashton's house with them. Especially because they wanted to know how I was doing and I wanted to hear from Luke.

“Well, everything was fine. Everything calmed down, as far as possible, until the intercom rang.” I give a discredited laugh, remembering yesterday. “When Stephen appeared at the door of my building.”

The two looked at me in astonishment.

“You're kidding, right?” Ashton even got up, approaching me.

“Go for me, I would like a lot, but no. He knew about Luke and me and wanted to try the chance. Little does he know that I already know everything.” I comment the last part quietly, not wanting to focus on that.

“This guy is unbelievable. How does he have that courage?!” Calum comments outraged.

“Did you tell Luke?” Ashton asks, after walking around as outraged as Cal.

“No and I don't know if I'm going to tell.” they look at me alarmed. “I don't want Luke to feel like he has to have any responsibility to keep Stephen from me and I know he will.” I confirm my theory when Cal shakes his head, agreeing with me. “Nothing happened either, Noah went down and ran him, it was just an isolated case.” I shrug.

I didn't expect Stephen to show up, not after the hospital, however, if he ever had the courage to show up for the first time after everything I experienced (according to my diary), the hospital misunderstanding was nothing for him.

I can't hide that I was very tempted to go down and break my cast on his head, but Noah was quicker, locking me at home and going in my place. According to him, now was not the time for an aggression scandal. Do what?! He's right.

“I understand you, my love, but as a friend, I advise you to tell.” Ash sits next to me. “This will end up getting to him, like it or not, so it better be for you.”

“Yeah, no need to go into details, but tell him.” Hood reinforces.

“I don't know if Parker's party is an appropriate place, but it may be easier to relax afterwards.” Ashton shrugs, wanting to help.

“Ah, I heard about this party. He's Noah's fling, isn't he?”

“Don't let Noah hear that.” Calum laughs, catching my attention.

But it was Leah who told me about them.

“Noah and Parker resemble you and Hemmo very much at the beginning. Everyone knows something is going to happen, but you guys play hard to get”. Ashton explains. I open my mouth to defend myself, but according to my diary, that was it.

I don't help myself.

“Well, regardless of his status, I won't.” the two look at me surprised and upset. “ I'm not ready for parties yet, sorry, but I don't want to sit all night on the couch without being able to dance or having to drag it up and down.” I point to the orthopedic boot on my foot, irritated by that thing.

“But what are you going to do over the weekend then?’ Cal asks.

“You will laugh and judge me.” I answer with a pout. I may not know them well enough, but enough to understand what they are like.

“Calum quite capable, but I don't.” Calum opens his arms, visibly offended by Ash's comment, making me laugh. “You laugh at that fall of Mike in the London show until today and it has more than seven years.”

It was Ashton talking about this show that Hood started to laugh, agreeing that he was the most likely to laugh at me.

“I still have the video.” he comments after a sigh, stopping laughing.

“Tell me.” my friend asks me, turning my attention to him.

“ I'm going to throw myself on my couch, with a lot of junk food and watch makeover programs and maybe some movies. This is going to be my weekend.” I tell after a sigh.

“This is so depressing that I can't even laugh.” Calum says shaking his head in denial. I look at him indignantly. Come on?! It's not so bad.

“Really, M&Ms? Is this going to be your weekend? On the couch clogging up with food?” Ashton is more indignant than I am with Cal.

“ I'm not in the mood, I'm sorry. But don't worry, Kyleen told me about your birthday party and I will, I swear.” I raise my right hand, as if I were in court.

“You are not even crazy to consider not going. I bring you by the boot.” he counters by returning to the vase he was stirring before.

“Was he always that delicate?” I ask Calum, who spits half the water.

“Oh, Marnie, you need to spend more time with us.” he pats my knee, like an old man telling about his childhood.

“Well, changing the subject a little, and Luke, how is he?” Ashton and Calum look at each other to get my attention.

“He's taking it. He has been busy with some compositions, he has lived in the studio.” Calum replies, going around the mouth of the bottle with his finger.

I look at Ashton, who was still thoughtful. Luke is probably not as well as they try to pass me, or something else is going on.

“He'll be fine!” Irwin reinforces, trying to keep me calm.

I decide not to poke the situation anymore and focus my thoughts on the conversation we were having when I arrived, which was to recall some more facts from the last few years.

“Wait, and you got stuck in the room? And the girl is gone?” I question Calum, very lost in the whole story of how he met Kyleen.

“Yes, the girl locked me there and I don't know where she went, but Kyleen came and released me.” he explains.

“You need to find more normal girls, seriously, you have a serious problem in choosing someone.” I tell them. Serious! Emery, this girl now, my God, what a rotten picker.

“After that we went out a few times and she became part of the team. Shortly thereafter, we met Noah and Leah. That's been six years. Something around there.” Cal finishes.

“Went out?” I widen my eyes. “Have you and Kyleen ever had an affair?” I approached him, shocked, seeing him nod. “ Oh my God!”

“ It's really fun to tell her things, isn't it?” Ash laughs, seeing my reaction.

“Yes, but it came to nothing, it was more fun and in the end, it started to get weird. So, we decided to just be friends.” Hood responds. Once again, I look at Ash with my mouth open, making him laugh.

“She didn't tell me that. What a bitch.” I lean against the wall, indignant.

After the fun afternoon with Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Calum took me home, since today I was having dinner with my father and Meredith for the first time.

“Anything call me, okay?” Hood speaks before saying goodbye. “Especially if Meredith brings that peach pie with homemade whipped cream.” I watch with wide eyes, he close his eyes dreaming of the pie. “I can even taste it.” he finally sighs.

“Do you want me to keep a piece?” he quickly nods, smiling. “Okay, bye, Cal. Thanks!”

I get out of the car laughing. I couldn't ask for better friends.

I keep imagining a million scenarios while I get ready and wait for them to arrive. I know that Meredith and I know each other and get along, but that doesn't stop my anxiety from attacking.

The doorbell rings and I almost cry, regretting not having canceled before. I open the door to find Meredith fixing the collar of my father's shirt, which held the so famous pie. I watch the woman with medium dark hair and a long jumpsuit, opening a warm smile. My father steps forward and gives me a hug.

“How are you?” he analyzes me.

“Well, every day better.” I give a nervous smile. Then the time came. “Hey!” I open my smile a little more to receive Meredith.

She takes a step towards me, shy and extends her hand. I squeeze willingly and give passage to the two of them. We sat at the table and stared at each other for a few seconds, until I realized that I didn't put the dish on the table.

“Sorry.” I mention getting up, but my father takes the lead.

I understand that he wants to help, but being alone with Meredith, even for two seconds, was still not comfortable.

“So …” I start. “I saw that you are going to publish a second book.”

“Ah yes yes. Next week, I can't wait.” she responds excitedly.

Her first book was about toxic relationships and to my amazement, I helped out on some points. The second book would be about the new beginning, the emotional and financial freedom of women. She was not a Jane Austen, because the genres are different, but she is well known.

“I know I'm suspicious to talk, but it looks incredible. Your mother read and loved it.” my father comments the last part in a natural way. However, Meredith notes that I was a little uncomfortable and changed the subject.

I discreetly thanks. My parents' divorce and their friendship is something that I am still absorbing. I accept, but I am learning to cope.

We started talking about my father's trip to Japan and how he fumbled over there. It didn't take long for me to get comfortable with Meredith over there, she's as funny as my dad and very kind.

Meredith must be my mother's age, but she has an energy that makes her look much younger. She wears colorful clothes, always has a huge smile on her face and a contagious laugh. It is good to be close to her. I discover that her first husband was her high school boyfriend, but unfortunately he died of cancer.

Then she started dating an organic food store owner, but he was not a nice guy. It was from this relationship that the first book came out. I admire the courage and strength she had to put an end to it. In return, she had Kendall and Samantha, who look adorable.

“Ah, before I forget.” She takes some papers out of her bag. “The twins made some drawings for you.”

I open those papers with a huge smile. The paintings contained various hearts, flowers, Petunia in various forms and even their self-portrait with me. Everyone wished me well and said that I was the best sister in the world.

“I do not even know what to say.” I am touched. I always wanted to have siblings and since I knew them both, the desire to meet them only increases. The only issue is the fear that they won't like me.

“They are dying to see you, but we said they need to wait for you to be ready. I know there is still a lot to assimilate and absorb.” Meredith says calmly. I am grateful that they do not press anything.

But like everything, I needed to face this. Being afraid of two five-year-olds is not going to help at all. In fact, it will only make me miss them more.

“Yes, you commented on the interview that Meredith will give on the afternoon program, on Wednesday. If they want, I can take care of them.” I suggest nervous, after all, I have amnesia, a broken arm and a leg in the orthopedic boot. I don't know if I'm reliable.

They both look at each other and shrug. For them, I wouldn't have the slightest problem, and certainly not for the children. So it was agreed, Wednesday, I would find my brothers, and may God help me.

“Who's up for pie?” Meredith opens that smile again.

I end up laughing again, remembering Calum earlier. I send a photo of my plate to him, who responds with crying emojis and a huge audio, begging to keep his piece.

[razberryyum]

TGCF donghua Episode 5 Thoughts (SPOILERS!)

Welp this is definitely my favorite episode of the donghua thus far. Holy crap where to even begin??? I rewatched it five times already to make sure I caught every little detail, but I'm sure I still missed something.

Ok first of all, couples fixing each other's hair is a super big soft spot for me, I love seeing that! I think it's so freaking adorable and sweet and domestic. Hell, this whole episode was so freaking adorable and sweet and domestic! It was so difficult deciding which moments were my favorite since I loved so many of them!

But before I get to any of that, I have to say, I am officially in love with this man.

Gawds that look literally made my knees weak. Like, I kinda already loved him the first moment we saw him in the first episode (I mean, is it supposed to be a big secret who he is? Putting aside I already know from just being in the MXTX fandom, I think the donghua's been pretty blatant about his dual identity. Maybe it was easier to hide in the novel). I knew it wouldn't take much for me to love San Lang, I do have eyes after all, but the more time we spend with him the more I am just UTTERLY in love with him. I love his smiling eyes, his sexy aura, his personality, but I especially love the way he looks at Dianxia.

I literally just love watching him watching Xie Lian. I can totally feel his love and devotion. It's like I can't take my eyes off of him because his love for Dianxia is like a magnet drawing me in.

Likewise, I also love the way Dianxia can't seem to keep his eyes off of San Lang either.

And I really appreciate how the donghua plays it off as Xie Lian trying to figure him out, trying to determine if he's the Ghost King. I'm sure he sincerely is doing that but it's also obvious he is just fascinated by this man as well. And we know he thinks he's good looking thanks to his fortune telling attempt.

I just about freaked out when this happened cuz I couldn't believe it. Look I know bros can share a bed and there's nothing untoward about it...

...especially when they keep a respective distance apart. But there was just such a heavy air of sexual tension leading up to it that there was almost no way not to overreact to them sharing a bed straw mat. I mean, after all just a few moments ago, THIS happened.

What was THAT all about?? 😂 What did Xie Lian think San Lang was going to do?? Am I wrong to think naughty thoughts?? I can only work with what they give me.

But given what little I know about their history, I'm puzzled by why San Lang seems almost sad at times when I would expect him to be nothing less than ecstatic. For example, when Xie Lian offered to share his bed with him, I thought San Lang would be overjoyed, but instead as can be seen above, he looked sad. Someone had explained that he was sad over the state of Dianxia's living conditions, which I can understand, but then felt like he should still be a little happy about sleeping next to the one he loves.

Then there was also this curious moment before that:

One would think he'd be totally excited about having physical contact with with Dianxia, but he broke off the contact almost immediately and seemed distraught over it. UNLESS, I was supposed to read that as San Lang forcing himself to break contact in order to control his desire for Xie Lian? That just that little physical connection was already too much and he felt overwhelmed? Hence the trembling lips?

I think I'll go with the second option instead. Hotter that way. And if I'm way off base either way, don't bother to correct me. After all, half the fun in watching without reading the book yet is finding out the answers on my own and seeing how wrong or right my guesses and interpretations are.

Such as, Hua Cheng's eye. San Lang mentioned he guaged it out himself... I'm guessing it had something to do with him failing Dianxia in the past so he plucked out his own eye out of anger? Or was it a sacrifice on behalf of Xie Lian?

And then his ashes...I can't wait to find out if he already gave them to Xie Lian in the past without him knowing it, maybe Dianxia unknowingly even has them on his body now in some portable form, or he will be giving them to him in the near future.

Another thing I'm dying to find out about their relationship is how come Xie Lian has no memory of Hua Cheng or San Lang. Seems like there's some memory loss overall on XL's part based on some of the other gods' reaction to him. I mean, I guess HC could have been just a devotee from afar, but that would be, what, 800 years worth of one-sided love? Damn. Or is that actually the beauty and mystic of HuaLian's love?

His words melted me. I am already a puddle of goo over HuaLian and I barely know anything about them. I hope I'll survive the emotional impact once I truly learn the entirety of their history.

Also can't wait to find out more about his curse mark. Based on San Lang's reaction, I can only guess it had to do with him or he is just upset he couldn't stop it from happening.

Again, please do NOT tell me. I really look forward to finding out on my own...either through the donghua when they get to it or by reading the book when I finally get my shit together. I need to earn my worthiness of being able to worship at Dianxia's altar.

[liberty-barnes]

Tom being in love with your baby niece

Tom Holland x Female!Reader

Prompt: You meet Tom at a hospital and he’s immediately infatuated with the little girl in your lap (inspired by this video I found on tiktok)

Warnings: F L U F F, Tom being amazing with kids, mentions of alcoholic/drug addict mother, mentions of child abandonment, but overall fluff and feel good story

Word Count: 2379 words (this was supposed to be short but oh well)

Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

A/N: me, sweating profusely: calm down, just finish writing this, you are stronger than your baby fever, you are too young to have a child CALM TF DOWN

Masterlist

So, funny story, you met at the hospital

Tom had dislocated his shoulder while doing a backflip *dejected sigh*

And you were just trying to keep your baby niece calm while waiting for the nurse to come get you

You were sitting on the bed, Tom was right next to you, only a curtain separating you

But there was a tiny crack near the end from where it was pulled too far

And when you pressed Olivia closer to your chest, her head resting on your shoulder, she made eye contact with him

He saw her tear-filled eyes

(broke his heart)

So he started to make funny faces at her

Which made her start to giggle and coo and make grabby hands towards him

You turned around, visibly confused because hellooo she was just crying a second ago and now she’s???laughing???

And then you saw him

oh shit he’s hot

He smiled at you

You smiled back, cause what else are you supposed to do?

He got up and pushed the curtains back 

And sat on the chair instead

Still on his side of the curtain

But looking at you straight in the eye now

“So... what’s a pretty girl like you doing in a nasty place like this?”

Poor boy thought he was smooth

But he rested his weight on his injured arm

(that idiot) 

And it lead to him hissing in pain and cradling his shoulder with a pout while you laughed

“Fell down the stairs and twisted my ankle. You?”

“Dislocated my shoulder while doing a backflip.”

Meanwhile Liv was now resting on your lap

Looking at him with a smile on her face

And clapping while he smiled at made funny faces at her again

But then he noticed you were watching

And he was kinda making a fool of himself in front of you

(cue the blushing)

(so cute)

So you decided to help him out a little

"Thanks for putting her in a good mood again."

"No problem... is she yours?"

He didn't want to seem rude so he kept the judgment out of his voice, but you seemed a bit young to have a kid already.

"Nah, she's my niece"

"Oh, okay... Why'd you bring her to the hospital with you? It must be hard having to take care of a kid and get your ankle checked."

You looked a bit sad for a while.

"My sister left her with me as soon as I turned eighteen. My parents were never in the picture so it's been me and her for almost a year now."

"I'm sorry..."

"'S okay. Besides, at least I'm not alone all the time you now? I mean, it's hard to take care of a 13 month-old, but at least I know she won't grow up like I did... afraid... wondering if her mom was gonna come home drunk or half-dressed with another guy on her tail, wishing her sister would let her sleep on the bed instead of locking herself up with her boyfriend there."

He watched you smile as you looked down at the little girl in your arms that seemed to be a perfect reflection of you.

That was the moment he fell in love with you

Dark circles under your eyes and all

He got your number (yay!!) and had to work (read: pester you) for two weeks before you agreed to go out on a date with him.

Liv stayed with Harrison (after you checked that he was a good babysitter)

He took you to a nice little restaurant near the beach

They served giant burgers

Which you liked at lot

Conversation was easy 

He asked you what you were currently doing

"I'm working as a waitress in a little diner downtown."

He also found out you were doing online college to get your creative writing degree.

You told him about your family life. 

How your dad died in a car accident when you were three. 

How your mom was an alcoholic junkie and OD'd when you were fifteen.

How your nineteen-year-old sister had to take care of you for there on out. 

How she left soon after you graduated high school and left you with a three-month-old baby to take care of.

In turn, he told you all about his life

How he became an actor and got his big break as Spider-Man

He told you about his family and how much he misses them

How thankful he is to have Haz with him

You excused yourself to the bathroom just before dessert

And that bastard took advantage of that tiny window to pay the bill

You scolded him for that obviously

And tried to pay him back

He laughed and said no

Then he bought you a giant cotton candy

"Tom, seriously I can pay for my own stuff."

"I know but I like spoiling you."

You finished the cotton candy together while strolling down the beach

Then once it was done he threw out the cone and took your hand

The sun was just setting so it was like a picture-perfect moment

So he took advantage of that and kissed you

(so cliche)

You tasted like strawberry from your chapstick

The cotton candy you just had

You tasted like sweetness

And comfort

And home

You started dating officially not long after that

And that's when it all really started

You knew he was good with kids

That first day at the hospital told you as much

But you didn't expect him to be this good

Olivia was very much in love with him

They were practically glued at the hip

She constantly wanted hugs from him

He took her to the park and threw her up in the air while she squealed in delight

He picked her up and carried her while you were making dinner so she didn't feel left out

She sat on his back while he did push-ups

He'd kiss her nose every time he did a sit-up

They would have kissing contests

He kissed her cheek

She kissed his back 

Then he kissed hers again

And so on

Her first word was Tommy

You'd never seen him so happy

You, on the other hand, were not

"I raised you on my own ever since you were three months old and this is the thanks I get?"

They'd often fall asleep together on the couch

Your camera roll was full of photos of them sleeping

Her favorite thing to do was grab him by the sides of his head and kiss his curls

(a d o r a b l e)

He helped you plan the perfect birthday party for her

"Only the best for my best girl"

"I thought I was your best girl"

"Only the best for either of my best girls but in this case the youngest one"

She loved it

You're pretty sure he loved it more

But who can say for sure?

On your six month anniversary, he told you he loved you and that he had no plans on ever leaving you two.

He forced you to quit your job at the diner

"You're overworking yourself. I have more than enough money to take care of all of us and that way you'll be able to focus on your studies and travel with me since you do online college. Everybody wins."

So you went wherever he went

Including filming for Infinity War/Endgame

He took you to set one day

Everybody loved you

But as always, Olivia stole the show

They passed her around like a little doll

She loved the attention

It was quite funny seeing such a tiny baby being held by the mountain of a man that is Chris Hemsworth

She only referred to Chris Evans as 'Cap'

And Robert would forever be 'Tony'

But they didn't mind one single bit

"She just looks so cute when she says it, I can't be mad at her."

You met his family when the filming ended and he went back to London

Dom was ecstatic to finally have a little girl to take care of

"At least she laughs at my jokes, not like those idiots"

"You can leave her with us whenever you want"

Nikki was very happy to have one more girl in her corner

"I swear, if I hear one more second of golf talk, I'll go nuts"

Harry loved taking pictures of Liv

"She's just so photogenic, it's so easy"

You learned a lot of recipes from Sam

"Finally someone that won't wreck my kitchen and taint my food's good name"

Paddy liked playing with Liv and Tessa in the backyard

"It's nice to take care of someone for a change, I'm always the one being babied"

You made your relationship public while you were in London, a year and a half after you started dating

The public loved you

Because he just couldn't help but brag

And Tom with kids is the content the fans live for

tomhotland: omgggg they're so cuteee

spideysbae: the heart eyes thoooo

peterpprotectionsquad: i hereby declare that Olivia is the cutest baby to have ever existed and she must be protected at all costs

He took you to the Far From Home premiere

Your dress matched his suit

The fans went crazy

Olivia was living her best life in her little red and black dress

She'd gotten used to the flashes after Harry's numerous photoshoots

So she was just smiling and clapping a lot

The paparazzi loved her

The interviewers kept asking about you two

"(Y/N)'s the love of my life and Olivia's the sweetest baby I've ever known, I couldn't love her more if she was my own"

"So, do I hear wedding bells ringing?"

"Well, you never know"

That caught your attention for a second but you let it go in favor of posing with Liv after the paps all but begged you to

"Livvy say bye-bye"

She sent a kiss a said bye-bye in all her baby glory

They awed so much

His Instagram was filled with pictures of the three of you

Zendaya took a bunch of selfies with her as well

"Our dresses match, I have no choice"

She kept pretty quiet during the movie

But hugged Tom especially hard when she saw him cry on the big screen

The next morning, you were all over the headlines

"The sweetest little family in Hollywood"

On your third anniversary, he took you on a week-long trip to Bora Bora

Liv stayed with his parents

He took you on a walk to the beach

(déjà vu much?)

And proposed

Clumsily, but he proposed

How can a proposal be clumsy, you ask?

Well, he kneeled on a rock at first

"Ow! Fuck my knee, hold on a second"

Then he kept stuttering because he was so nervous

And in the end (after you said yes and he checked about five times cause "Wait seriously?") he started freaking out cause the ring didn't fit

But she wears the ring I used as a reference all the time!

"Um, Tom?"

"Yeah, babe?"

"The ring's supposed to go on my other hand..."

Ah, that explains it

The wedding was simple but beautiful

Livvy was the flower girl cause she wanted to throw petals in the air

Tessa brought the rings

His heart almost stopped when he saw you walk down the aisle

He was convinced you'd never looked more beautiful than that day at the premiere when your clothes matched 

But right now, looking at your smile and how gorgeous you looked in that dress, he realized he was wrong

He sniffled, trying to hold his tears, but Haz just handed him a tissue

"I came prepared"

You two adopted Liv

She was your daughter anyway, you just made it official

She started calling you 'mommy' and 'daddy'

"She called me 'daddy'."

Oh, the tears

To Tom's great delight, she started picking up a British accent, as she grew

It didn't help that she stayed at Nikki and Dom's all the time when you started teaching at a university in London

So they dialed they're British-ness up to eleven so she'd pick up on the accent

"Mummy, what's for pudding?"

Good Lord

After two years of trying, you found out Tom was unable to have kids

He cried a lot, and felt like he failed

You shut him up with a kiss and immediately mentioned adoption

"There are hundreds of children begging for a home and parents to love them."

You adopted an eight-year-old boy named Lucas and his five-year-old sister Cleo

Olivia loved having another girl her age

They had tea parties

And played dress-up

And forced Lucas to play the prince

You taught them to bake so they could have cookies for their tea party

And Tom found himself often ambushed in one of their games

"No, daddy, you gotta pretend that the big bad dragon took you so we can save you."

They rolled around on the floor and made 'pew pew' noises to imitate guns

Lucas was always quieter

He was your little angel

You two were very close

He shared your love for writing and literature

As well as cooking, to Uncle Sam's greatest delight

You often sat down on the couch, the five of you (and Tessa, obviously) and someone read a book out loud, while the others just laid back and listened

Cleo became very interested in Uncle Harry's camera and took a bunch of photos of her sister and her dad with the polaroid camera she got for her seventh birthday

Olivia still loved the attention and remained the bright and photogenic child she'd always been

She became a model, to no one's surprise

Cleo became a freelance photographer, which allowed her to fulfill her dream of traveling the world while taking pictures and earning good money

Lucas became one of Hollywood's best and brightest screenwriters

But everyone still made time for each other

Attending every single one of Liv's fashion shows

Every time Cleo showcased her pictures in a gallery, they were the first ones there

All of Lucas' films

Going to all of Tom's premieres and wearing matching clothes, per Liv and Cleo's request

"It's for the aesthetic"

Everyone was happy

And life was good

i’m pretty happy now, ngl

i need a Tom in my life